I dislike good things. I dislike Dark Souls, a game made with vision and care that a lot of people love, because to me it looks ugly, feels clunky and just utterly miserable. But sometimes you have to understand that things are not made for you specifically. Yeah, subjectively it is bad for me, but it's also good overall, no matter what I feel about it.
If Tears of the Kingdom was a native 1080p 60 fps game, it wouldn't have a whole system of physics-based interactive modular devices. Game developers are amazed that Nintendo even managed to get such complex systems running. Of course it's more demanding than Metroid Dread, does anything in it even remotely compare? That game doesn't even need to render distant landscapes, it's all small rooms and predetermined backgrounds. Do you think that was a lack of wanting to make it happen?
Maybe if a new console comes along and it's ported to that it will run better and look better, but for now, everything it can do comes at a cost.
I already acknowledged and agreed with you that Nintendo's online is bad. But there's more to those games than that. Aside that aspect though, what about Smash's gameplay, visuals, music? It's not like that game is only playable online, and thank goodness for that.
What about the variety and detail of Animal Crafting's clothing and furniture, or the behaviors of the villagers, or how customizable is the island this time around?
Well, overexaggeration aside, I still appreciate many 3DS games to this day. This rush for the latest and greatest is part of what fuels planned obsolescence. Really, it feels a little inconsistent to criticize them for how they offer older games if you can't bear a game that's even a little bit aged.
I can grant you that Nintendo online kind of sucks but offline Nintendo games tend to be some of the most responsive, due to not letting too much realism get in the way of game feel, as well as the most readable, due to clear contrast and vibrant colors. Zelda or any other, I can tell everything apart very easily in Nintendo games, either portable or a big screen. Something games with much higher resolution often fail to do. Excessive shading and clutter often gets in the way of readability in the Sony games I played, no matter how much more defined objects look.
I even agree preference-wise with the Animal Crossing criticism, making bait is kind of a chore, but I also understand that the game's design is deliberately intended to slow the player down. It is a chill game to take it easy, not a game to rush and optimize everything. This is not a flaw, it's a difference in intent. This is what I believe weakens your arguments the most, you can't seem to diferentiate from something you don't like and something done badly.
C'mon, I can't take it seriously if you are going to overblow it like this. Tears of the Kingdom is a marvel of engineering and losing sight of that because it's not running on the most powerful gaming hardware is a huge disservice to the work put into it. It's a superficial way to judge them and it only makes me give less credit to your opinion. It just make you sound like the sort of gamer who would prefer a hyper-realistic generic game running at 4K 60 FPS than anything with passion, who has no appreciation for a more modest game that is finely crafted.
Both Animal Crossing and Smash Ultimate too, like I said, the online is disappointing, but they are still excellent games both single-player and couch multiplayer. To call it "poor quality" and "unacceptable"? If you really mean it then I just don't trust your opinion. Listing such a small nitpick as Animal Crossing's UX in that is downright silly. All of these games are fun, beautiful and even technically impressive for a limited hardware like this.
This is not me being a blind fan. I have played plenty of Animal Crossing and I've seen those issues. There are things in it that I'd wish were expanded or brought back from previous entries, but I can put that into perspective, considering how much content in it is new or much more polished than before. To deem it "unacceptable" because of that, the person must not have played any real bad games.
I'm not keen on it but I'm also not overly concerned about how Nintendo offers older games now because I know how to get them. And so does anyone who really care about this really. As for Mario 35, I definitely don't like that, but this sort of approach is rare for them and left to smaller, niche projects. As opposed to Sea of Thieves which is the only thing we still hear of Rare in years. In fairness, I don't think it's an excuse, but I'll lament the loss of Sea of Thieves far more than those other games, especially considering I can still play Mario, F-Zero and Tetris regardless.
Microsoft and Sony responding to market forces is exactly why I want Nintendo out of their hands. Because if those two get a pass to rip off the player, they won't even hesitate. Look at Microsoft did to Forza. Bungie is now Sony's and look at what Destiny 2 is like. The market often leans towards cheap profiteering. Nintendo is maybe overly self-important, and for that reason it keeps trying to deliver quality with a self-respect that other companies are already shoving out of the door. With the exception of Pokémon, a Nintendo game is guaranteed to be a good game and a complete package.
