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Nicktendo

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Posts posted by Nicktendo

    Euro 2024 | 14th June to 14th July

    in General Chit Chat

    Posted

    Read an article somewhere, maybe the BBC, where they were lamenting how bad the big teams have been at this tournament, blaming it on the long and demanding elite season across Europe. I'm inclined to agree with that POV. It's only going to get worse next time with the revised bigger European club tournaments coming in this year. 

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    PC Gaming Discussion

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    Spent about 75 bones in the sale and picked up:

    System Shock (Nightdive Studios version - Loved their work on the Turok games & Forsaken)
    Dead Rising OG
    Sea of Stars
    Balatro
    Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore (because of my DF boy @Dark1x John's involvement)
    Batboy
    Forza Horizon 4: Ultimate Edition (Loved this on GP, but wanted to try the Lego DLC)
    Legend Bowl (Have a big soft spot for NFL games, especially retro-inspired ones)

    So far, so good. Loving Dead Rising, Balatro and Forza at 4K60. Yet to dive in to the others. 

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    UK General Election 2024

    in General Chit Chat

    Posted

    I didn't register in time. I thought I could vote in the embassy, like I have done once in the past, but apparently not these days... I applied on the gov.uk site and thought I was done in early June, but then they asked for a scan of my signature, which turned out to be a whole hassle and a ton of waiting for snail mail. Then I was away for a couple of weeks in mid-June so wouldn't have managed to do everything in time anyway. My last registration was Bolton North East, and I haven't lived there for 8 years, and didn't vote in 2019. Oh well. ::shrug:.

    It was strong Labour seat for around 20 years, but swung back to the Tories in 2019. Having looked at recent by-election results over the past ~2 years, it seems the Cons are losing 60-90% of their vote from 2019, so it will be very interesting to see how me ol' constituency goes this time and whether the threat of ZERO SEATS is actually the real deal.

    Xbox Series S | X Console Discussion

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    10 minutes ago, bob said:

    Chris Dring? Jeff Grubb? Matt Booty?

    These aren't all real people right? They're made up faceless PR entities surely? Can't even give them normal convincing names.

    Matt Booty is the worst of them. Supposed to be head of Microsoft Game Studios and can't even get a team's name correct on occasion. The other two don't work for Xbox to be honest, just Twitter journos and leakers. 

    I think this is the death knell for Xbox as a console manufacturer. Wii U was a bigger disaster, no doubt, but Nintendo had some solid games from 2014 onwards and manged to steer the ship out of troubled waters with the Switch. I don't see Xbox releasing anything of note in the next 12-18 months to turn this around, even if they do try a hail mary and release new hardware or a handheld. It's over. They have proven consistently that they couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. The management, or lack thereof, of their games and their studios is absolutely shocking. Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, Matt Booty and Aaron Greenberg should all have been fired long ago. They don't even have the hardcore fans on board anymore. I know these directives are all likely coming down from MS themselves, but Phil and co have had years now to just release some decent games and they have not done it outside of one or two in a sea of utter failures. 

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    Nintendo Switch Successor Announced

    in Nintendo Gaming

    Posted · Edited by Nicktendo

    19 minutes ago, killthenet said:

    Crazy that people find all this stuff, like you say a lot of it is over our heads but the big takeaways are that there doesn't seem to be any new gimmick, there's no reference to any cameras so the rumours about it having AR features don't seem to hold water - it really is just a more powerful Switch. In terms of specs this confirms that there will be 12 GB of RAM which is more than the Series S, so given that is the biggest limiting factor for that hardware it's a good sign that we'll get to see more current gen ports. Same goes for the storage too, UFS 3.1 is capable of over 1.5 GB/s read which is lightning fast compared to the original Switch, although it's still only about a quarter as fast as the PS5 is capable of but it's still a great sign that developers will have much more freedom this time around. 

