Run from it, or Learn from it

Remember in The Lion King when Rafiki bopped Simba on top of his head with his staff to teach him about the past? Simba asked "Why did he did he do that?" Rafiki told him, "What does it matter? It's in the past." Simba said, "Yeah, but it still hurts." To which Rafiki said....

 "The past can hurt, but you can either run from it, or learn from it. Change is good, and everybody is somebody, even a nobody"

Part of our growth process is to turn pain into purpose. Every trial we face is an opportunity to level up. Failure is not when something doesn't go in your favor. Failure is when you give up.

When something jacked up happens in our lives, it is a lesson to teach us something. We are not trying to hear that in the moment, obviously. Our feelings about the situation are too strong. I think this is the missing component that people leave about in regards to giving advice on how to learn from mistakes or find purpose in pain.

YES, it DOES suck. VERY MUCH SO when something bad happens to us. We MUST acknowledge that and our feelings accordingly.

We are not robots or drones where we can just flick a switch to control our emotions. It is unhealthy and unwise to hold in your emotions, or to dismiss them.

There are ways to deal with strong emotions without causing physical or emotional harm to yourself or others.

Some form of athletic activity like running, biking, swimming, weight-lifting, martial-arts, etc. If you are like me and find it hard to exercise because of chronic pain, this is a good time to burn that energy and calories while you're at it.

Going into a sound-proof room (if you have one) and shouting the lights out. Writing EXACTLY how you feel in the moment in a journal.

Drawing a picture that represents how you feel. (This doesn't just work for kids. It works for adults too.)

Intentionally focusing on something that you know will bring you instant joy, or looking or listening to some content that makes you INSTANTLY laugh until your stomach hurts as soon as you see it.

Even crying can be very therapeutic or cathartic. You just have to release that pressure in a way that allows things to come back into focus. Sometimes (but not all the time) this alone can allow us to see that what we were so upset about really wasn't all that serious.

Once we disperse that energy, we can calm down, re-access the situation to examine just exactly what happened here, see what we can learn from it, and then plan a strategy to how to deal with the situation so that it's never an issue again in our lives and we can help others not to ever have to deal with it to begin with.

Diminishing returns, or chasing a dream?

I remember the first time that I really saw a 3D game in action. It was StarFox for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was clear that even with the help of the Super FX chip, StarFox was pushing the SNES to the absolute limit. The frame rate of the game was putrid by today's standards. At times it felt like I was playing a game on a flip-book. Still, it was a classic game and it showed that Nintendo wanted to push the boundaries of gaming as far as they could.

The game that really turned me on to the 3D world of gaming was a game called Battle Arena Toshinden for the Sony PlayStation. That was when I felt like 3D gaming had finally arrived. I was blown away by what I was seeing. Virtua Fighter for the arcades and later the Sega Saturn came before that, but the characters felt "too" blocky as Sega decided to sacrifice visuals for a more smooth gameplay experience. It had better game mechanics than Battle Arena Toshinden, but it just wasn't as fun to look at.

The point that I want to make is this. In my opinion, that was the last time that we truly had a significant generational-leap in graphics, gameplay, sound, scale, and overall presentation. Ever since then we have seen major improvements every generation, but the new gen just looks and plays like a much better version of what the previous generation offered.

When it comes to pushing boundaries in hardware, Nintendo bowed out of that race in 2006, and chose to try to push boundaries in the way we play games. There is a reason for that.

With the Nintendo64, the management at Nintendo chose to stick with the cartridge format rather than use CDs. This was obviously a grand mistake for numerous reasons, but the source of that decision was greed. With the Nintendo GameCube they chose to use 1.5GB mini-DVDs rather than a full-sized 4.7GB DVD and a built-in broadband adapter. They would claim they were trying to combat piracy, but that decision was also based in greed.

When it came time to make the Nintendo Revolution, then President of Nintendo of Japan, the late Saturo Iwata stated that he wanted a small device that could fit anywhere in the living room. Something about the size of three DVD cases together. Engineers told him that if they choose this form factor they would not be able to make a device that can compete with the Sony PlayStation 3 and XBOX 360 on the hardware side because it would be too difficult to put something that powerful in such a small package and be able to keep it from spontaneously bursting into flames. Putting a proper cooling-system in something like that would have made the console unaffordable.

