Is it really that impressive that focusing on game design results in a better game than spending a billion dollars on a thousand artists so that every tree can have ten times as many polygons and each texture is 16kX16k? Better graphics rarely actually IMPROVE a game, and can do nothing to fix a game that was designed poorly.
AAA studios whine and cry about how expensive games are to make (completely glossing over the fact that they are 100x as profitable as they were in the 90s because videogames are no longer niche) but nobody asked them to! Linus Tech Tips water cooling a 4090 isn't the normal consumer! Most consumers want to have fun when they pay $70 for a game, not play the exact game they bought a decade ago with more detailed scenes, and more detail doesn't make a game better
I agree with your general point but I don't think Tears of the Kingdom is a good example of it.
They have clearly poured a mountain of design and engineering effort into squeezing every last drop of graphic fidelity and art out of the Switch. It looks really really good. Some of that is having the wisdom to choose an art style that works well on the Switch—a little cel-shaded, not a ton of texture detail. But, also, they really are getting as much detail and graphic complexity as they possibly can out of that little machine.
This isn't some cheap 2D pixel art game that spent their whole budget on game mechanics. It's a AAA game that maxed out their budget along every single axis. They just happened to target hardware with lower specs.
Yeah honestly they’ve exceeded what the Switch can do at this point and areas of the game drop to 20 fps. The game wouldn’t be worse at 60. 30 is widely viewed as the bare minimum.
Nintendo is a deeply Japanese company, and in Japanese animation, frame rate can be heavily deprioritized. If they have a limited budget, and have to choose between better art/design, or better frame rate, they'll choose the art every time.
Nintendo also clings closely to its roots as a toy manufacturer - their primary goal is to build games that are fun to play.
It shouldn't be surprising that their focus on creating beautiful, fun games resonates deeply with the wider populace. I do notice the framerate occasionally dip during complex scenes, but it's such a wonderfully designed game that I don't really care.
The sales agree with you, but none of the art or design choices get worse by having hardware that won't drop frames to that degree. I realize they do this every console generation, but since they're no longer passing along the savings to the consumer, I'm not going to keep apologizing for them.
Sales are probably because they've sold so many switches and people don't have a choice. What could be considered a AAA game come out rarely on the switch Nintendo's biggest win was allowing indie games on the platform, without them people would realise how few games Nintendo actually makes.
They sold so many switches because of nostalgia and convenience/form factor reasons - switch is the only console in that form factor
I expect new hardware from Nintendo in 2024 or 2025. The immense sales of the Switch and the pandemic have kept it around longer than it probably was originally planned for.
It just keeps selling though. Sales have dipped, but not so much that Nintendo is in any hurry.
I expect new hardware in 2023, not because of how powerful the current chipset is or is not, but because Nintendo is very likely losing a massive percentage of sales to emulators now.
How many units would the game have sold if Yuzu/Ryujinx didn’t exist? It’s even more jarring when you’re a paying consumer running the game at 720p20 and someone else can quite easily download switch games for “free” and play a much better 4K60 unofficial PC version.
Those videos are all over YouTube and have been for a couple of years now. I’d always assumed Nintendo was just trying to get TOTK out the door, give it time to sell, then announce the new system with a new Mario later in the year.
They also squeeze every single drop from the switch. Look at the new cloud particle system for example, missing in botw but adding gorgeous atmosphere in this one. That is coded by people who deeply care about performance and memory usage. Not the ones slinging about electron and building apps like Slack.
No. Mario Kart, Splatoon, Yoshi, Smash, Metroid Dread etc. are optimized for 60FPS. It's just they can't do the same with an open world game, so it stops becoming a priority.
Games aren't anime. Having a lower framerate means you will be making more mistakes, especially in combat. Besides, a sudden drop in frames just looks bad.
But that's literally just the lifecycle of every console pretty much ever. Gets released and devs don't focus on optimising since it has more power than previous generation. Then by the end of the gen, devs know the console inside out and are using all sorts of crazy tricks to improve performance. Devs build on top of what we've built before.
Sure graphics gives diminishing returns, but I've played ToTK @ 60fps on an emulator. It's significantly better than a Switch @ 30fps, and personally I think the Switch's hardware is ToTK's biggest flaw
Often times better graphics make a game worse because they're at the expense of everything else, while also making the community smaller because most people can't run it.
Yes, I'm still slightly salty about the train wreck that KSP 2 turned out to be.
It never fails to amaze me how quickly the hate train starts or how fast it gets going when it comes time to blame technical artists for the shortcoming of others, even though they are arguably the best in the industry at reliably accomplishing amazing deeply technical feats that deliver joy.
I'm glad I figured this out before spending much time going down that path, but I still know people who did, they're the smartest people I know, and it always frustrates me to watch critics line up around the block to take a shit on them, blaming them for problems they didn't cause and snubbing them for accomplishments that they did.
To be fair, I don't think anybody is undermining the effort/ingenuity some of these technical artists/engineers have. Its moreso the overwhelming focus of AAA game studios on this over gameplay.
These artists/engineers have accomplished absolutely amazing things and really pushed the limits. But somewhat ironically... gameplay/story is still king when it comes to 'games.
I will say, when a game does blend the two, they are usually highly applauded, it just rarely happens nowadays that a game has both very good graphics, and very good gameplay.
You're not being fair, you're making excuses. I was responding to a post that literally said "better graphics make a game worse."
Bad writing and bad mechanics can absolutely ruin a game far beyond the ability of art to compensate -- but it's both absurd and cruel to blame this on art.
I don't think you are representing the original fairly, they said
"often ... because they're at the expense of everything else,"
Which seems plausible although "often" may be harsh. Too high a proportion of your budget on art is rarely going to end up somewhere good, unless the art is the main point. There does seem to be a bit of a AAA arms race here, which isn't necessarily a net gain.
I think you're forgetting what actually makes a game at its core. What separates the medium from others are roughly these things: interaction, objectives, mechanics, feedback, challenge.
The art department can make the feedback better, the objectives clearer, the interaction easier, but fundamentally you can have a game without any art at all (see dwarf fortress, zork, etc.) and have it be a game, whereas a bunch of art assets by themselves don't a game make.
Nowadays it's all about marketing material and lying to people, so having good game art is prerequisite for great prerendered trailers that will drive preorders. But when you allocate all your budget to art, you don't end up with a game, you end up with false promises.
It seems like the reasonable response to a product you dont like is to not buy it and then ignore it. Why do people get fixated, angry, and shit on products they dont like.
It's not odd, it's the result of false marketing and frankly very much the direct fault of publishers. They spend an untold amount on promotional campaigns showing prerendered footage, gameplay running on workstations with unrealistic specs, and buy endorsements. All together that makes people invested and makes them expect too much. It's very easy to feel lied to and betrayed when the final result doesn't even closely live up to the promises. It's even worse for sequels, as they inevitably get compared to the original by its fans.
If the promotion wasn't false advertising there would be no backlash and people would act rationally, as you say. Nobody hates on something they've never seen before unless somebody tells them to expect more than they'll get.
Thanks for adding some clarity. I can understand a complain about false advertising. I thought a major part of the complaint was game development focusing on graphics opposed to gameplay, which makes less sense to me.
I still don't get buying a game primarily for the graphics without looking at representative gameplay. I thought it was generally understood that promos and ads would show the best.
I think I'll still be fuming about KSP2 for a long time. I don't know why I let myself have any hope it'd be good given the development history but I still bought (and returned) it on launch.
Yeah. In contrast to the creativity applied to Tears of the Kingdom that took the framework of Breath of the Wild and extended it majestically, KSP2 is a brazen & soulless cash grab that under delivers under the guise of "Early Access".
Hi-Fi Rush is a perfect example of how a game should be It had all the details you want in a game to make it look awesome but the style and art was paid close detail
Graphics don't impact gameplay, but this game really does look flat-out bad on a full-sized TV or monitor. Using FSR1 upscaling the realtime shadows (required for dynamic time of day) all "crawl", like a constant flicker in any motion, and it's really distracting. Level of detail "clicks" in when you're 20 feet away from objects, also extremely noticeable. And beyond the visual issues, it also suffers from a poor framerate in many areas. It can't even hit 30fps all the time.
