imthesoldier

2 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

WHAT

I SAID, "GIVEN HOW MANY PEOPLE THESE DAYS HAVE SHIT HEARING DUE TO LISTENING TO MUSIC SO DAMN LOUD WITH EARBUDS ON, NOTHING IS LOUD ANYMORE!"

1 hour ago, Zaku3 said:

Checked my deck and the fan seems fine. Doesn't seem to be that loud.

Given how many people these days have shit hearing due to listening to music so damn loud with earbuds on, nothing is loud anymore.

3 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Even Nintendo themselves consider it a console. I remember years ago they were surprised about how many people used it handheld.

 

Now they've kind of muddied the water since because they brought out the lite and the OLED which offer not benefit to playing it on a TV but it was always meant to be a console first.

Interestingly, I always wondered why they never considered a "docked" only Switch, considering they already have a "portable" only console of the Switch. And I do believe Nintendo said portable vs. docked is about 50/50. For the OLED model, I'm sure that's a bit higher given the type of screen used.

9 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

No. They very clearly still make a console. 

Right? Just because they found a way to make a device that can do two different form factors doesn't mean they've left the console. Hell, just looking at the Merrian-Webstar definition of a console clearly states this:

"5 : an electronic system that connects to a display (such as a television set) and is used primarily to play video games "

Yup. Looks like the Switch fits that definition perfectly.

@vaxick

Included Max Payne 2 in there. Never did get Max Payne 3 for PC though. Originally got that for PS3, but have since sold that one. I’m looking to get the whole trilogy on Steam. 

18 hours ago, vaxick said:

Please come with a mousepad 

I still have mine from the original game, and use it to this day! Once I get home, I'll snap a photo of it.

I certainly wouldn't mind a replace mouse pad though as a pre-order bonus. Back when preorder bonuses actually meant something.

1 hour ago, cusideabelincoln said:

Finally Ubisoft games can jump on that 120+ Hz train.

Nah, man. This'll be the secret sauce that finally brings GTAV into the next-gen. Coming in 2024, GTAV: Direct Edition made specifically for PC with DS in mind.

4 hours ago, Brick said:

 

Because it was five years ago haha. It was at E3 2017 they showed the logo, and announced it was in development. Since then nothing except they started over with Retro doing it now instead. 

 

I'm hoping we finally see something either this year or next. I say next because they might release/announce the HD Trilogy first for this year, and then 4 the following year. 

Yeah. All we had to go on was it was in development by a brand new team, and then Jan 2019, they reveal development was restarted with Retro at the helm. Truthfully, we can expect it was restarted in late 2018, which puts the current development for Prime 4 at almost 3 1/2 years right now. It's certainly more possible now they'll have something to show for it come June.

As far as Prime Trilogy, that dead horse has been beaten more than one of R. Kelly's girlfriends, so it's a fricking coin toss if it'll ever see the light of day. The same is true for Wind Waker HD, and Twilight Princess HD coming to Switch. Given this delay though, I suspect it's more likely than ever those two will receive ports.

On 3/29/2022 at 12:18 PM, TwinIon said:

Seems great and I hope to see it in a bunch of games, but I won't hold my breath for significant adoption anytime soon. It also requires an M.2 SSD, which is increasingly standard, but I'd guess far from universal.

 

 

I'm curious as to how much of a hit this is to the GPU. Given how many games are GPU limited on the PC, I'd be slightly concerned that moving more work to the GPU would be less than ideal. During initial loads that's obviously not a problem.

 

 

I don't think that was in danger of changing much either way. Games haven't exactly been great at optimizing for all the many threads that have been available for years now.

I wouldn't say there was a danger either. The issue I think had more to do with as video games become more sophisticated, and require more resources, the liklihood of developers using more CPU cores starts to seem logical. But what we're also seeing is more and more hardware is being used to help accelerate functions that otherwise would be allocated for the CPU. The GPU itself over the years has already removed a ton of the work involving the CPU. With DirectStorage API now on the docket, you're removing even more of the overheard that CPU

That said, I think what might end up happening is evolving the CPU to handle a lot more IPCs instead of simply adding more and more cores. Case in point, you can still play modern games with CPUs over a decade old, and while performance is certainly limited, you play them relatively alright.

