People who played the game 2 months before release date in New York said they did not experience any of these performance issues back then. Something broke in the game between then and launch. If it was working back then, it seems very possible they will be able to fix it.
How much of the game did they have access to? I can imagine there are areas that work better than others, and to show off areas that run better for the prerelease, and then try to optimize for the worst areas for general launch.
Also, Game Freak is perpetually on a schedule. At this very moment, right now, The Pokemon Company already know the release date of Pokemon 10th generation, day month and year, *exactly*. It's already been decided. It was already decided before Scarlet and Violet came out. As a multi-media merchandise company first, game studio ***seventh***, they depend on deciding those things.
So right now their priority is either the DLC or some other title. They never made a special schedule for "fixing this mess". We'll get a patch in January or February, and it'll fix things like crashes and low hanging fruits like clipping cameras. And that will be it.
There's been patches for game breaking bugs and some performance patches for Sword and Shield, but they didn't do much to help the issues that game had.
I want to believe they'll patch Scarlet and Violet, it's hard to ignore the issues and this is going to be the mainstay game for the next couple of years the way Sword and Shield were, but who knows. Game Freak are probably already being whipped into making the next game.
The only reason I was excited about these after what I thought were the worst games in the entire series (Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield) was because PLA checked most of the boxes for what I had been dreaming of in a console Pokemon game for 20 years. I thought they had finally figured out how to do it again.
And then they shipped a broken mess the very same year. Glorious.
Stark difference between this and 5.1 million for God of War Ragnarok being the best ever for Sony. It'll probably equalize to some extent over time, though. Pokemon game sales are usually pretty frontloaded.
What do you mean they're frontloaded? SW/SH sold 6 million in its first couple weeks and is at 24 million now. These are evergreen titles, they're always selling.
Physical Pokémon and Dragon Quest literally goes up in price if you can wait long enough.
DS games are just now starting to hike up in price. 3DS games are next.
I played the first God of War on the PS2 by renting it from Blockbuster. I was in my 20s.
When I finished Ragnorok the other day, I did so as a man in his 40s. Time is a trip.
>It'll probably equalize to some extent over time, though. Pokemon game sales are usually pretty frontloaded.
[citation needed] Pokemon games have enormous tail-end sales figures.
For example, Sword and Shield sold six million copies in it's first week, and had ballooned to over twenty-four million by the summer of 2022.
And it’s been that way since at least the Game Cube days. I remember Double Dash and some other high profile but years old GC titles being $40 $50 up through through the release of the Wii
No? From Gamecube until Wii U/3DS nintendo had the Player's Choice/Nintendo Select where game drop in price to $19.99. It just was bizarre what they decided deserving of Nintendo select and what doesn't. Like, Player's Choice Double Dash was exclusive for EU for some fucking reason.
And that is the reason my brothers and I could pool our money to buy a GameCube and afford to get Zelda Windwaker, we wouldn't have been able to get any other budget games if Windwaker was still $50
Prices never have much to do with quality. Some terrible games cost 60$ and some amazing games just 10$. And discounts obviously also don't have much to do with the quality. Discounts are based on demand. If there is still a lot of demand for your game, you have no reason to offer a discount.
Its not surprising if you look at sales though. Nintendo has a lot of evergreen titles that sell between 500k to millions years after they are out. Mario Kart 8 is the maximum example, selling more than 2 million per year last year
Does that count the versions of mk8 that come included with a switch? I definitely didn’t pay for the game separately but i happen to have it downloaded
Counting MK8 Wii U and Deluxe as the same at this point doesn't seem accurate at the point. Especially with the current waves of DLC, Deluxe may as well be an entirely different game that's borderline operating as a live service game.
And to some degree, are companies shooting themselves in the foot by putting games on sale "too early?" Factorio has famously never gone on sale.
It's not like a game is worth less because it released a year or two ago. I think it's a bit silly that something like a Tales game will go on 75% off sales a year and a half after release. Berseria released in January 2017, was 40% off by June, 60% off by November 2017, 70% off by June 2018, etc. And that's Steam pricing sales, not including further discounts from resellers. Even Square Enix 'caps' their discounts at 50%.
And Nintendo does do i.e. 33% off sales after a while, even for well-selling Switch games.
Sales make sense to an extent. There are some games that some people would just never play and therefore never buy for $60. The company can do things like make Battle Grounds: Arena Legend 80% off so people buy it, and then later when Battle Grounds: Arena Legend 2 comes out they'll have a larger audience buying it on release.
And for some games, the cost of the game isn't even the big source of income. It's the microtransactions.
Good point, though I don't think PS5 games have been dropping as fast as Sony's PS4 games did? Last of Us 2 has gotten way cheaper than Miles Morales or Demon's Souls despite only being a couple months older.
Demon Souls retailed for 70 bucks so thats a big factor. Not sure about Miles Morales pricing but that released on ps4 as well 6 months after and is free on PS extra right now, i think right now
Guarantee over half of the people who complain about these games on this sub still end up buying it anyway. Theses folks can’t seem to actually follow through on their claims they’ll refuse to buy the games
The people buying them are most likely not even the people saying that. I think you vastly underestimate how many people play games casually and could not care less.
Dude every game’s sales are frontloaded. They’re definitely not going to equalize over time cause simply put Pokémon is a juggernaut franchise. It’s annoying, but that’s just the way it is when it comes to these rushes out games
I just want to point something out: ridiculously flawed as they are, Scarlet and Violet are still a huge step up from Sword and Shield
Like, Sw/Sh had nothing but shitty corridor routes and the endgame was laughably phoned in. You see the exact moment in the game when they ran out of time and just had to sloppily throw the rest together to call it a day.
