Switch 2 General Chat Thread (Aka, the final video game console)

[Steven]

Oh hey I remembered that this thing has HDR, and that I recently learned that HDR can add input lag. Given the Switch's notoriety for input lag, this may turn out to be interesting. I only have about 2 games that have HDR, and one of them has really bad HDR that makes it look worse than it does with SDR, so that's something.

I think the only potential "lag" added by HDR is on the monitor side, not the console. And from my quick Google research, it usually amounts to just 1 milisecond or so. It's there, but it's a tiny fraction of a frame.

Okay, that's not so bad. I was seeing that it was adding maybe up to about 30ms, and I'm assuming that it was at 60 FPS, which would give just under 2 frames. The screen has HDR, I am assuming, but I'm also assuming that it's been engineered to be good or something. I hope.

Still, 2 frames isn't going to make a huge difference by itself in most cases. It's that 2 frames plus all of the other stuff going on in the chain that adds up.

To be honest, I had no idea the Pro was already out. I don't understand why you'd want that. You can get a Slim SKU with the drive

The PS5 Pro is in a very awkward (bad) place. Aside from being super expensive, apparently it has compatibility problems with some games, and of course it has no exclusive games of its own. It's way too expensive to justify over a regular PS5, which also has very few games that aren't on PC/PS4/Switch. PS4 is the important one there because if you already have the PS4, just keep it and play the same things but with slightly longer loading times! The regular non-Pro PS5 already doesn't justify existing. I should stop thinking about this before I become too disappointed.

[spmbx]

I should stop thinking about this before I become too disappointed.

Too late

[Steven]

At least the Switch 2, as a handheld, should immediately prove to be more useful and less disappointing than most post-Gamecube consoles. I hope that they fixed the design flaw that requires the Switch to have a battery, and I also hope they fixed the input lag, and I also hope that the Joy-cons don't break with light casual use this time, and I also hope they will eventually have a controller with the damn d-pad in the correct location, which of all things shouldn't be too difficult.

I really liked the Switch for a while, but after a few years it became very obvious that the Switch has a lot of problems. If they can fix all of those and get some cool stuff that's not on PC, or at least a good new Metroid (which means getting rid of MediocreSteam, ideally, but Dread was a huge step up over Samus Returns, the worst 2D Metroid game, so I'm willing to give them another chance), that's all that I ask for. A lower price would be really damn nice, too. As it is, it will be far cheaper for me to buy the Japan-only version of the system and rebuy all of my digital stuff on my Japanese account than it will be to buy the multi-language version of the system. But of course I CAN'T DO THAT BECAUSE FUCKING SEGA AGES SHINOBI GOT DELISTED. God, I hate digital games. Edit: or did it? It looks like it might still be up in Japan! That's good. Still hate digital games, though.

Speaking of Metroid, as I have mentioned elsewhere, I LOVE Prime 1. Then I had to force myself to finish Prime 2, which took nearly 20 years to do because I dislike it so much, and I dropped Prime 3 very quickly. Please be good, Prime 4, although I don't have much hope because so far each Prime has been way, way worse than the previous one.

[BryanM]

The PS5 Pro is in a very awkward (bad) place. Aside from being super expensive, apparently it has compatibility problems with some games, and of course it has no exclusive games of its own. It's way too expensive to justify over a regular PS5, which also has very few games that aren't on PC/PS4/Switch. PS4 is the important one there because if you already have the PS4, just keep it and play the same things but with slightly longer loading times! The regular non-Pro PS5 already doesn't justify existing. I should stop thinking about this before I become too disappointed.

It really is a beautiful that we get to witness an end of an era. For some reason I thought we'd surely have graphene processors before we had god computers, but surprisingly I guess not!

You know all those people longing for a new console with any kind of personality? Like the PC Engine, Neo Geo etc were like back in the day? Things like the Ouya, the Chameleon, the Atari VCS? There is a tiny bit of justice in the world that the only good versions of those came from the fantasy console scene, where hobbyists made games for the Pico-8 and the like...

But once you have a computer able to make games with the amount of work put into it with $million+ budgets, they'd really stop being something special. Everyone and their dog can have their own private console, real ones and not like Soulja Boy's.

