Topic: Uhh guys, my series x just died

@NEStalgia Actually, J. quoted me on that thread but erased my name and left the quote. He decontextualized a phrase and his reply was a straw man. The others also quoted me so I only mentioned people that have engaged me on that thread. E. is bad mod, biased and unfair (with me, at least). Yes, it looks like Nintendo fanbase is the worst as Menchi said!

@SplooshDmg It still seems a little suspect, even if he uses it for good, that he does it at all, to me. Something sits wrong about knowing inside information and dumping it on the internet like that. Maybe you got some because of it, but how much does that tip off scalpers. Though at the moment I'm almost pro-scalper since the retailers are behaving more deviously than the scalpers. $500 + 100 for W+ for a $600 "maybe you can get a console probably you can't" candy scramble you may have to come into the store for, or $750+40 shipping/closing for "you definitely get a console, shipped" - the scalpers still seem more legit.

Avengers and CP 2077 for $9.99? You're showing your age in GameStop years. They don't have games to sell anymore, it's a Baby Yoda foam rubber keychain and a "WTFIDK" XXL tshirt they upsell now.

@BlueOcean E. is a really lenient mod, really. I think he's pretty good. No real complaints with him. He's harsher with you than anyone really..but he's pretty lenient with you too. I think he was maybe unfair calling you out for your side of the arguments when there was a pile-on against both of us, even if it was coming across as a bit aggressive. Though I get that he was trying to boil down the thread a bit, and going after the one person on one side is more practical than going after the 4 on the other side to stop it. But honestly I thought you were going to end up banned or the comments locked when you retorted back at him, and he just let it go. So he's pretty tolerant on all sides as long as the users not an obvious troll or trying to stir up totally unjustified arguments. But I think naming people like that makes it too easy/tempting to justify actually taking action.

@SplooshDmg Oh, I hadn't heard about .NET6 controversy. what did they do?

But yeah, there's, this weird bubble that some people are in. I mean, some people, I get it. If you can afford only one platform ,and that's the one you're locked into, you're going to love it to pieces, and it's going to be enraging when people criticize it because you need to believe it's just perfect because your sanity starts depending on it. Shattering that illusion is like turning your happy place into a war zone. I can kind of get it to a degree. It's more about protecting ones own illusions around their coping mechanism than anything else. But the worst fanboys don't seem to be that. They seem to be otherwise multiplat but will lock in one one as exceptionalism. Those are the people I really don't get. And they seem to be most obnoxious. Nintendo and PS seem to have the lions share of that type for now, but a lot of the PS ones are the former 360 ones....so they'll flip flop back here eventually.

Well, we had Matrick back with the 1 who literally told everyone to #dealwithit. He said in words what Nintendo basically just says "talk to the hand". Uncle Jimmy tries to do that but has had to back down a few times after overwhelming backlash. Nintendo....yeah, they flip everyone off and just stonewall them. But a big part of that seems to be that the Nintendo market consists of consumers too unengaged to know they're getting screwed, and loyalists so fanatical they try to shut down all criticism. There literally can't be a backlash on Nintendo on the internet like Matrick got or Ryan gets, because the loyalists will crush any uprising against the chosen brand. It's so weird. Nintendo was a fun place to be during the 3DS and WiiU years. It was a laid back, easy going community, mostly. Ok, there were the "lazy companies won't make games for this market failure console!! Boycott them!!" crowd. It wasn't really fun in the Wii years just because it was such a non-gamer community. And it was too different before then to qualify. But man, in the Switch era, it's just....I'm guessing all the Wii/DS babies are now Teens and 20's with a chip on their shoulder to defend their childhoods or something? IDK, I grew up under Yamauchi's iron fist in an iron glove. I was oblivious enough at the time to think Nintendo=video games and is a happy go lucky company with cute mascots, but it didn't take long until they started suing anyone and everyone to become clear Nintendo just wants to extract your wallet. I bought a Virtual Boy and saw the price skyrocket for N64 and games (and SuperFX Chip), I kinda figured out what they're about early enough.

They've had their ups and downs but under the new management they've kind of resumed the worst of the Yamauchi Clan, while kind of abandoning a lot of their charm and quirkiness into the bland corporate depths of Disnification. This isn't the same company that had the lead designer vacuuming the CEO on camera not that long ago. Or the aggressive "Now you're Playing with Power" of the NES. This is the Epcot Center of video games now. Universalized and homogenized to appeal to everyone without being unique or special in any particular way.

