there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare… In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises… Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new.
Ironically, EA grew out of Origin, one of the original grand-daddies of computer RPGs and the maker of the Ultima series in the 1980s-1990s.
I still have so many games I’ve picked up on Steam sales that I’ll happily wait for those $80 games to go on sale while going through my back catalogue
I remember paying $10 for an Atari game. I know it’s not a great comparison, but I got hundreds if not thousands of hours of gameplay out of Qbert. Can any of the leading games in the last decade do that?
It’s funny I mention Atari. They had so many games to play. the choices you had were bonkers. best part was you could take your carts to a friends house and trade or share.
can’t do that today since most games are digital downloads that need 32gb day-0 updates.
perhaps the problem isn’t the gamers, but instead it’s the greedy corporate interests that are poisoning the game industry requesting $80 single owner games.
Can any of the leading games in the last decade do that?
Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere project, Factorio, Minecraft, Dreamlight Valley
Arcade games were great because it’s what we had. Sit a kid in front a Q-Bert now and try to get 1000 hours out of it.
Stuff is getting too big, there’s too much emphasis on making it pretty to sell it rather than making it fun, but I don’t know that we could go back to arcade games. I fear our nostalgia is a half-dose of Stockholm’s syndrome.
$50-60 based on what? Adjusted for inflation in 1982, it’s more like $33 and distribution costs are way lower than back then. Truth is you just need to find a compelling gameplay loop but companies don’t like taking risks- not every game needs to be a massive endeavor like skyrim. Look at games like slay the spire and see how a cheap game can be compelling without having to be a AAA behemoth. And at that note, is there even anything wrong if a game only takes your attention for a hundred hours? I don’t see the need to extend the player’s attention with poor side quest grinding. These things add unnecessary cost
Wow, shift goalposts much? You said “$10 in qbert days” which was the 80s and now it’s not $10 it’s $30. You can just admit you got it wrong and it was never $10 (though I do think prices right now are actually well aligned at $60 because of the far lower costs in distribution and marketing). Also I’m NOT the OP who played thousands of hours on qbert. Great job quoting someone else.
The other thing is that there was simply fewer games back then so you either continue to play the good games you own or you don’t play games. I loved Ocarina of Time, but I’m not going to pretend it was God’s gift to mankind just because I played it tons in my youth. I played it tons in my youth because it was one of the best games that I owned, and even then I had plenty more options than I’m sure this person had on the Atari for good games
Give it a year. Thankfully Toys for Bob was able to buy themselves out, otherwise surely they would have either been shut down or put to work in the Call of Duty mines.
Edit: By “it works” I mean the link can be clicked on. If the formatting looks wrong, check to see if the client you are using supports subscript/superscript fonts.
Looks like Lemmy has decided to use a flavor of Markdown which is inconsistent from Mbin’s. That’s a shame.
Weirdly enough, different Lemmy Android clients for Lemmy also work differently with the scripts formatting, each having their own quirks. One person though did fix their problem by upgrading their client app to the latest version.
I had thought it was all one single standard, when first started using the formatting. My original intent was just to have a smaller font, as I was at first just using the link format without any subscripting, but people were complaining about that, so I was trying to compromise and make it smaller.
That isn’t how anything works. This is like those people on Facebook posting their voodoo chainmail posts about their comments and profiles. You don’t own your comments to transfer a license in the first place.
You truly have no idea what you’re talking about. Multiple times now you haven’t even been able to grasp something as stupidly simple as different people talking to you.
You sir, are a moron.
It must be a strange feeling to be the current laughing stock of Lemmy right now. I hope you’re able to learn from this.
“I DO NOT GRANT PERMISSION TO LAW ENFORCEMENT TO READ THIS COMMENT. ANY USE OF THIS COMMENT BY LAW ENFORCEMENT FOR ANY REASON IS ILLEGAL. THIS COMMENT CANNOT BE USED AS EVIDENCE AGAINST ANY NON-LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONS IN RELATION TO ANY CRIME.”
Aha, so you actually read it? Thanks for clarifying.
I have. Both versions. I was just linking to the easy to read version (canonical), but by declaring my comment as licensed means it is covered by CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, and you can get to the legal version from the canonical version.
So you didn’t reach the conclusion that this license is incompatible with posting on Lemmy?
Are you a lawyer? No? Well then be sure to come back here once you get your degree and let us know the final word on this.
Idk first thing about any of this, but I do think with MSFT controlling Windows, Azure, Xbox, GitHub, OpenAI, Teams; at some point one has to ask if MSFT is just too big for no good.
