Sheikah

It's pretty much the only game they've developed in recent years. Aside from the Battletoads reboot, which was itself 4 years ago.

Yeah, me too. I haven't done much remote gaming so I'll be interested to see what the input lag is like. I won't be using it for twitchy multiplayer games though.

I bought myself a PlayStation Portal yesterday after they briefly got restocked at PlayStation's own shop. I don't get to use my TV as much now that I have a family so I'm looking forward to this, I've heard pretty good things and I think it'll be convenient for me. I'm hoping that I don't have any weird connection issues though - hopefully because I sit very close to the router it won't be an issue.

But it's also on other platforms. I think I've seen topics before created on both boards when a game is available across platforms.

My thoughts exactly. This communication is hilariously mismanaged...why wouldn't they just nip it in the bud? The only thing that would make sense is if, following the backlash, they've chosen to hold off announcing any other games that might/will also come to other platforms. Start with just 4 and then trickle announce others further down the line to soften the disquiet. Real nonsense speak going on in this announcement though. They're talking about bringing games to lots more people like they're some sort of charity, when in reality they bought up the industry which has ultimately restricted access to existing players.

Are you aware of the term "cherry picking"? So you point to specifically one quarter to make your point that PS5 shipments are lagging behind - i.e. quarter 13 (the yellow Q3 cell in the table). Which shows PS5 shipments 8.2 million vs PS4 9.7 million. But... if you go to literally the quarter right before that one (yellow Q2 cell) the stats are entirely reversed! 4.9 million PS5 vs 3.9 million PS4 shipments. And add to this - quarter 13 (i.e. fiscal Q3 of 2016) was when they released the PS4 Pro, which inevitably led to an extra boost in hardware sales - even existing PS4 owners like me going out and buying a Pro to replace their old console. A fair comparison then? Of course not. And like I said before, LTD sales comparisons are meaningless given the restricted PS5 supply for the first few years (meaning if anything, the numbers being so close between the two systems shows how popular PS5 is).

Yes, you can. In Tapatalk.

Yes, it's a hastily unplanned announcement and also a carefully planned Switch tie in.

Would be a bit crap if you never docked surely, can't have you just sailing the seas for all eternity.

I think being forced out becomes more and more likely. He hasn't steered Xbox to success and at some point the higher ups will surely want to replace him. He has really squandered his time at the helm of Xbox when he should have been working to kick start development of new big games. Also it wasn't long ago that Spencer was saying in an interview that titles like Elder Scrolls would be exclusive in the sense that they'd only come to platforms with Game Pass. So for them to go traditionally multiplatform is actually a change in strategy, not something they were intending all along.

Completely agree. I think most of it all it shows a lack of care for actually creating games and game development in general. There's very little new they've developed from scratch over the last two generations that has been on a big scale - i.e. not just games released from studios they recently acquired and weren't involved with from the start. They are a company that pretty much subtract and we've seen with their acquisitions that they're actually walling off content and making things worse for people who just want to play previously multiplatform games. Spencer has been at the helm for so long and has ample opportunity to reverse this. The most bizarre thing for me has been to see that he's had supporters over the past decade. I suppose when people see Game Pass, which has been heavily subsidised by Microsoft in terms of the promotional £1 upgrades and subscription stacking, people have attributed that great value to him? The costly subsidising will no doubt have been a decision for Microsoft to sign off on rather than him, just like the decision to (likely) go multiplatform is probably out of his hands, too. The real decisions he's actually been able to make, like starting game developments from scratch, or supervising game development closely - clearly he never made those decisions.

Yep, exactly what I thought. Disguise some other bad news (digital only for both) as some good news while the audience is distracted by the multiplatform announcements.

Did I really say that? I definitely preferred Uncharted 2, that game was legendary. That train set piece, man. Uncharted 3 was not on the same level for sure, and I felt like Uncharted 4 was a great way to showpiece the PS4's capabilities but as a game wasn't very exciting. The gameplay and puzzle solving felt a bit old hat and stale and they were right to end the series at that point. You've played Mass Effect 1, in my opinion Mass Effect 2 and 3 should definitely be high up on your list. Great games and the remasters made them even better.