The death of human relevance as everything gets plowed over by a steamroller might be pretty bad, but at least some cool games that could never have existed due to the profit motive will be possible. Nobody in their right mind would make a $200 million game with 8-bit graphics, for example.

I absolutely hated Double Dash when it came out. I no longer remember why, but I did not like it.

I'm starting to form a long list of mostly little things. The most immediate is the handling, second, the low number of courses...

But it is really brutal. For example: Be me. Be in second place. About 2 seconds behind. Hit the guy in front of me with a red turtle shell. I hit him again with a SECOND shell. I'm at full acceleration. He quickly recovers and begins to increase the distance between us. At no point do I ever come close to even touching him, let alone being in the lead.

The CPU cheats in all these games sure, but I've never felt so demoralized and helpless in a Mario Kart game. The bullshit is just too audacious and blatant.

Not having the hop is just another crime against humanity. These kinds of things are important:

Like in Mario 64, they give you lots of different things to do when you move from point A to point B. Like they always say, the triple jump isn't to get to a higher place, it's so you can go wah hah wee-hee. The hop in Kart doesn't make you go faster, but it makes the time move faster inside your brain.

[Steven]

You know all those people longing for a new console with any kind of personality? Like the PC Engine, Neo Geo etc were like back in the day? Things like the Ouya, the Chameleon, the Atari VCS? There is a tiny bit of justice in the world that the only good versions of those came from the fantasy console scene, where hobbyists made games for the Pico-8 and the like...

This is something that I have been lamenting recently. What was the last major console to actually have a personality? Probably the Gamecube. I was thinking Dreamcast, but it's probably Gamecube. Certainly the PS2 is soulless as hell, as is most of the consoles that came after it. The Wii and to a lesser extent the Wii U both felt extremely sterile and impersonal, like a hospital or something. I don't know if that makes sense, but that is how it feels to me.

I absolutely hated Double Dash when it came out. I no longer remember why, but I did not like it.

I'm starting to form a long list of mostly little things. The most immediate is the handling, second, the low number of courses...

But it is really brutal. For example: Be me. Be in second place. About 2 seconds behind. Hit the guy in front of me with a red turtle shell. I hit him again with a SECOND shell. I'm at full acceleration. He quickly recovers and begins to increase the distance between us. At no point do I ever come close to even touching him, let alone being in the lead.

The CPU cheats in all these games sure, but I've never felt so demoralized and helpless in a Mario Kart game. The bullshit is just too audacious and blatant.

Not having the hop is just another crime against humanity. These kinds of things are important:

Like in Mario 64, they give you lots of different things to do when you move from point A to point B. Like they always say, the triple jump isn't to get to a higher place, it's so you can go wah hah wee-hee. The hop in Kart doesn't make you go faster, but it makes the time move faster inside your brain.

Was it one of those things where the game has a bunch of little things that on their own don't hurt it that much, but when grouped together just make it seem worse than it really ought to be? You may very well be right. I have not played it for over 20 years and I barely remember it at all. I seem to remember that it had that unattractive, dull plastic look that a lot of games from around that time had.

For the number of courses, I forgot how many there were (gonna go check in a little bit), but I think most racing games in general will struggle to match MK8D's insane 96 courses. That's a massive amount of courses, although I didn't buy much beyond what is in the base game because I no longer have anyone to play Mario Kart with, as I have since graduated from university and now live alone, so I do not have many opportunities to play multiplayer games at school or with my former roommates now. I am assuming that the later courses are good. Unfortunately for the developers, they have to follow up with a sequel and it would be bold to make a sequel to anything that had an insane amount of (good thing) and not have that many in the sequel. I don't know how many courses this new game even has. Time to find that number, too.

[Sumez]

This is something that I have been lamenting recently. What was the last major console to actually have a personality? Probably the Gamecube. I was thinking Dreamcast, but it's probably Gamecube. Certainly the PS2 is soulless as hell, as is most of the consoles that came after it. The Wii and to a lesser extent the Wii U both felt extremely sterile and impersonal, like a hospital or something. I don't know if that makes sense, but that is how it feels to me.