But when you say that you'll get pages of Metacritic links and lists of releases compared to 2011 that PROVE you're wrong. I've had back and forth arguments over days about Switch being a handheld first and foremost as though I've said the most controversial thing possible, as though Nintendo didn't just sell $50 more worth of handheld features and not $1 of console features other than a LAN port that even their game producers (Sakurai) told everyone they really shouldn't play without. Then again Sakurai told everyone to buy an Xbox and play Banjo so....

The internet used to be a weird place. But what's happened now is that we now have two generations that grew up entirely on the internet as the real world and now make the majority of the total population, or at least the relevant population as much as business is concerned. What used to be weird internet, now has become the cornerstone of reality itself. Which is why reality is freaking broken beyond function.

That sucks about it dying on you and especially after not much use at all. If the repair is going to take ages one cheaper option might be to get a Series S to tide you over the holidays

@PartyMarty Thanks. It got a relatively decent amount of use from Nov to maybe May, then was idle June through October, mostly.... so it had ok runtime on it, but obviously still shouldn't die in a year (or ever, really...) I did actually grab an S to tide me over last week. It's not a bad little console for current Series games. Its BC is kinda sucky though, unfortunately. I'd still love to try to get a spare X to keep around.

@SplooshDmg One has to wonder how it is that the bots can so easily do that and the websites can't easily stop that. it seems like a massive failure on the retailer's parts and their silly capatchas seem like a ridiculous lack of caring about it.

Honestly I just want to reset the world back to 1995. Maybe 2005 at a stretch.

Yeah, thankfully the ones that go into OTHER communities to praise their favorite console are a lot rarer than the ones that do it within the community of their favorite, but they're still annoying. You have the Nintendo fan that also plays PS and PC (always PS and PC, rarely XB) that seems to be the most zealous of all the Nintendo fans, the most rabid "NDF" (Nintendo Defense Force) people far more than the "ohai I just got a Nintendo and I love it so much can it play nintendogs?" people. Same with the PS camp, it's the people that also play on PC or Switch that are the most zelous "Sony makes best games no one else comes close ubisoft sucks even though Sony games are basically the same" group. Ok, the Xbox fans on the PS side keep pointing out how much PS is screwing them compared to Game Pass so I guess that counts a little....but...it's kinda just stating facts.

There was ONE guy on NL that was an XB fan and was one of the true trolls, Gatorboi I think his name was, and I think he got banned, long ago. He was kinda obnoxious, the old school 360 dudebro into the X1 era that defended it. I used to argue with him so much that X1 would be MS's last console, lol. Though that was before Phil rescued it, and I was technically right, had Phil not rescued it considering that was Satya's first question to him was pretty much "why should we keep the division?"

To a degree, ripping Halo is fair. It's a traditionally boxed $60 game that's now F2P P2W, MTX out the wazoo. The criticism is fair. Not as much as FO76 that turned a solo RPG into an MTX online game.....but fair.

Genshin....I want to hit things anytime someone mentions it. It's literally a propaganda and market manipulation tool of the CCP, and it's getting global praise by the oh-so-politically-aware gamer demographic while exploiting every hyper-capitalist technique Activision and EA could cook up. Some trusted people on these forums praise it, and I get curious, and then the more they themselves describe it the less interested in trying it. And you're right, without MS competing on value, Sony would have been praised as consumer friendly. I never thought I'd ever say "thank goodness for Microsoft" but...yeah. of course in this competitive space if it weren't MS it would have been Amazon or Zuck or someone. And we KNOW Tencent is going to sell us the Social Credit Console sooner than later.

The USSR had Cuba. The ME has Gaza and Syria. AIPAC has Senkaku and Taiwan. We have Bethesda.

@SplooshDmg I just don't get how it's so hard to block the bots. I'm not sure they ever cared. Every preventative measure seems like it was designed by some room full of old oil executives that don't know how this whole series of tubes thing works. Walmart's new one is "click and hold on the I'm not a bot button." Seriously? Because a button that appears in the same spot on the page with explicit text isn't kinda just as easy for a bot to hit as the buy button? There's a million easy ways to do it but none of them tried, or what they tried just breaks it more.

