this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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We'll keep wondering cause the shift to digital clearly isn't stopping piracy.
Like almost everything, it isn't about stopping piracy entirely.
Physical copies get sold early by stores/cashiers that don't care. Or they get outright pocketed/copied at the factories and warehouses. Which lead to the constant "This nintendo game leaked a week or a month or whatever early". Which... less so after the lawsuits but it means emulators can be updated to support the games before they even hit shelves.
Digital only doesn't entirely stop that. But it tends to lead more toward "an unknown fake influencer posted all the cutscenes of this game online a week early".
Is saving the game from an early leak worth getting rid of physical games? I hope not.
I might be unique in this but I'll never "buy" a digital game. They're impossible to resell and I can't lend it to friends or my kids, they'd need my account or console. Plus I'll have the physical game forever, digital games are only good as long as the servers are up.
I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this, so if companies stop offering physical games then I'm not going to buy them. (I'll just pirate). I've preordered Zelda from GameStop. I support the content I want more of, like Zelda games, and I'll continue to buy each one. If I don't, then they might not make more.
I have no interest in physical games. I'm not willing to carry around 300 cartridges or only have access to a small portion of my library. But Nintendo has to know that physical game collectors are a big portion of their audience (with probably more than any other platform in either raw number or proportion). They can't abandon physical.
Where would you be carrying them?
The switch is a handheld. So most places I go?
But surely you don't need to constantly access all your games on every trip, right?
Yes, I absolutely want to be able to play any game I own on that platform at any time. That's the entire reason I bought the game. Being restricted to the library on one platform is already a massive concession.
"You can only play this game if you preemptively lug it around with you in case you want to play it today" is not an acceptable condition of a purchase to me.
Did ygu mod your switch to have several TB of data? What if you don't have Wifi?
Well, I don't really believe that you don't have any games that you haven't touched for a year on your switch account. But even if you're right: You're an extreme edge case.
I highly prefer being able to access my games until the hardware gives out. Not until Nintendo shuts down the services. That is unacceptable IMHO.
Most games aren't that big. Especially switch games. Yes, I have a large micro SD to hold them all. I didn't say I'm not an edge case; I made it clear that silly collector shit is half the reason Nintendo has a market.
I have plenty of games I haven't played recently. That doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that if I want to play it tomorrow, I can play it without hassle wherever I am. Anything short of that is not owning the game.
I'll have access long after the hardware gives out, with no need for the obnoxious process of ripping hundreds of cartridges. Digital is forever; DRM isn't.
I have no interest in selling a game or hardware. I never have and never will. You choose between getting half of what they'll sell it for or spending a bunch of time and trusting some random stranger not to screw you. Both options are worse than just keeping your stuff.
No you didn't and it isn't. Nintendo has a unique design philosophy which keept them around since the NES. Do you consider the desire to own physical media "silly collector shit"?
That might be "true" for you, but I vehemently disagree. Most people have no problem keeping their copye of BotW on the shelf, while taking Luigi's Mansion with them because that's what they're currently playing. People have selectively been taking their stuff with them for milennia.
You don't need to rip cartridges to play them. After the hardware gives out: I'm relying on the piracy community here.
Lol, tell that to the 3ds/WiiU marketplace.
You have a very unrealistic and pessimistic view of the used market. I've both sold games I'm not interested in anymore and bought perfectly playable games used. It's quite a cheap way to get access to the games you want, especially with Nintendo's sales policy. I'm guessing that the person buying hello pikachu from me had a great time playing. Never had a problem on ebay. It wouldn't be still around if most transactions weren't kosher.
Also: Libraries have game cartridges.
Yes, I did. It was the first post. They couldn't run a profitable gaming division without collectors. They wouldn't go broke because they have ridiculous cash reserves, but they would have bailed on gaming at some point because collectors are a big chunk of their sales.
People did it because they didn't have a choice. That doesn't mean they were OK with it, or that anyone would have chosen not to have everything instantly available given the choice. That choice exists now.
I'd need to rip them to play them now. Carrying around cartridges isn't acceptable. I have no issue relying on data preservation communities to preserve access to my data.
Half those cartridges have junk builds that won't work without external updates by the way. You need the internet to get to the actual functional version regardless.
3DS or Wii can get digital games just fine.
I have no interest in the used market. Even if I could get 90% back on every game every time to abandon access to a game, the fact that it would require carrying physical games would make the value proposition completely unacceptable to me.