So, they remembered that they had purchased motion-control technology, and decided to go that direction.

With the Nintendo Wii U, it was clear that Nintendo was trying to tap into the good faith they accrued with the Nintendo Wii, but it wound up backfiring because a lot of people thought that it was just an attachment for the Wii and not a next-gen device.

So, Nintendo rolled the dice one more time with the Nintendo Switch, and this time they hit the 7. They found their formula. They leaned heavily into what they do best which is portable gaming. They combined all of their development studios to be able to cut down on costs and redistribute that manpower into unified game development. The console has sold over 150 million devices worldwide and still counting.

I'm pretty sure than when Nintendo has the next investor's meeting that they will announce that the Switch has surpassed the Nintendo DS as it's best-selling hardware of all time and the previous marker held by the PlayStation 2. Of course, it probably won't have surpassed the new number Sony randomly pulled out of their ass last year of 160 million even though for the past 10 years they have reported the number to be 155-157 million.

Now, we have the Nintendo Switch 2. It has everything that people loved about the original Switch, but a better version of it. They have fixed a lot of nagging issues from the previous gen, and the system actually has some power. Is it on-par with the XBOX Series X and PlayStation 5? No. Is it in the room? Yes. It's waaaaaaaaay in the back, but it's in the room and quite frankly, that's all it NEEDS to do. Let's ask some tough questions here. How well has the massive jumps in horsepower for the XBOX and PlayStation devices worked out for them as of late? Honestly, just ask that question to yourself. Games are taking far too long to develop. The landscape is very bare with the PS5 compared to previous generations which has relied on many remakes and remasters with only a few ground-up titles for the device. On top of that, Sony HEAVILY invested money, time, and manpower into live-service games which they have decided to cancel which took a HUGE chunk out of their productivity.

As far as Microsoft goes, that is just a mess. They do seem to be re-balancing a little bit though. However, they suffer from the same problem as Sony. It takes too long and too much investment to produce games in a timely manner that justify the need for a PS5 or XSX. There also has not been any "killer-app" for either console. AAA 1st-party games that have had the benefit of time to fully take advantage of the power of the PS5 and XSX are going to look despicably good, but how long are we going to have to wait for those games? How long is the interval between those games going to be? How many of those games can we realistically get in one generation? Keep in mind that both Microsoft and Sony have closed down many studios and laid-off (or FIRED) thousands of people. Even Nintendo has stated that game development time will increase with them as well. So, if Nintendo is saying it's going to take longer for them to make games, it's really not sweet for Microsoft and Sony. Also, things have pretty much reached a point of equilibrium in gaming. There is always a "WOW" factor at the beginning of every new generation, but after awhile the new car smell is gone and you are stuck with what you had the previous generation in a prettier package. There is also a level of "uncanny valley" creeping into games as well. Things are starting to look too real to feel comfortable. Especially in games that depict graphic violence. I mean, warfare is NOT GLAMOROUS. How "real" do you want a game like Call Of Duty to look? I think that we have officially reached the point of diminishing returns. We are here. It's happening. I think that if the gaming industry does not figure out how to progress beyond "realism" as the purpose for new hardware and reasoning for pushing bleeding-edge technology into gaming, a MAJOR crash is in its future and this one will be far WORSE than the one in the early 80s.

Ironically enough, who saved the gaming industry from the first gaming crash?

Nintendo.

It may be up to them to save it again from another crash happening at all. From what I can tell, Nintendo seems to be using the new power from the Nintendo Switch 2 not just to make the games look better, but to do things in games that they couldn't before. To make larger and more expansive worlds in gaming. In fact, they were already thinking this way 13 years ago when they started work on The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild for the Wii U. Just think of how massive that game is and it's just a Wii U game. The Wii U is basically an overclocked XBOX 360 with more RAM. The Nintendo Switch 2 is substantially more powerful than any console behind the PS4 Pro, possibly more capable than the XBOX One X and maybe on-par with the XBOX Series S. If nVidia's claims are true (and there is no benefit to them lying because once the system teardowns happen we will know for sure anyway) that the Switch 2 is 10 times more powerful than the Switch, that would put it around 4-5 teraflops. Probably closer to 5 because of the resolutions and frame rates it is able to produce. Keep in mind that this is just raw performance without any assistance of DLSS.