I guess it's really subjective. WiiU and Switch both had a ton of "personality" to me.
I kind of agree about the Wii. And definitely regarding PS2.

[Steven]

Research suggests that the new Mario Kart has maybe 29 courses, although it hasn't been officially announced yet. I think that's possibly more than enough, provided they are all good, and I expect them to add to that with DLC later. I doubt that it will reach the huge number that its predecessor has, but we'll see. Double Dash has 16, the same number that 64 has.

This is something that I have been lamenting recently. What was the last major console to actually have a personality? Probably the Gamecube. I was thinking Dreamcast, but it's probably Gamecube. Certainly the PS2 is soulless as hell, as is most of the consoles that came after it. The Wii and to a lesser extent the Wii U both felt extremely sterile and impersonal, like a hospital or something. I don't know if that makes sense, but that is how it feels to me.

I guess it's really subjective. WiiU and Switch both had a ton of "personality" to me.
I kind of agree about the Wii. And definitely regarding PS2.

I may be wrong about the Wii U. I haven't played it in many years. I'd have to check again, but I have only a handful of games for it and I only played it a few times. I wonder if mine still even works, as I've heard that they can stop functioning if you don't use them, although I don't know if that is true or not. I hope it still works because I need to eventually finish Prime 3 and I'd rather do that on the Wii U than on the Wii. Don't really want to deal with the mess of the RT5X and stuff to get the Wii working, especially as I have absolutely no idea where my Wii video cables are, so it's much easier to have the Wii U's native HDMI out.

[ryu]

Research suggests that the new Mario Kart has maybe 29 courses, although it hasn't been officially announced yet.

Didn't they show a map with icons of all courses during the direct?

This is something that I have been lamenting recently. What was the last major console to actually have a personality? Probably the Gamecube. I was thinking Dreamcast, but it's probably Gamecube. Certainly the PS2 is soulless as hell, as is most of the consoles that came after it. The Wii and to a lesser extent the Wii U both felt extremely sterile and impersonal, like a hospital or something. I don't know if that makes sense, but that is how it feels to me.

I guess it's really subjective. WiiU and Switch both had a ton of "personality" to me.
I kind of agree about the Wii. And definitely regarding PS2.

The Wii also had a lot of personality to me. And honestly... even the PS2 had some. If nothing else the boot menu was pretty iconic and I really like the design of the fat model.

Also it hurts speaking about those consoles in the past tense lol. I currently have my Wii set up and even turn it on every few days.

[Steven]

Research suggests that the new Mario Kart has maybe 29 courses, although it hasn't been officially announced yet.

Didn't they show a map with icons of all courses during the direct?

I didn't watch it, so I can't say.

[BryanM]

Was it one of those things where the game has a bunch of little things that on their own don't hurt it that much, but when grouped together just make it seem worse than it really ought to be?

For the number of courses, I forgot how many there were (gonna go check in a little bit), but I think most racing games in general will struggle to match MK8D's insane 96 courses.

I think it's kind of a snowball effect. Where you dislike something, and then automatically view everything in the worst possible light. If you love something you overlook its flaws, if you hate it you shrug off its merits.

My first impression of this game was twenty years ago and I immediately hated it in the first ~15 seconds. Which was utterly baffling to me because I've really liked ALL of the Kart games from the 64 on up. So I've been trying to give it an honest chance and it's still not improving its appeal..

MK8's DLC were tracks from the mobile game... but still, 16 tracks was very barebones. Minimum standards for what made a game worth the money began to really inflate post the Playstation 1.

Certainly the PS2 is soulless as hell, as is most of the consoles that came after it. The Wii and to a lesser extent the Wii U both felt extremely sterile and impersonal, like a hospital or something. I don't know if that makes sense, but that is how it feels to me.

That's like that PS4 abridged youtube video: "We forgot to bring a photo of the flippin' console, but don't worry! It's just gonna be a big black box."

I do agree the Wii kind of feels like a DVD player and remote you'd use in a hospital. I do agree that's trying to conform to boomer appliance expectations (just like the generic black box conforms to edgy gamer expectations): like it's something an adult wouldn't be ashamed to have sitting in their living room. Like how the Atari 2600 etc had wood paneling back during the wood age.

