@Mars Tbh this is the risk with making games exclusive to any console (as well as any platform, speaking more broadly), or for any publisher.
The games industry across the board is largely terrible at preserving their past works, with it only recently becoming even of slight interest to any of them (e.g. Microsoft backwards compatibility). They’d rather old IP rot & be forgotten than risk releasing it & losing the slightest profit opportunity from a nostalgia cash-in.
That’s why I like GOG. No DRM bullshit and they actually put in some effort to make old games run on modern hardware.
When it comes to console games, emulation is the only way to go most of the time. If only they would just let you buy ROMs legally for a fair price. Instead Nintendo likes to give you a sub par experience and only if you subscribe to their service. No way to purchase old games. Not that you ever really owned the eShop games you bought, but at least it was not tied to a bloody subscription service.
I feel some kind of way lately about the superior experience available with emulators vs the original console, too. Like, do you want to buy a switch and a ~$70 game to play Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 720p at 30fps and with no ability to adjust the control mappings, or do you want to emulate it at 1440p 60fps and use your favorite controller set up just the way you like it? And that’s not even accounting for mods, which could include accessibility improvements (by god, why is there not a color blind mode in a 2023 game? I hate to think what that game must be like for people who can’t distinguish blue/green or yellow/orange, when using the powers that rely on highlighting objects in those colors.)
The system as is now asks people to pay more for an inferior experience than the people who download it and emulate it, and inferior than the one people get if they do have legal copies but use those legal copies to set up an “illegal” - per Nintendo - emulator for the game they legitimately bought. When Nintendo attacks emulators, it screws over both pirates and people who literally bought the game on switch, and would probably buy it on PC too if they could, who just want that better experience.
@Lowbird@Link To add to this, when Nintendo attacks emulators they even screw over folks that buy their games to show support and then play them via emulator for the benefits they provide over the original hardware.
Sure, that may be an exceedingly small number of folks, but I’ve personally done this with older titles simply ‘cause emulation provides so much more flexibility. I’d do similar with other platforms’ recent games if it was as viable (looking at you specific PS3/PS4 exclusives).
My brother bought an original box case of SWAT 4 for over 100 dollars, saying it was the only way he could get it, I then bought it on GOG for 9 bucks lol. He then swapped to saying he wanted it for the box and art and all that (which is a valid reason), but that definitely wasn’t why he spend 100+
I’m hoping exclusives, by which I mean true exclusives and not timed exclusives, go the way of the dodo. They’re already a lot more rare; Nintendo is the last big holdout when it comes to tying their games to their own hardware only.
That said, I don’t know what Xbox and Playstation are doing in regards to the Japanese releases of (what in the U.S. are) timed exclusives. Are they timed exclusives in Japan as well, just the same, or are they be treating that market differently? Are there PC ports available in some countries that aren’t made available in other countries or in languages besides English?
I dunno about the the preservation value of something like gamepass, either. Games come and go continually, online connection is required, and the files are… Stored in incredibly messy and inconvenient ways for everybody who even just wants to mod a game or copy save files. But still, it means they make official PC versions that could be separated from gamepass if that goes down one day.
@Mars Tbh this is the risk with making games exclusive to any console (as well as any platform, speaking more broadly), or for any publisher.
The games industry across the board is largely terrible at preserving their past works, with it only recently becoming even of slight interest to any of them (e.g. Microsoft backwards compatibility). They’d rather old IP rot & be forgotten than risk releasing it & losing the slightest profit opportunity from a nostalgia cash-in.
That’s why I like GOG. No DRM bullshit and they actually put in some effort to make old games run on modern hardware.
When it comes to console games, emulation is the only way to go most of the time. If only they would just let you buy ROMs legally for a fair price. Instead Nintendo likes to give you a sub par experience and only if you subscribe to their service. No way to purchase old games. Not that you ever really owned the eShop games you bought, but at least it was not tied to a bloody subscription service.
I feel some kind of way lately about the superior experience available with emulators vs the original console, too. Like, do you want to buy a switch and a ~$70 game to play Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 720p at 30fps and with no ability to adjust the control mappings, or do you want to emulate it at 1440p 60fps and use your favorite controller set up just the way you like it? And that’s not even accounting for mods, which could include accessibility improvements (by god, why is there not a color blind mode in a 2023 game? I hate to think what that game must be like for people who can’t distinguish blue/green or yellow/orange, when using the powers that rely on highlighting objects in those colors.)
The system as is now asks people to pay more for an inferior experience than the people who download it and emulate it, and inferior than the one people get if they do have legal copies but use those legal copies to set up an “illegal” - per Nintendo - emulator for the game they legitimately bought. When Nintendo attacks emulators, it screws over both pirates and people who literally bought the game on switch, and would probably buy it on PC too if they could, who just want that better experience.
Tldr: longwinded agreement with you
@Lowbird @Link To add to this, when Nintendo attacks emulators they even screw over folks that buy their games to show support and then play them via emulator for the benefits they provide over the original hardware.
Sure, that may be an exceedingly small number of folks, but I’ve personally done this with older titles simply ‘cause emulation provides so much more flexibility. I’d do similar with other platforms’ recent games if it was as viable (looking at you specific PS3/PS4 exclusives).
My brother bought an original box case of SWAT 4 for over 100 dollars, saying it was the only way he could get it, I then bought it on GOG for 9 bucks lol. He then swapped to saying he wanted it for the box and art and all that (which is a valid reason), but that definitely wasn’t why he spend 100+
I would guess that was after he found out the disc doesn’t run on a modern PC.
It actually did work! idk how lol
I’m hoping exclusives, by which I mean true exclusives and not timed exclusives, go the way of the dodo. They’re already a lot more rare; Nintendo is the last big holdout when it comes to tying their games to their own hardware only.
That said, I don’t know what Xbox and Playstation are doing in regards to the Japanese releases of (what in the U.S. are) timed exclusives. Are they timed exclusives in Japan as well, just the same, or are they be treating that market differently? Are there PC ports available in some countries that aren’t made available in other countries or in languages besides English?
I dunno about the the preservation value of something like gamepass, either. Games come and go continually, online connection is required, and the files are… Stored in incredibly messy and inconvenient ways for everybody who even just wants to mod a game or copy save files. But still, it means they make official PC versions that could be separated from gamepass if that goes down one day.