6 ms·

I've never been into Nintendo but after having kids I kept hearing this about how great they are for families so I bought a Switch. That's when I learned what a

by guelo 4y ago

I've never been into Nintendo but after having kids I kept hearing this about how great they are for families so I bought a Switch. That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is: overcharging for games, nickle and dimeing for everything, and abusing their fan's nostalgia. I definitely don't want to get my kids invested in their platform so I got rid of the Switch. Steam has more than we need anyway. (just wish Steam had better family friendly search filters, why is it impossible to search for games by ESRB rating?!).

hbn 4y ago
What games are you being nickle-and-dimed for? I bought Super Mario Odyssey on release day in 2017 and it's never asked me for more money. In fact I think it got a few free content updates. It's the tightly-made, quality video game experience that it was when it came out.
- tokamak-teapot 4y ago
  I feel like I’ve got my money’s worth for most games on the Switch, too. Mostly a lot more than my money’s worth. Speaking of Super Mario Odyssey, two of us have played it from beginning to end, so we definitely got a lot of fun game time out of the cost!
jfim 4y ago
Do you mind elaborating on the "overcharging for games" part? Console games in the 80s were about $45, so games today are actually cheaper if inflation is taken into account.
- bentley 4y ago
  Games for Nintendo consoles aren’t overpriced relative to games from past generations, but are expensive relative to PC games today. Sales promotions on PC platforms like Steam and GOG are more frequent and provide deeper discounts than Nintendo’s. And while AAA Nintendo games are roughly the same price as AAA games on Steam, old Nintendo AAA games retain much higher prices than old AAA games on Steam. (Example: Mario Kart 8 is nine years old and still sells for $60 not including DLC.) A lot of the major Nintendo games are on sale this week (probably because of March 10 = MAR10), but even the oldest first‐party titles are only down to about $40 at the lowest.
- gtop3 4y ago
  Console games really benefited from economy of scale. The Legend of Zelda had an MSRP in 1986 of $50. That is $136 in 2022 money. You can preorder The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for $70, or roughly half the price. Imagine how many more hours of labor goes into a modern game compared to a 1986 game. The 1986 game has nine people in the credits. Three people with the role "programmer". Two things kept prices in line. Reduced hardware costs, as the older carts are much more expensive. Increased sales, where more people buy the same software.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Throwing more people mostly making graphics, and creating movie like sequences where characters explain things isn't as hard with the tools available compared to making everything fit memory-wise making choices not faced today. Those three programmers interfaced with the hardware directly, solved os problems to get things working enough to put in a custom game engine they created into the smallest amount of memory before they can even start creating a world where there game could exist. The challenge today is how can I generate enough content to create a story to put into my unreal game engine. The 3d part, driver development, the memory management all is handled by something else.
sharkweek 4y ago
Random question for the HN crowd piggybacking off your comment: What age did you introduce video games to your kids? My oldest is 5 and I let him tinker on the PS5 when I’m around playing things like Sonic or he really likes Astro’s Playworld. We limit it to maybe 15-20 min a day but I swear it’s like I tell people I let him watch R-rated movies or something when I mention that I let him play video games at his age. Curious what people here view as age appropriate.
- elijaht 4y ago
  Don't have kids yet, but I started playing at age 5, didn't notice any issues (although that may be in the eye of the beholder, ha) I actually think video games did me a decent amount of good with reading and math skills. Lot of RPGs, minecraft, etc. I would definitely set time limits and try to push towards more "brainy" games
  - wholinator2 4y ago
    Yeah. Although it was good that I quit when I did, my time with world of Warcraft when I was 9 leveled up my typing and communication skills so fast. Since I'm particularly prone to min/maxing I also got some good experience with math and unintuitive systems and how to guage what was better. (Percent increase vs flat increase, hit speed vs hit damage, etc.)
- low_tech_love 4y ago
  My kid is 4 and plays a few specific games that I allow. He loves ”fire boy & water girl” for example, and he used to play Super Mario Run but it was not turning well so I cut that. Sometimes we play SNES Mario games together but he usually finds them too hard. Also some Mario Kart on emulators, and some Minecraft.
- TehShrike 4y ago
  We let our oldest start pretty young. He could beat Monument Valley at 3 and beat Shovel Knight at 5. Our current limits for our 5 and 7 year old kids are one hour, three days a week. In some ways it feels like letting them read visual novels. The media itself is usually great, I just worry about them getting used to the easiest forms.
chongli 4y ago
That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is I bought a game (Spelunky) on the Switch online shop. Nintendo then proceeded to send me constant emails about how my “coins are expiring.” So they award coins for purchases which you can save up to get “free” games, but then make them gradually expire if you don’t use them. What kind of high pressure sales tactic is this? I was really turned off. I can see how this would be highly manipulative to kids though. Why is Nintendo doing this crap? They’re a privately owned, family-run company. They don’t have outside shareholders to please. They could just choose to be less profitable and focus on protecting their family-friendly brand. This excessive greed is highly unseemly.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  For what it is worth, the Yamauchi family has been slowly selling their portion of the company for nearly a decade. (https://www.campdenfb.com/article/nintendo-heirs-sell-stake-family-firm https://www.campdenfb.com/article/nintendo-heirs-sell-stake-...). The shareholder structure is the only thing keeping in control and they definitely care about how happy shareholders are. Luckily, the particular shareholders they are concerned with tend to hold for an extremely long period of time (Japanese banks and holding cos).
  - konichi-value 4y ago
    Actually, their largest shareholder after the Yamauchi family is The Public Investment Fund of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- endemic 4y ago
  The coins are a "fun" value add thing. You can get small discounts on digital games if you use the gold ones. The silver ones can get you various digital/physical goodies. You're not missing out if you don't use them.
  - chongli 4y ago
    Why make them expire though? Even worse, they expire the coins gradually, stretching it out as long as possible, like radioactive decay. And they send you an email to remind you every time a few coins expire. This is not fun! This is straightforward psychological manipulation! It’s taking people’s loss aversion [1] and grinding it as hard as possible for as much profit as they can. This is especially bad when you consider that they are a family-oriented company that primarily markets to children. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
datavirtue 4y ago
The switch is also a UX nightmare. I can't believe the time and stress incurred to get profiles setup and purchase games. Completely drained my excitement. I have like four of them...all sit unused.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by guelo 4y ago

