Review: Mainlining – A Rare Example Of A Game That Doesn’t Belong On Switch
Mainlining places players in a world where the Government has introduced the BLU Pill Act and reactivated the secret service network known as MI7, giving them full and unadulterated access to the personal online information and lives of the population within their jurisdiction on the internet. You play as a member of MI7 charged with hunting down the members of a criminal gang using your investigatory prowess to sift through information, grab documents, hack IP addresses and track suspects until you have enough evidence to ensure you can take them down permanently.
Developer Rebelephant describes its game as being a mirror held up to real-world scenarios, specifically the attempted introduction of the Snooper’s Charter in 2016 by (then) Home Secretary Theresa May, which would have seen secret services enjoy the sort of total power deployed to MI7 here in Mainlining. The game, according to its devs, sets out with the ambition of questioning techno-ethics and whether it is acceptable for an organisation to wield this sort of power over personal information.
It’s an interesting, if not entirely original premise, and it takes place within a well-realised little pixel homage to the internet landscape of yesteryear. Indeed, its parody websites and pixel recreations of old PC user interfaces are by far the biggest draw here as, in actual practice, the game fails to live up to its promise, relying on pretty bog-standard caricatures of the types of people you’d expect to meet frequenting the blogs and chatrooms of the early web. It never actually says anything big or clever about real-world events and is further negatively impacted by the fact its hacking gameplay is shallow, repetitive and – on Switch, at least – completely hamstrung by a pretty terrible control interface.
Investigations in Mainlining tend to consist for the most part of you logging to your MI7 portal, searching a website which you’ll have been given information about then pinging it to grab its IP address; you’ll then hack the IP address (in no way as exciting or cool as it sounds) and make your way to the owner’s personal information dumps. From here you proceed to download as many files as you fancy and sift through them for information until you have what you need to make an arrest.
It’s a simplistic, repetitive cycle, which could be forgiven if it wasn’t for the fact it often descends into trial and error over what constitutes a vital piece of evidence. There’s also absolutely no form of penalty if you try to make an arrest and give the wrong information. In making an arrest you must fulfil a handful of specific parameters: find the suspect’s real name, where they reside and provision of one piece of evidence to support the case being made. Only one piece of evidence is allowed, and choosing the right piece to attach is oftentimes an exercise in blindly trying until you get it right, as there’s no discernible reason why one is of any more use than another; it doesn’t make any logical sense. On top of this, as we’ve said, you won’t suffer any punishment (beyond a newspaper excerpt flashing up onscreen to laugh at the bumbling MI7 agent), which further reinforces trying every piece of evidence you’ve got as a legitimate tactic – hardly something a professional online investigator would do or the kind of thing that helps a video game create a feeling of engagement or empowerment in its player.
There are occasional divergences from this samey setup; we enjoyed watching suspects get tailed around a city on a little pixel version of Google Maps for example, but for the most part, it’s all quite tedious stuff and it’s exacerbated to no end by the terrible controls on Switch. The most important tool at your disposal in Mainlining is your keyboard and it’s represented here by a virtual version on your Switch’s screen which can be interacted with via extremely fiddly pushes of shoulder buttons and thumbsticks, or using the touch screen (the latter being our preferred, but still very clunky, method of input).
The problem with this setup for Switch users is that having an onscreen keyboard means almost everything else is constantly being obscured, including any typos that you make, and you’ll make plenty due to your big human fingers banging on tiny onscreen keys. You’ll soon find yourself loathing the idea of having to key in information, which is a pretty big problem in a game all about keying in information. It also takes away entirely from the central novelty of the game, feeling like you’re tinkering around on a little pixel recreation of a PC interface. It’s something that suits being played on a PC, where Mainlining was originally released some two years ago, and not forced onto the Switch where the novelty is lost behind frustrating controls; in the end, it’s a rare example of a game that doesn’t really feel as though it should have been transported to Nintendo’s system.
There are other problems with Mainlining; little typos and errors in information here and there that’ll have you scratching your head thinking you’ve missed something until you realise it’s a mistake on the developer’s part, as well as things like a notepad that deletes all your precious detective work when you close it down and open it again – not ideal. All of this adds up to a game that, even if it were being played on a PC, just doesn’t really manage to achieve anything it sets out to.
