Nintendo 5 years from now: “After suing multiple fan projects and intimidating them to cease projects, Nintendo admits that they were just fan projects”
This is the company by the way that’s behind on the times of technology. Like, how long did it take them to adopt broadband technology on their consoles? The Wii?
I don’t think people remember, but there was a time when no twitch streamer or youtuber would play Nintendo games because they fucking take down their streams for copyright infringement.
That’s not entirely true, you could keep the videos up if all the ad revenue went to Nintendo. In other words, if you paid them so you could promote their game.
They killed Splatoon’s grassroots Esport community thanks to them making a quick buck with splatoon 3, that promised a bunch of network functionality improvements that never materialized.
So now, a game that used to have multiple small but growing international tournaments now has nothing. Hell, they used to have tournaments on the main stage at PAX East.
How they treated professional Melee and especially Project M was the moment I realized Nintendo was just another out-of-touch company. So many indie devs would kill for fans that passionate, let alone a modding scene that robust. Nintendo threw it all away.
Edit: and that ignores the graveyard of fan games Nintendo has killed. AM2R, Pokémon Uranium…
I never understood why they abandoned Splatoon 2. Like, I get that they have a new game, and that’s great, I guess…but why not support Splatoon 2 until Switch 2 comes out? I never bought the splatoon 3, because I JUST bought splatoon 2 like 2-3 years prior when it came out. You NEED online to play that game.
So you’re paying $59.99 for the game, and then $20 a year for online. All for a game that exists in a time bubble. Once it’s time for the next game, fuck you. Buy the new game. Your old game means nothing.
Well fuck you too Nintendo. I’ll just not buy Splatoon 3, and not pay for online anymore. How about that?
It’s a great game with a very high skill ceiling, but the MMR and team balancing was absolute garbage. It was very rare that it was a close match. You usually clapped or got clapped.
As one of the leaders in said community for the NA scene I wouldn’t lay the blame entirely on Splat3. Things were slowing down before then and a lot of the old guard were hanging up their hats.
Networking left much to be desired, but we also started the grassroots on the Wii U after all.
Fair, I have connections to a few that were fairly serious during 2, most of which were in tournies, one of those never bought 3, but the rest gave it a shot.
The ripoff that is S3 seems to be nails in the proverbial coffin.
Yeah the transition between games was hard. 1 to 2 was ok-ish as there was excitement on the switch. 2 to 3 was rough as the average comp player was between high school and college aged which had less disposable income to get the game right away.
Not to mention each time was a hard reset on both maps and equipment that slowly rolled out over time made getting cohesive teams extra hard…
Folks pointing out GCN/Wii internet abilities are missing that the experience was awful. Like sure, the guts of broadband were there, but actually playing a game with friends online was way more trouble than it was worth.
So to your point, real online gaming was indeed way behind other consoles (IMHO).
I stopped playing Mario Kart online with others on the Wii. Some players had set an infinite blue shells hack on. Just wasn’t fun to play. Complained to Nintendo and they replied like there was nothing they could do or something like that.
Nintendo is competent at exactly 1 thing - designing great video games.
They are run by the equivalent of dwarven master blacksmiths… They’re one of the few gaming companies with employees on staff with more than 40 years experience of game dev (and whom have ONLY ever worked at Nintendo their entire careers) in charge of things.
That’s great if you like Zelda and Mario games… but because they’re run by a bunch of old-school grandpas… they’re not good at much else.
Terrible store, multiplayer, ancillary modern network-driven services like voice chat and partying up, little to no 3rd-party support (whether it’s games, media apps, or even tech integrations with formats like Dolby ATMOS), and - as a benefit - really terrible device security so it’s usually pretty easy for folks to reverse engineer, run custom boot-loaders / jailbreak / scrape their store servers / etc. - stuff that companies like Sony and Microsoft either never had issues with - or have taken seriously long enough that they have locked down.
The only reason they’re still in business is that they still do the one thing that matters most the best - design really great game-play mechanics for IP that is beloved by multiple generations of gamers who will overlook everything else.
Yup, they changed their minds. Bluetooth, Titles on mobile. It’s this mish-mash of bullheadedness for the sake of being bullheaded, then the try like a decade later.
I’m personally surprised by Nintendo continuing to include user accessible SD cards in their consoles from the DS through the Switch. It becomes incredibly convenient for piracy and I would have thought they were doing it on purpose to at least sell the hardware if it wasn’t for all the evidence you the contrary.
The ps5 port only requires one screw to access.
I know the hard drive on the PS4 was only one screw to access as well.
I’m uncertain of the Xbox, they had a proprietary hard drive for the 360 so I didn’t go down that path.
