Just like the horse armor, people complain and complain and then fork over the money anyway.
Are lemmites going to realise that they aren’t the majority and that there’s a whole world of different people out there.
Looks at comments
I guess not.
Yeah, I’m not happy about the Switch 2, but the amount of cope is unbelievable. I’ve seen multiple people claiming, “the Wii U sold out a launch too,” even though the Wii U sold worse than the Wii on opening weekend. The sales might still fall off a cliff in a month, but breaking the PS4’s record for launch sales is not a great sign.
I guess it wasn’t too expensive after all.
"THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY THINK WE’RE GOING TO STAND FOR THIS!
I’ll take two, one for me, and one to sellHOW COME THEY KEEP DOING THIS!? DON’T THEY KNOW THEY’LL LOSE ME AS A
repeatCUSTOMER!?"So much for the boycott and all the negative press it got.
Non-tech people usually don’t care about the ToS and the dirty practices a company does. They’ll gladly pay for the ‘convenience’.
Most Nintendo fans even argued that prices, new ToS (bricking the device) and such were “justifiable”. Same thing about owning games, most argued that “in today’s era you barely own anything anyway”.
It’s very unfortunate and sad to see but it is reality.
Personally though, I’ll wait for either a working emulation or when there’s an actual exploit found to hack the Switch 2.
Tech people here not sure why you think we care more than others. I want to play new Nintendo games and I can afford it. That’s really all it’s about.
Tech people here not sure why you think we care more than others. I want to play new Nintendo games and I can afford it. That’s really all it’s about.
You might not care but tech people do care. Much more than non-tech people.
A statement can be true even when it does not apply to you.
So much for the boycott
What boycott? Don’t overestimate bla bla bla on lemmy and other social media.
Boycott 101, it’s not a boycott if you doesn’t want to buy that shit before calling boycott.
Gamers are the least savvy consumers on earth.
Matt Piscatella pointed out on Bluesky that a launch like this is only a function of how much inventory they made available. The Xbox One had the third most successful US launch of a console.
Every Nintendo console released gets negative press. I remember the articles bashing the original Switch because it was underpowered and that it was another gimmicky console - only for it becoming so successful that the form factor is being copied left and right.
As for boycotts, I only saw people bitching about games being more expensive. I get it, I too would love to get shit for free. But inflation is a thing, games are more expensive to make nowadays, and that cost will be offloaded to consumers. At least Nintendo games are not plagued with monetization and typically are released in a complete state.
The WiiU also got negative press. That doesn’t somehow redeem it.
So did the Wii, I remember the game press making fun of the gimmicky motion controls.
My point is that negative press for Nintendo on every console iteration is a given, and very little can be extracted from it.
You and I remember the press for the Wii very, very differently. Just look at the Wikipedia article listing all the awards it won before or around it’s launch. Game Critics, Spike TV, Golden Joystick, Popular Science, IGN, GameSpot, the Guardian, and much more. including awards and praise for the innovative controls.
Was there negativity? Sure, but it was a miniscule minority. The kind of thing only an extremely defensive Nintendo fan would notice. The Wii sold out instantly and was impossible to find for the first year or two, similar the PS5 except without the excuse of a global pandemic disrupting supply chains.
It’s not some anti-Nintendo bias. The press was pretty mixed on the Xbox One for example, with some outlets pointing out it was a bit overpriced, and of course the whole debacle about being always-online and the Kinect being mandatory caused a lot of backlash. The PS3 was seen as overpriced at launch and got a 6/10 from IGN.
And another important factor is that conditions change after launch. (The 360 probably would have had worse reviews if the press knew about the red ring of death before launch. The PS3 saw price reductions and eventually outsold the 360 despite having a worse launch. The 3DS floundered for its first few months until Nintendo dropped the price.
The press is neither monolithic nor perfect. I guarantee you can find some outlet somewhere with the exact take you are looking for, but to just dismiss the entire industry because you don’t agree with most of them on the Switch 2 seems like coping.
