Ronnie

I agree. I know Furukawa mentioned adapting to changing circumstances and being fluid with how the industry moves (I'm paraphrasing), but I genuinely think Nintendo would be quite happy to keep pushing out hardware even if the rest of the industry has gone all in on streaming. It might be an option but I still think they consider themselves a toy maker. Interesting times for sure.

Maybe Nintendo will do a Yamauchi again. Doug Bowser gets up on stage, Microsoft waiting behind the curtain for the big reveal, and at the last minute Nintendo announces.... they're partnering with Google!

Crazy stuff. I wonder how all this stuff will be announced, if it'll be at a (Xbox?) press conference or just a slow trickle of news. If it's the former, the perfect time would be the one E3 where Sony is a no-show.

That would be insane if true, but I just wonder, what's in it for Microsoft apart from extra software sales? Game Pass is amazing and you'd think they'd want to make it the (exclusive) reason to get an Xbox. xCloud could help with some of the more demanding games, and then things like Cuphead and Ori could just run natively. Would be huge news if it happened.

I’ve just watched that lovely video NoA put up, read all the nice messages on twitter, talks of him being a marketing genius from insiders, fun memories of him being the face of Nintendo. And then I come on here. Loads of people will miss him, thankfully far outnumbering those who are “sick of him”. He’s obviously a great leader, a nice guy and he’s done a huge amount for Nintendo. Doesn’t deserve a shred of the abuse he’s getting on here.

It really doesn't work like that. The Anthem devs are purposefully holding back content for the same reason the Destiny devs did, to give players enough time to reach the level cap. It doesn't matter if Destiny did it 5 years ago or 20. That's how these things work. It's an ongoing game, not everything should be avaialble from day 1. That's the whole point. Not only is the next chapter of story content coming in March (so similar timeframe to how Destiny did it), the devs were on a live stream last night and announced a couple of new features that'll come in a few weeks. Cosmetic chests at the end of strongholds (that need keys to unlock, which are rewards for doing daily challenges), so making the MTX even less necessary than it already is, and Legendary missions (replaying storyline missions at varying degrees of difficutly).

Raids and Trials of Osiris were in from day 1 were they? Genuine question. What is there to do around Fort Tarsis? That's where all the narrative, storytelling, side missions, world building etc happen.

And a massive step forward in many more aspects. Anthem has a story-based hub world. Destiny didn't. There would be no need to wander around the Tower in Destiny because there was nothing to do there. There's tons of narrative in Fort Tarsis, and so the game was designed around roaming around there. Or you can just use the Launch Bay to fast equip and go in missions quicker.

I read that Polygon snippet and was like, ok? Sounds like a pretty normal way of equipping new items? Just with a few load screens, some of which last a few seconds which of course the article doesn’t mention. They designed the game to be fast paced so you don’t have players stopping, checking what they got, reequipping in the middle of a mission. I’m sure if Anthem released with a fraction of the content, was totally free, had a cast of characters that screamed diversity and representation and came out out of blue and bypassing all the toxicity you get with big budget EA games and hype cycles then I’m sure it’ll have fared similar to Apex. Did this game need more time? Absolutely. Thankfully it’s an ongoing game that the devs say will be supported for years. The day 1 patch fixes a lot of issues and everyone thought Destiny would be dead and buried at launch. I’ve said my bit on the MTX discussion. No one apart from a few on this message board seem to care about it in Anthem and the situation is more nuanced than simply MTX = bad. This game’s (frequent) future story updates will be free of charge, for the lifetime of the game. Games are cheaper and more expensive to make than they ever have been.

Wow indeed @Glen-i

I played a grand total of 4 games on mine: Tearaway, Child of Light, Wipeout and Little Big Planet, and went from adored to enjoyed in that order. I bought it for Tearaway though and have zero regrets. I think a decent chunk of the PS4 audience are more on the casual side of gaming who have it for the big things like COD and FIFA etc and don't really care about portable gaming, hence the poor sales. Shame cause the tech itself seems pretty slick. That OLED screen (before they got rid of it for a worse version) was lovely.