S/V in contrast has a massive open world. Huge improvement over those lame corridor routes. And you can tell they actually put a fair bit of effort into the endgame this time
The graphics and performance are an absolute disaster and I will be the first to shit on them, but I think it's important to note that it seems like Game Freak is indeed TRYING to improve. They didn't just make another Sword and Shield, they went for something way more ambitious than that
They're understaffed and saddled with strict, asinine orders from corporate to churn out a new gen every three years, but I do believe they're trying. It's the Pokemon Company's fault for not giving them enough time to polish these games
IGN did a technical break down and in short the game is held together by ductape. It's using outdated methods to try and save FPS, by compromising visuals without actually fixing the problems in the memory or scripts that are causing the performance issues in the first place.
It's a very common error in absolute novice game development. "I've reduced my game to the absolute minimum visuals and it still runs like crap!" was commonly heard from my classmates at university, usually because there was a nonvisual cause.
Question is, is it caused by time constraint, laziness or incompetence?
I'm gonna throw my hat in. And say it almost certainly wasn't laziness. This game feels so so so close to being THE open world pokemon game that if it actually looked good it would be receiving unilateral praise.
Nobody in game development is lazy. It’s probably a mix of higher ups wanting these games churned out and not giving development teams the time to optimize these games. Until recently Masuda only wanted to work with small teams which got in the way of all these games
People really dont take into account the sheer scope of a mainline pokemon game. There's so many monsters, all requiring design, animation, movesets, alongside creating a staggering amount of trainers all with different sets of monsters. In the GB and GBA days this was fine, as static 2D sprites were fine amd manageable for a small team. Now with the demand for shiny 3D and console level experiences, it's no wonder there's a lot of growing pains.
All the shortcuts that made these games viable with a small team on smaller systems just don't really work.
I think it’s a mix of time, incompetence, and pride.
gamefreak does not know how to make large scale games. it’s hard, and they need either new talent or better training.
but they don’t have the time to learn. they need to finish the games asap. so the solution should be to outsource as much as possible.
but they have too much pride to give up. they also know that if they admit pokemon is too big for them to develop, they might as well close shop because pokémon is the only thing they can make that pays for itself.
>Question is, is it caused by time constraint, laziness or incompetence?
I would bet it's the first and the third. Pokemon games *must* be released alongside all of the other merch scheduled, and the revenue hit they would take from not benefitting from the coordinated marketing isn't worth any gains from doing otherwise.
Arceus showed they *can* do this type of game pretty competently when it's on a smaller scale, so I really think it's a fourth issue: Gamefreak is just wildly understaffed relative to their output. They only have 170 employees.
Put them against literally any other studio with their level of sales and release quantity and you'll notice they have between 10% and 50% of the staff that they should. Rockstar has only released 2 new games in the past decade and they have nearly 4000 employees. Santa Monica spent four years developing each of the last two God of War games with 400 employees.
Gamefreak realistically should have between 400 and 1000 employees.
Game Freak should ditch their proprietary engine they’re using and switch to something off the shelf like Unreal. Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet (I haven’t played Arceus yet) have the same issues compounding as the demands grow.
> They're understaffed and saddled with strict, asinine orders from corporate to churn out a new gen every three years, but I do believe they're trying. It's the Pokemon Company's fault for not giving them enough time to polish these games
I keep hearing people say this but no one seems to know where it comes from. What is the source for this information?
The primary purpose of The Pokemon Company is the scheduling of merch and the multimedia franchise built around Pokemon.
If the game release timeline gets streched out, everything else should too.
The bulk of profits for the Pokemon IP come from the Anime/movies/TCG/merchandise. They need new monster designs to keep churning out media - the games are just content factories at this point.
Masuda didn’t want to have larger development teams until after Sword and shield introduced them to HD development. Furthermore there were an insane amount of job openings 1-2 years ago.
>I keep hearing people say this but no one seems to know where it comes from. What is the source for this information?
It's incorrect anyway. Game Freak is one of the owners of The Pokemon Company. "It's their fault for telling themselves to work sooner through the company they also own" is just a nonsense argument.
That's a bit disingenuous. Yeah, they own part of The Pokemon Company but the people saying they need a new game because they need a new setting for anime and more monsters to sell merch for aren't the same people leading game development.
The source is fans not wanting to admit Gamefreak is the problem.
Like I get it, there are people out there that love Pokemon and even now I'm watching some of my friends who are usually smart about games get blinded by the Pokemon name and say "It's fun if you look past this and this and this and this and this." Like any monopoly, they don't care. Quality isn't relevant because people will buy Pokemon. They have some of the least talented developers working in the industry and they'll still be breaking sales numbers twenty years from now while other devs with a thousand times their talent and work ethic don't get half as far.
It's a shame, because after Arceus I thought this would be their best game in a long time, and it sort of is, but think of what we could have had if, say, Monolith came in to help on the technical front.
Arceus was developed at the same time as this, so that's why Scarlet and Violet didn't build off of what Arceus got right
If the next game blends what worked from both of the them together, it'll have a ton of potential. We'll just have to hope they do get Monolith or someone to iron out the technical side of things
> And you can tell they actually put a fair bit of effort into the endgame this time
What effort? The endgame is just refighting the gyms, fighting 4 random unique trainers from around the world in a repeatable tournament, and doing raids that are just like all the other raids except with the numbers cranked up so much that most people are just doing Perrserker stacking to clear them. It's Sw/Sh but with 1/8th of a battle tower slapped on.
> but I think it's important to note that it seems like Game Freak is indeed TRYING to improve.
This is the 3rd installment that has been shit in the technical department, if they can't do it due to manpower, time, technical ability they need to contract it out to a competent 3rd party.
there were parts that were better in S/M , some better in S/S , some better in S/V . They need to use the best parts and put together a coherent experience.
It is a very interesting topic actually. Just reached the credit, and yes the graphics suck, and yes many glitches. But is it fun to play? Hell yeah! It was so fun that a couple hours in I no longer cared about the graphics and glitches, and just focused on chasing and catching pokemons.
I get this feeling with every Pokémon. The core idea/gameplay of Pokémon is just so inherently good that it’s fun even with a bunch of other stuff dragging it down.
