Oops, I forgot to forget to pay and paid. Sorry.

it can turn into the same neo nazi trash that people are joining it to get away from.

And it will. Capitalism makes it inevitable.

Oh, I know everything will be affected by the coming price increases. But the thing is, on PC you have a lot of options as far as getting games to play compared to consoles where you’re locked into their ecosystem and have to pay whatever price they want you to. So it’s a higher up front cost for less cost later. And you can choose to pay less for tech that’s older and will run things at lower settings. With consoles you have no choice.

Oh, good point, I forget about that! They actually went asymmetrical first with the Gamecube, then symmetrical with the Wii pro controller. The Switch is asymmetrical out of necessity, and the Switch pro controller probably is because the joycons are. So it really is only Microsoft always preferring asymmetrical.

After the Switch 2 reveal I saw the writing on the wall that console gaming was going to be too expensive for me, but I still wanted a way to easily play on the TV with a controller. The Steam Deck has been awesome for that. I’m fine with playing older games on it and reserving the rare new demanding games I actually want to play for the PS5. Next gen I might just move to PC for demanding games the way things are going.

For me it came down to affordability more than anything else. The cost of the other PC handhelds don’t make sense to me considering the battery life. Might as well get a laptop at that point. The fact that the Steam Deck doesn’t use Windows and has the best community support were bonuses.

Valve and Sony are the only ones that did symmetrical. Symmetrical was actually first with the DualShock for the PS1, but the 360 controller being popular and commonly used for PC apparently made googly sticks more common. The Switch at least has a justification in that the joycons can be removed and used by themselves, necessitating the stick placement.

All that matters is when the game was first released anywhere. SMW - 11/21/90 in Japan, Sonic - 6/21/91 in Europe (and boy, is it weird that Europe got it first!)

Bowser being Robotnik before Robotnik was a thing.

What about Hogwarts Legacy? Fuck copyright laws, pirate it. Just like with any other big-name game, lots of people will be buying it. Nobody will notice or care that you pirated.

we HP fans deserve a genuinely good Hogwarts simulator along the lines of HL meets Bully

If only Rockstar would make Bully: The Dark Ages.

The Sims 4 is the only game my wife plays nowadays. You can bet we didn’t pay the hundreds of dollars it would cost to get all the DLC.

STAREFIELD

I recently got a Steam Deck after the Switch 2 reveal because Nintendo priced me out, but the vast, vast majority of people aren’t like me. The Switch 2 will do fine, but not nearly as well as the Switch 1 due to prices being less accessible. I wonder just how many actual new exclusive games Nintendo is going to be releasing for it - their new releases were pretty sparse on the Switch due to so many ports, and they’re already pumping out Switch 1 game upgrades for Switch 2 and marketing them like they’re new releases, not to mention it’s going to be PS4/PS5 dual releases all over again for a while.

Yet Nintendo goes after emulation with the fury of a thousand angry suns. It makes me want to pirate their stuff more out of spite.

The “loophole” that they included on their website?

If multiple users want to play the same game at the same time:

The user that purchased the game should play on a system that is not the shared console (a non-primary console). This console will need to have an active internet connection. The user that did not purchase the game should play on the shared console (the primary console for the user that purchased the game).

It has gone up because people will pay the price. The games industry makes money hand over fist and could charge far less and still make a good profit. It’s pure greed, but the consumer is ultimately to blame.

Did you say that they’re raising the price for the US switch?

Most likely they will be. They stopped pre-orders in the US because they have to figure out the tariff situation. $450 is the pre-tariff price.

It would make sense if they lowered the digital price rather than raised the physical one.

For the US only. Other countries won’t be getting a price increase.

Yeah, I could stomach a big upfront cost for the console (a year or so after launch, when you can just walk into a store and get one), but the $80 and $70 price points combined with Nintendo never putting their games on sale makes it so, so not worth it. Third party games you can play elsewhere, even portably, so that’s not nearly as much of a selling point as it was in 2017.