19 hours ago, Zaku3 said:

Don't games need to be developed with this in mind.

I think existing games could also be patched to take advantage of it, but it likely wouldn't be the same as a game built from the ground up with it. That'd especially be the case if developers design their game without elevators, or long corridors to hide streaming assets.

Either way, a 20-40% reduction in CPU usage is significant enough to the point where 6-Cores, let alone 4-core CPUs, might still be the standard for many more years to come.

Well, there goes my prediction. I was certain 2022 would be the year of Zelda.

Definitely more discussions coming as to whether or not this coincides with a possible Switch 2 release for Spring 2023. Given other SKUs of Tegra Orin chips are planned to launch later this year, it does appear to slot right in there as an opportune time.

But like you said @Xbob42, as long as the Switch does well, there might be less incentive to do so. I recall that compared to Nintendo's previous systems, the Switch is one  of the only to continue selling as well (minus say the Nintendo DS) five years into its life. It's unprecedented really. If Nintendo does see the writing on the wall with a projected sales slump coming this year, and into 2023, then perhaps it does make more sense to release a new iteration as early as next year.

I could see another cross-gen situation for BOTW2 as we had for the first one. More than that, I can see the same happening for Prime 4 at this rate. And you could split the differences in versions enough to entice gamers wanting to upgrade if they'd like. So say BOTW2 on OG Switch runs at 900p30, but on Switch 2, it's 1080p60 for example. And same sort of thing for Prime 4. OG Switch maybe 720-900p30, and Switch 2 1080p60 or something like that. But Nintendo doesn't normally make the two versions that drastic for a cross-gen release unless it's a remake/remaster ala Skyward Sword situation for example.

I'm a little sad they delayed it, but I'd rather they do so, and make the game as perfect as they want it rather than turn into Cyberpunk-type scenario, which normally isn't Nintendo's M.O. anyway.

It'll also give me time to replay BOTW perhaps this next winter, leaving me more time to replay Xenoblade 1, and finally get and play XC2+Torna prior to XC3 launching.

3 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I've long argued that emulation should be a core competency at Nintendo at this point. Given the rate at which they re-release games across platforms, and their penchant for building novel hardware that may not resemble past hardware in terms of architecture or capabilities, they should be the best in the world at putting their own games on whatever machine. The best of their back catalog should be playable anywhere and should always be the best versions of themselves. If you've got Nintendo hardware, it should never be a question as to if you can play your favorite old Zelda or Mario game. Then they should just be moving through their catalog making premium remakes like Link's Awakening.

 

Instead it seems that every time Nintendo releases hardware, it's some mystery as to what they'll do with their old games and how much they'll cost and how the official version might be inferior to some pirated emulator. It seems like Nintendo understands the value of their catalog, but is only ever willing to put in the bare minimum effort to monetize them.

 

Maybe the new subscription is a good way to do it, I haven't paid for it or heard many opinions on it, but it doesn't feel great to pay for a subscription to access games I've payed for multiple times already.

I think part of the issue is Nintendo has talked in the past about always trying to "move forward" as it were, and by continuing to support old titles, it feels they're going backwards. Not to mention if they cannot figure out something "new and exciting" to add for an existing franchise, they won't do it. Case in point, F-Zero. After F-Zero GX, Nintendo thought that was the end practically. Even Miyamoto himself said something along the lines of, "...didn't we do that already?" In his mind's eye, if they can't do something different, or new for a franchise, they won't bother because they don't want to rehash what has already been done before.

I sort of get that, but on the other hand, it leaves a lot on the table in terms of support. "Oh, you want to play that old game again? Why? Why not play this new game we have instead? It's new, and exciting!"

But if that were truly the case, why bother re-releasing their old titles via Virtual Console, or more recently, NSO? Answer: Nintendo knows that their fans do care, but instead of doing it in a way that would make sense for most people, they must do it their own boneheaded way. Take a look most recently with the Switch update that FINALLY adds folders...except the folders are not on the front page, and you must enter a different sub menu, and then open it up from there. Despite that they're perfectly capable of making folders for their OS as the Wii U, and 3DS have shown, nope. They have to be "different."

