Now, I'm very strongly in favor of digital rights for games. That is, that once you buy a game digitally, you should ahve the same rights you would with a physical copy to sell or return your game. This move does not give us that badly-needed right of digital resale, but it does move things forward on the other front, and that's great.
Still, the limits of this are important: You can only return a game if you bought it within a week and never downloaded the game, or if you tell support that the game won't work on your computer and they can't help you fix the problem. They have no way of proving if people in the second group are telling the truth or not, but said that people who use this too often could lose this right because of abuse. So yeah, this sounds good, but really it's only a very small step forwards... but anything forwards is good, so I'll take it.
Of course, since GOG is DRM-free I can see why they wouldn't want to add resale (since there's absolutely no way to keep people from downloading and then selling a game), but PC games in the '90s were usually like that, and the decade was a pretty good time for PC gaming... sure, there were codewheels and CD keys, but those still allow resale, if you sell the whole package. That's nothing like digital games today. Publishers are probably happy about that, but consumers should be very unhappy.
Anyway though, apparently on Origin (yes, much-maligned Origin) you can return EA titles within 24 hours of buying them, so there's that too... but nothing from Steam, not even this minor step GOG has done. I wonder if/when they will budge...
Doomed! Third party by 2015. Smartphones, Tablets and PS4/XO power aren't things Nintendo can recover from.
Really doomed! I don't understand money and think Nintendo will go bankrupt any day now.
They'll be fine, the haters will be proven wrong for the millionth time!
Well?
Seriously though, the constant drumbeat of Nintendo hate that fills the gaming press is incredibly stupid and obnoxious. Why are so many gaming "journalists" so thrilled about the idea of Nintendo losing money and giving up on consoles? Why do they hate Nintendo so much, and want them to fail? Why do they defend the PS4/X1 and Sony and MS first-party titles, while then bashing Nintendo and saying that their games should be third party (but not Sony or MS'es, of course!)? I don't get it... sure, the Wii U is not doing great, and should be more powerful. But going from that to the reactions in the press... it really shows how much a lot of people who cover videogames hate Nintendo, that's for sure. And that's very sad. Of course Nintendo has some issues right now, but giving up and going third party would only make things much, much worse for them, not better in any way.
I'm.... stunned by this. I mean seriously, we all knew the NSA was "evil", but apparently the NSA knows that about itself now. I've never seen a government agency do something so... blatant. What's the next step? Change the uniform so they all have skulls on their chests and change the NSA leader's title to "Grand Overseer Hawk Lord of all Knowledge"? Maybe install a secret bunker full of brains in vats, or maybe a flying hover tank that shoots lasers? The sky is the limit when you design a logo and motto that could have come out of G.I. Joe or James Bond. Heck, even today's James Bond movies wouldn't risk something so laughably ridiculous and overtly evil as a logo like that.
Now to be fair, I suppose the very fact that I can mock this so relentlessly without being hooded and dragged to some internment camp is a point in freedom's favor, but nobody's arguing "put up on a wall" levels of rights violations here.
Posted by: Dark Jaguar - 10th December 2013, 11:53 AM - Forum: Tendo City
- No Replies
This one adds a lot of features the 3DS has needed, but the biggest one is the Miiverse.
I'll list the smaller, but welcome, changes first.
The 3DS finally added patching to a Nintendo game system, but the patches had to be done manually. A user first had to become aware that a patch even existed for a game, then find said patch on the 3DS store and download it there. It wasn't automatically downloaded or installed, as it is on MS and Sony's systems (just so you know, yes, you are prompted asking for permission to patch, and you can go on playing the game without it, but online features will be disabled, and that applies to both XBox and Playstation). The Wii U did fix this, finally adding automated patching, but the 3DS still lumbered about with no reliable way to update user's games to fix glitches. Fortunately, it seems enough frustrated gamers complaining about already patched issues called Nintendo's hotlines for Nintendo to finally do something about it. Now when you launch a game (assuming you're online of course), the system will alert you with a message indicating that a patch is available (if one isn't, it'll simply launch the game without delay). You can skip the message if you want, but here's where it gets a little tricky. If you DO want the patch, it won't just download and apply it right there like on every other modern game system. Instead, it'll take you to the 3DS store's download page where you have to initiate the download yourself, then quit the store, then start the game again. It is still far better, because even with those extra steps at least the average user will now know the patch exists, but I'm hoping a future update will streamline the process a bit to operate more like the Wii U.
