Splatoon 3 Championship 2023 - Nintendo Live 2023
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Starting at 3pm PT, the top 4 teams from the online Splatoon 3 Championship 2023 Qualifier tournament face off in the Splatoon 3 Championship 2023 held on th...

Direct Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecsVny3ebQ0

Announcements In order announced:

I liked the Direct, even though new announcement for first party were pretty much all remakes, but since Switch is my first Nintendo console, I loved all those announcements.

What do you all think about it?

  • KecessaEnglish
    93·
    1 year ago

    Because I find it insulting to have to pay for services that are free on PC, especially when we’re talking about being able to play multiplayer games using a peer to peer connection or the ability to play some older games (amongst other things).

    • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
      62·
      1 year ago

      I feel ya, but consoles are a different beast.

      Reasonable people can debate how the pricing should be structured, especially when it comes to online functionality that doesn’t even take a penny of Nintendo’s server budget…

      But I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect zero cost at all, when:

      • Console manufacturers have an unavoidable incentive to sell hardware at a loss (even without factoring in the platforming costs+risks) and make up for it in software sales and add-on services
      • …and they suffer the reputation hit if any of their offerings are not up to par, in a way that e.g. Windows does not, so they have an unavoidable interest in monitoring and triaging issues with games
      • …and networked components tend to be the most sensitive and most traceable part of any software system
      • …and scaling issues tend to be a cross-cutting concern that a third-party vendor who isn’t intimately familiar with the client codebase can affordably help with

      It’s just part of the deal you make when you sign up for a walled garden. You get certain guarantees, but only if you pay for the relevant package. You can’t have it both ways – getting the benefit of first-party backing while enjoying the freedom of a purely third-party environment. It’s like a cruise ship that doesn’t let you bring your own alcohol.

      • KecessaEnglish
        62·
        1 year ago

        Windows doesn’t offer the service that connects Counter Strike players together, Valve does, and they do it for free and they offer it for first and third party games and they suffer the reputation hit if the service doesn’t work (possibly even worse because at least with consoles you potentially have a physical copy as a backup to play with, which isn’t a possibility with always online games on Steam).

        Nintendo gets a cut on all software sold on their consoles, they get all profits from first party software, they don’t tend to be the manufacturer that sells at the biggest loss (if at a loss at all), but people are still defending their choice to lock basic functionalities behind a paywall…

        • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          they don’t tend to be the manufacturer that sells at the biggest loss (if at a loss at all)

          Yeah, fair enough: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/79180/xboxes-arent-profitable-but-the-nintendo-switch-certainly-is/index.html

          While Sony and Microsoft sell consoles at a loss and rely on game sales, monetization, and services to turn a profit, Nintendo designed the Switch so it made a profit at the beginning of its lifespan. Every year Nintendo makes profits from Switch hardware, and in FY2021 alone, the company generated a whopping $8.2 billion from hardware sales. Hardware made up over half (57.2%) of its total gaming earnings (over $16 billion), the company said in a recent earnings report.

          Still, the staffing and computing resources of online services are an ongoing cost. I wouldn’t say that Valve is quite in a similar position to Nintendo here, but I see your point that there are companies willing to lean in and expose themselves to a certain degree. I mean, Microsoft even does that by exempting certain games from requiring a Live subscription.

          But Valve and Microsoft are vastly more mature than Nintendo when it comes to cloud infrastructure, and there are some side benefits to carrying that cost themselves, too, when the core of your business model depends on you having it figured out to the point that a real-world system performs well on it.

          I’m just sayin, there are different concerns here and it’s a pretty reasonable ask. They’re not exactly cackling towards the sky in a dark tower with a bolt of lightning behind them saying “my evil plan to lock basic functionality behind a paywall is finally complete!” with their $20/year service.

          I think there’s room for both of us to be right here. At least, so long as you agree that it still costs Valve and Microsoft money to foot the bill for their free (to the consumer) online services, they just choose to not pass the cost along because it gives them other advantages that may not be universally applicable to every vendor.