Kelly
@Kelly@programming.dev
- Comment on PirateSoftware's Take On $80 Games 6 hours ago:
I don’t think he has a great understanding of Australian prices.
The current SMW price of $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 $70.85.
We are currently at a low point with our dollar so the conversion rate today would be $66.49.
Compared to the prices I’m seeing internationally it looks like Australia is getting relatively generous prices from Nintendo.
- Comment on Mario Kart World - Announce Trailer [Nintendo Switch 2] 2 days ago:
Except Mario Kart has had its fair share of paid post release content lately. We can’t expect it to be the one-off purchase it once was.
- Comment on First-party Switch 2 games—including re-releases—all run either $70 or $80 2 days ago:
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.
- Comment on Nintendo Switch 2 Launches on June 5th Worldwide; 1080p Screen With 120 FPS and HDR Support, Docked Mode 4K Resolution Support Confirmed 2 days ago:
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 A list 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 titles 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 a little lower 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 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 MKW 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.
- Comment on Switch 2 mouse mode (such potential) 2 days ago:
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.
- Comment on First-party Switch 2 games—including re-releases—all run either $70 or $80 3 days ago:
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
This links take you to a price tracker with chart showing historical prices. The RRP of each of these has been static, and discounts are short and infrequent.
- Comment on First-party Switch 2 games—including re-releases—all run either $70 or $80 3 days ago:
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:
- Comment on Important information about compatibility of Nintendo Switch games with Nintendo Switch 2 3 days ago:
Interesting to see reasons for where compatibility is physically impossible:
- The console is a different shape and can’t fit the LABO frames
- The Joy-Con 2 are a different shape and can’t fit the Ring-Con or Leg Strap.
- The Jon-Con 2 don’t have the IR Motion Camera
- The Jon-Con 2 rumble is weaker than Joy Con
- Comment on Nintendo Switch 2 Launches on June 5th Worldwide; 1080p Screen With 120 FPS and HDR Support, Docked Mode 4K Resolution Support Confirmed 3 days ago:
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.
- Comment on Nintendo Announce Virtual Game Cards (Digital Game Sharing) 6 days ago:
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 family, (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. Not that it only applies to direct title purchases from the store, if a feature is locked behind IAP it can’t be shared. We have his a could 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 requires approval for each of th feollowing on each child account:
- All content
- All purchases using the family payment method
- Only in-app purchases
- No approval required
I presume the family manage ornly has control of the Family Wallet for adult family members but I don’t have direct experience to confirm…
- Comment on Nintendo Announce Virtual Game Cards (Digital Game Sharing) 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on Silent Hill f has been banned in Australia, and no one knows why 1 week ago:
And it’s been given: MA15+ Strong Horror Violence
- Comment on Silent Hill f has been banned in Australia, and no one knows why 1 week ago:
And it’s been given: MA15+ Strong Horror Violence
- Comment on Nintendo Announce Virtual Game Cards (Digital Game Sharing) 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on Nintendo Announce Virtual Game Cards (Digital Game Sharing) 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on Silent Hill f has been banned in Australia, and no one knows why 1 week ago:
OFLC have pulled the page listing it as RC.
automaton-media.com/…/silent-hill-f-ban-in-austra…
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).
- Comment on Katamari creator says he left Bandai Namco to develop games with people from other countries 1 week ago:
The list is crazy, so many niche platforms and limited availability:
- Glitch was a failed Fash based MMO, that launched as production release, was pulled back to beta 2 months later and then closed in late 2012. During this second beta they seemed to host a 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.
- Comment on Silent Hill f has been banned in Australia, and no one knows why 1 week ago:
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. 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 the 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.
- Comment on Silent Hill f has been banned in Australia, and no one knows why 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst 1 week ago:
GTA5 is more than a decade ago,.
The older gemers may remember but there is a whole generation that has spung up since.
- Comment on The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst 2 weeks ago:
the console install base isn’t what it was when GTA V came out at the end of a generation.
At 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 is 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”.
- Comment on The System Shock 2 remaster comes out June 26th 2 weeks ago:
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.
- Comment on The System Shock 2 remaster comes out June 26th 2 weeks ago:
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.
- Comment on Favourite 90s platformer? 2 weeks ago:
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.
- Comment on Forza Horizon 5 Will Require a Microsoft Account to Play on PS5 4 weeks ago:
The future is indeed dumb. The 2022 GoldenEye it’s own baggage.
I don’t think Nintendo was willing to let Microsoft sell it as a physical product (collectors would view it as superior to Nintendo’s NSO requirement).
- Comment on BALATRO WIP for the C64 (aka 8-bit Balatro) 4 weeks ago:
It looks like they were using the name.
At that point it becomes a trademark protection issue.
- Comment on Epic Games is delisting Dark and Darker due to an ongoing legal dispute 4 weeks ago:
This is going to vary from case to case.
In a situation where sales are legal and the publisher or platform choose to remove it from sale then its usually still available in you library for download.
But is a situation where the publisher never had a legal right to sell the product and the platform never had a right to offer it for sale? Then it may be pulled from libraries.
- Comment on Turok - Next-Gen Update 4 weeks ago:
The PlayStation version released in 2021 was PS4 software that ran on PS5 in backwards compatibility mode.
This update provides a native PS5 version. No I guess is “next gem” in comparison.
- Comment on Itch.io California Fire Relief Bundle - 422 items for $10 4 weeks ago:
I bought it because my son has been asking for Skatebird, but we also enjoyed an hour playing Ripped Pants at Work together and I’ll give Delver a go later tonight.
Thats the thing with bundles, different titles will appeal to different people.
- Comment on The UK Government Just Made Everyone Less Safe As Apple Shuts Down iCloud Encryption 5 weeks ago:
I’m not in the apple ecosystem.
Do apple customers have voice messages, emails, call logs etc from my interactions with them on iCloud?