Before, the 3DS only allowed you to do a data transfer to another 3DS a total of 5 times. This restriction is now lifted. Good, but not far enough. One still can't "log in" as separate accounts on a 3DS and download their account items to another system as on other consoles. One is still forced into all-or-nothing when transferring anything, as even saved data for games, SAVE DATA, is encrypted and locked to the system in question.
So as to the Nintendo ID, yes, you can now "link" it. This unites the 3DS and Wii U online stores, as well as any balances. This is also how you post to Miiverse. The 3DS "account" still exists though, and here's the problems. It doesn't take your friends list from your Wii U, instead just keeping your 3DS account's friend list. They need to "unite" the friend lists at some point and resolve this, as it's a rather large problem, especially when it comes to tracking friends on Miiverse. It also would pay to allow multiple accounts to be made on one 3DS. When accounts can be "recovered" onto any Nintendo system, just like with the other consoles, this'll be very helpful. I also want to address one more thing. Virtual console games need to be "shared" now. If I buy the NES game Super Mario Bros. on the Wii U, I should be able to download it on my linked 3DS.
All that said, get today's update, as it is a big one.
These were all introduced with the update after recovering from the hack. They're kind of annoying, and it'd be great if you could fix them.
-First, when you post from the Quick Reply box at the bottom of each page, for some reason it automatically double-posts every single time. In SeaMonkey, I get a "do you want to leave this page" warning now (which I did not get before), and if I say "No" then it posts only once as it should, but doesn't display it on screen (since saying "No" means that I'm still looking at the quick reply box with writing in it, not the new post posted to the thread). Then I have to reload the page to get the post to be viewable, if I want to do that (and hit "Yes" this time on the double prompt boxes which pop up).
In Firefox, I don't get any warning prompts, so it simply double-posts automatically, with no way around it, every time that I (and others) post from the quick-reply box. Sure, I can, and do, then delete the duplicates, but it's kind of annoying to have to do that after every time I post... this needs to be fixed.
-Second, the site still doesn't properly register me as logged on on the main forum list page (tcforums.com/forums). I appear as logged out there, but after clicking on any of the forums, then I automatically log in. This is kind of annoying because the "new posts" stuff doesn't work since that relies on you being logged in, and also because this means that you can't see if any posts were made in Forum 5 unless you click through to Save Tendo City and look there. This really should be fixed.
-Last, the Advanced "new post in current thread" page is all messed up. That is, if instead of posting in the quick reply box I Instead press "Go Advanced", this line is at the top of the screen "Warning: Only variables should be passed by reference in ..../newreply.php on line 389", and I see this below the text-input window (see attachment).
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]
I don't think I even need to say that this is OBVIOUSLY not right. And yes, it did not used to be like this, before the hack and upgrade that obviously messed things up. Fortunately the text-input window itself works correctly, but everything below it is a mess. This looks exactly the same on either Firefox or Seamonkey (Firefox is shown in this screenshot).
Hopefully you read this, etoven, even if you don't post here much... while the site is usable as it is, these bugs are annoying and should be fixed. Thanks.
Anyone planning on getting one soon? I'm not. No way can I afford that now, and anyway I'd get a Wii U before either of those, for sure. They are tempting of course (new tech!)... but no, not now. I'll need to get an Xbox One someday, though... I want to play Crimson Dragon!
![[Image: Satellite-logo-for-spying.jpg]](http://b-i.forbesimg.com/kashmirhill/files/2013/12/Satellite-logo-for-spying.jpg){kind=logo}
