Do you approve of Nintendo right now?

[Ness]

We all know the price for the switch 2 and some of its games but i am concerned if yall approve of Nintendo's actions

As a Nintendo nerd for life i was shocked to see that switch 2 price. I feel like Nintendo is just getting to greedy. You cant even mod your switch 2!

Nintendo's action are okay in my opinion. If they want money they should localize Mother 3, make some EarthBound 2 or a remake and bring back their older franchises.

 

[Mialentia]

The only thing Nintendo has overpriced this generation is Mario Kart World. Everything else they've done is either following previously-established market trends (capitalism's fault) or perfectly valid (no one's fault). The grifting is getting absolutely unbearable.

The Switch 2 being unmoddable is because it literally just came out. People will find vulnerabilities eventually. They always do. Its price is also perfectly valid for a hybrid console of this quality (just compare Cyberpunk in handheld on Switch 2 VS Steam Deck), and with so many exclusives that are bound to release for it.

People just love to bitch for no valid reason. It's exhausting.

 

[TheVocalsmith]

The only thing Nintendo has overpriced this generation is Mario Kart World. Everything else they've done is either following previously-established market trends (capitalism's fault) or perfectly valid (no one's fault). The grifting is getting absolutely unbearable.

The Switch 2 being unmoddable is because it literally just came out. People will find vulnerabilities eventually. They always do. Its price is also perfectly valid for a hybrid console of this quality (just compare Cyberpunk in handheld on Switch 2 VS Steam Deck), and with so many exclusives that are bound to release for it.

People just love to bitch for no valid reason. It's exhausting.

Im glad im not the only one with this opinion and being annoyed about it.

I got called some pretty bad stuff by a friend on Discord because I said I liked Z-A...They hate Nintendo for stupid reasons.

 

[Mialentia]

I got called some pretty bad stuff by a friend on Discord because I said I liked Z-A...They hate Nintendo for stupid reasons.

Respectfully, that doesn't sound like a friend to me. Imagine getting so caught up in fabricated hate that you insult a friend over it. I feel for you

 

[da man/man]

Agreeing that Mario Kart World, has been the only truly overpriced recently. The problem with the Nintendo "hate mob" (not saying all nintendo haters are unreasonable, but you know what I'm talking about) is that if even a single thing is unfavorable to the consumer, it's chalked up to nintendo being greedy, even though a lot of the prices are just the new standard in the industry (unfortunately).

On the modding side of things, I personally, am in full support of what they're doing on that, which is likely a controversial take. But the way I see it, I feel like it's more to combat piracy if anything, and modding just got caught in the cross fire, but since the system just came out they're doing what they can to prevent uncondoned consumer-side edits, and modding just happens to be part of that. And it likely won't last forever, back when Pokemon X and Y came out, people were flipping their lids about how it was difficult to hack in things or mod things, but it doesn't take long to see that's no longer the case.

The last major point that gets brought against nintendo, is the large amount of lawsuits, and beside the "big" one (in which I'm also on the nintendo side, but I know plenty of others aren't) if you look, a large majority of them are cracking down on piracy. Streamers and Subreddits that focus on pirated games, as well as emulators that run Switch games, and a lot of people dismiss it as wrong because "David vs Goliath". But yes, sometimes the megacorporation, is in fact in the right.

If something is big, and widely liked, people will feel the need to look through every crack and crevice to try and discredit it to feel like a rebel, and it get's tiring trying to hold a modest conversation about said thing with them.

 

[The Mega Champion]

Haha... No.

They've become massive anti-consumer overnight basically. They've joined the other money hungry greedy corpos and want to push for the all-digital future... became the first company to increase video games to $80 (with an overpriced game I'm sorry)... go after other companies and even people over the stupidest of reasons and things (patents, emulation, ROMs, etc.) and let's not forget to mention their game key card BS which has forced me to only support first party games now.

I know for a fact I'm forgetting things but these are the immediate things that came to my mind.

