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The comparison was Sonic1 vs. SMW as that was the SNES pack-in title and what Sega chose to showcase in the famous TV ads in 1991. Sonic1 was a fine platformer and a great brand mascot, but even by the time Sonic2 arrived SMW was old news so no one was framing the Sega vs. Nintendo debate in those terms. The culture by 1992 was preoccupied with Street Fighter 2 on the SNES, while Sega was beginning to align their brand with sports franchises. The big story of 1993 was the MK1 ports.

The Sonic vs. Mario thing was, at best, a ~6 month microcosm of the "console wars" in the months following the SNES NA launch. The "hate" was, and is, overstated. Chalk it up to games media personalities giving exaggerated hot-takes for effect. Sonic wasn't and isn't relevant enough to feel that strongly about.

You can't talk about refreshes without talking about process nodes. Ask yourself what process node you think a PS5Pro would be, what advances you think that process node would afford you, and what sort of time table it dictates.

5/4nm? It might give you, what... (up to)25% more CPU? 50% more GPU maybe? Would studios even bother to add a SKU-specific profile for such a small spec increase, or would it just run games a bit more smoothly? Would consumers feel ripped off if all they got was a more stable vsynced 60fps?

3nm? When do you figure such a refresh would be reasonable? I don't think we'll be seeing AMD shift their product stack to TSMC 3nm for another couple years yet, in which case we might be talking late-2025 for a hypothetical PS5Pro. What would a 2025 PS5Pro mean for the PS6's schedule and launch? Perhaps by that point the industry will be unable to deliver new iterations that justify being called 'generations', and it's just a series of updates with continuous backward compatibility?

Of course all this depends on how desperate TSMC and AMD are to move product over the next few years. If TSMC has too much spare capacity that's going to waste and AMD is struggling to hit revenue targets, then maybe they give Sony and MS such a sweet deal that they can't pass it up. I don't think we would have had a PS4Pro/X1X if not for the fact that AMD was in terrible shape at the time.

That's my take as well. In a world where most big games are chasing to sand down all the corners in an attempt to appeal to the broadest multiplatform audience, it's nice to have examples like this where there's a target audience on a single platform and the developers are focused on it. If your game is a PC game and you can leverage more features of the PC in a legitimately useful way, then go for it. There's an entire genre dedicated to sports management simulation where the entire UI is spreadsheet-based, never mind external support for Excel.

@jejuneinstitute: Yeah. The first Garden Knight I think took me maybe 20 attempts to beat, and I was honestly considering quitting the game for good at one point (I'd sooner quit than cheat). After more exploring and leveling up is when I switched strategies and opted to blitz them (mostly relying on the hookshot to keep them close and for the animation disruption and stun) and every boss went down in 1-2 attempts. Even the cathedral boss rush sequence only took 2 attempts to complete and I didn't need to activate the potion spawn.

I suspect much of this can be attributed to the significant power inflation you get from stats and potions -- the dev(s) are stuck having to balance the damage and defenses of the bosses for pretty large range of player strengths. My earliest impression of the boss combat wasn't very positive, as I was expecting a more classic Zelda-style approach of strategic weapon selection, weak points, and patterns (as opposed to what it is, which is largely timing, reflexes, and execution). After having completed the game I feel this way even more so, but now for the reason that I think the added structure of limiting when, where, and how you can deal damage would reduce your ability to simply tank the occasional hits long enough to kill them.

Rather than be discouraged from swapping to the inventory screen (due to the lack of pausing), I wish they'd have encouraged you come up with creative combinations of weapons and items and made the bosses as much of a puzzle sequence rather than strictly a contest of dodge-rolling, stunning, and slashing. Granted this is coming from someone with very antiquated tastes as I haven't played any action or adventure console games since NES/SNES -- everything from analog stick movement to dodge-roll i-frames was new to me here.

The bosses at times felt like they belonged to a twin-stick shooter, as I really wanted the ability to move and aim/block in independent directions. A lot of the time I was using the lock-on system just to try and keep myself blocking in an approximate direction while moving in another, but that also meant whenever the thing I was locked to slipped out of range, I'd immediately point in some random direction and end up getting hit. This sucks in a game where a single hit can spiral into a death, and deaths cost money+time if you're relying on purchased consumables.

That lack of coordination eventually made me give up trying to play safe and tactical and just blitz them and try to maximize the amount of time they're stun-locked. The fact that this worked way better is probably the biggest failing of the game -- despite the bosses being very visually distinct and themed, the most effective strategy is too simple to feel rewarding.

I wasn't very happy with the complexity and fiddly execution of the golden path ending. For something that integral to the proper completion of the game you shouldn't be putting players in a position where they're not sure if their solution is wrong, if they're executing it wrong, or the game merely isn't registering it correctly. It was a huge bummer to have that be the culmination of my play, as up until then I had been playing unspoiled and was willing to keep going to 100% otherwise.

@turtlefish: "and then spent the next 8 years polishing, developing and listening to feedback."

I think the problem with that is there are core architectural limitations that prevent bolting on new features over time. Elite Dangerous can only end up being a series of different games stitched together because the tech can't integrate a first-person component, space travel component, and terrestrial flight and driving component without a lot of sleight of hand to hide the seams.

This is an example that I actually see as a 'win' for consumers -- we get to have it both ways. Elite Dangerous gives us the product of an ad hoc development model, with all the benefits and limitations that go along with that. Star Citizen gives the other. There are basic things that SC can do today that ED will never be able to do, and in contrast, ED's more conservative and compartmentalized modules allow them to fine tune features and hit their roadmap targets. Had SC taken Frontier's approach you'd have a game just like ED where you never really feel like you're playing in a contiguous game environment.

The future of Battlefield is going to depend on the quality of DICE as a studio and their Frostbite team. They lost a lot of senior engineers (including the Frostbite lead) to Embark Studios a few years back, and judging by the state of BF2042 they don't seem to have recovered from that yet. Maybe they'd be better off just moving to UE5 down the road rather than trying to build their own tool chain and engine in-house again.

3 is longer to play through, has more total levels, and is more difficult. I think SMW was the first game I remember thinking that a franchise had been dumbed down to make it more broadly appealing. I can't think of a game before SMW where running out of lives didn't matter, and that you could retrieve free 1ups or powerups whenever you like.

I'd say this is a pretty reasonable assumption to make given how large and long it's been in development. Neither Roberts nor anyone else involved in this project has ever had to manage something like this, especially without being constrained by cash or contract with a publisher. It's unprecedented. It's messy. It involves a lot of money. Certainly a lot of opportunity for nefarious dealings, money laundering, who knows what. It has everything going against it.

It's also the only big budget PC game I can think of since maybe... Crysis1 that felt like it's pushing the envelope and doing something that hasn't been done before. It's been at least that long since I felt compelled to build a new PC because of a must-have game, and with the way the industry is going, it's hard to imagine anything other than a Star Citizen (or other future crowdfunded mega budget monstrosity) filling that void.

I think the distinction of "released" doesn't have any meaning, at least not here. ED and SC do similar things, albeit ED costs more money because you have to buy expansions every so often. I really couldn't tell you off the top of my head what month or even year ED went from alpha to beta to "release", or what month or year the major feature updates came out. Likewise for SC. Maybe the biggest thing that separates the two is that Frontier has never advertised things that were super early in development, whereas SC/RSI has put that front and center. Games don't tend to publish their DLC revenue on their front page, but SC/RSI does/did.