The Thursday letters page ponders the rising cost of making AAA , as one reader speculates on Nintendo’s Switch 2 Virtual Console plans.
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Next gen power
I wouldn’t trust Bobby Kotick as far as I can throw him but assuming he is telling the truth being roughly as powerful as a PlayStation 4 then that is a very exciting prospect. Considering games like Horizon Forbidden West and God Of War Ragnarök work on PlayStation 4 that could be amazing, in terms of third party games and what Nintendo can do with that much power in its own games.
I know some will be upset that Nintendo are going to be perpetually one generation behind but, let’s face it, most games are barely any more than that, and it’s really only the top 10% that even come close to making full use of a console’s full power.
Even without Activision’s reveal (Nintendo are going to be furious if it’s not true!) about as powerful as PlayStation 4 is the obvious guess anyway. It’s got to be more powerful to some degree and I’m sure tech has advanced enough by now that that sort of standard should be both relatively cheap and portable.
I’m much more excited to find out about the Switch 2 than I am anything else in gaming at the moment and that’s not to dismiss cool things like Starfield and… whatever games it is Sony is working on but won’t tell us about. It’s just with Nintendo I know there’ll be doing things we never expected, and that’s unfortunately rare in games.
Onibee
No, money down!
I love how this Microsoft trial is now a straight-up farce, with all of because… they didn’t know how to use a marker pen properly? Or rather their lawyers didn’t, I guess? Who did they hire, Lionel Hutz?
It’s interesting stuff though, not so much how much games cost right now but the point about how it doubles every gen and $400 is clearly impossible. Or at least it is in terms of people buying a £70 game. I guess if it was some kind of Fortnite style mega game, that everyone played, but Fortnite, and other super popular stuff like Call Of Duty and FIFA aren’t even that great looking.
It seems to me that $200 million is really as far as it can go, without things getting out of control. I hate to say it but companies will probably try to make up the difference by using AI for things like texture, basic dialogue, and maybe even landscape. In that sense I don’t think it’ll will necessarily be putting people out of work, it’ll just be compensating for the fact that they can’t employ 600 people to work on a game instead of 300.
Toxey
Please continue
Hopefully Nintendo talking about accounts carrying over to the next console means games too, and not just your friends list, but I’m also hoping the Nintendo Switch Online games carry over too.
Their slow drip, drip, drip of releases would make more sense if they’ve been planning on spreading them out over years and two different consoles. I don’t want them to start all over again ‘Here’s Super Mario Bros. and Zelda!’ Keep what they’ve already added to the service and become the expansive Virtual Console library we all yearn for.
But who knows what Nintendo plans? They’ve randomly announced four new Mega Drive games coming to Nintendo Switch Online out of the blue, so you simply can’t predict when they’ll be doing anything.
Euclidian Boxes
GC: That’s a good point. Starting from scratch again would be awful but we wouldn’t put it past them.
If you don’t ask you won’t get
Referencing the reader who wrote in about Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, I emailed Limited Run games support about another game that I would like to buy physically and this is the message they sent me:
‘Thank you for contacting Limited Run Support. We appreciate the passion you have for our titles. At this time, I’m not showing anything announced by us regarding a PlayStation 5 release for Cursed To Golf, so we can definitely forward along the recommendation.
Otherwise, the best way to make a recommendation is to send your suggestion via a tweet on Twitter, since the developers do not have access to our support tickets. While we cannot make any guarantees, that can certainly help to get the ball rolling.’
Andrew J.
Sorry, not sorry
I’ve got to agree, is not that of a company trying to win back fans but who thinks they already have and are no longer to atone or apology for anything. Maybe actually try releasing another game before you even start trying to think like that? And I’m not sure I’d eve count DLC for Cyberpunk 2077.
I will certainly never see them the same way after the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, not just because of how bad a state it launched in but because they obviously knew it was like that and just thought they could bludgeon their way through the problem and everyone would go along with it. I will think very carefully before ever buying The Witcher 4 at launch.
