As a counterpoint to most of the cynicism here, this is how the company I now work for formed. Caveats include: the founder had a lot of money because he had previously worked for a big name Internet company when it was a startup, and we spend almost all of our time as contractors for other studios rather than developing in-house IP.
Dave the Diver! It looks so goofy but give it a shot. It’s got hilarious cutscenes, and a really well executed blend of roguelike, restaurant game, resource management, and story RPG.
Seems really ridiculous to me that they can write an article like this and still use terms like “deathbed,” “barbones console,” etc.
If anything this shows that hardware matters less and less. The game itself is king and Nintendo is really good at it. Beefier hardware has diminishing returns and people who write articles like this seem to have cut their teeth on the big leaps: 8 to 16 to 64 bit and don’t realize that doesn’t really matter anymore.
I haven’t played this game and I’m not really apprised of what the players’ dissatisfactions are, as I’ve not been paying attention to it.
But as a working game dev, he is 100% right about that. One thing that seems… unique to gamers as hobbyists is how confident they are in their opinions and assumptions about the how and the why. It’s pretty frustrating. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the outcome. But 97% of the rest of what gamers have to say beyond that is toilet paper.