(As a slight aside, I get a little prickly when people diss the Nintendo 64's three-pronged controller. For me, it's more comfortable than the standard PSX2 layout everyone's settled on: The position of the analog sticks on those are just a centimeter off from the natural resting position of my thumbs. Truly the spork of joypads.)

I hope that they fixed the design flaw that requires the Switch to have a battery

Isn't that just how tablets are built to work? : P

It's actually pretty impressive they're only around 50% battery inside. Most tablets are closer to 80%.

Ah, while on the topic of future tech, solid state batteries are a thing that exist commercially in the world now. Maybe there'll be a version of the S2 down the line with OLED and twice the battery life, a couple years before the world ends.

Twice the battery life is really gonna improve the uptime and range on those killbots~

[Steven]

Was it one of those things where the game has a bunch of little things that on their own don't hurt it that much, but when grouped together just make it seem worse than it really ought to be?

For the number of courses, I forgot how many there were (gonna go check in a little bit), but I think most racing games in general will struggle to match MK8D's insane 96 courses.

I think it's kind of a snowball effect. Where you dislike something, and then automatically view everything in the worst possible light. If you love something you overlook its flaws, if you hate it you shrug off its merits.

My first impression of this game was twenty years ago and I immediately hated it in the first ~15 seconds. Which was utterly baffling to me because I've really liked ALL of the Kart games from the 64 on up. So I've been trying to give it an honest chance and it's still not improving its appeal..

MK8's DLC were tracks from the mobile game... but still, 16 tracks was very barebones. Minimum standards for what made a game worth the money began to really inflate post the Playstation 1.

I have a terrible memory, so I really would need to play Double Dash again. I've been considering checking out what Gamecube games are available locally. Fortunately, my hacked US Wii gives the middle finger to the region lock, and I've played Japanese games on it before.

Region locking is so stupid. Nintendo still hasn't completely clarified how the special Japan-only version of the Switch 2 works, which is an annoyance, but almost all of my Switch games are Japanese anyway, and of course a large amount of Switch games only have one version, with the the only difference being the box art (the most important part of any game, BTW. Japanese Mega Drive still has the best box art by far. I miss awesome box art. Now it's all lame and boring, and the Switch game box aspect ratio is not very helpful for nice box art. PS4/PS5 isn't much better because of the giant horizontal bar at the top, something that the Switch 2 also adds in addition to retaining the odd aspect ratio of the Switch), and game's language being determined by the system's language setting.

(As a slight aside, I get a little prickly when people diss the Nintendo 64's three-pronged controller. For me, it's more comfortable than the standard PSX2 layout everyone's settled on: The position of the analog sticks on those are just a centimeter off from the natural resting position of my thumbs. Truly the spork of joypads.)

I only learned about two or three years ago that people hate the N64 controller. I'm like... what? If nothing else, that thing was mostly pretty comfortable, even if it is massive. You could complain that the d-pad's placement is not optimal, but for almost every N64 game that I have ever played, the d-pad does literally nothing at all. Can't even navigate menus with it, so in most cases you could saw off the entire left side of the thing, equally useless L button included, and it would change literally nothing.

Then again I only probably played like 5 games on the damn thing, which is also not that far off from the almost equally tiny number of PS1 games I have played (8~12, I believe), so who knows.

I hope that they fixed the design flaw that requires the Switch to have a battery

Isn't that just how tablets are built to work? : P

It's actually pretty impressive they're only around 50% battery inside. Most tablets are closer to 80%.

Ah, while on the topic of future tech, solid state batteries are a thing that exist commercially in the world now. Maybe there'll be a version of the S2 down the line with OLED and twice the battery life, a couple years before the world ends.

Twice the battery life is really gonna improve the uptime and range on those killbots~

It's very disappointing that the PSP and 3DS both work without their batteries but the Vita and the Switch don't. I don't know if there is a no-battery mod for Vita, but at least the Vita TV exists. It's definitely not the best way to play Vita games because of the huge input lag, and of course you also can't play some Vita games at all because you may need the camera or whatever, but it's better than nothing. People complain about the lag on the Switch, but the Vita TV is way, WAY worse for some reason.

