If this is widely adopted, I have enough emulators and classic PC games to never buy another game in my life and still be entertained the whole time. Good luck, corpo dipshits.
3ds and DS cartridges both have a limited lifespan and are likely to experience save failure as the years pile on - have you considered hacking your 3ds and getting a flashcart for DS games?
(You also won’t be giving money to scalpers on ebay)
Selling games from 10-20 years ago isn’t scalping.
I have 15 Nintendo handhelds on my last count. 2 of the 3ds are modded.
I have a pretty sizable collection and I’ve not had a game die on me yet, aside from save batteries that I’m capable of changing. I know the games can eventually die, I know it’s on the horizon, but they all still work for now, and I think even after they die I’ll enjoy the memories that the physical media provided me.
Retro games can totally on the market for completely unreasonable prices, look at any of the NDS pokemon games for a quick point of reference - especially insulting compared to the ease of using a flashcart.
Damn, you’re one of those hardcore collectors. I’m just the kind of person that bought a 3ds for the unique hardware layout and emulate the rest of Nintendo’s handhelds on my Steam Deck, but different strokes I guess.
The 3DS carts I believe are the most prone to failure - most of what I read comes from the Animal Crossing and Pokemon communities (probably due to their dedicated fanbases), so that’d be the primary concern. Considering you can regularly rip your carts using a modded 3DS, staying ahead of it would probably be wise (I’m not hatin’ on the collection, but even diehard physical media collectors should rip their copies for safety).
Yeah man, the prices are unfortunate, but supply and demand is definitely a thing. Items are only worth what people are willing to pay, and I’m fortunate to be able to justify some of my expendable income on growing my collection here and there.
If you really want your head to hurt, look up some of those really popular games sealed and WATA/PSA graded. Old graded consoles still sealed can sell for 6 digits.
I definitely have several of my favorites ripped for a rainy day. It’s definitely not a hobby for everyone. I have more modern emulation machines that can easily run all of my backups, but there’s really no replacement for the real games on real hardware. Just like some people are audiophile vinyl collectors who thumb their nose at Spotify and a pair of ear buds.
This will never be widely accepted in the gaming space because it’s not a game. The model only generates an interactive world, not a game world. It’s effectively a glorified AI prompted showroom. It’s useless as a development tool because nothing it generates is usable in the traditional development process which means the model would have to create the whole game but the model is incapable of understanding what a game is.
Isn’t that the AI hype in a nutshell? “It’s all it does right now but if you add insert hopes and dreams it’s going to revolutionize X”.
I mean, human touch will play a role but I think the tech overall just nowhere near where it should be to make games. It would actually need to understand what it is doing because there needs to be some intentionality there. Something as simple as a counter going up when you kill an enemy, but I think even that goes beyond what current models are even remotely capable. They would be capable of imitating a counter for some timeframe but to actually keep track of it over a long gaming session? I have my doubts.
They would be capable of imitating a counter for some timeframe but to actually keep track of it over a long gaming session?
The article was little light on the details, but if the whole game is run on ai thats what is going to happen. But if AI is creating real code and the game it creates has real files that are saved on the computer, things like point counters are not anymore tied by the limits of AI’s memory.
But i just dont see how AI in its current state could make large cohesive projects.
Also there is no such thing as artificial intellect. AI is just nice marketing word for something that tries to mimic what real AI would be.
It’s not generating any code. You don’t even get a game out of the model, you only get a video of what you played. It’s like an AI video generator except you have control over the camera and character.
That’s a very good analogy. Yeah, this is stupid. What’s even dumber than the concept itself, is freaking out over it and selling stocks. This technology should not intimidate anyone, it’s impressive by some limited metrics, but it’s not in any way effective at creating a video game.
Given that what it “does so far” already required the theft of the sum total of human creativity available online and the sacrifice of the survivability of humanity due to climate change, kinda seems like there isn’t much else to wring out of this.
Even better, it’s Starfield but your character is moving in 4D space and things pop in and out of existence depending on your position in the 4D space. And of course no loading screens.
As a dedicated fan of walking simulators I can already see the amount of shovelware we need to dig through to find the good stuff multiplying by orders of magnitude.