hbn 4y ago

What games are you being nickle-and-dimed for? I bought Super Mario Odyssey on release day in 2017 and it's never asked me for more money. In fact I think it got a few free content updates. It's the tightly-made, quality video game experience that it was when it came out.

tokamak-teapot 4y ago
I feel like I’ve got my money’s worth for most games on the Switch, too. Mostly a lot more than my money’s worth. Speaking of Super Mario Odyssey, two of us have played it from beginning to end, so we definitely got a lot of fun game time out of the cost!

jfim 4y ago

Do you mind elaborating on the "overcharging for games" part? Console games in the 80s were about $45, so games today are actually cheaper if inflation is taken into account.

bentley 4y ago
Games for Nintendo consoles aren’t overpriced relative to games from past generations, but are expensive relative to PC games today. Sales promotions on PC platforms like Steam and GOG are more frequent and provide deeper discounts than Nintendo’s. And while AAA Nintendo games are roughly the same price as AAA games on Steam, old Nintendo AAA games retain much higher prices than old AAA games on Steam. (Example: Mario Kart 8 is nine years old and still sells for $60 not including DLC.) A lot of the major Nintendo games are on sale this week (probably because of March 10 = MAR10), but even the oldest first‐party titles are only down to about $40 at the lowest.
gtop3 4y ago
Console games really benefited from economy of scale. The Legend of Zelda had an MSRP in 1986 of $50. That is $136 in 2022 money. You can preorder The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for $70, or roughly half the price. Imagine how many more hours of labor goes into a modern game compared to a 1986 game. The 1986 game has nine people in the credits. Three people with the role "programmer". Two things kept prices in line. Reduced hardware costs, as the older carts are much more expensive. Increased sales, where more people buy the same software.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Throwing more people mostly making graphics, and creating movie like sequences where characters explain things isn't as hard with the tools available compared to making everything fit memory-wise making choices not faced today. Those three programmers interfaced with the hardware directly, solved os problems to get things working enough to put in a custom game engine they created into the smallest amount of memory before they can even start creating a world where there game could exist. The challenge today is how can I generate enough content to create a story to put into my unreal game engine. The 3d part, driver development, the memory management all is handled by something else.

