Nintendo Switch paid online coming 2018

[Hero-of-Time]

Another translation of the article.

No mention of charging extra only that the system will be strengthened. 

[Ronnie]

Phew if the latter is the case. Them adding a new service wouldn't have gone down well.

[Ronnie]

Investors Briefing news... 8 million subscriptions to their Online service. Basically 25% of users, way more than I expected!

[Nicktendo]

6 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Investors Briefing news... 8 million subscriptions to their Online service. Basically 25% of users, way more than I expected!

To put that into perspective, Nintendo have made ~$160,000,000 for releasing a shitty mobile app, uploading a few roms and basically doing absolutely nothing else 

Itprintsmoney.gif

[Hero-of-Time]

It will be interesting to see what those numbers are like once the 1 year subscription is up. If the system isn't improved in a way that gamers are happy with I can imagine that many will let their subscriptions lapse.

I've just thought, we have had the service for around 5 months now and outside of the NES controller there still hasn't been any special offers that were promised.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Hero-of-Time

[Sméagol]

2 hours ago, Nicktendo said:

To put that into perspective, Nintendo have made ~$160,000,000 for releasing a shitty mobile app, uploading a few roms and basically doing absolutely nothing else 

Itprintsmoney.gif

You forget the only significant thing: blocking online multiplayer for non-subscribers.

[Ronnie]

4 hours ago, Nicktendo said:

To put that into perspective, Nintendo have made ~$160,000,000 for releasing a shitty mobile app, uploading a few roms and basically doing absolutely nothing else 

Itprintsmoney.gif

And you know... running online infrastructure. Unless all that comes free to them.

[Nicktendo]

2 hours ago, Ronnie said:

And you know... running online infrastructure. Unless all that comes free to them.

I’m sure it’s eating into a huge chunk of that 160 mil. Probably at least one percent more than when they were offering free online 

[Ronnie]

1 minute ago, Nicktendo said:

I’m sure it’s eating into a huge chunk of that 160 mil. Probably at least one percent more than when they were offering free online 

When they were offering free online it was still costing them to run the infrastructure. Times change. Be thankful gaming is cheaper than it’s ever been. 

[Nicktendo]

Can someone make a gif of Reggie as Dr. Evil with the tag line ONE HUNDRED..... AND SIXTY..... MILLION DOLLARS. BWA-HA-HA-HA.

In all seriousness I thought we’d get better online, dedicated servers for big games like Splatoon, but nope. Roms and complicated voice chat. 

I don’t mind paying because I actually see some value in the NES and (hopefully) SNES games. And I like playing online. But if this is really anything other than a cash-grab, simply because they can, then my uncle works at Nintendo.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Nicktendo

[Mr-Paul]

2 hours ago, Ronnie said:

When they were offering free online it was still costing them to run the infrastructure. Times change. Be thankful gaming is cheaper than it’s ever been. 

Stop saying this lie. It isn't cheaper than it's ever been. Yes, there are indies giving you cheap, affordable gaming, but the top line stuff is getting more expensive.

Gamecube, Wii and Wii U eras were definitely cheaper (funnily enough, also when Nintendo used discs rather than carts for their home consoles.)

And while there has been the RRP rise there's also DLC, special editions, micro-transactions and loot boxes taking even more money from gamers.

And when Nintendo's online offering is arguably worse than it was in the previous generation, it's certainly a cash grab.

[Ronnie]

30 minutes ago, Mr-Paul said:

taking even more money from gamers.

Ahh the usual entitled, "I want stuff for free!" gamer attiude. Standard.

30 minutes ago, Mr-Paul said:

Stop saying this lie. It isn't cheaper than it's ever been.

Yes it is. You're the one peddling a lie if you think the top line stuff is more expensive these days than back in the SNES or N64 days. Or maybe you've just never heard of the term inflation, and how it should have, but never did apply to the gaming industry.

Game's RRP is either the same as twenty years ago, or cheaper (go look up what N64 games used to cost), and yet modern games take 10x more development costs than they did back then. Now try and compare the actual amount of content you get from Ocarina of Time ($70), to Assassin's Creed Odyssey ($60). 