Anyway, relying entirely on batteries that will eventually become useless is not great. Someone will certainly make replacement batteries for it, but ideally you should be able to power it with only its AC adaptor in case of battery failure.

[Sumez]

(As a slight aside, I get a little prickly when people diss the Nintendo 64's three-pronged controller. For me, it's more comfortable than the standard PSX2 layout everyone's settled on: The position of the analog sticks on those are just a centimeter off from the natural resting position of my thumbs. Truly the spork of joypads.)

This is a bit of a pet peeve to me as well. People like to make fun of it like they've never actually tried to use one. "What did Nintendo think we all have three hands hurh durh hurh lol"

But the design is pretty ingenious in a way. You can play a game with either an analog stick or a d-pad depending on how you hold the controller, and both configurations are very comfortable. I can understand not risking what would eventually become the modern standard of a single grip where both of them are within the reach of the thumb.
While it sounds like an obvious approach, it also sounds a lot more uncomfortable on paper than it really is, and even today I do quite often come across people who dislike either the PlayStation or Xbox design. based on how far away either the D-pad or stick is located.

It's also worth considering that at the time, analog stick controls wasn't normal at all, and I don't think Nintendo could have possibly predicted that like 99% of the games on the system would end up using only that!
And even then, like I said even if you think holding it that way looks odd, it's still perfectly comfortable. Again, at the time the most "ergonomic" first-party controller was the PS1 controller, which is a weird mutation of the SNES design - the N64 ergonomics was a really big step over that, and remained probably the most comfortable controller up until the X360 one, with Sony not managing to fix their design until PS4!
Back in the day I had a N64 controller adapter for my PC, because it was my favourite controller, and I wanted to be able to use it for emulated games.

[Steven]

Imagine being Microsoft and announcing that you spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing the Xbox One controller but somehow still put the d-pad and left analog stick in the incorrect places. I hope that Switch 2 will finally get a left Joy-con with the d-pad in the correct place. I am sure it won't, but damn do I wish it would.

I played Metroid Dread yesterday for the first time in about two years. I did a bunch of sequence breaks that I've never done before, which was cool, got as many upgrades as possible in a really weird order because I can, and I skipped Space Jump entirely. This game has some definite performance problems at some points in the game, mostly during boss/mini-boss fights. Hopefully the Switch 2 can simply brute-force its way through those. Support for 120 FPS and HDR on Switch 2 would be really nice as well, but that's probably not going to happen.

[ryu]

While it sounds like an obvious approach, it also sounds a lot more uncomfortable on paper than it really is [...]

I think the problem is mostly people thinking they were supposed to hold the left and right grips no matter what game they were playing. At least I know one guy who didn't get that he was supposed to hold the middle grip when playing with the analog stick...

[Sumez]

even today I do quite often come across people who dislike either the PlayStation or Xbox design. based on how far away either the D-pad or stick is located.

Imagine being Microsoft and announcing that you spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing the Xbox One controller but somehow still put the d-pad and left analog stick in the incorrect places. I hope that Switch 2 will finally get a left Joy-con with the d-pad in the correct place. I am sure it won't, but damn do I wish it would.

Case in point XD

God damn Nintendo for not putting the analog stick in the "correct" place, which Steven of course is the sole authority on.

[ryu]

Haven't played X-Box in ages (and never played it alone by myself), but if the Switch and Wii U pro pads are anything to go by I'm inclined to agree that PlayStation got the better layout.

[Sumez]

It's never something I've ever thought about at all. And there's no way one of them can be better for *both* analog and d-pad, it really depends on which one you use, which again depends on the game.

[Steven]

even today I do quite often come across people who dislike either the PlayStation or Xbox design. based on how far away either the D-pad or stick is located.

Imagine being Microsoft and announcing that you spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing the Xbox One controller but somehow still put the d-pad and left analog stick in the incorrect places. I hope that Switch 2 will finally get a left Joy-con with the d-pad in the correct place. I am sure it won't, but damn do I wish it would.

Case in point XD

God damn Nintendo for not putting the analog stick in the "correct" place, which Steven of course is the sole authority on.