    Personally, I think faster storage was at the top of my wishlist, the original Switch has felt pretty sluggish since I've started to use a PS5 and been spoiled by the much shorter load times, so it's great to hear there will be a big upgrade on that front. 

    I was going to post similar analysis but got distracted. 12gb of RAM is very encouraging. 

    On the concerning side, we've got 256gb of storage with lightning speeds, which is undoubtedly great. While this probably won't be too bad with Nintendo first party games, which very rarely, if ever, are more than 15gb, it will be a problem for third party devs. I would also assume that expanding internal storage via SD card is no longer going to be an option and the reads speeds are not going to be anywhere close to the internal storage. So are we going to see a fridge situation? Or will they have a proprietary solution like Microsoft? I may be reading into this wrong, so please correct me if that is the case.

    Here's an old video from November 2023 which explains what the T239 chip is capable of in theory. I think it's quite promising.

    Edit: Rich is going off of clock speeds of ~700mhz in this video, but it seems like there have been a few rumours doing the rounds this week that it will be much higher than that (close to double!) in docked mode. 

    General Switch Discussion

    in Nintendo Gaming

    Posted

    7 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

    Feels like I've been hearing about this being implemented on the next Switch for years now. Pretty sure you guys talked about it on the podcast at some point. :D 

    Well yeah that's true. :laughing:

    Back in 2019/20 there was a lot of talk about a Switch Pro being released that would take advantage of DLSS, which was still in its infancy back then and wasn't around during Switch's production. Despite seeing decent results with the 1.0. release, it really came into its own with the 2.0. release which was around that time frame. Whether the rumours were true or not it doesn't matter now. Plans that may have existed were likely cancelled due to COVID anyway and Nintendo doubled down on the 2017 system and released the fantastic OLED. Iwata, remember, had spoken of a evolving console "platform" before his death, which led to a lot of speculation about more regular iterations of the Switch platform, similar to how Apple updates iPhones on a yearly basis. Not that anyone expected a new system every year, but the idea was that it would be a unified platform with more frequent updates. Perfectly feasible in 3 year cycles, for instance, to take advantage of recent hardware, machine learning, and AI developments. There were patents and documents laying out this vision. It seems they have walked back on that idea now, anyway. And rightly so, given how strongly the Switch has marched on since 2020. 

    Being a mobile platform built on Nvidia tech, it makes an immense amount of sense to incorporate DLSS capabilities into the chip. It is far and away the best upscaling tech on the market with AMD's FSR tech hugely struggling in comparison, which Xbox and PlayStation both use. It would undoubtedly help the new Switch overcome power limitations and punch above its weight in contrast to the competition, even Steam Deck. So the idea of Nintendo using a cheaper, older chip that can support modern hardware developments like DLSS and VRR would be a perfect marriage of price and tech. Not necessarily for handheld mode (I think even the OG Switch is still fine in that regard), but those two features would help immensely with TV output.

    What worries me slightly about the Switch 2 rumour mill at the moment is the fact that most people seem to be convinced it'll be an 8-inch LCD screen and will render at either 900p or 1080p. I think both of these moves are bad. Going back to LCD from OLED is going to be extremely rough, and upping the resolution and size of the screen is pointless and will significantly impact the battery life for a mostly indiscernible "upgrade" in visual quality. 

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    General Switch Discussion

    in Nintendo Gaming

    Posted · Edited by Nicktendo

    1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

    I want DK64 and DKR on there.

    Less excited by DK64, but would love to go through DKR again. Must've been a couple of decades now since I've played it but I'll always maintain it was a better game than MK64. 

    I wouldn't mind seeing the OG Smash 64 get dropped too, just for nostalgia's sake. 

    Their N64 line-up as it currently stands is very strong though, they've done a great job. Wishlist games would be Perfect Dark and a couple of racing games like World Driver and Top Gear Rally, but I doubt any of those will happen. 