It's true that gameplay trumps all, and it definitely didn't push me off the (excellent) game, but the Switch hardware really _substantially_ impacts the experience.
I play ToTK on an emulator at 60fps ultrawide, and the experience is night and day vs the Switch. Definitely an incredible game but I think the Switch is its biggest flaw
I'm not sure what your point is other than complaining.
It is impressive to make a great game with broad appeal. It isn't easy or trivial to do and companies that get it right should be recognized with good reputation and customers. I haven't heard other Studios whine and cry, but if they do it's not my problem so I don't care or mind if they do.
Nobody is forced to buy bad games, so I don't really understand the complaint there.
Recently I found good stuff actually sell the most in game industry, you have stuff like Elden Ring and Legend of Zelda, in indie space you have stuff like Pizza Tower, all selling huge. I wonder if big studios that makes safe copy 3As will actually think about innovation as an element to maximize profit.
Also realistic graphic != good graphics, we need more stylized graphics like these recent 2 Zelda titles! It's a shame we already lost the great graphics of the 3ds era Pokemon (which I think is peak cell shading aesthetics) to a generic 3d look of recent titles.
The other day I was playing Super Mario World, I didn't play since the nineties, and wow, they where capable to do so much with so little, from the graphics to the sound, the game feels so good, I was in love
Imagine AAA studios investing all their energy on creative ideas, gameplay innovation and fun experiences for a second. What would that do to indie developers and small studios?
What initially "wow"s me about a game is how beautiful it is. What keeps me coming back to it time and time again, is how well put together it is as a whole.
> Have you played red dead redemption 2? The detail elevates the game to one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.
Absolutely. Graphics do have their place, but most games don’t need to be that extreme level of detail. For one, I played RDR2 on a stock PS4 and the level of detail and immersion was incredible, despite the hardware already being underpowered by the time RDR2 was released. Ie you can achieve the level of immersion and masterpiece without pushing the limits of graphics.
And the most successful game ever is still minecraft.
As someone that first played it on a PS4 and then again recently on a maxed out PC, I can confidently say the immersion was superior on the better machine. In fact, I was salty that I first experienced it on such a gimped device.
Superior, sure. I’m not saying that better graphics aren’t, well, better.
But I am saying that it’s unnecessary for a deep immersive experience. I was equally immersed 20 years ago playing Gothic and Oblivion as I am playing recent games, graphically speaking. IMHO the differences only become apparent if you play the same game with different visuals, as you did playing RDR2 on PS4 and again on PC.
It’s also worth remembering that the vast majority of players also don’t have access to a maxed out PC.
> I was equally immersed 20 years ago playing Gothic and Oblivion as I am playing recent games, graphically speaking.
But you wouldn't be immersed on Gothic now. By playing gothic you set a new bar for yourself and that's how the industry works. Audiences everywhere get more and more sophisticated so much so that what worked back then won't work today and what works today won't work tomorrow. Can't wait until the time RDR2 becomes an "old" game with shitty graphics.
Yes, RDR2 is closer to a simulation than a game, and fidelity matters.
Rockstar knows their community. They spent around $1 in marketing for every $1 spent on the development of the game itself, totalling around $500mil, and the game paid for itself opening weekend with over $700mil in sales.
The studio has managed to master this sort of high-fidelity development while fully recuperating all costs, and fostering an incredibly loyal fan base. (Personal data point; replayed every single Rockstar title last year)
You cannot criticize such a company for delivering high-fidelity projects and pushing the edge. (You can criticize their working environment, however)
And without such companies blazing ahead, we wouldn't be currently undergoing a revolutionary phase in tech history as we explore the power of massively-parallel, computationally-intensive AI algorithms.
I have the exact opposite experience when I get to play a game again with better graphics. It's like I get to experience it all over again, which is great
Good for you if have the time to replay the same game with different graphics. I don't, which sucks and which is why I'd rather play if first with best graphics.
And the control schemes drag it back down into the quagmire of unplayable mess despite all that work. An excellent example of the broader point about development focus.
I've never noticed this, but I also play on the PC.
The only control stuff I don't like is fabricating arrows, notching ammo, cooking food, etc. But that's not clunky, it's just time consuming. It's also optional, so I just don't bother.
Yeah probably not. If you prefer really snappy controls and fluidity then games like RDR2 or elden ring or souls like games are not for you. That being said, in general, these games are not games that are generally considered to have bad controls.
I picked up that game and put it down an hour later because the detail of the character movement and how tedious it is to climb a ladder or do anything killed the fun.
I bet you didn't like elden ring or any of the dark souls games either. In general the clunky controls are a style of game and promotes a certain type of game play.
It turns off people who want instantaneous responsiveness, but there's another style of action game genre your missing out on if you don't develop the patience to master those controls.
I played Demon Souls and Dark Souls and Elden Ring. The controls of RDR2 are like the opposite of those games, clunky and imprecise and full of unneeded animation. Souls has very tight mechanics in comparison
Aiming and shooting is far more precise in red dead. Combat controls are instantaneous. You fire your gun, the bullet comes out and goes in a straight line towards an enemy on every click. You can headshot an entire gang of people no issue in red dead if you used PC controls.
Dark souls has delay. Not precision at all. Every movement is unresponsive and the point of those games is to get used to the delays and imprecision. You rapidly press hit 3 times in dark souls your character hits maybe once. In red dead that's 3 shots with the pistol.
Rdr2 movement outside of combat is built for immersion. As in the delays are variable based realistically off the environment. The combat however is by far significantly more precise then any dark souls game and as a result is actually the easier game.
> not play the exact game they bought a decade ago with more detailed scenes, and more detail doesn't make a game better
Except in the case of this Zelda sequel you sort of are playing the exact same game you bought 5 years ago, and with little/no improvement to detail, for an even higher price (69.99)... While I've bought it and am enjoying it, its hardly some huge shift in any way (technical, gameplay or story) from BOTW, and virtually all the mechanics are identical. I still think it worthy of great reviews to be clear, but it is not some genre shaking release.
> While I've bought it and am enjoying it, its hardly some huge shift in any way (technical, gameplay or story)
You have got to be kidding.
The ability to build machines by connecting basically anything to anything is a very impressive mechanic both from a gameplay perspective and from a technical perspective. The fact that they built this to run this nicely on an 8 year old tablet is frankly incredible.
The fact you can jump from the sky and dive to the underworld without pause is impressive as heck too.
Even the little ability to jump through a ceiling to travel upwards to the nearest place to stand is incredible, considering you can do it anywhere that has a ceiling in range. That mechanic is honestly mind blowing from a technical perspective imo.
Why? play the two games side by side - there is a truly enormous amount of gameplay and visual overlap.
> The ability to build machines by connecting basically anything to anything is a very impressive mechanic both from a gameplay perspective and from a technical perspective. The fact that they built this to run this nicely on an 8 year old tablet is frankly incredible.
Many reviews (and myself!) find this addition to be cool but shallow? Also, while cool, its not technically mega avant garde here- "Banjo Kazooie nuts and bolts" attempted similar thing back in 2008.
> Even the little ability to jump through a ceiling to travel upwards to the nearest place to stand is incredible, considering you can do it anywhere that has a ceiling in range. That mechanic is honestly mind blowing from a technical perspective imo.
I found this to be the least impressive of all Link's new abilities personally, and fail to see it in terms of being some unreal technical breakthrough? It's literally just a jump through the surface directly above the player's head.
> I found this to be the least impressive of all Link's new abilities personally, and fail to see it in terms of being some unreal technical breakthrough? It's literally just a jump through the surface directly above the player's head.
Implementing Jumping through one-way platforms is easy.
Implementing Jumping through anything, no matter how deep, and detecting the first safe place for him to stand, as well as having the ability to back out at any time to return to your original position, especially in a huge open world game like this? I'd say it's pretty technically impressive. Especially how fast it loads when showing the little upwards swimming animation.
You can use this ability in the underground in some places to pop up anywhere on the overworld. From the bottom of the world to the highest mountain. It's way more impressive than just jumping through things.
> Many reviews (and myself!) find this addition to be cool but shallow? Also, while cool, its not technically mega avant garde here- "Banjo Kazooie nuts and bolts" attempted similar thing back in 2008.
