It’s been a while and I’ve never tried a 100% pacifist run, but I think that it’s theoretically possible in Planescape: Torment (Steam, GoG).

I know for a fact that the vast majority of encounters can be skipped with dialogue, and in fact, it’s heavily incentivized because the combat system is not very good.

The Switch 2 has not sold 20M units yet. They just hit 5M, and they’re projecting they’ll sell 15M by the end of the fiscal year, which is by March.

Whops, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to inflate it voluntarily. I remembered 3M from the first few days, then checked update sources, got numbers mixed up in my head and somehow came up with 20M. That’s surely a wild number lol

Thanks for catching that, would hate to spread disinfo like that.

But that’s exactly the same reason I stopped buying any console. I was more than happy to let the handful of Sony exclusives pass me by, and then they started coming to PC. Now I’m more than happy to let a handful of Nintendo exclusives pass me by.

I agree with you here and I wish more people did it as well, but it’s not how it works. Millions of people buy a Nintendo console for their exclusive title of choice, be it Pokémon or Mario or whatever. That’s how it’s been for the past decades, and judging from the 20M consoles sold in a few days, that’s how it’s going for the Switch 2 as well.

Those 20M had plenty of alternatives, be it a traditional console (PS/Xbox), a PC, or a handheld (Steam Deck). They went and bought a Nintendo on day one, despite the alternatives offering equal or better performance, similar form factor and in the same price range.

But that’s not driving console sales like they used to. The last few Final Fantasy games seemed to do quite well on PC, indicating that people did not buy a PS5 to play them, and PS5 is having difficulty matching PS4 units sold even with the utter decimation of their closest competitor.

Yes, but again, that has nothing to do with the argument at hand. Third parties don’t have a horse in the race, they are content selling as many copies as they can because that’s their only revenue stream. It’s a completely different situation for console manufacturers, to the point that they are not even remotely comparable.

That’s another point you made later in your post; wherever Xbox players went, it wasn’t to PlayStation. Data would seem to indicate that not even all of the PlayStation players stuck with PlayStation.

Exactly, which shows that players do move to whatever platform is more enticing to them. There is certainly a “core” fanbase that sticks to their console - either because they have invested in a digital library, or want to stick go their profile and the achievements/trophies built over the years, or simply because of blind brand loyalty - but there are also lots of people who jump ship and take their money elsewhere. And judging from the numbers, it’s not a small amount.

Exactly, but potentially, they would stand to make way more money by selling more copies of those games than by selling more Switch 2s and getting those customers locked in.

That was never the question. Of course they would sell more copies of those games by porting them elsewhere. The question is, does that risk them losing more money in the long run, as players buy their games elsewhere?

A Nintendo player gives nintendo 100% of the cut in any Zelda sale (and other first party titles), and a 30% cut on any other third party game bought on their platform. Conversely, a PlayStation player will give Microsoft 70% of the revenue for one single sale (Forza Horizon 5) and 0% on anything else.

If your user base is small (the Xbox user base certainly is) and not accustomed to buying games (which many devs have lamented over the years - I remember this article from 2022, for example), then it’s a no brainer: port your game to the rival console and enjoy that 70% cut. It’s not as cut-and-dry for Nintendo.

Yes, there is. If you got 30% of all sales from games on an install base the size of the Wii U, it’s not going to make up for a game like Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. selling 100M additional copies on extra platforms. We don’t know yet how well Switch 2 will do (probably better than Wii U and not as well as the Switch 1), but at certain thresholds, that 30% leaves them worse off than that other 70 that reduces the value of their platform.

If your/Piscatella’s argument is that they should give up a 30% cut on all sales because of the possibility (insofar, with no backing) of their console selling less units than the predecessor, then it’s a bad argument.

Even if they somehow lost 10/20% of their previous user base, that’s still gigantic enough to make their 30% cut (and all adjacent revenue streams, like online subscriptions, hardware sales, etc) enticing, especially if those people are accustomed to buying games at full/near full price. Suggesting that the alternative - taking a 70% cut on a few select titles - would be better for them sounds, frankly speaking, ridiculous to me. I would be willing to hear that argument a few years down the line, after seeing how Switch 2 is really doing, but for now, there is simply no reason at all to even entertain such an absurd notion.

And instead he’d say that people are happy where they are and would buy the game if it came to them, as evidenced by how high something like Stellar Blade or Forza Horizon 5 shoot up the charts when they get a port

Comparing Forza Horizon and Stellar Blade to the likes of Pokémon, Mario and Zelda is, frankly speaking, an exercise in futility. You can’t extrapolate useful data by comparing completely different products, catering to completely different audiences.

FH5 already became one of the best-selling PS5 games for the year almost immediately, even though PS5 owners could have bought an Xbox to play it at any point.

Why would a PlayStation user buy an Xbox, like, ever? It’s the same platform, doing the same thing, but worse. Heck, even Xbox users aren’t buying Xbox at this point. PS users waited for FH5 to come to them, because nobody in their right mind would buy a $500 console for FH5 alone, and there’s little from what the Xbox offers that entices them to buy their console.

Nintendo, meanwhile, offers them a different experience (handheld console) playing completely different games (a lot of award winning Nintendo exclusives).

not mentioned in the article, there’s the night and day financial difference that a PC port makes for the likes of a mainstay franchise like Final Fantasy.

Third parties have nothing to gain from exclusivity deals but the initial paycheck, while console manufacturers keep cashing in from people who bought into their ecosystem and are now locked into paying them a 30% from all their purchases. Final Fantasy went multiplatform because the exclusivity cash from Sony was not enough to offset the missed sales from other platforms. There’s also something to say about a shrinking playerbase which makes the franchise less prestigious in the long run (as less players grow up playing FF titles, they won’t develop interest in/nostalgia for the franchise and won’t buy future entries).

