Zero Punctuation: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

[Karavision]

Wasn't expecting that.


Everytime this topic comes up, I blame two things: 1. Nintendo's lame marketing department and 2. pretentious ignorant people that have no business calling themselves gamers. (coughSeanMalstromcoughcough)

And really, I don't think the WiiU's touch screen controller is any more forced than the Kinect and the touch pad on the XBone and PS4. The majority of games I own just use it for either an extra map screen or off-screen play. So really 3rd Party devs have no damn excuse other than, "we only want to pander to the 'cool crowd' which is the neanderthals that make up 90% of the gaming community on YouTube."

"Yeah, those damn cavemen who don't let Nintendo tell them what they want like I do."


Nobody wants their fucking gimmick and now they are paying for it. They can either release something with the control scheme that is the accepted norm and do something about their horrible online plans or they can fail in the west.

 

[VG_Addict]

Wasn't expecting that.


Everytime this topic comes up, I blame two things: 1. Nintendo's lame marketing department and 2. pretentious ignorant people that have no business calling themselves gamers. (coughSeanMalstromcoughcough)

And really, I don't think the WiiU's touch screen controller is any more forced than the Kinect and the touch pad on the XBone and PS4. The majority of games I own just use it for either an extra map screen or off-screen play. So really 3rd Party devs have no damn excuse other than, "we only want to pander to the 'cool crowd' which is the neanderthals that make up 90% of the gaming community on YouTube."

"Yeah, those damn cavemen who don't let Nintendo tell them what they want like I do."


Nobody wants their fucking gimmick and now they are paying for it. They can either release something with the control scheme that is the accepted norm and do something about their horrible online plans or they can fail in the west.

I'm tired of asking this question over and over, but what's wrong with the Wii U's online, other than the account thing? I have never gotten a direct answer.

 

[Vrach]

Well, my friend bought a WiiU recently. He's one of those "I'll watch you idiots fighting over who has the better console from afar, while I'm doing my thing" guys and I respect that. Honestly, as you've mentioned, consoles have mostly dropped their main appeal, the couch co-op. Nintendo on the other hand, has a bunch of games, that, while not exactly comparable to some singleplayer triple A fun found elsewhere, are fantastic party games.

And WiiU's controller is a brilliant addition to that. Honestly, when I first saw the premise for it, I was quite skeptic. But having used it recently, it has some brilliant points. The use of it in ZombiU is cute, but what I really love it for is when the two of us get together and play anything that has co-op. Injustice Gods Among Us, Sonic All Star Racing etc., for all these co-op games, the controller works as a personal screen. And it does so remarkably well. This is quite a boon when you're not one of those guys owning some 60 inch plasma screen TVs where splitscreen is hardly an issue. He's got a decent TV, but even split in two, it has its faults and split in 4 can be really irritating.

So, while I agree the console could use some more titles, it's hard to see why it's got such a bad rep. Personally, the only thing I'd change on WiiU itself is adding the ability to play your games from anywhere with the controller (as, let's face it, it would be remarkably easy to add, modders would get it done in under a week if Nintendo allowed it). But then, Nintendo does want those 3DS sales... :\

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Considering Microsoft was pushing that horrible DRM scheme when the Xbone was announced and the general always on bullshit, I'd just prefer a console that lets me play fun games.

But Nintendo also uses DRM... so I'm not seeing the logic there. And the other consoles also let you play fun games - but there are a lot more of them to play.

I believe what was meant was highly annoying and intrusive DRM. As simply having a game disc is kind of an accepted level of DRM at present.

OK, so what about Playstation or Xbox makes the DRM any more intrusive than Nintendo's?

Also, calling Nintendo the "good guy" on this topic is kind of weird - this is the company that once insisted on manufacturing custom game cartridges, and charging publishers for the privilege, rather than using cheap and easily produced optical media. Nintendo was dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world of optical media. It would have loved to keep its cartridge monopoly.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Considering Microsoft was pushing that horrible DRM scheme when the Xbone was announced and the general always on bullshit, I'd just prefer a console that lets me play fun games.