I never said it was some unique thing no one has ever done before. But it's definitely not shallow, you only have to look for videos showing the crazy things people are building to see how it's mechanically super deep. I never played Banjo Kazooie but Im guessing it didn't have nearly the level of physics simulation, or the number of parts that are usable, or anywhere near the size of world that Zelda has. That's why it is technically impressive. Not just the mechanic, but the context that the mechanic is in.
> Implementing Jumping through anything, no matter how deep, and detecting the first safe place for him to stand, as well as having the ability to back out at any time to return to your original position, especially in a huge open world game like this? I'd say it's pretty technically impressive. Especially how fast it loads when showing the little upwards swimming animation.
Its 2023, if this blows you away wait until you see what else even 8 year old computers can do...
> But it's definitely not shallow, you only have to look for videos showing the crazy things people are building to see how it's mechanically super deep.
Building things for the sake of building is not really adding depth to the "game" as such, the mechanic contributes very little to the gameplay of the game. Indeed, you can almost completely avoid it save for a handful of mandatory sections. IMO, the best mechanics add depth to the gameplay and make the whole game richer, which this feature doesn't really do, its a very ancillary feature to the game.
FWIW, the part list on nuts and bolts was pretty good, and had great physics while being a core conceit of the game.
> Its 2023, if this blows you away wait until you see what else even 8 year old computers can do...
Like what? Another generic Sony open world game? If this sort of thing was so easy, why don't other AAA studios make anything remotely as interesting?
> which this feature doesn't really do, its a very ancillary feature to the game
This is honestly not even close to true. I'm not even sure you're playing the same game as me.
You can't solve 90% of the puzzles in this game without engaging heavily with the new mechanic. Hell, there's honestly large parts of the world you cannot traverse without it either. You can't reach large parts of the Sky without it for instance.
I genuinely don't know how you could play this game and come away thinking it doesn't do anything very interesting mechanically or technically.
That’s the secret, they haven’t played it. If someone like that cannot see the technical wizardry done to make Tears run this smoothly with its exquisite set of parlour tricks, and has the gall to believe the game is the same as Breath, it’s because they haven’t really paid attention and think the reused map is the whole story.
And the whole thing about Kazooie having done it before, keep in mind that game was a giant failure. It wasn’t fun. Nintendo managed to make building vehicles and contraptions fun!
Generally speaking, a lot of Nintendo's IP games are rehashing the same play concepts/stories in different ways over the last 3 decades. There's nothing wrong with that, just pointing out that this is their MO. They are in a "forever" business for gaming, company has been around since 1889.
So the new Zelda game being similar to the N-1 Zelda game is exactly what they do. I remember defeating similar enemies in the original Zelda game, finding shrines to build health up, wandering a forest looking for hidden stuff. Its fun but the game concepts haven't changed much.
Most games coming on current gen hardware are utterly forgettable.
Zelda games, especially cell animation ones tend to age so well. Like WindWaker on the Game Cube. Such an amazing and fun game even on almost 20 year old hardware.
For all the amazing hardware on PS5 and Xbox Series ... most games releases are barely even an event that register in the cultural zeitgeist.
A few exceptions exist of course. But for the most part, yes the graphics are pretty but the game is not that fun.
And also, another thing Zelda has going for it and this cannot be said enough: it is a full freaking game. Not a broken game that needs to be patched up later (though there are always patches but the game isn't unplayable).
Nor is it pay to win. You unlock stuff by just playing and progressing. The Amiibo content is optional.
You get a full game with tons of stuff, ready to go. With a solid single player campaign and no online bullshit needed to experience it to its fullest. I cannot stress how much this needs to be said. But lately, broken or partial game experiences at triple A prices is a thing that people tolerate.
> Most games coming on current gen hardware are utterly forgettable.
I don't make any strong claim that the proportion hasn't shifted, but that has absolutely been the case at every point in my awareness of games. Flip through an old Nintendo Power or Game Pro.
Meanwhile, some very interesting games are coming out these days - some of my favorites are from the past 5 years; time will tell how well they hold up, but I am optimistic.
The NES has somewhere around a thousand distinct games, if you count all markets and include unlicensed games (which there weren't that many of).
Maybe 200 of them aren't total trash. Perhaps 100 were genuinely good at the time. Low-tens of them are still at all worth playing for someone without nostalgia goggles—though, in some cases, that's because an entirely-superior remake exists; like, if you want to try the first three Final Fantasy games, you probably shouldn't play the NES versions, in 2023, unless you're aiming for some kind of "I want to experience them exactly as Old People did" sort of thing.
nintendo's playbook: bet on withered technologies.
which means their focus is only on gameplay mechanics, story and art direction. not focusing on bugs that are well not known cz of using something too new, expensive etc.
not fancy graphics, or other modern fancy things - that don't really add anything to the game.
wish the software industry would learn to bet on old technologies and develop novel experiences on those.
not the current - move to the latest framework, hardware etc. while presenting shit.
You are wrong there. Nintendo instead been always pushing the tech.
The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were part of the "bits race" and kept pushing forward in hardware power. Mario 64 is credited along with Wing Commander for creating the AAA graphics race at all costs behavior in the industry.
The Wii wasn't entirely a direction change, Nintendo felt competing on CPU power now was not interesting and went for motion controls, that later all other consoles imitated.
Then we had the Wii U that tried to mix TV with handheld. Wii U kinda sucked so they just tried it again with the Switch and made it portable. This again is spawning clones (steam deck for example).
I am not a Nintendo fan (I was on Sega camp during console wars and currently I prefer the Playstation) but Nintendo hardware always is impressive.
PS4 and 5 for example are boring, just mostly normal x86 computers with custom OS.
Neither the Wii, Wii U or Switch have anything powerful from a hardware perspective - the last time Nintendo released a product equally powered to the competition was the Game Cube but that was over 22 years ago now.
This is the 'withered technologies' playbook in action - use underpowered/mature technology in new and fun ways rather than relying on cutting-edge graphics technologies. As an example when the switch was launched in 2017 the CPU on the SoC was from 2012.
Nothing in the Wii was cutting edge in terms of the technology - it was just well implemented. The motion controls were 2 IR dots and a cheap camera, and that wasn't a new concept.
Similarly nothing in the switch was actually cutting edge technologically, just assembled into a great product.
I think the point was you are looking at technology purely through the lens of processor speed. But technology incorporates a lot of elements of the design, not just raw speed.
While processor speed may have withered, there were other innovative and cutting edge aspects of the design.
This is the the best take. When the switch was new, this was a refreshing take—and using "older" technology means proven SDKs and lower costs for volume.
It's just sad that the switch has become long in the tooth. Great for many, but now limiting. The problem is that Nintendo has tried and failed to succeed with spec bump consoles (see, the new Nintendo DS and the new Nintendo 3DS), so the fact that they haven't followed up the Switch with a spec bump makes gobs of sense.
My first Nintendo device since the original NES was in 2015 when I bought a 'New' Nintendo 3DS XL. It was getting long in the tooth by then, but I had a lot of fun with it and still mess with it from time to time (the eShop closing made me grab a bunch of stuff before it was shut down). Just a few weeks ago I bought an OLED switch. Figured I would see if Breath of the Wild was all it was cracked up to be. I'm having a ton of fun, even if the console is getting up there. If I want bleeding edge graphics I have my PC for that.
The classic example of this from Nintendo's toymaker days is a remote controlled toy car that only turns left. It was cheaper for them to make it that way and you can still race cars around a track.
And the original DS launched with a pitiful 67 mhz ARM9 CPU and 2mb of RAM. It sold 150 million consoles. Because the games were good.
If you care about tech specs, consoles are a losing battle. Even if they are a good price-performance when they release, the length of console cycles will inevitably cause them to be underpowered and outdated by the second half of their existence, and yet many great and generation defining games come out closer to the end of a console's life cycle.
You are proving their point. Nintendo switched to the "don't care about tech" strategy because they had been pushing tech for 2 generations and only doing worse as a business. People preferred the Playstation 2 over the Gamecube because it had more and better games, and Nintendo spent the n64 and Gamecube console generations losing their third party support. That's also why the doubled down on their first party games.
They did care about tech, just not the tech everyone else cared about. They built pretty much the only successful docking computer, something I've been dying for phone manufacturers to try for a decade. That was revolutionary and a huge part of their success.