Conclusion
Mainlining fails to really provide any interesting commentary on its chosen subject matter, revelling instead in caricatures we’ve all experienced a hundred times before; stuff you’ll have seen done better in any Grand Theft Auto game that has parody websites involved. Its gameplay too often degenerates into trial-and-error and lacks any sort of consequences for the player getting things wrong, which renders the whole investigative process pretty much pointless. On Switch these problems are married to a control system which is, in short, terrible, and will likely see you reaching for the off switch long before you’ve reached the end of your investigations.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 07-01-2019, 05:29 PM - Forum: Windows
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Harnessing the power of AI to transform healthcare
One of the many remarkable things about artificial intelligence is that while we tend to think of it as something that will have a big effect in the not-too-distant future, it is already transforming people’s lives in profound and powerful ways today. In factories and warehouses, AI is improving workplace safety by scanning thousands of videos to detect potential risks. In the U.S., researchers are exploring how AI can help public health organizations around the world prevent the spread of deadly diseases like Ebola, Chikungunya, and Zika by detecting the presence of pathogens in the environment and stopping transmission to humans before outbreaks can begin.
I believe this is the true promise and challenge of AI – using these new technologies to create a healthier and safer world for everyone. Now that AI has given computers the ability to recognize words and images, discover patterns in complex systems and reason and learn much like people do, it is enabling our devices to behave more naturally and more responsively. This is transforming how we understand the world and augmenting our uniquely human talents and abilities in ways that will enable us to begin to find answers to some of humanity’s most pressing challenges.
This is particularly true when it comes to human health. Today, it is possible to imagine a world where we have discovered new approaches that enable us to address some of our most pressing challenges in healthcare, including heart disease, chronic illnesses, and cancer. The good news is that innovators around the globe are already working on these issues. From detection to preventive care and personalized medicine, the opportunities to us AI to improve outcomes and reduce costs appear to be nearly limitless.
Ethan Jackson, a Microsoft researcher who is leading Project Premonition. (Photo credit: Brian Smale)
In India, for example, Microsoft is proud to work with Apollo Hospitals, one of nation’s largest private healthcare companies, to use AI to improve detection of cardiac illnesses that cause more than 3 million heart attacks in that country every year. Until now, it’s been difficult for doctors to identify patients who are at risk for coronary disease because most prediction models are based on studies conducted in Europe and North America and don’t apply well to Indian populations. For example, high LDL cholesterol, which is a significant cause of heart attacks in western countries, is less common in India.
Our approach is to combine the rich data and deep expertise that Apollo offers with Microsoft’s powerful cloud and AI capabilities to develop a scoring system to identify patients in India who are at high risk for suffering a heart attack.
To do this, a team of Apollo clinicians and data scientist started by reviewing more than 400,000 patient records from its hospitals around the country and found that nearly 60,000 patients had suffered a cardiac event after a health checkup. The challenge was to uncover the risk factors in the data that existing models had overlooked. To do this, they uploaded all the data they had collected to the cloud using Microsoft Azure and then worked with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning services to search for hidden correlations.
The team started with 100 potential risk factors and 200 lab data points. Using the massive computing power of the cloud, they trained machine learning algorithms to find the statistical significance of each factor in the occurrence of future heart attacks. This enabled them to create a model that identified 21 risk factors in Indian populations. Dr. K. Shiv Kumar, Apollo Hospitals’ chief of Chief of Cardiology, said the resulting model is twice as accurate at predicting the probability of future coronary disease as previous models. Not only is this transforming how physician’s conduct preventive health checkups, but they are now developing an AI-powered app that would allow anyone to find their heart risk score without visiting a doctor for a detailed health checkup.
In China, Ray Zhang, CEO of a startup company called Airdoc, recruited a team of engineers to develop an AI-based diagnostic tool that can instantly detect signs of chronic illnesses including diabetes, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, age-related macular degeneration, and more – simply by taking a high-resolution image of the back of the eye.
The device takes advantage of the fact that examining the human retina is an effective way to assess the health not just of the eye, but to look for evidence of other diseases. To create it, the Airdoc team used thousands of retinal scans to create an algorithm using Microsoft Azure’s machine learning capabilities that is trained to look for tiny abnormalities such as specks, spots, and deformed blood vessels that can be warning signs for a wide range of health issues.
