Famitsu have released an interview with Shuntaro Furukawa where he expresses concerns about the cost of development.  The industry needs to get a handle on the development time and costs. Things are already getting out of control for Microsoft, Sony and 3rd party developers, and if these same problems start to hit Nintendo then they could end up taking a bit hit. Numbers came out the other day that showed that 81% of the software sold on the Switch were 1st party games. If development slows down and they aren't able to pump out the software then things could get messy. On the other hand, Nintendo do a good job of creating smaller titles that their user base enjoys, myself included, and so they aren't relying heavily on massive AAA experiences to bring in the money.  At some point the industry needs to stop chasing more powerful hardware and just make do with what they've got. If they don't, then there won't be a gaming industry left to make games for. The second part of the quote is reassuring. It's nice to see that Nintendo still have the philosophy of hiring people and retaining staff, rather than just acquiring studios left and right.

For me, the mess that has occurred over the past few days has basically been because of the Game Pass model. The thing was destined to fail and cause issues further down the line and now here we are. I mean, subscription services across the board are not seeing any real growth. The plan clearly was to buy up all of these studios to bolster the GP line up, which in turn they would hope would bring in more subscribers. This didn't happen. They then cultured their own userbase to become adverse to actually buying games by releasing their 1st party output for free. Development costs have gone through the roof to the point where selling millions of copies doesn't break even. Add to the fact that this was all on a failed console and you have a recipe for disaster and ultimately, it was the poor studios and developers who have suffered for MS gambling on Game Pass. I get that people jumped on Game Pass because it was cheap and offered a load of games for very little but it completely devalued software and it's caused a lot of damage to the industry. Had Game Pass not been a thing then there would have been no need for the aggressive acquisitions in the first place. Time to whip out my Simpsons gif again.  

@Glen-i just recently played through it. He posted his thoughts in the Gaming Diary thread.

Time for Miiverse to return!

You won't be able to upload screenshots to Twitter/X after June 10th this year: I assume this is for the same reason that Sony did this for PS5 last year: Elon musk raised the API usage fees for X to $42,000 a month