Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Little Nightmares 3 Preview, and Digimon Stories: Time Stranger Interview
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BrazillianCara
Posts: 88 |
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I honestly panicked a little bit reading this, before I realized this was a hypothetical scenario (unlike the previous two mentioned). Anyway, the impression I get is that some people legitimately get a high out of feeling outraged. Like, literal endorphins at work. |
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Cheap Trick
Posts: 58 |
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None of those involve the consumer so why would people call them anti-consumer over those things? Prices of consoles, games, and accessories affect the consumer. QC issues, artificial scarcity of game releases , EULAs, and gaming patents do. There's other stuff like content creators and fan communities but I don't really care about those so Smash players whining about their tournaments doesn't affect me but the previous stuff I mentioned does so I'll complain about that stuff. I'm waiting on confirmation but the fact the direct today said the Virtual Boy accessory was REQUIRED to play the NSO releases made me raise an eyebrow. A poor choice of words, or do you actually have to buy an expensive and glorified Switch holder to play some ROMs? And for what purpose? Nintendo never required you to buy the retro controllers to play NSO releases before but... at this point who even knows with them. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1769 |
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If I'm not mistaken, the direct also mentioned that there's going to be a cardboard virtual reality visor, like the ones that were common with smartphones and that were used on the original Switch for the LABO games, for those who don't to buy the Virtual Boy replica |
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Traptrix Lover
Posts: 194 |
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Reading the fine print of the new Pokemon Legends ZA stuff reveals that Mega Greninja, Mega Delphox, and Mega Chesnaught are time locked behind FOMO ranked battle seasons that requires the paid NSO subscriptions. They also announced paid DLC before the game is even out. Personally when I criticize Nintendo and Pokémon it's because of this kind of stuff. The patent trolling sure doesn't help though.
And just to show I'm not playing favorites, I played the demo for Time Stranger and thought it was merely okay. Hopefully it's just the intro that's a slog but so far I think Cyber Sleuth was more interested from the get-go and got you into the action faster. But they're also charging $70 dollars with optional $120 digital ultimate mega super edition. I'll wait for a huge discount. Sorry, but it did not feel anywhere close to a AAA game so they should not be charging AAA prices for it. |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2959 |
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Oh Nintendo, putting a Direct up after the deadline. Lots of stuff for next week though.
As for the patent, at this point so many complaints about Nintendo are just white noise. You can only scream for so long before it's dismissed as Boy Who Cried Wolf. Especially when tons of them have perfectly reasonable defense. Emulators, the only time that happened was with Dolphin on Steam, which was actually stupid on the designers' part because emulators are never, EVER going to be mainstream and will always be in a gray area. Fan projects, companies have to defend their copyright (Woolie espousing "Shut up until you can release it"). Switch 2 prices, have you been living under a rock for the past couple years? And as said, this is not unique to Nintendo and if you have a problem with those things then you have to think about it in the big picture. Just singling out one company is dumb, if not disingenuous. It definitely feels like people are just wanting to complain about Nintendo for the transgression of just existing |
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Greed1914
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Appreciate the clarification about that patent. I was seeing plenty of stuff about Nintendo patenting summoning battles in games, which certainly gets attention, but my initial reaction to that was thinking that they were really late to that party if true. I'm not saying a company wouldn't try to squat on something like that, but they'd be begging for enough legal battling over it that it also doesn't seem worth it.
Even though it looks like it amounts to a patent around pokeballs, I'm still kind of questioning if that was the correct way to go about it. Everything is fine, but don't you dare use a ball somewhere in there? That sound more like protecting a trademark if that is all they care about. There isn't anything especially unique about using a ball rather than, say, a box in the whole sequence, so I'm not sure that it was something that should have been granted. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1769 |
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I don't remember if I read it somewhere, but I think it has been proven that outrage content draws more attention and views, that's a reason why there's so many content creators on platforms like YouTube, basically grifters and drama channels making the most clickbait thumbnails to draw attention, Nintendo is a very easy target, but I've seen tons of "rage bait" channels focused on anime, video games in general and movies.
