They got my $40 in 2012. I absolutely loved the Wing Commander series; Wing Commander II was an embarrassingly important part of my adolescense, I love space sims, and still had fond enough memories of the name Chris Roberts that I didn’t think he’d blatantly lie and steal from me.
How people are still giving these clowns money I have no idea.
People are buying the dream. There is personal investment now- this isn’t a game, this is their game. Supporters tend to talk like this is a community project, not a transaction between a customer and a studio.
Whenever the studio finally folds, I guarantee there will be whales lamenting that if they’d only spent a little more they’d have kept the game afloat.
One of my ex coworkers has spent somewhere in the ballpark of 12k. He sells, flips and trades rare ships to sell back to people after the exclusivity of the ship has expired. He’s made like 4k. I don’t understand gaming anymore.
Yes of course! But I’d imagine the average CSGO/2 player is really only in for $100 or so on side market deals. Not 1000s. The lowest ship is like $35 or something.
Yea that’s where I’m at. I’m platform agnostic, and the only game I simp for is the original halo trilogy. Microtransactions are dirty. And making digitized items a financial value just to sell them is the same as what you said, like Funko pop collectors.
Lol if that game is ever finished, I bet there’s going to be some people who paid way too much for a ship that turns out to completely suck but seemed ok on paper. Kinda like a PT cruiser, except it looked ok on paper.
I used to be like you, laughing and enjoying life.
The new director of technology we just hired a few months ago flexed about how he’s now hit 6-digit donations to Star Citizen. It’s still early and he hasn’t shown any results, but if he’s following the Star Citizen path of growth, my department is fucked.
i want to fall for it yet i keep waiting for further development, thankfully they occasionally do free flight events so I can actually test the game without having to pay
Today was day one of Citizencon and CIG revealed a lot of stuff that shows they’re still working to give players the game they want. Most of it was actually tech to answer the scalability problem for everyone wondering how they’re going to get to 100 star systems when they still only have 1
Personally, I don’t think they should be aiming for 100 anymore, even if it was promised. That number was for the original pitch and was arbitrarily high since it was for a much shallower and easier to create game
I would say private server is more what you’re referring to, also CIG’s wording, but maybe agree to disagree. A quick search says that they haven’t cancelled that feature, but it’ll appropriately be the very last thing they work on
the common understanding of “dedicated server” is a server binary you can download and run yourself. a “private server” is usually still hosted on the company’s hardware.
I can understand you have different criteria for dedicated servers, but private servers are certainly not generally characterized by still being on 1st party hardware. You need only look at private servers for Minecraft, WoW, and the like
minecraft server binaries are a prime example of a “dedicated server”. tf2 is another. the alternative is a “listen server”, where one player acts as server. note that the term’s use in gaming has very little to do with the concept of a dedicated server in general use, aka a machine dedicated to running a service. in multiplayer games a dedicated server is just the name for a binary that contains no client.
anyway, the important distinction is whether the means for the game to continue existing is in the hands of the players or the company.
Microsoft paid Ninja about $50 million to leave Twitch and stream solely on their Mixer platform, only to close Mixer entirely less than a year later.
They will absolutely buy up a bunch of stuff and then just close down altogether. Their market cap is in the trillions; these things don’t really matter to them in the end.
Why wouldn’t they just buy a large stake if they’re only there for the money? The reason to buy the company out is control, meaning they can further other interests (e.g. growing XBox market share) through the acquisition.
Nah, even then that guy is still right. Go check out what Microsoft makes in a quarter, Q22023 for example.
They can afford that loss. Remember, Microsoft is stupid big and makes stupid money, if you go to any world index fund, Microsoft is like 3% of it. It is titanic.
Yeah no way. I can't see it. Maybe shutting down game pass and shuttering xbox integration but I can't see them completely leaving. Too much money on the table.
They created the Zune only to promptly shut it and the division down. The zunes were awesome and I wish we had more options for music playback devices.
Until March 31st, 2026, the GameChat system will be available for free for all Switch 2 owners
Is this so they can lock it behind the subscription after this? Along with all the other new features, not worth it for me. Getting the steam deck once I can’t get anymore physical games on the switch 1.
I hope they at least allow gamechat to be used locally, and by that I specifically mean allowing the camera stuff to be active (like if you plug in a small USB C camera in portable mode, maybe even if you sit in wireless range but in different rooms)
High refresh screen and 4K support is a surprise to me, that’s very nice when it comes to Nintendo standards.