While that is slightly more complicated than inserting a SD card, it is not technical.
M.2 seems easier for normies to mess up and SD cards have traditionally been significantly cheaper… plus a microSD card is smaller than M.2 by an order of magnitude.
Like, how long did it take them to adopt broadband technology on their consoles? The Wii?
As on addon or built-in? I know the GameCube had an Ethernet add-on and I think the N64 had a dialup addon (Would have been the fastest at the time for home users, nobody had home broadband on N64 release)
Like, how long did it take them to adopt broadband technology on their consoles? The Wii?
While I agree they’re behind the times on their consoles re online, I think it’s more a software issue. I don’t think criticising the hardware functionality is quite fair.
The predecessor to the Wii was the Gamecube which came out in 2001, where few people had broadband internet
The other consoles in that generation were the ps2, xbox, and briefly dreamcast. Of those, only the xbox came with built in networking, until the playstation slim release in 2004. The dreamcast, ps2 and Gamecube all offered additional adapters to provide ethernet (and the dreamcast and Gamecube had dial up modems available too). So the Gamecube was in line with most of the competition.
The Wii had out of the box WiFi (and an adapter for ethernet available) which put it in a similar space to its competitors. Only the ps3 had both WiFi and ethernet out of the box at launch. The 360 only had ethernet until a refresh that added WIFI. And the Wii was also coming in at a significantly lower price point.
Nintendo 5 years from now: “After suing multiple fan projects and intimidating them to cease projects, Nintendo admits that they were just fan projects”
This is the company by the way that’s behind on the times of technology. Like, how long did it take them to adopt broadband technology on their consoles? The Wii?
Didn’t the GameCube have a broadband adapter you could buy. Swear I had one to play PSO
I don’t think people remember, but there was a time when no twitch streamer or youtuber would play Nintendo games because they fucking take down their streams for copyright infringement.
That’s not entirely true, you could keep the videos up if all the ad revenue went to Nintendo. In other words, if you paid them so you could promote their game.
I owned Mario Kart 8 for Wii U and it had a feature to record gameplay and post it to YouTube.
I post a clip once and they fucking claimed ad revenue on it.
What a brilliant racket. Have people do all the work of getting a channel going, then claim the money for yourself.
Sue them back, for a feature built in!
They killed Splatoon’s grassroots Esport community thanks to them making a quick buck with splatoon 3, that promised a bunch of network functionality improvements that never materialized.
So now, a game that used to have multiple small but growing international tournaments now has nothing. Hell, they used to have tournaments on the main stage at PAX East.
They’ve been shutting down Smash Bros tournaments as well.
How they treated professional Melee and especially Project M was the moment I realized Nintendo was just another out-of-touch company. So many indie devs would kill for fans that passionate, let alone a modding scene that robust. Nintendo threw it all away.
Edit: and that ignores the graveyard of fan games Nintendo has killed. AM2R, Pokémon Uranium…
Yeah this was my first moment also and largely why I will never pay for NSO+. How they treat the esport community is crazy.
Ok but like… given what I was hearing from those scenes that was probably for the best
I never understood why they abandoned Splatoon 2. Like, I get that they have a new game, and that’s great, I guess…but why not support Splatoon 2 until Switch 2 comes out? I never bought the splatoon 3, because I JUST bought splatoon 2 like 2-3 years prior when it came out. You NEED online to play that game.
So you’re paying $59.99 for the game, and then $20 a year for online. All for a game that exists in a time bubble. Once it’s time for the next game, fuck you. Buy the new game. Your old game means nothing.
Well fuck you too Nintendo. I’ll just not buy Splatoon 3, and not pay for online anymore. How about that?
Never got into Splatoon but it looked like great fun and kind of perfect for low-stakes competition.
Fucks sake Nintendo
It’s a great game with a very high skill ceiling, but the MMR and team balancing was absolute garbage. It was very rare that it was a close match. You usually clapped or got clapped.
As one of the leaders in said community for the NA scene I wouldn’t lay the blame entirely on Splat3. Things were slowing down before then and a lot of the old guard were hanging up their hats.
Networking left much to be desired, but we also started the grassroots on the Wii U after all.
Fair, I have connections to a few that were fairly serious during 2, most of which were in tournies, one of those never bought 3, but the rest gave it a shot.
The ripoff that is S3 seems to be nails in the proverbial coffin.
Yeah the transition between games was hard. 1 to 2 was ok-ish as there was excitement on the switch. 2 to 3 was rough as the average comp player was between high school and college aged which had less disposable income to get the game right away. Not to mention each time was a hard reset on both maps and equipment that slowly rolled out over time made getting cohesive teams extra hard…
Folks pointing out GCN/Wii internet abilities are missing that the experience was awful. Like sure, the guts of broadband were there, but actually playing a game with friends online was way more trouble than it was worth.