It’s been a year since I played INFRA and I’ve thought about it without fail at least once a week and it damn well isn’t because they haphazardly made boring environments.
The companies that market machine learning tools to investors and the masses have not been set up by people who believe art has value. Everything is content, and content exists to be aggregated alongside advertisements or displayed for a fee.
I genuinely hate that actual artists can’t use a lot of pretty neat novel digital levers to make stuff. Because it’s synonymous with garbage. The ability to leap across the uncanny valley has lost all novelty and is downright banal now.
But the answer to your question is the same as every desperate attempt at getting a “good” use case for slop generators. It’s for cranking out low effort trash.
Yeah this is more investors being stupid. Hell this would be impact VFX and Architects but the logic they are using. The whole thing is a cool demo but little real world application like like with most genAI.
I also have probably emulators for approx. 90 consoles / systems and have full set of games for most… Even if no game is produced anymore, we can buy current gen PC and console games, including Switch and Steam. In addition to emulation of older systems. And then there is the modding scene… with never ending content for out beloved games, even remasters from fans.
If the gaming industry goes wild, then I have no fear of missing out. And there are enough games (even to buy) that will serve me for the rest of my life.
The problem with this, and most other “ai products” isn’t just that they are immortal attacks in human labor and and intellectual property, they also simply don’t work.
I’ll still buy from principled indie devs any day any year. There may be more old games than anyone could play in a single lifetime but let’s be real most aren’t good.
Literally millions (billions?) of amazing games made before 2018 are waiting to be played! I wonder if future gamers will shun the 2020 era of gaming like the disco era
Exactly my thoughts, but I am waiting for the Steam Deck 2… Or something more future proof (that would be my 1st gaming handheld stronger than my overclocked hacked Nintendo Switch v1).
Probably still a ways off. They said they didn’t want to do a 2 until there was a substantial upgrade available… And while the latest amd apu IS better, its not the leap and bound they say they are looking for so likely not yet in any type of production
I’ve been enjoying Dr Robotnik’s Ring Racers. However, it’s rather technical compared to mario kart, so I would recommend against using the cheat-code to skip the tutorial.
There is like a good chunk of an entire decade’s worth of games that can’t be played on PC legitimately due to either expired licenses for music (e.g. EA Trax) or lack of support for older, disc-based DRM (SecuROM etc.).
That’s before factoring older titles that no longer work due to arbitrary changes to DirectX and the Windows kernel, which break backwards compatibility.
It wasn’t on proton but there’s a very old entry on wine. Looks like my boy Jeff’s last entry was quite recent in 2023, he rated it a silver. There’s a known bug from some graphical glitch during certain events like the protagonist meeting himself back in time and others which may prevent completion. I wonder how it works now, tempted to test it out.
Worse than disdain, it’s hostility. Their family-friendly image is at odds with their actual actions. Going after streamers because they dare play (and publicize) your games…? What the fuck!? Their attitude literally makes me reconsider buying their console and/or games…
They asked what's different from the others, because Sony and Microsoft will also ban you if you try to go online with pirated games. This news isn't actually anything new.
They’re much worse, for a myriad of reasons, but mainly because they are extremely litigous and overprotective of their IP to the extent that they regularly kill open source emulation projects that support games they don’t even sell, and also shut down any kind of fan-made projects or events.
The first flagship phones with the headphone jack removed.
The normalization of phones without expandable storage.
A phone where you buy the charger separately.
A walled-garden ecosystem without sideloading.
An OS that removed support for kernel extensions.
An authorized repair program that replaces instead of repairs.
A line of ATX-sized desktop PCs with storage modules that are only accepted if they’re the same capacity as the ones you originally bought the PC with.
Their entire software and hardware is an affront to personal ownership, right to repair, and consumer rights.
Don’t forget the thousand dollar basic monitor stand. Or the assumption that their users were too stupid to understand multiple mouse buttons until like the mid 00s. Or making a mouse that was completely round (still with one button) so you’d have to look at it to be sure it’s oriented correctly, though I guess that one was more bad design than lack of respect for their users.
Oh yeah. And the rechargeable mouse that needs to be flipped upside down to charge simply because the designers hated the idea of people leaving it plugged in constantly. Or the Mac Pro wheels that cost almost as much as an entire handheld PC.