That's half of why I'm starting to view the "retailers" as wholesalers, and the "scalpers" as the retailers. In a way we've just gone back 40 years. Remember how most things you bought used to be from some small local mom & pop store, or local department store, and of course there was markup on it. Then the big box discounters came in and started selling things at low low markup and crushed the "expensive" mom & pops with razor thin margins at high volume? Now we've gone full circle. The discounters have gobbled each other until there's only 4 of them, working at razor thin margins, where a bunch of small (digital) mom & pop sellers sell them where people can actually get them at a markup. In a way, nothing changed at all, we just reversed the Kmart & Walmart 90's and went back to the 70's & 80's of paying markup from small sole proprietorships. We just don't walk into the store and see them anymore. It's the new corner store, except it's in Toronto. It's funny, we spend trillions inventing new technology we use to go backward to a more complicated and convoluted version of exactly what we started with.

I've noticed it's mostly the ponies that complain about Ubisoft. IDK why, it's literally the format Sony has made into their legacy but that's the group that disdains ubi the most. Sucker Punch literally only makes AC clone games. inFamous was VERY similar in design to AC1 in terms of the map and play loop. GoT is very literally AC Origins, less bloated, and with the Japan skin everyone wanted from AC since the end of the first game. Not a knock, SP is my favorite Sony studio, I love their games....but...I like Ubisoft games, too. HzD is basically a Ubi game. Spiderman....IDK about that one. It feels like it clones inFamous cloning AC2. But it also feels blander and emptier than any of them. I've never felt such a bland open world of simple menial tasks to do. I think that series would be better without the open world, IMO. I like Insomniac, I loved Sunset, but I feel like they maybe just aren't good at open world. The world isn't interesting. Part of it is the source material. It's NYC. It really is bland, despite the grandeur. But SP managed to make an interesting pseudo-NYC with Empire City.

Really the NL crowd has become so defensive I've actually been spending a lot more time on Push Square. The crowd there actually seems more chill than NL now. Weird, a year ago it was a bunch of edgelords and elitists, and they've all collectively calmed down (or the edgelords mostly left.) Now NL is girded for an argument to defend the perfection of Switch against all the naysayers, and a year ago it seemed less so. I'm not sure where the revolving insecurities come from. PS seems a lot more calm, and a lot more multiplatform including XB than it was just one year ago. The worst edgelord I can think of there now is exactly as I've called it. A former 360 dudebro who converted and saw the light on PS4 who will probably buy an XB for starfield.... (who still lurks PXB as well who likes to take my quotes from here, paste them there as an argument, while somehow calling me a Nintendo fanboy.....) At least he rubs people there wrong too.

I think of the 2008 as "the new stuff" so...... to me nothing should have changed since 2008 and I never actually understood 2008. If it's different from then then I'm 2 generations out of step at least. Heck, to me, Unreal Tournament is the new stuff.

Genshin was developed by the actual devil. The servants of Winnie the Pooh. Of course it's just a big exploitation machine!! I know some people insist they got ten thousand hours without paying a dime. Of course, because it's all grind. And I fear the effect that game is guaranteed to have on the whole industry.

Yeah, sometimes I figure I sound like an xbox fanboy, but it's just that Nintendo is doing a lot of things that make me feel like I'm getting screwed, and I'm unhappy with. Sony is doing a lot of things that make me feel like I'm getting screwed, and I'm unhappy with. MS just keeps on improving value and providing engagement and hasn't given me too many things to complain about short of my faulty console which hopefully is a fluke and not a warning, and the horrendous lack of console availability even compared to Sony. So I mostly have positive things to say about them and a lot of negative for the other two. But I also know that trend will reverse eventually. I'm hoping the surge of S sales this holiday doesn't move MS into the complacent mode. But I'm hoping it DOES force Sony to try harder now that their own scarcity of models and sudden availability of S is going to start sliding a lot more people deeper into the MS ecosystem and they'll have to address that.

@NEStalgia He is harsher with me, at least you see that. I mean, people insult me and he tells me to calm down and it's not the first time. Instead of moderating the four people attacking me, he moderates the person that is being attacked (me) even if I'm not insulting back. I retorted back when he told me not to moderate the thread but I was very careful with my wording. I also was careful when defining his idea (feelings) about BotW.

My two cents about Halo Infinite Multiplayer. Microsoft make a free-to-play game and people bash Microsoft because of the cosmetical DLC?

