this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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Breath of the Wild was a good step on one aspect of open world, destroyed by not knowing that open worlds still need actual content. It's a good tech demo. It's a terrible game. And it can't be "innovation that sells a system" on the Switch when it was a port that was already available before the Switch.
Try getting a physical copy of big, successful TV shows now. Many of them don't exist at all. Some movies never get physical copies.
Nintendo provided a handheld that just met the bare minimum threshold to play their games. But the argument for physical being acceptable is about all games, not the 1% that are from Nintendo.
The hardware wasn't expensive to make. Again, that's their entire design philosophy. They took junk chips nvidia had no use for dirt cheap and screens you can get on a $30 tablet. There was no meaningful up front R&D cost and there was a very small cost per unit compared to the other consoles. They didn't invest anything in the Switch. Their "system seller" wasn't even a new game.
It's always expensive to port to Nintendo consoles because they always use ancient technology.
Giving up legitimate access to a game until you buy it again is a big cost you're ignoring, as is the time you invest in selling. You're also ignoring that the cost of a bad experience goes way above the couple bucks involved.
Lol. As if BotW is comparable to what the Ubisoft game (for there is merely one by now) or other open world games have been doing up until then.
Lol. It's ok to not like a game, but claiming that a game on which so many players sunk 100+ hours into didn't have "content"? Come on. xD
Lol. That's why it was incredibly successful and attracted immediate copycats, right. \s
What are you talking about? BotW released with the switch. It was also available on the WiiU, yes. But that only proves my point that it was a system seller, since people bought it with a switch, instead of getting a cheaper WiiU.
I constantly see them in my library (e.g. house of dragons). Also, again: book stores continue to exist.
Thats not how console releases work. Games usually get technologically more advanced as the hardware ages. TotK is way more advanced than BotW. Also: I'm not following your point here.
It is, especially the cartridges. Not as expensive as the Playstation, or XBox, true. But that's because Nintendo on principle don't sell hardware at a loss. Still, the markup is waaaay lower than with the mini consoles, which were my examples for collector's items.
That's pure maths: if you focus on a small demographic (like collectors), you need a high markup. E.g. MtG is only lucrative, because the cardboard is so cheap. The switch doesn't have such a high markup, so they need to go for mass appeal. If collectors would be Nintendo's main source of revenue, they wouldn't have bothered with the switch lite, which is clearly aimed at the opposite of collectors.
The main reason why the supposed R&D cost was so low was because Nintendo fuzed their hard-held and console team. They had a lot of experience with hand-helds (and innovation in that space, for that matter).
Again: you're talking bullshit. (Also: they had a second system seller with Mario, which arrived half a year later)
And you're refuting my point... how? Why am I getting the feeling that you care less about a coherent argument than dunking on Nintendo?
You're ignoring the budget point and that all digital purchases will inevitably be void in the future.
And you're gnoring how rarely that happens.
It's the emptiest open world ever made. Shrines take longer to load than to beat.
Bookstores are also dying, and stores are abandoning physical media of all kinds because people don't buy them.
It's how they're supposed to work. That ARM CPU was tapped out before the switch launched. The entire cost of porting to Nintendo systems is always for the same reason, making the obscene downgrades visually and mechanically mandatory to get games running on their system. There isn't performance to eke out of it. It's bad.
The switch has a huge markup. Cartridges are actually expensive. Nothing else is. Their costs were low because they used tech that would have been thrown in the trash if they didn't buy it, and they spent virtually nothing on R&D. They absolutely could have made money on an extremely small market. It's what they've been doing for years. Even without their huge cash reserves, they could have sold 500k switches and wouldn't have lost money. Again, that's their entire philosophy as a company. They do not take financial risks.
You are entitled to your opinion, if you find BotW boring. But the original point was that it was a critically acclaimed and incredibly successful system seller. You claimed that the switch sold well because of the third party support. But if it weren't for Nintendo's system sellers (Zelda and Mario Odyssey), the third parties wouldn't have bothered developing for the switch. You also agreed that the switch is hard to develop for. By your logic, the PS Vita and the WiiU would have had to be successful. Stop focusing on your shit takes in order to distract from the original point.
Yes, and single player games are also dying. /s You have already shown that you make wrong assumptions based on what you feel is right (like Nintendo depending on collectors).
Compare TotK to launch titles. That game is a testament on how much you can get out of aging hardware. Supposedly, Alien Isolation's port for the switch is the best edition.
When? When has Nintendo relied on niche markets (since the NES, I mean).
What "huge" money reserves? The ones from the WiiU? They only got their cash reserves after they released the switch.
Lol, do you remember the N64, the Virtualboy, the Gamecube, the WiiU, etc? Edit: what was the Wii, if not both innovative, as well as a big, fat risk???