That has nothing to do with the argument at hand, though. It’s a completely different situation for two very different players in the market that have nothing to do with one another.

Speaking for myself, I’d have bought Tears of the Kingdom if it came to PC, and instead I was happy to just not play it at all.

A lot of people would be content playing Zelda on their PC, that’s the entire point. A Nintendo console has as much value as the exclusive games you can play on it. Port them over, and a lot of people would just… Not buying the console at all.

There is if the volume of what they’re taking 30% of doesn’t make up for the money they would have made by making Mario Kart, Zelda, and Smash Bros. multiplatform releases.

There is no chance in hell that 30% from all purchases from a healthy fanbase on all games, DLCs and subscriptions (and that’s not factoring in hardware sales, like consoles, Amiibos and other overpriced plastic thingamajig Nintendo fans spend their money on) is even remotely comparable to a 70% cut on some titles, especially if taking that 70% cut risks lowering the interest and engagement on their main platform. Basically, MS had nothing to lose, their 30% cut was shit anyway, but Nintendo’s cut is far more valuable and, at least so far, more enticing than the other option.

They can hope that, but as Piscatella sees in the data, getting people to move largely isn’t happening.

Except that it is. Of the 70-80M XboxOne users who bought that console, only half that much have decided to stick with Microsoft through the next gen. Those people didn’t disappear, they moved onto other (more enticing) consoles. WiiU was a dumpster fire and Switch went on becoming one of the most successful consoles ever: where did all those people come from? Did they stop gaming altogether while waiting for Nintendo to put their shit together? No, they bought a different console, and came back for the Switch because what they saw interested them.

There is certainly a lot going on in the younger market and the generational shift will be something to analyze in the years to come, but Nintendo’s strategy is not without reason.

The strategy worked for Xbox because the alternative was to curl up and die. There’s no reason for Nintendo to give up their 30% sales cut to reach audiences in their system of choice.

Nintendo also has a lot more visibility and brand recognition (and generally speaking, more prestige and goodwill) compared to whatever Microsoft is attempting to sell at the moment, which again, means there’s little reason to reach people who bought into other systems. People already know Pokémon and Mario, and know those are good games. If they wanted to play them, they would’ve bought a Nintendo console.
Porting Mario and Pokémon to PS and Steam would certainly bring in more sales, but it would also devalue a console whose entire shtick is that it lets you play games you can’t play anywhere else.

The only concession Nintendo has done so far is to bring some spin-off titles to mobile, possibly in an attempt to corner the younger market that seems to be less interested in traditional consoles, and hook them with their games in the hope of them buying a Switch and doing their purchases on the Nintendo store.

Whoever says that Nintendo should follow in the steps of one of the biggest failures of today’s console market, instead of doing what they’ve done so far with resounding success, is nuts, especially since the “data” MS has released so far about their consoles and the revenue is muddy at best - they say, for example, that GamePass is profitable, but we don’t know how much profitable it is, nor how much does it cost for them to bring into the service all those games, nor the opportunity cost of releasing those games on the service instead of selling them, nor… Anything at all, really. Like, how many players are on GP that play regularly? How much money did those players spend on the store before subscribing to GP? How much do they spend now? How many of those players are subscribed for Gold and Call of Duty, and how many are interested in other titles? What’s the difference in sales between GP and selling the same game on a successful platform, ie Steam/PS? Is GP the fault of other titles selling poorly on the console, and if so, doesn’t that threaten the stability of the console, when the developers refuse to optimize or straight up release their game on the platform because it’s a waste of time and money to do so?

Microsoft knows that data and refuses to tell us, so we’re left wondering what “profitable” means. What we know for sure is that Xbox is dead, and Nintendo isn’t.

Imagine saying that one of (if not the most, we’ll see how it goes) successful consoles of all time should follow Microsoft’s example when it comes to administering their consoles and exclusives.

Like, wow. I despise Nintendo and everything they stand for, but this is just delusional on so many levels.

CrossCode is one of my favourite games ever. I can barely contain my excitement for this one!

P.S: Alabaster Dawn is from the same developers as CrossCode, but it’s not a sequel, it’s a new IP.

Steve Jobs a psychologist now.

It’s a bit of a complicated situation and I wouldn’t go into much detail, but basically, they live in Italy, but one of their job is (work from home) in another country. They are taxed by the other country, then taxed by Italy as well.

After that, Italy fined them on some bullshit grounds and forced them to pay a ridiculous sum of money. Needless to say, they never attempted to skirt or evade taxes or anything. They worked their ass off and the country said “fuck you in particular” because Italy.

I specifically remember them telling me that, despite being half Italian, they wanted to live in Italy because they love the country and have friends and family here, but now they don’t know what to do. It’s heartbreaking seeing how our country treats its citizens, then our politicians going on TV and lamenting the fact that young people choose to go live elsewhere. Italy as a country doesn’t see you as a citizen to protect, it just wants to squeeze you dry and leave you for dead.

Italy is a joke. Our politicians call us lazy, the rich go on TV crying because they can’t find people willing to work for minimal (or below) wage, and then a young person manages to carve themselves a path outside of the ‘norm’, our state immediately shows up and curb stomps them.

I was talking with a colleague of mine the other day. They work two jobs to make a living. The state taxed them so much, they are paying more for the second job that they are gaining, basically working for free. Tax the poor, let the rich off the hook.

Fuck Italy.

John Wick Hex has been sold as a completed product and will remain playable (for people who have already bought it, and people who track down a physical copy) even after the publisher pulls the plug. This is not planned obsolescence, their license for the movie rights has expired.

Stop Killing Games has NOTHING to do with this.

The catch is that each of them has to come up with a different anagram every time.