Carrot

Brother, my phone is almost never charged higher than 70%. I need the number to differentiate between 6% and 2%. I don't even think about my battery until the battery saver mode prompt.

Yeah, I always show up when the movie actually starts. I know that AMC lists the actual start time along with the showing time. This usually happens on accident anyway, my friends are always late to show up to carpool anyways

And I guess what I'm getting at is that, if trying to do gimmicky things that might not work out isn't the definition of innovation, what is? And telescopic phone controllers are kind of in line with "controllers that can be used in handheld/docked mode," so I could understand an argument that that aspect of the switch isn't innovative

You're right, they do go for an online subscription. I guess my distinction was that access to your games aren't lost if you aren't paying the subscription. However, I realize that they do that for access to the retro games, so I'll retract the rent-seeking statement, they've definitely moved to having more rent-seeking behaviour. My use case of the Switch just doesn't interact with it in any way. I play games in split screen or local wireless multiplayer, which doesn't require a subscription.

I mean if you're being that reductive, sure, a handheld gaming system wouldn't be innovative. The innovation comes from a console that switches from handheld mode and a docked TV mode. The innovation is a pair of controllers that work both as the built-in handheld controllers, and controllers that can be used when the console is docked. The innovation is that the controllers can behave either as a pair of controllers or a single controller. Sure, they aren't super significant innovations, but it's more than you see from other consoles. I don't see the similarity in your last statement, but I guess I could be missing something.

I'm so confused.. There are so many valid reasons to hate on Nintendo, but you guys come up with two that aren't valid? Nintendo is the only one of the big three that genuinely innovates when it comes to console design. Rent seeking? They're the only one of the big three that doesn't try to lock you into a subscription for your games. Every game that they make for their console is still sold as a physical cartridge with the full game on it. Even their online services are the cheapest of the three.

They don't innovate when it comes to games, sure, but that's not what you folks were saying. Their games never go on sale and are overpriced, sure, but that's not rent seeking. Like I said, there's so much to dislike about Nintendo and how they run things, but the two examples here that seem to clearly resonate with people are just wrong, and I'm not sure why people are upvoting them. Maybe I'm missing something

The Switch was innovative? So much so that, upon seeing it's success, literally everyone copied them in one form or another?

Nothing the other guy said contradicts this? Nor shows a lack of understanding this?

I've still got the snake in a can that my grandparents had when I was a child, it's a fun prank

Steam has DRM. But there are 3rd party programs that can bypass that DRM. So if you have the game downloaded, then you will be able to play your games forever, even if valve goes under and the internet breaks. You'll technically be pirating the game at that point, but I personally have no qualms with that.

I agree. I buy any game I can on GOG or physical media, but still use steam. The only reason I'm fine using steam is that I have backed up every game I own, and there are piracy tools that can break steam's DRM. This way, if valve disappears, I can still play all my games without worry, except for the multiplayer parts of games that had multiplayer using steam servers exclusively.

However, there already exist emulators that let you play those multiplayer games on LAN without a connection to steam or the internet, so I'd imagine folks will figure out a hostable version for over-internet play if the need arises