This is dystopian, if true. This type of data should be kept private, on the console itself, for the use of the user only.
If you have your profile set to Public your hours have always been there.
Steam is part social network, so it’s expected. The play time is clearly counted, and you can choose to hide it. Steam does not count your offline hours.
From the 15 minutes I’ve played Switch, it did not obviously: record playtime, phone home, or give any option to be online/offline.
Click on your user icon in the top left of the home menu to find your profile. It’s pretty much the same as Steam in this regard.
I read somewhere else some games would be $90, no thanks. I was weighing Switch 2 or Deck, ended up with deck. No regrets.
With deck at least you don’t pay to use your own internet, and if a game is too expensive at launch you know it will be down to 50% at a sale in a year or so.
I consider myself a patient gamer now. I just wait till most my purchases are on sale.
Same. Benefits of preordering:
- your stupid ass inner monkey is silent for a second.
Benefits of waiting for a sale:
- you know if the game is good or not
- you spend less money
- you have had time to think wether you actually want it
- all the huge bugs and issues are fixed
- guides are available
- any documentation for any issues you might have exists now.
- all the dlcs are out and included in the price
Who cares for the hype train?
This is more like a hype wagon, really.
Actually maybe not the worst idea ever?
Any system used to spy on users’ daily activities and preferentially rewards people that are predetermined to have the greatest chance to make the most profit of off, seems like a fucking awful and disturbingly distopian idea.
“Spying” implies the user doesn’t know about it.
Virtually every platform collects this information, partly as a service to the user, so I don’t think it’s completely ridiculous.
One thing I do appreciate about Nintendo is that it works completely offline so if you don’t want them to have any info about you, you can keep it.
This stops most scalping though so using voluntary metrics to prioritise some seems like a reasonable trade-off. This suggests scarcity but it’d be weird since they launch mid-year. I guess they’re trying to FOMO their fans.
“Reasonable trade-off” is all too often just a baby step to something so much worse.
Perhaps this really is just Nintendo solving the scalping problem, but it sets the foundation for policies, technology, and cultural apathy that can be even farther weaponized against people and used to manipulate how people spend money. Stuff like this is dangerous as fuck, now more than ever.
Often in lower league football (soccer?), if there’s huge game (cup match against bigger opponent, playoff etc), tickets are prioritised for those who have been to more regular games. Makes sense, the more committed fans get priority and avoids scalping.
This just seems like the same thing to me