Call it coping all you want. We are talking about an event that happened more than 2 decades ago. I was there, and I clearly remember a lot of negative press for every Nintendo console.
Fun fact by the way, I am not even necessarily a Nintendo fan. I loved the SNES and all their handhelds, but I really hated the N64 and seriously disliked the Wii U, and I was never all that much in love with the Wii. But I recognize that every console iteration the gaming press spells doom for Nintendo. It’s almost a meme at this point.
Also, it’s not only for Nintendo, I do lump the vast majority of gaming press in the “trash” category. I completely ignore professional reviews for a reason. Gaming press is just marketing and PR.
In the end of the day Nintendo products are for casual gamers who only care about commercial material. It wouldn‘t even cross their minds to read reviews or discuss it outside their neoliberal Discord bubble. Emulating? How scary!
Besides, the Switch is a beloved system and many users waited for an upgrade for years. The Switch 2 is downwards compatible and able to give your older games a considerable performance boost. 90€ for new games just isn‘t enough of an argument to sit out this generation when you‘ve already spent thousands on games in the Nintendo ecosystem. The locked in effect is strong.
I am not very surprised by this but I sure as hell am glad I bought my Switch and and several games second hand for I‘m mostly a PC gamer.
In the end of the day Nintendo products are for casual gamers who only care about commercial material. It wouldn‘t even cross their minds to read reviews or discuss it outside their neoliberal Discord bubble. Emulating? How scary!
This sounds very inaccurate to me. Either that, or I just learned that I am a casual gamer that only cares about commercial material. And it seems that I don’t read reviews or only discuss things on some hypothetical neoliberal Discord bubble.
You derive far too much meaning from people’s preferences for console platform.
Care to paint a different perspective for me then? Just disagreeing isn‘t a good strategy for a discussion.
The Switch 2 is a fine upgrade to a successful but aging system?
I mean, the price is similar to the cheapest Steam Deck I can find, which has a similar form factor. Beyond that, it is compatible with my switch 1 library, and those games will benefit from the more powerful Switch 2 hardware - some of those had occasional slowdowns on the old hardware. What’s not to like?
First party games are slightly more expensive, but that is to be expected as the industry is inching towards more expensive games. That is understandable considering inflation. As a point of reference, in the early 90s I bought TLoZ: ALttP for around 50 USD. In today’s money it would be considerably more expensive than the price increase.
On the bright side, Nintendo games at least don’t have awful monetization and tend to be released in a complete state. I prefer to pay 80 for this than 60 for a game that will be full of microtransactions anyway (as most AAA tend to be).
Beyond that, it seems the joycons are crap, as the old ones were. Does not matter much to me, I only use the Switch docked and I have much superior 8BitDo controllers to play anyway. I never really touch the joycons.
And to be honest, all first party controllers seem to be crap nowadays. My PS5 controller had horrible drift after a few months of light use. Might be even more fragile than the joycons.
So yeah, I think the idea of a boycott was pointless.
Is this enough og a different perspective? Or am I just some Discord neoliberal?
Or am I just some Discord neoliberal?
So that’s what ticket you off? Because we agree on pretty much everything else it seems. I really don’t know what to tell you here. Discord’s entire business model is neoliberal to the core so naturally you find tons of neoliberals on servers there. You know the kind who complained about 90€ for Mariokart and 10€ for Welcome Tour once they were announced but then shared pics of their Switch 2 hauls on release day in the same chat. It is what it is and I think there is no point in having strong feelings about it.
I just think it’s an odd insult. I don’t particularly like Discord, but I use it here and there because that seems to be the current replacement for what would have been private forums back in the day. I didn’t think having that piece of garbage software installed would say much of my political positions.
I use Discord too. This isn‘t about you or every single Discord user specifically but my impression of the average user and consumer. They may complain at first but then they vote with their wallet and often can‘t even help making ironic remarks about having irresponsible spending habits. Why you bought it is up to you and I think there are good reasons for it despite everything. The console is at the beginning of it‘s life cycle so it‘s a bit early to completely judge for me.