But Nintendo also uses DRM... so I'm not seeing the logic there. And the other consoles also let you play fun games - but there are a lot more of them to play.

Nintendo uses DRM in the sense of "you can't copy this game disc" but we've had that since the beginning so nobody minds. They never went near any of the MS plans like having to lock the game to your account so you couldn't give it to a friend.

That's exactly how disc based games work on the other consoles. they aren't tied to any accounts.

But how do downloaded Nintendo games work? Surely, they are tied to accounts, and can't be freely exchanged? I'm not really seeing any difference here. You're talking about a Microsoft plan that was never implemented (and that Sony never planned), not the reality of using these consoles.

Whatever generation you consider the Wii U to belong to, the 360 and PS3 are still on the market, so can't just be ignored. It's not like everybody who decides not to buy a Wii U is going to buy a PS4 or Xbone (and that's not even counting PCs or mobile).

Also, right now the other consoles really have very little to offer in the "fun games" department. The launch titles for both were a mix of mediocre to okay.

Huh? The PS3 and Xbox 360 have a huge library of fun games. Those are the consoles that the Wii U launched against. There was no PS4 or Xbone when it launched - and the Wii U's specs are more in one with those consoles. It really isn't playing in the PS4/Xbone territory.

Nintendo have some really talented first party developers, the problem is that they've been making stagnating franchises exclusively for the past few years and people are starting to lose interest. Mario has sort of become the The Simpsons of gaming. It was once fantastic and it's still fine but there's only so much you're willing to take. Imagine how quickly people would be buying Wii Us if Nintendo announced they were going to make 3 brand new IPs for the console themselves. If they had that then 3rd parties would be far more inclined to jump on too.

I can agree with that. Nintendo is overwhelmingly a first-party console. The company has alienated most third-party developers, and these days it's basically impossible for one company to provide enough games to meet demand. Back in the day when gaming wasn't as big, Nintendo could produce enough compelling content to satisfy users. Today they can't do it without third-party help.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Also consider this. For the same price as a game here in the UK you can get a 100GB SSD drive. Now just think if games had stayed with cartridges and they'd kept with it they'd be on par at least with disc now.

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. Console makers and game makers are not electronics retailers. They aren't going to sell you a 100GB SSD for the price you can buy it for at the computer store.

Also, an SSD is just RAM storage. A cartridge is a bunch of ROMS - logic chips that contain the game. Kind of like firmware. I'm not really sure what the price of SSDs has to do with game cartridges, or how it makes it "on par" with disc. A Blu-Ray can hold 50GB and costs less than a dollar to manufacture. SSDs are nowhere near that level of economy.

Also I kind of don't feel bad for Publishers having to pay money out like that why should I considering Publishers actions recently ?

You do know that the publishers will just pass these costs on to you, right? It just gives them even more excuses to gouge you. And despite the shitty actions of many publishers, why would you want to make it harder for games to make it to market? Using cartridges adds significant time and complexity to the release of a game. It gives a huge advantage to the large publishers you despise, while discriminating against smaller publishers and independent developers. It also makes updates and patches more difficult.

I mean, really, championing the cartridge? It's a seriously obsolete technology. And it makes DRM look user-friendly.

 

[Thanatos2k]

And it's still not enough for a console that can only play Nintendo games.

Uh, it can't "only play Nintendo games". It can play other modern titles just fine. The reason no one is bothering to put their third party titles on the Wii U is because a) the console's not selling well, b) their games wouldn't sell very well even if the console was selling well. So this is just false information. It's got nothing to do with technical restrictions, and more to do with third-party devs not wanting to throw away money.

No and yes. SOME games being currently developed for the PS4, Xbone, and PC could be made to run on the Wii U, but unlike cross porting games between very similar architectures in the 3 aforementioned platforms, developers would have to do a disproportionate amount of work to get things running on a Wii U, in addition to the performance degradation necessary to get it to run on inferior hardware. You'd get this situation over and over again:

Then there are the games that really WOULDN'T run on the Wii U no matter how hard you try. True next gen games like The Witcher 3 which the devs said simply couldn't run on a PS3/Xbox360, which means the Wii U as well. And there's only going to be more of those games developed now that we've actually moved into the next generation of console hardware, while Nintendo sits alone with an underpowered half baked hardware stack.