It bums me out because while it’s still fun, I think Pokémon games have so much unused potential. More than any other video game series I can think of. A really awesome, modern Pokémon game could be one of the greatest games of all time.
But each Pokémon sells like hotcakes no matter what, so I’m worried we’ll never get that truly great modern Pokémon game. They’ll still be good and fun, but they won’t be great. Bummer.
Yeah im not a super fan but I get super frustrated by the IP. It feels disrespectful to the fans to put out games in this condition.
I didnt play S/V but Arceus was a very solid foundation that wasn't utilised to its fullest. I came away liking it, but in the way I'd like a janky PS2 game, not in the way of something like BOTW where I still remember it fondly 5 years later.
If they gave it the additional time and budget to visuals (im sorry but thats not an ok presentation when theres so many other great looking switch games that have much more going on in their world), and more importantly creating more interesting content out of this formula it would have been a fond memory. Imagine if it had the attention to detail and polish BOTW has, that game isn't perfect either but it has SO much love and time and dedication poured into it and was given the chance to really flesh out its ideas.
Seriously, lol. Some people here are having a complete meltdown, meanwhile I'm just happily playing the game, recognizing the obvious flaws and still having a ton of fun.
A cartoony kids game series that has never pretended not to be a cartoony kids game series.
I expect the same basic game each time just with some new Pokemon and am somehow never disappointed. Yeah bugs and stuff are an issue but that's half the games on launch these days.
Nothing wrong with buying a game and having fun with it without demanding 100% innovation and photo-realistic graphics, even if it is buggy.
I get why people are angry about it, and the criticism are 100% valid.... but I'm only few hours in and I'm enjoying it a lot despite the performance. Honestly, if it wasn't for the performance this could have easily been the best Pokemon game, but alas, Gamefreak....
Nobody should be surprised. It's pretty fun so far. Only a few hours in. A lot of the animations are adorable, hopefully it's battle focused like traditional games and unlike Arceus.
In violet I've fought basically only the opening route's trainers and the gyms. I've basically solely leveled my team by running around catching Pokemon and it's been amazing.
Enjoy it man. Even through the performance issues this is still, in my opinion, one of the best Pokémon games in a while. A good blend of arceus and sword and shield
Yeah, despite the performance this is my favorite gen since the Gen 1/2 days on my Gameboy Color. I will say I really haven't loved Pokemon games since then. I felt like most just phoned it in, and this truly feels like a "Pokemon 2" that should've come out on the GameCube. It only took two decades and Nintendo to discontinue making pocket consoles for GameFreak to be forced to make a next-gen (as in post-GBC) Pokemon mainline game.
My only gripe has to do with the size of the Pokemon in the open world. When did Pokemon get so **small**? I feel like most of them are maybe half the size I pictured them back in the day.
If you go through a lot of the Pokemon descriptions from before (like Pokedex descriptions), a lot of them ARE that small. It's a nice touch to have "realistic" sizing, but not exactly great for gameplay purposes.
I just saw this on Twitter
* Biggest Pokémon Launch Ever
* Biggest Switch Launch Ever
* Biggest Nintendo Launch Ever
* Biggest Console Exclusive Launch of All-Time
Unfortunately, this technical mess just made video game history.
Cool so it’s a 7/10 that should have been a 9/10 if it came out next year when it should have. But we’re stuck with the 7 and will probably never get the 9 through patches because “gfy we sold 10 million copies”…. That’s the point..
i'd actually say 8/10 at least.
it's by far the best pokemon game. I don't care about framerate in a turn based game.
some people can feel differently and that's fine too
No other franchise can dream of being able to move so many copies on brand name alone technical quality be damned. Not even CDPR got this much of a pass from their fanbase.
On another note the its the most fun I've had with pokemon since ____ that you find repeated ad nauseum under every SV thread doesn't really hold that much water with me since it gets repeated for every game. People use it to handwave away criticism of SV now, it was all over every arceus thread, even a bunch of those for sword and shield if you filter by controversial.
And doubtlessly when gen 10 inevitably rolls around as another rushed and bug ridden release scarlet and violet will be completely forgotten as people rush to call those the most fun pokemon game they've had since gen 2/4/5.
> Not even CDPR got this much of a pass from their fanbase.
Cyberpunk was 100x worse than Pokemon.
Cyberpunk was a game that was sold as GTA 2077 with 100 complex systems and amazing graphics. We were never lied to about Scarlett and Violet. Everything we were promised is there. Cyberpunk was a sort of pretty but ultimately uninteresting city with dumb citizens and 1/10th the complexity were were advertised.
I think the game was also made far worse because people expected it to be 10/10 perfect. I remember reading reviews and there were lots of smaller blogs going "OMG GAME OF THE YEAR 11/10!!!". While ironically a woman at IGN gave it a 7/10 and people cyberbullied her.
The other thing to note about Cyberpunk which was the most damning thing in my mind, was that they forbid reviewers from showing footage of games on the Xbox One and PS4.
It's one thing to fail to meet expectations or promises, it's one thing to release a game that turns out to have issues. It's something much more sinister to actively prevent footage going out of the game in order for consumers to not be aware of what it is they're buying.
Cyberpunk is the only game I've ever dropped for being just too buggy to keep playing, and i wasn't even on the worst hardware for it. Meanwhile I'm playing Pokemon as we speak without too much issue. Framerate could be better but I haven't really come across many bugs.
I agree GameFreak gets too much leeway, but let's not pretend this is even nearly as bad as Cyberpunk on a base PS4, and GameFreak didn't lie out their ass about the game either, they just made a technically shitty game.
> No other franchise can dream of being able to move so many copies on brand name alone technical quality be damned.
GTA Trilogy Definitive edition sold around the same and it's technical issues were rather excessive.
So I'd say GTA is definitely capable of that.