Think about it, a competing game studio might be paying MSFT for Windows licenses, Teams for internal communication, Azure for game servers, GitHub for hosting their source code, ChatGPT Pro for using AI in smart ways and finally a 30% cut to Xbox Store, only to compete with bazillions of first party titles under Xbox Game Studios.
Now think of a big publishers, they need to somehow compete with GamePass, which takes all the money MSFT can throw at it and makes game sales kinda irrelevant. Why would a consumer buy a $70 game when they can play other games for $15 max a month. Even if it’s $30 a month, it’s still a steal. Why would a studio go to a big publisher and give up bigger chunk of revenues (Outriders didn’t get much under Square Enix despite being on GamePass) when they could just become a second party developer with XGS and rake in whatever cash flow positive MSFT would give them before the game is even launched, with a bonus of marketing of “Day One With GamePass”.
In nut shell, MSFT makes a tonne money during development even if the game isn’t released on Xbox, and Xbox Game Studios slowly hollows out competing publishers by using the MSFT money to secure deals with third party studios or straight up acquiring them. They can adjust profitability by tweaking prices at several touch points of this huge Microsoft services pipeline.
If Xbox was broken away from MSFT, they’ll become yet another publisher, though a pretty big one, without the daddy money. It would make the industry more competitive between publishers, but it may also probably lead to egregious monetization strategies like we already see these days, because MSFT is uniquely positioned to do what they’re doing.
Similar things can be said about Amazon or Google. How is it that if Netflix succeeds AWS wins and if Prime succeeds, AWS still wins? How can Google make the search engine, video hosting platform, dominant browser and a ads platform and cross pollinate money like crazy? If big companies weren’t allowed to build such synergetic businesses, consumers might be paying to several different companies, but they’ll also be seeing competition in each of those domains, driving prices lower, hopefully.
So yeah, I support the idea of breaking up companies that start dealing with orthogonal domains that end up creating a nest of services that no competitor can easily break free from.
IDK, just because Microsoft has products in a variety of categories doesn’t pose problems in itself, the problem is when those products command a significant chunk of the market share to the point where they can control a big chunk of the market. From your list:
GitHub - problematic because it’s the biggest code hosting platform around, but on its own isn’t a big issue
Teams - doesn’t really dominate, and many orgs use Slack or something else for communication
Xbox and XGS - not an issue unless either dominates their respective markets; buying large publishers like Activision is a serious issue
Azure - they’re like second or third, so there should be a close watch to make sure there isn’t monopolistic behavior with integrations with GitHub, Xbox, etc
And so on. I don’t personally think they should be broken up, but acquisitions in sectors where they already have significant market share should be blocked.
Exactly, on their own the products aren’t harmful at all. The problem comes when MSFT can leverage their position to undercut prices or shoving their products in other products.
How can slack compete, despite being a superior product, when MSFT puts Teams in the effing taskbar of Windows and sells it for half the price, and bundles it with office?
How can bitbucket or gitlab compete if MSFT integrates npm, GitHub, Azure, GitHub Copilot, VSCode and so many other dev tools so well, for much lower price?
Azure is second, yes, but my company, like many other companies, uses Azure over AWS because MSFT gives a sweet deal where Azure, Outlook, OneDrive, GitHub, Teams are all bundled in such a way that it’ll be expensive to use individual companies for each, and also a big hassle. And when MSFT becomes an incubator for a startup, it’s even better deal for the startup. How can digital ocean, for example, compete with that?
I mean that’s what happened with Internet Explorer. Netscape couldn’t compete coz MSFT could give IE for free and bundle it into the operating system. Google did something similar by getting other softwares to bundle Chrome with them in the installation process, and also asking users to use chrome on all Google properties. Firefox can never compete with IE or Chrome or Safari, as long as these big companies can integrate their services and products so seamlessly.
So you’re absolutely right, individually none of the products are harmful, infact some of them are really good deals for consumers, but due to them all being under one umbrella, it’s hard for competition to thrive.
Both of these are free and open source. There’s a paid hosting tier for NPM, but it’s easy to self-host that.
But your larger point stands. The more tools they can package together, the more they can push out competition. Why use Slack if it’s a pain to integrate with GitHub and Office, but Teams works smoothly? This is certainly not unique to Microsoft, look at Apple as a clear example. The App Store forbids competition with Safari’s rendering engine, and that limits the competition other browsers can provide. Apple has its own ecosystem around iMessage and iCloud that don’t work outside that ecosystem. So if we’re going to make rules that target Microsoft’s bundling of functionality, it should also target Apple as well.