Microsoft uses horrible monetization approaches for online multiplayer focused games to allow for the more consumer friendly decisions to be sustainable.

I mean, it's a free-to-play game. Are all Microsoft games like that?

@BlueOcean Gears 5's multiplayer progression was initially just as bad and that wasn't FTP.

@Grumblevolcano Can you be more specific? What do you mean by progression? Isn't Halo Infinite's paid content cosmetic? What do you mean by horrible monetization?

@BlueOcean The progression in both games is the Battle Pass (Gears 5 calls it an Operation). In Gears 5 you complete challenges to earn stars which ranks up the operation and unlocks cosmetics. There's also a store where you can buy characters and cosmetics using a currency called Iron which can be bought using real money. The backlash was so big that 10 months later a currency called Gears Coins got added which could be earned by playing, completing challenges and ranking up. You could buy almost everything from the store using Gears Coins. Halo Infinite seems to be following a very similar pattern.

@Grumblevolcano I didn't even know that Gears 5 had paid cosmetic DLC. One thing is Halo Infinite and other thing is Halo Infinite Multiplayer. Halo Infinite Multiplayer uses cosmetic DLC and Halo Infinite Multiplayer is free-to-play. So, you think that Microsoft uses horrible monetization approaches for online multiplayer focused games because of this? You're talking as if Microsoft had become a mobile games publisher. What about Forza Horizon 5? Sea of Thieves? Minecraft? Sea of Thieves is my most-played multiplayer game of the last generation after Fortnite. I spent a bit of money on Fortnite but not a cent on Sea of Thieves yet (because I was a day-one insider and then it joined Game Pass). Sea of Thieves didn't have any paid DLC until very recently and it's also cosmetic.

Nintendo's approach with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is much worse because it sells you the characters separately and the game costs £60, how much does it cost you to have every single character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate? Tell the me exact figure. That is horrible monetization because you're spending hundreds just to have the complete game. There is no ultimate edition of Ultimate. If Halo Infinite Multiplayer was a Nintendo game, do you think it would be free-to-play and that you only had to pay for cosmetic DLC? Serious questions, especially how much does it cost you to have all the characters in SMBU, because I could calculate it but I think you might know this better than me (the Switch entry is the only one that I don't have). Even if Halo Infinite Multiplayer has paid characters (I don't know if it does), it's a FPS, they all play the same, it's cosmetic. In SSB characters are all different because it's a fighting game, like Killer Instinct 3, but Killer Instinct 3 is free-to-play and there is a definitive edition with all the characters.

@SplooshDmg Halo 5 multiplayer was excellent, indeed. Halo Infinite has been a money pit for years because of 343 Industries. Thankfully, Microsoft had the brilliant idea of making the multiplayer part of it free-to-play just like Fortnite, Apex and so many FPS out there and people go to forums to call this "horrible monetization" because it has paid cosmetic DLC. I think this is the best idea Microsoft have had since Game Pass. Many games are not free and also has cosmetic DLC, I mean, tons of games. Why is Halo Infinite Multiplayer the black sheep?

@NEStalgia The "worst" fanbase is always whichever one you have the least in common with, because it's difficult for you to see their perspective on things.

Anyway, I guarantee you if an equivalent of that NL thread gets a lot of traffic here or on Push Square, you'll see pushback. The change between the Wii U era and now is that Nintendo is actually on top again, so there's an increase in interest in them, both positive and negative. That also means more trolling, more criticism, etc. in addition to people who like what they're offering and feeling the need to counter such trolling and such criticisms.

I don't post much on here (not a fan of modern Microsoft, so there's just not much to contribute), but I'm a regular on Nintendo Life and Push Square. And, without fail, I hear a lot about how "Nintendo Life and Pure Xbox are toxic" on Push Square, and equivalent judgments about the other communities on NL. And I've seen both judgments about NL and PS on here. I've probably even contributed to that rhetoric.

It's the nature of things for humans to be tribal, although I try to rein that impulse in where possible, as I don't see the value in swearing undying fealty to any megacorp or the conglomerations of metal and plastic they mass produce.