The Airdoc device is similar to the scanner optometrists use for routine eye exams. To use it, a patient sit on a stool, place their chin on a padded brace, and look into an eyepiece. The algorithm then automatically adjusts the angle until a green cross comes into focus and captures a high-resolution, medical-grade image that is instantly uploaded to the cloud, where it takes less than a second to conduct a detailed analysis that rates susceptibility to a long list diseases as either low, medium, or high. The results are then sent to the patient’s smartphone, with a recommendation to seek professional medical help if there are signs of potential problems.
Currently, the Airdoc device can recognize signs of more than 30 diseases. Eventually, it will be able to detect 200. The plan is to make it available in more than 1,000 hundreds optical retail stores across China over the next few years. The Airdoc device significantly reduces the amount of time physicians will need to spend reviewing and assessing scans, so they can focus more on identifying and treating patients with serious health issues. The potential to provide a simple and inexpensive way to detect not just eye problems but a wide range of diseases has the potential to transform when and how people begin treatment for chronic illnesses in China and around the world.
We’re also working with the Princess Margaret Cancer Center at University Health Centre in Toronto to redefine cancer treatment through a remarkable new approach called “single cell sequencing” that enables doctors to analyze the genetic makeup of every single cell in a cancerous tumor and then select a combination of drugs that is optimized to kill the greatest number of cancer cells. Typically today, doctors try one drug at a time to find the most effective combination for each individual patient. By utilizing the power of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and the cloud, single cell sequencing is enabling doctors to predict how every cell will respond to each of the thousands of compounds that are available for cancer treatment and then create a truly personalized therapy based on the specific genetic characteristics of each cancerous tumor.
Azure also provides a common platform for sharing medical data and analytic tools with researchers and physicians across the country. Scientists at Princess Margaret Cancer Center now envision a time in the not-to-distant future when this kind of detailed genomic analysis will be available for every patient in Canada.
These examples are just the beginning when it comes to the outpouring of AI research and innovation Microsoft and its partners are involved in right now – and not just in healthcare. In future posts, I look forward to sharing how Microsoft is also helping innovators and entrepreneurs use the power of AI to transform the industries of agriculture and education.
iPhone and iPad designer Jony Ive is leaving Apple after 27 years
Veteran industrial designer Jony Ive is leaving Apple after close to three decades at the tech giant, and chose to break the news in an interview with the Financial Times.
Ive joined Apple as a full-time employee in September 1992, and despite becoming disillusioned with the company during his first years there, was eventually convinced by a returning Steve Jobs to stay on and help shape its future.
It proved to be an astute move for both Jobs and Ive, with the latter going on to design some of Apple’s most influential and successful products, including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
The iPhone and iPad have a special place in our hearts (and history as a whole) for obvious reasons, with both having evolved over the years to become, among other things, bona fide video game platforms.
Spurred on by the help of the App Store, the iPhone and iPad helped popularize mobile gaming, and became the home of choice for a number of influential titles including Monument Valley, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and Infinity Blade — all of which made their debut on iOS devices.
Ive is departing to establish his own design company called LoveFrom, and revealed his first client will be, you guessed it, Apple. Although he’ll now be working with Apple as an outsider, the fabled product designer reassured fans he’ll still be “very involved” with the company for many years to come.
My Friend Pedro has sold 250,000 copies in one week
Newsbrief: DeadToast Entertainment’s absolutely bananas shooter My Friend Pedro has sold 250,000 units during its first week on shelves.
The bonkers game was released on Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch on June 20, after being in development “on and off” for around four years.
To celebrate the milestone, publisher Devolver Digital has released a behind-the-scenes video that delves into the development of My Friend Pedro. You can check it out here.
We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!
