I don’t use A.I. because I’ve had nothing but negative interactions with A.I. Customer service bots that fail to give adequate responses, unhelpful and incorrect search result summaries, and, “art,” that looks like shit hasn’t made me want to sign up for ChatGPT or Gemini. For most people, this isn’t a moral stance, it’s just that the product isn’t worth paying for. Stop framing people that don’t use A.I. as luddites with an ax to grind just because tech bros spent billions on a product that isn’t good yet.

As I said to the last person who said the exact same thing, even at launch, the Wii U’s numbers were sluggish. It was considered a decent start, but it still sold fewer units than the Wii in terms of opening week sales, and it launched just before the holidays. It’s too early to say, but breaking the all-time record for opening day sales is a pretty good sign that this is going to be a different story than the Wii U.

For the record, I hope I’m wrong. I hope this is a flop for Nintendo, and it forces them to go back to making innovative hardware at more affordable prices with physical games that you actually own. That could still happen, but this very early data point doesn’t point that way, and it is not indicative of a second Wii U.

I mean, even at launch, the Wii U’s numbers were sluggish, and the Wii U launched during the holidays. It’s very early, and there could be a huge drop off, but this doesn’t appear to be a Wii U situation.

Yeah, YouTube creators have really figured out that negativity will get more clicks than positivity, so everything is, “finished,” or, “over,” before it even comes out.

As much as I hate what the Switch 2 represents for the industry, this has been a great reminder to ignore the hundreds of YouTube videos that proclaimed, “Switch 2 is DOA,” and that this was, “Nintendo’s downfall!”

Oh. Well, that sucks ass. My switch was a present, so I never knew that.

Oof, yeah, that’s pretty steep for Nintendo. Honestly, I always wait at least a year for the library to build up and the price to drop a bit. I’ve heen thinking that a Steam Deck would be my next purchase as well, and if the Switch 2 turns out OK I’ll get it in a couple of years.

You’re actually skipping one of their handhelds: the Virtual Boy, Nintendo’s attempt at a 3D console in 1995. It was such a huge flop that its designer, Gunpei Yokoi, delayed his retirement in order to help develop the Gameboy Pocket, which was meant to hold the company over until the Gameboy Color was ready for launch.

I get what about not jumping to a new thing just because, but that’s kinda Nintendo’s whole thing (well, that and abusive IP lawsuits). Sometimes it’s a huge hit, like the Wii, and sometimes it’s a train wreck, like the Wii U, but it’s always different and, either way, it usually causes them to innovate.

That’s what I like about Nintendo; unlike their competitors, they’re not releasing the same product every few years with a graphical update, but that seems like what they’re doing here. I’m used to seeing them keep the same system alive for a decade, like the Gameboy or DS, and I’m used to them coming to market late with a relatively underpowered system, but I’m not used to seeing them say, “That was successful, let’s just make another one of those.”

LOL, weird reaction, but OK.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, that’s not nothing. It’s almost nothing, but not nothing.

Yeah, but those are just different models, not different systems. Those DSs were all running the same operating system and playing the same games. We’re not talking about a new generation of console (except from DS to 3DS, which I would say is a pretty big graphical shake-up).

Honestly, I’m a little concerned. Nintendo almost always tries something new and innovative. This just looks like a hardware upgrade, which is good, but not what keeps them ahead of their competitors. The Steam Deck is already encroaching on the Switch’s territory, and it’s only a matter of time before Playstation and Xbox try something similar (assuming Microsoft doesn’t just give up on consoles and just make PCs). I was expecting something no one else would try, like a duel-screen that could function like a Wii U and a DS.

I certainly hope so; I’m on Wolrd, and most of my favorite communities are located on World, but I often find the admins’ decision questionable, and I have just as many reservations about ml. I hope I could put together a good group of communities without either instance, but sometimes it feels like they’re necessary to a good Lemmy experience. But either way, I think you’re right, most instances won’t defederate.

Look, the question was, “Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have.” I gave an answer explaining that I didn’t think Lemmy would enshittify, but pointing out another senerio where Lemmy could collapse. Sorry if you found it too pessimistic, but if you didn’t want to hear negativity, maybe this wasn’t the discussion for you. Also, if your solution is, “make multiple accounts to get around defederation, start your own instance, or GTFO,” that’s going to be a problem for growth, because most users will pick GTFO.

Also, I think hyper-specialized instances will only exacerbate any potential schisms. Tribalism isn’t necessarily political (although that is currently the central conflict on Lemmy). Admins could find divisions over rule enforcement, fediverse philosophy, or just get into good old-fashioned pissing contests. The admins on my instance recently created a real mess with the moderators of their own Vegan community, overriding their moderating decisions and then retroactively changing their own rules to justify it. Now imagine that conflict was between two instances, and you need to make a separate account just to talk about veganism. If anything, it seems like having an eclectic group of communities on each instance would be better than specializing, since admins would really have to consider whether it’s worth cutting their users off from multiple diverse groups over a conflict.

I don’t have the time or interest to do that, and it wouldn’t fix the underlying problem of tribalism that I’m concerned about.

Fair enough, but the point is that the instance would still be cut off from a large portion of most users’ content if it were to defederate from ml or world. And while tankies and centrists libs are the schism developing right now, it seems like that’s a symptom of tribalism people have around instances, which I think could undermine the entire principle of federation in the first place.

sh.itjust.works seems to be doing well, playing nice with world, ml, hexbear, and grad, I just worry that a culture cliqueish I’ve seen so far could keep fracturing Lemmy so it can’t develop a sustainable user base. But as I said, I haven’t been on the platform that long, and this is just my guess of what Lemmy’s version of enshittification might look like after being here a short time.

Right, and as long as I’m wrong about petty tribalism fracturing Lemmy, that’s good. But if your insurance winds up cut off from World or ml because of petty infighting, that will be a problem

Yeah, if I were ever to switch instances, that would probably be my next move. It’s still really small, though. Green Text seems like the only decently sized community.

I’ve only been on this platform for a little less than a year, but my guess is it will be brought down by petty infighting, not financial incentives. World and a few other instances have already decided to defederate from hexbear, and there’s enough tension between World and ml that defederation seems like a real possibility. While the goal may be a decentralized platform, the largest communities are on these two instances, and it they break apart their might not be enough content to keep new users’ interest.

Even if Lemmy gets past the infighting between the liberal Reddit refugees of World and the, “old Lemmy,”" communists of ml, users seem to tie their identity very heavily towards their instance. I’m worried that in the long term, that will drive people away from committing to cross-instance communities; even now, I hear people brag about how they’ve blocked entire instances because they’re full of, “centrists,” or, “tankies.” I think the downside of federation is that it leads to tribalism, and enough of it could kill the momentum Lemmy needs to grow.

I don’t mean to sound down on Lemmy; it’s the most interesting platform I’ve seen in years, and I’m curious to see how it develops. But at this point, I’ve abandoned Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and MySpace; I’ve learned that social media accounts are not permanent parts of your life. I’m having a lot of fun with Lemmy, but I don’t expect to be using it in 5 years.

I mean, fair enough, but I’ve never heard anyone use tankie as…well, not a pejorative. Like, I’ve never heard a liberal call themselves a, “libtard.”