I'd say it's a remnant of the Console Wars between SEGA and Nintendo, however, some of the people who still pit both companies against each other on social media or YouTube weren't even alive back when the '90s Console Wars happened, but I think some of them have heard stories about SEGA and believe that they didn't deserve abandoning the hardware business, I think some of them are also Sonic fans who sometimes resent the fact that Mario is more popular than Sonic. Honestly, I've seen some content creators saying that SEGA was an underdog company that stood against the monopoly Nintendo had on the console business, now, it's true that Nintendo had a monopoly, but SEGA wasn't a small company, they were a huge company, and they were pioneers in the development of arcade hardware, their downfall was due to a combination of factors and Nintendo had very little to do with it. |
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KefkaesqueXIII
Posts: 156 |
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Games lawyer Haley MacLean has a good thread on Bluesky about why what Nintendo is doing is an abuse of the patent system: https://bsky.app/profile/haleyfax.bsky.social/post/3lyjddftl7s25
The short of it is that patents are meant to be issued on inventions, not for ideas like game mechanics. Nintendo (and other companies) work around this by couching the patent in terms of how software executes the idea, which can be enough if you get the right patent examiner. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 926 |
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My off-the-cuff assumption would be that, with these games being what they are, going back into the master code to make them single-screen games instead of designed for VR would be too much work. (Remember, these games are being hosted for what is nominally free, in exchange for the basic NSO subscription.) There's also something to be said about wanting the games to be played in their appropriate context. But hey, there's a cheaper option, and it's basically a Nintendo Labo.
Yeah, keeping those Megas gated behind a battlepass of sorts is bad, especially since they're for what used to be the starter trio for that region. But I have no leg to stand on for people who decided Day One DLC is beyond the pale--I paid for the day-one DLC in Xenoblade 3. And they didn't announce all of the DLC for that at the get-go. Not that Day One DLC is good, but it's been pretty normalized up until now and it weirds me out that now that it's suddenly this mega-contentious thing because a Pokémon game is doing it. I feel like if Pokémon starts including lootboxes, it might actually convince the game industry at large to reject practice en masse...
I saw the thread, and I have a few problems with it. For one, MacLean also ignores the whole angle that the patent revolves around the use of "a spherical device." Petty? No--because that's how these things work. Remember, Marvel held the coals to Rob Liefeld so that Fighting American couldn't throw his shield (especially after Liefeld licensed the character from Kirby and reworked him to be more like Captain America, shield included). Nobody's arguing that Marvel owns patriotic characters, nor characters empowered by a super serum, nor characters armed with a shield who throw the shield as an attack. But if you're doing all three, you're up to something. The other issue I take is that they're speaking from an American perspective without taking the Japanese industry into account. Like how earlier this year at Tokyo eSports Festa, representatives from the legal departments from various publishers (Sega, Konami, Capcom, Nintendo) explained how patenting mechanics is a central part of their business in Japan: Japanese corporations subsidize development costs by licensing out their patents. It's no different from Epic Games licensing out Unreal Engine to other studios, especially considering how much money Epic has made over the years with Unreal Engine--arguably, far more than the Unreal Tournament games. Come to think of it, Epic also sued the pants off of Silicon Knights because Too Human was running off of an unlicensed, modified variant of Unreal--and that lead to Too Human getting removed from shelves. Are we still worried about "creativity being limited" when the game in question is Too Human instead of Palworld? When you combine that with Japanese companies wanting to protect their IP (case in point, Nintendo's brush with the law over Donkey Kong/King Kong in the 80s), yeah, that just sounds like part of the business over in Japan. There's also the matter of folks in Japan being more respectful of a creator's wishes (as well as parody law not being enshrined in their constitution). When a studio in the US tells folks "Don't do [x]", the reaction is "Screw you, I won't do what you tell me!" When Nintendo told the Touhou Puppet Play people "You're not allowed to use our assets to make a new game," the TPP people just made new art assets in the style of the Gen3 games. People in Japan like that Nintendo has clear-cut lines of what is and isn't allowed. And again, because it bears mentioning: Nintendo isn't even the strongest patent holder in Japan. They don't even chart in the list from just last year; Sony Interactive Entertainment, Konami, Bandai Namco, Sega and Capcom all top the list. So I say again, if we're going to draw a line in the sand over patenting mechanics, the discussion goes way beyond Nintendo, significantly. But the discussion is only ever framed as how "evil" Nintendo is for doing it. |
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FishLion
 Crazy Fangirl Posts: 861 |
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Thanks for another great article!