47 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I never could get into GTAO back then, and still can't today. But RockStar doesn't care. They'll make hundreds of millions of dollars because of this.

13 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

 

I think they're bitter their games are pirated so much, lol.

 

Beyond that though, be honest... it doesn't hurt their business much at all to be a dick to their fans. 
Ask yourself how many people will boycott the next Smash because Nintendo kept it out of EVO or deleted their post mentioning 'PM' or 'Slippi.'

That is something Nintendo has never, ever truly understood. They are very much like Disney in that regard in that they will fight tooth, and nail to control every aspect of their IPs in order to maintain that status quo. Mario is to Nintendo as Mickey Mouse is to Disney.

EDIT: Nintendo actually forced the removal of an archive scan of a game guide for Super Mario 64 that someone uploaded. It's a scan...of a game guide that only launched in JPN...is out of print, and has been for decades now...and Nintendo issued a takedown notice for it.

If you want just how "Nintendo being Nintendo" can go, it's bullshit like this.

18 hours ago, TwinIon said:

As far as mistakes that actually cost Nintendo, the Sony partnership and every decision made with the Wii U have to be up there.

 

Then there are the mistakes that it's not clear to me have really cost them, like their terrible strategy with online. It's plausible to me that they could have sunk a ton of money into building a first class online platform and that it wouldn't really have helped their bottom line at all. Then again, it's also plausible to me that their failure to invest could have long term implications and end up costing them more in the end. Same for how they've treated their back catalog. They've made a ton of money re-selling their games again and again, but it is possible that strategy will cost them long term fans.

 

Lastly, there are the decisions that I wish they'd made differently but obviously haven't cost them. Chiefly among them, not waiting longer to launch the Switch and putting in a more powerful chip in there. I'd also argue that the overall design of the DS line is up there. Even though I owned many versions of the DS and the success of the various DS platforms is hard to argue with, I think those systems succeeded in spite of the dual screen gimmick. So few games actually made any kind of interesting use of the second screen, and I really think they could have made a better, more traditional handheld without it. I also think the success of the DS systems lead to the development of the Wii U, which amplified all the problems with the DS to the point they couldn't be overlooked anymore.

What's perplexing is Nintendo back in the 90s was trying all sorts of new things with regards to online capabilities. The freaking Super Famicom had online for christ's sake. I was watching that DF Retro video about F-Zero, and it astounded me that Nintendo had LIVE F-Zero races that real players would compete in that you could watch on your TV; with commentators, like you were watching an F1 Race. Consoles even today don't do that, and Nintendo was doing this in the early 90s?

6 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

The switch from an AMD to Nvidia chipset is what I was referring to.  Because of that, they couldn’t take the easy way out to keep backwards compatibility with the prior gen, as they had a pattern of.

Emulation of older hardware is another matter.  The Switch’s N64 Emulator being worse than prior gens is ludicrous.

 

What I'm hoping is Nintendo stays with nVidia for the forseeable future, and as such maintains BC for future systems so we don't have to keep rebuying all their fucking games every generation. My thought is if they stick specifically with the ARM Cortex CPU (the newer Tegra Orin uses Cortex btw), then it should be easier to do so.

AMD says FSR 2.0 will run on Xbox and these Nvidia graphics cards

WWW.THEVERGE.COM

---

AMD’s new answer to DLSS might be "demanding," though.

R.I.P RX 580 owners. They get no love anymore.

16 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

 

Atleast we will eventually have a solution for 15FPS Xenoblade Chronicles 3. (Either BC or emulation)

At least Homebrew exists, so you can max out the clocks for a more stable experience. I hear it works quite well for XC2.

33 minutes ago, CastletonSnob said:

They were a newcomer to home consoles.

 

Panasonic, Apple and Phillips were successful home electronics companies, too. Didn't help them much in the console market.

In the case of Pansonic with the 3DO, that was DOA practically due to its staggeringly high price of $699...in 1993. Same with Apple with the Pippin, which was $599 in 1996 (3x the price of the N64 mind you). And the Phillips CD-i, while co-developed with Sony, just could not garner that market, and also had a very high price of like a grand. 