Alternatively, it could.

Yeah, a week is basically the minimum they feel they need to quickly get their messaging/communication ready after the unplanned leaks. We know then that the leaks are basically true or true enough since he's posted this. Interesting times.

On the one hand, lack of competition would be bad. Sony would be unchecked in this space and could more or less do what they wanted, at least until a competitor comes along. I'd say that this could mean Sony could go all digital next gen without competition, but ultimately Microsoft are going that way already anyway with their new console refreshes. And on the other hand, Microsoft have acquired a bunch of studios and already have started to make their (once multiplatform) games exclusive, so Microsoft becoming platform-agnostic would mean a bunch of titles would be available to me again. So a bit of a mixed bag, this. Either way, I think we can agree that Microsoft are not good at the home console game. They aren't great at managing studios and ultimately have never been able to recover from E3 2013. That really was the start of the end.

If it a hybrid it'll have to be less powerful, and I'm sure it still will be.

Yeah you'd spell FAQ out if talking about it on its own as otherwise nobody would know what you're talking about. But GameFAQs has for a long time been said that way by a lot of the userbase. I'd argue most who are familiar with the site would still know what gaming website was being talking about in context if someone said Game-facks, regardless of how much they dislike it being said that way. [emoji14] I'd also contest that the whole "but you'd say it this way in this other context" doesn't really work in establishing a one-rule. Sometimes abbreviations are said differently depending on the context. The way of pronouncing "OS" (operating system) in MS-DOS versus iOS, for instance.

How would they be competing with Sony though. If they just released a more powerful Switch 2 they still wouldn't compete graphically with PS5 given it's a mobile form factor, so still wouldn't get the third party games. And it'd still be a hybrid machine, unlike the PS5. No way they are ditching the Switch format for their successor. We have seen Nintendo not innovate too much between generations before like DS to 3DS (the main gimmick just being a fairly pointless 3D effect). So it's not like there isn't precedent for Nintendo playing it safe to say they won't do it. I reckon Switch 2 will still get a smattering of third party ports and whatnot, and they'll still sell reasonably well owing to the huge install base they'll get.

Yeah, I always thought it was common knowledge that it was pronounced "Game Facks", and that was generally accepted/understood by the people on there going ages back. The same way people say "FOMO" as a single word rather than "eff oh emm oh". It is somewhat amusing though to see people think they're being astute by essentially saying "hey, the FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions, don't you know?!" You don't say...

The worst thing is when Spencer comes out saying the firings are "painful". Complete tosh, he is probably getting a nice bonus after the firings for making the company more profitable.

Microsoft buying them will lead to (and already has led to) games being walled off from specific console owners. They're the worst American company that could have bought them, out of those who would/could realistically have done it. If Google or Amazon had bought them they'd almost certainly carry on releasing ABK games on all consoles as per usual, seeing as they don't have their own home consoles.

It's interesting because what we see as a rip off might actually be sufficiently different to pass. I'm reminded of whenever I go into ALDI, there's tonnes of stuff that is very blatantly meant to look like known brand products, yet clearly they've made products differently enough to avoid legal issues. I'm thinking things like this:

Yeah this is basically what I was suggesting. @Dcubed I'm not suggesting that they would pre-emptively change anything now, I'm saying that if they were actually sued in some way purely on the basis of specific reuse of models then they could technically switch out the models later and the product wouldn't be infringing on anything. Assuming they still had money left after being sued...to be honest I don't really know how it would work, but you'd think they could release a product again if it doesn't infringe on anything, right?

They could just say they're alternate appearances or whatever they want, or simply not make it known that they're working on them. Or they could have even made the alternatives prior to launch for the ones most like Pokemon and have them ready as "prototypes" they already developed. Bear in mind they would only ever switch them in after the point of a successful legal challenge, so no legal ramifications here (in fact it would be to address a legal issue).