Mojang’s asinine version numbering

They do what now?

I’m using the word “feel” because I’m not qualified to provide a legal opinion.

It lasting 10 years doesn’t mean much to the people who were sold the game in the last 6 months without any warning they were buying into the final hours.

Should they have announced and removed it as soon as the board meeting ended? How much earlier would that be in this case?

My unsubstantiated theory is the the licences they signed for all the vehicles and real world content had a 10 year lifetime.

Usually those contracts would just require that they stop selling the game, but they may have included something about the servers in the contract too.

Either way they new something was going to change in 2024 and realistically they knew which of these possibilities were viable:

• sign new deals with all licensors and continue business as usual
• sign new deals with cooperative licensors and modify the game to remove the others
• remove the game from sale and keep the servers running for current customers
• remove the game from sale and kill the servers - tell people to buy the sequal

I’d they waited until December of 2023 to have that meeting then that feels negligent.

If they had that meeting earlier and continued to sell the game (until ≈100 days to EOL) without warning customers that feels fraudulent.

Call me crazy but I expect businesses to guarantee their products.

On December 14, 2023, Ubisoft delisted The Crew and its expansions from digital platforms, suspended sales of microtransactions, and announced that the game’s servers would be shut down on March 31, 2024, citing “upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crew_(video_game)

People who paid around us$40 for the game on December 13 were being sold a lemon.

Given that it was released in 2014 it seems likely that their licenses were given a 10 year duration and they always intended to shutdown in 2024 at the latest (of course if its user base failed to reach critical mass they could have pulled the plug earlier).

Does selling a game in 2023 when you plan to kill it in 2024 legally qualify as fraud?

It looks better than the art for the new snow Bros game

https://youtu.be/yGsHq-mZI8U

At that point is not really oblivion?!

PSx

Transferable licence.

They can be sold, gifted, inherited, etc.

Its the same concept as a stub game disc which requires a full online install (something Xbox used for cross-gen one/series titles).

Its nothing like the account tied physical sales they proposed at the Xbox one announcement.

Switch 2 game-key cards won’t be account- or console-locked

What? Of course not … that’s why they are in the form of game cards.

I don’t think he has a great understanding of Australian prices.

The current MKW price of au$120 looks high but if you remove our GST and convert to USD with the average exchange rate over the last 12 months its equivalent to us$70.85. (Donky Kong is au$110 or us$65).

We are currently at a low point with our dollar so the conversion for MKW today would be us$66.49. (DK would be us$61).

Compared to the prices I’m seeing internationally it looks like Australia is getting relatively generous prices from Nintendo.

As a bundled launch title I expect most launch window sales will be digital. There won’t be 2nd hand game cards on the market in any volume until after they drop the bundle.

If it sells out, expect a price drop in a few years

Switch sold out in 2017, and now the same basic Neon model is selling for the same price in 2025.

In Australia we had an au$90 price tier with only 6 titles:

• Breath of the Wild
• Pokkén Tournament DX
• Fire Emblem Warriors
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2
• Super Smash Bros Ultimate
• Tears of the Kingdom

All their other AAA titles were au$80, for example:

• Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Pokémon Sword/Shield or Scarlet/Violet
• Super Mario Party / Superstars / Jamboree
• New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe / Super Mario Wonder

Then smaller releases were placed at $70, for example:

• 1-2-Switch
• Go Vacation
• Fitness Boxing 2/ 3
• Miitopia
• WarioWare: Get It Together / Move it

You can see they used the $90 tier quite aggressively early in the piece and then scaled back significantly with almost 5 years between Smash Bros and Tears of the Kingdom.

At the same time they made sure the Marios (Kart, 3d, 2d, Party, Sports), Pokemons and other franchises with broad all-ages appeal were priced in the middle at $80.

To be honest I’m a bit worried about the pricing for Super Mario Kart World, the previous one was the beat selling Switch title and if they come out of the gate with high sales they may take the wrong lessons and try to lock in that au$120 price (a 50% increase!).