This is how I feel. Nintendo carries about tech, but in a different way. For them, its not about ultra graphics, but about changing the way you interact with a console and game. Like the Wii, sure, it wasn't bleeding edge hardware or even good hardware compute wise. But it challenged the way we normally thought about how a player could play a game. The switch another example of a console that is both portable, but easily dockable. The only thing I wish they did different was make it so it was a little more performant when docked.
The graphics and power competition existed ever since Sega entered the ring. To be honest, the console wars are more nuanced than that. The N64 had superior graphics to PS1, but the lack of discs meant publishers had to spend $10-15 in wholesale costs on cartridges (vs <$1 for CDs), and due to the ROM tech at the time, they couldn't ship games much larger than 64MB (and even that size required additional expensive chips). Squaresoft famously bailed on Nintendo platforms as a result of the game size issue.
GameCube's proprietary "micro-DVDs" also meant limited game sizes compared to PS2. And PS2 could play DVDs, which was a strategic advantage at the time. With both Sony and Microsoft now competing for hardware dominance, however, it became a tougher position for Nintendo to hold, plus the company was not willing to sell consoles at a loss (as I believe both Sony and Microsoft did at first, to gain adoption).
So both N64 and GameCube were limited in significant ways, and it cost Nintendo its market dominance. The Wii was an example of Nintendo taking the console tech in a totally different direction than its peers, explicitly focusing on motion controllers and casual gamers. It was a smash hit, but eventually the novelty of the Wii wore off. The Wii U was a flop. The Switch successfully blended their portable and console offerings.
> People preferred the Playstation 2 over the Gamecube because it had more and better games
PS2 was barely more expensive than a decent DVD player, at the time, and came out before most folks had a DVD player. And it played DVDs. Gamecube didn't. This made the Gamecube a second console for most people... which meant they didn't get it at all, if they only had one console. PS2 also played PS1 games, which meant some gamers had a large library that could be played on it on day 1. GC didn't play N64 games.
Nothing else is really needed to explain the GC's weak sales relative to the PS2.
The Gamecube and N64 were both nerfed by Nintendo's insistence on using proprietary storage formats. The N64 cartridge size ranged from 4mb to 64mb (64mb being the maximum at the end of the console's lifespan).
The GameCube used minidvds that had only 30% of the storage space of standard dvds.
The result was a generational game like FF7 was only possible on the PlayStation.
> The main selling point of Nintendo was always their ip. They're better at making games then making consoles.
I'd have to think about it, but I might defend the NES, SNES, and Gamecube as the best consoles of their generations, if we're just looking at the consoles themselves. The first two do even better if we consider the games, too (though the GC is plainly not its generation's frontrunner, if you add that—the lack of 3rd party interest really hurt it, its library is tiny, and consists mostly of few great Nintendo games and a bunch of terrible shovelware).
I'd put the N64 at a tie with the Playstation. The N64 looked better and had four-player support out of the box, which made a big difference in how many games supported four players. The analog stick on the controllers was a real problem, though, as was the storage size. Then again, the Playstation launched without any analog sticks. Call it a draw.
It's only really with the Wii that they stopped credibly trying to keep up (and IMO the Wii's various gimmicks don't make up for its deficiencies, among which I count some of those same gimmicks)
>I'd have to think about it, but I might defend the NES, SNES, and Gamecube as the best consoles of their generations
NES yes, it's competitor was atari and atari had games that weren't that great. The NES launched games as mainstream, there was no competition at the time... it was the best.
SNES was also the best but it was only a slight edge over sega. The genesis was comparable.
Gamecube was not the winner. PS2 ruled this era. Starting with the gamecube and maybe you could say the N64... nintendo became more and more reliant on it's IP rather then a platform all developers wanted to work on.
>I'd put the N64 at a tie with the Playstation. The N64 looked better and had four-player support out of the box, which made a big difference in how many games supported four players.
No playstation wins this one hands down. N64 graphics had blurry textures and lack of digital media. Squaresoft switched their entire nintendo led RPG line (Final Fantasy 7) to the playstation because nintendo hardware couldn't handle it. Nintendo came out with some heavy hitters but overall in terms of game selection Sony won.
>It's only really with the Wii that they stopped credibly trying to keep up (and IMO the Wii's various gimmicks don't make up for its deficiencies, among which I count some of those same gimmicks)
I wouldn't say they stopped trying to keep up. Nintendo took a risk, and in the end for games that are less casual they sort of lost the market. But in the end it was the right choice in terms of sales.
I do not believe calling Steam Deck a clone of the switch is a truly charitable argument or characterization of the product. The Steam Deck is an infinitely moddable PC that play your steam library on the go. It's been long needed, but exists with a different consumer persona than steam deck.
The Switch actually came out as an advanced handheld. The appeal was that it was a handheld advanced enough to play on a TV. It's just that (especially handheld) technology have advanced in the last 8 years. On the Switch, Nintendo is simply extending it's console's life.
I think a Switch 2 is likely from Nintendo, but they are also likely to release some other idea. Nintendo console releases are highly variable. They have had a lot of major hits. They've had some flops. They are just making hay while the sun shines, and delaying a console release that might change the weather. I do wonder how many bad console releases Nintendo can get away with. I also am beginning to worry they don't have a great console concept prepared for the next generation.
The next console will be a follow up to the Switch. It probably has some kind of added gimmick, but I think the form factor will largely stay the same.
When Nintendo has a hit console they try to extend and expand on the idea for their next console and even the naming is typically very similar:
NES -> SNES
GB -> GBC
DS -> 3DS
Wii -> WiiU
When they have a flop they usually pivot hard, which is how we got the Wii. Hopefully they can avoid the terrible naming of the WiiU. I remember at the time a lot of confusion regarding if it was just an a tablet accessory for the Wii.
Nintendo is not willing to lead the charge this time around (leave that to fools like Zuck) so they'll just wait to see which parts work and expand that.
> The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were part of the "bits race" and kept pushing forward in hardware power.
The NES wasn't—it was an 8-bit machine in a time where 16-bit processors were available. I don't really know if the SNES pushed the envelope at all, but you're right that the N64 did.
The impressive part of the NES was its picture processing unit, which among other things finally delivered on an arcade-like experience at home and gained mass appeal in the process. For the time it was considered quite an advanced chip in its price range. The other extremely clever thing Nintendo did with the NES was to put the video bus on the cartridge, and this enabled them to expand the console's apparent capabilities by adding new features to game paks. This helped to keep the NES competitive in the market for many years.
> The other extremely clever thing Nintendo did with the NES was to put the video bus on the cartridge, and this enabled them to expand the console's apparent capabilities by adding new features to game paks.
Can you imagine putting the video card in every copy of a game now? What a time that was.
I don't think we have to reduce it down to a boolean choice. Nintendo has altered their strategy over time, as all 100 year old companies have. It's definitely true that for quite a while now they have not attempted to complete on raw specs.
There's pushing and pushing. Nintendo vs Sega in the early 90s showed this. The Genesis had way more CPU power and MHz but it wasn't balanced (less colors, worse sound compared to SNES chipsets).
The N64 was a bit like that too, they waited quite a long time to release it to get special SGI capabilities.
The 5 though? Now that's interesting hardware, the thing is so fast, smooth and silent, I am always impressed everytime I turn it on. Feels like an Apple product, if only it wasn't so damn big...
Nintendo's credo of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" was originally framed by Gunpei Yokoi in regards to the Game Boy. The N64 is the only real stand-out exception.
> PS4 and 5 for example are boring, just mostly normal x86 computers with custom OS.
Well, PS3 wasn't boring and where did it get them?
Boring is good.
Eh. They don't push in the classic ways. I don't think Nintendo has ever put out a console that was on the cutting edge of technology.
What they like doing is taking common components and milking them for all they're worth. Or optimizing for what's really important in a system. Like for the Game Boy line, they focused on energy consumption rather than raw horsepower.
The NES used a modified 6502, which was used in the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore 64, and others.
Always blows my mind when I see the install size for Nintendo games. Super Mario Odyssey was under 6GB. That’s smaller than the patch size of most games.
Weird take because of how much they have experimented with entire consoles in the past. I don't know how the Wii could be called betting on withered technologies.