Creating a Sanctuary in Jurassic World Evolution After the amazing reaction to the first Jurassic World Evolution story expansion – Secrets of Dr Wu – we knew we wanted to do more and give players new ways to experience the game. We knew we wanted to tell more stories, and we knew we wanted to try something new… Read more
Pack Your Bags and Get Ready for the ID@Xbox Explore and Discover Sale Now that school is coming to an end and the dust has settled from E3 it’s the perfect time to go on an adventure! The ID@Xbox team are here to help scratch that exploration itch. We went on a quest through our content to find some of the best adventure games… Read more
Coming Soon to Xbox Game Pass: Resident Evil Revelations, Goat Simulator, and More Hey, Xbox Game Pass friends! E3 has come to a close and we’re still buzzing here like a kid with a king-sized candy bar. We’ve launched Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta), brought over 100 new games to the Xbox Game Pass library across console and PC, and got called breathtaking… Read more
Citizens of Space Brings the Future of RPG Gameplay to Xbox One The Earth is missing and it’s up to you, the Ambassador of Earth, to recruit Citizens from around the galaxy to aid you in your fight to get it back! For the development of Citizens of Space, we wanted to capture the same tone and humor of the previous game in the series… Read more
Neverwinter: Undermountain Brings Iconic Dungeons & Dragons Campaign to Life As we were designing an expansion for Neverwinter, we needed a huge space for players to progress to level 80 with a new cap increase. Where better to do so than in the biggest dungeon in the Forgotten Realms? With that idea in mind, Wizards of the Coast’s “Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage”… Read more
A Look at Ghost Face, Dead by Daylight’s Latest Addition is Available Now on Xbox One Lurking in the shroud of night, Dead by Daylight’s Ghost Face is a natural stalker who likes to study his victims before striking. For this new killer, we decided to have a bit of fun. This time, it’s you that will be playing hide and seek with the survivors. The power of Ghost Face is… Read more
E3 2019: Lie, Sneak, and Blast Your Way to Success in The Outer Worlds Thanks to a development history that includes titles like Pillars of Eternity and Neverwinter Nights 2, a new game from Obsidian Entertainment is automatically an event. Specifically, when it looks like it might be a continuation of the designs seen in Obsidian’s Fallout New Vegas… Read more
Vigor Update 0.9: Aid is Coming in July to Xbox One Waiting… waiting never changes. After a burst of new information about the upcoming Summer Release, there’s been next to no news from our side. Indeed, we prepared a handful of minor updates – including the addition of Random Duos – yet there was nothing major on the horizon… Read more
Journey Through Generations of Sonic the Hedgehog Games with the Anniversary Sale June 23, 2019 marks Sonic the Hedgehog’s 28th birthday and now’s the best time to journey through one of the most iconic gaming franchises from the start with the original Sonic the Hedgehog and end with Team Sonic Racing, the latest Sonic game. To celebrate, we’re launching… Read more
A New Master for Minion Masters with an Inside Look at Morellia It was a wild couple of months of preparations to release Minion Masters and bring it to Xbox One. That means we can sit back and relax, right? Nope, that’s not the BetaDwarf way. We have too much stuff we want to show you. We wanted to add something very special… Read more
Next Week on Xbox: New Games for June 25 to 28 Welcome to Next Week on Xbox, where we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox One! Every week the team at Xbox aims to deliver quality gaming content for you to enjoy on your favorite gaming console. To find out what’s coming soon to Xbox One, read on below and click on each of the game profiles for pre-order details (dates are subject to… Read more
E3 2019: Scavengers is a Tornado of Compelling Competitive Survival Scavengers is a 4-player team-based survival shooter that is billed by developer Midwinter Entertainment as “co-opetition.” That’s a made-up term that actually captures the spirit of the game, even if it doesn’t begin to hint at what makes it unique. Scavengers imagines an Earth that has been plunged into frigid cold thanks to the destruction of the Moon… Read more
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 07-01-2019, 11:23 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Sony Makes PS4 Exclusive Game Free, This Weekend Only
Sony has announced it's setting one of PlayStation 4's big PSVR exclusive games free this weekend. Firewall Zero Hour will be free for PS Plus members from June 28 through July 1 on PS4. In addition, all players will receive double XP for the duration of the free-play weekend, and your progress will carry over should you decide to purchase the game.
The PS4 game launched in August 2018 to a positive reception. The tactical shooter is multiplayer-based, pitting squads of four against each other. It ordinarily costs US $40 / £25 / AU $40--though it is currently discounted to £16 / AU $25 if you want to own it permanently (in the US, it remains $40). If you're looking to download it, it's a separate entry on PSN from the standard version of the game--you can find it here on the PlayStation Store.
Firewall has also received a number of updates in the past few months, from new missions and rewards to a completely revamped user interface. Two new maps have also been released for free just recently. We said the game "showed that tactical multiplayer FPS games can work on PSVR" in our 2018 VR gaming review.
