Sheikah

As a Japanese company, their workers are no doubt going to be working silly hours to meet deadlines. The only difference is that over there that overworking is seen as less of a problem and more part of their culture.

Have you noticed that Bran doesn't get moved around now either. He's just always where he needs to be...pretty disconcerting.

It's going to happen, but battles generally don't do much for me. Give me political plays and twists over grand battles any day of the week. I really hope the battle is fairly short and they spend more time wrapping up the plot at the end. I don't think it'll happen though...

It's a victimless crime - greedy corporate shills get called out which at the same time makes good entertainment. I really like Jim. It's impossible to deny that he is having a very positive effect on the industry by calling out these practices time after time. Let's not forget that the Battlefront 2 Reddit AMA included the most downvoted response of all time - to a question asked by Jim. The massive backlash to that game's practices has caused EA to tweet that there'll be no microtransactions/lootboxes in their next Star Wars game. The worst thing that can happen with practices like these is for nobody to talk about them, and nobody to care.

No way, as soon as they start fighting you can kiss goodbye to all the meaningful character interactions all over Westeros and say hello to a LOTR Return of the King-style battle taking up the next few episodes.

God help you, you are in your own little world Ronnie. Never have you been more wrong. The human cost of this game is real and this article highlights that, and as a result Bioware have internally communicated that they're going to improve. BioWare have had a string of flops/below standard games now and that’s nothing to do with Jason. They NEED to change and it’s articles like this that can cause change to happen. That you would find a problem with this article that shines a light on a very troubled studio that shows no signs of change really says something about you.

No My Time at Portia love?

Aonuma is a ledge...Majora's Mask and BoTW, then this...what more can you ask for?

It made an excellent wedge to hold a door open though, so there's that.

Less than half a percent, that's a pretty crazy figure. This was at ShopTo and The Game Collection, hardly unknown places. It's not just those sites though; to give you an idea of the scale of the discount, it was also at £35 on Amazon within just days of launch. There were even news articles documenting how this price decrease must be a sign of the game struggling. Just to reiterate, the game is £60 on the PSN store and before launch was around £32 physical, and after launch it's £35. It doesn't matter what type of game it is, if you're buying the digital copy for nearly £30 more you're either seriously damn lazy or don't ever think about shopping around. Just to touch on the point you said earlier about a higher proportion of Anthem purchasers going digital versus those buying RDR2 due to the nature of the game - by comparison, RDR2 was an expensive game on all formats (physical and digital), so buying digital if anything made more sense due to the price not being much more than physical.

1 million yen? That's barely enough to unlock one ability.

What difference does it make about it being out of date, you buy a disc or download it, you're still downloading the same file size off the internet. They both take up the same storage space on the hard drive. I'm pretty sure most people, if informed of one being 30 quid and the other 60, would definitely go for the 30 quid option. I get that some people will pay for the convenience of not having to get up every once in a while to swap discs but I find it hard to believe most would pay double the price just for that convenience. I disagree fundamentally with your point that more people would buy Anthem digitally versus Red Dead. Normally maybe, but the price discrepancy between formats here means nothing but ultra laziness or being simply unaware would mean people would opt for digital in this instance.

It might be more now (35 quid by my brief searching, don't use Amazon) but just before release it was even less at multiple places. As we know a large proportion of copies sell at launch. Anthem is 60 quid (!!!) on PSN, and was close to 30 physical right before launch. I find it difficult to believe that anyone but the most lazy/ignorant would have kept their digital preorder. Obviously some people did, I just can't imagine there would be many.

The boxed copy was selling for 30 quid, I would bet a lot of the sales would have been physical.

Not exactly an achievement when ME1 and 2 were launched at different times on the X360/PS3. There was also not exactly much else multiplatform launched in February (I can think of a non-numbered Far Cry spin off and another Metro game). It's fair to say that there wasn't anything people were really looking forward to. Factor in they dropped the price of Anthem to around £30 before it even launched and, well, you get my drift. This isn't really news. Seeing as we're mentioning past quotes, what of you remarking that reviews won't be relevant in a month since it'll be different by then? Not a week goes by without more bad press about the game. This is a live service game that relies on player retention - let's see how popular it is in a year.

It's impossible to tell what the input lag is like without playing it...I reckon it will still be noticeable and therefore a subpar experience for most games. The 4k60 boast means nothing compared to input lag.

My first ever videogame.

I haven't seen the documentary yet, but I thought it was interesting to look at your points here - couldn't everything you said in the quote above be pretty much applied to Jimmy Savile? Both JS and MJ are no longer around to defend themselves, the victims came forward decades later (for understandable reasons), and they are not backed up by hard evidence (mostly their word vs the accused). The main differentiator seems to be that JS seemingly affected more people. Would you defend JS using the same arguments? Not having a go, just curious. In cases like this where there's never going to be hard evidence I think patterns are generally important. If a lot of people are coming forward with separate but very similar accounts then you either believe in the collective accounts or you believe in conspiracy. Although it's not ideal that MJ isn't around to defend himself, like with Savile, I don't think it does justice to victims if we assume the accused cannot be culpable simply because they're no longer alive.

Been playing the heck out of this the past week or so. Absolutely love it - an RPG player's dream. I like how well constructed Dragon Quest games are - there's just no bloat. Damage and HP numbers are low and equipment and items you get (and exploration) is meaningful. Extraordinary game. The only thing I would really improve is the soundtrack - an absolute step down from DQVIII, which was fully orchestrated. Can't really understand this one given a lot of the tracks are the same as those featured in DQVIII (and the games before it), just they're in some sort of low-fi MIDI format this time. DQVIII had an astonishing, fully orchestrated soundtrack. My parting gift for this post: "Stump Chump" What a guy.

The puzzles aren't very difficult and the games are superb, if that helps.

Had to paste this, it's equal parts hilarious and terrifying.

If it means you get games at prices closer to what they are on PS4/X1 then it's absolutely the right thing to do. Don't give these greedy bastards this much money if you can avoid it.

Oh yeah, it's still a rip off. But for those interested, it's ludicrously easy to switch regions to the Russian eShop - I've done it a fair bit. Just switch region via web browser and buy the game on your Switch with a credit card that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees. Then switch back.

Dat Switch tax. Not at all unexpected!

I'm sure there's a million ways they can explain the mechanics of the game to people who have never played it before without putting the 95% who've played it before through the same rigmarole. They could even make a beginning island tutorial or some shiz where you can go to only if you select that you're a new player at the beginning. Loads of options but still the same old setup, game after game.