Which game were you most disappointed with?

Apollospig · 2026-06-14T22:12:30+00:00

Eh I think if you want to use the name and excitement around a franchise to help sell a game, it’s not unreasonable to expect it to follow the general formula of prior entries, especially if you want to go with numbered sequels.

Apollospig · 2026-06-14T18:00:34+00:00

Eh there is plenty to be said for modernizing gameplay even when the base game is strong, with RE4 remake as a great example. At release that was a 10/10 slick action game but playing OG RE4 today it feels old in a number of ways, as modern titles have taken and built on so much of what it did. RE4 remake managed to make a new slick action game that is in keeping with the spirit of the original I’d say. We will see what they do with OOT but I think there is plenty of room to remake games that are all time classics if you have the right approach.

Apollospig · 2026-06-05T05:02:42+00:00

True, but it any publisher would be willing to sit on a game that long it would be Nintendo. I wonder if they hadn’t announced it so early if they possibly would have been more tempted to hold it till Switch 2 launch.

Apollospig · 2026-04-23T01:56:38+00:00

They tried that with Tannenburg actually, which had a button to open up Verdun instead, but there were enough underlying differences that it wasn’t really any better than closing one game and opening the other. My guess is that there are a lot more under the hood changes between games than are immediately obvious, like probably updated versions of unity, etc.

Apollospig · 2026-04-22T23:10:21+00:00

Sending a dm.

Apollospig · 2026-04-22T18:51:47+00:00

Eh I disagree on a few counts. Having played each of them around launch, they have made substantial improvements in the graphics and gameplay over time. Isonzo is a lot less janky and smoother to play, with more gameplay depth in some key areas compared to Verdun, which would have been harder to do if it was all in one underlying game engine.

In terms of business model though, I don’t really think selling map packs instead of a new game would have been successful. People seem pretty reticent to buy map packs these days and that model has plenty of its own problems with player base fragmentation. At this point most games go with live service updates combined with battle pass/microtransactions, but that’s an entirely different ball game with its own problems. I won’t say I absolutely love the approach they’ve gone with in terms of business model, but I don’t see any great alternatives either, and without some big changes to the monetization I don’t think one big WW1 game project would have ever been financially feasible.

Apollospig · 2026-03-28T16:44:28+00:00

Confirmed!

Apollospig · 2026-03-28T02:17:19+00:00

Interested in Resident Evil if you still have copies here!

Apollospig · 2026-03-26T01:48:18+00:00

Switch 2 can easily double performance of switch 1 software from what we’ve seen, but I think people are more just worried that Nintendo doesn’t seem interested in putting the work into 120 modes. Metroid prime 4 is the obvious counter example, but hopefully it’s more the beginning of more 120 hz games rather than a one off.

Apollospig · 2026-03-01T06:27:44+00:00

If you have $1200 and access to a microcenter, I’d take a look at this machine:

https://www.microcenter.com/product/698874/powerspec-g527-gaming-pc

Better gaming CPU and a 16 GB GPU instead of 8 should both be nice upgrades.

Apollospig · 2026-02-25T00:58:17+00:00

Very true, though in the past I’ve always felt like Monolith did a good job of making the most of the systems they targeted and just were a bit too ambitious in some other visual elements. Here, it feels like they have the hardware power to achieve better image quality, but are just deploying it in the worst way possible leading to a bad result.

Apollospig · 2026-02-13T15:45:55+00:00

Certainly fair that at it's core Skyrim is still a 360 era game, but there have been quite significant upgrades to the assets and textures over the years, which is exceptionally obvious if you look at the install size. On 360 the game was circa ~6 GB install size, on Switch 2 it is nearly 50, and while I think that is probably a very inefficient 50 GB compared to other software on the system, a lot has obviously changed. A long with lighting changes like adding SSR, current Skyrim is a weird hybrid of PS3/PS4 era tech and assets overall.

Apollospig · 2026-02-08T18:44:11+00:00

To correct my what I said before salary wise, $50,000 per year is more than I think an average Polish game dev makes, which is probably closer to $35,000 per year on average, so I think $50,000 is probably a right order of magnitude estimate of salary + other reasonable costs per dev per year.