The wii is basically a slightly more powerful GameCube with novel controls. It competed with (and outsold) the ps3 and xbox360 which offered HD visuals and integrated online play.
So it was outdated tech except for the parts that weren't? If you add in "outdated graphics tech," sure, but saying it's just outdated period does Nintendo a big disservice.
One of the issues with the Wii was that the controller tech was too immature, hence the later addition of the MotionPlus stuff, and how the Switch versions of "use it like a pointer" games are so much more robust.
Hmm maybe it's a bad term. I was trying to convey the fact that gamers that enjoy something like fallout or Diablo or Mass effect or RDR2, those types of gamers lose out when they lock themselves onto nintendo.
I for one like every genre but I find it unfortunate nintendo has a wierd focus on casual age friendly games.
The Wii is actually a perfect example of that philosophy. It was built using outdated, underpowered tech, but in spite of that, was a huge success because they did something unusual and innovative with it.
Specifically CPU. The Wii's internals weren't much more powerful than the GameCube's.
... but as peer threads have noted, this is a relatively new vector for them in terms of value brought to the marketplace. They were competing on grade-A computing and graphics tech in the console space, but did the math and (IMHO wisely) concluded they weren't going to win that fight against Microsoft and Sony (and the manufacturing deals MS and Sony could cut and the manufacturing they could do in-house). So they instead noted those two firms were competing on making the same kind of game and pivoted to providing a platform to make the kinds of games they couldn't put on those consoles (but were starting to show up in arcades, where the inability to compete with the home console market had led to the need to incorporate more interface gimmicks).
Their [Nintendo] art-books are so cool - while a game-art-book isn’t necessarily unique to Nintendo I do appreciate the value in them being so well done and expansive. Don’t have the time to play Zelda sadly but the books have been a really neat thing to page through.
As a kid, going to Barnes and Noble and grabbing the Emerald/Sapphire/Leaf Green official strategy book was, and still is, one of the coolest “books” I have.
The withered technologies idea was Gunpei Yokoi’s vision for development, explained in these terms after he had left Nintendo. Yokoi has been dead 25 years at this point, and more recent strategies, like the Blue Sea idea, have a far more influential impact on Nintendo’s design ethos.
Actually I would say this is yet more proof of how awesome breath of the wild was, and the incredible strength of a good franchise. 10 million people instabought it just in the hope it will live up to its predecessor.
That's what I did. I'm apparently in the minority. though, because I HATE it. But since I bought it digitally, I can't return it so I'm counting towards those 10M sales. I guess I'll just go back to my Game & Watch Zelda and keep playing Adventures of Link.
I also bought the Dragon Quest Builders game and hated that. It turns out I like classic RPG and action puzzler games but I don't like crafting and sandbox games. Now I know.
Yeah, I was surprised at the direction they took with this. Adventure + crafting is... Well, it's Minecraft's killer recipe, but those two modes of gameplay are different pacings. I think it was risky to assume Zelda fans would enjoy hitting the relative brick wall of strategic structural building.
I don’t know if you’ve discovered this, but you eventually get plans for your constructions. So you don’t have to constantly build stuff. You just need to build one very good car once.
Now that I've hit that part: yes yes yes they cracked the nut. :)
The addition of that game mechanic creates for the player a new type of puzzle in addition to the raw crafting puzzles: pattern recognition. Coming up on a jumble of nonsense, mentally parsing it out, and recognizing you have a template that can be applied to it is actually really fun (and even more exciting when you're doing it in realtime because some monster is bearing down on you).
> gameplay and art direction matter more than anything.
I would argue gameplay. Look at how insanely successful Minecraft is. It needs to be accessible to anyone who plays the game, nobody cares that you can emulate a fighter jet perfectly, you'll get your niche crowd, but if you want everyone, it needs to be adoptable by everyone.
Quick Edit: Remember Flappy Bird? It was simple graphics, a rip off of old old browser game from the 2000s (idr name) but everyone was hooked overnight.
Also to some extent 2048 though I felt that was niche to geeks.
Minecraft’s art direction is very cool and was, at the time, pretty unique. Arguably it was one of the most striking things about the game at the time, and definitely what got me interested back when it came out.
It was also objectively "stolen" from another block based game that was super niche. Minecraft did well because "go out into the wilds and modify it to your will while you build a home at your own pace" is crack to the human brain. Plenty of other games tried the art style and it doesn't really add anything on it's own.
Art direction doesn’t have to mean a complex art style. It’s more about consistency — making your assets all feel like they’re part of the same universe.
I do think this 8-year-old GPU really pretty out-of-date. Even if Nintendo did a lot of optimize for TOTK, it really has a low reslution and low fps(sometimes 540p and 20fps).
Of couse the gameplay and art direction is the best part of a game(compared to Sony games, they has a great performance, but it's totally not fun).
However, I saw some screen records in simulator, I think that is the best which game maker want people to play: 1080P and 60FPS.
Whatever, Nintendo Games is good. But we really need a better console.
It's incredibly easy to emulate, and at much higher resolutions than the switch. There are also patches to unlock the FPS (and to fix the occasional 20 FPS throttling that the game forces) though I haven't tried them yet. I've had a few minor graphical issues, and had occasional crashes until I updated the firmware and game version, but it's working amazingly well overall.
Your GPU won't matter too much, so long as you have a decently powerful CPU you should be fine.
I keep hearing that GPU doesn't matter, but I don't understand why. It uses Vulkan and OpenGL behind the scenes–wouldn't those rely heavily on the GPU?
The only one that's difficult to emulate is the N64. Last I checked there wasn't an agreed upon project like there is for the GC/Wii and other Nintendo consoles.
That is a software emulation of the RDP from the n64 that runs in a shader on your GPU. No more visual bugs, no more artifacts, no more perfect dark missing a visual effect that kills an entire mission, and accurate upscaling, and it actually runs very well even on cheap GPUs.
What? I've been playing emulated N64 games with sixtyforce on my Mac without issues for years, easily since I was a kid in high school.
Your assertion of a social requirement for an "agreed upon" project is false: every emulator is valid, though some have their pros and cons. If it plays the game you want to play just fine, what makes it "difficult"?
>What? I've been playing emulated N64 games with sixtyforce on my Mac without issues for years, easily since I was a kid in high school.
And all those emulators use the same graphics plugin system, which only had TERRIBLE plugins until a couple years ago when angrylion and PareLLEI showed up. The RDP was always poorly emulated.
Compare to Dolphin, which is an open source emulation masterpiece, and has things like ubershaders to give you both performance and emulation accuracy.
For over a decade, you couldn't play through perfect dark with just a single graphics plugin unless you were cheating your way through a mission.
Even Nintendo's official n64 emulators for VC are mediocre
Let's check back in a few months, the Yuzu devs have been making incredible progress improving performance in general, and it is not unfathomable to think that in a few months Steam Deck will be at or above locked 30fps while playing in Switch docked mode. (I already get a solid 40fps in Shrines, but those are comparatively undemanding, including on Switch)
There's a Game Maker's Toolkit video [1] that does a good job explaining how Nintendo focuses on play first.
"That's how we make games at Nintendo, though: we get the fundamentals solid first, then do as much with that core concept as our time and ambition will allow" - Shigeru Miyamoto
They also take into consideration the limitations of the hardware from the very beginning, and not just the engineers, but the designers as well.
"...Although I am not an engineer, I have always included in my designs consideration for the technology that will make those designs a reality. People have paid me a lot of lip service, calling me a genius story teller or a talented animator, and have gone so far as to suggest that I try my hand at movies, since my style of game design is, in their words, quite similar to making movies. But I feel that I am not a movie maker, but rather that my strength lies in my pioneering spirit to make use of technology to create the best, interactive commodities possible, and use that interactivity to give users a game they can enjoy and play comfortably. "
It’s true. But the actual hardware doesn’t offer anything particularly unique (which is a win for me: Nintendo is settling down with the gimmicks.)
This game would be an objectively better experience if it ran on a PS4/5 or Xbox if you don’t care for the handheld mode.
The game is an absolute masterpiece despite hardware, not because of it.
I think Nintendo should be lauded for experimenting with hardware, but ultimately they’re a games company and I almost wish they’d get out of the hardware business. I gave my kid my 3DS last week and showed him how the 3D worked. It took him no more than 30 seconds to ask me to turn the 3D off.