By contrast, Sony needed a device that was their version of the Sony Walkman, but for gaming in a sense. Price competitiveness was likely a huge factor. Had the PSX been 400-500 dollars, even with CD-Rom, it's possible its success would not have been as high. We'll never know of course, but what we do know is the PSX was cheap compared to others ($299 was a big factor for sure) on top of Sony's own marketing department.

3 hours ago, Bloodporne said:

This was baffling at the time. Also the Wii is the last Nintendo thing I ever bought.

The Wii is an interesting case analysis on what Nintendo should've done differently, but hindsight is 20/20 of course.

The Wii could've been at least a 720p resolution console (hell, the original Xbox could output in 720p), plus with actual gyro sensors in the Wiimote at launch instead of the Wii Motion Plus a few years after the fact. By that point, it was too little too late. It probably would've raised the cost of the system to easily 300 dollars at the time instead of the launch 250, but with better motion controls, plus slightly better graphics to take advantage of a high resolution, I think the "fad" of motion controls would not have faded so quickly, and the overall success of the Wii possibly would have been heightened.

1 hour ago, CastletonSnob said:

The second reason I say that sticking with cartridges was Nintendo's worst mistake is because Final Fantasy VII was originally going to be on the N64, but because of Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges, Square jumped ship to Sony, where FFVII became a killer app for the PS1.

It's interesting because we've kind of gone full circle. Cartridges, while limited in size, were much much faster compared to optical media, so loading data was quicker, and loading times were either non-existent, or greatly reduced. As optical media became common place in consoles, loading times increased, but so did game sizes because it was cheap. It kind of hit its peak during the PS4 era because of the use of Blu-Ray discs, plus spinning hardrives. Those long load times were quite honestly a pain.

But now? SSDs are finally hitting their stride in the console space, and loading screens are again, greatly reduced, or non-existent. We moved from media with no moving parts to media with moving parts, all the way back to media with no moving parts.

Was sticking with cartridges over CDs the worst mistake Nintendo made? Eh, I think even that is debatable to be honest, but you could easily write a book about Nintendo in the 1990s. Personally, I don't think there is that "one" thing Nintendo did in their history that undeniably is much much worse than everything else they've done.

Here's another example though; prior to the release of the SNES in NA, Nintendo was considering on adding the Super FX chip into every console. They decided against it for cost cutting reasons, and as a result, the chip was used in the cartridges instead, and also limited its appeal. It would've made the SNES one of the most powerful 16-bit consoles ever made (It could run freaking Doom for goodness sakes!). But alas, they did not.

No Super FX in SNES, Use of Cartridges during N64 era, Lack of HD for the Wii, and not Gyro at launch, plus bad naming/marketing for the Wii U. You could take all four of those scenarios (interestingly are all one after the other), and come up with compelling reasons why they were some of the worst.

3 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

We've come a long way since these days

 

 

Oh, that brings back so many memories. I remember being so anti-Microsoft during those days, hence why I picked up the PS4. Now, the tables have turned just a wee bit.

That's quite hilarious actually. Reminds me of the days playing GT4 with B-Spec running for those 24hr races. Big difference though is -Spec wasn't really for farming, but instead just getting through those long, and rather tedious races.

Still not a fan of this MTX business, let alone the always-online requirement (maybe for the latter, a patch will be issued to fix this, but I have doubts)

Looks impressive.

What strikes me though is it seems the closer we try to make graphics look "real"the further away we truly are. One thing I've been trying to nail down lately is why despite how good it looks, you can still tell it's just CGI. It could simply be we've seen the progression for so many years, that we're used to the details, but can also spot when something looks off.

I think it also had to do with how "smooth" everything looks. Even the animations look too smooth for real life. As though it doesn't have weight. Like I said, the facial animations looks very impressive, but it's still missing something.

11 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

According to that, it tells me June 6th, which conveniently is my B-Day. I'd be ok with that.