Nintendo Has No Plans To Censor Video Games Like Sony
Although Sony is clamping down on saucy content in PlayStation games, Nintendo appears to be quite happy to leave any censorship decisions to rating systems.
The Japanese company recently reaffirmed this during its 79th Shareholders meeting, when president Shuntaro Furukawa was reminded about “other platforms” applying restrictions independently of CERO (Japan’s rating organisation). This was his response on behalf of Nintendo (thanks, Censored Gaming):
Nintendo, as do 3rd-parties and their software, applies for an objective rating from 3rd-party organizations prior to release. If platform-holding companies choose arbitrarily, the diversity and fairness in game software would be significantly inhibited. We provide parental controls that can be used to apply limits.
As noted, parental controls can also be used to restrict younger players from accessing mature-themed content.
Do you agree with Nintendo’s current stance on censorship? Tell us down below.
Disgaea 4 Complete+ For Switch Comes To North America And Europe This October
At E3 2019, Nippon Ichi announced Disgaea 4 Complete+ was coming to the Nintendo Switch. Weeks later, it has now been confirmed the game will arrive in North America and Europe on 29th October. Fans in Oceania will, unfortunately, have to hold out until 5th November.
The updated version of the fourth entry includes all of the additional scenarios, characters and DLC ever released for the title and adds new tweaks and functionality to ensure this version offers the definitive experience. Here’s a bit about the story:
When the ruling powers of Hades are revealed to be corrupt, Valvatorez must spark a rebellion to bring them down! Armed to the teeth with dynamic, over-the-top gameplay and a horde of special features, this is the ultimate Disgaea!
In addition to this, NIS America is running a “Reverse Cover Contest” – allowing fans of the series to vote for one of five different covers every day until 11th July. The most popular one will be put on the flip side of the game’s main cover. You can also win prizes for participating in the contest (read more about this on the official contest page).
Pre-orders for Disgaea 4 Complete+ are available now. For more information, check out our original post.
Will you be adding this one to your Switch collection when it is released? Tell us below.
Essential Beginner Tips for Harry Potter Wizards Unite
Recently, Harry Potter hasn’t always had the best games to offer to its fans, especially on mobile. Taking one quick look at Hogwarts Mystery should be more than enough proof that it’s been incredibly hit-and-miss with one of the world’s most beloved franchises.
Whether Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will change that remains to be seen. As for me, I’m personally having a blast roaming up and down my street, trying to be the best magic user that the world has ever seen and showing up Harry Potter in the process. That’s for being an arse in the Cursed Child, you tyrant!
But being the best is trickier than it looks, and if you’re not used to mobile games that feature a heavy amount of AR, as well as other time-consuming mechanics that Wizards Unite employs, you may feel similar to a fish that’s just been flung out of water. Anyone who played Pokémon GO will feel right at home, but for everyone else there’s a lot to do and things can fly way over your head.
So, here are some general tips and tricks that Wizards Unite doesn’t outright tell you, but what you should pay attention to all the same.
Keep an Eye on Your Spell Energy
In Wizards Unite, you’ll probably be completely nonplussed to find out that you have to cast a lot of spells when playing. This is because you’ll be finding traces of magic and foundables, all which will help you level up and progress through the Wizards Unite story.
However, casting spells takes up energy. Spell energy starts at 75 and can be increased by 10 using 150 gold coins to pay for an upgrade or through giving your Vault an extension which costs 475 gold coins but upgrades other things beside your spell energy. Though, the faster way is to upgrade using 150 gold coins.
Spell energy is such a useful commodity in Wizards Unite that without it, you may be waiting around a lot in order to continue playing. To minimize that waiting, we advise you to pay close attention to the glyph on your phone screen because screwing that up still wastes spell energy. So, practice!
Which brings me to my next point: Inns and Greenhouses.
Use Inns and Greenhouses
Inns and Greenhouses may not seem all that important to new players at first, but they have features that are absolutely pivotal to you levelling up and other features, such as regaining spell energy.
For those who have played Pokémon GO, you’ll see Inns as similar to PokeStops, a place where you can get items. In Wizards Unite, you’ll have to enter Inns by tracing the glyph that appears on your phone screen. If you do so successfully, the inn will reveal itself to you by presenting you with five dishes – which it’ll choose for you at random. After consuming your scrumptious meal, you’ll be rewarded with Spell Energy.