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I sure as hell am glad I bought my Switch and and several games second hand
I had a Switch but I sold it after realizing that even second hand games sell for 90% of new. I’ve no idea how the economics of that situation works out…
Nintendo has spent decades building an extremely loyal, multigenerational consumer base. They also release very popular, high quality games. I have no interest in owning a Switch, but I get why so many people do.
And the masses have been conditioned to accept the corporate anti-consumer “you will own nothing and you will like it” MO.
Yeah, PC gamers bent the knee to Steam decades ago at this point. This isn’t exactly a brand new issue.
The vast majority of Steam games can be easily cracked and played offline if they ever go rogue. Modern console games are much more difficult to jailbreak like that.
Except that they are not high-quality. For example, Pokemon Scarlet.
Ah yes, the one Nintendo IP that has gone to shit. Not fully by the way, as Legends Arceus was fantastic, and even my mom who hasn’t given a fuck about Pokemon since Yellow loved watching me play it. If Gamefreak would finally make another side game like Mystery Dungeon (or the more forgotten cult classics like Pokepark, Ranger, Conquest, Rumble, etc.) we wouldn’t be trolling them so hard. It’s also more of a Gamefreak problem than anything, as other companies that did Pokemon games (Chunsoft, Genius Sonority, etc.) did fantastic.
Anyway Zelda and Mario are still making bangers, Kirby Air Riders is coming back, Metroid fans are fed, Splatoon is getting a whole new game for Switch 2 (fuck me…), people are still relatively happy with Animal Crossing NH, we’ll see how Donkey Kong’s new game does, and while FE’s newest entry wasn’t so hot you can’t ignore how Three Houses brought in a brand new wave of loyal FE fans.
Literally everyone knows Pokemon mainline has been going to shit (and not the characters, designs, music, etc. imo, just the animations and story writing). Pick another game, even Nintendo (and Pokemon) fans make fun of it.
We’ll have to see how Beast of Reincarnation turns out. Gamefreak’s other side games weren’t anything spectacular, except for Smart Ball.
And with that. Every gamer was fucked
Not yet. The 3DS and Wii U sold out at launch, too, but after the diehards all got them, nobody else wanted them. The 3DS recovered after they dropped the price by $80 6 months after launch, but the Wii U never did. Maybe that won’t happen this time and we truly are fucked, but time will tell. Historically, Nintendo fucks up after they have a successful console and get cocky with the next one.
Don’t forget that the Wii U had one of the most incompetent console marketing campaigns of all time. Just two years ago I met someone who still didn’t know it was a console and not an accessory.
That’s true, but that alone doesn’t account for how just how bad it did. The idea that Nintendo consoles are always bought up by lots of people no matter what is completely untrue. One big advantage they’ve always had that they no longer do is affordability compared to the competition. What will determine whether it’s a success will ultimately be how many good exclusive games they can pump out, and their track record has been awful since the launch of the Switch. A very large chunk were Wii U ports, which worked because nobody had one, but they’re already heavily shilling Switch 1 upsells. Diehards will of course snatch them up, but with 150 million Switches out there I question how interested the masses will be in them. If Nintendo seriously ups their game and consistently puts out new good games, I imagine people will stomach the prices. But are they even capable of that any more?
There are three guarantees in life:
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Death
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Taxes
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A video game boycott will never succeed.
It’s not really about boycotts not working.
It’s that a handful of people virtue signaling about how bad X game/company is on niche social media communities don’t matter if their opinions aren’t aligned with your average person.
Most people just enjoy games as a hobby and treat it the same way they treat picking something to watch on Netflix.
On the plus side, the virtue signalers saved $ and can spend it on something that’ll bring them more joy and is hopefully more aligned with their views. And gives them practice and a mindset of “I’m the kind of person willing to boycott” for any other boycotts that might have a real effect someday.
