It will certainly be interesting to see how this film turns out given the oft-cited point that Link does not traditionally speak during the games (though I think he did in the CD-i games).

It’s also worth noting that video game based movies rarely do well. I’m not sure what the general consensus was on the Illumination Mario movie, so maybe people are more optimistic for this movie if they liked that one. Personally, I didn’t love the Mario movie, so I’m still a little uncertain of the potential quality of this movie.

I certainly hope this movie does well, though. Then we can finally get the Chibi-Robo movie we’ve all been waiting for.

I’ve never been one to play competitive online games since I have the hand/ eye coordination of a house plant, so I can’t weigh in on the advantages of blocking controllers that are “unfair”; but as someone who hated button mashing “A” in Animal Crossing, I can say that custom controllers can definitely have a place with a console.

In my opinion, this feels like Microsoft simply wanted more licensing money and is doing it under the guise of fair online play. It reminds me of Apple locking faster charging and data transfer on USB-C to their own proprietary USB cables.

Hopefully this does not negatively affect too many people.

After reading the article, I’m not surprised First Class was my favorite of the X-Men franchise; it really seems like Matthew Vaughn understands what was needed. Putting DoFP right after instead of letting the younger cast stand on their own for a while always felt like a mistake to me, and I missed the lighter tone from First Class as well.

I also found it interesting he was thinking of Tom Hardy for a young Wolverine, since I’ve seen that thrown around as a fan-casting for a while.

Anecdotally, I find I get better discussions on posts if I include quotes from the article I find particularly relevant or poignant. I also like to comment my own feelings on the article in the comments as well. I don’t think the issue was the title of the article necessarily.

In this case, what sections did you wish people were discussing? To me, the section about the exclusives did not feel particularly engaging since the number of exclusives mentioned was actually pretty high since most games on a console trend to be third party.

If there is an argument being made you would like to highlight, I would certainly be interested in seeing it.

It’s a bit of a long read, but I thought it was interesting what a mess the Marvel production was.

Marvel Studios has always had a tough relationship with TV cough Inhumans cough. I think Agents of SHEILD being their only successful non-Netflix show before launching a plethora of shows on Disney+ (and even that one was a little rough around the edges).

Since launching Disney+, I have personally found the Marvel TV quality to consistently hit C+/B- quality, with occasional highlights (the first half of Wandavision, most of Loki); which surprised me since I felt the movies hit higher quality more consistently.

It makes sense the TV landscape has been hard with Marvel after reading this article, though. Committing to a whole season/ series with no pilot seems risky enough, but combine that with no show-runner and a fix-it-in-post attitude, and it’s a shock the shows came out as passable as they did.

It sounds like Disney is planning to change that, but I’m not sure how much I believe that to be honest. It’s also worth noting that I only think it’s happening because of the recent negotiation with the WGA.

I think we all knew this was coming when Nintendo discontinued being able to purchase 3DS and Wii U games on the eShop, but it is still very sad to hear.

Many 3DS and Wii U games have been ported to the Switch over the years, but there will be several games that will likely never get ported because they were incremental series games. Why would they port Super Smash Bros Wii U when they already released Super Smash Bros Ultimate?

A lot of people will probably not care much being on the newest console, with the newest games, but it is truly sad to know that you will never be able to revisit these games again in a few years when you’re feeling nostalgic, or if you just like the old version better.

I can only hope that homebrewers figure out how to spoof their own servers to keep online functionally for these old games.

The interesting thing about this to me is it sounds like HYENAS was already very far along (being in an open beta quite recently).

I wonder if SEGA is giving it the Batgirl treatment, where they cancel it just for a tax write-off; or if it had serious structural issues that would have actually been very costly to rectify.

I’m glad to see SAG is standing up to the video game industry, which is notorious for mistreating its workers.

Hopefully, after seeing the damage from the WGA/ SAG Hollywood strike, the video game studios will take this threat seriously and negotiate in good faith enough to not warrant another strike.

I also hope that SAG standing up for themselves may inspire other game development employees to unionize and stand up for themselves as well.

This is quite surprising to me as Kamiya co-founded Platinum Games, and I always considered it to be largely under his influence creatively.

I have no idea why he would leave the studio that was already largely under his control. Based on the quote at the end:

I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll pop up soon somewhere else, perhaps funded by a Chinese company.

I have to wonder if he wanted to sell Platinum Games to Tencent some time back when they were having financial troubles but he wasn’t allowed to, so he left on his own to have more financial stability for his games.

Platinum Games has a problem of putting out solid games but rarely owning the IP themselves, so by leaving Platinum, I guess Kamiya is really only leaving Wonderful 101 behind (IP wise), and I’m not sure how likely he was to revisit that anyways. (Though Platinum did jump through a few hoops to secure the rights to it, so who knows?)