Bullshit. The switch isn't the best-selling console since forever because of collectors. Nintendo went out on a limb and innovated on both hard- and software and it payed off big time.
You know the last time Nintendo had to rely on collectors? It was in the time of the WiiU (when they introduced Amiibos).
Any source on that, or just hunches.
Considered that physical media hasn't die out yet and people still enjoy their books and whatnot: I think that you're talking out of your ass.
It is to enough people. Stop making broad statements that only apply to your edge case. You come off as an arrogant prick.
Nintendo games usually have a high polish at release. This isn't Call of Duty.
Not anymore, they can't. The servers went down.
That's fine but no reason to slander the used market so much. It's a, great option for gamers on a budget.
They didn't meaningfully innovate on software. They "innovated" on hardware by using a tablet and giving it a dock to make older games viable on handheld that weren't before. Which is fine; it demonstrated the market for handhelds playing real games even with the worst controller the world has ever seen, and kickstarted the steam deck and a bunch of PC copycats. But collectors are their core market. If they do a switch 2 that doesn't do physical games, it will fail.
Physical media has mostly died out. Streaming has almost entirely replaced music, TV, and movies. Ereaders are still growing, but they're also a huge market, and libraries support multiple ebook borrowing apps with different libraries because ebooks are so much of their job now.
Nintendo makes a handful of games a year. Most switch games aren't from Nintendo. Most switch games don't work well without updates. And if you want to talk about how popular the switch specifically is instead of the fact that their core audience is physical collectors, all of the switch's popularity is because it could play third party games.
You don't need Nintendo servers to get digital games.
The used market has massive compromises that you're just ignoring. It doesn't matter if it's "only" 1% chance of a bad transaction. Bad transactions happen, and it's a risk that nullifies much of the benefit if you experience it.
Have you heard of the game "Breath of the Wild"? O.o
Yeah, and apple "innovated" by combining available technology to create the iphone, which became the archetype of the most commonly used type of technology today. That's how innovation in tech usually works: lateral thinking and application of available technology. And the switch's success proved Nintendo right.
You've done a horrible job convincing me of your divination powers. All you're doing is speculating very confidently/arrogantly.
What are they streaming, if streaming killed movies? O.o
Yeah, the convenience of streaming has severely reduced the amount of physical media around. Bookstores, libraries and Bluray players still exist, though. You're sounding liks execs claiming that single player games or not streaming games is about to die out.
And they have been successfully applying that model for decades. Compare the quality of each new Zelda/Mario release with the n-th Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty.
But Nintendo supplied the system sellers. The switch sold like hot cakes and then everyone wanted a piece of the slice.
The switch audience is way too large for that to be the case. You can't rely on collectors for hardware that's so expensive to make (compared to the classic mini consoles, for example - here. I'd accept that collectors were the core audience).
It's actually hard to port to the switch. You wouldn't put that much effort into a port if the switch didn't already have such a high adoption rate. The switch was successful first and then they made all the 3rd party ports for it. Again: compare it to the WiiU.
You need them to access them the way that you bought them. The whole discussion doesn't make sense if piracy is your main mode of getting the games, since people psually don't want pirate cartridges. (Unless it's like an everdrive... where the games are still digital)
You're dismissing the benefits wholesale. Cartridges aren't CDs. Using a cartridge doesn't degrade the contents. Buying used/borrowing from friends is really safe, or the friendship won't last. Marketplaces like ebay have checks in place so that the seller doesn't get the money if there's a serious issue with the game. It's less like a 1% likelihood than a 0.01% likelihood. And again: not everyone can buy new and not everyone has access to a 1st gen switch.
Breath of the Wild was a good step on one aspect of open world, destroyed by not knowing that open worlds still need actual content. It's a good tech demo. It's a terrible game. And it can't be "innovation that sells a system" on the Switch when it was a port that was already available before the Switch.
Try getting a physical copy of big, successful TV shows now. Many of them don't exist at all. Some movies never get physical copies.
Nintendo provided a handheld that just met the bare minimum threshold to play their games. But the argument for physical being acceptable is about all games, not the 1% that are from Nintendo.
The hardware wasn't expensive to make. Again, that's their entire design philosophy. They took junk chips nvidia had no use for dirt cheap and screens you can get on a $30 tablet. There was no meaningful up front R&D cost and there was a very small cost per unit compared to the other consoles. They didn't invest anything in the Switch. Their "system seller" wasn't even a new game.
