Category: Games

Background and Points of Debate

The nickname “fart guideline” comes from the visual effect that guides players to their destination, which leaves a smoke-like trail in its wake. The actual point of criticism is that despite the game following a completely linear, single-path structure, it still spells out the location of every treasure chest one by one, and its QTEs are designed to succeed regardless of whether the player presses the button. In recent AAA titles, destination markers and QTE-skip options are typically included as accessibility features independent of difficulty settings, but the thread’s discussion assumes the out-of-the-box experience and never addresses whether such settings can be changed. The thread also cited Famitsu’s favorable review, which praised the game for feeling like a “playable movie,” and opinion was split over whether its linear, low-effort design should be seen as a strength or as a lack of substance as a game. This divide is also rooted in the precedent set by “turn your brain off” style action games like Uncharted, which have found a fair amount of support in the past.

Background and Key Points of This Discussion

Kojima Productions became independent from Konami in 2015 and has developed the Death Stranding series with funding and cooperation from Sony. “PHYSINT,” the title at the center of this discussion, was announced in February 2024 as a new Sony-backed project, but as of September 2025 it remains at the cast-announcement stage, suggesting it’s still in the early stages of development. Sony, meanwhile, has been tightening cost controls in recent years following the major failure of Concord, studio closures, and layoffs — a context that feeds into both the “development-cost burden” theory and the “planned withdrawal” theory. Opinions on the forum were split over whether the split was initiated by Kojima or decided by Sony, and how Sony’s contractual obligations to AMD regarding the PS6 might factor in — though all of this remains speculation in the absence of any official explanation. It’s worth noting that neither Sony nor Kojima Productions has officially stated a reason for the split, and the thread’s discussion doesn’t go beyond outside speculation.

Background and Key Points of the Discussion

Behind this lies a broader trend: Sony is said to be gradually scaling back physical distribution for PS5 and consolidating toward digital-only sales. Some posters in the thread claimed that ‘reprint production will end entirely in January 2028,’ but this should be treated as unverified chatter circulating on 5ch rather than an official announcement.

The discussion split into two main camps. One side treated the shrinking of physical media as the expected direction things are heading, saying this will simply become the norm going forward. The other side focused on the inconvenience of not being able to resell a digital-only game if it turns out to be a letdown, highlighting the difference in resale value that a physical copy offers.

Opinions also diverged over whether PS5’s digital sales ratio really is as high as 90%, with some posters citing actual sales figures for other titles to cast doubt on that number. That said, these figures were unofficial estimates raised within the thread, not official statistics, and should be read with that caveat in mind.

Background and points of contention

Kojima’s relationship with SIE began with the development of DEATH STRANDING after he left Konami in 2015, and the quoted interview dates from that honeymoon period. The topic resurfaced now because Kojima’s own account — that SIE abruptly notified him of a project’s cancellation — drew renewed attention years later, and posters treated it as ironic that he ended up having his contract cut by the very partner he’d praised for not “meddling.” In the thread, some cited the poor performance of SIE’s own in-house titles, like Marvel’s Wolverine, as evidence of the company’s cost pressures, while others questioned Kojima’s own development pace and sales track record — the two camps never reached a consensus on which was the primary cause. It’s also worth noting that the entire account of the cancellation notice comes from Kojima’s side, not from any official statement by SIE.

Background and Key Points of the Discussion

Charging a paid subscription for online play on consoles isn’t unique to Nintendo’s “Nintendo Switch Online” — Sony and Microsoft use the same general model, and this thread’s focus was on the specifics of how it applies here. The split in the thread came down to how convincing people found it that even a cross-play title running on another company’s online service and external servers still requires the platform holder’s own paid subscription on the console version. Posters pointed out that “Super Chameleon” runs on Epic’s online service, and many questioned why a subscription is still mandatory even though Nintendo isn’t the one footing the actual server costs. Others pushed back, arguing that if you’re using a server, you should pay for it — leaving opinions split on how to evaluate the console subscription model itself. Note that the claim about “NSO membership plummeting” is sourced from an article that’s two years old and doesn’t reflect the current situation, and the day-one sales figures mentioned in the thread are unverified, with no primary source given.