 

[NumberOneSpinelApologist]

For an average someone who does not live in a rich country of the global center, (to use Wallersteins terminology), or to put it differently, the rich West, the games and the switch*** are really not affordable at all. Obviously that is not just a problem with Nintendo, but that does not mean I could say "I approve of it". Silvally above said it really well.
Some of their lawsuits are absolutely ridiculous, ...but then again, the problem is the copyright/patent laws themselves, that in their current forms, do not benefit human culture as a whole, its creation, innovation and preservation. They should be radically revised (or in a perfect world, they would not be needed at all. Information should be free, but in a world with the so called AI (generative LLMs is a more correct term) abolishing them is a bad idea)
But just because the problem is with the laws, does not mean Nintendo are not acting like assholes over it.
Obviously, a big megacorporation will never be actually "pro consumer", because it is a corporation. It exists to make money. So none of this here is surprising or unique to Nintendo. But, to reiterate, does not mean that I could say "I approve"


PS The irony of me saying this as a person with a Spinel PFP is not lost on me BTW.

***Addendum: a point could be made that all electronics are actually too cheap, considering the amount of exploitation some countries of the global south are experiencing, just to get all the rare elements needed for their production, but I highly doubt that any of that extra money will go, for example, to Africa, a major exporter of rare metals

 

[Princess Viola]

You cant even mod your switch 2!

...

If this is about that whole statement Nintendo put out saying unauthorized modifications to the Switch 2 are not allowed and system updates may render the system unusable.

That is like...not anything new. Not at all. Literally every single console manufacturer says that and Nintendo has said it for all of their consoles that have had the ability to receive system updates and their older non-online consoles usually had shit in the legal information saying that unauthorized modifications may make the console unusable. It's pretty much just a legalese way of saying 'Yeah doing this shit ain't allowed by us but if you do it anyways and you brick your system or if an update ends up bricking it because of the unauthorised mods, uhh don't come crying to us about it - this stuff isn't authorised by us and we're not gonna test if our software updates work on anything but the official system software we developed for our consoles'

It's also a weird as Hell thing for some people to get up in arms about (mainly the OMG AN UPDATE COULD BRICK YOUR CONSOLE WTF) because like...God during 3DS modding days, literally everyone knew that you don't update your system when Nintendo released a new update. I don't recall if anyone had an update brick their 3DS but the updates could patch exploits and even remove the softmodding so instead you just waited a few days fo the modders to check and see what exploits were patched by the new update, update their custom firmware and other mods, and then you update that shit first before downloading the official update.

It's weird and I don't get why it seems so many people (not talking about you just in general) engage in modding but don't understand it.

 

[beasttrash]

I kind of echo that a lot of Nintendo's choices wrt following market trends. Unfortunately that's just the reality of the situation and I think being upset about it is very valid.

I don't approve of Nintendo right now, but I don't disapprove either. I feel mostly neutral.

I guess my main concern with Nintendo, and this goes for most big corporations in general is that: the overuse of copyright protection is damaging media preservation and our ability to archive said media for future generations.

 

[da man/man]

Obviously, a big megacorporation will never be actually "pro consumer", because it is a corporation. It exists to make money. So none of this here is surprising or unique to Nintendo. But, to reiterate, does not mean that I could say "I approve"

I agree with this! This is kinda what I mean. Tbh, ironically the reason I think I'm more sympathetic with nintendo is that I'm overall more pessimistic with big companies in general, and I was kinda expecting behavior like this for a long time (and even now it's not as egregious as I anticipated). I think the easiest thing that's unfavorable is the pricing is just a walled garden, and that's very disappointing, but at the same time expected.


Of course I'm not going to look at the recent changes and go "this is a good thing", but I don't outright hate it like many (but I definitely understand why many do) so I'd say I "approve" even if not particularly happy about it.

The annoying thing about the "Nintendo Debate" is how piracy is treated as if it's a debatable subject, when I just feel it really isn't. As someone who isn't the position to just pick up a game leisurely, I still have no sympathy for it, since it's literally stealing, not emulation. And defending it kinda paints people who can't just buy the game in a bad light, since even those who do just have the patience to wait, get looped in with the piracy discussion.

oof, I'm being a total yapper rn aren't I. Ig this is just something I want to make my stance very clear on.

 

[Princess Viola]

Also to answer the actual thread title - I think Nintendo can be a greedy company (I am not going to say 'anti-consumer' because that term has been misused to the point of uselessness like I'm sorry but no, pricing something to a price you think is too high is not what 'anti-consumer' means) but there are gaming companies doing far worse things than Nintendo does so I mean in terms of my ire for gaming companies, Nintendo is nowhere near the top of my 'I do not approve of them' list.

Like for my many issues with Nintendo, they are not constantly chasing trends, they don't have a culture of scope and feature creep with their games, they generally don't crunch their developers, and they don't make games that cost so much money to develop that even if a game sells a few million copies, it still doesn't make a profit so they have to either layoff tens to hundreds of employees and shutter studios.

