Look, I want a Steam Deck from the deepest depths of my heart and I love what it offering... but this take just isn't it. The Steam Deck is said to have sold "multiple millions" of units, lets say generously around 10 million. The Nintendo Switch has sold 132 million units. The Steam Deck couldn't hope to begin threatening the Nintendo Switch.
Though in all fairness, I don't think it needs to. It's much more of a specialized device rather than something you give to your kids.
The creature designs are similar to Pokémon but that's where it begins and ends. Palworld is a survival sandbox with creature collecting, it doesn't even have turn-based battles. It's far more similar to Ark or Rust than Pokémon.
If anyone wanted a game that "is but isn't Pokémon" they should look into TemTem or Cassette Beasts.
Yeah, but I would say that already makes it more markedly different, even compared to, say, Monster Hunter Stories. Sure, there's cutesy creatures which gives it some similar aesthetics but the gameplay experience is not even remotely similar.
Compared to Lies of P which looks and plays like Bloodborne, it's not really that close.
I get it, but part of my point is that there are games that are very much like Pokémon for someone who wants 90% of that with a little bit of a different twist. Meanwhile I'm seeing some people looking into Palworld and going "Wait is this Minecraft? I wanted Pokémon with guns."
I got an OLED SWITCH for Christmas and I’ve been diving into the emulated games. So much fun but I normally emulate games on my miyoo mini plus or pc....
Frankly emulating on other systems is simply better by all the improvements you can do over the base experience. Especially when it comes to 3D games. Not to mention the libraries are much more expansive. I think the only advantage of NSO is the integrated online multiplayer being more seamless and easier to find other players in.
Not in the rare cases when the company is owned by someone who cares about the product, who resists investor pressures. To some extent Larian, Valve and Nintendo manage it so far.
Decline through endless profit chasing only seems inevitable because profiteering investors are so thoroughly present in nearly every company.
That's why "to some extent". Nintendo does some unsavory moves, but I'm not sure the point of it is profiteering, especially when it comes to taking things out of sale.
But you can't deny that they put out games of consistent quality, and not overly monetized.
Caring about the product is not incompatible with making profit, but it is incompatible with maximizing profit, because then your design priorities must shift to emphasize functionality and entertainment to cutting costs and expanding monetization opportunities.
It's easy to see in gacha games. Even the best of them have to have to obstruct fun to make money, from the way they limit gameplay options so that people will gamble for them to the way that they gate progression behind repetitive daily grind so that people will keep coming back out of habit and FOMO.
Even beyond the monetization itself, great games require a willingness to take time experimenting and polishing, time which would seem like wasted wages to more money oriented companies. Sometimes it pays off, like Larian, but sometimes it doesn't, like the old Clover Studio.
To be fair, originally it utterly failed to do most that they promised and I don't blame anyone who felt burned because of that and gave up on it,
But today, it does some of the craziest stuff that it promised that at the time sounded like pipe dreams. The planets are some crazy and different some of them seem downright surreal. I made a base on a planet with a landscape made of stained glass crystals. The animals are wild and weird. Getting to learn to communicate word by word with multiple different alien species is pretty cool. The dynamics of trading are pretty interesting. Raiding derelict freighters is creepy. And you can play all of it with your friends.
When people say it's shallow, I wonder if they didn't even try to bite into it or they are expecting custom story content in every planet. I have played it for hundreds of hours and I didn't even finish the main story quest. Each aspect of the game has a lot to offer.
Because of that I'm also really looking forward for their new game.
Sure but still today there are people who say it is too shallow and dull, and at that point I think they are just expecting it to be fundamentally different.
Most digital gaming stores are, except GOG and ItchIO. Even consoles are trying to push things that way. XBox has Game Pass and Playstation released a version of their console with no disc reader. Subscriptions may seem more fleeting that digital purchases but in actuality we've seen how companies can take down purchased media and entire digital storefronts.
I have purchased more Steam games than it would be sensible but as companies lose any qualm to take purchases away from customers, if anyone wants any any guarantee of ownership they really need to buy DRM-free and back them up independently.
To be fair nobody plays *JUST one single game for 3 years. Economically speaking it is more affordable to pay the subscription than to buy it. That said there are no guarantees they won't raise prices. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually decide to include ads and add limits eventually. There's not even an expectation of control by the users.
But we have seen enough of how streaming libraries change and split. Losing access to your favorite game is an almost inevitable eventuality.
You are confusing my argument. You listed me 10+ games. If you paid $2/mo for 3 years and got to own a game for it, that would be enough for a couple of them at most. I'm not saying old games are not worth playing. I'm saying that if you had to pick between buying all the games you like or paying for a subscription, most likely the subscription would be more affordable. Because ultimately you played more than a single game.
To be fair nobody plays just one single game for 3 years (they play multiple)
rather than
To be fair nobody plays one game for 3 years (they are too old)
The former complements the following argument regarding how costly buying vs subscribing would be. The latter doesn't work with the following paragraph that lists the unreliability of subscription libraries as a downside.
This sort of argument is just a way to cope with the erosion of customer rights and the overreach of corporations over digital media as if that's some inevitable entropy of the universe type of thing. We still have books that are thousands of years old, but even though we have better technological means to store and reproduce media than ever, arbitrary legal hurdles are leading people to treat cultural loss as an inevitability.
You got your answer in your own response. Emulators are a thing. Virtual Machines are a thing. Proton is a thing. We figured out how to recover games going as far back as the Atari. Unless actively and fiercely obstructed people will figure out how to keep these things available out of sheer passion and goodwill.