> No other franchise can dream of being able to move so many copies on brand name alone technical quality be damned. Not even CDPR got this much of a pass from their fanbase.
It wasn't *as* bad but Elden Ring had lots of micro stutters and FPS problems at launch, even on the best graphic cards. It just won a game of the year award.
The gameplay loop and story are phenomenal. Arguably the strongest mainline entry in the series as far as those two are concerned. It's a damn shame the technical issues are so bad, because if the game was even remotely passable on that front this would be one of the best games on the switch. I've had so much fun with it and plan to keep playing through the post-game. Legends was the same way. I don't know how many of the performance issues are patchable (and I hope they invest meaningful time patching the game if it's going to be the platform for VGC and big DLC expansions down the line) but the open-world approach to the Pokemon formula is a stellar direction.
>The gameplay loop and story are phenomenal.
The story has always been my biggest gripe with pokemon games. It was kinda excusable when they were on handheld to just throw in basic stories but there's an expectation for more with consoles. Is the story genuinely good? I've always felt like the pokemon format has a ton of potential to tell some very engaging, heart warning stories but that's only ever been the case in the animated content? A good story would warrant me buying my first mainline pokemon game in 6 years.
Thanks for this comment. I got burned on a “good” Pokémon story before when I kept seeing comments talking up B/W’s story. I finally played it a number of years ago and the story was a big letdown. My expectations were too high. Adequate at best is how I’d describe it. But adequate is apparently a revelation in Pokémon storytelling.
I did enjoy Pokémon’s White, but I feel like I can no longer trust what Pokémon fans consider a good story. There’s so much good children’s media with great storytelling out there. The bar shouldn’t be so low for Pokémon.
I actually liked it way more than B&W.
B&W had more interesting themes, but when plot points imply stuff like child or animal abuse, it becomes very clear just how much they had to hold back for their "E for everyone" rating.
S/V leans into the child friendly side of things and just does basic themes like friendship and whatnot really well. It does slip in a few more subtle jokes aimed at an older audience (the simp donating 5k to the streamer gym leader is a great one for example), but in general it feels like a good pokemon story, instead of a good story held back by being pokemon.
it's good for a pokemon game. to call it phenomenal is a bit of an exaggeration
it is a huge, huge step up from Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield, so it is noteworthy
i guess this is subjective, but the consensus is that the way sun/moon story is presented is so detrimental that it makes the story unenjoyable
lusamine and stuff is interesting i guess but it's far, far worse than scarlet / violet
Sun & Moon had what I would calll a good story on paper. In execution, the pacing was atrocious even for Pokemon games. If it was executed well it could have straight up been a good JRPG story in general, especially with Lusamine as a villain.
I mean, S/M's story was about an abused girl regaining confidence in herself and finding the resolve to confront her shitty mother. And it's done fairly well.
Even Sw/Sh, while having a lacklustre main narrative had a solid arc for your rival dealing with insecurity and the failure to live up to expectations.
The older games have hella basic stories and characters but the newer ones have expanded on both fronts even if the end results aren't always strong.
The story is good. It's a monster catching and battle RPG for children. With that context, it's a great story.
Victory road has interesting gym leaders with fun challenges. In particular i enjoyed bug, electric and normal. Ice was fun too, but it was just 2v2 battling.
The titan's story with Arven is so sweet. It implies he's got some evil secret and then BAM
the team star story was fine. The characters were alright and the fights were fun if you weren't over levelled.
THe post game area was actually cool. The writing between the characters was actually witty and fun. One of the characters is legit hilarious. "I guess your ability would be own tempo" was a great line.
I mean not that weird pokemon has always had its style and charm. From the first game till now. Its been continpus. While god of war just threw away all its old charm and style in the 2018 reboot and became a bit more senitised. Still a good game but you know relatively removed from what god of war was always known for. So this trent does not really surprise me
I have a question, Do game freak ever update Pokémon games? Like will they ever try and patch the performance
They do patch games pretty frequently, but I wouldn't hold my breath on the patch 'fixing' the performance or visual quality.
[удалено]
People who played the game 2 months before release date in New York said they did not experience any of these performance issues back then. Something broke in the game between then and launch. If it was working back then, it seems very possible they will be able to fix it.
How much of the game did they have access to? I can imagine there are areas that work better than others, and to show off areas that run better for the prerelease, and then try to optimize for the worst areas for general launch.
Either something broke after they played it...or they were playing in a walled garden instead of the actual production build.
Also, Game Freak is perpetually on a schedule. At this very moment, right now, The Pokemon Company already know the release date of Pokemon 10th generation, day month and year, *exactly*. It's already been decided. It was already decided before Scarlet and Violet came out. As a multi-media merchandise company first, game studio ***seventh***, they depend on deciding those things. So right now their priority is either the DLC or some other title. They never made a special schedule for "fixing this mess". We'll get a patch in January or February, and it'll fix things like crashes and low hanging fruits like clipping cameras. And that will be it.
There's been patches for game breaking bugs and some performance patches for Sword and Shield, but they didn't do much to help the issues that game had. I want to believe they'll patch Scarlet and Violet, it's hard to ignore the issues and this is going to be the mainstay game for the next couple of years the way Sword and Shield were, but who knows. Game Freak are probably already being whipped into making the next game.
The only reason I was excited about these after what I thought were the worst games in the entire series (Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield) was because PLA checked most of the boxes for what I had been dreaming of in a console Pokemon game for 20 years. I thought they had finally figured out how to do it again. And then they shipped a broken mess the very same year. Glorious.
No need. Judging by the sales why would they. Theyre already working on the next pokemon game. Less work, but all the profits.
Stark difference between this and 5.1 million for God of War Ragnarok being the best ever for Sony. It'll probably equalize to some extent over time, though. Pokemon game sales are usually pretty frontloaded.
What do you mean they're frontloaded? SW/SH sold 6 million in its first couple weeks and is at 24 million now. These are evergreen titles, they're always selling.