I’m less concerned about price and more concerned about exposed capability. IMO, Teams shouldn’t have any different access to Office or GitHub as Slack has. Once you have a large market share, you need to be extra careful about how your apps communicate to ensure that other apps can directly compete.
And as you mentioned, I think defaults are part of the problem. Mobile Safari isn’t dominant on iOS because it’s better, it’s dominant because it’s the default. Same with Edge on Windows and Chrome on Android. If there’s competition for a given product, it shouldn’t be bundled with the OS, and if the product is important for most users, it should prompt the user for what to use. I can see exceptions here for basic functionality (e.g. a dialer on a phone, or file browser on a desktop OS), but that definition needs to be very restrictive.
Glad I could make my point clearer. It’s hard to narrow down what feels wrong about this level of consolidation, and given MSFT’s track record in recent years, it’s hard to say they’re definitely going to become evil, but just that possibility feels scary.
Microsoft has already been evil, and I think there’s a good chance they’ll do it again if given the chance. The best company IMO is someone who is in second or third place (e.g. AMD v Intel, MS v Google, etc). As long as there are at least three competent players in a field, things tend to stay pretty competitive.
You just listed a bunch of Microsoft made products + GitHub + openAI (who they don’t control) - why shouldn’t they be allowed to control products they created?
You’re also talking like Microsoft is the market leader in game consoles when they’re a distant last and getting further behind. If this acquisition was blocked it would basically be game over for Xbox, and I would bet it would be sold off or go third party software only and exit the hardware market within a few years. Sony are the ones people need to be worried about here as they have a long history of abusing their dominant position and making blatantly anti-consumer moves based on that position.
Without Xbox as a competitor Sony would have free reign with no one to stop them. The video game industry is one of the most expensive industries any company can get into. Google tried and failed. Sega exited. Xbox is the last real competitor that entered and stayed and that was over 20 years ago, and the only reason it’s still around is to stop Sony from getting a monopoly in the living room.
You’re right. A company should be allowed to create and acquire other companies, no doubt in that.
The problem, as I listed above in the very long post, is unique to the big tech players where they can create such synergetic businesses that it’s pretty difficult for anyone to compete or break free from that.
What you’re saying makes great sense. Xbox indeed needs more and more IPs and more importantly much better quality control to compete with Sony. They lost the last generation, and they need to do everything in their power to course correct. After ABK, they would match Sony in number of IPs and maybe surpass them in number of studios. Fair enough. But, as a whole, this gives a lot more power to MSFT, and my question is simply whether it’s too much power or not.
Calling what Google did trying is a bad joke. Stadia failed because and exclusively because it was a fucking horseshit premise with no redeeming qualities.
In my dreams, regulators would require UP and NS to divest older or redundant ROW so that publicly-owned transit systems can repurpose them for passenger rail services. Even so much as a single-track minor branch line could be reinvigorated with high-floor DMUs while maintaining freight access in the off-hours, such as with SMART in San Francisco area. And in the long run, electrification without UP’s typical objections to overhead wires could enable performant EMUs like with CalTrain.
Fully agree. In a civilized modern country the government would own the rails (because, I mean obviously it would) and operators would put out timetables and requests for trains - all managed by the government. Just like the UK and most other countries, the government is in charge of maintaining the rails, keeping them safe, and expansion, while the operators do what they do best - they manage their schedules and try to squeeze the most profit out of it.
It’s a win-win, private industry doesn’t have to worry about safety or maintenance beyond their own vehicles, they work with the government on scheduling, and passenger rail would get a resurgence because adding new train lines and stops would just be a matter of starting a new operator.
If you thought of a new commuter line that you think would benefit a region, it wouldn’t be trying to convince Amtrak to do it - you could literally raise the money and start your own operator, lease some vehicles, and then literally just start running your train line operated on government tracks. Just as the semis do on the interstate system, just like airlines do.
In a civilized modern country the government would own the rails
I agree with the sentiment, but also have to mention some implementation quirks that should be addressed along the way.
Just like the UK
I personally find the UK to be something of mixed bag. Yes, they do have Network Rail managing the fixed infrastructure for the national rail system, but they’ve bungled the working model with a half-hearted attempt at semi-privati(s)ation with franchise operators for different rail segments. And while that problem has flared and simmered since the 80s, attempts to fully open the network for any operator (aka open access) runs into the age-old problem of too much demand.
Open access – which should absolutely be a starting point of any regulated monopoly, government owned or not – comes with the challenge where if every train operator wants to run their own London to Edinburgh service, then very quickly, the East Coast Main Line and West Coast Main Line are going to be booked up, leaving scant capacity for local service. Obviously, a high-speed corridor between Scotland and England would solve that particular issue, but the central challenge remains one of finding balance: local vs long-distance express, minimum train speeds, freight capacity, first-class vs economy vs sleepers. Open-access is open like a door, but even the widest doors enter to a limited space.
