tiramichu

Turned out that scratches can easily be avoided if you are careful, and - more importantly - a few scratches won't prevent the disc being read, thanks to the error correction.

Back in the day I remember using one of those AOL internet sign-up junk discs as a drinks coaster, for several years. As you'd expect from grinding around on my desk it was filthy and scratched to total hell, never mind the thermal stress of hundreds of hot tea mugs being sat on it. I'd never seen a CD looking so bad.

One day out of curiosity I decided to wipe it off and put it in the PC to see what would happen. I was genuinely surprised when the AOL splash popped up (and also a little disgusted because I had no love for AOL and was hoping I'd killed it)

Right, and I'm not challenging you on that :)

As someone who games a lot it would be more cost-effective to do it on systems other than the switch (or switch 2) - I agree.

You said what the case is, I was hoping only to add some commentary on why.

The console hardware is cheaper to produce vs other consoles, so it's not like they are losing on the hardware and aiming to make the money back later - they designed the hardware to meet a specific price point, and to capture a certain market.

Having captured that market though (kid owns a switch and now the kid wants games) they can pretty much set the price of games high and keep them high.

As a gamer buying for yourself, with every purchase you are weighing up the cost of the game against how much you personally want to play it. If the price is too much you will choose something else, or wait for a sale.

As a parent buying for a child, however, if the child says "I really want the new Zelda game for my birthday please!" then they get bought the new Zelda game, no matter how much it costs.

Nintendo are very much aware what their business model is on this one, and who they are targeting.

For a lot of consumers, especially those who are lower income, the single most important factor is how much money you need to spend at once.

This is especially true because a key market for the switch is children, who have no direct purchasing power themselves, and depend instead on adults to buy it for Christmas and birthdays. So initial cost of entry is critical.

Simply put, 'parents' who are buying a console for their kids and expect to buy new games only rarely, have quite different needs to 'gamers' who are buying for themselves, and want new games often.

The cause of enshittification is essentially the shareholder pressure for endless and exponential growth that comes from public ownership.

Valve is a privately held company, and as long as it remains that way it doesn't have those perverse incentives.

Gabe will never allow Valve to go public as long as he is in control, but after he is gone who knows.

This is like playing Disco Elysium

Exactly according to plan.

When someone buys a used physical game, publishers don't get any of that money, and the publishers want that money.

Digital-only is how they get it.

The article basically answers its own questions in the conclusion that we've pretty much reached the 'final form' for consoles - Just like with phones.

In the early 2000's phones were all manner of wild designs with weird shapes and crazy functionality, but now we've settled on the ubiquitous black rectangle of the smartphone. So too now has the console settled on this, a single screen with buttons on the sides.

We saw the lead-up to this long ago with Nintendo's own evolving line of handhelds, and Sony's PSP and Vita, and now we've seen it on the PC side too with the Steam Deck.

Even Sony are trying to move into making their main console a handheld - the only reason Nintendo were able to get there first is they were willing to do their classic move, and go with a low-power device without much grunt, and rely on the fun-factor of the games to make it good.

Imagine if next cycle Nintendo came out with a dual screen beast, a-la the DS. These days, more and more games on consoles are cross-platform and work on all systems, with few exclusives. That doesn't work so well if your system has super unique hardware and deviates too far from the single black rectangle. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot.

I think if Nintendo do something truly off-the-wall again, it will only be because there has been some new tech shift in the market and Nintendo jump in to get first mover advantage. Like a new type of VR that works super seamlessly, or something none of us have though of yet.

But for now here we are. The ubiquitous black rectangle has arrived.

The nice thing about Gator Game was that movement felt so good and fluid. It really is just a game about jumping and climing and bouncing around like a hyper kid.

Given the game doesn't have 'combat' they really really needed to get traversal right because that's the main draw, and they succeeded in that.

I got lost a few times too, but I think they did a good job of providing mitigation for that with specific large landmarks you can see at least one of from anywhere, like the big tree, the mountain, the windmill.

I understand what the devs were trying to do by not having a map. When a map is there, especially an always-on minimap, I basically spend my whole time with my eyes glued to that tiny corner of the screen rather than actually looking at the world. So I can respect the decision to try and do without any map.

What the fuck are people doing

Exactly, it's not on Nintendo to fix, this could be happening anywhere in the chain.

Could be within the stores or their suppliers, or it could be returns from end-customers.

My personal bet would be scammers buying games with cash, taking the games and then shrink-wrapping the box before returning them for a cash refund. And then they flip the cartridges on eBay or whatever.