Indeed I am, and I therefore officially determine that the Steam Deck has the most optimal and most comfortable layout, and therefore best controls of all modern console controller-style options. I have heard that the trackpads on the Steam Deck are super incredible for first- and third-person shooting, but I have not used them for that purpose yet. Anyway, this thing is damn comfortable. It is quite heavy for a handheld game thing, however. Everyone that I've let play my Steam Deck always says exactly the same thing when they hold it for the first time: "it's heavy". The second thing they say is "holy shit this screen is glorious", in case it matters.

Going back to the N64, that system's games can be weird to deal with now because of its unique controller. There's no way around needing an N64 controller to get the proper layout. The same can be said of the Intellivision, ColecoVision, and anything else that has a huge phone-number dialing thingy on it, but the N64 is probably the primary one.

[ryu]

It's never something I've ever thought about at all. And there's no way one of them can be better for *both* analog and d-pad, it really depends on which one you use, which again depends on the game.

For me it's basically just that the PlayStation works well for both analog and d-pad focused games, while the Nintendo controllers work well for games using the analog stick and feels awkward for games that use the d-pad. :/

The analog stick position of the Nintendo/X-Box controllers is probably a bit better than the one on PlayStation controllers, but it's not as noticeable as when I have to use the d-pad with the other layout for me.

[Sumez]

Going back to the N64, that system's games can be weird to deal with now because of its unique controller. There's no way around needing an N64 controller to get the proper layout. The same can be said of the Intellivision, ColecoVision, and anything else that has a huge phone-number dialing thingy on it, but the N64 is probably the primary one.

GameCube tho?

[ZellSF]

Just spotted this:
https://store.spike-chunsoft.com/produc ... ba-edition
"*Please note that the Nintendo Switch 2 physical version will be released as a Game-Key Card."
So uh... yeah it's not just Square Enix being cheap. Nintendo's trying to kill off physical games.

[ryu]

Just spotted this:
https://store.spike-chunsoft.com/produc ... ba-edition
"*Please note that the Nintendo Switch 2 physical version will be released as a Game-Key Card."
So uh... yeah it's not just Square Enix being cheap. Nintendo's trying to kill off physical games.

I heard Nintendo is pressuring companies into releasesing on game cards because they only support 64gb cards (expensive) and game-key cards. But yeah, definitely trying to kill physical for good. Could you imagine gifting a child a fucking download code for their birthday or christmas? Jesus

[Sumez]

Hopefully this will mean a lot of smaller publishers are just gonna keep releasing the Switch 1 versions and rely on backwards compatibility

[Steven]

Going back to the N64, that system's games can be weird to deal with now because of its unique controller. There's no way around needing an N64 controller to get the proper layout. The same can be said of the Intellivision, ColecoVision, and anything else that has a huge phone-number dialing thingy on it, but the N64 is probably the primary one.

GameCube tho?

That one's not so bad. It just has some weird positioning for the face buttons. Those analog shoulder buttons pose a problem for Switch controllers, which don't have those, but those and everything else can be replicated by the PS4/PS5 controller, odd ABXY button positioning excepted.

Hopefully this will mean a lot of smaller publishers are just gonna keep releasing the Switch 1 versions and rely on backwards compatibility

It would end up being the current situation with the PS4 and PS5 all over again. I almost expect the PS5 to be discontinued before the PS4 at this rate, not after. Still, this is preferable to digital-only, or worse, a streaming + subscription-only thing that I am sure at least Sony and Microsoft have as their ultimate goal.

[Sumez]

That's not really a bad thing though. Although the industry is trying to make it look like it's not the case, the idea of "console generations" really died after the PS4 released. There is never going to be another shift in technology that could in any way justify that type of terminology - all we will see going forward are iterations, and we will keep getting new games that don't need those iterations at all. In fact, the further we go, the more rare the games that truly make use of every single hardware improvement will be.

Consoles as a different platform than PC is also eventually going to die out, and I'm honestly curious to see how that is going to evolve. Consoles have been getting PC-ified for decades now, and more recently PC is getting console-fied as well.
For most games already, releasing on one platform and not another, is less a question of technology and development, and more about marketing and licensing. Actually making the port, is typically the press of a button. Many fan ports of PC games to Switch already exist, and the recent source leak of Guilty Gear Strive has allowed fans to very easily port that to every platform already.