 

[da man/man]

i think perhaps i havent articulated my point well? it was not my intention to imply that piracy is not stealing. what im trying to highlight is that there are not often good alternative options for consumers. that statement is not intended to be a defence of piracy. it is to suggest that nintendo is neglecting certain options (options which i would approve of) which would also be effective at countering piracy

if someone wants to play hgss their only options right now wouldnt involve giving any money to nintendo. you either buy these items second-hand at exorbitant prices or you pirate it. pokemon duel is completely inaccessible outside of piracy (i think) and this will likely be the eventual fate of every single digital-only nintendo game

nintendo could sell its old games on gog drm-free. it could open-source the code of live service games they no longer plan to support. i understand why they do not do either of these things. but these are actions i would approve of

No dw I wasn't replying to your post in particular, just my opinion. Your points are very valid, I just still don't really like it in particular, even if the alternatives aren't very plentiful. Old games for preservation purposes is necessary to prevent things from becoming lost media, but pirating a current gen game because you don't have the money is just wrong. Sorry for the confusion ^^;

 

[Nicolas721]

This generation truly had a rocky start...And honestly it's well deserved. Things like the console being overpriced while being so similar to the Switch 1 was understandable, but they crossed the line by literally asking money for everything. Tech demos, DLCs, Switch 2 upgrades...Things that had minimal costs have now exorbitant prices that don't justify that much money from the buyer. Quality issues have arosen as well, things like Mario Kart's online being not good or Mario Party Jamboree not being upscaled for the Switch 2 have become more recurrent. I think Nintendo's next 2 years will probably be the same unless they start receiving less money from customers.

 

[Princess Viola]

Honestly I gotta disagree with the statement that the Switch 2 is overpriced.

Like it's one thing to say 'I wish the Switch 2 was cheaper', that's all fine but I see a lot of people (not here but in other online spaces) acting as if Nintendo very much could just make the Switch 2 cheaper and they're just being greedy by having it be $450 but like that doesn't add up when you look at the hardware Nintendo is selling in the Switch 2 compared to other handhelds on the market right now. Like it's pretty much on-par, more or less, with the performance of handheld gaming PCs around the same price point. y'know.

That being said I also have this theory that a majority of the current rabid anti-Nintendo sentiment (not like reasonable criticisms but y'know like the type where expressing any positive sentiment towards anything Nintendo does is treated as just like corporate bootlicking or whatever and where people make thumbnails with like an Evil Mario and Miyamoto with devil horns looking angry titled shit like 'STOP PLAYING YOUR SWITCH 2 - NINTENDO IS THE WORST COMPANY. I AM SERIOUS' is just pushed by grifters and people online who fully and genuinely believed that they'd just be able to pirate and emulate Switch 2 games from day 1 (I'm not even gonna entertain the notion that these people would be dumping and emulating copies of their own games that they bought, let's be real here. These types don't want to give money to Nintendo but they still want to play their games lol) and are just super upset about it so now they try to blow up every single thing about Nintendo into some massive negative controversy (or even just make shit up at times - look at how they first claimed that the Switch 2 was flopping because 'it was easy to find in stores' then once it started selling out and became difficult to find, they started to instead claim 'it's just artificial scarcity, they only ship a few units to stores so it just looks like it's successful') to IDK 'punish' them for this.

 

[Blast]

I'm checked out now. I don't feel like I need to bother with whatever they're up to now when I have access many of their old games and consoles I've accumulated over the years. Not to mention games on the PS4 which are much cheaper second hand and on PC. Gen 10 might recapture my interest but before then they're not offering anything I wanna buy. This is coming from someone who was a Wii U owner back in the day.

I won't go into some of the arguments here but defending one of the most powerful gaming moguls for no good reason other than that some of the other companies have gotten worse earlier or stooping even lower when the trajectory is going downwards either way... Maybe if you'd make some money off that like those extreme online haters I'd understand it better. After all, with that logic those people are also only following market trends and there's even worse influencers than them in the industry. Right now, negativity and hate online sells. As do buggy games and endless microtransactions or DLC. Why would I defend any of that? At the end of that day it's all about money for everyone, including those making a living complaining about Nintendo, and Nintendo. I doubt any of us are making a dime out of posting here, so why defend the hunger for money of both when we gain nothing from them doing it?