I don't think that's where the comparison breaks down, but where the comparison is most imporant. The utter lack of handheld competition is exactly why Nintendo's 3rd party alienation procedures aren't effecting the 3DS, but that's not going to work for the console space.

Er, no, the fact that the 3DS has no competition is precisely why the comparison breaks down here.

And, again, it's not "alienation". This is the second console in a row where third-party devs were originally lining up to praise the console and how they loved it and were totally going to work with it....and then never did, making some excuse as to why they backed out. You can't claim "alienation" from Nintendo if these third-party devs are willing to come onto a stage and say "I like this hardware and I'm excited to work on it", and then don't live up to that promise. It's about time gamers wised up and saw this trend, and asked these third-party devs if, next time they fully endorse a console, they intend to stick to their guns or not.

When did anyone praise the Wii U? Someone may have been forced by their publisher to say it at one point, but certainly no one at any developer is actually thinking that, especially now that the FAR easier to develop for PS4/Xbone are out.

The real reason why most third parties are being alienated by Nintendo is the absolutely wretched online infrastructure. Online multiplayer and digital distribution is an absolute mess on Nintendo systems, and Nintendo wants to meddle with what you implement at every step of the way. Developers have had enough of that jazz, and so they've had enough of working with Nintendo.

Super Mario 3D World is a game that's just as good as Mario Galaxy, and it will never approach half of the sales numbers of that game. Nintendo games aren't moving what they used to and Nintendo seems to have no plan beyond that.

And yet the evidence is clear: A single Nintendo game sold almost 2 million copies in just over three months on a console that hasn't been selling well. It's already in third place for top console sales. And that one game helped pushed sales of the Wii U to their highest levels since the console's initial few weeks of release.

But you have no idea what those levels are. Nintendo refuses to release numbers, only percents. Sales are up 180%! Over what? When finally forced to nail down numbers, Nintendo slashed console sales outlooks by SEVENTY PERCENT to 2.8 million consoles through Q1. The PS4 and Xbone have both already sold more than that, and the Wii U had a one YEAR head start!

What has become crystal clear is that Nintendo games are no longer enough to keep their console sales afloat.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Yes they aren't near that level however you need to account for the fact firstly SSD's are being sold at a profit and not wholesale in retail stores.

Firstly, you said that if they used SSDs they would "be at that level by now." Now you're saying they aren't near it?

Secondly, retail electronics is a very low-margin business. It's not a lot more than wholesale. But you seem to be forgetting that game developers and publishers are in the business of selling games, not storage devices. You'd still need to add the cost of the game to that price. The whole business is about selling IP. The cost of the medium (whether it's a disc or the bandwidth costs for downloads) is tiny compared to the cost of developing a game. Selling an expensive and unnecessary storage medium in addition to that cost is completely bonkers.

The modern Nintendo cartridges are the 3DS ones which are pretty much SD cards.

Right. With all that encryption and DRM applied. SD cards are cheap compared to SSDs, but you still pay a premium for Nintendo's cartridges, because it's still not as cheap as online distribution or an optical disc.

Passing the cost on ?
At least then all the cut content and season passes will have more of a reason to exist beyond simple greed.

What? That doesn't make any sense. How does the medium the game is distributed on justify such things?

Make it harder for games to make it to market ?
Considering few indie games see the heights of an on disc release (short of compilations)I don't think it's that huge a problem.
Also you get up and put in discs so the cartridge still needs putting in. Who knows what imaginative things could be done.

What imaginative things could be done? I dunno, how about getting rid of physical media, and using this thing called "the internet" to distribute games instead? Discs are already on the way out. The idea of physical media making some kind of resurgence just seems ridiculous at this point.

Harder than patching a sealed disc with a fixed storage space which you can't add more content to ?

It's much easier to do a new run of updated discs than it is with cartridges. See all those "Game of the Year" editions, and "complete editions" that include all the DLC on a disc.