On the other hand, It’s very weird that they didn’t announce a price at the showcase… It sounds like this might be more expensive than what everybody’s expecting it to be.
It’s not similar to PC hardware; It uses a Tegra processor like the Switch 1. Which means it’s more like a phone with a less than laptop grade Nvidia graphics chipset thrown in. Unlike the Steam Deck, for instance, which uses an AMD Z processor, a scaled down version of what is in the Xbox and PS5.
That is entirely meaningless. That's not how performance works, it has no bearing on anything.
In practice, they showed a whole bunch of footage of comparable games, including Elden Ring, Cyberpunk. Hitman, Star Wars Outcasts and Split Fiction. At a glance, it seems fairly comparable to the current batch of PC handheld APUs and seems to be mostly running cross-gen PC games at lower resolutions and framerates but pretty solidly otherwise.
That puts it in a weaker spot than next-gen PC handhelds, but on par with most of the current batch. Or at least as on par as the Steam Deck is.
So in terms of pricing for the hardware it seems pretty consistent with what we're seeing elsewhere. The two Deck models seem to have the most comparable specs, and those are slightly cheaper for the LCD and slightly more expensive for the OLED. Other handhelds are marginally more powerful but also way more expensive. With the upcoing batch of high-end AMD APUs being also way more expensive than last gen, it seems the Switch 2 is price-competitive, at least until Valve decides it's time and tries to make another custom deal with AMD for a more powerful APU at scale.
I understand what you were saying. I'm saying it doesn't make a fundamental difference what architecture is being used and there are other aspects that impact performance, so you can't make assumptions based on that. Plus the GPU is very PC-like, or at least it was on the first Switch. Porting to these things is actually surprisingly straightforward.
there are other aspects that impact performance, so you can’t make assumptions based on that
That is literally what I have been trying to say this whole time in response to you saying it looks comparable. I genuinely have no idea what you are arguing against at this point.
I said "considering how similar hardware on PC handhelds stacks up", meaning the current batch of PC handhelds seem to get similar performance and visuals than what they showed today. You claimed that the hardware isn't similar because the CPU is an ARM device.
If you meant that to mean that the performance is the same despite the different architecture you have to walk me through how you thought I was going to interpret that from you caveating that the architecture is different with no additional context, but I guess I'll take it?
Your response was to Simple’s comment about price. From my reading it seemed that you were implying that the price was right because the performance was similar. I was agreeing with Simple and disagreeing with that perceived implication based on the fact that it uses a different and historically cheaper architecture. One that would typically make a dollar per hertz comparison useless, as you seem to have pointed out. Hence my confusion.
Yes, I am implying that the price is right because the performance is similar. ARM isn't fundamentally cheaper than x64, I don't know where you get that. The Switch was cheap because it was running a cheap, old, basically off-the-shelf part, not because that part had an ARM CPU. And indeed the Deck is running an older AMD APU as well at this point.
My laptop has an ARM CPU in it. I assure you it wasn't any cheaper than the equivalent x64 version with the same performance.
Then it seems we got off on the wrong foot when you called my disagreement meaningless.
RISC has always been fundamentally cheaper than x86 which is one reason why Nintendo has used a RISC processor in all of their handheld consoles since the original GameBoy.
Your last sentence is pretty much my point though. There is no reason for that. Look at the iPad and the Mac Mini, look at the Raspberry Pi… there is no reason for a RISC machine to cost more than an x86 machine.
This conversation is kinda surreal and I think I want it to stop.
Even if you were correct about this, and you are not, especially in modern times, this only applies to one part of the APU. The GPU is still your run of the mill CUDA-based Nvidia GPU, effectively a PC part. And this is a handheld, a lot of the cost is stuck in the display, controllers, storage and the rest of the hardware package. The CPU component of the APU is not going to be what sets the baseline for cost unless you're building in a super high-end part.
I can't parse how you're looking at this, but I assure you that it doesn't counter the point that this thing seems to both perform similarly and cost about as much as the current batch of PC handhelds. I don't know how this is a back-and-forth thing.