Not always. It has been for longer than we’ve been alive, but stock originated as a way to fund merchant voyages - you paid a share of the costs and got a share of the proceeds (in merchandise or in the sale value of that merchandise) when the ship came in.
Literally the origin of the phrase “your ship has come in”.
Then people started speculating over the future value of and trading those shares while the ship was still at sea, then the concept got generalized beyond merchant voyages, etc and here we are where it’s more like the art market where things are worth whatever someone will pay and that value isn’t necessarily tied to anything concrete.
Yah, definitely not DS or DS lite. Playing online with pirated games on a hacked 3DS MAYBE, but certainly not flash carts.
That said, I hacked my N3DSXL AGES ago so I could back up my Monster Hunter saves in case something ever happened before XX was released and I could transfer my data, played online a shit ton (with my R4DS in the cart slot) and was never banned.
Yes, but it was only a few games when they were played/used on flashcarts before the game released :p
Happened with phantasy star zero iirc
It was also not nintendo’s choice but the game devs. So it was game bound, not console bound
The cost of having to have an account to get "easy" driver updates always seemed a bit high to begin with. I never really found its game optimization profiles to be useful either.
The profiles can be nice for setting most things, but having it default all of your games to Fullscreen instead of Borderless Windowed (and no way to change what the default setting is anywhere in the program) should be fucking criminalized.
Yeah I disable those back when I noticed World of Warcraft started performing badly. GFE had helpfully optimised it to run at a resolution 4x higher than my screen and downscaled it…
There’s TechPowerUp’s NVCleanstall, it has semi automatic drivers updates with a lot of granularity (though the latest version needs an update due to this new app).
Tbh, the control panel is a lot of things, but responsive or slick aren‘t one of them. As long as they carry all the functionality over and get rid of the bugs, I‘m happy with the app. Unless they pull a fast one and add account requirements in again later.
I mean, my point is there's no reason they should be overhauling it entirely (at the cost of performance) when they could just pay some competent Windows programmers to un-shit the existing Control Panel. Yeah its UI sucks but it's not going to make you drop frames for just having it open
IIRC the framework it‘s built on is so ancient it didn‘t allow for that, they needed to re-write the whole thing to „fix“ it, and this is what they came up with for that. DF‘s Alex said as much in one of their podcast episodes. All just paraphrased by me of course.
I don‘t think the performance hit is by design or intentional anyway, so hopefully the current screw-up is gonna be a nothing burger by the time the app‘s mandatory (if it ever will be).
I am highly skeptical of that. There are plenty of hobbyists making new things in ancient environments. I just don't think Nvidia has ever been very competent at software engineering (drivers excepted as they're in a very different domain)
Serious question from someone who only recently moved to PC gaming: Why can it be ignored? Isn’t that where you get the latest drivers? Or are you downloading and installing them manually?
You can download them manually if you want. Updated drivers is rarely that important for performance. Maybe for newer games, but not for 98% of what’s already out there.
And they also mess things up occasionally. Like all those Minecraft performance mods that had to change how the game looked to the driver, because if it looked like Minecraft it’d tune itself and get worse performance instead of better.
A driver allows games to interface with the graphics hardware, enabling accelerated performance for example. This “app” provides additional functionality on top of that (I don’t know what, but GeForce Experience it replaces provided things like recording gameplay videos etc.) which is not strictly required and, it seems, hurts gaming performance.
As for getting the latest drivers, you can do it manually by going to nVidia’s website and download them, or rely on Windows update to give you reasonably recent drivers.
Some years ago, when I was still using windows, I used to run www.techpowerup.com/nvcleanstall/ instead to update drivers. Still recommend it to this day.
You don’t need to update your drivers every time a new version comes out, some games can actually get worse performance with a newer driver - I personally had problems with No Man’s Sky, nvidia drivers over version 424 I think, made the game effectively unplayable, while versions like 416 kept the game and the framerate smooth throughout.
They removed the forced login too. Which was welcome imho. It’s why I tolerate it now. Just for driver updates. I use none of the other features. Sometimes I wish stuff would stay in its lane.
