Switch & Nintendo News/Discussion

[Raid]

I know it's not as simple as saying "they earn this much so they should spend this much", but c'mon, this franchise has to be in the top 10 most profitable game series of all time and it's been going for nearly 30 years; why are they still a small studio? Given how controlling Nintendo are over their major franchises, I'm still astonished how little effort appears to be put into these things.

They have access to a ready-made set of voice acting for the voice work, but they're still using the same gravelly samples they were using due to the limitations of an 8mb cartridge. It's not like they're iconic sound effects, you ask anyone with knowledge of the franchise what Pikachu sounds like and they'll reply "Pika pika!" from the anime. It's not like they haven't reference the anime before; Pokemon Yellow changed the plot and characters, even some of the game mechanics to match it.

[Mantis]

I totally think of this when someone asks how Pikachu sounds. -_-

[DjchunKfunK]

I know it's not as simple as saying "they earn this much so they should spend this much", but c'mon, this franchise has to be in the top 10 most profitable game series of all time and it's been going for nearly 30 years; why are they still a small studio? Given how controlling Nintendo are over their major franchises, I'm still astonished how little effort appears to be put into these things.

They have access to a ready-made set of voice acting for the voice work, but they're still using the same gravelly samples they were using due to the limitations of an 8mb cartridge. It's not like they're iconic sound effects, you ask anyone with knowledge of the franchise what Pikachu sounds like and they'll reply "Pika pika!" from the anime. It's not like they haven't reference the anime before; Pokemon Yellow changed the plot and characters, even some of the game mechanics to match it.

Sound work isn't cheap, especially when you take into consideration multiple regions, so that is probably the reason. Even if you have some work already done for the anime you would still need to license it for games and then do a load of recording for all the other Pokemon not in the anime.

As for why the team is still so small, I don't know but the Pokemon games are not quite like every other Nintendo franchise because of the IP being jointly owned by three entities, so Nintendo have less control in general than with their other games. If I had to guess it is probably this that is the cause of a lot of the issues you have with the games. If it was a wholly owned Nintendo IP I think that much like it's other IPs that have seen big changes on the Switch, we would have seen a very different Pokemon game by now.

[Raid]

Sound work isn't cheap, especially when you take into consideration multiple regions

Y'know, it never occurred to me that Pokemon had different names in different languages, but of course they do; half of them are English plays on words. Although funnily enough Pikachu has the same voice everywhere, so my "Pika Pika" comment stands.

[DjchunKfunK]

Sound work isn't cheap, especially when you take into consideration multiple regions

Y'know, it never occurred to me that Pokemon had different names in different languages, but of course they do; half of them are English plays on words. Although funnily enough Pikachu has the same voice everywhere, so my "Pika Pika" comment stands.

[Mantis]

Reviews are coming out for Arceus and it really does sound like some of them are trying to spin a positive out of it when really it sounds like the absolute minimum viable release they could have managed.

Eurogamer spins it as being a bare budget minimum showing the series at its purest and says it has a flimsiness which is compulsive.

[Alan]

New update adds folders! In the most ass backwards Nintendo way there is. They don’t appear on the main screen you need to go to your library then press L and it takes you to a second library with folders.

[Alan]

Beta of Splatoon 3 tomorrow. If you sign up via the store you also get a 7 day Nintendo online code which is nice I suppose. Are people really going to pay another 50quid for another slight iteration of splatoon though? Yeah, they probably will.

[DjchunKfunK]

I mean people pay £50 for CoD every year.

[Hatredsheart]

[Alan]

They didn’t broadcast it live in the uk because of the title.

[DjchunKfunK]

They didn’t broadcast it live in the uk because of the title.

That's mostly supposition but it would be very dumb if it was true.

[Raid]

So the new Pokemon game is being reviewed, and oh dear lord this is the worst-looking major release I've seen in a long time. I've linked to a timestamp in Eurogamer's review video that shows that they can't even animate characters correctly in cutscenes within an environment that is barely more detailed than 4 textured walls and a floor. I'm gobsmacked that they think this is fit for release.



I really try to be fair to games developers because I know it's not an easy profession, and that graphics usually aren't as important as gameplay, but this is an abomination, visually. I just can't fathom how such a valuable franchise is seeing mainline releases that look like this. Do developers at Gamefreak have some equivalent to tenure and they haven't been changed since the Gameboy days? Are they being forced to use a game engine originally created for the DS? I know the answer is always "it'll still sell six million copies in the first week", but there has to be something wrong at that company.

[Mantis]

The performance issues haven't really been that bad at all for me. I notice the frame drops here and there but haven't had anything more significant than that.

Shame this installment is being bombarded with so much negativity for it as so far I think it's been the best entry in the series in ages. Sword was so bad. The quality of life improvements and general little gameplay changes have made Violet a lot more streamlined so you can focus on the actual entertaining parts of the game. There's a good variety of Pokemon available early too so it's a bit more interesting and the freedom to just wander off anywhere suits the game nicely.

[Raid]

I've seen that same sentiment elsewhere, it's a shame that it's clearly been pushed out the door too early. Digital Foundry, a channel I seldom bother watching because I'm not all that interested in technical stuff, did a comparison to Legends: Arceus which isn't even a year old yet, and that performed and looked vastly better. They also mentioned that there's a lot of staff overlap between the two titles, so it's likely that development on this wasn't the company's main focus until Arceus was finished. I had it in my head that this didn't look a lot different to Arceus, because the latter wasn't exactly a looker compared to other open world games, but seeing them side by side is quite eye opening. They also showed it next to Breath of the Wild which is almost a generation old now and also ran on the Wii U, and despite BotW relying more on art style than graphical grunt, it looks like a masterpiece by comparison.

Look at this, it's just so clearly unfinished. It's apparently quite common throughout the world.


It wasn't likely to affect me anyway, as I very quickly got bored of Sword due to the lack of challenge. Pokemon games have never been difficult, but Sword wasn't a good Pokemon game either, and I just didn't like the concept of the wild zone, or whatever it was called.