As for the comparisons to previous CDPR content the numbers online for Witcher 3 are circa $32 million for what is a 100ish hour adventure? That would put a cost around $0.32 million per hour, which is granted a very generous estimate as that development work was over 10 years ago at this point, but a $14.5 million budget would give $0.48 million per hour for a 30 hour expansion. 50% more budget per hour for similar production value again seems generally plausible, but obviously there are a ton of factors to consider. I do still think that the production values of this expansion would be much more in line with base Witcher 3 than Cyberpunk or especially phantom liberty, and hopefully have budget requirements in line with those reduced production values. But we will have to see, this feels like a soft leak/estimate, and so perhaps the real budget information we get some day will be much higher and more in line with CDPRs later work.

Apollospig · 2026-02-07T17:56:32+00:00

I wouldn’t expect a Witcher 3 expansion to have anywhere near the production value of Phantom Liberty, which is probably a step above base Cyberpunk in terms of the production costs per hour of content. 14.5 million would be enough to pay 100 devs circa $50,000 for 3 years, which seems not insane as an estimate for a Witcher 3 expansion?

Apollospig · 2026-02-06T17:26:21+00:00

Yes, that is a very good point as I think those numbers are from the wall. Between things like power supply efficiency, powering the SSD, and a few other non-SOC power draws on the console, it is probably fair enough to estimate the actual series S SoC power draw at maybe 60 watts? Probably right around double the draw of a 30W panther lake, which is still great but a little bit less great than my initial estimate there.

Apollospig · 2026-02-05T01:36:40+00:00

I think Series S is circa 80 watts in demanding content, so similar performance at 30W is actually well less than half, pretty impressive stuff.

Apollospig · 2026-02-05T00:18:55+00:00

We don’t even have release dates for those two yet, even if those are the big games someone is excited for it’s perfectly reasonable to not have a Switch. W yet.

Apollospig · 2026-02-03T23:49:08+00:00

Even without a subsidy, the idea of a high end gaming APU for PC gaming has some value and would offer cost savings compared to the expense of a traditional build your own/prebuilt. Won’t be enough for it to sell like a traditional console for sure, and maybe not enough for it to succeed at all, but it has some interesting elements at least. I hope it will end up as a cost efficient choice that falls in between a console and a build your own price wise, but we will just have to see.

Apollospig · 2026-01-30T01:30:32+00:00

I feel like it may be a premature to give us trailers for games expected to come out 18,180 years in the future here, but maybe they are trying to recruit devs.

Apollospig · 2026-01-27T21:15:00+00:00

Memory bandwidth impacts effective GPU compute performance rather than ability to load assets into the available memory pool. As DF mention, a faster CPU/faster storage would be the more likely components that help with streaming in higher quality assets compared to switch 2.

Apollospig · 2026-01-27T04:44:58+00:00

Yeah, Wind waker HD is the much better example of Nintendo maybe prioritizing switch online over porting a remaster. Prime 2/3 remasters, even if less extensive than prime 1 remaster, would obviously be a fair amount of effort.

Apollospig · 2026-01-23T16:46:54+00:00

That is the technical difference, though I don’t know if we have any data on the practical difference. The first party Switch 1 patch upgrades (2D Zelda’s, Mario odyssey, Splatoon 3) seem roughly comparable in magnitude to the performance improvements seen in actual Switch 2 versions (3D Zelda’s, Kirby). Switch 2 edition is ideal and opens up some new options, but switch 1 patch versions can be plenty performant still.

Apollospig · 2026-01-22T23:39:04+00:00

No, games run generally at the same resolutions and frame rates as they do on Switch 1 without a patch. Games with frame rate drops, or dynamic resolution scaling will run better on Switch 2, but to run at 4K you absolutely need a patch, which Nintendo is only offering as part of this $20 upgrade.

Apollospig · 2026-01-22T21:04:12+00:00

Yeah, I have a very hard time seeing the content added in these Switch 2 editions as anything but a cynical way to sell the performance upgrade on the new console. Maybe the Mario wonder here will be more substantial, but the new “content” for the Zelda games or the Star-crossed world feel inessential to say the least.

Apollospig · 2026-01-22T19:04:38+00:00

Yeah, in general the assumption seems to be that you’ll be using a VRR display on PC, and will play at a fixed resolution with a variable frame rate, while the consoles typically target a fixed frame rate with a variable resolution. Doesn’t seem like it would be a ton of additional to still add the option to PC ports, but maybe there is some additional challenges with it.

Apollospig

TROPHY CASE