It also isn't trivial. They had to write custom emulation code for those old games, and they had to negotiate that with the rights holders in a lot of cases.
All that applies to Nintendo titles, especially the latter. If they don't manage it for the titles they already have for which they already did the technical work, Nintendo on PC seems even more unlikely.
Right, as opposed to the flawless technical quality of the latest Pokemon games and the impeccable business model of tying games with a killswitch behind a subscription model?
I expected for you to bring up Pokémon, and in all fairness I agree that it was released in an unacceptable state. But I should remind you that The Pokémon Company and Game Freak are separate companies that work differently than other first-party Nintendo titles. Could you honestly tell me that Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Animal Crossing and all other Nintendo franchises are anything but excellent? People may have their preferences and dislikes about them, but it would be dishonest to say they aren't all finely crafted.
I agree with you as far as their attitude towards Mario 35, but what do you think is going to happen to Sea of Thieves once they decide to take the servers down? This is not something that Microsoft is going to fix, it's the pitfall of all live service games, and as time goes by gaming companies only seem to insist more on this direction.
I don't agree with Nintendo with everything, their online platforms are lacking, their closedness is disappointing, their litigiousness is often revolting, but I definitely wouldn't trust Microsoft or Sony to do better, even less any other gaming company.
The newer XBox consoles are x86 architecture devices with an operating system that is similar to Windows. If they can maintain retrocompatibility with older titles, that means they have a functioning emulator or compatibility layer for classic XBox and 360 games. It would be trivial for Microsoft to release them for PC but they don't seem interested in doing that. Whatever obstacles there may be there, they are not technical. Considering that, it's unlikely that they would take a different approach regarding older Nintendo titles.
The example of Age of Empires II if anything indicates that they want to have a console-centric approach towards older titles. So, it's just speculation to assume that Microsoft acquiring Nintendo would lead to their games being ported to PC. On the flipside, I'd be more concerned that Microsoft's more inconsistent quality standards and monetization tendencies would make their way into Nintendo titles.
Sure, but if you are talking about Super Metroid ROMs, you are talking legacy releases, and Microsoft didn't bother to rerelease their classic XBox games on PC, so there's no reason to assume they would do it to SNES games if they acquired Nintendo.
Not even Microsoft is selling ROMs, at most they make their older games retrocompatible on console. From one locked device to another. At that point you might as well dump your old Nintendo games and the result is the same.
Nintendo does care about making good games, or it wouldn't make all the weird moves that it does, and it wouldn't consistently output quality titles like it does. We are just so used to dispassionate money leeches controlling everything that the idea that anyone in charge cares about anything but money seems hard to believe.
Which is all the more reason why Microsoft can't be allowed to acquire it.
I did have good experiences with Savage Worlds. It's system is a little strange, but it manages to be simple while still offering a good variety of mechanics for different themes, though it isn't itself narratively-oriented if that's what the group wants.
I still need to try Forged in the Dark, but Powered by the Apocalypse just makes me run back to Shadowrun as it is. It's way too far the other way, barebones and genre-centric to a limiting extent. For all its issues, maybe even because of its bloat, it never leaves you out of options for any assortment of scenario themes.
That doesn't add up, in this case. If they simply announced a revenue share, something that Unreal Engine already has, it wouldn't have been anywhere as controversial. Some devs would grumble but it wouldn't have been taken as an existential threat worth jumping ship as soon as possible.
The whole charge per download was likely an attempt to get more money out of freemium mobile games, but nobody was willing to accept that.
Really, the damage to their image so significant, it's likely many dev studios will drop it even under those conditions, just out of lost trust.
It's a shame that well-balanced TCGs are so hard to find because the booster model is much more popular, you know, because it lures gambling addicts. So these games keep going and releasing sets with inevitable power creep.
It'd be nice to find some games to play casually vs CPU or easy to play with friends. I like card games in theory but just the thought of playing with other people with thousands of hours of ranked play saps my enthusiasm.