…I have thought about it and it is interesting that “virtue signal” is such a dirty word now. When I say “please” and “thank you” I’m essentially just virtue signaling that I’m willing to play nice, but nobody calls me the bad word for that. Although I understand that the current use of “virtue signal” is more about people you find to be sanctimonious and obnoxious online who you personally don’t think actually bother with real activism, just online keyboard warrior-ing, and not about any type of “hi, I am not horrible to interact with” social signaling ever.
I have thought about it and it is interesting that “virtue signal” is such a dirty word now. When I say “please” and “thank you” I’m essentially just virtue signaling that I’m willing to play nice
“Virtue signalling” implies a level of hypocrisy. Like, you don’t really care about the underlying issue, and only cares in reality to look like you do.
When you say “please” and “thank you” you are being polite. You may be “virtue signalling” politeness when in truth you are an asshole, but I would be unable to tell, so I give the benefit of doubt.
By the way, I dislike the term “virtue signalling” as I think it was overused to the point of meaninglessness, and I have an issue with that. On top of that, sometimes performative actions do matter to call attention to a given cause. Things are more nuanced sometimes.
On the plus side, the virtue signalers saved $ and can spend it on something that’ll bring them more joy and is hopefully more aligned with their views. And gives them practice and a mindset of “I’m the kind of person willing to boycott” for any other boycotts that might have a real effect someday.
It’s not really a boycott if you never really planned on buying the product. Otherwise, I’m technically boycotting Apple and Ford. Because I don’t buy Apply products and I don’t buy Ford cars.
When I say “please” and “thank you” I’m essentially just virtue signaling that I’m willing to play nice…
Those are specific actions you are taking in being kind and nice towards another person in reality. However, if you were to make a comment on Lemmy about how kind of a person you are because you claim you say “please” and “thank you” all the time, then that would be virtue signaling, because making claims about what you do or care about on social media is relatively meaningless without the specific actions being taken outside of that context.
So, in this case, talking about how evil Nintendo is for pricing a game at $80, what does that do exactly? Why should anyone else listen or care about someone expressing that opinion? Are you joining activist groups and spending time or money pushing for laws/politicians/etc to enact change to fight back against these actions? If so, then that’s not virtue signaling. But I’m unconvinced most people expressing these opinions and upvoting/downvoting posts and comments are doing anything beyond exactly that.
Most charitable interpretation: social pressure to get others to not buy, thereby hurting Nintendo just that bit more. I can say I was planning on buying a Switch at one point, but all these comments and news posts about anticompetitive practices have turned me away and slotted me in the “not buying” category.
Somewhat charitable interpretation: maybe venting outrage? Frustration at being the little guy in this situation who can’t do much? If you hate homelessness you can go volunteer at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter or donate money to either two, but if you hate these rising prices not much I’m aware of that you can do besides raging online and hoping you turn others away from buying. Although to be fair, you just proposed some things. Promoting other games instead could also help.
I don’t care too much about virtue signaling. What bothers me is people getting nasty and personal, and unfortunately that often happens in Company Does Bad Thing comment sections, so I’ve learned not to click on them. I should probably change that to big company news at all. I say this all because I want to say thanks for kind of disagreeing with me while also not being awful to me in this discussion. But I get how virtue signaling can annoy others.
I would wager they many of the same people arguing for a boycott went on to purchase it anyway. Opinions are free, as long as it doesn’t affect your life in any way.
There’s a switch 2 boycott?
An intentional boycott, no. But we don’t know how a console will do by its launch. The Wii U and 3DS sold out at launch too after having very successful predecessors. It wouldn’t be people intentionally boycotting that would humble Nintendo, but the masses just deciding it’s not worth their money for them or their kids. We’ll see what they do.
That’s why i was honestly surprised they sell it for that “cheap” the numbers would’ve been pretty similar for 50-100 dollars more.
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I find it ridiculously impressive given how abhorrently expensive purchasing and owning it is.