    • Like 2

    Nintendo Switch Successor Announced

    in Nintendo Gaming

    Posted · Edited by Nicktendo

    This fiscal year...

    My guess is it will maybe be revealed in with a short trailer in September, followed big Direct in January, and launching in March. Probably around the 3rd :laughing:

    They likely want to squeeze a final Xmas out of the OG Switch, so I guess the June Direct will give us a hint as to when exactly the new console will launch. If they have a fair amount of stuff for Q3 and Q4 of 2024, March will probably be nailed on as a launch date. 

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    Helldivers II (8th February 2024)

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    I've been away all week and was actually planning to jump in to Helldivers II this weeks thanks to the immense social pressure I've been under. Lots of friends having a good time on PS5 and PC wanting me to join them, so coming back to this news was hilarious. 

    Had this gone through, I wouldn't have even been able to buy the game. 

    Extremely arrogant of Sony. It just shows how utterly detached these AAA companies are from the end user and what they actually want from gaming. Sony has demolished any good will this game had earned them, and while there is certainly a much deeper discussion to be had regarding MS, Sony and PC releases, this was an extremely sceptical move, hilariously pushed under the guise of "player safety". In reality, this is just Sony trying to sweep up a few extra PSN users for their earnings calls and balance sheets. The "safety" they speak of is just more control over how people play the game and the discussions they have over voice chat. They also want more data too, which is what having everyone log in to PSN would have given them. 

    Needless to say, I will not be buying this game. I see people in some regions have been given refunds despite having 100+ hours in the game already. And rightly so, IMO. 

    This seems to be another example of a continuing trend where a product is sold and then the rules are arbitrarily changed a few weeks or months down the line to the detriment of the buyer. So while I'm very pleased to see Sony walking it back in the face of the outrage, I have no doubt that this is just a minor bump in the road and they will merely implement all of this stuff in a more subtle way over time. 

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    Playstation 5 Console Discussion

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

    Building a PC isn't easy for your average person, let's not kid about. Not even 10% of gamers will be building a PC, it does require research into what parts you need and how to put them together.

    Put it this way - you can spend maybe £500 and buy the PS5 Pro and just plug it into your TV and it works. Or you can faff about buying parts and put them together, and let's be honest it will be a lot more than £500 if you want considerably better performance than the PS5 Pro.

    What do you think your average gamer will pick?

    There are plenty of companies that will do the entire build for you depending on your power / cost demands. They can advise you on what parts to go with and it will come out cheaper than a regular store-bought "gaming" PC. I built my own in 2019 having previously known nothing about PCs. Took about 3 months on and off of YouTube research before biting the bullet and spending around £800 on all the parts. A massive time sink, admittedly. The whole process is extremely intimidating and the build was terrifying, taking me around 14 hours to actually do from start to finish, but it was well worth it, and is not actually that difficult given the wealth of information available online. It's the time commitment that's the issue for the average person. I've easily upgraded parts of it over the past 5 years and very pleased with it. I don't know if I could go back to being console only now, but that's just me. Everyone has different time demands and different priorities. I had a old laptop that was on the way out and wanted to get a desktop instead, so a gaming PC seemed like the way to go at that particular moment.

    No doubt a PC that gets PS5 / Series X performance is probably going to set you back at least double the console cost, if not more, and yes it's true that even if you have similar specs, a lot of games will run worse than on console due to the nature of PC gaming (and horrific lack of optimisation by most developers), but this is why the stuff Valve are doing with Steam Deck and Linux is so exciting. They are doing all the hard work behind the scenes so that the PC market can become much more like the console market. All it would really take is someone taking the Steam Deck's handheld internals, beefing them up a little, putting them into a set-top-box for £50 less than a PS5 and you've got a SteamOS console. Would it have the same performance as a PS5? Probably not, but it would be close enough. Honestly though, the Series X and PS5 aren't exactly setting the world on fire in terms of tech because of the compromises that have to be made in the components to get the box under £500. They have a number of advantages in getting good components manufactured cheaper in bulk, but there is only so much you can do when you're working to a strict budget.

