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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

What games? One thing I do appreciate about the Switch is that most first party games come fully playable on cartridge. I bought Splatoon Raiders the other day on the way to the train station for a long ride; I popped it in and started playing, never had any internet. It occurred to me later that I probably couldn't have done this for a third party title.

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There's a spreadsheet [0] tracking Switch games where you can see which ones have 'complete' versions on carts. It's roughly 1/4 for both first party and third party titles, though first party games are more likely to have cartridges released in a later run with updates included, while third party games are more likely to just have no updates.

(Splatoon Raiders was released a week ago so I don't think that's a good example to use for games without updates. Even it has an update already, albeit a non-critical one)

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1CEABCBrPv1tWf89h...

> Splatoon Raiders was released a week ago so I don't think that's a good example to use for games without updates.

...I don't really see why. The question isn't whether a game has updates available, it's whether the un-updated version feels like a complete experience vs a compromised one.

I'm not sure how to read the spreadsheet in that context.

> The question isn't whether a game has updates available, it's whether the un-updated version feels like a complete experience vs a compromised one.

Exactly -- a game released a week ago is unlikely to have updates that could make it feel like a compromised experience.

Take, say, Terraria. I had a blast playing it ten years ago, despite having a fraction of the content and polish it does now. Nonetheless, if that version was all I had access to today, it would feel like a compromised experience.

Updates matter significantly more for some games than others. Sandbox games like Terraria and Minecraft often lie at one end, while at the other end you'll often find first-party Nintendo games, which typically receive a handful of bug fixes at most. Of course, how much playing a 'lesser' version bothers you personally varies greatly too.

The spreadsheet just shows which games have fully updated versions available on cartridge.

Hardcover books often contain typos. The Kindle versions of these books will sometimes get updated to fix these typos. These updates make the reading experience better for Kindle customers, but they do not reduce the reading experience for hardcover customers. Your hardcover book will remain just as good as it was at the time it was published.

Now, Terraria received much more significant updates. I think a game like Terraria is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of physical games.

It seems we're largely on the same page. I would point out though, sometimes those seemingly minor tweaks can be pretty important; they're not always at the level of typos in a book.

One that affected me personally was in Pokemon XY, where if you saved in the wrong spot it would corrupt your entire save. As a kid it was a pretty memorable experience to lose ~20 hours of playtime on my Christmas present because I assumed the updates weren't important. Granted, day-one bugs that major in first party Nintendo games are rare, but it's not a given that they're irrelevant either. It can go either way.

Also there is https://www.doesitplay.org/

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