So no, I don't approve of Nintendo and if I did I don't think I'd defend them unless they paid me. I'm fine being checked out.

 

[Insanish Danish]

My take on this whole thing is that I don't "approve" of Nintendo in the same way I don't approve of any major corporations. I don't think Nintendo is any better or any worse than other large companies. I love Nintendo for their games, always have and always will, so in that sense I'll always be a Nintendo fan even if I don't like what they're doing on the business side of things.

 

[Norzan]

Nope, not by a long mile. The Switch 2 is 100% not worth the price point, neither are any of the games. People have every right to criticize Nintendo for that and it's not a stupid reason in the slightest like people are even attempting to claim here.

Then there's the absolute nonsense of trying to patent summoning mechanic like they invented that shit. Thankfully they seemed to have lost that in Japan at least, dunno about everywhere else.

Switch 1's success was solely because they actually responded in the right ways to the failure of the Wii U. Now they are doing the complete opposite with the Switch 2, far too emboldened by the success of the Switch 1. And if people say nothing things will just get worse.

 

[Kathylikestoread]

The only thing Nintendo has overpriced this generation is Mario Kart World. Everything else they've done is either following previously-established market trends (capitalism's fault) or perfectly valid (no one's fault). The grifting is getting absolutely unbearable.

The Switch 2 being unmoddable is because it literally just came out. People will find vulnerabilities eventually. They always do. Its price is also perfectly valid for a hybrid console of this quality (just compare Cyberpunk in handheld on Switch 2 VS Steam Deck), and with so many exclusives that are bound to release for it.

People just love to bitch for no valid reason. It's exhausting.

I couldn't have phrased it better

 

[pilosophos]

Speaking as someone who basically only buys consoles that can be modded, I wholeheartedly reject the idea that Nintendo's not only hostile but litigious attitude towards modding is a good thing. To me, this is a matter of your right to unleash the potential of the hardware that you purchased and now own. This is not a rental device, so why should you owe it to anyone to keep it unmodified?

Did you know that every Switch 1 is technically capable of running Android and Linux? The OLED Switch 1 would actually make for a fantastic little computing device― you can bring it around, use it as a tablet, play games, and when you come home, put it in the dock and use your TV or external monitors with it. It's a huge shame that to be able to do this, you have to purchase an external modchip and go through the ridiculously delicate and error-prone process to solder it in.

Meanwhile on the Steam Deck, obtaining total control of the operating system (also Linux) is trivial. When the system launched, you were able to play a whole ton of high-quality games originally for PC on the cheap, browse the web, type an essay, even develop and play your own game all on the same system.

Now this will surprise you: did you know that both the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation 3 could run Linux, and not only this, but Sony officially supported this until 2010? If you were brave enough to use the Linux of that era, having a PS3 meant you also had access to a pretty powerful general purpose computer. Powerful enough, in fact, that scientists conducted a lot of research using supercomputers made of PS3s to simulate black holes and such. When Sony removed this feature from the PS3, people cared enough that there was a whole class-action lawsuit brought against Sony! Up until 2018, you could get up to $66 from Sony because of the settlement.

As far as I'm concerned, the Switch (and by extension the Switch 2) has a really attractive form factor and hardware package for general purpose computing, yet Nintendo spends exorbitant sums on making it as hard as humanly possible for you to use it that way. This is akin to purchasing a toaster, and the toaster manufacturer going, "No, no no! This toaster is for bread only! You're not allowed to put bagels in it!" and the toaster refusing to turn on if you try.

It is an anti-consumer practice, and even if you accept that this is just the way the market is (which is untrue of the Steam Deck), it is still Nintendo's fault for perpetuating it because, guess what, Nintendo is literally a market leader.

 

[Poke Dragon]

Honestly, it's a mixed situation in my opinion, on one hand. I find the games great (even if some of the decisions are awful, like focusing on FOMO in certain games), but on the other hand, I find $80 for a single game to be extremely ridiculous. I would excuse the price of the Switch 2 itself if they hadn't made the games even more expensive than games of the previous console.

Chasing trends isn't always a good thing, especially when prices are involved, and there are plenty of examples where chasing trends actually led to failures in the industry (like the Kinect as Microsoft's answer to Nintendo's Wii Remote, just as an example).

As for why I would excuse the price of the console itself, that's because it's a one-time payment, while to get the games, you will have to spend $80 every single time you want to get a new game (this doesn't even account for any potential DLC a game might have).