Goober
Seriously trying
I’m really enjoying Final Fantasy 16. The combat’s great but, I’ve got to say it’s up for the unintentionally hilarious cut scene of the year. It’s the one when the servant/guard enters the quarters of the Titan Dominant meathead, bringing with him a box. Automatically giving me a ‘Call bomb squad, we’ve got a box’ vibes from the movie Seven. The meathead proceeds to randomly rant about Cid being a @#$% and orders the guard out.
At no point have we been instructed visually or narratively about the contents of the box. Could be blue Smarties maybe? He then starts a rather troublesome grimace, almost as if he’s torturing his undergarments by passing a motion. I’m aware that it’s now meant to be the emotion of distress that he’s conveying, as he’s sunk to his knees with a side-on camera shot of his face and the box.
Still visibly pained by the Herculean effort to suppress the natural will of his bowels he bows his head and utters the word ‘Benedickta’. Hold for two seconds, fade to black and… end scene. Maybe it doesn’t sound that funny to some but it reminded me perfectly of how gloriously terrible video games can be at storytelling and conveying emotion.
It’s why all the later Resident Evil games aren’t as cheesy. It’s because Capcom know they’re now seen as cheesy nonsense, so they intentionally add the ham. The originals were playing it straight. It was meant to be taken seriously.
he developers have to be under the misguided impression that they’re delivering AAA quality narrative and not realise that it’s actually terrible. It’s what makes the video game industry great. Gloriously terrible ‘serious’ scenes where you can feel the actor’s remorse at his agent getting him this gig.
Wonk
I am Error
Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, again. It’s such a funny game and I can’t help but think that must have been difficult translating Japanese humour (not that I speak Japanese) into English into text. I’ve chuckled often.
We have come a long way since ‘All your base are belong to us.’
Chevy Malibu (PSN ID)
Next gen predictions
Interesting news on Nintendo and how it handles the move to the next console through Nintendo accounts. Like most I think back compatibility will be baked into the Switch 2, Nintendo are using next generation Nvidia chips in the new console (the Tegra 239 seems the common choice for SoC at the moment) so they’ll be some continuity there.
They’ve also been working with Nvidia on emulation solutions to older titles (like Super Mario Galaxy on the Nvidia Shield in China) so could see newer iterations of that technology making its way into the Switch 2, to play original Switch titles out of the box.
However, I’m not sure we’ll see many enhancements to those titles. Not only is Nintendo not really interested in technical performance – games are designed and built for a target platform and then they move on – but why would it allow its next generation console to play the existing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at 4K when it wants to see people buy into Mario Kart 9?
It’ll also want to sell ‘upgrades’ to titles like Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom, like how Sony has tried to do with some of its exclusives. £15 or so to upscale the resolution and frame rate of those classics? Millions of people will pay for that, and it’ll be a big incentive to get existing Switch owners to upgrade, something Nintendo couldn’t manage going from Wii to Wii U.
For me though the most interesting thing will be what they do about cartridges. Japan is a market very fond of its physical releases, and boxed Nintendo games are something of a collector’s item everywhere. However, the technology in the Switch is feeling a little long in the tooth and you can count the number of games on the high-capacity cartridges on one hand (I think The Witcher 3 is on a 32GB card?) due to the manufacturing costs. Will the Switch 2 be able to take original Switch cartridges and just play the games without patches?
Then with the Switch 2 supposedly reaching PlayStation 4 levels of performance it’ll need a big bump in cartridge storage space for all those detailed textures and larger gaming worlds, is current Switch cartridge design, but with 100GB of space, even feasible? Think outside first party games we will see a lot more digital-only releases.
Marc
GC: Those all seem pretty reasonable prediction to us.
Inbox also-rans
I’m really not buying this mobile game talk from Microsoft. They had ample chance to buy a bunch of companies but didn’t and they only seem to remember to mention King once every few weeks, like a kid that’s forgotten what lie it’s told its parent.
Blender
Maybe it’s just my friend group but I haven’t heard anyone talk about Final Fantasy 16, either positively or negatively. It just doesn’t seem to have caught anyone’s imagination. Maybe next time make your sequel have some kind of resemblance to the rest of the games?
Orbie
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