It's a looter shooter where most of the content comes in endgame. Doing dungeon and mission runs over and over for better loot is the whole point. That's part of the equation. Well you're the one that first mentioned the word "grinding", so which is it? You can't have it both ways. Are you playing dozens and dozens of hours having fun or are you tediously grinding to be able to buy a new emote? If a game is fun then you should have no problem with putting lots of hours into it. And for all we know cosmetics will unlock for completing challenges in the near future. The devs are teasing a new feature for cosmetics that the're talking about this week. Apex Legends doesn't have a robust, incredibly rich customisation feature built into the base game. You're doing yourself a disservice not looking into how good it is, and how it renders a lot of the cosmetics easily skippable in the vast majority of cases. It's very easy to sit on a soapbox and say that EA should make future story expansions paid, and not put any MTX in the game to balance that out but the reality is, that is a very flawed way of doing things just so that they can call themselves ethical and not rely on the handful of people who'll spend big on MTX. It'll piss off most of the player base who are quite happy to never give the cosmetics store a penny and keep getting content for free over the months and years, and the game itself will split its userbase which benefits no one.

US sales data from NPD/ResetEra and software wise:

I guess the original plan was Mario U DX in January, Yoshi in March, Fire Emblem in April/May and Mario Maker in June. Then things like Animal Crossing, Luigi's Mansion, Pokemon and Zelda in the second half. That seems pretty spread out if Fire Emblem hadn't gotten pushed, but from what I saw that game needs as much work as possible, it looked a bit rough in places.

I agree with you, but I also remember most people on here saying Nintendo should have had Mario Odyssey and BOTW ready for the Switch's launch. Loads agreed that two big hitters on the same day was better for them than spacing them out. Obviously that turned out not to be true, and that still applies here I think, like you say. I think there's a few big third party games releasing in Q2 for the Switch, so maybe that's one reason they're pushing most things towards the second half of the year. Or they wanted to get Mario Maker and Fire Emblem earlier than June/July but they just needed more time.

People who've played the game after a few days were finishing the campaign having earned 180k coins, enough to buy everything in that shop, and that's NOT including the 40k they get for free when starting the game. And even if the game didn't give out coin at a generous rate, like Anthem does, isn't the whole point of games... to play them for a long time? Especially in a looter shooter where it's all about "one more run". You're assigning far too much value to a bunch of cosmetics that the vast majority of people won't care about, and those that do will likely have enough money to just get in them in game anyway without spending a penny.

You can get everything in there without paying a penny. That's the point. If you're really that bothered about having a gum on the shoe emote in the first place.

I take back what I said about not being an idiot. Now, he's obviously not completely blameless in this but I do realise addiction is a major problem and needs regulating like some other games do. All I'm saying is Anthem is MTX done right. Would EA have done it like that if Battlefront II hadn't happened, maybe not, but they obviously learned their lesson from that debacle.

Wow. Gaming really is cheaper than it's ever been.

I got Pirahna Plant in the post the other day. It looks fantastic, great quality as usual. Remember when everyone was up in arms about amiibo, good times.

It's a free to play game. Don't be an idiot and spend $500 on it. In fact that's literally his message to everyone in that thread. No annoyance towards EA or Respawn. No lootboxes in Anthem. All MTX cosmetic and don't impact gameplay. All cosmetics earnable in game. All future story content free of charge. No one is kicking up a fuss online, because there's nothing to kick up a fuss about. It's MTX done the right way. Some people might prefer content expansions to be £10 or £15 each time but I think the majority much prefer the model EA/Bioware have chosen.

Exploit a vulnerable minority? It's not like people who buy the occasional emote (if they're not just using the freely available and earnable in game currency to buy it as most people will in Anthem) are being forced to do so, nor are they in any way "vulnerable". Except that doesn't happen in Anthem. Completely optional cosmetics (on top of the enormously robust and indepth customisation that comes in the game itself) impacts the game in no way whatsoever. Sorry, what game are you talking about here? Which game is designed to be unfun? As is the gaming community at times. Utterly toxic, entitled, lacking in maturity and swimming in hyperbole.

Reading that interview on PC Gamer it kind of sounds like the sequel is a fair ways off sadly. I could be wrong but doubt we'll be playing it for a couple of years. Always nice to see more Darkest Dungeon love on here.