GFE’s only useful purpose is for ShadowPlay. Use Nvcleanstall instead to update your drivers. That way you can remove unnecessary features and stop the privacy-invading telemetry.
There are very few companies that are able to reach my only if used or stolen classification. Nintendo has managed to reach the not even if used or stolen classification.
Roughly an average 10% drop in major gaming stocks, because a plagiarism machine can produce one minute of 720p, 24fps ‘gameplay’ at an absolutely astounding compute cost.
These people are all fucking idiots.
Therr is no universe where this even makes sense under a ‘a games are streamed’ paradigm.
This is like 100x to 100,000x the cost in hardware and energy, to produce a minute.
Do these fucking idiots think a game can just be wholly reinstantiated every single minute?
It actually would have made more sense to fine tune an LLM to interface with an API layer for Unity or something, to just… you know, produce an actual game?
Call that the uh, the processed training data/output condensed into a distilled an efficient piece of software, the ‘local’ model, if these clowns understand nothing but jargon.
I truly cannot comprehend the mind numbing level of stupidity on display here.
If that much investor money can be swayed by this utterly pitiful demonstration, then all these game stocks deserve to go to near 0, because clearly the people in charge (the investors) understand literally nothing about video games.
This is utterly asinine.
What happens if/when all of the plagiarised games start suing Google for IP infringement?
How is everyone involved at every step of this so utterly mentally impaired?
… I didn’t downvote you, but uh, no, I really don’t think they can.
I think you are confusing an semi-automable asset pipeline that adheres to various kinds of standards for… a whole lot more than that.
I’d really like to see any evidence that what you seem to be describing actually exists.
Because if it does, and is or has been in widespread use for any amount of time prior to now… well very broadly, it would seem to be hurting more than helping things.
How is everyone involved at every step of this so utterly mentally impaired
Most of the shareholder oligarchs who own our economy are lead poisoned boomers and this is all just their way of competing with each other for the top spots on the forbes richest people list.
Basically you don’t understand. Investors sell when they think the companies will fuck shit up. That could be because they think the product is obsolete, or it could be that they think manglement is going to do dumb shit. Take your pick. Remember, it’s gambling about the future, not about what’s right or reasonable.
Like, I generally agree with you, but… no one can possibly do any kind of analysis on TSLA, and Elon, and conclude anything other than:
Everything about this is completely insane and makes no sense.
Oh hi I’m Elon Musk, my car company only exists because of tax credits for EVs, and I just spent a squagillion dollars to elect a guy who will cancel those.
Oh, also, we build C3POs now, not cars.
Even though they’re decades behind already existing humanoid robots, being built by another car company (Hyundai), who acquired an actually ground breaking an revolutionary robotics firm (Boston Dynamics).
Also, please given Elon a squagillion dollars, to incentivize him to keep performing his super duper CEO magic.
… fucking what? He’s an actual madman, not a suave and calculating Bond villain, he’s a fucking lunatic!
… Does any of this not qualify as ‘management is going to do dumb shit?’
(also i am not sure if ‘manglement’ was an intentional joke or unintentional misspelling, but that will now be the word I am using in place of ‘mismanagement’, hahah!)
I tried to make sure it got quoted but my app doesn’t do well with copying the user so I did it this way so people would know it certainly wasn’t me who saw the flaw.
If it helps UFD tech on YouTube also reported off the Tom’s Guide article, spouting the same flawed data as the headline.
Despite the fearmongering going around about bricks, this is only online bans. Same thing they've always done, same thing Sony and Microsoft do too if you get caught there.
Frankly, if you try to go online with pirated games, you're an idiot.
Also it’s impossible to make legal backups with the Mig flash. Yes backups for personal use are legal, but under the DMCA bypassing the DRM is not legal. And the Mig flash is seen as a DRM circumvention device. And before y’all come at me no i don’t agree with this but Nintendo probably has the law on their side with this. Since players using the Mig are violating the EULA.
lol first response is a personal insult because someone takes it personally when someone else speaks truth that is disagreement with how they want things to be.
The problem is that updates are not automatically inserted in the flashcart. All the flashcart does is clone the original one as it was put on sale. Updates are always downloaded by the console and are not stored on the cart.
