Nintendo has IP lawyers. They have to, at their scale, because they will constantly be bombarded by patent trolls, licensing companies etc. trying to extract profit out of Nintendo. So, like any other large business, they hire IP lawyers to protect themselves.
Most patent disagreements are resolved by cross-licensing. That’s where one business says, in response to a law suit, “oh, but you’re actually using 6 of our patents, so maybe we can come to an agreement”. A patent is both a shield and a sword. Even against trolls they can be useful, as they can be used to argue against troll arguments, if it gets to court, or pull in other business to the defense, if helpful.
IP lawyers know this. So they extract every patent they can out of everything a company does, as a way to build up the IP bank.
So, I highly doubt “Nintendo wants to prevent others” bla bla. It’s just IP lawyers doing their job.
I’ve sat in MANY discovery sessions with IP lawyers where they push and prod at software I, or my team, have written. “So, what you’ve effectively done is written a unique data structure to connect elements in memory?!”, “no, it’s a linked list, next question please”.
I feel like this is pretty reductive, really, to blanket all AAA games as one thing that are all bad. Just like all indie games aren’t great. In fact, the vast majority are kinda trash, really.
For every Call of Duty, you can find amazing games like Death Stranding 2 that have insane budgets but swing for the fences (and succeed in my opinion). And on the flip side for every Silksong you have three million, anime-girl-on-the-cover trash indie game.
There’s no “one is better than the other” when comparing the totality of AAA vs indie.
The AAA label can be misleading. I’ve been playing Dying Light: The Beast, which is technically a AAA game, but it has an indie jankiness to it that all open world Techland games have which is part of its charm.
People who swear off AAA games seem to think that they’re all COD, and they’re missing out on the good ones.
FromSoftware is a AAA studio. And there are plenty of AAA studios that resist the typical enshittification common to big budget studios. Now that I’m thinking about it, a lot of the “good” triple A studios that come to mind are based in Europe or Japan. USA style capitalism is the problem, not AAA studios themselves.
We have capitalism here in Europe too, and don’t get me started about the work culture in Japan.
I think there’s something else in the US. It’s a lack of cultural diversity. Yes, the country is a mixing pot of cultures, technically speaking - but it’s also kinda not. US mainstream media (I don’t mean news, I mean games, movies, etc) in general is quite homogenized. It’s also a huge export, so of course people in other countries get influenced by a lot of it too, but we have a lot of our own culture, which doesn’t much influence the US, but influences us.
I blame the death of mid-budget movies for the death of American media diversity. Which of course is largely due to Netflix et al. So capitalism is still the root cause, but it’s also the extreme cultural dominance of the US. Whereas here in Europe most movies and TV shows get made with the expectation that they’ll be watched by people of the country where it’s made, so it can afford to be jankier, American media has the expectation of being consumed around the world - so it’s a bit more generic and polished.
I just go into all games with no expectations or influences. its a much better way to game, imho.
rather than writing off AAA entirely. if I avoid reviews/ forum discussions etc and just play, then the labels kinda fall away. every game has a chance to be fun. regardless if it was made by 100 person dev team or 2.
Indie games have had a far better hit rate with me since about 2017 or so, but this year, bigger budget games have been more my speed. I agree; there’s no need to stick to those sorts of categories when your favorite can come from anywhere.
very apt meatphor, especially when you consider the development and enjoyment of games has consistently been part of the human experience.
a lovingly crafted game is a gourmet meal, each ingredient lovingly selected based on experience and a desire to give the recipient a special experience that will stay with them emotionally long term
a big studio game is fast food combination meal, each component focus tested after optimizing the whole pipeline to reduce cost to the investor and the resulting experience leaves the recipient feeling empty and unsatisfied. sure, occasionally something innovative will come along like a first person openworld sandbox or a 4 pack of cinnamon poppers, but eventually the big firms will replicate what’s working at other firms and you’ll be left with every studio offering the equivalent to chicken nuggets, hamburgers, fried chicken sandwhiches, french fries, and soda
I think this is pretty normal as you grow up. You get kind of bored of playing games that use the same gameplay mechanisms and you just look for a change. Even if the mechanisms in these indie games aren’t as good, just being different makes the game more interesting.
Nowadays I’d much rather play a short indie games that a big budget game.
I fully agree! This is a perfect example of how true the cliche “variety is the spice of life” can be. Novel experiences are abundant when you’re young, but when you’ve “seen/done it all” life can become boring or perhaps feel like the movie Groundhog Day…every day the same routine, no change in schedule or behavior, no change in outcome or expectation. There’s certainly comfort in routine but i find learning and trying new things to be one of the most rewarding experiences as i get older.
The Apple event after was just insane. Jobs said about the previous announcement that Bungie is still making Halo for Mac. And Bungie and Microsoft reps came on and nervously said it is still being made.
It released in Xbox. And then PC. And then a long time later, a third party were hired to port it to Mac.
Good on ya for sticking with it that long. I stopped at 4. Tried 5 but couldn’t get through it and I only had it bc it came with the wife’s Xbox.
Edit: just to add, I’m not even sure what it is since I like some of the things they’ve tried. Like, I love the multiplayer bots. They’re just fun to mess around.
Infinity was such a joke. They told everyone it was going to have a 10 year support plan despite the gaming coming out unfinished. Master Chief collection is great.
How is this a nightmare vision? Proprietary bullshit, which is what consoles are, is what Apple does better than the others. M series chips seem ideal in terms of hardware, and a consolized Mac mini would be pretty dope.
M chips are super expensive. They’re optimized for low clockspeed/idle efficiency and pay through the nose for cutting edge processes, whereas most gaming hardware is optimized for pure speed/$, with the smallest die area and cheapest memory possible, at the expense of power efficiency.
And honestly the CPU/GPU divide over traces is more economical. “Unified memory” programming isn’t strictly needed for games at the moment.
And, practically, Apple demands very high margins. I just can’t see them pricing a console aggressively.
It is “cheap” because they are hoping that someone is stupid enough to pay the upgrades like $200 for 256gb of extra SSD. Or that it later leads to purchasing more Apple devices.
Charging $200 for having 256gb of extra SSD space on a $700 computer (cost for them: $2) is textbook definition of scam.
The price is actually good for the Mac mini but clearly they sat on a table for hours discussing how they can fuck the end user like “and for the SSD, let’s make a board that LOOKS LIKE a standard M.2 drive, has almost the same dimensions and connector, BUT we don’t include a controller on it, so it’s not electrically compatibile with existing drives and we can charge a 10000x markup on it”. And all the marketing managers in the room started clapping
The base Mac Mini is not super powerful. Physically, the silicon comparable to AMD Strix Point, which you’d find in any AMD laptop.
I am not trying to rag on Apple here: their stuff is fine. It’s ridiculously power efficient. It’d be beyond excellent for a handheld like the Steam Deck, or a VR headset.
…But a plug in gaming console? That’s more ‘M4 Pro’ silicon. And what they charge for that speaks for itself.
I mean didn’t Microsoft just bring Apple back from going bankrupt around that time. Had to have competition so they wouldn’t become declared a monopoly. So you bail out your friends
gamesradar.com
Gorące