So to your point, real online gaming was indeed way behind other consoles (IMHO).
I stopped playing Mario Kart online with others on the Wii. Some players had set an infinite blue shells hack on. Just wasn’t fun to play. Complained to Nintendo and they replied like there was nothing they could do or something like that.
on the bright side you could literally use their eShop to download games you don’t own if you had a hacked switch
I’m pretty sure the switch didn’t support Bluetooth connectivity for years until they finally decided to enable it just after I bought one.
That is the action of a company either incredibly incompetent, or that was hoping to exploit it for financial gain.
Nintendo is competent at exactly 1 thing - designing great video games.
They are run by the equivalent of dwarven master blacksmiths… They’re one of the few gaming companies with employees on staff with more than 40 years experience of game dev (and whom have ONLY ever worked at Nintendo their entire careers) in charge of things.
That’s great if you like Zelda and Mario games… but because they’re run by a bunch of old-school grandpas… they’re not good at much else.
Terrible store, multiplayer, ancillary modern network-driven services like voice chat and partying up, little to no 3rd-party support (whether it’s games, media apps, or even tech integrations with formats like Dolby ATMOS), and - as a benefit - really terrible device security so it’s usually pretty easy for folks to reverse engineer, run custom boot-loaders / jailbreak / scrape their store servers / etc. - stuff that companies like Sony and Microsoft either never had issues with - or have taken seriously long enough that they have locked down.
The only reason they’re still in business is that they still do the one thing that matters most the best - design really great game-play mechanics for IP that is beloved by multiple generations of gamers who will overlook everything else.
Why not both
Yup, they changed their minds. Bluetooth, Titles on mobile. It’s this mish-mash of bullheadedness for the sake of being bullheaded, then the try like a decade later.
I’m personally surprised by Nintendo continuing to include user accessible SD cards in their consoles from the DS through the Switch. It becomes incredibly convenient for piracy and I would have thought they were doing it on purpose to at least sell the hardware if it wasn’t for all the evidence you the contrary.
IMO SD cards are not good for gaming and accessible M.2 should be more common
I’d love a handheld with a little slot where you just slide a 2242 M.2 without having to open the device.
Okay, but as I understand PlayStation and Xbox do not have easily accessible drive ports at all. Or am I mistaken?
It’s not about what is common but instead that micro sd cards aren’t typically designed for so many reads and writes.
The ps5 port only requires one screw to access. I know the hard drive on the PS4 was only one screw to access as well. I’m uncertain of the Xbox, they had a proprietary hard drive for the 360 so I didn’t go down that path. While that is slightly more complicated than inserting a SD card, it is not technical.
M.2 seems easier for normies to mess up and SD cards have traditionally been significantly cheaper… plus a microSD card is smaller than M.2 by an order of magnitude.
Yeah that way the ROG ally can cook them right
Game Cube had a network adapter, but few games used it. It did let you do 8 player Mario Kart.
As on addon or built-in? I know the GameCube had an Ethernet add-on and I think the N64 had a dialup addon (Would have been the fastest at the time for home users, nobody had home broadband on N64 release)
The Wii was the first to have it built in
As built in.
While I agree they’re behind the times on their consoles re online, I think it’s more a software issue. I don’t think criticising the hardware functionality is quite fair.
The predecessor to the Wii was the Gamecube which came out in 2001, where few people had broadband internet
The other consoles in that generation were the ps2, xbox, and briefly dreamcast. Of those, only the xbox came with built in networking, until the playstation slim release in 2004. The dreamcast, ps2 and Gamecube all offered additional adapters to provide ethernet (and the dreamcast and Gamecube had dial up modems available too). So the Gamecube was in line with most of the competition.
The Wii had out of the box WiFi (and an adapter for ethernet available) which put it in a similar space to its competitors. Only the ps3 had both WiFi and ethernet out of the box at launch. The 360 only had ethernet until a refresh that added WIFI. And the Wii was also coming in at a significantly lower price point.
Just mild correction, the Dreamcast came with the dialup modem. So while it wasnt as good, it had functional internet for 99 out of the box
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The original Xbox (2001) came with integrated Ethernet
I think you forgot about the XBox360
And the OG Xbox. And the Dreamcast.
360 didn’t launch with built in wireless though. But yeah you’re right that’s worth mentioning
If we’re just mentioning internet connectivity, the PS2 did end up getting the ethernet + HDD expansion adapter
.
I remember playing MGS Online that way with friends back in the day.