    Ray tracing and 4K60 were both hyped prior to launch, and neither have been delivered. AMD are way behind Nvidia in a lot of RT and the machine learning stuff that makes it run on weaker hardware and Xbox and Sony are stuck with them. We've got 1440p/4K and 30fps in some games and a blurry "performance mode" which is often 1080p or less. Chasing power is not going to work as it did in the past for either of them when you have to reset every 5-6 years or have a half-step in the middle, because PC tech will always be ahead 6 months after launch, and considerably so in the second half of a console's life. It was absolutely the right thing to do in the early 2000s when gaming PCs were in a bad place and almost impossibly inaccessible, but a significant number of barriers have been removed in the past 20 years. Ironically, we could actually see decent console ray tracing in Nintendo games before we do on PS or Xbox because Nvidia are so much further ahead in this space. 

    None of this really matters, however, because when this eventual explosion of SteamOS mini-PCs does happen, and Xbox and Sony games are available on Steam day-and-date, or 6, 12, 18 months later, what pull will people towards MS's or Sony's hardware? I think they're both relying way too heavily on a short-term strategy and PC gaming is only going to continue to increase in popularity and become more accessible over the next 5 years with the work Valve are putting it. 

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    Playstation 5 Console Discussion

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

    Same thing could be said for Nintendo too... Switch's USP isn't much of a USP anymore when Steam Deck and other similar devices can also pull the same Handheld/Docked party trick.

    A simple more-of-the-same Switch 2 isn't gonna cut it over the next 5-10 years when the handheld PC space continues to open up and rise in prominance.  It might not be a threat right now, but it absolutely will be in a few years when Valve look to launch their own Steam Deck 2 and other manufacturers (potentially even Xbox) start to get into the market sector.

    Nintendo's First Party software is strong enough to be a USP. This has been true of all console manufacturers throughout time for better or worse, but if Sony and Xbox are abandoning that position, I don't see what they have to offer, or will have to offer over the next 5-10 years. 

     

    4 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

    Is the Steam Deck available from retailers now? Geniune question. I know it wasn't when it launched. If not, then I fail to see how it will have a mass market reach.

    Still only available direct from Valve. They've stated themselves it's an experiment and I don't think they have any intention of it becoming a mass-market device. But it has allowed them to develop SteamOS and get a huge amount of games running on Linux, which is very, very good overall for the traditional PC market. It has the added bonus of making similar non-Valve handheld devices and plug-and-play PC-like hardware to function like a traditional console. Exciting times.

    Playstation 5 Console Discussion

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    Yeah these are some of the points I was trying to get at with my previous posts, just couldn't formulate it all properly.

    The more these consoles go up in cost, the less value I feel they have, when a realistically decent PC can be had for a little bit more. So if PS5 pro does launch at £500 or more, I struggle to wonder who it'll be for. You'll have your hardcore Sony fans buying day one, no doubt, but what is the appeal to Joe casual who plays only CoD and EA FC? Same for the PS5, outside of shinier graphics and better running games, the first 3 years of the PS5 were basically bare-bones from Sony. Hardly any exclusives, which is why I'm puzzled to why it sold so well compared to PS4. Once you get up to £500 territory, you're getting into PC land, and it has never been as easy as it is today to build your own current-gen level PC at a decent price.

    With PC gaming becoming much easier and more intuitive, affordable modern hardware like Steam Deck giving people the Switch experience with their PC library, and PS and Xbox games being available on those platforms - what incentive is there to continue keeping yourself tied to a Sony or Microsoft box in the future? We can already see MS failing fairly spectacularly, but I don't see a plan from Sony to prevent themselves going down the same road. Their offering seems very underwhelming from the outside looking in. They seem to have gone all in the AAA story-driven big budget games, whereas during the PS3 era, they had a ton more breadth and depth to their 1st party catalogue to make those big-budget experiences have greater appeal. They also can't seem to get a handle on their budgeting and keep chasing incremental gains for what seems to me to be relatively little advantage if sales of TLOU2 are anything to take insight from. 