A DRM-free installer/executable for a game, when properly backed up, will still be playable most likely indefinitely.
Unfortunately, as the mention of DRM itself indicates, obstructions are plentiful and ever increasing. This is why supporting DRM-free media and open platforms is valuable. Can you imagine what people could do if they were empowered instead of obstructed?
You really seem to want to argue with me but I don't think you understood what I was saying to begin with. I'm not saying subscriptions are better, I'm saying they are more economical but unreliable, and I am saying that you, who listed 10+ great games you played a lot, didn't get only a single one. It also doesn't mean there won't ever be any new game you like.
You know, 10 games × $60 > $2 × 12mo × 3y
Though Ubisoft is $18/mo and games are $70 now. Ubisoft Club is a bad deal but Game Pass is still ends up cheaper at $10/mo. But I digress,
That said there are no guarantees they won't raise prices.
Yup. You just want to argue and decided you'll be doing it at me for whatever reason. This is literally on my first comment that you replied to.
You convinced yourself I'm advocating for subscription as The Future, rather than just conceding one point on economic grounds. Meanwhile in this thread you could find me arguing that DRM-free backups is the only true guaranteed way to own digital media.
It can go however far you want. Even if you say you'll play these games for the rest of your life, at $2/mo buying it only becomes more economically worthwhile if you entirely quit getting games entirely. I emphasize, economically. Now, if we take Game Pass, depending on where you live buying might be more worthwhile if you get 2 or less full-priced games a year. In my country Game Pass is cheaper than 2 games
With the means that we have, that anywhere in the world a dozen people can figure out how to get very niche things adapted in one way or another into different systems, and countless people can keep media on thumb drives rather than needing entire climate controlled libraries, something has to be very, very, extremely obscure for it to be completely lost, and even then there are people for which the obscurity of something is the very thing that makes it appealing.
I don't think you are technically incorrect to some extent that some things will inevitably disappear, but I would still scratch it far more to imposed legal and technical restrictions than to the futility of fighting time.
Say, every single online or mobile game that closes and is completely lost? It's 100% on the erosion of customer rights, exclusively. We have today the technology to keep them running and people willing to do it. It's just that business and contracts defined that, no matter how much people have spend on them, they don't get access to essential server files necessary to keep it running. This is not "time coming for us all", it's selfish businesses enabled by a law with no regards for cultural preservation.
Meanwhile the MAME project year after year figures out how to run incredibly niche arcade titles from decades ago. Even with all the challenges and obstructions.
Really, take a moment to really admire, that with all the struggles and limitations that we have, you as an individual human being, can with a handheld device, access and personally store thousands of Public Domain books from the Gutemberg Project, the entirety of Wikipedia, several full collections of every single game released for multiple consoles, including prototypes, hacks and homebrew. A single person can do that much. Ozymandias' statue may crumble to dust but his history lives on, in someone's pocket.
Maybe to you all that effort is pointless. Maybe it's be easier to just let it go. But there's a whole world of other people who might be interested in it. Maybe you just care about one single game. But a different person cares about a different single game. In a world of billions, how many different things might people care about?
If you talk to me about the inexorable advance of time, I'll still be on the side of the indomitable human spirit.
When talking about the best games of all time people generally mention Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario 64, Halo 3, The Last of Us, Nier Automata, etc. , but dismiss other great games....
Toribash is an indie classic. It was mentioned fairly often among indie fans around the time of Cave Story's rise. But back then there weren't so many indie fans.
Tunic has such an unique vision and it executes it expertly. On the surface it's a zelda-like but it's so much more than that, and it's best experienced blind. In fact, that's the whole idea. The developer wanted to replicate the experience of being a kid picking up a game in a different language that you had to figure out little by little.
Hundreds of developers say they're working on Nintendo Switch 2 (www.eurogamer.net)
A growing number of video game developers are now quietly working on projects for Nintendo's unannounced Switch 2. Eigh…
Palworld Sells Over 1 Million Copies in Just 8 Hours as Steam Servers Struggle to Cope With Launch - IGN (www.ign.com)
Palworld has hit a big sales milestone just hours after release in what is already looking like one of the biggest video game launches of 2024.
Barbarians don't suffer such insecurities (startrek.website)
With Nintendo Switch Online having emulators like gba and 64 etc. Would you play those versions or would you continue to emulate those games on another device?
I got an OLED SWITCH for Christmas and I’ve been diving into the emulated games. So much fun but I normally emulate games on my miyoo mini plus or pc....
'You won’t find our games on a subscription service' says the founder of Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian, after Ubisoft forecasts a future of players 'not owning' games (www.pcgamer.com)
"Subscription models will always end up being cost/benefit analysis exercises intended to maximise profit."
We have mind-controlled furry avatars yet Facebook can't get legs working right in the Metaverse (lemmy.world)
twitter.com/the_nerd_skull/…/1747328857617883402
What are some good games that have a bad reputation due to unreasonable expectations?
For consistency sake, let’s say that any game that’s >or=7/10 at what it’s trying to do while having a popular perception of being a
Ubisoft Wants You To Be Comfortable Not Owning Your Games (kotaku.com)
What games do you think are unfairly snubbed when talking about the best games of all time?
When talking about the best games of all time people generally mention Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario 64, Halo 3, The Last of Us, Nier Automata, etc. , but dismiss other great games....
What difficult games/game challenges did you give up on?
Be it a game that’s difficult in its entirety, or a particular challenge in a game that you just couldn’t complete....