Honestly compared to other handhelds and current-gen consoles, the price seems OK for what you’re getting. The problem for me has always been how expensive Nintendo’s games are, $80 seems way too much.
As if, the console’s a scam and the game pricing is just the cherry on top. Half committing to caring about how much things cost is a waste of time, either acknowledge they’re both garbage or stop spreading this half assed attitude.
Didn’t realise that consoles were sports teams that you were either in the club or out of it. OP is allowed to have a nuanced take.
Sega does what Nintendon’t.
It warms my old man heart to see the console flame wars still going strong. Tribalism, what a thing, lemme tell ya. Human nature at its naturist.
goes outside to yell at the clouds to get off of his lawn
MOVEMENT CONTROLS PEAKED WITH WASD!
The Switch 2 being a bad deal and Nintendo having a VERY strong history of anti-consumer behavior has nothing to do with console wars. The person you are replying to is equally allowed to have a nuanced take.
What, are you expecting every comment critical of Nintendo to also include criticism of how terribly Xbox has managed it’s game studios just so we can be “fair and balanced”?
The comment I replied to believed that both the console and the game price is a scam, that is their valid opinion.
They criticised OP for “half caring about the rip off pricing”. OP didn’t think the console had ripoff pricing. Why is that a character flaw of op like is suggested by the commenter?
Bro said Black and white unironically
the console’s a scam
Then point me to another handheld that can do the same thing for $450
Isn’t the cheapest steam deck $480? Does the switch do something more or less the same?
The steam deck doesn’t come with a dock, has a worse screen at 800p/60Hz compared to the S2’s 1080p/120Hz, is way larger and thicker, doesn’t have detachable controllers so if you do buy the dock you’ll have to bring your own controller. It also can’t play in a kickstand mode which is a negative if you’re wanting to play with friends outside which is something I do often with my Switch 1.
I like the Steam Deck, really, but it’s not a 1:1 comparison and I think the average person will still really prefer the Switch 2.
Do what? Play one game?
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It really isn’t. Nintendo consoles always sell out at launch. It’s how they’re doing six months or so later that actually matters.
Especially when you need new controllers because they aren’t really bothered to fix the stick drift
We get stories like this all the time.
Was the switch 2 a successful launch from a monetary perspective: Hopefully
But people also have to understand. Gaming gets more and more mainstream every year AND population increases every year. Of course units sold are going to increase. The last time we had a console launch was 2020-ish. It has been five years of new people getting into video games and so forth.
Its similar logic to any time we see “Call of Auto 789151 is the fastest selling Call of Auto ever!”… Of course it is. If it wasn’t then that would be a huge red flag for the franchise.
I do always love “records” that are effectively population increases.
Just like when people share maps of data that are effectively just showing population distribution.
Gran Theft Duty
Aside from the analog sticks, the console itself seems like a fine upgrade from the original making it a tempting for anyone looking for “Switch Pro”. But it’ll be intersting to see how the price of games and the digital key aspect will affect the game sales down the line.
Steam Deck and other portable pc:s seem to be also getting a lot of momentum so there’s increasing amount of competition for handheld devices which was not really the chase with Switch 1.
PC handhelds are nowhere near switch + switch 2, 3.5M units almost equal total number of Steam Decks sold since its launch in 2022.
There’s no competition for handhelds dude l. This the switch 2… there was one before it. And it’s a console. Mthe steam deck came out after the switch, you could emulate like 95% of the switch library on the steamd deck plus steam games plus wharever you wanted. I’d imagine in 2-3 years the steam deck 2 will come out. But all this is is just a console vs a PC… Still… Just like before. Nintendo kant shaking anything up except that every company will now sell games at $80. Nintendo fucked everyone
How?
Did you all forget that Sony has been selling games at US$80 since 2020?
Users, or scalpers looking to score?
Yea was thinking the same thing. “How many of those are scalpers?”
Four days?
They were gone day one where I live. Where the fuck did people find them 4 days after release?
I think some websites sold theirs in staggered batches rather than just letting them all sell out on day 1