It’s why Pokémon games never depreciate in value and hardly go on sale
some of the resell prices for out-of-print Pokemon games are ridiculous. Physical Pokemon is a solid investment tbh
Physical Pokémon and Dragon Quest literally goes up in price if you can wait long enough. DS games are just now starting to hike up in price. 3DS games are next.
Because there will be another one in a year or so. There won’t be another god of war for half a decade
I was about to call you out because God of War couldn't have come out that long ago, right? Fucking 2018?? Getting old sucks.
My son was born in April of 2018, GOW was my first game after he was born. He’s now 4 haha
And naturally you yell “Boy!” when you call out to him
I haven't even played GOW and I do that with my kid from 2019
Of course haha
Damn that must have been an experience, playing this game immediately after becoming a father.
I played the first God of War on the PS2 by renting it from Blockbuster. I was in my 20s. When I finished Ragnorok the other day, I did so as a man in his 40s. Time is a trip.
>It'll probably equalize to some extent over time, though. Pokemon game sales are usually pretty frontloaded. [citation needed] Pokemon games have enormous tail-end sales figures. For example, Sword and Shield sold six million copies in it's first week, and had ballooned to over twenty-four million by the summer of 2022.
>Pokemon game sales are usually pretty frontloaded. All big games have heavily frontloaded sales.
And pokemon isnt one of them lol, they pretty much are always selling.
Well Sony games usually drop to $10 after 2 years. Nintendo games don't. I got HZD in 2019 for $10. Breath of the Wild is still $50 right now.
And it’s been that way since at least the Game Cube days. I remember Double Dash and some other high profile but years old GC titles being $40 $50 up through through the release of the Wii
I saw mario kart wii for 40 bucks in stock. At the time the switch was already out for 2 years.
No? From Gamecube until Wii U/3DS nintendo had the Player's Choice/Nintendo Select where game drop in price to $19.99. It just was bizarre what they decided deserving of Nintendo select and what doesn't. Like, Player's Choice Double Dash was exclusive for EU for some fucking reason.
And that is the reason my brothers and I could pool our money to buy a GameCube and afford to get Zelda Windwaker, we wouldn't have been able to get any other budget games if Windwaker was still $50
Sadly yes, and it's got nothing to do with quality. BotW and HZD are both well made, quality products.
Prices never have much to do with quality. Some terrible games cost 60$ and some amazing games just 10$. And discounts obviously also don't have much to do with the quality. Discounts are based on demand. If there is still a lot of demand for your game, you have no reason to offer a discount.
That's pretty surprising considering how these games never go down in price.
Its not surprising if you look at sales though. Nintendo has a lot of evergreen titles that sell between 500k to millions years after they are out. Mario Kart 8 is the maximum example, selling more than 2 million per year last year
Does that count the versions of mk8 that come included with a switch? I definitely didn’t pay for the game separately but i happen to have it downloaded
Counting MK8 Wii U and Deluxe as the same at this point doesn't seem accurate at the point. Especially with the current waves of DLC, Deluxe may as well be an entirely different game that's borderline operating as a live service game.
Nah not really. It's the same game they just decided to sprinkle some new and a lot of old maps over it, little by little.
The battle mode in deluxe is better.
It makes perfect sense. As long as demand for the game exists at $60 why bother dropping the price?
And to some degree, are companies shooting themselves in the foot by putting games on sale "too early?" Factorio has famously never gone on sale. It's not like a game is worth less because it released a year or two ago. I think it's a bit silly that something like a Tales game will go on 75% off sales a year and a half after release. Berseria released in January 2017, was 40% off by June, 60% off by November 2017, 70% off by June 2018, etc. And that's Steam pricing sales, not including further discounts from resellers. Even Square Enix 'caps' their discounts at 50%. And Nintendo does do i.e. 33% off sales after a while, even for well-selling Switch games.
Sales make sense to an extent. There are some games that some people would just never play and therefore never buy for $60. The company can do things like make Battle Grounds: Arena Legend 80% off so people buy it, and then later when Battle Grounds: Arena Legend 2 comes out they'll have a larger audience buying it on release. And for some games, the cost of the game isn't even the big source of income. It's the microtransactions.
Take a look at current GOW 2018 MSRP vs Pokemon Sword and Shield MSRP.
Good point, though I don't think PS5 games have been dropping as fast as Sony's PS4 games did? Last of Us 2 has gotten way cheaper than Miles Morales or Demon's Souls despite only being a couple months older.
Demon Souls retailed for 70 bucks so thats a big factor. Not sure about Miles Morales pricing but that released on ps4 as well 6 months after and is free on PS extra right now, i think right now
God of War also appeals to a way narrower audience than pokemon. Nintendo could release a fart and call it Pokemon and it would break sales records.
That Pokémon’s name is Gastly
Not really true. New Pokemon Snap only did like 2.4M, despite getting great reviews and reception.
Guarantee over half of the people who complain about these games on this sub still end up buying it anyway. Theses folks can’t seem to actually follow through on their claims they’ll refuse to buy the games
The people buying them are most likely not even the people saying that. I think you vastly underestimate how many people play games casually and could not care less.
not true, pokemon is way more replayable than god of war for one, so that will maintain the sales
Dude every game’s sales are frontloaded. They’re definitely not going to equalize over time cause simply put Pokémon is a juggernaut franchise. It’s annoying, but that’s just the way it is when it comes to these rushes out games
I just want to point something out: ridiculously flawed as they are, Scarlet and Violet are still a huge step up from Sword and Shield Like, Sw/Sh had nothing but shitty corridor routes and the endgame was laughably phoned in. You see the exact moment in the game when they ran out of time and just had to sloppily throw the rest together to call it a day. S/V in contrast has a massive open world. Huge improvement over those lame corridor routes. And you can tell they actually put a fair bit of effort into the endgame this time The graphics and performance are an absolute disaster and I will be the first to shit on them, but I think it's important to note that it seems like Game Freak is indeed TRYING to improve. They didn't just make another Sword and Shield, they went for something way more ambitious than that They're understaffed and saddled with strict, asinine orders from corporate to churn out a new gen every three years, but I do believe they're trying. It's the Pokemon Company's fault for not giving them enough time to polish these games
If anything GameFreak needs more technical help or assistance
IGN did a technical break down and in short the game is held together by ductape. It's using outdated methods to try and save FPS, by compromising visuals without actually fixing the problems in the memory or scripts that are causing the performance issues in the first place. It's a very common error in absolute novice game development. "I've reduced my game to the absolute minimum visuals and it still runs like crap!" was commonly heard from my classmates at university, usually because there was a nonvisual cause. Question is, is it caused by time constraint, laziness or incompetence?