Also, the systems that use cartridges tend to be extremely limited on storage space. Those with optical discs tend to have roomy hard drive space for updates.

So you carry all your Data about on DVD's ? Or do you have an USB bar / data drive ?

I use Dropbox.

But anyway, not the same as a cartridge, which doesn't allow you to store data, it is read-only.

You have piles of files on DVDs all on Spindles or do you have an extra hard drive to store things ?

I use a NAS RAID.

Solid state storage isn't obsolete and solid state storage is the modern version of the cartridge.

No, it isn't. Solid state storage is the modern version of the hard drive. It has nothing to do with cartridges.

 

[xGrimReaperzZ]

I feel like Yahtzee's "review" of A Link Between Worlds was lazy and lacked any real criticism..

Sorry, but saying that there is nothing innovative is lazy critique and i'm a fan of Yahtzee and i still am, but when he fails to provide the quality and quantity of criticism expected from him it has to be noted.


But good analyzation of current-gen's missteps and failures.

 

[Gothproxy]

BRILLIANT!!!

Simply a brilliant episode.

'nuff said.

(and yes, I too hope that Nintendo was watching)

 

[Saika Renegade]

I hope it's actually ironic that a self-described misanthrope who claims to detest the idea of socialization is trying to encourage a console manufacturer to go with their actual strength of making games which encourage people to socialize freely in the same physical location.

That said, the whole "WiiU gamepad can take the game away from the TV so it can be shared" bit becomes an interesting corner of the argument--it goes against the notion that games can be a literal shared experience between people in the same space. A TV watcher and a game player each using their respective screens for different things ruins the proffered strength of a console, because it asks them to be alone, independent, and not involve each other, where actually getting people together in one place to do something is a party-style console's strength.

Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows.

 

[TheZaius]

I like the Wii U.

Yahtzee should review Earthbound for the Wii U's Virtual Console.

 

[Strazdas]

What reputation? "That company that makes consoles with no games, and the games it does have are for kids.

Nintendo has a reputation among the laymans as kid oriented company that always puts out good quality games. After all15 games with most sales in history of gaming are nintendo [http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/] (16th place is finally breaking the chain with a microsoft game).
Meanwhile amongst people in the business Nintendo also has a reputation of beign ruthlessly xenophobic and abusing local laws to shut people off even if they operate under fair use.

Uh, erm... shit. Can't argue with (depressingly large) sales figures
I guess there's still the argument that people go to smartphones and dedicated handhelds for different experiences. I wouldn't whip out a 3DS for the sake of playing a quick game of Angry Birds, and trying to play SM3DL on a phone would be a nightmare, but people do have limited funds, so they might not be able to splurge on more than 1 item to pack into their pockets.[footnote] But seriously! who the fuck drops over $800 on a mobile game's in-app purchases?! You could buy a mid-tier PC or console AND a decent library with... I just... what... drugs... 1st degree financial irresponsibility... aasfhapondh! [/footnote]

Im jelous, my old machine can only do 11 turbotaxes per second, i need a new GPU!

Huh, that seems strangely low. It could be stuck running in 2D mode. Is the card heating up when you try, or does it just sort of sit there and refuse to move?
Failing that, try upping the intensity. Bump it up to around 15 to start, and tweak from there.

Yes, i would love if traditional gaming was the market leader however sale figures are sale figures.
The argument of idfferent reasons would not stand considering there we got a lot of people laying mobile games and paying money for them, so at least significant margin of people that buy smartphones for whatever reason also spend a lot on gaming, which makes the reasons people buy it moot as long as they game on them.

Limited funds view is very right here. If you have a choice of buying a phone you need and buying a handheld, or buying a phone you need anyway and just game on that, your likely chose the latter. thats the same reason PCs are on the rise. in order to game you gave to either buy a PC, or buy a PC you need anyway[footnote]during a recent study i read somewhere (dont remember the link now) it was determined that sudden disappearance of PC would cause more chaos than sudden disappearance of any other electronic device, people NEED pcs in their lives[/footnote] and thne buy a console on top. COupled with other benefots of PC gaming and loss of benefits of console gaming (the new generation really are simply PCs, but shit). So the obvious choice becomes PC for anyone that isnt doing it out of brand loyalty or other subjective reasons.

