Never trust a 10/10 on any game on (or before) day release

Original name for these device was UMPC, now rebranded as “handheld” because flow better in tweet an youtube videos titles.

F2P games target need big number of people, by necessity their biggest customer share is low-income people: proposing them luxury range product and peer-pressure (“to look good”) is what I call dishonest.

Worse than what they’ve been doing for the last decade? It seems to me like this is a better state of things because it’s clearly a lot of money for one big purchase, so you know immediately that it’s not something you can afford. Better transparency, so less manipulative.

Clearly so it seems to you. There are companies that, more simply, don’t do this at all: they don’t need to be transparent on how dishonest they are… because they aren’t.

If your argument “in secret they may be”… well, if your point is “entities that seems honest are the most secretly dishonest”, I think the first entity that we can apply your logic is your very self: you pretend to be honest in defend companies who behave transparently dishonest… it simply mean that you’re honesty is just a show off, while in truth you’re just shilling.

That’s your logic: next time behave openly dishonest, so we know how much transparently dishonest you are.

What’s the downside?

Customer manipulation.

You could say “of course don’t affect me” to FOMO, p2w, whales, dark patterns and alike… but just because you personally ignore it, it doesn’t mean it’s going to vanish. Industries live and evolve through money, the next iteration of video gaming is made by where money went.

LoL players came from a mod of Warcraft III; Riot is slowly cooking (put in warm-to-boil water) their frog customers in something people don’t consider healthy (generally with “they are them, not me, so I don’t care”).

👉 cookie wall

… he feel safe for about the next ~48 hours.

There’s an economic network behind console: contrary to PC (which is more an abstract concept that no one owns) you can find console in your local general store: these stores put Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo brands/logo all around without the need for these three companies to directly pay them (PC/Notebook strictly places for general and office purpose). Before the ecommerce got the point is today, these stores putting free console advertising made a big difference. PC gaming industry was fragmented, also the main player in the PC sphere (Microsoft) had their own console which, due to conflict of interest, damped the huge storm of the PC gaming industry. The only company I am aware of, that consistently work in favor of PC gaming was Valve. But they were a digital store and had not much interest in the physical presence in general stores until SteamMachine/SteamController/SteamDeck

For indie developer you got itch.io… then the void.

How this is Valve fault? You can’t blame a company in both direction for the same argument, you have to pick a side for your criticism.

Valve was accused to allow all sort of shovelware by indie developers… then you got the competition like GoG that say: " sure, we will have store curation: we will give indie developers the discipline that Valve won’t "

How things gone for GoG in the indie sphere? You remember any indie recently booming on GoG… Because surely can name few on both Steam and itch.io.

There are different types of monopoly: the one that attempt Epic by using bribe money just so everyone come to their Battle Royale… and one you get because all the companies around you ignore what customers and business (indie Dev) wants: a democratic platform like itch.io (in which Valve is closer with its approach)

He’s just a CEO, he’s just supposed to say “we’re gonna make money”. Other than that… he’ll may get fired.

I agree. Incompetence is not an apology for their mistakes, instead the fact that Sony don’t address their security issues make it even worse.

You can find a decent web browser on… basically anything: cheap smartphone, cheap smart TV (even non android/apple ones) and… Well, basically anything but Sony. Also Sony is the company that leaked customers private data. They are just incompetent.

But the omission for a web browser count more on the fact that you can play webgl videogames for free (instead spending on their store) than any security concern they may have (force customers to make PSN accounts after they were repeatedly breached is tell-tale about their security concerns)

The PS5 doesn’t have a web browser. What CPU+GPU Sony makes you pay for the PS5? Well, if your PS5 is turn on and you want to check a web page, you’d better take a cheap android phone out (heck, a old blackberry would do) so you can check the website you want to… because your PS5 can’t.

Sony, simply, live in another universe… they still have pockets to buy game studios and bribe exclusive in our dimension, but they simply don’t actually exist in our reality. That’s all I can think about Sony and their commercial practice: they take money from our reality (fewer and fewer each year), but they have no idea why.

Take-Two CEO: The idea that AI will make everyone unemployed is ‘the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard’

He doesn’t want everyone unemployed, he just want everyone at Take-Two, except him, to be fired thanks to AI.

If overall humans are unemployed, he got no one to sell.

Whale economy as seen in f2p games.

Starve the community around you with higher prices, make all your money with the few who buy bottled mineral water for car wash.

…instead of the more respectable, non western, way of “just forget that people until they die”?

Don’t expect the AAA industry to do anything else than the usual CoD and Fortnite for children… but honestly, I hope the indie market to catch up this promising share of elderly gamers and making interesting products that catch their attention. If things go well, it mean that even I (also " you" and everybody else playing videogames) will have fresh deliver in gaming-adventure experience even as may grow older.

Got through the whole article and they don’t say, “Fall of Duty” once.

What even is journalism these days?!?

Everybody gaming gangstar until the Call of Out in spring drops in.

You tell people to not use AI, and some may agree with you.

You tell companies to not use AI, they laugh at you and they keep make even big money thank to the added margin made by those poor fellow that aren’t using AI… because they did listen to you.

AI is not something is gonna vanish, it’s a tool… a whole new category of tools and instruments. Like the first electric musical instruments in times when the only way to have a sustained job in the music industry was to work in a orchestral band kept up by bigger institutions.

How many unplugged classical indie music artists do you know? Compare to the number of indie music artist that rely on electric musical instrument and beyond.

There’s a treat for you. If you’re using mobile Firefox on the loaded archive.org page there’s should be a small icon [a square with 3 lines, resemble a written page] on the input url address. If you click it you get a very special page with just the article text tailored perfectly to your screen… with few added benefit: no ads, if your smartphone is set to dark mode, the content will tuned so, no java to track your mouse position (needed for advertiser) etc.

Pages recorded with archive.org will always work with Firefox’s reader view (somewebsite are catching up and blocking this mode). Basically you get the best of… nearly everything.

(on desktop it’s [ctrl][alt][r])

Can we not link archives in post link section? If you access from Europe you get a “cookie wall” (which I don’t think it’s EU compliant): basically give you three options:

1. accept all the advertsment cookies form… basically everyone (ads company, google, fb… anyway to sell your data)
2. pay subscription
3. get the hell out.

…basically a troll fine on the top of the bridge.

anyway, on the archive.org saved page you also get the online address too.

I’ve bad feeling about SteamDeck 2.

So far, the biggest bourdary for Valve seem to be: no 3 for software, no 2 for hardware (but we may still get a SteamDeck 1: Episode 1… if SteamDeck OLED isn’t already that)