Even without optional microtransactions and DLC, games are enormous these days, packed full of content in a way they could never be back in the day. And yet games have remained either the same price or in some cases, cheaper thanks to inflation.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Ronnie

[Sheikah]

Yes it is. You're the one peddling a lie if you think the top line stuff is more expensive these days than back in the SNES or N64 days. Or maybe you've just never heard of the term inflation, and how it should have, but never did apply to the gaming industry. Game's RRP is either the same as twenty years ago, or cheaper (go look up what N64 games used to cost), and yet modern games take 10x more development costs than they did back then. Now try and compare the actual amount of content you get from Ocarina of Time ($70), to Assassin's Creed Odyssey ($60). Even without optional microtransactions and DLC, games are enormous these days, packed full of content in a way they could never be back in the day. And yet games have remained either the same price or in some cases, cheaper thanks to inflation.        

 

Comparing anything to N64 is silly because N64 games were expensive relative to everything else even at the time, largely owing to cartridge costs.  Often now the entry price is the so-called base price, I suggest you watch this video which gives you a good explanation of how much of the content is carved out and resold later down the line:  

 

 

Many big games these days also contain large amounts of padding and bullshit to make them bigger; "big" open world games often have large expanses of not much and copy-pasted mission types. Ubisoft games are well known for this. The bottom line here is Ronnie that what you are paying for now is getting you less game, or a lesser quality of game. Maybe not in all cases, but in a lot of cases with these big AAA games. Here are good recent examples - Battlefront 2 and Middle Earth: Shadow of War. Both games were rife with microtransactions and their effect on the gameplay was not optional in the sense that when they removed the microtransactions, they had to rebalance the game because they progression system was utterly boring when earning things the normal way. The quality of these big games nowadays is often impacted by these decisions to include things like microtransactions. Another example is in AC Odyssey where people are paying real money to "skip the grind" and get a permanent 50% XP buff. But let's not eat shit here - who designed the game to have a "grind" that people would want to pay money to skip?

 

Lastly, there is literally no need for companies to make AAA games cost so much to develop, it is all on them. Plenty of companies have shown that great games needn't cost the Earth to make and don't need to be made to emulate Blockbuster movies.

[Glen-i]

It's not very often that I agree with @Sheikah, but he's totally right. Most of the big game companies try to nickel and dime players and if you're the kind of person who can ignore stuff like microtransactions, then you're not the target audience.

@Ronnie I covered this a bit in my Pokèmon spin-off thread. Around 10 years ago, a Pokémon spin-off would consist of an idea that a third-party company comes up with. A pinball game where you smack a Pokè Ball around to try and catch Pokèmon. How about a game where you tame wild Pokémon not to help you battle, but to help you save nature from an evil corporation? Or you could explore an alternate universe where Pokémon speak the same language as yourself and features a more plot-driven adventure with more mature themes than you'd expect from the franchise.

Nowadays, you won't get games that try a spin-off that's new and experimental. Instead, you get free-to-play crap trying to get people to bite on microtransactions to make it easier to progress, with Pokémon slapped on to it. It only takes one poor sucker to drop a lot of money here to make it a worthwhile venture for the Pokémon Company. For all my shouting about the game, it's why I think Pokèmon GO sets a very worrying precedent for the series.

There's a serious problem of people getting addicted to games and spending literally thousands of pounds on stuff like loot boxes, hoping to get that thing they need to enjoy the game they're playing. Any game that has the nerve to charge for the purchase of it and then try to sell you stuff that might get what you're looking for is a giant slap in the face.

So to you and to me, gaming is relatively cheaper, but you have to realise, we are not the majority of people. The majority of people don't hunt around for the cheapest price on a game, stuff like that.

The sooner people realise how much of a scam some AAA games have become, the better. And if that means governments have to step in on this because the gaming industry won't regulate these scummy practices, then that's fine by me.

[Ronnie]

2 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Nowadays, you won't get games that try a spin-off that's new and experimental. Instead, you get free-to-play crap trying to get people to bite on microtransactions to make it easier to progress, with Pokémon slapped on to it. It only takes one poor sucker to drop a lot of money here to make it a worthwhile venture for the Pokémon Company. For all my shouting about the game, it's why I think Pokèmon GO sets a very worrying precedent for the series.