Let’s make a real world example: you go in a store and buy the cart for “disney dreamlight valley” for $40. You actually don’t know, but inside the cart there’s only a 34,6 MB file that only contains a splashscreen and a popup that says “connect to internet to download the update”. It then connects to Nintendo servers to download the 4.61 GB “update” that is the actual game. If you are blocked from Nintendo servers how can you get the update? Your console itself isn’t hacked, so you can’t just download it from random online sources with a different signature. You can dismiss the popup but then you can only admire your new $40 wallpaper.
This is the “gameplay” of said $40 game if you don’t have the possibility of installing updates:
The point I'm making is this: if you wanna pirate, you're on your own. If you can't get it working, tough shit. You played stupid games and you won stupid prizes.
The problem is that the people that got banned did not pirate the shit and paid with real money the games.
If the hardware is mine and i paid a valid license for the game, i am then entitled to play that game whatever i would like to play it. I can’t get a $450 paperweight if one day they decided that those 8-in-1 multiplexers for the dock aren’t supported. Or if one day a production lot of cartridges is glitched and they blacklist people at random
If they blacklisted the console, then it’s ok to block online gaming (and I would 100% agree with that), but playing offline games should still be allowed.
I vote with my wallet and i don’t support this shit
If you wanna take the attitude that you can do whatever you want with it including piracy, fine but you're on your own. If you can't get your flashcart working offline, tough shit. Too bad, so sad. It's your fault for using the flashcart.
I have no idea why people and companies still trust Google. When I did work on GCP we had mandatory maintenance every 2 months because some core service was changing. Hell I just got a notice last week that they’re shutting down another API.
I am convinced they just push stuff to become THE dominant ai company. It doesn’t matter if it’s useful, they just need the publicity and also ChatGPT to crash and burn.
It’s not the account that’s banned. It’s the device that’s banned. You can factory reset the Switch 2, completely wiping all data, and it will remain banned. This means that none of the games you’ve purchased legally will function, as cartridges no longer contain games and Nintendo’s services are required to play them.
You don’t, unless there are unofficial servers to connect to. This hypothetical console is banned anyway, so you’re being forced to pirate to actually use it.
How do you play any new game? You need an internet connection to download games as the majority wont be true physical games anymore (the cartridge is a “key-card”).
Your console is banned from connecting to Nintendo’s services (apparently not for the console updating service, as users from gbatemp.net have figured out), so you won’t be able to play the majority of the Switch 2’s library, even when purchasing a game legally.
Yes, but that’s not the same as merely putting the console into airplane mode. And it’ll be 2 to 3 years before CFWs, homebrew, and piracy will be viable on the Switch 2 (based on the time it required to do the same on the Switch 1, and 3DS).
Right, but the OP said being unable to go online to update the firmware made it a prime piracy machine. It follows that it has to be jailbroken to qualify as such.
According to those on GBATemp.net, the update server and the eshop server are both different. Your console being banned means it’s banned from all the shop services, but console updates still happen.
I think console updates are semi-forced, so you’ll still have to keep the Switch 2 offline and/or keep denying update prompts like usual, even if it’s banned.
Looking at the listings on Target and GameStop, I’ve noticed that many publishers decided to use the game-key card format. This is allegedly because Nintendo is only offering third-party developers the 64GB cartridge or the game-key card—there is no smaller, standard physical cart. This would explain why nearly every major (and minor) AAA release is on a game-key card, since publishers don’t want to pay extra for the more expensive storage space.
Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD, Hitman: World of Assassination, Hogwarts Legacy, Madden NFL 26, Raidou Remastered, Sonic X Shadow Generations, Split Fiction, Star Wars Outlaws, Street Fighter 6 Year 1-2 Fighters Edition, and Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut will all require an internet connection to download before playing. Civilization VII will actually just be a code in a box. I can image there will be more (of both) in the future; the Switch 2 only just launched.”
As a British citizen I am starting to get ideas. The following is about distance selling which includes online sales.
You must offer a refund to customers if they’ve told you within 14 days of receiving their goods that they want to cancel. They have another 14 days to return the goods once they’ve told you.
tomshardware.com
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