On the other hand they may just be price anchoring with the bundle. Having the standalone console priced at au$700 and the bundle at au$770 will let the consumer find ways to justify the purchase, they might say the console is worth $700 so the game is only $70, or they might argue the game is $120 so the console is really only $650. Either way will make them feel better about giving Nintendo the money.

I suppose the best outcome for the consumer would be for most people to get SMKW in the bundle and then hopefully the next title they release at that price point has lacklustre sales. If they see they sell more units at a lower price it can be a good outcome for everyone.

I don‘t see 90% discounts in the Nintendo shop

Not 1st party sure, but there is a weekly deal cycle where 3rd party publishers compete to stand out.

https://www.dekudeals.com/games?filter[critic_score]=70&filter[platform]=switch&filter[format]=digital&filter[discount]=discounted

These are the top 5 sellers on Switch:

• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• Super Smash Bros Ultimate
• The legend of Zelda:Breath of the Wild
• Super Mario Odyssey

These links take you to a price tracker with a chart showing historical prices. The RRP of each of these has been static, and discounts are short and infrequent.

In a break from form Nintendo hasn’t released a budget “Selects” label for older titles this generation.

Their emulators have always been proprietary. The waters were a little muddied by the NES/SNES Classic consoles using a Linux OS but the emulators were their own code.

Their FOSS code is made available when required and is published here:

https://support.nintendo.com/jp/oss/index.html

Interesting to see reasons for where compatibility is physically impossible:

1. The console is a different shape and can’t fit the LABO frames
2. The Joy-Con 2 are a different shape and can’t fit the Ring-Con or Leg Strap.
3. The Jon-Con 2 don’t have the IR Motion Camera
4. The Jon-Con 2 rumble is weaker than Joy Con

Well spotted!

I missed that while i was reading the supported resolutions on the screen.

So this thing only takes microSD Express cards?

Are there any larger than 256GB on the market?

I have a 1TB card in my Switch 1 and I would rather not downgrade the capacity if there are any options.

Edit: all good, lexar is offering 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB cards.

https://americas.lexar.com/product/lexar-play-pro-microsdxc-express-card/

For Google Play the requirements are:

• the family manager is over 18 and has a payment method on file (they manage the family wallet).
• the family members are in the family managers country, (and if under 13 the account is created by the manager).

I only have direct experience with managing a kid under 13, in that case I have created the account for him and never entered a payment method on his account. For any purchases he wants to make via the “family wallet” it needs my direct approval, which can be granted by using an app on my device or directly entering my password onto his. After either of us has made a purchase we have a “share with family library” toggle that can share the title with the other family member. Note that this only applies to direct title purchases from the store, if a feature is locked behind IAP it can’t be shared. We have his accompanied locked so he needs my approval for any purchases (including free apps) but this is not required by the platform.

For child accounts the family manager can choose between requiring approval for each of the following on each child account:

• All content
• All purchases using the family payment method
• Only in-app purchases
• No approval required

I presume the for adult family members the family manager only has control of the Family Wallet but I don’t have direct experience to confirm.

For child accounts the trust might extend to blocking purchases in the general case and having the kids send purchase requests to the parent for approval.

Of course this leaves the child account restricted is such a manner it would be unappealing if there wasn’t an actual parent-child relationship IRL.

And it’s been given: MA15+ Strong Horror Violence

Its a strategic time for this regime to be implemented. With a sequel console on the horizon a lot of households are going to become 2 switch families soon. Anything to make customers more comfortable spending money will speed the uptake.

For PlayStation I liked they way they let each user nominate 1 primary PS4 and 1 primary PS5. They both could play the PS4 library without restriction so the old console was a perfect hand-me-down.

In comparison for Xbox they have maintained that the whole platform is homogeneous with each account only allowed one home console at a time be it One or Series.

Its still missing physical object’s killer app: permanent license transferability.

With physical objects I can buy them from others, give them to friends, etc and that transfer can be permanent.

All of this lend and automatically return is just a mechanism to block permanent license transfer.