Well the Switch has a big gimmick: it is a desktop & mobile console at the same time. It's in the name.
This is why they had to compromise on GPU power and basically skip 2 generations compared to the PS5.
Yes. And it’s one of the most useful gimmicks from Nintendo.
But imagine if the game was also sold on other consoles.
What I’m saying is that the game doesn’t directly benefit from console lock-in. It’s not like that yielded any special opportunities, like, say, how the Wiimote provides an entirely different experience from what a PS3 could offer.
The latest Zelda games have all used motion controls, while not all contemporary consoles have the hardware for it. Sure, it could be argued that not everyone requires/enjoys motion controls, but Nintendo has never been the kind of company that designs gameplay experiences for the lowest common denominator.
Part of what makes Nintendo, Nintendo is that their games target their hardware, and vice versa (Their game roadmap influences hardware design).
I played 200 hours of BOTW and 100% of my time with TOTK using a PS4 controller. Using the controller’s motion controls to aim my bow is possibly my favourite non-mouse style for aiming ever.
Yeah Zelda's motion controls are great for what they're used for — but that's kind of my point. Even without using a first party controller, you're still enjoying controls that were designed for their own hardware.
If TotK was released for the "Big 3" consoles + PC, motion controls couldn't be relied on, as not all platforms have the hardware for it. I'm not saying that they couldn't make it work without motion controls, but just pointing out that what makes Nintendo special is that their software is made for their hardware, and both are better for it.
Yes, and seeing the Steam Deck makes me excited for whenever or if ever they finally make a Switch 2. Surely 6 years and multiple GPU generations is enough to let me play the Zelda games in 4k.
Don’t get your hopes up. Nintendo is probably not going to tolerate the low battery life the Steam Deck has, which means they’re probably looking at a device far less powerful than the Deck.
I mean, I hate to break it to you all, but all y'all obsessing about FPS are the minority. By a lot.
While it has by no means killed the XBox or the Playstation line, I think they've obsessed over that segment of the market more than they should have to their own detriment, particularly due to the expense of keeping up with it. As a side effect it has also convinced that segment that they're bigger than they actually are. Most people don't care.
My kids don't care. My kids were lined up with allowances and/or birthday money in hand on day one. They're loving it.
I am too. It's not a skinner box designed to extract the rest of their money from them. It's a complete, quality product. No subscription pass. No seasons. No loot boxes for money. No gambling mechanics designed to secretly back to real world money. They made a good choice.
I'm sympathetic. I care at least some; not obsessed but I do understand what you're getting at. And even that position + total obsessing is clearly in the minority.
Nintendo knows what they're targeting, they hit it, and while you're complaining about the fps not being very good they're rolling in dough. I mean, if I had to choose between satisfying the fps obsessives and making more money than I even know what to do with, I know which I'd choose.
I'm finding that as I play this game, the frame drops from 30 to ~15 really do suck. It's not just the abilities that do it - it'll happen in the overworld and when walking around villages. In most parts of the game just spinning the camera is enough to tank it and it just feels bad. Though maybe performance varies between earlier and newer switch models.
Dropping from an average of 60 to 30 doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as that, which is one of the key benefits of a higher framerate. If you check out TOTK with a 60fps mod on an emulator, it really is a much, much nicer experience (emulator caveats notwithstanding).
Nintendo often does focus on framerate in several of their other major games. And they have done so as a selling feature for rereleases of past games (including Zelda titles) that were previously locked at 30. In this case I think they just really can't accomplish their design goals with TOTK on the Switch hardware without sacrificing the frame rate. But I bet it would be a major feature of any "next gen" patch for the game if they were to release, say, a Switch 2 any time soon.
FPS is a fair criticism of these games. They are fundamentally enjoyable games, so you look past the flaws. But low FPS in sections is still a flaw.
If you let your kids play a version that had a smooth 60+fps throughout, then play a version with 15fps stutters, then asked which one they enjoyed more, they'd prefer the higher FPS one. Stutters are immersion breaking, but it's not going to make you put down the game until it drops to the single digits.
I'm not stranger to loving flawed games, so I get it. I played this shit out of Pirana Bytes games, and managed to finish an early build of Cyberpunk. I've loved many flawed games; but I just wish they didn't have those flaws.
Who says I'm obsessing about it? The comment made an exaggerated statement about the visual aspect of a video game on a community known for being sticklers for detail and spec because they're technical as a demographic, their jobs are also technical. You cannot bullshit this demographic and ass-pull subjective hot takes on something measurable.
Address the point at hand, don't go off on some tirade about how much someone else loves it, that doesn't negate the fact that it runs very poorly on existing, released official hardware.
Who says I'm complaining? You are projecting so much of your emotions onto what I had to say and completely ignoring what I'm responding to.
It's a fact. A fact is not a complaint, it's an observation and measurable spec. Are scientists just obsessing?
There are no gacha mechanics in this game. There is a mechanic where you throw some dropped monster parts into a device in order to receive random building materials, but monster parts and device parts are already abundant, drop rates are basically equal for all parts, and, most crucially, there's no way to spend real money on any of this. It's not there to facilitate gambling, it's there to incentivize creativity in your builds by giving you parts that you might not otherwise go out of your way to acquire or use.
> So you're just going to ignore the gacha mechanics?
No money involved. It's as much gambling as going to random.org and guess a random invocation. It's as much gambling as random encuonters on JRPGs, or quest/mission rewards, or really anything else in gaming with random chance. Is catching a pokemon in any pokemon game a gacha mechanic? You use a pokeball and might or might not get the pokemon. What about any game ability with a miss chance or a critical hit chance? D&D is peak gacha.
Really, it's just "drop some common stuff and get some random util back"
Gaming nowadays is full of "games" that are actually just live services trying to extract as much money as possible from you. This mechanic is completely unrelated. Your comment seems an over reaction from someone that never actually tried the game, or doesn't know how bad current big budget or mobile games are.
TotK's in-game mechanic literally operates like a gachapon machine. You insert something (a facsimile of a coin), out comes a capsule with something random in it. Softening kids to the mechanics of gacha isn't good. Furthermore, you completely dismissed the rest of my comment and what I was responding to.
Pokemon Masters is definitely a gacha game, so maybe there's a progression there in terms of where this is heading.
In the spirit of gambling, I bet you fifty bucks that the Nintendo theme park has gachapon machines with capsule toys in.
Nice way of completely invalidating all your arguments in this thread. I hope this will be a lesson for you next time you go on a toxic and obnoxious rampage.
Anyway, time to go back to the most beautiful game I've ever played. A game that looks fantastic.
You sound like a 90's mom complaing about GTA's violence.
Gaming world full of actual gambling and even worse practices, and what what should we complain here about? A single payer game that can be offline only and never asks for a credit card has very minor random feature that looks like a gacha machine...
> Pokemon Masters
Mobile game. But please ignore every random mechanic in every game since gaming dawn that are no different.
> In the spirit of gambling, I bet you fifty bucks that the Nintendo theme park has gachapon machines with capsule toys in.
Missing the point. And I'm sure they do.
> Furthermore, you completely dismissed the rest of my comment and what I was responding to.
Pot calling the kettle black? your gacha comment and link did not even address the paraghrah which i quote:
> I am too. It's not a skinner box designed to extract the rest of their money from them. It's a complete, quality product. No subscription pass. No seasons. No loot boxes for money. No gambling mechanics designed to secretly back to real world money. They made a good choice.
but let's go back to your tech stuff.
I will state: I agree that game looks good.
It has frame drops ocasinally in docked mode or just by using ultra hand.
It is capped at 30fps
But it looks good.
No i am not one of those that think 30fps are enough for gaming, I have gaming PC , i have owned a low latency monitor for decades.
But this is a fucking switch, and this is a puzzle and exploration game. With the crazy phisics and amount of things (plus particles) that this game interacts with, the fact that it can run on 30fps is amazing by itself. Making this kind of game on this platform run better for sure it's very hard work, obviously it can always be better, just look at any demo scene stuff, but this is still a masterpiece, and there is no other game on the console which shares such good looks.