This conversation is surreal because you don’t seem to understand how disagreement works. You said the price makes sense, I am saying it doesn’t. You are free to end the discussion there if you wish but I am going to keep responding to the person who keeps acting like their opinion is fact;
Tegra GPUs are specifically cost reduced, low power versions of previous generations of GeForce GPUs. The one in the Switch 2 has been rumored to be based on the 3000 series but I have not seen any confirmation of that as yet. I feel like you are making my point for me, you keep saying that everything else costs the same so why should this one cheaper part matter… and my response is because it’s cheaper. Note the lack of PCI and Thunderbolt for instance. There is also no Windows license to worry about.
If you don’t want to reply then don’t but seriously it seems like you are getting upset solely because somebody has a differing opinion.
I mean, go nuts. It will have cheaper games, a lot of the same cross-platform stuff and it trades blows on performance and display, from what I can see... but price isn't really the biggest difference here.
The price reductions on the nintendo eshop aren’t really that enticing in comparison. So you have to pay pretty high prices for games or have to search on the second hand market to buy games cheaper.
On Steam, Gog and Epic you get good deals every day. Those crazy 1000+ game collections from Steam users aren’t there without reason. Games are often so cheap on Steam that you buy them even when you have 10 other games in the backlog you would rather play before.
Yeah, well, that's not really a good thing in my book. You also arguably don't need a thousand games you're not gonna play. One of the things I'd like to see this gen on the Switch 2 is more curated discoverability and less shovelware.
I think your argument will make more or less sense depending on how the physical market eveolves. The price bump for physical is a bummer, but this generation it's been very easy to find cheap physical copies, both new and used.
At the end of the day, PC handhelds are like PCs, you tend to pay more for the hardware (only the very cheapest LCD version of the Deck is cheaper than the Switch 2, and multiple specs are actually worse) and on consoles you get more affordable hardware but typically more expensive games, at least day one.
So at worst the Switch 2 is... you know, a console. The pricing of the hardware is by far the least egregious pricing choice in this whole thing. If anything, the Switch 2 feels weirdly standard for Nintendo's typical strategy. They have a tendency to sell very old hardware at some profit instead of subsidizing it. This feels weirdly comparable to the PC handheld segment.
The Steam Deck is significantly cheaper when you take 🏴☠️ into account. Having cheaper hardware made having to deal with Nintendo’s walled garden worth it in the past. Plus the fact that there wasn’t anything else like the Switch when it launched.
Sure, anything is cheap if you don't pay for software. Kinda not how we measure the value of the hardware.
I mean, by that metric, and considering how Nintendo's software security has been, historically, the Switch 2 is probably going to get dirt cheap real soon, by your standards.
How open a platform is is high on the list of how I measure the value of hardware, but not how the general population does. I played my launch Switch way, way more after I jailbroke it. I was originally going to wait until the Switch 2 came out, but Nintendo pissed me off with their Yuzu crap last year. For most people that just wanna play games with less hassle, the Switch 2 compares much more favorably.
Yeah, sure, that's always the case for consoles. I have no objection to that train of thought. If you want versatility and an open platform you're going to be better off with a similarly specced PC handheld. At the cost of first party exclusives and a few other creature comforts, but if you're only going to buy one device and that's a priority that's clearly the way to go.
Looking at it in general and in the market and just looking at the hardware they're packing in, though, their proposition isn't super overpriced. The part that is a bummer is they seem to be shifting that extra cost to other places with the subscription, generational upgrade packs, higher physical game prices and so on.
It is quite a shift from how Nintendo’s been doing things since the Wii. They were always the weaker hardware at a lower price guys, so this is quite a change in their philosophy. I saw you said as much in another comment. They’ll be competing more directly with Sony and Microsoft than they have since the Gamecube. I’ll be interested to see how selling at top dollar does for them in the particularly unstable global market we have now.
Yep. This is a shockingly... Playstationy proposition. First party games aside I would have not been surprised to see a Vita revival be this exact console. I mean, they're basically shipping Bloodborne 2 and EyeToy.
The US site lists May 8. Preorders also seem to be invite-only in the beginning?
From the US site:
Invitation emails will be prioritized on a first-come, first-served basis to registrants who have purchased a Nintendo Switch Online membership with a minimum of 12 months of paid membership and a minimum of 50 total gameplay hours, as of April 2, 2025. Once invitation emails have been sent to all registrants meeting the priority criteria, invitations will be sent to remaining eligible registrants on a first-come, first-served basis.
The German site lists April 8, but requires you two have a Nintendo online subscription for the last two years.
