I love Janet! This piece was so so good, glad we got her thoughts on this. I’ve been thinking about this intersection all week, can’t think of a better person to write about it.
Interesting. I guess I am curious if others find review threads useful? Generally I agree with you, I don’t care that much about most individual reviews. However, I find the aggregators useful as a way of taking the temperature on how critics feel about a new release. The threads also make a good place to focus discussion around specific games. However, most of these threads get zero comments unless the game is hotly anticipated.
i recently discovered that OpenCritic has been acquired by Valnet, who also owns some of the trashier websites listed on OpenCritic, so I would really love to move back over to Metacritic since they seem to do a better job of filtering out low-quality critics. If anyone knows a way to create review threads like this using Metacritic, please let me know!
I do think $80 is steep. But that aside, the game is outstanding
Isn’t the launch deal essentially getting the game for $30 off? Seems like a fair price for the game when you consider that - if you are buying the Switch 2 at launch, you are buying it to play the new Mario Kart, so I guess the $80 price tag is just to push you towards the bundle? I wonder what kind of discounts they will do this gen. Nintendo has historically been very stingy with deals, but I wonder if $80 price tag will mean slightly deeper discounts in the future?
i guess hype is still valuable to Nintendo, even if people can’t buy the thing right this second? Nintendo are the masters of intentionally restricting supply to increase demand and hype. They honed their strategy with the Amiibos, NES Classic, and SNES Classic, and then i’d say they mastered it around the time of the COVID Switch 1 shortages.
By all accounts, Nintendo is not artificially restricting supply with this launch. - it seems like they are really trying to have as many as possible available for launch day. But they still know how to make the most of a shortage.
ahhhh you beat me to it. i was tryna line it up with the release day! lol
Well…i wish i had more to say about the game itself aside from my preview thoughts. I love the Souls games but have not gotten around to Elden Ring specifically. Seems like they nailed the “ER but more multiplayer” feel that they were going for, and I think that’s sick as hell.
i guess that sort of makes sense, like if you’re hacking the thing to install your own software, Nintendo says “have fun outside but you can’t come back to our garden”.
But it also doesn’t because Nintendo has the power to remove functionality that I already paid them for. Even if I tinker with my device, why does that mean that I can never go back to the stock Switch experience that I paid for?