this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
238 points (98.8% liked)

Games

39217 readers
2486 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 46 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

I am not in the market for a console (my last one was the Sega Mega Drive which was abandoned after we got a Pentium 1 PC and dialup), but I got to say, I love Nintendo's pricing policy.

It's almost as if they are taking the piss and want to see to what extent their fans are gluttons for punishment.

One possible complicating factor for those games? While they're physical releases, they use Nintendo's new Game-Key Card format, which attempts to split the difference between true physical copies of a game and download codes. Each cartridge includes a key for the game, but no actual game content—the game itself is downloaded to your system at first launch. But despite holding no game content, the key card must be inserted each time you launch the game, just like any other physical cartridge.

This is full on corporate regressiveness.

Nintendo will also use some Switch 2 Edition upgrades as a carrot to entice people to the more expensive $50-per-year tier of the Nintendo Switch Online service. The company has already announced that the upgrade packs for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will be offered for free to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers. The list of extra benefits for that service now includes additional emulated consoles (Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, and now Gamecube) and paid DLC for both Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8.

Wait so you have to subscribe to get access to emulators (which are all open source I am assuming)? And you can't just buy a retro game (ala GOG) and play it to your heart's content? You need a sub to Nintendo online?

[–] wuzzlewoggle@feddit.org 45 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The key card thing is seriously infuriating, both from a consumer standpoint and from a media conservation standpoint.

Basically you own a game cartridge, but as soon as Nintendo shuts down their servers for whatever reason it becomes a useless piece of plastic. They really don't want us to own anything anymore.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure that's how that works. The Switch already had both physical boxes with digital codes in them and cartridges that required mandatory downloads to run. This seems like a physical unlock key for a digital download, which depending on how it's implemented is actually easier to both resell and use offline than the Switch 1 solution to the same problem.

I don't recommend purchasing either, and I avoided both of those options on Switch 1, but I'm pretty sure this at least does not make things any worse.

I have major gripes with a number of pricing choices in this thing, but to the best of my current understanding this one is based on a misunderstanding.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You cannot use the unlock key, or even redownload the game, when, not if, the Switch store goes offline.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 1 month ago

This is true.

It's also true of the partial download carts for Switch 1 that don't include a full playable version of the game in the cart.

Presumably the digital back-compat on the Switch 2 means the Switch will live a lot longer usual for Nintendo platforms, and we don't know if there will be a backwards compatible Switch 3.

But in practice, this is just an iteration of the Switch 1 version of the same thing. It's not great. I avoided both the mandatory download carts and will likely avoid these ones, but it's not a bigger deal than it has been for the past five years or so.

[–] Kelly@programming.dev 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Their emulators have always been proprietary. The waters were a little muddied by the NES/SNES Classic consoles using a Linux OS but the emulators were their own code.

Their FOSS code is made available when required and is published here:

https://support.nintendo.com/jp/oss/index.html

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I see. I am surprised they didn't simply take existing open source code and go with that.

[–] PrinzKasper@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

They likely want to avoid legitimising those existing emulators.

[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 months ago

Oh wow, that cartridge thing is actually just the worst of both worlds. I'm similar to you, my last console was a Mega Drive but I did get a Switch for my wife and played a couple of games on it which was fun. Not really keen on giving Nintendo more money though.

[–] Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

So when Nintendo servers shut down, that's it.

[–] whodrankarnoldpalmer@startrek.website 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So does this kill used game sales?

[–] XiberKernel@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I think it kills game leaks before the street date. Even if the data isn’t in the cartridge (which is stupid), you would still be able to sell the cartage assuming the online service is still active.

Sucks for game preservation though. I’m personally hoping there’s some flaw in the gen 1 hardware that can be exploited for archive purchases.

(edit: fixed autocorrect)

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I am assuming you can re-sell the "Game Key".