There is a LOT that Nintendo can do from a gameplay standpoint with this type of power. My final point is in the form of a question. It is clear that while you can have games with great graphics and great gameplay, I think gameplay is being hindered by graphics. Back in the 1980s, you had limited hardware to work with, so the gameplay had to be supreme. Once the hardware started to become more potent and capable, developers started to focus more on the visual aspect and less on the gameplay aspect which is why THE VAST MAJORITY of arcade games and many console games from the late 70s and early 80s still resonate today with people of all kinds today. A lot of AAA games from the 1990s forward don't have the same staying power except for the truly elite ones. A random person that has never played Pac-Man before can grab a joystick and start playing. A random person that has never played Final Fantasy VII before is gonna need some help. When I say gameplay aspect BTW, I don't just mean the level of enjoyment of the game itself, but what actually can be done IN the games. Nowadays it feels like 90% of gameplay development is dedicated to realism and optimization of the game to retain that realism. The actual gameplay experience itself often gets lost or just drag-and-drop mechanics of similar titles. I think people are still chasing that feeling we had back in the mid 1990s when we first started seeing 3D games or games with rendered sprites that blew our minds. We are never going to see that type of jump again.

EVER

So, my question is this. Now, all three big companies have capable devices. Microsoft and Sony have shown us that it is not sustainable to have BOTH supreme graphics and supreme gameplay. Which would you rather them focus on?

What Do You Feel Is More Necessary For Long-Term Survive Of The Gaming Industry?

• Bleeding-Edge Visual Presentation.
• Innovative Gameplay Design and Mechanics.

Hypocrisy at it's finest

Let me start off by first saying this. Do I WANT to have to pay up to $80 dollars per-game going forward? No. Am I happy that the floor for video game console prices will most likely be $500 regardless of the company? No. That being said, am I going to pay whatever I need to pay to get that product that I want? You betcha.

There is a lot of consternation regarding the Nintendo Switch 2 in terms of the confirmed prices and miscommunication about prices and other features. I do take issue with Nintendo for their lack of communication and lack of transparency with the Nintendo Switch 2. They don't seem to understand that the rest of the world is NOT Japan. While you are the big fish in a small pond over there, everywhere else you are just a voice in a chorus. In the West, you have to communicate with your consumers often, and do it correctly. There are a lot of issues that have blown up into a maelstrom of negativity that could have been easily avoided if Nintendo would have just explained everything in detail from the beginning. Let's start with this whole idea that people were running with that has been DEBUNKED regarding that for Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games, consumers would only be getting the Nintendo Switch edition of the game in the box with a download code for the upgrades. This is brick-stupid AND, FALSE Consumers that purchase the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of a Nintendo Switch game will get a NINTENDO SWITCH 2 EDITION OF THE GAME. Meaning, all of the upgrades are already integrated into the game. If you already have the Nintendo Switch version of the game, you will be able place that game card into your Nintendo Switch 2 and download the upgrades. The price that I have heard for download upgrades for The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom will be $9.99. That is not bad AT ALL for 1440p and 60fps. Plus, you get cleaner and more crisp textures. Not as much of an upgrade that I would have hoped, but not a big deal. I guess Nintendo is saving all that for their next Zelda entry.

