Hahaha that got me! I legit thought this could’ve been a PR stunt that actually may have happened until I read the last sentence … after which I thought it was even more likely to have happened.

It’s actually 10 years old when taking the original Wii U version of Mario Kart 8 into account.

One might even go as far as saying it’s morally not okay to pay for a Nintendo game because you are in a way financing their lawyers.

I’m not 100 % sure how it exactly works, but I think Microsoft recompiles/translates the games and you then download the changed binary instead of playing off your disc (which is also why texture streaming should be a lot faster).

This is most likely a process that’s automated for the most part though. And I highly doubt it’s recompiled from source, that’s why I called it “translated”.

Games using the id tech engine were often affected by visible texture pop in, and apparently the PS3 version was affected more than the 360 version, but the latter still was noticeably affected. Rage uses id tech 5, but I remember playing BRINK (id tech 4) on PS3 which had no mandatory install (it ran from the disc without installing anything to the HDD upfront), but used the HDD extensively for caching texture data. After I upgraded from the standard 5400 rpm HDD to a 7200 rpm HDD I remember texture pop-in was noticeably reduced.

Xbox 360 emulation on Xbox One or Series isn’t really accurately emulating the hardware, instead it translates the original code to something the One and Series understand.

Sounds feasible.

Well most of these AAA ports aren’t exactly new and people interested in AAA gaming likely already have something like a PC, gaming console or Steam Deck, which are all better suited to these types of games, because they have more power than a mobile device and/or built-in controllers.

Like, what is the setup for playing at home? Mirror an iPad to an Apple TV via AirPlay to play on your TV with a Bluetooth controller?

And on the go, you either need a bluetooth controller and a way to hold your iPhone while holding the controller, or get one of these clip-on controllers.

Then there’s pricing, with the games often being a lot cheaper at least on Steam.

They don’t owe you anything in a sense that you don’t have to purchase their product, that is correct.

Also yeah, the idea of cheating didn’t even come to my mind. We used to do that a lot back in the day :D - but to be fair, trainers aside, games often actively supported cheats out-of-the-box, and I don’t think From Software’s games do. It’s probably still trivial to cheat on the PC version, but on console, it might not be feasible.

I totally get the feeling of accomplishment that comes with playing games on high difficulties, I do play quite a few games at higher difficulties, but then again I also enjoy lower levels of challenge at times.

It’s still a very valid complaint that difficulty levels aren’t a thing. It wouldn’t change the difficulty for anyone who enjoys the current default difficulty, and might make the game more enjoyable to other players.

Elden Ring sold more than 20 million copies, that’s quite a big “niche” if you ask me.

Not sure how lowering the health pool or damage per hit of bosses (as a very trivial example on how to easily reduce difficulty) affects the story of this game. And even if this would make the game less authentic to some players, they could just play it at the default difficulty…?

There is just absolutely no reason (other than maybe ego problems, but just add an achievement for each difficulty level then) why more difficulty options make the game worse for players who enjoy the current difficulty setting, as they can simply stick to the default difficulty. These players will have the exact same experience as they have now, and others who struggled or just didn’t enjoy the grind of the default difficulty could turn it down a notch and enjoy the game.

Most rhythm games have different difficulties. Last time I checked Guitar Hero had 3 or 4 difficulties for every single song, osu! has a shitton of maps with many songs being available in multiple difficulties, and Beat Saber has what, like 5 difficulty levels?

I wouldn’t really see myself enjoying rhythm games if I was deaf (as the music is a big part of it), but if you can make the game more accessible to someone who still enjoys the gameplay, then honestly, why not?

I’m not particularly interested in the game so I can’t say whether the game is actually difficult (from what I saw it’s still very much about learning attack patterns of bosses and spamming the roll button or something), but my god do big parts of the Souls community get salty if someone wants to have the option to reduce the difficulty in a single player game.

To me it’s a completely legit complaint and request to have a difficulty setting.

This number is likely very inflated though and doesn’t match what people actually spent on unplayed games.

It couldn’t have accounted for key sales or bundle purchases. I have at least a hundred unplayed games that were included in some random Humble Bundle I bought just because of one game that was in that bundle. If you were to divide bundle pricing by amount of unplayed games, it’d be like 1 or 2 bucks per game.

Yeah, it’s also not “just” if it’s one of what feels like hundreds of steps now to make the OS somewhat usable.

I am one of those people who prefers that the game only has one difficulty. My friend and I both played Phantom Liberty, and unfortunately he didn’t enjoy it as much as I did because at higher difficulty he struggled too much with combat in a way he didn’t find fun. I could argue my point for a while but I doubt I’d achieve anything.

Why would you care if the game had more choices in terms of difficulty? It’s a single player game, you could still choose the difficulty level the game it at right now, and others could play at an easier or harder difficulty if they so chose.

For (dominantly) single player games, let players enjoy the game however they want.

Yeah, but then fix your game/engine.

From Software’s PC ports are always pretty poor, but I feel like they don’t get enough flak for it because it’s a From Software game. Does the game still not run with an unlocked frame rate?

Then there always seems to be so much talk about the apparent difficulty of the game that talking about the actual game sometimes falls short. The difficulty of these games is mostly down to observing and learning attack patterns and reacting to them accordingly. It would also be rather trivial for the developers to add a difficulty setting to make the game more accessible or on the other hand make it harder for players that want more of a challenge (I’m aware that there are certain builds that make the game easier and new game + makes it harder in some ways).

The fact that many players always defend the games supposed difficulty often doesn’t allow good discussion about actual balancing (which is different to “difficulty”).

Ping your own VPS?

True. Might be easier to just drop a bunch of torrents to the website though.

That’s not what this is. You can download a supposedly dead torrent, add more trackers that might have peers available for that torrent to it, and re-add the modified torrent to your client.

No doubt call of duty will steal this idea or maybe not I don’t think devs have enough take in a year to make a whole new mode and I dont’ think suits care.

So do you have doubts or not?