AbsolutSurgen

For the record, I always heard them referred to as: "Nintendo" and "Super Nintendo" -- I didn't hear them called "NES" and "SNES" (however you want to pronounce them) until much later.

/Troll Comment/ I always thought it was called "trash graphics compared to my Amiga." How do you pronounce “NES”? Nintendo throws a wrench in the debate You can keep your long-running debate about how to pronounce GIF. For me, the argument over how to pronounce "NES"—the abbreviation for the Nintendo Entertainment System—is the more interesting and contentious debate. Whenever the argument over this inconsequential question comes up—in forum debates, Twitter threads, Slack chat rooms, or even in-person conversations—it never fails to draw strong feelings. People who grew up pronouncing each letter in "N-E-S" are met with those who have gone their whole lives calling it "ness" (or "nezz" in some cases). Both sides are usually equally stringent in their decision and wonder how the other side could possibly think they're right. For years, I thought that Nintendo had "officially" settled that debate (as far as it could be settled) in favor of pronouncing each letter of "N-E-S." But now, a throwaway line in the Japanese version of WarioWare Gold has thrown everything into question once again. N-E-S in the U-S-A I've been somewhat obsessed with the (again, admittedly unimportant) question of "NES" pronunciation since at least 2010, when I first polled my Twitter followers about it. The unscientific results were overwhelmingly in favor of "en-ee-es" back then, as they were when I re-ran the poll in 2016. All that proves, though, is that I have smart, largely homogenous Twitter followers. But for years, I could at least tell those followers that they had support from Nintendo itself in pronouncing the abbreviation as "N-E-S." While Nintendo hasn't responded to a request for comment from Ars, the "official" evidence is practically overwhelming. Classic advertisements for first-party games like Dr. Mario, Kirby's Adventure, and Yoshi all call the system "N-E-S" (others use the fuller "Nintendo Entertainment System"). At least two Super NES commercials from the era continued the tradition, referring to the "Super N-E-S" (not the "super ness"). Nintendo's late president, Satoru Iwata, referred to "N-E-S Remix 2" in a 2014 Nintendo Direct presentation. Nintendo's Bill Trinen similarly talks about the "N-E-S Remix" series in a late 2014 Nintendo Direct presentation. Two "Nintendo Minute" presenters talk about the "N-E-S Classic Edition" in a 2016 promotional video. You can also see this "official" stance in writings from Nintendo, where the company routinely writes "an NES" (which only makes grammatical sense as "an N-E-S") rather than "a NES" (which would be read as "a ness"). You can find "an NES" written on multiple Nintendo.com troubleshooting pages, in numerous official press releases, and as the header for at least one "Iwata Asks" interview segment. (Interestingly, Tecmo development head Yosuke Hayashi refers to "a NES game" multiple times in that Iwata Asks interview, which is the closest I could come to finding official Western acknowledgement of the "ness" pronunciation.) There's also a 2017 Financial Times interview where Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime is quoted talking about "an SNES Classic." That only works if you read it as "an S-N-E-S Classic." Sorry, fans of "sness" (or "snezz." Or "Super ness." Or... well, maybe he said "es-ness"?). A foreign schism? I'm willing to acknowledge that plenty of people grew up calling their system "ness" and that pronunciation of abbreviations and initialisms depends a lot on personal choice and regional dialect ("Ness" seems more popular in Great Britain than America, for instance). That said, the above evidence makes it pretty clear that Nintendo's position is that every letter in N-E-S should be read individually when spoken. So it was a bit surprising to see a tweet this morning showing a screen from the Japanese version of the newly released WarioWare Gold. There, the letters "NES" are accompanied by the katakana ネス, which can be romanized as "nesu" or "ness." As least one crowdsourced conversational English-to-Japanese reference site seems to show the same pronunciation split between Japan and America. In an entry for Nintendo Entertainment System (machine translation), the authors at "Eijiro" note that "the pronunciation by Nintendo of Japan is 'NESU,' and by Nintendo of America is 'EN II ESU.'" It seems Nintendo of Japan has a massive schism from Nintendo of America on this important (read: utterly unimportant) issue. But part of the difference might just be down to the vagaries of translation. Localization professional Andrew Vestal told Ars that while "ness" only requires two katakana, writing out "エン　イー　エス" is more of a hassle. And while "N-E-S" is only three syllables in English, the straight Japanese transliteration "en ii esu" needs six syllables and "requires a Japanese speaker to quickly string together multiple 'ee' and 'eh' vowel sounds without a break in a very unnatural way," as Vestal put it. This is a common issue in going from English to Japanese, where the two-syllable Xbox can become the six-syllable "ekkusu bokkusu" (and the eight kana "エックスボックス"). For the most part, this doesn't come up among Japanese speakers, who simply call the system "Famicom" unless referring specifically to foreign models. Still, I'll grudgingly admit that supporters of the "ness" pronunciation can now point to their own "official" support, straight from Nintendo of Japan. Now, on to more important matters: how do you pronounce the PS2 game Ico?

Not 2018.

I wish they would just make another Metal Slug game.

I'm with @Spork3245 on this one. Buying at the end of a generation is always a losing proposition. However, know exactly what card you want, and pull the trigger as soon as you see it. They will be in short supply for a few months.

HZD is a great game. The Killzone games were all AAA -- even if everything after 2 was disappointing...

If all you want to do is watch YouTube and surf the web, you don't need a good tablet. A cheap one (like a Fire) will do fine.

I won't let my 10-year old play online games. And no games where he shoots people (aliens/robots are OK). I don't pay for a tutor for video games, but I am paying for tutoring for school.... Call me old fashioned.