Greenhouses on the other hand are, in our humble opinion, much more useful than inns. For one, they too can grant you Spell Energy, with the downside being that it isn’t guaranteed to reward you with it, unlike Inns.
That being said, Greenhouses are useful for other things, such as growing ingredients to create potions. These ingredients can be grown or picked up around the map when you’re out walking or playing at home. You may not think potions are worth investing in, but you’d be wrong. Potions are incredibly useful when going up against particularly tricky Foundables, with some lowering the chance of failure whilst others will offer the possibility of more rewards during your success.
Don’t be Afraid to Team Up for Fortresses
Dungeons and Harry Potter shouldn’t really go together, but Wizards Unite is going to try and make it happen anyway.
Fortresses are areas that are found out while you wander throughout the world. When you enter them, you’ll find yourselves in a glorified dungeon that has 20 floors and is filled to the brim with AI monsters that are eager to snap you up. Thankfully, you don’t have to do these fortresses by yourself, as up to 5 players can team up and storm the area.
A trick for handling the fortress is to be well-stocked and have someone in your party that is at least a little higher level than you. This is because some floors of the fortress have level-restrictions, and you’d fare a lot better having someone more advanced at your side. Potions of your own choice would also do some good, especially if this is your very first time handling a Fortress and you’re going it alone.
Yet, as gnarly as it may sound, Fortresses offer great rewards and if you’re looking to show off your superior wizardry to your friends, there’s no better way to do so.
Maximise your Registry
Keeping an eye on your registry is one of the smartest things you can do. With it, you’ll be able to see what Foundables you’ve managed to collect on your journey, and which ones you’ve still got left to complete. Knowing which ones you’ve got to collect and which ones you haven’t allows you to plot out which Foundables you should be grinding for, and which ones to leave well alone.
Collecting these Foundables are important as they’ll not only increase your rank but will give you new items too. New items means new things to check out and make your time with Wizards Unite a fun one.
Check Daily Assignments and SOS Often
It may seem obvious, but Daily Assignments and SOS are one of the biggest ways to get ahead in Wizards Unite. SOS stands for Statue of Secrecy Task Force, and are used to progress the story, as well as the characters and players understanding of the Calamity which has befallen on the Wizarding world.
Daily assignments, however, are the bread and butter to getting great items, as well as a Hippogriff load of XP. Taking a quick check on what you have to do, you’ll more than likely find that potions, ingredients and sometimes even a Portkey. With each level of progression, the further you are to becoming a Wizarding master
Turn off AR/Turn On Battery Saver
The AR in Wizards Unite is nothing short of awesome, but it has a problem: it drains your phone incredibly fast. I can play Wizards Unite for a few minutes at 50% only to have it lowered to 20% after I log off the app. It’s annoying and can cause you to turn back on your adventuring to head home and charge, which nobody wants to do if you live in a place that has no inns, greenhouses or fortresses nearby.
So turn off your AR. Yes, it’s pretty but if you’re out and about and you want to progress a fair amount, then turning off your AR, as well as turning on your battery saver, may be the best call. Besides, nothing’s stopping you from turning your AR back on when you’re at home and can use a Portkey.
We hope these tips are enough to get you started – let us know if there’s anything you’re struggling with and we’ll try to help!
Nintendo Doesn’t Plan To Censor Video Games Like Sony
Although Sony is clamping down on saucy content in PlayStation games, Nintendo appears to be quite happy to leave any censorship decisions to rating systems.
The Japanese company recently reaffirmed this during its 79th Shareholders meeting, when president Shuntaro Furukawa was reminded about “other platforms” applying restrictions independently of CERO (Japan’s rating organisation). This was his response on behalf of Nintendo (thanks, Censored Gaming):
Nintendo, as do 3rd-parties and their software, applies for an objective rating from 3rd-party organizations prior to release. If platform-holding companies choose arbitrarily, the diversity and fairness in game software would be significantly inhibited. We provide parental controls that can be used to apply limits.
As noted, parental controls can also be used to restrict younger players from accessing mature-themed content.
Do you agree with Nintendo’s current stance on censorship? Tell us down below.