Easy (comparatively speaking) to make Pokemon spin off games that may as well be free to play nickel and dime mobile shovelware is a little different than 100 hour Assassin's Creed games that took a thousand employees to make. I'm not talking about shitty little Pokemon games like Pokemon Quest or Go. I'm talking about AAA video game development.

AAA development, as a whole, hasn't become a scam. I didn't pay more than the asking price for Spider Man, Red Dead, Detroit, AC: Syndicate, God of War. I got the base game, I put 100 hours into them (or 50 in Spider Man's case) and had a great time. Those games' RRP, with their 100 hour campaigns full of content, are the same RRP as Super Nintendo games back in the day, with their 2 hour campaign you replayed over and over.

That doesn't mean that scummy practises haven't occured before obviously, Battlefront II being the most recent example, but on the whole, games are cheaper to play nowadays than they ever have been, that isn't a lie, it's the truth.

Edited February 2, 2019 by Ronnie

[Ronnie]

4 hours ago, Sheikah said:

Comparing anything to N64 is silly because N64 games were expensive relative to everything else even at the time, largely owing to cartridge costs.  Often now the entry price is the so-called base price, I suggest you watch this video which gives you a good explanation of how much of the content is carved out and resold later down the line:  

Ok, compare them to SNES games then. $50, $60, $70 RRPs back in the day. Hence, we have it cheaper now.

 

4 hours ago, Sheikah said:

The bottom line here is Ronnie that what you are paying for now is getting you less game, or a lesser quality of game.

Oh come on. So you're saying we're getting less game now if you bought Metal Gear Solid V versus if you bought Metal Gear on the SNES back in the day for the same RRP? $60 back then was worth a lot more than $60 now.

Even if your copied and pasted side missions argument had merit, it really doesn't, games back in the day relied on OTT difficulty to keep the game last a while. Castlevania on the NES can be finished in 45 minutes, same with Lylat Wars. Both games that cost the same RRP as modern AAA titles.

4 hours ago, Sheikah said:

Lastly, there is literally no need for companies to make AAA games cost so much to develop, it is all on them. Plenty of companies have shown that great games needn't cost the Earth to make and don't need to be made to emulate Blockbuster movies.

That's the direction the (non Nintendo) gaming industry have decided to take things. Better GRAPHICS with each gen, more terraflops. If Sony and Microsoft provide consoles that can deliver incredible visuals, developers have to keep up with them or they sadly wouldn't sell.

[Ronnie]

Look I didn't mean for this to start a discussion about AAA game development and how much content there is in games etc.

The simple fact is, we're getting bigger, broader, better looking games with much more content in the BASE GAME than we did 30 years ago, for comparatively, less money when you adjust for inflation.

Games have remained at the same price because publishers don't want to raise them for fear of turning people off. Their alternative? Tack on DLC and the like for those people who WANT to spend more for extra content.

That's all I'm saying. I resent being called a liar for stating the obvious.

Edited February 2, 2019 by Ronnie

[Sheikah]

[mention=4353]Ronnie[/mention] every point you are making has summarily been countered in Jim Sterling's video.

 

 

I get that you believe what you're saying, but you're not convincing me in the slightest.

 

 

 

[Ronnie]

10 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

I get that you believe what you're saying, I just can't see you convincing people.

 

Excuse me? Maybe just speak for yourself about not being convinced, or needing convincing in the first place for that matter.

Oh and Jim Sterling relies on being on the same side as gamers, of course he's going to take the pro-gamer view.

[Dcubed]

The AAA sector is worthless garbage now.  They're not even really games anymore, they're just Skinner Boxes.

 

Something like the remake of Resident Evil 2 is the incredibly rare exception to the norm.  The grand majority of AAA games are designed to waste your time and pull the wool over your eyes in doing so.  For all of the flashy visuals they flaunt, they don't have the gameplay to back them up; and their developers purposely make these games a chore to play, in the hope that you will pay to skip the grind and the privilege of not having to play the game to see the rest of the story and its pretty visuals.

 

You might be getting more production values for your money, but you are getting substantially less actual game and gameplay for your money.

 

Jim Sterling is absolutely right.  Thank God for him!