It's always expensive to port to Nintendo consoles because they always use ancient technology.
Giving up legitimate access to a game until you buy it again is a big cost you're ignoring, as is the time you invest in selling. You're also ignoring that the cost of a bad experience goes way above the couple bucks involved.
Lol. As if BotW is comparable to what the Ubisoft game (for there is merely one by now) or other open world games have been doing up until then.
Lol. It's ok to not like a game, but claiming that a game on which so many players sunk 100+ hours into didn't have "content"? Come on. xD
Lol. That's why it was incredibly successful and attracted immediate copycats, right. \s
What are you talking about? BotW released with the switch. It was also available on the WiiU, yes. But that only proves my point that it was a system seller, since people bought it with a switch, instead of getting a cheaper WiiU.
I constantly see them in my library (e.g. house of dragons). Also, again: book stores continue to exist.
Thats not how console releases work. Games usually get technologically more advanced as the hardware ages. TotK is way more advanced than BotW. Also: I'm not following your point here.
It is, especially the cartridges. Not as expensive as the Playstation, or XBox, true. But that's because Nintendo on principle don't sell hardware at a loss. Still, the markup is waaaay lower than with the mini consoles, which were my examples for collector's items.
That's pure maths: if you focus on a small demographic (like collectors), you need a high markup. E.g. MtG is only lucrative, because the cardboard is so cheap. The switch doesn't have such a high markup, so they need to go for mass appeal. If collectors would be Nintendo's main source of revenue, they wouldn't have bothered with the switch lite, which is clearly aimed at the opposite of collectors.
The main reason why the supposed R&D cost was so low was because Nintendo fuzed their hard-held and console team. They had a lot of experience with hand-helds (and innovation in that space, for that matter).
Again: you're talking bullshit. (Also: they had a second system seller with Mario, which arrived half a year later)
And you're refuting my point... how? Why am I getting the feeling that you care less about a coherent argument than dunking on Nintendo?
You're ignoring the budget point and that all digital purchases will inevitably be void in the future.
And you're gnoring how rarely that happens.
It's the emptiest open world ever made. Shrines take longer to load than to beat.
Bookstores are also dying, and stores are abandoning physical media of all kinds because people don't buy them.
It's how they're supposed to work. That ARM CPU was tapped out before the switch launched. The entire cost of porting to Nintendo systems is always for the same reason, making the obscene downgrades visually and mechanically mandatory to get games running on their system. There isn't performance to eke out of it. It's bad.
The switch has a huge markup. Cartridges are actually expensive. Nothing else is. Their costs were low because they used tech that would have been thrown in the trash if they didn't buy it, and they spent virtually nothing on R&D. They absolutely could have made money on an extremely small market. It's what they've been doing for years. Even without their huge cash reserves, they could have sold 500k switches and wouldn't have lost money. Again, that's their entire philosophy as a company. They do not take financial risks.
You are entitled to your opinion, if you find BotW boring. But the original point was that it was a critically acclaimed and incredibly successful system seller. You claimed that the switch sold well because of the third party support. But if it weren't for Nintendo's system sellers (Zelda and Mario Odyssey), the third parties wouldn't have bothered developing for the switch. You also agreed that the switch is hard to develop for. By your logic, the PS Vita and the WiiU would have had to be successful. Stop focusing on your shit takes in order to distract from the original point.
Yes, and single player games are also dying. /s You have already shown that you make wrong assumptions based on what you feel is right (like Nintendo depending on collectors).
Compare TotK to launch titles. That game is a testament on how much you can get out of aging hardware. Supposedly, Alien Isolation's port for the switch is the best edition.
When? When has Nintendo relied on niche markets (since the NES, I mean).
What "huge" money reserves? The ones from the WiiU? They only got their cash reserves after they released the switch.
Lol, do you remember the N64, the Virtualboy, the Gamecube, the WiiU, etc? Edit: what was the Wii, if not both innovative, as well as a big, fat risk???
Edit (addendum): so you hate BotW but still find it "unacceptable" if you didn't have constant access to it? And you don't get how people sometimes want to cash out on experiences they don't value?
A console being different is not a financial risk when you spend no money on developing it and no money on producing it.
There was no path to bankruptcy, or even meaningful financial loss, if the Wii failed.
