I use Discord too. This isn‘t about you or every single Discord user specifically but my impression of the average user and consumer. They may complain at first but then they vote with their wallet and often can‘t even help making ironic remarks about having irresponsible spending habits. Why you bought it is up to you and I think there are good reasons for it despite everything. The console is at the beginning of it‘s life cycle so it‘s a bit early to completely judge for me.
So that’s what ticket you off? Because we agree on pretty much everything else it seems. I really don’t know what to tell you here. Discord’s entire business model is neoliberal to the core so naturally you find tons of neoliberals on servers there. You know the kind who complained about 90€ for Mariokart and 10€ for Welcome Tour once they were announced but then shared pics of their Switch 2 hauls on release day in the same chat. It is what it is and I think there is no point in having strong feelings about it.
In the end of the day Nintendo products are for casual gamers who only care about commercial material. It wouldn‘t even cross their minds to read reviews or discuss it outside their neoliberal Discord bubble. Emulating? How scary!
Besides, the Switch is a beloved system and many users waited for an upgrade for years. The Switch 2 is downwards compatible and able to give your older games a considerable performance boost. 90€ for new games just isn‘t enough of an argument to sit out this generation when you‘ve already spent thousands on games in the Nintendo ecosystem. The locked in effect is strong.
I am not very surprised by this but I sure as hell am glad I bought my Switch and and several games second hand for I‘m mostly a PC gamer.
You would do that probably because you have a huge Steam library but many Switch users have a huge Switch library and want that performance upgrade. You and me are not their target audience but it remains to be seen if the Switch 2 will flop or exactly what Nintendo fans want right now. There‘s a huge difference between paying 600€ and 1000€ for hardware that‘s pretty much toe to toe anyway. If I wanted a Steamdeck I sure as hell wouldn‘t buy one right now but wait a little longer.
The presentation looks too fluid. I don‘t see any room or reason to use a controller live on stage there other than to pretend. The entire thing looks scripted through and through so why would you even make Ciri controlled live there? Feel free to send me time codes where the camera itself actually looks like it‘s controlled by the guy behind the pult, though. I can‘t see anything. It looks like a normal tech demo with preselected inputs to me and I see no reason why they would give the guy control over anything.
What actually stuck out most to me besides Witcher 4 was their LLM based „Don‘t press the button“ game presentation at the very end of the show. No one is really talking about it because it was really lame but I think it‘s telling how they showed the AI driven stuff after everything else almost to kind of sweep it under the rug because they know most people are already sick of AI but they still had to include it for gullible shareholders or something.
Well damn I know it’s just footage of a tech demo so there is a lot that can happen still and Ciri was definitely not controlled live (as they tried to make us believe if you watched the full event. Like seriously, who’s going to believe you when you slice up a horse and voxelize trees? Holding the controller on stage was just corny, sorry guys) BUT it looks amazing! I especially loved how they showcased some of the technical details. I really didn’t think it would impress me this much because they showed way more about a game that’s probably years away from release than I ever anticipated. And again, a lot can still happen and go wrong but I would lie if I said I wasn’t hyped already. Mission accomplished I guess.
I‘m just going to say that the distinctions between the two you‘re laying out here seem irrelevant to the discussion to me. I am not arguing about a season pass or preservation of games. Again, that is not what this discussion is about. This is about the developing side of games where these things don‘t mean anything. To give an example of what I mean: World of Warcraft employed and paid more people over a longer period of time than most AAA games.
That‘s the critical one. It‘s not about budget or outsourcing or whatever. It comes down to who makes the decisions and why. In a lot of cases it‘s people with a finance background who couldn‘t care less about the medium they‘re working with and that can be a major issue. Gaming being a bigger industry than music and film combined has attracted a lot of people who only think in dollar bills and it shows. Luckily however, there are still a lot of passionate teams with leaders who have a love for games.