    I'm apprehensive about what is coming next from Nintendo, but I feel fairly confident they'll find good success if the next system is just "more of the same". I can't see how Sony keeps going at this pace without taking something from Nintendo's approach to software, namely: strong console exclusives / a sensible budget for 90% of the catalogue / heavier emphasis on gameplay and keeping the output going throughout the year with AA titles. The rise of these handheld PCs, and undoubtedly at some point in the not too distant future, plug-and-play home set-top boxes running SteamOS, is surely going to start eating into Sony's profits if they don't have anything stand-out to offer.

    Playstation 5 Console Discussion

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    Kudos to Sony for still believing in 3rd party exclusives. I honestly think that's a main pillar of delivering an enticing console experience. I've seen a lot of MS fanboys hating on them for taking this approach, but it is the bread and butter of the console industry, so if MS isn't willing to stump up the cash (as they did to a great extent in the OG and 360 days), they can pound sand. But outside of that, I really do see very little. PC and Switch is the place to be at the moment, and Sony seem to be losing ground and mindshare in a substantial way. You mention CoD, but that's likely to be "best experienced on Xbox" from October/November moving forward. 

    And I do not believe that Nintendo games will ever be available anywhere but on a Nintendo system, and that's exactly the way I want it to stay. They are the only dev left in the industry and that builds their software to a specific hardware. 

    Playstation 5 Console Discussion

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    I don’t really get the point of PS5. Full disclosure: I haven’t owned a Playstation since around 2008 (PS3), so I may be a little biased, but what’s its unique selling point, outside of it essentially being a PS4 Pro+? It barely has any exclusives and has been mired with cross-gen titles from Sony 1st and 2nd party for the first 3 years of its life. I agree that 3rd parties have been doing the heavy lifting, but Sony as a dev and a publisher seem to be in a really bad place.

    The fact they’re launching another console this year is laughable to me. They’ve already said there are no big 1st party hitters coming in 2024, so why are they doing this? PS4 Pro++? I can’t understand why the base model is selling so well on the back of basically nothing. Both Sony and MS have really dropped the ball this gen. Demon Souls, Astro, what else is a 1st party PS5 exclusive?

    I heard on Sacred Symbols that they are making ~6% profit on the PlayStation brand at the moment, which is very low. I don’t really get what their grand plan is. TLOU2 and Spiderman 2 seem to have fallen below expectations, and Ragnorok and Forbidden Wastes were both cross-gen titles that could have been so much more had they not been. Seems things are getting very stale in Sony land. Insomniac being tied to Marvel content until 2035 is a very, very bad idea IMO. 4th year of a console launch and under 10 1st party exclusives is absolutely terrible form tbh. What’s going on over there?

    The fact a decent gaming PC costs roughly double the price of a PS5 is interesting too. I have picked up quite a few Sony games in the past 2 years and they are giving me absolutely zero incentive to buy another PlayStation, considering releases on PC to be happening sooner rather than later these days. Ghost of Tsushima is dropping in a couple of weeks or so and I will definitely pick it up, but if PS games are going to be dropping within 12-24 months of release, and are likely to run better on a mid-range PC, what incentive does anyone have to buy a PS5/pro?

    Hollow Knight: Silksong

    in Nintendo Gaming

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Julius said:

    Rated in South Korea:

    XTU7JuN.png

    This news comes days after wishlist pages turned up on Xbox and PlayStation digital storefronts on April 1st. 

    Soon™? 

    No, I refuse to believe it. This game is a myth, an Internet legend, and is never coming out. It is but a figment of our imagination. Cherry Team probably doesn't even exist anymore. Maybe it never existed?

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