I would have bet real money if you had asked me yesterday that it would have been limited to 1080p to reduce cost. I am very curious to know more about how it actually performs in each setting, how much of it is upscaling, etc. I imagine that most 4k games won’t have much in the way of better graphics than the Switch 1, the higher memory bandwidth could help with higher res textures though.
There’s not going to be a single worthwhile game that will run natively at 4k. And i have my doubts about 1080@120 too. Maybe they can keep their polygons so low they can actually reach it, but then what’s the point?
Starfield is good. It’s not the next Skyrim, it’s not the greatest RPG ever made, but it does more than enough things right to be worthwhile. It’s fine to not like a good game, by the way - but this doesn’t make it terrible.
I honestly don’t even think they’ll get that far. I mean they’ve announced it now, yet again, for a 2026 release date…two years from now. they’ve been doing this for the past decade. “It’ll release in 2016” then it’s “Squadron 42 coming 2018” and so on and so forth. Mark my words we’ll get to 2026 and at their little convention they have to further milk their userbase of money they’ll announce Squadron 42 for 2028 but please, user, they need more backers and as a reward for backing you’ll get a fancy ship you’ll never get to keep.
You’re getting downvoted but you’re right. People who buy starfield need to accept to themselves that they enjoy bad games and rewarding the companies that make them.
I imagine you must have a pretty sad life if you find yourself spending free time insulting people who enjoy something you don't like.
There must be some serious mental illness going on to spend time in threads about products you don't like. I don't like Ford vehicles, but I don't spend my time on Ford forums insulting them and their owners because I'm not a miserable loser with nothing to fill my time.
Go find something you enjoy. Nobody is interested in your pathetic trolling.
The only thing worse than corporate cock sucking is this constant insistence that only positive opinions should be shared. If I wrote a dystopic novel about that I’d be criticized for being too heavy handed. And since enshittification is directly the fault of people like you, I’ll piss on you all I’d like thanks.
Lol? Armchair psychology much? I’m talking the shit with my friends and you’re occasionally begging for my attention like I’m your alcoholic father. Stop projecting your shit onto me.
It has nothing to do with agreement. It's the premise of spending time in a forum for a product you don't like, and insulting everyone else. That screams mental illness and a miserable life.
Todd Howard has said ES 6 will be his last Elder Scrolls. That makes me really sad. I was hoping Starfield would be his last game.
I honestly think the only way ES6 could be good would be if the writers and environmental artists of Elder Scrolls Online are a huge part of it. The core Bethesda team has shown they can’t write for shit anymore. And please please can the animators.
I wonder if the utterly generic and inoffensive stories are intentional. People LOVE to be outraged today. They tried to boycott the latest Harry Potter game because they hate J. K. Rowling. Maybe Bethesda is just trying to stay as far away from the outrage as possible, and the result is… this. Maybe all the interesting stories get canned or neutered and turned into side quests.
Wat. No.
Bethesda has had a policy of streamlining thier games and making sure the player can win everything since Oblivion. They only “play it safe” to make sure the player never loses. That’s all it is.
The prices plus the fact the “physical” games are just download codes (cartridges are not preloaded) really killed the hype for me. I was excited for the new Mario Kart. But $90 for a physical download code after the lackluster, unfinished feeling main titles (Animal Crossing especially) on the Switch has me kind of disgusted. The game “upgrades” also are a bummer. Mario Party Jamboree, while fun, also feels unfinished. A lot of Nintendo’s newer games do, save for Zelda.
I just hope Tomodachii 2 is available on Switch 1. If it’s not I’m just going to have to wait for a rip.
I don’t think all games are like that, only some. Probably the ones that got larger file sizes. I hope they don’t cheap out and put smaller games also on licence-only cartridges.
Only some games are like that, and the ones that are, are cheaper.
I don’t know how you think Mario Party Jamboree is unfinished tho. It’s felt like the most polished one on years - probably since the first one on the Wii, except it has even more stuff than that.
That takes away much of the appeal of physical copies since Nintendo can still still control how it’s used after it is sold and will eventually no longer offer it for download while their DRM will make it difficult to make and use a backup copy. Buying would not be owning in that case, so what’s the point?
It’s a shame we have only gotten 1 game on id Tech 7 (Doom Eternal). I know it’s a highly specialized engine, but I’d love to see more FPS titles using it or this new version (Wolfenstein 3 please)
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