Sheikah

Meh, the last NSMB bored me senseless. Who cares if the game is polished if it's just rather dull?

Played the toybox to completion yesterday, it's a lot of fun. It really does feel like they've distilled the BK formula and applied it here. I did play with a keyboard though, which I wouldn't recommend; that said, the platforming feels tight. Nice to see the NPC humour is there still as well, that's pretty much crucial to a BK-style game.

Seems a bit more ridiculous when you consider that the notification watch accessory thing will let you catch Pokemon you have caught before with 100% success.

That is a shame, I remember him posting about meeting Charles Martinet. RIP dude.

The effective result of the double image is a 400*240 3D image. If you looked at a 3DS screenshot and a native 800*240 image side by side you would notice that the 3DS image is half the resolution. Turning 3D off demonstrates this even further as then the image is pure 400*240. Kinda mad that they went with 3D over having a higher resolution game.

3DS is not 800*240, it is 400*240. The 800 is misleading - this the result of a double image just used to generate the 3D effect. Actual resolution is 400*240, much too low IMO.

Nah you'll never hold a gym more than 20 hours unless you live in the middle of nowhere or it's a really high gym level and well occupied. You basically take a gym or two and claim right away. Then take the gym back next day.

In your cinema example the cinema is a function; the film is the medium. Films aren't losing popularity, just the cinema, which starts to lose out to the home. That's why companies like Microsoft were/are desperate to own your living room space with their TV TV TV push. So to favourably compare to your cinema example - gaming arcades, the function, lose their popularity - which they already have. If we look at the actual games, which are the medium, they are totally different - stats show sales of PS4s are higher than any PlayStation console before it. Even if video game uptake stopped rising, technology constantly improves to allow better games to be made at the same cost. That is why I don't see it as doomed. We also now see incredibly competent companies that handle outsource work no doubt for cheap (see FFX remaster, Wind Waker HD). And even ingenious ways that small teams can make big games (see No Man's Sky).

Just to throw a spanner to that - there are games like Overwatch where all microtransactions are purely cosmetic; they also promise free maps and characters for life, funded no doubt by said microtransactions. They can be done very well, if the developer wills it. Many games with a serious competitive side do not have microtransactions that affect actual gameplay (Destiny too). This is a model I definitely agree with as it means we tend to get updates for free. Also regarding the on-disc content, I'd say we're getting more and more. The scale of games gets bigger and bigger while the price tag stays pretty solid. GTAV is much bigger, more detailed and feature-rich than GTA3 - and yet, the price was pretty much the same. You could argue the same for many other games too - like Assassin's Creed Syndicate. The scale and detail is immense in that game. As the scale and amount of content increases with these games (as it always seems to), I can only see games becoming better value for money as time goes on. As I said before, games back in the 90s were actually quite poor value; consider the average wage then and they were really quite expensive. Also think about games like Smash 64 and the limited number of characters and levels - compare that to Smash of today. I honestly completely disagree that games now seem to offer less and less for your money. The problem as I see it is that gaming has exploded, to the point that people spend more on games as there are a lot more games of good quality to buy.

Can I just say fuuuuck sliders. Give me some proper analogue sticks.

Not as willing to exploit gamers back then? Can you really say DLC is that? They're giving gamers what they want - because if it wasn't what they wanted, they wouldn't buy it. Secondly, if you see it that way, that's still not true. Back then on PC you would have expansion packs for games that functioned exactly the same as modern DLC. Why not on console? Because they did not have hard drives then, and they could just reuse an engine and assets and sell it as a new game instead. You're bringing up some good examples of bullshit practices that are employed now but that doesn't really go to show that gaming is more expensive. I could still buy games for cheaper than I could then even buy some microtransactions and it'd probably still be cheaper than a game back then. I'm also not having a lesser experience, or missing out on the 'full' experience in Pokemon Go by not paying. Paying in that game would speed things up but I wouldn't be experiencing any new content or modes of any kind, so I disagree with you on that. In fact that's how it is on most F2P games - the money never really buys you content. Arguably, paying to win would also be a lot less satisfying and therefore actually detract from the experience for me.

