This kind of thing didn’t used to bother me at all before it very much bothered me and now I’m somewhere in the middle. I think cartridges/discs for consoles should not require an Internet connection to play them. That said, this isn’t the PS2 era anymore. Many games release with patches day 1 and most will have at least some updates post launch. A lot of games kept offline end up missing out on a ton. Keeping a physical copy of a game is only preserving a portion of the game for a future without the servers to supply the final version, which is my main concern when it comes to physical vs digital media. We still have to rely on hacked consoles running custom firmware or emulation to properly preserve games.

The rare xkcd I find charming and relatable rather than charming and arcane.

Is there a Voyager 1, uh…emulator or something? Like something NASA would use to test the new programming on before hitting send?

This is one of those ideas I’d love to agree with, but I know the reality of the situation would mean negative consequences for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, just like how current ID systems are now.

True, if they went to court and lost, every emulator project would likely be sued. But settling out of court also sets a precedent, or rather perpetuates the current status quo of crushing any vaguely gray area fan project with the threat of legal action. The shutdown of Yuzu will embolden Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony to be more aggressive about killing off these projects. Until someone does take one of these three to trial and wins, things are going to continue getting worse for game preservation.

Yes, absolutely. I’m sure experienced, qualified developers are clamoring to invest thousands of hours of work into a fork of a project hosted exclusively in a space only a fraction of a percent of the online world will ever access. I love the “fuck corpos” attitude from this community, I really do. But Yuzu development is dead. Super dead. Nintendo killed it and all the other emulator teams and game publishers are looking at it thinking about what’s next.

Not for you since you’ve exited the Switch, but for anyone else with stick drift: Gulikit makes replacement hall effect joycon sticks that do not drift. Easy to replace and inexpensive.

Can the paywalled version be found hosted anywhere? I’m expecting Yuzu to get scrubbed from most of the Internet very soon, so I want to grab the latest stable release.

I’ve wondered about those. Don’t they get outdated as the emulators become more developed? I’m assuming it’s packed with whichever version was the latest stable release at the time.

Playing Persona 5 Strikers now and I’ve just gotten into the habit of opening the Steam overlay and hitting Exit Game. Yes, Atlus, very cute and stylish menu animations, but please let me quit your games within 15 seconds.

Vending machines used to get vandalized at my school. How much tech are they putting in these things now?

Gulikit makes solid hall effect sensor analogue stick replacements for joycons. Had mine for months with no issues and, if it’s to be believed, should last for the long term.

I would absolutely love a foldable handheld like that with some actual buttons. Sadly, I think those times are behind us, even with new folding screen technology. Maybe one day if haptic tech gets good enough to mimic physical buttons.

The “new” 3DS especially is an improvement on the original when it comes to emulation. And yeah, just last week someone ported Moonlight for it, which works surprisingly well for a device that only has a 2.4GHz WiFi card.

You have plenty of answers already, but one thing I want to point out that might not have been mentioned yet: The DS line of handhelds are unique hardware; the Switch is not.

By that I mean there is a vast library of games developed over ~15 years that were designed for the dual screen layout. Don’t listen to what anyone tells you about emulation; those games are much, much better when played on actual Nintendo hardware, not because they run poorly on emulators, but because your phone, monitors, Steam Deck, and TV are one horizontal screen. Every alternative layout I’ve seen for emulating DS games is an awkward compromise to fit two screens on one. It sucks, it doesn’t look good, and you’ll have to change the layout on a per game basis because one size absolutely does not fit all.

Now look at the Switch. It’s a standard 16:9 720p touch screen. Everything that can and will ever be built powerful enough to emulate a Switch will display those games in the way they were intended to be presented. When Switch emulation is perfect (and it’s most of the way there) there is no compromise. You can already play Switch games on other handheld devices at higher resolutions and frame rates than the Switch itself can handle and it’s an objectively better experience.

I only offer this perspective because you’re talking about a very long term view of device ownership. We are now well past the period of game development on two screens as it existed on the DS line of handhelds. I highly doubt that phase of game design is ever coming back. And like it or not, many of those games are best experienced on the original hardware they were designed for and that will probably still be the case 20 years from now. On the other hand, we already have a plethora of alternative hardware options for games made for the Nintendo Switch and those numbers will grow considerably between now and 2044.

Aw, that’s fuckin adorable. Thank you.

Broken. 🤷

Yep. If you judge how Netflix is doing by Lemmy/Reddit comments alone, you’d think they’d be hemorrhaging subscriptions. But nah. They’re pulling records of money with these policy changes and price hikes. Turns out people just pay up.

I want what that journalist and sexy term have. Good for them.

Trained almost exclusively on pictures of young women? Pretty astounding results, though.