Background and Key Points of This Debate

The PS5 only gained VRR support via an update released years after launch, and due to the narrow range it covers, it’s sometimes called “fake VRR.” VRR is a mechanism for reducing stutter when frame rates fluctuate — it’s not a measure of power consumption or raw processing performance — so the thread’s reaction that “there’s no way a 20W handheld beats a 300W-class home console” conflates VRR’s technical meaning with processing power. There’s also technology like LFC (Low Framerate Compensation), which produces a pseudo-VRR effect even outside the normal VRR range, and differing opinions on where “true VRR” ends are part of what fueled the circular argument in the thread. It’s also worth noting that the underlying report is an analysis from overseas media, and the specific figures and refresh-rate ranges were not independently verified within the thread itself.

Background and Key Points of This Discussion

The optical discs used by the PS5 are capped at roughly 100GB per disc (single-sided, triple-layer), so fitting 300GB of data onto one or two discs is technically difficult. The “disc plus mandatory download” approach itself isn’t unusual for large-scale titles in recent years, and doesn’t necessarily mean corners were cut. Where the thread split was over how this size gap connects to past criticism of the Switch 2 version’s visual quality: some read it as meaning that if the PS5 version was built at 300GB “without compromise,” the smaller Switch 2 version must have been proportionally simplified, while others pointed out that judging visual quality or polish from file size alone is premature. The fact that even the disc version still requires a mandatory download is also raising questions about what the point of choosing physical media even is anymore.

Background and points of debate

The Switch 2 launched in 2025, with “Mario Kart World” as its launch-tier title, followed by “Donkey Kong Bananza,” “Kirby,” and “Metroid.” There’s been no announcement yet of successors to Nintendo’s flagship franchises — a mainline 3D Mario, a new Smash Bros., or a new Animal Crossing — with the next major title expected to be a new Pokémon game in 2027. In past hardware transitions, the standard playbook was to lead with a steady stream of first-party blockbusters, but the Switch 2’s strength lies in backward compatibility that lets players carry over their Switch software library as-is, meaning there’s structurally less pressure than before to rush out a “must-upgrade” flagship title. Where the thread split was over whether to view this apparent holding-back as a deliberate life-extension strategy, or simply the natural result of blockbuster titles taking years to develop. Opinions were also divided on whether the success of Bananza and Mario Kart counts as a commercial win, or whether they fall short as substitutes for a mainline Mario game.

Background and Key Points of This Discussion

*Marvel’s Wolverine* is an action game developed by Insomniac Games. A Metacritic score is an average of scores from multiple outlets, so the overall impression can shift a lot depending on the breakdown — and that’s exactly what happened here. Major outlets like IGN and VGC scored it around 60, while a high score from an obscure site appears to have pulled the average up, and that gap is what fueled speculation of ‘score manipulation.’ That said, no one in the thread actually presented evidence of manipulation — it remains pure speculation on 5ch’s part, so that should be kept in mind. The claim that the QTEs (quick time events) don’t respond to button input traces back to a social media post, and posters cited it as one more data point on the game’s overall polish. AAA titles are generally expected to land around 80 on Metacritic, so a score in the 60s counts as a relatively harsh verdict — which is likely what drove the reaction in the thread.

Background and Key Points of This Discussion

As mentioned in the thread itself, third parties are believed to have historically avoided Nintendo hardware due to the burden of steep licensing fees. This time, the early involvement of CD Projekt Red, FromSoftware, and Capcom appears to have changed the trend, with preferential treatment like the commemorative Pro Controller 2 for FromSoftware serving as evidence of that shift. Meanwhile, specific figures such as “Elden Ring sold 20.5 million copies on Steam versus just 30,000 on Switch 2” circulated in the thread, but it should be noted that these are individual posters’ claims, not officially tallied or announced sales figures. The discussion split into two main points of contention: first, whether the rise in third-party support should be seen as a sign of Nintendo hardware’s growing strength, or simply as an additional porting destination; second, the quality of ports (the so-called “downgraded versions”) and the merits of moving away from physical discs — a push led by other platforms — which brought the usual platform rivalries along with it.