Edit (addendum): so you hate BotW but still find it "unacceptable" if you didn't have constant access to it? And you don't get how people sometimes want to cash out on experiences they don't value?
A console being different is not a financial risk when you spend no money on developing it and no money on producing it.
There was no path to bankruptcy, or even meaningful financial loss, if the Wii failed.
The market they actually get isn't the point. It's that they never invest enough money for it to be possible for them to lose meaningful money if their gimmick doesn't work. If Sony doesn't sell PS5s, they're diverse enough that it probably won't bankrupt them, but it will hurt bad. Nintendo isn't even willing to invest enough that not selling is a mild inconvenience. They just refuse to invest.
You're spouting non-stop bullshit. The Wii didn't have R&D costs? Get outta here!
Nintendo was on the cusp of going the way Sega went after the Gamecube and the WiiU. The financial successes of the Wii and Switch saved their asses.
Compared to any other non-Nintendo platform ever made? No, it didn't. They used cheap junk tech, exactly like the Switch, and didn't commit to any meaningful investment in number of units.
The fact that they use hardware not capable of playing modern games is why third parties have very limited involvement with them. It's why they got ports of 15 year old games instead of most developers of new games even considering putting their games on there. And their bad hardware is a direct result of their unwillingness to invest like everyone else does. Even Valve, who has very limited hardware production, invested far more in the Steam Deck than Nintendo did on the switch.
so... what was so groundbreaking about developing the xbox one/series or ps4/5? How are those consoles any more R&D intensive than developing the Wiimote?
You already claimed so much bullshit which I debunked. Do you have any data about the rest of your allegations? like how Nintendo was supposedly fine after the WiiU?
The SteamDeck wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Switch. The Valve VR headsets wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Wii.
Performance is expensive. Building and validating a system around high end custom chips is expensive. They also will not make you units if you don't make serious volume commitments.
Building a very basic system with cheap, bad, off the shelf components is not expensive.
Sorry, you have no idea about hardware development. Just because Hardware is cheap doesn't mean that R&D is cheap.
Do you think that development hardware drives R&D costs? No, paying engineers does. Do you think that Sony or Microsoft develop their own chips? Again: nope: They use AMD Microarchitectures (Sony won't make the mistake of the PS3 again).
You know what costs R&D? Developing controllers does. And guess who reinvents their controllers every generation! Not just hd rumble, like the dual sense: Video streaming, HD rumble, IR technology, etc.
And Nintendo tripled their R&D budget from 2003 to 2007 twice:
Source
Any more bullshit for me to debunk?
Yes, designing the chips is obscenely expensive. Microsoft and Sony aren't using off the shelf $5 SoCs. They're partnering with AMD, using AMD's IP, to make custom designs specifically tailored to their design goals. The fact that you think you can talk about R&D costs without understanding this basic reality is hilarious. Validating high performance custom SoC designs takes a tremendous amount of very limited capacity of small batch test manufacturing ability to get to an end product.
I promise you Sony spent more developing their triggers than Nintendo did on the joycon. That actually is new tech. Putting IR and nfc sensors that already exist onto a controller isn't that expensive. Developing new tech is where costs come from. Sony isn't spending a couple hundred million. They're spending billions, every year.
Even after kicking their investment up for a switch 2 that can't use an off the shelf chip because there isn't one, they're still spending less than half of what Sony does.
Surely. You won't fail to supply any data to back up your ludicrous claims this time, will you?
Do the search yourself with whatever source you trust. They all have the same information.
Sony spent over 2 billion on R&D in gaming last year, which doesn't count the guaranteed volume that's also required to get leading edge chips. Nintendo still spent less than a billion (which is a big increase from the complete joke of investment leading into the switch, because the switch didn't take any research).
Ah, yes. The good ol' "do your research sheeple" bit. Gotta love it. You've already claimed so much BS, why shouldsI take anything you say at face value?
Also: lol. Do you think that the technology in the Dual Sense's triggers is new? o.O
Do you actually even own a switch, if you're so desperate to dunk on Nintendo?
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/92231/nintendo-boosts-spending-as-next-gen-switch-2-looms/index.html#:~:text=According%20to%20Nintendo's%202023%20annual,R%26D%20throughout%20Fiscal%20Year%202023.
With a nice chart showing how much of a joke their investment developing the Switch was.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/sony-boost-gaming-unit-with-217-bln-rd-war-chest-2024-nikkei-2023-07-12/
There are literally dozens, minimum, of sources with the same numbers. They're in annual reports and not secret or debatable at all.
Everything I've said is accurate. You're the one pretending putting one of the worst controllers ever made together with off the shelf parts is somehow comparable to designing custom SoCs on cutting edge nodes.
Ah, yes... "accurate" claims like
Give me a break