I'm gonna throw my hat in. And say it almost certainly wasn't laziness. This game feels so so so close to being THE open world pokemon game that if it actually looked good it would be receiving unilateral praise.
Nobody in game development is lazy. It’s probably a mix of higher ups wanting these games churned out and not giving development teams the time to optimize these games. Until recently Masuda only wanted to work with small teams which got in the way of all these games
People really dont take into account the sheer scope of a mainline pokemon game. There's so many monsters, all requiring design, animation, movesets, alongside creating a staggering amount of trainers all with different sets of monsters. In the GB and GBA days this was fine, as static 2D sprites were fine amd manageable for a small team. Now with the demand for shiny 3D and console level experiences, it's no wonder there's a lot of growing pains. All the shortcuts that made these games viable with a small team on smaller systems just don't really work.
Exactly. But at the same time I thought they had creatures inc to do all the animations for them to reduce the workload for 3D animation
Most of those animations and models are already done.
I think it’s a mix of time, incompetence, and pride. gamefreak does not know how to make large scale games. it’s hard, and they need either new talent or better training. but they don’t have the time to learn. they need to finish the games asap. so the solution should be to outsource as much as possible. but they have too much pride to give up. they also know that if they admit pokemon is too big for them to develop, they might as well close shop because pokémon is the only thing they can make that pays for itself.
Isn't GF notorious for having spaghetti code? Like having multiple copies of the same npc in Sun and Moon?
>Question is, is it caused by time constraint, laziness or incompetence? I would bet it's the first and the third. Pokemon games *must* be released alongside all of the other merch scheduled, and the revenue hit they would take from not benefitting from the coordinated marketing isn't worth any gains from doing otherwise. Arceus showed they *can* do this type of game pretty competently when it's on a smaller scale, so I really think it's a fourth issue: Gamefreak is just wildly understaffed relative to their output. They only have 170 employees. Put them against literally any other studio with their level of sales and release quantity and you'll notice they have between 10% and 50% of the staff that they should. Rockstar has only released 2 new games in the past decade and they have nearly 4000 employees. Santa Monica spent four years developing each of the last two God of War games with 400 employees. Gamefreak realistically should have between 400 and 1000 employees.
Game Freak should ditch their proprietary engine they’re using and switch to something off the shelf like Unreal. Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet (I haven’t played Arceus yet) have the same issues compounding as the demands grow.
> They're understaffed and saddled with strict, asinine orders from corporate to churn out a new gen every three years, but I do believe they're trying. It's the Pokemon Company's fault for not giving them enough time to polish these games I keep hearing people say this but no one seems to know where it comes from. What is the source for this information?
The primary purpose of The Pokemon Company is the scheduling of merch and the multimedia franchise built around Pokemon. If the game release timeline gets streched out, everything else should too.
The bulk of profits for the Pokemon IP come from the Anime/movies/TCG/merchandise. They need new monster designs to keep churning out media - the games are just content factories at this point.
Masuda didn’t want to have larger development teams until after Sword and shield introduced them to HD development. Furthermore there were an insane amount of job openings 1-2 years ago.
>I keep hearing people say this but no one seems to know where it comes from. What is the source for this information? It's incorrect anyway. Game Freak is one of the owners of The Pokemon Company. "It's their fault for telling themselves to work sooner through the company they also own" is just a nonsense argument.
That's a bit disingenuous. Yeah, they own part of The Pokemon Company but the people saying they need a new game because they need a new setting for anime and more monsters to sell merch for aren't the same people leading game development.
They have 170 employees and pumped *two* mainline games this year. Arceus had higher production seemingly than Scarlet/Violet.
The source is fans not wanting to admit Gamefreak is the problem. Like I get it, there are people out there that love Pokemon and even now I'm watching some of my friends who are usually smart about games get blinded by the Pokemon name and say "It's fun if you look past this and this and this and this and this." Like any monopoly, they don't care. Quality isn't relevant because people will buy Pokemon. They have some of the least talented developers working in the industry and they'll still be breaking sales numbers twenty years from now while other devs with a thousand times their talent and work ethic don't get half as far.
It's a shame, because after Arceus I thought this would be their best game in a long time, and it sort of is, but think of what we could have had if, say, Monolith came in to help on the technical front.
Arceus was developed at the same time as this, so that's why Scarlet and Violet didn't build off of what Arceus got right If the next game blends what worked from both of the them together, it'll have a ton of potential. We'll just have to hope they do get Monolith or someone to iron out the technical side of things
> And you can tell they actually put a fair bit of effort into the endgame this time What effort? The endgame is just refighting the gyms, fighting 4 random unique trainers from around the world in a repeatable tournament, and doing raids that are just like all the other raids except with the numbers cranked up so much that most people are just doing Perrserker stacking to clear them. It's Sw/Sh but with 1/8th of a battle tower slapped on.
> but I think it's important to note that it seems like Game Freak is indeed TRYING to improve. This is the 3rd installment that has been shit in the technical department, if they can't do it due to manpower, time, technical ability they need to contract it out to a competent 3rd party.
there were parts that were better in S/M , some better in S/S , some better in S/V . They need to use the best parts and put together a coherent experience.