I am sure the bet is based on not believing the 20 million console delivery target. The holiday season will ultimately be telling.

"Then all of a sudden the Meta Argument switched to MS has no games. A person asks if there is a BIG difference between pspro and xb1 games and a couple of you guys (who are in the vast minority in this thread) are saying NOT really." So this is what you meant? Do you actually believe any of this? Or, are you just trolling? The jag core is one of the biggest problems in this gen, the other being the fact that they are still not using SSDs. However, putting in a faster CPU doesn't make your GPU any faster. A 970 can do a 4k frame buffer, but its going to run like shit -- even if it has an i9 giving it data. What pc is "already doing it that's not designed to take advante of aclosethat's not a close system is maxing out 4k60? A 980Ti can't do 4k60 with an i9 on most games on max settings (not even close) That is objectively wrong and is pure trolling. I never played Hellblade (nor DMC). I have always thought they made very good (but not great) games -- I thought that Enslaved and Heavenly Sword were good fun. "Full Financial Backing" is only one of the things that it takes to make great games. And if they started when they finished Hellblade, we won't see anything until AT LEAST 2021. Wow -- a "HUGE NEW STUDIO". Because we all now what a great record "huge new studios" have with making great games. Hell, the last 2 studios MS created made (the Coalition and 343 Industries) made Gears 4 and Halo 5 and they were …. Pretty good. New studios don't have a very good record of making great games their first time out -- even if they have buttloads of money.

1) You're Cherry picking: "yes plenty of games run natively at 4k on the XBX that only run at 2k on PSPro " "Yes. There are differences between PS4 Pro and XB1X games -- the biggest typically being resolution." "The Witcher 3 seems to be the biggest. You get a much closer to 60 fps experience in 1080p performance mode, or a much more stable locked 30 4ps in 4k." "The X1X's 30fps 4k mode is supposed to be slightly more stable than the PS4's checkerboarded 4k, which also has some LoD scalebacks." "If you only consider performance, resolution, image quality, texture quality and filtering, then yes, there are examples of the X making a notable " "Shadow of War. The 4GB extra RAM allowed the X to showcase better textures. The Pro version got a big rez bump but was stuck with base textures." "Seems like just about every game either looks or looks and performs better on the xbox one x, going by just about every digital foundry video I have seen." "As said earlier, mostly Shadow of War, where the extra RAM gives the X a clear takeaway the PS4 can't even handle in textures. " "Barring developer incompetence it should always be PC>XB1X>PS4P>PS4>XB1>Switch" 2) CPU cores aren't the biggest/only problem with hitting 60Hz at 4k. It's having a 6 GFLOP GPU. Faster CPUs don't magically make your GPU better. 3) Guerilla Games has been making some of the best "technically performing" games for years. They were able to get the game design up to a consistent level. Undead Studios and Compulsion Games are not currently AAA sized studios -- and have never even made a full priced game. Big difference.

Now they begin working on their Day 1 patch! (Does going gold mean anything anymore?)

1) People have universally said there is a difference in resolution, and a visible difference between the two platforms (what thread were you reading?) 2) There are declining benefits to increasing resolution. IMHO, improving the IQ and/or frame rate goes much further in most living room settings than improving resolution. Going from checkerboarded 4k to real 4k in most living room settings is hard to notice. 3) The output from MS studios is notably below Sony/Nintendo. Outside of Forza, they aren't releasing many top tier games. And I don't see the purchasing of Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory or Undead labs changing that. None of them have released a game that would compare to Zelda, Mario, Horizon, TLoU, God of War, etc.

EA has made some decent games over the year. Mass Effect: Andromeda was a worthy game to play Mirror's Edge Catalyst was worth a twirl

EA CEO: We’re Looking at Key Franchises to Deliver Cross-Platform Play Similarly to Fortnite "During the latest investors call after this quarter’s earnings report, EA CEO Andrew Wilson spoke (transcript via Seeking Alpha) about the company’s plans to investigate cross-platform play for key franchises in the near future, after Fortnite’s success paved the way for it. Wilson noted that this could be a particular fit for titles that have a “broad and diverse player base”. This could certainly be the case for sports titles, for example." I still believe that internet infrastructure and latency will be a huge barrier to widescale adoption of the game streaming strategy. Not everyone lives in San Francisco.

No. Nintendo has never launched a lower cost console with the vision it would play all the same games as the most expensive console. I don't believe it will be "more work" for the developer in the same way as it would be for developing for Wii (which made it essentially impossible for AAA) -- I believe very similar game software will be running in the cloud, and it will be streaming essentially the same game to your console. This is about (trying) to give you the same console experience, but moving the revenue out of the hardware, and into the monthly subscription fee.

You can't transfer your ownership. But you can "gift" a game you own by buying it again. I have my Xbox set up as my main account, and my kids play my games on their accounts.... I am sure you could do the same with their Xbox.

Given that I don't play Madden, FiFA or Battlefield. I'll just buy Anthem on Origin.

Yes. It gives you the option to "Buy as Gift".

Is $10 billion in annual revenue a big number for a console company?

SotTR available for 25% off  at GMG (Master Race Only) -- Today Only

Nintendo went after a low pricepoint on Wii, and arguably on their handhelds. That is not the case with Switch or Wii-U. Microsoft's strategy, IMHO, in the next generation will be to transition gamers into subscription revenue to a higher degree. And the objective of this rumoured box is to create a low price of entry, to drive subscriptions. I am not aware of Nintendo prioritizing subscription revenue in anything they've done.

I didn't get to race Hot Wheels Cars though...

FH3 is the best Forza