Would i prefer if it ran at 60fps? obviously. Would I want it to be uglier or have less features for that? No. The resources required to jump from 30 to 60 are big, i don't think it could have the same ambience on all those environments and all things happening around on a switch and keep a consistent 60fps.
I'm not asking for 60fps. I'm asking to not go down into single digit fps when using ultrahand or being in crowded areas. A stable 30fps isn't an unreasonable ask in 2023. To claim it's running at 30fps is to not understand the problem.
It's capped at 30fps. That isn't the problem. The problem is that the framerate is wildly erratic, and it can hit single digits, and fall down into the teens not uncommonly.
It's OK to criticize something, and it's OK to not pretend that something is perfect. It's a $70 product. Criticism is healthy. As is not going with the groupthink and denying measurable objective fact.
Game might look good. Game performs poorly, but so do most AAA games these days, so there's that. Jedi Survivor or The Last of Us on PC, anyone?
The way the capsule machines actually work in-game is that the probabilities of getting each potential item are roughly equal, and you get around 10 "pulls" for an extremely common currency, where each capsule is from a predetermined pool per machine of around 4 items.
Which makes pulling nonrandom given the law of averages. It's effectively a joke.
The Minish cap had a gacha machine, it was cute. The important part is you can't use real money on it, which means it HAS to be designed as an actual in game reward.
Nintendo's actual microtransaction garbage is the amiibos, which are shameless and often explicitly pay to win.
Minish Cap was 2004 before we had a better understanding of what is and is not a good thing to expose people to.
Pokemon Masters is literally a gacha game. The Nintendo theme park will probably have gachapon machines in it now kids are softening to the mechanism of it.
Which is what you were asserting. Gambling with fake money is a lot more fun to non-addicts than real gambling, especially because the system is usually rigged in your favor so you enjoy it instead of optimizing for tickling a broken reward system in your brain so you give a billion dollar corporation every dollar you have.
As others have stated, those machines are designed to give you the stuff, not to take your resources. That's not gacha.
> So you're just going to ignore the gacha mechanics?
I am certain that the parent poster was referring to the toxic microtransaction "loot box" style of in-game "gambling" that involves real world currency.
Unless I am extremely mistaken, that is not what's going on in TOTK.
Even those mechanics barely qualify as gambling imo.
When you find one of the dispensers, if you throw 5 charges in you'll get several of everything in the dispenser. The charges are easy enough to get that the only time I've _not_ thrown in 5 is in the tutorial where they tell you how to use it.
I hate it when people just cut off quotes and then proceed to argue based on that, so I will not be engaging with you any further as you are arguing in bad faith. The words after "gambling mechanics" are not incidental flourishes that could just be cut off.
And yet that's exactly what you did to me; ignored the majority of my comment to hone in on one little thing and go off at a complete tangent to what the rest of the discussion is about.
Have a good day and enjoy the average performing modern AAA title.
I don't think it is fair to hand wave away the performance issues like this. Frame rate drops down to 20 and below are very noticeable to the untrained eye. We're not talking about the difference between 30/60/120fps where you don't really know what you're missing until you get used to the higher frame rates.
The "Digital Foundry" tech analysis found that it's mostly stable 30fps, with occasional dips in villages but nothing that meaningfully impacts gameplay. My experience matches with that, so I'm inclined to believe their analysis. It isn't perfect, but I think a lot of comments in this thread are overstating the issue.
FPS drops throw people off. Just like TV that drops signal, car that sometimes doesn't accelerate, or maybe a website that sometimes loads 10s. It's perfectly fine to care about it.
>I mean, I hate to break it to you all, but all y'all obsessing about FPS are the minority. By a lot.
Sure but once you play a game on high refresh rate (+120hz) it's soooo smooth that after it everything below that looks like a PowerPoint presentation. Even doing coding or just browsing the web on a 60hz display looks terrible. And playing a game on 30fps with occassional drops to 20... just terrible no matter what.
(And yes it's not just shooters and competitive games there are countless good single player games with high frame rate gameplay)
Yes, and every subsequent generation. I still play, I've even IPS-modded the display on my DMG-01 to appreciate what the console could actually draw in terms of frames.
Same, although my collection is a GBC/GBA and PSP all clear shelled and with IPS screens. Gadgets don't have clear shells anymore :( hopefully it'll come back, was kinda cyberpunky
And the Switch has a 60hz display too and people can connect it to whatever display they have. It's just Nintendo hellbent on the 30fps. Even though there are games with perfect 60fps gameplay on the Switch from Nintendo too not just 3rd parties.
Maybe this is just comic exaggeration that's flying over my head, but I find it very strange to interpret Nintendo's intentions this way.
TOTK is clearly very very ambitious in terms of physics simulation and interactivity -- it very clearly feels like a case of "we are stretching the limits of this hardware and we just can't pull it off at 60fps" and not "lol who needs 60fps."
Are there 60fps games on Switch that are actually doing this level of ambitious interactivity?
That said, it definitely feels like there's some room for optimization e.g. the Ultrahand effect. I wonder if Nintendo will address this in a patch. This game was clearly a large and ambitious project that surely had an internal deadline to meet. As engineers we know how that goes... you have to balance completeness, correctness, performance, and actually hitting your deadlines.
Well, you can't run TotK at 60fps on the existing Switch hardware, even if it was unlocked, it's just not got enough grunt. The only alternative is make a less-demanding game, optimize it better, or release better hardware than can support the ideas adequately.
Yeah, there have been so many times during gameplay I've said "man, this crazy scenario I somehow concocted by tossing a lazer cannon glued to a fan into the middle of a group of bad guys sure is fun—but if it were just running at 10fps more I could really enjoy it."
The game looks and plays great. Most people won't notice framerate. You don't have to either.
Dude, someone said it looks fantastic, a purely subjective observation. And then you disagreed. It seems disingenuous for you to start disputing someone's logic.
Subjectivity versus objectivity. We can measure framerate and resolution, and for a 2023 title, it's really not ticking the boxes on what "fantastic" visuals are in modern gaming from AAA. The hardware struggles to run the game, let's be real.
In typical Nintendo Zelda fashion, it will probably get released on next-gen hardware in the future and run a lot better.
It's OK to say it is below expectations for the price point, publisher, developer, and competing product. It's just a performance spec.
Millions of games on the playstation and n64 were sold despite running at 12 fps, having horrific graphical artifacts (stupid texture mapping on the playstation, god awful smeary "filtering" on the n64), and everybody has fond memories of it, to the point that it's currently popular to emulate those artifacts.
If you make an actually good game, people will cross broken glass to play it.
It actually could be benefited from improved performance, for instance the introduction of the sky and the depth was only possible because of performance improvements from Switch (note that BotW's target platform was Wii U, so Nintendo intentionally limited the game's scope to the overworld).
I think a sparsity of sky islands could be partially attributed to performance issues. Those need to be visible from almost everywhere, so cannot be really culled out from the drawing pipeline. Even with aggressive LoD, this will take a considerable performance budget if you put hundreds of islands given a high level of drawing distance requirement in TotK.
I also noticed that TotK has lots of unusually aggressive performance optimization which seems to be done at the very last moment, and even with that a considerable level of frame drops on specific areas. I suspect this to be likely due to the reported delay of the Switch successor. They would still launch it on Switch with possibly worse visual fidelity but that would be fine if they got the successor at the launch time.
So yeah "how to use it" is what really matters, but having more performance budget can allow more freedom for developers. It's a really nice time to have the successor platform for Switch, possibly with backward compatibility.
It's also more than capable of running on other platforms via emulation, and there are visual tweak mods (increased draw distance, LOD tweaks, etc) that don't change the art style but make it far more beautiful than being limited to the underperformant Switch hardware.
Also polish. So many AAA titles have come out with so many bugs and performance issues they’re arguably just unfinished.
Nintendo’s games _work_, and, even though many would say they can overlook glitches, I believe that maintaining a “seamless” experience - not breaking the flow - is an much, much, more important part in maintaining the subconscious ‘this game is great!’ feeling than people give it credit for.
“It just works” is just as important a part of gaming as it is of other things.
> Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything
Absolutely. I'm sure the PS5 has great graphics but some of the game creators don't pay attention to this enough, it's basically like throwing heavy computation at an average directed game and to me that's not appealing at all.
"Look at how realistic the water looks" is not enough for me to play a game.