sharkweek 4y ago

Random question for the HN crowd piggybacking off your comment: What age did you introduce video games to your kids? My oldest is 5 and I let him tinker on the PS5 when I’m around playing things like Sonic or he really likes Astro’s Playworld. We limit it to maybe 15-20 min a day but I swear it’s like I tell people I let him watch R-rated movies or something when I mention that I let him play video games at his age. Curious what people here view as age appropriate.

elijaht 4y ago
Don't have kids yet, but I started playing at age 5, didn't notice any issues (although that may be in the eye of the beholder, ha) I actually think video games did me a decent amount of good with reading and math skills. Lot of RPGs, minecraft, etc. I would definitely set time limits and try to push towards more "brainy" games
- wholinator2 4y ago
  Yeah. Although it was good that I quit when I did, my time with world of Warcraft when I was 9 leveled up my typing and communication skills so fast. Since I'm particularly prone to min/maxing I also got some good experience with math and unintuitive systems and how to guage what was better. (Percent increase vs flat increase, hit speed vs hit damage, etc.)
low_tech_love 4y ago
My kid is 4 and plays a few specific games that I allow. He loves ”fire boy & water girl” for example, and he used to play Super Mario Run but it was not turning well so I cut that. Sometimes we play SNES Mario games together but he usually finds them too hard. Also some Mario Kart on emulators, and some Minecraft.
TehShrike 4y ago
We let our oldest start pretty young. He could beat Monument Valley at 3 and beat Shovel Knight at 5. Our current limits for our 5 and 7 year old kids are one hour, three days a week. In some ways it feels like letting them read visual novels. The media itself is usually great, I just worry about them getting used to the easiest forms.

chongli 4y ago

That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is I bought a game (Spelunky) on the Switch online shop. Nintendo then proceeded to send me constant emails about how my “coins are expiring.” So they award coins for purchases which you can save up to get “free” games, but then make them gradually expire if you don’t use them. What kind of high pressure sales tactic is this? I was really turned off. I can see how this would be highly manipulative to kids though. Why is Nintendo doing this crap? They’re a privately owned, family-run company. They don’t have outside shareholders to please. They could just choose to be less profitable and focus on protecting their family-friendly brand. This excessive greed is highly unseemly.

atdrummond 4y ago
For what it is worth, the Yamauchi family has been slowly selling their portion of the company for nearly a decade. (https://www.campdenfb.com/article/nintendo-heirs-sell-stake-family-firm https://www.campdenfb.com/article/nintendo-heirs-sell-stake-...). The shareholder structure is the only thing keeping in control and they definitely care about how happy shareholders are. Luckily, the particular shareholders they are concerned with tend to hold for an extremely long period of time (Japanese banks and holding cos).
- konichi-value 4y ago
  Actually, their largest shareholder after the Yamauchi family is The Public Investment Fund of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
endemic 4y ago
The coins are a "fun" value add thing. You can get small discounts on digital games if you use the gold ones. The silver ones can get you various digital/physical goodies. You're not missing out if you don't use them.
- chongli 4y ago
  Why make them expire though? Even worse, they expire the coins gradually, stretching it out as long as possible, like radioactive decay. And they send you an email to remind you every time a few coins expire. This is not fun! This is straightforward psychological manipulation! It’s taking people’s loss aversion [1] and grinding it as hard as possible for as much profit as they can. This is especially bad when you consider that they are a family-oriented company that primarily markets to children. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

datavirtue 4y ago

The switch is also a UX nightmare. I can't believe the time and stress incurred to get profiles setup and purchase games. Completely drained my excitement. I have like four of them...all sit unused.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]