I'm glad you've been making time to read also, I myself have been trying to do more non screen stuff and have been reading The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish, it is also a good danmei from the same publisher I believe. It's very comedic and always puts a smile on my face so far, I hope you have been enjoying Heaven Official's! |
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TokimekiCrisis
Posts: 131 |
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You know those bits in cartoons where a character is defending another character to someone and then the character they're defending does something incredibly dumb to undermine all the good things that was just said about them and makes them look even worse to the character and audience? That's how I feel seeing an article running defense for Nintendo drop the day they also drop announcements for the $70 Galaxy 1 and 2 bundle, $100 Virtual Boy accessory that's mandatory for playing the games on NSO, and pre-launch DLC and time gated Mega stones for Legends ZA.
I'm sure they'll all sell decent to good because Nintendo fans showed us for as much as they might complain they'll still pony up the cash when it comes to it with the price of things like the Donkey Kong Country Returns remaster or the Switch 2. At least the Yoshi game looked cute. It seems a lot more interesting than the cardboard themed one they did last time. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2560 Location: Online Terminal |
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I think Pokemon has transcended past the layperson's preconception of "video game" and is thought of as sort of a higher form of thing. Like, I'd bet most people would still think of Fortnite, or Minecraft, or Mario, etc as "video games" but they would view Pokemon as something different, if not simply "Pokemon." Doing things that are more in line with what video games do would break the public perception of Pokemon and foment relatively larger backlash. If Nintendo doesn't have a similar perception problem to Pokemon, I think the generations have cycled enough that Nintendo is effectively the New York Yankees. Even though they have taken big L's throughout their lifetime, they also keep winning and they've been there the whole time, two things Nintendo will be happy to tell you themselves. |
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yeehaw
 Posts: 884 |
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I have no interest in actually playing a little nightmare game because I need some story to ke me going unless it's like, picross, but it is a fun game to watch Let's Plays of.
I hope Hanae Natsuki plays it with Saitou Souma again, those were fun vidos |
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LR.Skyrabbit
Posts: 28 |
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This feels like an... odd verdict with which to end this discussion - in which the writer destroys a thin excuse to be mad at Nintendo, but casually AirDrops a batch of logically-superior reasons to be mad at Nintendo and a few other companies in the process. Is this supposed to make me a less miserable person? |
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Low-Angle Nakagawa
Posts: 27 |
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I would guess it's not really about wanting people to be less negative and miserable but more trying to direct people away from Nintendo which they're a big fan of. People already complain about companies like EA, Activision, Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco, and Square-Enix all the time, but as soon as the same complaints are pointed at Nintendo it seem to be a step too far for some people and they want to redirect you back to those other companies and leave Nintendo alone. In other words negativity is fine as long as it's not aimed at their preferred gaming company of choice. In regards to the patent stuff specifically, considering the amount of industry experts, other game developers, and actual lawyers who are weighing in and saying it's a bad thing what Nintendo is doing as well as my own personal feeling on the idea of game patents in general, I'm still siding with the experts all saying it's a bad thing Nintendo is doing despite being assured here that it's actually not that big of a deal because the author enjoys Nintendo a lot so it's okay they're doing this. Listing a bunch of whataboutisms doesn't change the fact what Nintendo is doing is bad. All those other examples being listed might be bad too. The reason there's not as much coverage is because Nintendo is huge and Palworld is huge. Those two going at it are going to get a lot more coverage than Sega going after a niche gacha game. It's like wondering why the superbowl is getting so much attention in the national news compared to a local high-school football game. |
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