You don't have to deal with microtransactions though? Don't understand why you say that. It's totally optional and we have seen in games like Destiny how events can be brought to every player because they fund development with microtransactions. Also happening with Pokemon Go - free to play for me because the game is supported by microtransactions. So that's good news! Not sure what your point is about season passes - you realise that is people paying up front for unmade DLC right? So again...don't pay it. And you'll be getting just your game, just like you were back then. It sounds to me like you're bringing up loads of stuff that you can spend money on as a way of saying gaming now is more expensive. Well, it's not. Because all that extra stuff is just that - extra, optional stuff on top of the original game. Also let's not pretend DLC is something seedy and extortionist, or anti-consumer; we'd have killed for some way to get new tracks on Mario Kart 64 back in the day. What we have now is more options. Coming back to the original point about regular (non F2P) games - these are £40 now, they were £50-60 on N64 in 1998. So no, it's not costing me any more today. Significantly less, in fact. And with budgets getting much bigger, but prices of games staying roughly the same, arguably you are getting decent value for money there too.

I disagree that gaming is going that way. Back in 1998 games for the N64 were £50, some £60 (CBFD for instance). PS2 games were also £40 (same as PS4 games now). If anything gaming has gotten cheaper as £50 then would be even more in today's money. There's also a lot of free to play games today unlike back then, which are typically sustained by those microtransactions. Microtransactions are totally optional and mean that people who want to pay them basically pay for the people who don't (who play for free). They can be in paid for games but again, they're still optional. Also humble bundles. No way did you get quality games as dirt cheap as that 10-15 years ago.

Reminds me of this:

People always miss the point on that. It doesn't matter if the gamecube didn't have as much support either (which was mostly down to other reasons), the point is that without a base level of system parity with your competitors you can't have most of those third party games by default. It's an automatic foul - it doesn't matter what good relations you foster with third parties if they stand to make much more money by making a game for PS4/X1, and for it to be costly for them to redesign the game to work on NX. It'll be miles behind. There's no way NX, with its ability to play games on the go, will come close enough to PS4 for games to be easily ported. I mean, look at the size of the PS4. It'll be Wii U vs PS4 problems all over again.

@dazzybee No but the fact it is mobile means its hardware will be limited by what can be mobile. It will be a generation behind the new console refreshes coming soon I reckon, meaning Nintendo will have the same problem again as what they had with Wii U and Wii.

It's definitely a move for business rather than the consumer - the Wii U showed that people weren't happy that the console was behind the competition in so many ways, as reflected by almost non-existent third party support. The console will be poor technically as a result of having to keep it mobile, which is a big shame. My biggest concern is that Nintendo's build quality of their handhelds is poor - the 3DS and gamepad in particular show that Nintendo seem to be making devices that would not feel out of place over 10 years ago, but don't feel good now. Also, I sincerely hope the screen is a decent resolution this time.

@Dcubed it's a handheld and a home console in one so a guess either way would have been correct .

They don't love Mario enough to buy another console. They love Mario enough to buy it if it released on the console they already have. The people who love Mario enough to buy a console would also buy the PS4 by that logic.

It's a shame really - they should just release the original game on the PSN store and make it PS4 compatible like they have done with a bunch of PS2 titles, rather than push this demake. A fantastic game that deserves the big screen.

I know I don't always see eye to eye with you but I've seen over many, many months people tell you that you're wrong and there's no way it could be a hybrid. Oh how wrong they were. If somebody doesn't dig out these posts I certainly will at some point.

Given people have renamed hypno to "Bill Cosby" and he carries "Drowzee candies" I'd say this qualifies him to be pretty epic. But yeah...why so common? He was never this common in the game. I think not having trading straight away makes sense for two reasons - it stops people racing to the finish too soon (all Pokemon obtained) and it provides something to draw people back in.

No, not quite right - you get 3 candies for catching a Pokemon (every time) and 1 more for trading it in.

Sonic's last good game was Sonic Adventure 2. No hype from me.

How is Konami's redirect a disastrous result for them? They make bucket loads of money from mobile and pachinko! Much more after they pretty much switched their entire focus to mobile. This is after all the most relevant example to Nintendo and Pokemon Go (the other examples were just to show that companies have often switched focus based on where the money is). Pokemon Go has also done better than any other app from any other traditional developer, so the focus-altering pressures can only be higher. Sure, it's one game. But it's proof of concept and also more than doubled Nintendo's value. It's absolutely bonkers is what it is, and I'd be very surprised if Nintendo weren't thinking about doing more mobile now they've seen that there's such money to be made.