@SplooshDmg I think it's a great idea so the multiplayer part is played by more people, good for them and good for players searching matches. It's also good because it means that Halo Infinite Multiplayer will be supported for many years and with the cosmetic DLC they can make up for the money pit that this development has been. I'm not particularly for or against this model. My friends dragged me into Fortnite (free-to-play). I tried Sea of Thieves (game as service) because it's made by Rare and I think it has become an excellent game. I like story-based and campaign-based games as well. The only model I dislike is Smash Bros. because it has the worst part of each model and, of course, those mobile games that I don't even care about.

@SplooshDmg Halo 5's multiplayer was definitely my favourite in the franchise, I was very relieved to be able to still find matches in it even after Infinite's multiplayer launch.

@BlueOcean Well like I said, it is a more recent thing that Xbox has moved to. With the exception of Forza which has always had the traditional DLC model, the models used were:

• Traditional DLC model up until 2015
• 2015 - 2017 was the loot box era
• 2019 - current is the battle pass era

I think the fairest approach to Infinite's monetization would've been to have earnable credits to buy store content and have the premium battle passes included with the campaign purchase. FTP with purchasable cosmetics doesn't have to be bad, it just is the vast majority of the time and this applies to FTP in general, not just Microsoft. Same thing will probably happen when Sony enters the multiplayer scene in around a few years.

But I do think the traditional DLC model is the best model.

@Grumblevolcano I can't talk about Gears 5 multiplayer because although I've played it, I didn't know that it has cosmetic DLC. To provide the multiplayer premium battle pass with the Halo Infinite campaign doesn't make much sense because the multiplayer mode will be much more popular. It's like expecting Fortnite to include the paid battle pass with Save the World. Also, you say that you should be able to earn credits to buy store content but I just checked and there's a free version that will grant you over 60 rewards in the game's 100-tier battle pass, so not all it's paid and the game is free to play. It's exactly the Fortnite model which is very generous.

Instead of using generic time frames, can you say what "Microsoft multiplayer games are horrible monetization"? Halo Infinite is?

And what is the "traditional DLC model"? Is Super Smash Bros. included in that? How much does it cost to get all the fighters in SMBU? Serious questions, all.

@SplooshDmg Yep but bear in mind that there is hypocrisy in these conceited people's arguments that complain right after insulting, insults such as miserable, ignorant, troll, etc., just because they don't understand nor tolerate that you can be a fan of Nintendo and not like everything that Nintendo do. Usually, the least tolerant people are the people that complain the most about the others and that is happening on NL, right now. The level of hypocrisy is such that the same people that say that don't see the value in swearing undying fealty to any megacorporation insult you when you criticise the megacorporation of their choice.

@SplooshDmg While obviously not fool-proof (that scuffle on NL, for example), I've found it's easier if you try and stick to the forums on each website. Article comment sections on the sites are full of upvoted fanboy comments, drive-by trolling, etc., which doesn't make for an environment conducive to positive discussion, IMO. But the forums usually have a core of people who play across a range of systems, and if you make it clear that you're not there to troll or try to ruin their fun, it's also not WW3 if you stick out. A lot of the regulars on Push Square know I'm a Nintendo-first person who is critical of how Sony has changed over time and only buys their consoles for a handful of exclusives that I'd usually rather play on my Switch. But I also don't go out of my way to be obnoxious about it, so it's all good. I imagine the same would probably be true here if I spent some time as a regular poster. Most people in these communities are pretty much the same: fans, not unreasoning fanatics. There's space in each community for people who are a little critical.

But that's also contingent, at least somewhat, on how you approach said community. If you don't want people to start slapping back, regardless of how valid your points are, you have to kind of balance out how you approach criticism in enthusiast communities. Obviously, none of us want to engage with forums full of corporate zombies who daren't utter a bad word about their preferred console maker; but at the same time, if your posting style is overly critical to a fault, it's easy to provoke dissent, since it can come off like trolling. That's especially the case if you label people who disagree with your harsh criticisms as childish, defensive fanboys, as was happening in that NL thread.

@NEStalgia and I pretty harshly disagree on a lot of points, but we've also interacted enough over the years that we like and have a sort of baseline level of respect for one-another, so we can walk away from scuffles on reasonably friendly terms. That's the ideal for discussions online, IMO. But that's just not going to be the case when it comes to entire communities full of different people unless you've spent years there building rapport, and even then, that's only going to be the most easily likable people.

For myself, I won't hide my feelings on a matter to avoid upsetting people, but I also don't... go out of my way to antagonize others. If I don't like the direction Xbox is going as a brand, or I don't like their games, or whatever, I'm not going to camp out here and be Captain Buzzkill and tell everyone that the games they like kinda suck, actually, and they should really demand better, and if they disagree, they need to play better games like the ones on MY preferred platform. That posting style is gonna cause friction in pretty much any dedicated community.

I would like to see more people cross over between communities to form new connections in good faith, though, if only to further erode the tribal divisions that crop up between groups of humans. It's kinda sad how you can take the most meaningless thing in the world, and humans will find a way to subdivide themselves into opposing teams over it.

@SplooshDmg Yeah, it's become weirdly common for Sony and Microsoft to test the waters with provocative announcements or decisions that they appear willing to back off from when they receive blowback. Part of me wonders how much of this is designed to drum up cheap good will by 'reversing' unpopular decisions, showing that 'they listen' to their base. Admittedly, it's happened a lot more with Sony lately, like their plans to shutter the PS Vita's digital shop, their plans to lock the PS4 version of Horizon Forbidden West off from a next-gen upgrade unless you pay for some expensive special edition of the game, etc. etc. That can only happen so many times before the company begins to look a bit incompetent.

Of course, Nintendo sits at the other extreme, where they just sorta... don't react to pushback at all. I do think they listen to and take note of fan criticisms, but their reaction is very passive. I don't imagine it's a coincidence that they abandoned region locking with the Nintendo Switch, for example, which is great, but it also doesn't really help people who are still stuck not being able to play 3DS games they buy in other countries on their consoles.

With the Big N, it probably also doesn't help that their real leadership is still very traditionally Japanese, whereas Microsoft is American, and the Playstation brand is also functionally American now, so it's easier to communicate with them. The Nintendo bigwigs in Kyoto are still playing by rules and social standards that much of the Western world has abandoned at this point. It's that way with a lot of Japanese companies. Which is why I imagine both Nintendo and Atlus (probably my two favorite companies in the industry) are so weird about people streaming their games, for example. Although seeing how nuts American culture has gotten, I feel like this might also be a blessing in disguise. I won't have to watch another Japanese company I loved slowly lose its identity.

So I do agree criticisms by fans can be helpful. Within reason, at least. People who can only ever harp on about a handful of pet issues get annoying quickly. Especially the ones who will take digs at you for not joining in on their slacktivist causes, or for disagreeing with them that said 'issues' are even a problem. I think Sony's overtly censorious standards for Japanese games are a problem, for example, but it's really pointless trying to convince some people you're not just a pervert who is upset about a lack of fanservice in your video games. I could argue with them incessantly on the issue (I was a little more hot-headed when Nintendo was removing largely harmless touchscreen features from the Western versions of specific Fire Emblem games, for example, to the point where a lot of people would have probably blocked me if the feature had been live at that time), but at some point you have to just accept it's time to move on from an issue. If you can't, it might be time to move on from that fandom or ecosystem altogether to one that aligns more with your values. These people who want to squat in communities and complain about every move a company makes really baffle me. I do think, on some level, some people, like myself, want to mostly focus on aspects of the hobby that bring us joy, while others are only really satisfied when they're complaining about something, and thus go out of their way to focus on aspects of the hobby that set them off. There are few differences I'd say are fully irreconcilable, but that's approaching the limit for me.

I'm a very multiplat person at heart, despite my current stated preferences. Started with NES, transitioned to Sega with the Genesis, went full pony for a long while with the PS1 and PS2, went with Xbox during the seventh gen, and then pretty gradually transitioned back to Nintendo in 2011. You won't find a lot of Nintendo fans who didn't play their first 3D Zelda game until 2012! During those times, I almost always owned at least two current gen systems, and, even now, own and go back and forth between a 360, Wii U, 3DS, Switch, Vita, PS2, and PS4. So going between platforms is fairly natural for me.

With Switch, my preference is less "because Nintendo" and more because I'm a handheld gamer at heart, and the Switch feels like a device that was designed with people like me in mind. Partially because my vision problems mean I see things easier when I'm able to press a screen up close to my face, and partially because I find handheld gaming sessions to be comfier and more intimate in general.

Probably worth mentioning, but, since 2011, I've also been a semi-permanent inductee into the PCMR. I really like the vast amount of customization you have on a more open platform, so that tends to be where I play most of the demanding games. Also, before the current gen consoles, it was the only way to play AAA games at 60fps. Some PS4 and especially Xbox One titles barely performed better than some of those horror story Switch ports of AAA games you might have heard about.