On 3/20/2022 at 2:47 PM, Zaku3 said:

So I am gonna echo the hardware reviews in that it's amazing. The screen is good pretty similar to the Neo probably slightly better (more of like backlight bleed on the Neo which the Next supposedly solves) the controls are great. I am not used to the sticks it uses but they feel good and all the buttons are feel great. The top placed analog sticks aren't really an issue for me. I thought I'd have to strech to reach the face buttons but no. The system seems to be limited to 15 watts but in that time it runs games really well. I think DS3 was anywhere from 58-60FPS and I think the game defaulted to high initially which is crazy for a handheld. The negative is the track pads. I think they might be too sensitive or just too small to really replace a mouse. It does open up turn based strategy games but I wouldn't touch anything real time on it. Maybe Hearts of Iron 4 because you could set up a frontline battle plan and let the AI deal with it. Very comfortable to hold as well. I kinda like how wide it is because I prefer not having my hands so close together while holding a controller. (not a big deal but I'd rather use joy cons in each hand then the grip that nintendo offers)

 

The software is pretty bad though. Compatibility is questionable. I haven't used it enough to make a game by game notice since I just got it yesterday at about 530 and was in a HOI4 game when I got it. Linus mentioned that he was playing Horizon Zero Dawn and performance would tank in later game areas while the game itself is steam green check mark verified. The only experience I can state with certainty is Dark Souls 1 remastered, Dark Souls 3, and Yazuka 0 worked. I ran into an issue with Blue Reflection (Koei Temco Gust developed RPG) where it would start up but wouldn't recognize the steam controller so I couldn't actually play it. Need to see if I can mess around a bit with the steam control settings to see if I can get it working. Yakuza had a problem with going to sleep. I put the game to sleep last night and turn it on today and the audio was crackling. Probably could be solved by just quitting the game and reopening it.

 

The desktop OS is problematic. I can't get the keyboard option to consistently open but It does include an app store so you can download most emulators by it. (I don't know how to install anything in linux beyond that app store. Tried to download Google Chrome but couldn't figure out how to install it. Problem is that you need a separate device (laptop or PC) so you can actually get ROMs and such onto a USB stick (or the SD card). It's hard to emulate on it because while the performance is good it's hard to get the built in controls to work. I got Circra (3ds) installed but can't get it to use the steam controller because I think it looks to the OS as a keyboard. I got yuzu (switch) installed and working and it had a setting for the steam controller which was great. My only issue with Yuzu was the lack of a keyboard prevents me from getting beta builds to use the latest version. I haven't been able to try any other system due to needing a keyboard to hunt down PS2/3 BiOS.

 

Overall it's not ready for prime time and anyone that is expecting this to be a console PC experience is sadly mistaken. TBH the solution to it's problem would be Windows actually. Problem is the drivers are not good as of right now and I dunno how that will play out. From what I can tell the APU isn't actually custom. It's the Van Gogh APU that AMD had in it's forecasts but never released. I imagine they considered Zen 2 and RDNA3 to not be as compelling as Zen3+/RDNA3. It will be fine in SteamOS and runs great in steamOS but the windows driver situation is questionable. Generally you can just download AMD APU drivers from their site but I doubt this one gets that treatment for Windows and no other device is really gonna be using this APU to make them work on it. 

 

It should work better by the time late Q2 and Q3 people get it but compatibility will always be an issue. As long as you want to play recentish games though it should be fine. Need to mess around with it more. I think the problem Valve certification is having is that they probably just open the game play it for a bit then give it a rating. Linus' Horizon Zero Dawn and the audio glitch in Yakuza 0 would support that.

 

I think I am gonna keep my current reservation and just offer it to a friend or someone here. The Deck I got is the 64GB version but the seller replaced the 64GB with a 1TB SSD.

Thanks very much for the impression, dude.

Going back to your problem with emulators, I've heard that if you install the emulator onto Steam as a non-Steam game, then the controls would automatically bind where they should, so there's less fiddling. I know The Phawx went into details about that early on, but not sure if his more recent videos talked much about that.

As far as the other issues, or compatibility issues you had, sounds like Valve continues to issues updates, so hopefully by the time it reaches me, more of those issues will be sorted like you said.

As far as making Steam titles Deck verified, I wonder if there'd be a way for Valve to create a program that would effectively "play" the game, almost like a playtest, and see if issues crop up during the test, and issues patch fixes for Proton after that. I don't know though. I'm not a programmer.