The proper balance is a matter of policy, rather than technical merit, so I’m not entirely sold on the notion that it should be the infrastructure manager (eg Network Rail) making those decisions. Such decisions would have major consequences, and so I think properly belong to public policy makers (eg lawmakers or regulatory agencies). But for technical decisions like loading gauge or max axle loads, those are almost exclusively for the infra manager to adopt, but with public consultation with operators and the public. After all, we wouldn’t want adoption of obsolete or unusable standards on the national system.
they work with the government on scheduling
I think this is implied, but I’ll state it for clarity: operators should have to make a showing to the regulator that their services operate “in the public’s interest” before being granted access to the national rails. And even when granted access, operators must conform to the infra manager’s technical requirements for uniform operation.
In the USA, this is almost identical to the process of setting up a television broadcast: radio spectrum is a limited commodity, and so it must be used in furtherance of public interest. In practice, this isn’t a very high standard, but it does prevent waste such as having one’s own private TV channel. So too would it be wasteful to schedule a “corporate train” service for the exclusive use of select personnel while still physically occupying the rails despite carrying zero passengers.
Basically, there’s much to be fixed in the USA, but the UK model could also use some work too, towards a principled model that maximizes the public investment.
Completely get all of your points, and respect them. I think on the spectrum of bad to perfect systems, I see the UK as “good” - but a long ways from perfect too. The US however is just obviously bad, and I think moving towards the UK’s system would be a massive step in the right direction. Personally, I think the first step is that the private companies should not own the rails themselves, they have proven that they are not the proper stewards of those systems and should not own that.
That’s step one. After step one though, I completely see your points and that there would be a lot of details worth looking into.
And, as someone how has ridden the Azuma service from London to Edinburgh 4 times - I have seen it cancelled twice. Ridiculous that in my very very infrequent trips to the UK I have seen my train trips cancelled just as many times as I’ve ridden them.
There is exactly one nice thing I can say about the USA rail system, and it kinda underscores essentially every issue we have with the rails today: the privately-owned railroads are absurdly good at moving freight.
If we were to ignore the entire notion of using trains to move passengers, then suddenly the American railroads are remarkable in how much tonnage they can move over across the continent, even with their horrifically skeletal network, and still achieve the highest energy efficiency for land transport. They really shouldn’t be as successful as they are, given that they have unionized labor, are not exempt from federal emissions regulations, and serve huge tracts of the country using only single-track lines dating back to the 19th Century.
To say that they’ve devoted all of their efforts to making freight work is an understatement. And it is from this foundation that all other uses of the rails are incompatible. And it shows.
The national passenger operator, when seeking to (re)start a line somewhere, must negotiate with host railroads – except when Amtrak owns the tracks, such as in New England – and that’s primarily a matter of paying for time on the track, plus the “inconvenience” of regular schedule services when most freight doesn’t really need to follow a schedule at all.
Unlike any other product or service, there is no eminent domain at the state-level for access to a railroad, so if a small public transit operator is rebuffed by the host railroad in their area, then that’s basically it. Only Amtrak has a right to use eminent domain for railroads, and that’s only ever been used once, resulting in a 20 year lawsuit to settle the matter at great cost.
Query whether a wealthy state like California or Texas can make a market-rate offer to outright buy the rail network within their state. I imagine the answer is yes, though this would have been much more useful if the idea came up when Southern Pacific was having their difficulties in the 1990s. Further query whether a state-owned railroad located in multiple states can unilaterally deny access to all other states – like what the private railroads can do. Who knows.
In all fairness, we do have a few objectively nicer things, like level-boarding for wheelchairs and strollers into LRT carriages, and pantographs rather than trolley poles.
But we did lose 100+ MPH operation in the 30s, when the 79 MPH track limits came into being for most railroads.
So in total, if that’s all we’ve progressed after a century, then yeah, we haven’t gone very far.
This story comes alongside numerous reports from the dev team that said the team felt it was ready. Plus it was only supposed to launch into early access.
They still both “could” be true. Though more likely something else was a foot. Maybe the earnings target was set poorly such that the payout was more than the increased earnings. You would think in general that such a clause would be mutually beneficial, but clearly one side didn’t think so.
That’s basically what I’ve been saying ever since the switch 2 announcement, I’m glad I can just copy the Sources from this article to support my intuition. Thank you, Superjoost!
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