I've actually been thinking about going mono-console with the new devices, which would be new for me. Less because of any tribal affiliations, and more because... well, owning multiple consoles means I'm drowning in choice. It's been paralyzing this gen, owning a PC, a 3DS, a Vita, a PS4, a Wii U, etc. So many games, and so little time to engage with them all! So it's not realistic at this point to own almost everything.

Sony is making it easier since they killed off Japan Studio, which was one of my big reasons for getting their consoles. If Atlus goes multiplat with Persona, I might never buy one of their consoles again!

@SplooshDmg oh yeah, click and hold is back! It's so dumb... Oh and I got my surprise delivery of laundry detergent...I picked shipping and they had the store deliver it. It was just two bottles of tide sitting on the doorstep, no bag, no box, just like $25 in drug money sitting there.... And I paid $13 for that and a chance to win a chance to buy a series x!

Mario party f2p. Do you realize what you're asking for?? And you thought genshin was Pooh's cash grab? You're actually asking to give the Yamauchi clan their casinos in the open air! . What's next f2p Pokemon OMG they already have that in concert with Google and it makes the GDP of Australia look insignificant!

ONLINE MULTIPLAYER: I just don't get that whole scene anymore... Like at all. Battle pass, cosmetics.....I just... Don't get it. To me online fps is about k/d and xp doesn't exist. I'm old. Where do I insert the Xbox cartridges? Where's the RF connection. Why can't I hear modem sounds?

@BlueOcean im not a fan of the whole f2p thing, but I have to agree about smash. I thought that was gross when they announced it. And then announced the next one. I think that was the moment I realized Nintendo was becoming EA.

@Ralizah I think there's a lot more to it than just which fandom you have the least in common with or popularity making more people defending or criticizing. To the former there's the fact that the fandom and the product changes overall. You were practically a pony when I first met you, and now you're even more critical of Sony than I am. Meanwhile I have a lifetime history of being Nintendo first since Duck Hunt was cutting edge. I ignored PS4 for most of it's life despite having it from day 1 because 3ds was just better. My avatar is Zelda. I'm kind of exactly what a Nintendo zealot ought to be.... So it's hard to say I have the least in common with the audience. Yet... Nintendos content, business, and actions the past 4 years or so, contrasted with content from the rest of the industry and their own past trajectory makes me highly critical. I don't think it's as simple as having the least in common with the community.

But what I have noticed both 8 years ago, and again now it's a massive shift in the communities themselves, as brands achieve popularity. 360 was AWFUL. But the company stared they were intentionally cultivating the bro market. It was a focus market and an actual strategy of getting the worst of the worst internet dwellers as the 360 community. I swung wide around anything xb online back then. Then the bros moved to PS4 en masse and continued being modified bros. You remember how much I avoided PS for years! But with the launch of ps5 mellowed a bit. Now a year later it's really mellowed a lot. Even some of the more noxious ps members have actually really mellowed. It's pleasant. PXB for now reminds me of nl in the 3ds era. I know it'll change but it's nice for now. There's the few upstarts from both sides but generally it's laid back and positive.

NL on the other hand...... In the past year, really since the new consoles came out, and maybe because the switch pro didn't.... The whole mood is on edge and people are ready to tear into each other the moment anything is criticized. And with Nintendo doing ever more divisive things, and nl being so willing to fan the flames in the articles everything gets ugly rapidly. More importantly I've noticed it's not like it's new mass market users arriving and starting noise, it's long time users that maybe we're always fanboys but we're harmless, are now becoming easily agitated and aggressive and more corporate zombies than ever. All I can think of is theresa new insecure, defensive attitude due to the comparatively really weak hardware, and the fact that pro never happened that there's this interiority complex or something for some. The mood overall there is just a lot more "old push square"like than it was a year ago. Meanwhile on push square, Liam posted on the what are you playing that he's playing fh5 and the site didn't go into meltdown. Nobody even mentioned it and a few mentioned also playing it. That isn't push square a year ago. And definitely not 4 years ago.

The communities themselves definitely change. It's not as simple as the bigger one or the one you have most in common with etc, other than that as the new tone takes over you have less in common with a group that didn't used to be the majority...