Nintendo knows graphical superior games is mainly to draw in gamers to look, but Nintendo franchises will draw regardless. The graphics just need to be good, also cartoonish graphics will look the same if you are on a PS5 or 6
I also upgraded to new Zelda-edition OLED Switch and case and snatched two Zelda-edition controllers from local Walmart. They will have huge bump in hardware sales as well.
Nah, it's Stockholm Syndrome. It's seems to basically be the same game as the previous one with a few small extras such as the building/gadget system.
If you really want to be all "gameplay matters most of all, therefore we don't need to improve on anything else" then tetris is still being bought even to this day. Doesn't mean we should stop pushing the limits in new games.
> Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything
More like- Nintendo proved that in spite of barely listening to the fan base over literal decades, a solid brand will still get sales with just bleh content.
They barely caught onto the open world concept and sandbox - and it took years and years.
Like I get that they aren't anywhere close to as detailed or sophisticated as the graphics available in other games, but they appear to facilitate gameplay quite well.
Like "poor" has a connotation of "bad", where in this game they just weren't a focus and clearly are good enough to not be distracting, at least in the videos I've seen.
That graphics would not look out of place in a 2013 indie game from a well-established but not rich studio. It would have not been ground-breaking in 2003, but would grab some attention for sure. I bet they will use same level of graphics in 2033, maybe with some AI tricks slapped on top if they manage to get cheap hardware for that.
> That graphics would not look out of place in a 2013 indie game from a well-established but not rich studio.
Sure. The WiiU was around in that year, BotW ran on it. Indie games for powerful platforms could definitely have better grafics.
> It would have not been ground-breaking in 2003
This is biggest bullshit I've heard. This is Xbox/GC/PS2 era. Not only there weren't any games with 720p or 900p resolution on those consoles, PC capable of those were very rare. Games were still very cubish. Even games like FF that spend most of their budget on visuals and were not very interactive were just so bad in comparision. You don't really know how expansive it is to have small details like hair, light small objects and things like that rendered. Also add all the particles the game generates for all its possibilities.
go to a top 2003 game list, and you will notice that there is nothing that comes close visually, specially with these resolutions, moving interactable objects, etc. None of them would require one tenth of the processing power a game like TotK.
BotW and TotK push the swith to its max potential. Obviously that is nothing compared to what can be done today, the switch is based on a nvidia shield which is a SoC for a portable for 2015, obviously it is not very powerful. But that doesn't mean that the game doesn't have a lot of effort to make it able to run on such a system. Sure the Switch can handle 1080p, there are nintendo games with 1080p 60fps on both switch and wiiu, and nowadays PC games aim to 4k and 120fps, but this is a Switch, and this is a beatfiful game with a level of interaction not easily seen, this is much harder to make than a lot of 4k/120fps games on PC.
Well, not TotK in particular as that's BotW 2.0, but BotW is out of the ordinary, expanding is still not an easy thing.
The graphics are rather poor, you can literally count the triangles. The art style saves everything. This is an excellent collaboration between engineering and design that give an amazing end result.
You know that just because it's the same franchise doesn't mean it's not innovative.
BotW was completely different than the zelda before. The only similiar enough zeldas mainline were Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and these Switch Zeldas. And still both MM and TotK changed enough things from the previous game they they feel very completely different.
Same applies for mario main games for example. Check 64 -> Sunrise -> Galaxy -> 3D world -> Odyssey. They are all very different games.
Formulae changes, that something that most companies don't risk with their big IPs. And still, nintendo does occasionally comes up with new IPs like splatoon or arms.
Not to also discount how they have done new things with their existing IP like the AR Mario Circuit.
Nintendo is also innovating on their existing IP. So the idea that Nintendo can't do anything "New" is just not true.
When a new Zelda game sells this well of course the team that makes Zelda games are going to make a new Zelda game. It still feels fresh after 20 some odd years.
Splatoon is an amazing franchise. Advanced Wars also has real potential. I'd buy a sequel to Arms.
There's a great video out there on the history of Mario Kart, where they detail how they set out to make a two player version of F-zero and wound up with Kart after balancing the technology capabilities and existing character IP.
Let me preface this by stating I have owned every piece of Nintendo hardware other than Virtual Boy, up to and including the Switch. I have played through BotW and other modern iterations of the usual IP. Also, yeah, this is really long and goes into a bunch of other stuff completely unrelated to TOTW. Sorry xD
Nintendo has a significant chunk of fans on that cultist level where they go ballistic and come for your throat when you point out they’ve been making the same games literally for 40 years. They have like half a dozen totally distinct IPs. LOL at the people bringing up side projects like BoxBoy, which could have shipped on all those old Nokias along with Snake. Mario + Rabbids is a MARIO game crossover and sells on name recognition. Literally nobody in 2023 would know what “Rabbids” even is let alone pay for a game centered on them without the “Mario” part.
The only thing that changes is technology, but they’re always behind too. Zelda is still using N64 single button combat and just sold 10 million copies of a copy/paste of BOTK with 20 year old Banjo and Kazooie Nuts & Bolts creation physics, and the vast majority of critics have to bow and praise. There are some real reviews with actual people out there unafraid to give BOTW/TOTK the 5-6 it deserves, but they’re too few and far between.
None of this is even getting into the gross superiority complex and behavior they show in their treatment of any third party studio even willing to port anything over to their systems, how they hold them hostage if they had ANY kind of involvement on any level financially (RIP Bayonetta 2 and 3), how they treat their own customers with crazy aggressive lawsuits and threats, etc. Just go look up their entire history - even that gold Nintendo label they put on boxes was for monetary and control reasons. Yes, companies do things to protect themselves and profits and blah blah blah, but nobody else does this stuff to the level and in the anti-consumer manner they do. The control and manipulation of Nintendo is even beyond Apple and Marvel/Disney levels, on par with Tesla. It’s literal insanity.
I know this is already way too long, but just a couple other interesting things you’d learn by reading up on their history - neither Sega (who positioned themselves and became a household name as the anti-Nintendo) nor PlayStation (Sony and Nintendo originally were working together on a CD-based system but their draconian behavior led to the partnership being called off by Sony and them going into gaming alone) would have existed in the way they have the past 3 decades if it weren’t for Nintendo being a POS company. Another interesting story involves Square Enix (then SquareSoft) at the end of the SNES generation, basically declaring they’re never making a game for Nintendo again (which didn’t hold up obviously but they still don’t release mainline Final Fantasy on them) and jumped to PlayStation for FF7. There is a two page advertisement for FF7 from back in the day that straight up makes fun of Nintendo by claiming the game is too advanced for them and would have taken up like 20 cartridges lol.
So, for their behavior resulting in these things and others, I do sincerely thank them (and anyone else who somehow got to the end of this)! :D
I think it proves that nostalgia and brands matter more than anything. I find it very hard to find much novelty in the art direction, the world seems empty, not unrelated to the technical limitations, and the gameplay seems just okay.
Just like the Mario movie I think it's less of an artistic feat and just shows the sheer power of Nintendo's franchises and very, very, enthusiastic fandom.
> I think it proves that nostalgia and brands matter more than anything.
No. That is a western view point of someone that did not play the core nintendo games. It feels like projecting what is happening on every streaming service out there, or on every AAA western studio.
People are not praising new Zeldas because they are new games with the Zelda title, BotW was a complete revolution, it did open world like no other game did before it. It combined really well a huge a amount of features and fun things that no other game was able to do so before. Games like these are very rare.
Saying that is nostaligia when these 2 zelda play like no other Zelda. Saying that's it's because of brand when i've seen so many friends and colleagues that never gave a shit about nintendo buying a switch or emulating it and praising the hell out of this game.
It’s both, but your theory doesn’t explain why breath of the wild was so good. I hadn’t played a Zelda game for 15 years before that, and it had no real relevance to those games, yet it was the best game I’ve ever played in terms of the world and story and gameplay (with the possible exception of the first deus ex).
Nintendo know what HBO does too, which is how to make exceptional content. That override absolutely every other value.
(I also suspect that part of the success is the mythical aspects of the Zelda games, and the reaching into the historical and religious past and traditions. Western companies seem to actively want to avoid this, but it’s extremely good for building content. Archetypes are archetypes for a reason, it’s evolutionary)
Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything.