“Okay, I know you weren’t too happy about my plan to retroactively charge you for every mile you drive in the car I already sold you… What if I told you, I’ll only charge you for a maximum of… uh… 30,000 miles per year?”
Reasonable people can debate how the pricing should be structured, especially when it comes to online functionality that doesn’t even take a penny of Nintendo’s server budget…
But I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect zero cost at all, when:
Console manufacturers have an unavoidable incentive to sell hardware at a loss (even without factoring in the platforming costs+risks) and make up for it in software sales and add-on services
…and they suffer the reputation hit if any of their offerings are not up to par, in a way that e.g. Windows does not, so they have an unavoidable interest in monitoring and triaging issues with games
…and networked components tend to be the most sensitive and most traceable part of any software system
…and scaling issues tend to be a cross-cutting concern that a third-party vendor who isn’t intimately familiar with the client codebase can affordably help with
It’s just part of the deal you make when you sign up for a walled garden. You get certain guarantees, but only if you pay for the relevant package. You can’t have it both ways – getting the benefit of first-party backing while enjoying the freedom of a purely third-party environment. It’s like a cruise ship that doesn’t let you bring your own alcohol.
I did watch the response video before commenting. Did you read the forum post? He said it’s all settled, it’s just gotta go through the bean counters now. But the fact that he emailed them immediately before posting proves that he knew it was not all settled.
What if they replied “Actually, you can’t just reimburse us for that. The manufacturing process that produced it is being overhauled and we won’t be able to replace it for at least 6 months and we’ve got conferences to demo at between then and now. We need you to get it back.”
I’m glad GN didn’t reach out. Linus emailed Billet Labs 2 hours after the GN video with an offer to reimburse them for the prototype, so that he could claim that GN got their facts wrong. But we have the receipts!
That was the nail in the coffin, for me. Making mistakes is fine, even big ones. I understand that Youtube is the devil, and it’s easy to fall into a trap of shoveling nonsense out onto the platform. I’m honestly sympathetic to that. If Linus said “You’re right, quality has suffered cuz we’ve been going too fast. We need to take another look at this.” I’d be completely happy.
But to lie – not just by words, but by actions – in order to cast doubt on the people who are trying to give you a reality check and get your work back on track… That’s really bad.