The 880 dollar mobile app purchase was over extended period of time. The story was that a guy would play a free to play game (if i remember it was called clash of clans) and he would drop 20 dollars on it every time he got paid for work. over time, it accumulated to him spending 880 dollars on a single game.
You could buy a high end gaming laptop for 880 dollars. I currently plan to buy one soon (760GTX, I5-4670, 8gb DDR3 1600 MHZ RAM) and its costs is 815 dollars and you have to take into account that computers in US is around 20-30% cheaper due to inflated costs here in eastern europe. For people not familiar with technical aspects - this one will play every game released to date with ease, games like BF4 will go on ultra settings at 1080p and 60 fps.[footnote]if i just want to beat consoles in performance a 400 dollar PC would suffice, so consoles arent even cheaper[/footntoe]


As for my turbotax numbers, i may need to buy that 8000 dollar water cooler and overclock my gpu to get taxes done faster obviously!

i dont care much about sales, the problem is the games, the PS2 era simply had so much more innovation, it was the age of the devil may crys, the gods of war, the GTAs, Shadow of the Colossus, etc


it always seemed to be something new and exciting and new ideas were constantly explored, this gen we got... DLC, microtransactions, and i guess spunkgargleweewee

i cant think of a single genre that was born this gen, except maybe music games, which incidentally also suffered a miserable death long before the gen was even finished


i can honestly say the most innovation came from PC this gen, specially towards the end, the indie revolution, digital distribution, kickstarter, free to play, i think the PS2 era games are still better, but there was certainly a turnaround when it comes to ways to deliver games to customers and the people making those games

PS2 era had GOOD GAMES. innovation is only supplementary. innovation for innovation sake gives you kinect. You may not care much about sales, but its all the companies like MS care about.
A genre born last generation? walking simulators (DayZ is a famous one). yes i know its supposed to be survival simulators. Also zombie genre pretty much came into power. Theres also a lot of actual real simulators out there that wasnt possible before. Physics based games. Destructible environment. plenty of good stuff last gen. This gen? too early to tell, the gen is only few months old.

PC has always been the birthplace of innovation. This is because PC is completely costumizable, this means people that want to experiment with new stuff will flock towards PC, and thus we get mroe innovative people with PCs. this is very evident in indie scene, where PC indies are quite innovative while xbox indies are mostly failed clones.

I, for one, think despite all the blunders like microtransactions and making patches cost money (and calling them DLC) gaming is still getting better. I may be naive, sure, but that is my opinion.

I'm tired of asking this question over and over, but what's wrong with the Wii U's online, other than the account thing? I have never gotten a direct answer.

well, you can add region locking to that.

Harder than patching a sealed disc with a fixed storage space which you can't add more content to ?

So you carry all your Data about on DVD's ? Or do you have an USB bar / data drive ?

You have piles of files on DVDs all on Spindles or do you have an extra hard drive to store things ?

Solid state storage isn't obsolete and solid state storage is the modern version of the cartridge.

i actually do have 660 DVDs and carry my data around in them. Data that needs constant changing is in cloud storage with automatic local backups into HDD on my home computer, but i dont "Carry it around". other data i carry on DVDs. The reason is simple - DVDs are much cheaper. Though as of last summer external HDDs are actualyl cheaper per gygabyte now, so i got myself an external HDD now.
SSD is still very uneconomical.

(and yes, I too hope that Nintendo was watching)

Yatzee is very high profile person in gaming world. there certainly is someone at nintendo whos watching (probably a person responsible for watching all the popular internet personals about what they say about Nintendo). Now whether they will use it as advise or "this guy dislikes us so we must respond in kind" is a different thing. That is, if said person even tell others at nintendo about it.