Edited February 2, 2019 by Dcubed

[Ronnie]

2 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

The grand majority of AAA games are designed to waste your time and pull the wool over your eyes in doing so.  For all of the flashy visuals they flaunt, they don't have the gameplay to back them up; and their developers purposely make these games a chore to play, in the hope that you will pay to skip the grind and the privilege of not having to play the game to see the rest of the story and its pretty visuals.

I didn't feel my time being wasted for one second playing God of War, or Red Dead, or Detroit, Spider Man, Shadow of the Collosus, Horizon, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mass Effect Andromeda.

None of those games "wasted my time", made me spent a penny more than the base game or felt like a "chore". I payed £40 (at most) for all of them, and had a great time. If you want even more content, pay for it, if you don't, then don't.

There's a ton more gameplay Spider Man (£40), than Metal Gear SNES (£40).

[Sheikah]

I didn't feel my time being wasted for one second playing God of War, or Red Dead, or Detroit, Spider Man, Shadow of the Collosus, Horizon, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mass Effect Andromeda.

None of those games "wasted my time", made me spent a penny more than the base game or felt like a "chore". I payed £40 (at most) for all of them, and had a great time. If you want even more content, pay for it, if you don't, then don't.

There's a ton more gameplay Spider Man (£40), than Metal Gear SNES (£40).

For every 1 of those games mentioned there are at least 5 big annual ones that do everything wrong that we have been saying.

 

You can also take exclusives out of that list (in terms of interpreting AAA game practice) because they are made with a totally different MO. Games like God of War are commissioned by Sony to give their console the edge and entice customers to their platform. Those games don't need to be such big money spinners because that's not why they were made.

 

In general, AAA gaming does everything we have been saying. You're finding the exceptions rather than the norms.

 

Oh and regarding ME:A - fuck that game.

[Ronnie]

12 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

For every 1 of those games mentioned there are at least 5 big annual ones that do everything wrong that we have been saying.

1 in 5. Are you sure?

12 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

You can also take exclusives out of that list because they are made with a totally different MO. Games like God of War are commissioned by Sony to give their console the edge and entice customers to their platform. Those games don't need to be such big money spinners because that's not why they were made.

In general, AAA gaming does everything we have been saying. You're finding the exceptions rather than the norms.
 

I'm not finding the exceptions, I'm finding the major AAA games this generation. Ok we'll say multiplats only: Red Dead, Mass Effect, Titanfall 2, Tomb Raider(s), Resident Evil(s), Far Cry 5, Fallout 4, Just Cause, The Division, Final Fantasy 15 etc etc etc - none of those were a chore to play, all of those had lengthy campaigns were you didn't have to pay a penny to get great value out of them.

Sure casual games like COD, Battlefield, FIFA try and nickel and dime you but those are in a category of their own.

Quote

Oh and ME:A - fuck that game.

"Fuck that game" ? Why? Because you didn't enjoy it? Because the facial animations were a bit shit? Why "fuck that game"? Why does the gaming community always have to get their pitchforks out at the slightest thing?

Edited February 2, 2019 by Ronnie

[Sheikah]

"Fuck that game" ? Why? Because you didn't enjoy it? Because the facial animations were a bit shit? Why "fuck that game"? Why does the gaming community always have to get their pitchforks out at the slightest thing?

1 in 5, easily. There's usually an AC game, often a Far Cry, then there's COD, FIFA, then usually at least 2 or 3 more other shitty practice big games out there per year (select from games like Battlefront, Shadow of War, etc). So yeah, very easily. Very easily.

 

And fuck that game for being rushed to market in a totally bug-ridden state, all the while charging full price. There's another issue of the AAA game these days - inferior quality control.

[Ronnie]

3 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

1 in 5, easily. There's usually an AC game, often a Far Cry, then there's COD, FIFA, then usually at least 2 or 3 more other shitty practice big games out there per year (select from games like Battlefront, Shadow of War, etc). So yeah, very easily. Very easily.

I mean... I've named 12 multiplatforms (because exclusives don't count apparently) games off the top of my head. You've managed to name... COD, FIFA and Battlefront. The base AC game has tons of content, likewise Far Cry. COD and FIFA are a completely different type of game, they rely on the casual market similar to how mobile gaming does.

So not really "very easily. Very easily".