so a strange, grandfathered loophole. Doesn’t help the new subscribers, and there are plenty of reasons to cancel Game Pass besides the steep price for Day One games. But sure, I guess there is probably a narrow raft of subscribers that will stay happily subscribed, thanks to this loophole, despite the price increases across the board.
My understanding was that all plans were going up in price. Evidently, this grandfathered plan is not. I’m just not sure how many people are left on that plan, it can’t be many if they are continuing to allow it
This is not a “loophole”, but normal business. Game Pass is not the only service who keep the old contract for current subscribers. This way people think twice if they cancel, because they would “loose” the cheaper price and day one releases and so on, its the same contract as before, which is a huge difference to the new.
Usually this sort of contract only applies for the term of the subscription, and then the company can change whatever they like at the end of that term.
The article even specifies that the grandfathered plan only continues to exist because Microsoft is “allowing” it.
When asked, an Xbox spokesperson did not confirm how long legacy Console subscriptions will remain active for current subscribers.
So I get what you are saying, but in this specific case, there is no legal reason why Microsoft could not force current subscribers to move to one of the new, more expensive plans. They are just being nice to some of their most loyal users, for some reason.
That seems like a great idea. Now that so many games are much less demanding on your gaming machine than others (playing a Phoenix Wright game, or Stardew Valley, or Minecraft), holding back a bit of power makes a lot of sense. If implemented right, I imagine you wouldn’t see any effect from this on most games.
It is arguable how much it is needed if games/libraries are coded “correctly”.
If a game is not resource intensive it won’t consume a lot of resources. This is why people who don’t understand power supplies might pop a breaker if they boot up the least AAA game but won’t have issues playing Stardew and the like. Or why you can get a few hours out of some games on the Steam Deck and MAYBE an hour with others.
If this is meaningfully effective then it speaks to something with the underlying Sony libraries (I forget the technical term) space filling resources. It sees memory is free so it uses memory and so forth. Which is pretty common with a lot of database/queuing software and why good practices tend to be restricting those with VMs.
Nah. Fuck the remnants of polygon (buncha scabs) but I think they are right that this has to do with setting a threshold/target for a potential handheld SKU. Basically the same thing MS had with the Series X vs S.
Just to provide a bit more. A common way of thinking of it is you have a static and a dynamic energy cost. Running the CPU at all costs a certain amount of power (static). But doing actual work on it costs more power on top (dynamic). So a completely idle chip is just the static and a balls to the walls run is static and 100% of the dynamic.
You can potentially turn off parts of chips to reduce the static cost (e.g. run with 4 cores active instead of 6) but that tends to require significant hardware support. And… most literature on the subject tends to e that it is still better to just run until the proverbial sweat runs down your crack because you’ll consume less power than if you had run lower for longer.
And it wasn’t even news back then. Almost immediately after the BG3 release Swen Vincke talked about the next project being an in-house IP again. And not much later they quit working on a DLC.
Since when do you have to link your phone number to your Steam account? I’ve had an account for as long as Steam has existed, and I’ve never been asked to provide my phone number.
No they’re aren’t competitors. I’d wager a significant portion (probably the majority even) of Switch users have never heard of the Steam Deck or even less so the other handhelds.
Steam Deck has it’s fans but like everything in life just because you love it doesn’t mean the majority of people have any clue about it.
I think to the “early adopter” crowd, the people like me who where huffing Nintendo “NX” leaks back in 2016, the more “core” audience of people from the ages of late teens to however old James Rolfe is now.
Those people will probably buy a steam deck before a switch 2. There are a lot of them.
Though not as many people as there are like my ex-sister-in-law and her new bf who put together have four kids. The Linux PC I built them to make sure their kids had a good puter is enough trouble, even with me to help. I don’t see them even considering them for their kids.
That being said I also think many of those people will stick to their current console until they release a cost reduced “switch 2 lite”.
Buying a new $450 console for every kids plus $80 games is fucking brutal and most parents won’t put up with that shit when a used switch lite is like $100-150.
I see this hitting their initial sales a lot more than their sales over the new consoles life span, especially as people who chose steam deck, and the parents who waited, slowly grab a switch 2 during sales/price drops.
Benson explained that because “the various projects that I am affiliated with in my career are family-based, children-based,” voice acting director Kris Zimmerman suggested that she go with a pseudonym.
That’s gotta be the stupidest thing I ever heard. Just about every voice actor does adult Video Games and kids movies. Nobody cares.
Also she’s been on the IMDb credits for the metal Gear games as EVA for like years
I never played BioShock 2 or Infinite, but I watched full playthroughs of each, and I thought infinite was great! Different to be sure in most ways, but it was a neat expansion of the world and themes hinted at in the first two games.