This move is quite perplexing to me, honestly.

That reminds me of when the GTA remaster collection came out and Rockstar had to delist the original (and I think they might have started C&D’ing some of the mod developers too).

At the end of the day, a direct port (or a cheap AI upscale in GTA’s case) does not have a lot of value add. This is especially the case when classic consoles (and the Nintendo Switch) can be emulated at an even higher resolution than native.

I understand why developers don’t want to actually remaster the game (or remake it, if they want to get really intense). It’s a lot more resource intensive, and it’s not a good guarantee of return on investment. Plus, most people who would buy a remaster would probably buy a straight port, too; so there’s really no financial incentive.

But having said all that, I simply don’t have much interest in playing direct ports. As far as I can tell, they’re really only useful if you don’t feel like doing the requisite tinkering to get an emulator working; but as you said, you’d probably still have better results on the emulator if you’re willing to put in the work.

I was able to track down the article (Garbage Day URL, Archive.today URL).

The portion I was referring to was:

Most major subreddits show a decrease of between 50 and 90 percent in average daily posts and comments, when compared to a year ago. This suggests the problem is way fewer users, not the same number of users browsing less. The huge and universal dropoff also suggests that people left, either because of the changes or the protests, and they aren’t coming back.

Personally I was not contributing much there; but I suspect the users they offended most were the power users, which is where most of the content comes from.

The Reddit blackout had more of an effect than it appears. I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that showed commenting and posting was down ~50% since the blackouts; and I can safely say I haven’t gone back to Reddit since, and I’m sure others have made similar choices as well.

People can have trouble “voting with their wallets,” but I genuinely believe it is possible and does have an effect. Hopefully people do not forget the choices Unity has made here; but even if they do, Godot has already gotten a significant boost from this catastrophe.

That’s actually a very good point, especially with the number of EULAs that we encounter on such a regular basis. How hard would it be for Adobe to slip a clause in about royalties without us noticing?

Is there even a stated reason for this change beyond just simple greed? To my knowledge they aren’t maintaining any servers or other cost centers for the games developed on Unity.

As you said, hopefully there’s still enough of a negative reaction to this that it doesn’t take hold elsewhere.

I may be misunderstanding their new fees, but this still feels like a major disincentive for using Unity. Even with revenue sharing instead of per-install fees, it is still being sprung on all the developers. Unity is now being upfront about not needing to use the newer Unity versions; but if there are engine bugs in the older versions, there is not much choice in if they have to update.

I would certainly think twice before choosing Unity at this point.

I’m not so many episodes in, so I’m not sure how strong a character she’ll be; but how could anyone not like a character played by Whoopi Goldberg?

My understanding is that most games come with the full game data on the disk, though it’s a little more of a gamble if some will be left as a download on the Switch carts since they charge by cart size if I recall correctly.

Having said that, it would still be the unpatched game data; but that’s still more playable than a digital copy when the servers are no longer maintained.

It’s also worth noting people with bad internet speeds can prefer the disks since copying 50-150GB is a lot faster than downloading it from the internet for them.

I do find it a little interesting that Phil Spencer is ignoring the content of the leaks and instead just focusing on the fact the documents are out of date. I would imagine the contents of the leaks are likely still pretty close to accurate, even if plans have changed a little, as a result.

I also wonder if Xbox will use the reaction to the leaks to determine potential changes going forward (ie: reactions to the console being all digital, reactions to the next gen console processor, etc).

… And it turned out Tasha really died, though the article did mention the actress returning on a few occasions. It sounded like the first season was a little rough behind the scenes, and the actress was also worried that the role would be too repetitive(?)

Ultimately, I feel kind of bad for the actress since TNG is widely revered as one of the best sci-fi series and she missed an opportunity to be a major part of it; but I can understand why she felt the need to leave. Plus this change gave Worf more time to shine, and also made room to introduce Guinan; so I really can’t be mad.

I also still find it pretty touching when the cast references Tasha and mourn her (like Data’s hologram in the episode where they legally have to prove his sentience).

I recently started TNG and saw that episode for the first time a week or two ago. When she died, I literally did not believe it right up until the end of the episode because of how anti-climactic her death was. I was absolutely sure it was going to be a fake-out.

When the episode ended, I had to look up why she was written out because I was so utterly perplexed.

I fully agree that game preservation is not a priority for any gaming company. The playability of old games and not requiring paying again for a remaster/ release can only hurt their bottom line.

The good thing is that they don’t have to like preservation, or even support it, when there’s physical game disks. In 40 years if I have a copy of Breath of the Wild and a working Switch, I can still play it; but the same likely cannot be said of a digital copy.

The fact that companies care so little for (or actively dislike) game preservation is the very reason physical games are so important.