Honestly it's all very weird.

@SplooshDmg lol I haven't played the e5 in years and years....I remember the votes being the worst part. Shamblers are kinda easy to cheese, but the vores........

@ralizah I'm always amazed at disagree on so many things because much of our trajectory and preferences are identical, lol

@NEStalgia Being an OG Nintendo fan doesn't really align you with the expectations of Nintendo's fans as they exist today, though, which you seem to have acknowledged yourself. Interestingly, the Switch playerbase is pretty wildly different from the ones that flocked to past Ninty consoles, particularly in terms of how hungry they are for third-party support, which is new. There's a reason that old "buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games" truism exists, and it's because, on most of their older systems, that's what people did: bought Nintendo-published games, maybe a couple of highly-advertised third party releases, and absolutely nothing else. Even with the Wii U, superior third party releases floundered while people snapped up every Mario and Zelda release on the platform.

The Switch changed all that, for some reason. While it's still not an ideal environment for AAA releases (even the majority of the most ardent Switch owners aren't generally eager to play DOOM Eternal at 540p30, it seems), AA and indie stuff is often selling better on Switch than on rival platforms, which would have been unthinkable even a generation before. The freeing nature of the hybrid design of the system means people want to play a LOT of stuff on it: thus the flurry of ports, re-releases, "legacy content," etc. This doesn't sit well with the people who buy Nintendo consoles to play the same five first-party releases they can't do without every generation, of course, but it's leading to the company having a much healthier position in the industry as a whole. Companies that would never have touched a Nintendo console with a five-foot stick previously suddenly can't port games fast enough.

Anyway, Push Square hasn't "mellowed out" at all. Particularly a few months after the launch of the PS5, where you couldn't mention GamePass on there without getting notification'd to death by fanboys. It's just hard for people to be obnoxious about their preferred brand when Sony can't go five minutes without saying or doing something controversial, I imagine. As someone who is a regular in that community, the only real change to their culture, IMO, has come from the writers. Sammy Barker has been surprisingly candid about criticizing Sony so far this gen, which I never expected. Much to the chagrin of some regulars in that community, mind you.

Nintendo Life is actually doing something similar insofar as the writers are very openly willing to call out Nintendo's missteps, as well as grading releases on the system harshly when their technical performance doesn't measure up.

So, writers for both communities are actually doing their jobs properly now. That's the only major change I've really noticed.

Which, isn't to say that the culture of NL hasn't subtly shifted in some respects, but, again, that always happens when a community sees an increase in attention. NL wasn't getting nearly as much traffic in the Wii U/3DS era as it has been in the Switch era.

But what you're blaming on a "shift in culture" is, I contend, nothing of the sort. As I said, if that thread had an equivalent on here or Push Square, you'd also see strong disagreement from forum regulars. Flurries of wild complaints being lobbed at every aspect of the company, and people being told they're wrong for being satisfied with the releases they are getting is, yes, probably going to provoke some mildly defensive reactions from fans.

And, come on, when you get to the point where you're saying Breath of the Wild isn't really a Switch game because it was a cross-gen release, Metroid Dread doesn't count because it's a side-scrolling Metroidvania instead of a 50 hour open world title, Luigi's Mansion 3 doesn't count for... some reason that I'm still foggy on..., such and such doesn't count because it's a "small game" (which, you'll recall, you never clearly defined for me), such and such doesn't count because outside studios were pulled in to help with development, such and such doesn't count because it reminds you of a game you might have played on the 3DS, etc., you have to admit you're not being a fully reasonable participant in that particular discussion. Some part of you knows that.

As before, this is as far I'm getting sucked into that particular conversation, because it doesn't really interest me. People have the right to be dissatisfied, and to express that. Other people have the right to disagree with those feelings. As someone who has said before that I don't think Nintendo's output is necessarily as good as it was in the Wii U/3DS era, I have mixed feelings on the whole discussion.

When we started talking, I didn't necessarily foresee Playstation leadership renouncing its Japanese heritage, nuking the only in-house studio turning out truly unique games, actively antagonizing Jp developers on its platform, releasing half its games on PC, and turning its biggest studio into a development farm for licensed superhero games. I also didn't foresee Microsoft flexing their financial muscle to spend billions of dollars snapping up major third-party publishers to fund the goliath that GamePass is slowly becoming.

I didn't change. Sony did.