I seem to remember a lot of sideline criticism when it came out that boiled down to “NPC sidekick not love interest but hot so I don’t like game”. I thought, and think that is ridiculous, and fortunately I think that criticism has faded with time because Elizabeth is such a positive part of the game, from my view.
I really liked BioShock Infinite. I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed that it was a deviation from the previous two, I liked the characters and the dimension travel. I especially liked the “fake facade” of it all, versus the overt, grimy dystopia of Rapture (which was fine). It gets extra points for being playable with ReShade on solely a Ryzen 5600G.
I honestly felt it was weaker than both Bioshock and System Shock 2. It was stronger than Bioshock 2, but I mean… that doesn’t take a lot.
Both System Shock 2 and Bioshock built the game systems first and foremost to be fun and engaging, and then wrote an engaging story around those mechanics. Bioshock was literally taking dumbed down systems from System Shock 2 and rewriting a more engaging and thoughtful story around the familiar systems. Bioshock Infinite seemed much more like they had a story idea first and then tried to adapt Bioshock-esque gameplay hamfistedly stapled onto said story. The others feel like the gameplay came first, and the story evolved naturally to align with the gameplay.
Games like Neir Automata really show where a synthesis of game systems design and game story design are really important and become even more impactful to the story, and in this Bioshock Infinite failed in comparison to earlier installments in the series (and its spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2).
I feel like it’s hard to talk about Bioshock as a series at all without discussing System Shock 2, because that’s where Levine first pioneered his story with the engaging antagonist who speaks to you through a radio, and Bioshock is where he refined it into what comes close to literature. Bioshock Infinite marks a regression, more worried about the story that Levine wanted to tell than the gameplay to support it. Due to that the story falls flat, feels stilted, and Levine’s generic take of “everyone can be a bad guy” feels hollow, because it’s not backed up by compelling gameplay that supports it.
As McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message” and video games inherently work better through a synthesis of gameplay and story, without one dominating over the other. Games that lean too far in one direction or the other (Metal Gear Solid’s interminably long cut-scenes for instance) take you too far out of the gaming medium and too far into other, more detached mediums.
As McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message” and video games inherently work better through a synthesis of gameplay and story, without one dominating over the other. Games that lean too far in one direction or the other (Metal Gear Solid’s interminably long cut-scenes for instance) take you too far out of the gaming medium and too far into other, more detached mediums.
Absolutely banger take, I agree completely. Games have a difficult needle to thread, unlike a book or movie that can be strictly narrative-based, a video game has to somehow give the player enough agency while taking it away to allow the story to progress. And now I have DND on the mind again.
I’m reminded of a comment my older brother made about Final Fantasy X, all those years ago. He described it as basically playing a movie. Go figure, I liked the cutscenes!
I came back because I read a bunch about Levine’s new game, Judas… and it sounds like his approach to Judas is exactly what I’m asking for.
He talks about “narrative legos” a lot while developing this game, and I think that’s the kind of thing he really needed to implement to be able to tell the story he actually wanted to tell.
I found one interview (already forgot which one) where he described Bioshock Infinite’s linear story as holding him back, and that’s part of why it’s a weaker installment, because it can’t change the story in response to your actions. That’s clearly what Levine was trying to do with stuff like the choice of harvesting of the Little Sisters or not, or in Infinite, choosing to be a racist piece of shit or not. He was held back technologically, and I think the “narrative legos” idea is why Judas languished so long in development hell.
Here’s hoping Levine learned his lessons this time around.
The art style was “what if we target the uncanny valley specifically?” It was the strangest thing that seemed to target realism but without the technology that actually makes it look reasonable. I didn’t really care about what it looked like though. Just having some game competing with Maxis would have been nice. Cities: Skylines brought the city builder out of the pit it had been festering in with no competition. I was hoping this would do the same. Hopefully the other projects can do that still.
Wizardry inspired a lot of games, but the three games listed have greater influences elsewhere. (FF and DQ in particular are more like Ultima.) Sadly the games that were most inspired by Wizardry, sometimes called “blobbers,” have mostly died out: The classic Bard’s Tale games, Might & Magic, Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. Etrian Odyssey and the Japanese Wizardry games hold the torch but are pretty niche these days.
The demise of the original Wizardry series is one of the greatest injustices in the history of computer gaming, up there with the closing of the original Atari.
You’re forgetting the other advantage of the switch is how cheap it is. If Microsoft can manage to make something that’s inbetween the price of a steam deck and a switch it could be pretty enticing.
polygon.com
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