The market they actually get isn't the point. It's that they never invest enough money for it to be possible for them to lose meaningful money if their gimmick doesn't work. If Sony doesn't sell PS5s, they're diverse enough that it probably won't bankrupt them, but it will hurt bad. Nintendo isn't even willing to invest enough that not selling is a mild inconvenience. They just refuse to invest.
You're spouting non-stop bullshit. The Wii didn't have R&D costs? Get outta here!
Nintendo was on the cusp of going the way Sega went after the Gamecube and the WiiU. The financial successes of the Wii and Switch saved their asses.
Compared to any other non-Nintendo platform ever made? No, it didn't. They used cheap junk tech, exactly like the Switch, and didn't commit to any meaningful investment in number of units.
The fact that they use hardware not capable of playing modern games is why third parties have very limited involvement with them. It's why they got ports of 15 year old games instead of most developers of new games even considering putting their games on there. And their bad hardware is a direct result of their unwillingness to invest like everyone else does. Even Valve, who has very limited hardware production, invested far more in the Steam Deck than Nintendo did on the switch.
so... what was so groundbreaking about developing the xbox one/series or ps4/5? How are those consoles any more R&D intensive than developing the Wiimote?
You already claimed so much bullshit which I debunked. Do you have any data about the rest of your allegations? like how Nintendo was supposedly fine after the WiiU?
The SteamDeck wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Switch. The Valve VR headsets wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Wii.
Performance is expensive. Building and validating a system around high end custom chips is expensive. They also will not make you units if you don't make serious volume commitments.
Building a very basic system with cheap, bad, off the shelf components is not expensive.
Sorry, you have no idea about hardware development. Just because Hardware is cheap doesn't mean that R&D is cheap.
Do you think that development hardware drives R&D costs? No, paying engineers does. Do you think that Sony or Microsoft develop their own chips? Again: nope: They use AMD Microarchitectures (Sony won't make the mistake of the PS3 again).
You know what costs R&D? Developing controllers does. And guess who reinvents their controllers every generation! Not just hd rumble, like the dual sense: Video streaming, HD rumble, IR technology, etc.
And Nintendo tripled their R&D budget from 2003 to 2007 twice:
Source
Any more bullshit for me to debunk?
Yes, designing the chips is obscenely expensive. Microsoft and Sony aren't using off the shelf $5 SoCs. They're partnering with AMD, using AMD's IP, to make custom designs specifically tailored to their design goals. The fact that you think you can talk about R&D costs without understanding this basic reality is hilarious. Validating high performance custom SoC designs takes a tremendous amount of very limited capacity of small batch test manufacturing ability to get to an end product.
I promise you Sony spent more developing their triggers than Nintendo did on the joycon. That actually is new tech. Putting IR and nfc sensors that already exist onto a controller isn't that expensive. Developing new tech is where costs come from. Sony isn't spending a couple hundred million. They're spending billions, every year.
Even after kicking their investment up for a switch 2 that can't use an off the shelf chip because there isn't one, they're still spending less than half of what Sony does.
Surely. You won't fail to supply any data to back up your ludicrous claims this time, will you?
Do the search yourself with whatever source you trust. They all have the same information.
Sony spent over 2 billion on R&D in gaming last year, which doesn't count the guaranteed volume that's also required to get leading edge chips. Nintendo still spent less than a billion (which is a big increase from the complete joke of investment leading into the switch, because the switch didn't take any research).
Ah, yes. The good ol' "do your research sheeple" bit. Gotta love it. You've already claimed so much BS, why shouldsI take anything you say at face value?
Also: lol. Do you think that the technology in the Dual Sense's triggers is new? o.O
Do you actually even own a switch, if you're so desperate to dunk on Nintendo?
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/92231/nintendo-boosts-spending-as-next-gen-switch-2-looms/index.html#:~:text=According%20to%20Nintendo's%202023%20annual,R%26D%20throughout%20Fiscal%20Year%202023.
With a nice chart showing how much of a joke their investment developing the Switch was.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/sony-boost-gaming-unit-with-217-bln-rd-war-chest-2024-nikkei-2023-07-12/
There are literally dozens, minimum, of sources with the same numbers. They're in annual reports and not secret or debatable at all.
Everything I've said is accurate. You're the one pretending putting one of the worst controllers ever made together with off the shelf parts is somehow comparable to designing custom SoCs on cutting edge nodes.
Ah, yes... "accurate" claims like
Give me a break
I always imagine people who die on this hill just admiring the title screen of every game in their library for 5 seconds and calling it a gaming session lol.