That list is crazy, so many niche platforms and limited availability:

• Glitch was a failed Flash based MMO, that launched as a production release, was pulled back into beta 2 months later and then closed in late 2012. During this second beta they seemed to host a virtual death cult. Its messaging framework was later rebranded as Slack
• Tenya Wanya Teens was designed to tour as an art piece last exhibited in 2014
• Alphabet was bundled with Experimental Game Pack 01, a promo for LA Game Space a failed incubator/exhibition space the broke up in 2018
• Woorld was a mixed reality game developed for Google Tango, a tech that hasn’t seen support on a new device since 2017
• Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure was developed for the Playdate and was featured in Season 1. This is still available, in fact it is a pack-in title with the Playdate.

I’ve just wish listed Wattam, its his only still available non-Katamari title that runs on a mainstream platform.

That doesn’t really work in Australia.

AFAIK Dallas Buyers Club was the last major case and the conditions the courts placed on any contact caused the rights holders to decide it wasn’t worth the bother. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35547045

The court told them they could buy the infringer’s contact details as a bulk lot that averaged $127 per person. But only if they invoiced for $127 + whatever they were charging for the film. In addition the court would need to review and approve any draft correspondence and call scripts.

All up it feels like the court was taking the most hostile interpretation of the law to protect individuals from being harassed by the business. Good stuff.

Hotline Miami 2, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and Saints Row 4 are among dozens of games to have been denied an Australian release […]

This is only partially true, Saints Row 4 and The Stick of Truth released modified versions in Australia. Hotline Miami 2 remains without and official release in Australia.

As for Silent Hill f? OFLC have pulled the page listing it as RC.

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/silent-hill-f-ban-in-australia-retracted-age-rating-up-for-review-again/

The screenshot of the pulled page indicates it was an IARC classification i.e. it was automatically classified based an Konami’s answers to a generic survey distributed to classification boards globally. If Konami contest the automatic classification then it will be looked at by actual humans who may determine that offensive content is contextualized to a degree that it can be released (or failing that give a list of content that needs to be modified).

GTA5 is more than a decade ago,.

The older gemers may remember but there is a whole generation that has spung up since.

Edit: a quick look shows there were 1.7 billion people born between 1995 and 2007 i.e. born in the period that would have trurned 18 between 2013 and 2025… This corresponds to 20% of the global population.

the console install base isn’t what it was when GTA V came out at the end of a generation.

I had a look to check the figures.

From the PlayStation perspective February 2025 estimates put the PS5 at 74.9m, while January 2013 estimates put the PS3 at 77m.

However Xbox is really letting their numbers lag with 28.3m Series consoles sold by September 2024 vs 77.2m 360 consoles by April 2013.

If we were just talking PlayStation I would say 97% is near enough to make no difference but if we compare both platforms together its only 67% and that is enough to influence strategy. A console only release in 2025 is unlikely to eclipse GTA5’s position as “fastest-selling entertainment product in history”.

Switch is conspicuously absent from the release platforms.

If I had to guess I would say they are skipping Switch 1 and it will be on Switch 2 when that drops.

That’s a bit like saying you can buy flour and bake bread.

Some people are interested in a product that is immediately ready to use as a simple convenience. Others might be on console that doesn’t offer the origial title or allow mods.

If it’s got platformer elements, then it’s a platformer, right?

Yes!

But I also argue that the second half of '89 counts as 90’s and that Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap was the best platformer I played in first half of the decade.

The 1.7 million customers who originated from a top 2023 release

This wording is a bit strange, are they tracking the new steam accounts that signed up to buy a specific 2023 title (like Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, or Starfield)?

If so it says more about the specific demographic attracted to that unknown title than it does about Steam in general.

Edit:

The methodology is explained here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/751641001553035271

To gather data illustrating the effectiveness of that approach, we went all the way back to 2023 and identified the biggest 20 releases of that year. We looked at every new first-time purchaser generated by those products (that is, an account making a purchase, or redeeming a Steam key, for the first time) for a total of 1.7 million new users.

Thanks

They have taken the survivors.wiki domain.

I wonder if they are planning spinoffs with other themes?

Edit: typo

Xbox one era d-pad shows a real attention to detail

While new game downloads plateaued in 2024, in-app purchases grew 3.8 percent compared to 2023.

They really has plateaued, 3.8% sound an awful lot like its tracking inflation.