Unless of course companies wanted to use more than a disc allows them or to not have to compress things.
One of the main challenges facing 4K is storage space and while Blue ray allows the use of a finer laser but stepping up from HD to 4K will require vast amounts of extra storage space. While you could in theory make even finer lasers it would cause the problem that even a very fine scratch could break the game entirely. Heck a speck of dust could make the game unplayable.

Think how some games play off the hard drive. Imagine if it weren't an SSD drive but say a 100GB hard drive modifed to simply plug in. That would be quite cheap (1TB is about £60 now so 100GB would cost far less)

if you want storage space - HDDs are the way to go and SSDs dont even come close now.
Blue Rays are a dead end technology, it was never economically superior and only went around because blue ray discs were pushed for movies. It also really works on consoles till you stop the nonsense of playing off disc and admit that installing makes things better.
You are wrong about HDD pricing. Making 100 GB HDD and 1 TB HDD is pretty much the same cost now becasue tecnology has moved past 100 GB HDDs. They are sold cheaper now becasue everyone wants to get rid of the stock, since even 500 GB HDDs are being laughed at as too small.

Until we're all on 100GB/s systems then that's not happening.

Oh, please, 100mbps is completely fine for downloading games. we dont need GB/s unless you want to stream uncompressed 4k video, and lets face it thats not coming for at least 50 years. heck, our 1080p streaming is compressed so much that we would be better off watching uncompressed 480p (not an option though).

Unless you specially format a disc and place it in a disc writer then you can't add extra data to an optical disc either.

This is false. if burned with proper software and not out of space you can add data to extra space available on an optical disc.

Except it is the modern face of the gaming cartridge. The chips were just another means to store the data really.

Not it is not. SSD is not a cartridge. its as much a "modern face" as internet is modern face of DVDs.

 

[Strazdas]

Very true but again they've come down quite a bit recently and the fight now is to get them closer to the storage space of other hard drives without pushing costs up too far beyond standard hard drive prices. The reason I put them forward is because they're faster then normal hard drives, that simple.

blue rays are getting more affordable now as support for CDs are finally dieing and as such you no longer need to put CD lasers in readers and then you get cleaer br players and this increases demand of blue ray discs. Also they of course find ways to manufacture the discs cheaper, like DVDs being ready to go in under 20 cents.
Blue Rays are not faster than standart HDDs.
1x of blue ray is even at technically perfect conditions only 36Mbps.
Typical 3.5" 7200rpm drives have average read speeds of about 80 - 100 MB/s
Now lets do the conversion on bit/byte to compare:
1x blue ray does 4.5MB/s read at perfect condition.
This means, that even imagining perfect conditions you would need a 20x blue ray drive to meet average working condition of a HDD in read speed. more if we take real life blue ray conditions.

PS3 has a blue ray drive that is 2x speed, meaning it is 10 times slower than hard drives even on perfect conditions.
according to Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-spec-analysis-playstation-4] PS4 has a blue ray drive that is 6x, which is still more than 3 times slower than hard drive. Xbox drive speed seems to be nowhere to be found, which is very worriying as they could be using some custom made crap that is uncompatible with replacements. The few sources i found claimed it was "Faster" than PS4 but didnt go into any specifications. It is doubtful that it is 20x however, because even dedicated blue ray drives that cost over 100 dollars seems to only go as far as 12x in reading capacity, and they havent gone that far with xbox pricing. Note though that on the slow hardware as the consoles run the drive speed will not be a bottlenect factor, however it would certainly be on PCs that process much more information to deliver much higher quality gaming.

wait, after writing this i just realized you meant SSDs are faster, yeah, my bad.

Actually it depends on the formatting. as you can technically "close" a disc or leave it "open" it's actually a more modern thing for this to be default in most software including windows but it wasn't always.

Yes, hence the "proper" software. as default used to be close.

True at present but this latest gen will be the first one with potentially 50GB games while the present Gen are what 8GB on DVD and maybe at most 20GB used of the blue ray (except Metal Gear solid). To digitally consumer as many games as people tend to have physical copies of and at 50GB each is a big ask really.

"you can always just add an extra installation dvd at marginal costs"

[quoet]the chip was just another means of data storage though.[/quote]
So was the CD/DVD/BR