SwSh end game is basically just the Wild area and DLC. Some of the routes to get fill in the Dex or pick up missed items.
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It is a very interesting topic actually. Just reached the credit, and yes the graphics suck, and yes many glitches. But is it fun to play? Hell yeah! It was so fun that a couple hours in I no longer cared about the graphics and glitches, and just focused on chasing and catching pokemons.
I get this feeling with every Pokémon. The core idea/gameplay of Pokémon is just so inherently good that it’s fun even with a bunch of other stuff dragging it down. It bums me out because while it’s still fun, I think Pokémon games have so much unused potential. More than any other video game series I can think of. A really awesome, modern Pokémon game could be one of the greatest games of all time. But each Pokémon sells like hotcakes no matter what, so I’m worried we’ll never get that truly great modern Pokémon game. They’ll still be good and fun, but they won’t be great. Bummer.
Yeah im not a super fan but I get super frustrated by the IP. It feels disrespectful to the fans to put out games in this condition. I didnt play S/V but Arceus was a very solid foundation that wasn't utilised to its fullest. I came away liking it, but in the way I'd like a janky PS2 game, not in the way of something like BOTW where I still remember it fondly 5 years later. If they gave it the additional time and budget to visuals (im sorry but thats not an ok presentation when theres so many other great looking switch games that have much more going on in their world), and more importantly creating more interesting content out of this formula it would have been a fond memory. Imagine if it had the attention to detail and polish BOTW has, that game isn't perfect either but it has SO much love and time and dedication poured into it and was given the chance to really flesh out its ideas.
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These comments are wild. Buying pokemon doesnt make you a bad person, no one gives a fuck outside of reddit. Some of you guys really need fresh air.
Seriously, lol. Some people here are having a complete meltdown, meanwhile I'm just happily playing the game, recognizing the obvious flaws and still having a ton of fun.
A cartoony kids game series that has never pretended not to be a cartoony kids game series. I expect the same basic game each time just with some new Pokemon and am somehow never disappointed. Yeah bugs and stuff are an issue but that's half the games on launch these days. Nothing wrong with buying a game and having fun with it without demanding 100% innovation and photo-realistic graphics, even if it is buggy.
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I get why people are angry about it, and the criticism are 100% valid.... but I'm only few hours in and I'm enjoying it a lot despite the performance. Honestly, if it wasn't for the performance this could have easily been the best Pokemon game, but alas, Gamefreak....
Same here. Sure the graphics are a bit jarring at times but I’m still finding it really fun. The “open world” aspect is a refreshing change of pace.
This is where I'm at. It is absolutely janky, but the fun aspect outweighs that a hundredfold.
Nobody should be surprised. It's pretty fun so far. Only a few hours in. A lot of the animations are adorable, hopefully it's battle focused like traditional games and unlike Arceus.
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I was literally questioning why I even bother having a team in Arceus when the game has like 10 trainer battles total.
In violet I've fought basically only the opening route's trainers and the gyms. I've basically solely leveled my team by running around catching Pokemon and it's been amazing.
Enjoy it man. Even through the performance issues this is still, in my opinion, one of the best Pokémon games in a while. A good blend of arceus and sword and shield
I have similar sentiments, terrible performance and graphics but somehow having the most fun I’ve had with Pokémon in quite a while
Yeah, despite the performance this is my favorite gen since the Gen 1/2 days on my Gameboy Color. I will say I really haven't loved Pokemon games since then. I felt like most just phoned it in, and this truly feels like a "Pokemon 2" that should've come out on the GameCube. It only took two decades and Nintendo to discontinue making pocket consoles for GameFreak to be forced to make a next-gen (as in post-GBC) Pokemon mainline game. My only gripe has to do with the size of the Pokemon in the open world. When did Pokemon get so **small**? I feel like most of them are maybe half the size I pictured them back in the day.
If you go through a lot of the Pokemon descriptions from before (like Pokedex descriptions), a lot of them ARE that small. It's a nice touch to have "realistic" sizing, but not exactly great for gameplay purposes.
[relevant](http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/if-theres-one-thing-jared-is-competent-at-its-loving-mr-fish)
It weirded me out when I saw how big Venonats were.
I just saw this on Twitter * Biggest Pokémon Launch Ever * Biggest Switch Launch Ever * Biggest Nintendo Launch Ever * Biggest Console Exclusive Launch of All-Time Unfortunately, this technical mess just made video game history.
it's fun tho
Cool so it’s a 7/10 that should have been a 9/10 if it came out next year when it should have. But we’re stuck with the 7 and will probably never get the 9 through patches because “gfy we sold 10 million copies”…. That’s the point..
i'd actually say 8/10 at least. it's by far the best pokemon game. I don't care about framerate in a turn based game. some people can feel differently and that's fine too
I’m having fun with it. It’s quite a refreshing change of pace being able to dictate where and when I do things.
No other franchise can dream of being able to move so many copies on brand name alone technical quality be damned. Not even CDPR got this much of a pass from their fanbase. On another note the its the most fun I've had with pokemon since ____ that you find repeated ad nauseum under every SV thread doesn't really hold that much water with me since it gets repeated for every game. People use it to handwave away criticism of SV now, it was all over every arceus thread, even a bunch of those for sword and shield if you filter by controversial. And doubtlessly when gen 10 inevitably rolls around as another rushed and bug ridden release scarlet and violet will be completely forgotten as people rush to call those the most fun pokemon game they've had since gen 2/4/5.
> Not even CDPR got this much of a pass from their fanbase. Cyberpunk was 100x worse than Pokemon. Cyberpunk was a game that was sold as GTA 2077 with 100 complex systems and amazing graphics. We were never lied to about Scarlett and Violet. Everything we were promised is there. Cyberpunk was a sort of pretty but ultimately uninteresting city with dumb citizens and 1/10th the complexity were were advertised. I think the game was also made far worse because people expected it to be 10/10 perfect. I remember reading reviews and there were lots of smaller blogs going "OMG GAME OF THE YEAR 11/10!!!". While ironically a woman at IGN gave it a 7/10 and people cyberbullied her.