[Steven]

Guilty Gear's source code leaked? That's interesting. I think that only came out relatively recently, so someone's getting fired... or perhaps already did.

It is too bad that consoles are all the same shit now. I liked it when every console had an almost completely different library that took advantage of its unique hardware. Yes, you had to buy all of the consoles and a PC if you wanted to play everything, or at least go rent stuff or go to a friend's house to play/borrow whatever you didn't have, but it was better that way. Now it's all the same, with identical games everywhere minus Nintendo exclusives.

At least Nintendo tries to give people a reason to buy their system instead of the other systems. Like what the hell is the difference between PS5 and Xbox now? The controller? Is that all? It certainly seems like it. I have no clue what's even on Xbox; it doesn't exist here, but I imagine it's the same shit that's on PS5, which is also the same shit that's on PS4, which is also the same shit that's on PC.

[Sumez]

There's nothing good about platform-exclusive titles.

[Steven]

There are plenty of advantages. It creates reasons to buy that system, which means that other companies have to also make meaningful exclusives of their own, which in turn theoretically results in decent amounts of good, creative games that simply wouldn't exist otherwise. It allows developers to take advantage of unique control options that don't exist on other systems, and it allows them to also take advantage of any other unique properties of the system's hardware. This all leads to better games, so there are only advantages to it. Of course, modern consoles are all the same thing, so this is all theoretical.

Without exclusives, why bother with consoles at all? Why not play on PC, which has all of the non-Nintendo games and is better at everything except maybe keeping your electric bill down? I've heard that that is in issue in some parts of Europe where electricity is expensive, and consoles, being more electrically efficient, will help with that. Switch will probably outsell the PS2 soon enough, and Mario Kart and Zelda and the other Nintendo games, which you can't play anywhere else but (possibly illegally) on PC, are carrying the Switch.

[Sumez]

There are plenty of advantages. It creates reasons to buy that system

Ok yeah, it's an advantage to the people who make money from selling the system lol.

I count this as a disadvantage in my book, and so should you.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Guilty Gear's source code leaked? That's interesting. I think that only came out relatively recently, so someone's getting fired... or perhaps already did.

It is too bad that consoles are all the same shit now. I liked it when every console had an almost completely different library that took advantage of its unique hardware. Yes, you had to buy all of the consoles and a PC if you wanted to play everything, or at least go rent stuff or go to a friend's house to play/borrow whatever you didn't have, but it was better that way. Now it's all the same, with identical games everywhere minus Nintendo exclusives.

At least Nintendo tries to give people a reason to buy their system instead of the other systems. Like what the hell is the difference between PS5 and Xbox now? The controller? Is that all? It certainly seems like it. I have no clue what's even on Xbox; it doesn't exist here, but I imagine it's the same shit that's on PS5, which is also the same shit that's on PS4, which is also the same shit that's on PC.

Microsoft sold Japan region Xbox Series X consoles back in 2022 as I bought one when it was "slim pickings" just to even buy an American Xbox Series X console during the pandemic (as both Amazon & Walmart sites would get their allotted amount to sell only to instantly sell out with all the damn bots/scalpers scooping up the orders at checkout time).

Of course, all Microsoft Series X and Series S consoles are "region-free" regardless of where they're sold worldwide -- that is a given in this day of age. Not mention with the tariffs implemented, Microsoft jacked up the prices of their Series X (with a whopping $100.00 increase) and Series S console (with a insane $80.00 increase) from originally $499.99 usd to $599.99 usd and $349.99 to $429.99 usd respectively just last week. Check out the current price of gaming hardware within the USA region Microsoft Marketplace right now -- it's truly "sticker shock," indeed!

During the pandemic of 2020 through 2022, people were easily paying upwards of $480.00+ for a brand new Series S console and $700.00+ for a brand new Series X console -- those were the days if you wanted either console "bad enough" during that particular point in time ("bite the bullet and pay through the nose" type of situation/deal).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~