There was too much important information that was revealed AFTER the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct. Much of it not even coming from Nintendo themselves, but confirmed by Nintendo later. In a recent interview, Nintendo Of America President, Doug Bowser, stated that the pricing of Nintendo Switch 2 games was not static and will vary accordingly in regards to the level of content of each game. In addressing Mario Kart World specifically, he was coy about explaining why the price-tag is $79.99 outside of describing that the game has a very robust gameplay experience with a lot to discover, and long-term replay value. Even though there is a Mario Kart World Direct coming next week, this is something that should have been addressed in the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct last week. The price-tag would still not be comfortable, but at least people would have something to work with in terms of the "why" the price is what it is. The other noteworthy thing coming from this interview is that 3rd-party developers apparently have the freedom to choose the price they deem to be necessary for their games. That is interesting. I don't know if it was always like that, but in this current economic climate, that is going to be very interesting going forward, which leads me into my next point. Now that it is clear that the Nintendo Switch 2 will be able to run Grand Theft Auto VI, and the fact that Rockstar stated that GTA VI is in the mix for Switch 2 along with other properties, we could very well see a $90 dollar game on the Switch 2 after all. I don't think too many people would complain because for the first time you would see a mainline Grand Theft Auto game on a Nintendo console and we know those games have long legs. Let's drive into this a little deeper. There are already $70-80 dollar games on the market RIGHT NOW. There are games that are $60-70 dollars games that have over $100 dollars in PAID DLC alone chock-full of things that should have been in the game anyway. Not only have we been paying full price for unfinished games, but we have been overpaying for unfinished games with loads of content that should already have been in the game in the first place and both the "quality" and "quantity" of the DLC seems to be depreciating. We get games that have all kinds of technical issues that have to be patched out later. Granted, we don't have to pay for those patches, but we still had to pay full price for the game. If you go to a restaurant and they miss up your order, do you pay for it first before they fix it? No. You send it back and ask them to prepare it properly and the fact that they messed up for some people it might cost them the tip. For instance, just take a look at the prices for Street Fighter VI on the PS4 and PS5. https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0102-PPSA02632_00-SF600000STANDARD $109 dollars for a fighting game to get the "ultimate" experience (not "complete" experience,) but "ultimate" experience. This is nuts. Remember back in the day when then the FULL GAME was on the disc or cartridge? Remember when you had to unlock new characters, colors, modes, and outfits based on your HARD WORK rather than with your wallet? Remember that?? Now we just accept rampant extortion "normal" from these developers.........but apparently for Nintendo we consider "normal" as rampant extortion. Mario Kart 8 released on May 29th, 2014 for the Nintendo Wii U. There are people STILL playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch. The game certainly has longevity. This game also has paid DLC. However, this is REAL DLC that came many years later. You already had the "complete" experience from Mario Kart 8 and didn't need anything else. This DLC is actual extra content developed later on. Ironically, the price of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch with the paid DLC is $85 dollars. $5 dollars MORE than Mario Kart World for the Nintendo Switch 2 which already out of the gate has more content than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe WITH the DLC. It seems to me that people do not value Nintendo as highly as every other console manufacturer. They claim that gameplay matters more than graphics. They claim that innovation matters more than horsepower. They claim that family-friendly games are more useful than hardcore, adult-contemporary games. Yet, the fact that when Nintendo has the nerve to bring the specs up to standard (more or less,) these same people don't think Nintendo "deserves" charge the same prices?

The PS5 is $500 dollars. The XBOX Series X is $500. The PS5 Pro is $700 dollars. The XBOX Series S is $300, but it is digital-only, you can't take it on the go, and it doesn't have DLSS upscaling. The Nintendo Switch 2 you can take on the go, and it does have DLSS upscaling. One last thing.

Here you can see what the cost of inflation looks like. How ironic that a AAA, 1st-party title like Donkey Kong Bananza will cost LESS than what it should cost today adjusted for inflation. Amazing that a AAA, 1st-party title Like Mario Kart World is just about at price of where it should be today adjusted for inflation AND is giving you better graphics, better resolution, higher frame-rates, more content, more racers to choose from, more racers IN the race, more modes to play, and an expansive playing field RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX for LESS than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with DLC included made on a 13-year-old console. There are just a lot of people yappin' right now and not saying anything. Some people are hatemongers that capitalize on controversy to get clicks on their accounts. Some people are sheep that don't think before they act. They just respond to stimuli. They think that because everyone else is saying it or doing it then it must be right. As I said before, I don't want to pay $80 bucks or more for a game. I don't want to have to pay at LEAST $500 dollars (most likely $800 or better with the next Microsoft and Sony consoles.) That's a reasonable concern. However, if you don't have a problem paying those prices for everyone else, I feel it is hypocritical to exclaim that the prices are "too high" when Nintendo does it. For those who insinuate that it is wrong or "anti-consumer" for Nintendo to charge market-value for their products and to insinuate and DEMAND that ANY purveyor of goods change their prices just to fit YOU, I'll let Sylvester handle this one for me.....