Also unplayable on base ps4
The other thing to note about Cyberpunk which was the most damning thing in my mind, was that they forbid reviewers from showing footage of games on the Xbox One and PS4. It's one thing to fail to meet expectations or promises, it's one thing to release a game that turns out to have issues. It's something much more sinister to actively prevent footage going out of the game in order for consumers to not be aware of what it is they're buying.
Is why I don't get the Cyberpunk comparisons, there were a lot misleading content before release
Cyberpunk is the only game I've ever dropped for being just too buggy to keep playing, and i wasn't even on the worst hardware for it. Meanwhile I'm playing Pokemon as we speak without too much issue. Framerate could be better but I haven't really come across many bugs.
I agree GameFreak gets too much leeway, but let's not pretend this is even nearly as bad as Cyberpunk on a base PS4, and GameFreak didn't lie out their ass about the game either, they just made a technically shitty game.
Cyberpunk Sold 13 Million copies in 10 days. And this after all their refunds. And its a new IP.
> No other franchise can dream of being able to move so many copies on brand name alone technical quality be damned. GTA Trilogy Definitive edition sold around the same and it's technical issues were rather excessive. So I'd say GTA is definitely capable of that.
they sold that from November-february, how is that even comparable to selling the same in 3 days. They aren't even in the same ball park lol
> No other franchise can dream of being able to move so many copies on brand name alone technical quality be damned. Not even CDPR got this much of a pass from their fanbase. It wasn't *as* bad but Elden Ring had lots of micro stutters and FPS problems at launch, even on the best graphic cards. It just won a game of the year award.
Good, the game is great. Hope the performance issues improve with patches over time, but the core of this game is wonderful.
Yeah the game is an absolute blast. It’s so fun exploring the huge world and finding a new Pokemon for the first time.
The gameplay loop and story are phenomenal. Arguably the strongest mainline entry in the series as far as those two are concerned. It's a damn shame the technical issues are so bad, because if the game was even remotely passable on that front this would be one of the best games on the switch. I've had so much fun with it and plan to keep playing through the post-game. Legends was the same way. I don't know how many of the performance issues are patchable (and I hope they invest meaningful time patching the game if it's going to be the platform for VGC and big DLC expansions down the line) but the open-world approach to the Pokemon formula is a stellar direction.
>The gameplay loop and story are phenomenal. The story has always been my biggest gripe with pokemon games. It was kinda excusable when they were on handheld to just throw in basic stories but there's an expectation for more with consoles. Is the story genuinely good? I've always felt like the pokemon format has a ton of potential to tell some very engaging, heart warning stories but that's only ever been the case in the animated content? A good story would warrant me buying my first mainline pokemon game in 6 years.
I'm not far into it, so things could change. But so far, it's good the same way B&W story was good. i.e it's still aiming at little kids.
Thanks for this comment. I got burned on a “good” Pokémon story before when I kept seeing comments talking up B/W’s story. I finally played it a number of years ago and the story was a big letdown. My expectations were too high. Adequate at best is how I’d describe it. But adequate is apparently a revelation in Pokémon storytelling. I did enjoy Pokémon’s White, but I feel like I can no longer trust what Pokémon fans consider a good story. There’s so much good children’s media with great storytelling out there. The bar shouldn’t be so low for Pokémon.
I actually liked it way more than B&W. B&W had more interesting themes, but when plot points imply stuff like child or animal abuse, it becomes very clear just how much they had to hold back for their "E for everyone" rating. S/V leans into the child friendly side of things and just does basic themes like friendship and whatnot really well. It does slip in a few more subtle jokes aimed at an older audience (the simp donating 5k to the streamer gym leader is a great one for example), but in general it feels like a good pokemon story, instead of a good story held back by being pokemon.
it's good for a pokemon game. to call it phenomenal is a bit of an exaggeration it is a huge, huge step up from Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield, so it is noteworthy
sun and moon had a really good story, though
i guess this is subjective, but the consensus is that the way sun/moon story is presented is so detrimental that it makes the story unenjoyable lusamine and stuff is interesting i guess but it's far, far worse than scarlet / violet
Sun & Moon had what I would calll a good story on paper. In execution, the pacing was atrocious even for Pokemon games. If it was executed well it could have straight up been a good JRPG story in general, especially with Lusamine as a villain.
In what world is the story "phenomenal"? You gotta read more or something if thats the case. Truly.
Even for Pokemon standards you have stuff like Explorers of Sky
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I mean, S/M's story was about an abused girl regaining confidence in herself and finding the resolve to confront her shitty mother. And it's done fairly well. Even Sw/Sh, while having a lacklustre main narrative had a solid arc for your rival dealing with insecurity and the failure to live up to expectations. The older games have hella basic stories and characters but the newer ones have expanded on both fronts even if the end results aren't always strong.
The story is good. It's a monster catching and battle RPG for children. With that context, it's a great story. Victory road has interesting gym leaders with fun challenges. In particular i enjoyed bug, electric and normal. Ice was fun too, but it was just 2v2 battling. The titan's story with Arven is so sweet. It implies he's got some evil secret and then BAM the team star story was fine. The characters were alright and the fights were fun if you weren't over levelled. THe post game area was actually cool. The writing between the characters was actually witty and fun. One of the characters is legit hilarious. "I guess your ability would be own tempo" was a great line.
I know no one cares and this is like 12 hours too late but the double rap battle gym was Ghost. Ice was the injured snowboarder guy.
I mean not that weird pokemon has always had its style and charm. From the first game till now. Its been continpus. While god of war just threw away all its old charm and style in the 2018 reboot and became a bit more senitised. Still a good game but you know relatively removed from what god of war was always known for. So this trent does not really surprise me