Most games I run on Heroic are free giveaways from Epic. Those are, to the best of my knowledge, all Windows. Heroic handles the compatibility with Proton, similar to how Steam does it. With a fancypants workaround you can even install Sims 4 as a direct game exe, and well, you can run any program from it if you really wanted
I’ve used it for Epic and GOG, Lutris for Ubi/EA, but can either play MS UWP games? That seemed to be the one huge hurdle for any third party launcher in general.
I remember that was the case for PS3 and BluRay, but not so much DVD and the PS2. PS3 was, what, $300? $400? Where as the cheapest BluRay player that just played BluRay movies was almost a grand.
I may just not remember it being similar for PS2. I was a sophmore in high school when it came out.
The PS3 was stupid expensive at launch, like $600 in 2006, nearly $1000 in 2026 dollars. But yeah I think that argument was made then also.
I think the PS2 was marketed specifically for DVD capabilities in some cases, I remember an IR dongle and remote control they sold so you didn’t have to use a controller.
the buttons on the switch and ps2, the asymmetry of the ps1 and switch, the logo on the ps4, and the lack of pixellation and strange proportions of the 360 and ps3. also the fact that only some of them have controllers depicted.
Sorry again, I know I responded below and not trying to just fight for now reason, but pointing out these different things you’re identifying that actually strongly suggest these aren’t AI, or aren’t indicators of AI or not either way.
For example, Switch asymmetry. This is how Switch directional and gamepad buttons look. It should be asymmetrical, and AI probably wouldn’t get that right like it is in the graphic. You can even see the color-distorted remainder of the “-” and “+” symbols above them, blurred to hell from terrible resizing.
Things like proportions and whether controllers are depicted are just choices either a human or an AI could make.
And by far the most obvious: many of the Pixels are not square, or misaligned with the grid pattern, and they also have wildly different sizes on some of the consoles
Which is AI-generated? It looks to me like real pixel art (except the 360) very lazily resized in a non-nearest-neighbor fractional scale and anti-aliased to mush.
Sorry, none of this is a clear indicator of AI. The “latent noise” you refer to is perfectly consistent with compression and resizing artifacting and noise. Proportions are often off when making “chibi” icon-sized consoles, but notably, they are consistently or coherently off. Other features are strongly suggestive it isn’t AI. For example:
All of the controllers have consistent layouts, including the correct number and orientation of buttons, player indicators, etc (e.g., the Wii controllers).
Consistent diagonal step effects, even if blurred from poor resizing (see the PS4).
Consistent text for all system indicators that is legible without AI artifacting, even if blurred from poor resizing.
The fact that the 360 and PS3 (didn’t notice initially) are not even pixel art suggests they just grabbed random icons from the web, not ran them through AI generators.
Ok - Yes, Adobe does have insidiously integrated AI tools. But again, nothing you point to here is strongly indicative of AI, and again, just consistent with sloppy & lazy resizing (which you could just as likely see pre-2020, before AI). Adobe also has a very extensive stock library which may be where these came from.
There are some really hard to spot AI generated materials possible now, but the sloppy inconsistency here is - conversely - an indicator that they don’t care much what we do or don’t notice so wouldn’t be spending the time to generate something with all of the consistent details (see list above). Instead, the consistent details suggest human-created versions based on the real systems.
What is “ChatGPT font”? ChatGPT and its image tool are distillation models that do not have fonts. They produce images based on per-pixel relational distillation, they are guessing what pixels should be next to each other and do not use fonts. Current models do produce text that can be indistinguishable from fonts, but there is no single “ChatGPT font.” If there is a generic font appearing here, that doesn’t tell us anything new.
For the PS1, I don’t understand what you are referring to. The blurriness and uneven lines happen from compression artifacting and/or resizing to a non-divisible fractional resolution. You can get the same effect now if you go into Photoshop, create a 32x32 pixel image, resize to nearest-neighbor 10x, then set an arbitrary similar but non-divisible resolution with a different resampler (e.g., 56x56 bicubic), and save as JPG at <40 quality. That’s extreme, but you get aliased artifacting, interpolated stepping, and so on.
If you’re taking some other features as evidence of AI, let me know.
I don’t understand you defending ai art, but here, the extremely obvious odd coloring texturing the surface of the ps1 would be enough for anyone to notice, but the generation error in the top is proof. This smudge line is where the ai failed on its final pass, likely to do with clipskip or whatever crap open ai uses as this is clearly open ai’s image model.
Why are you defending ai art so hard, what do you get from defending a massive cooperation?
Buddy, I’m not defending AI, and you making some conspiratorial allegation about my motivation is just weirdly aggressive. You and other people don’t seem to understand what happens with typical generational lossy compression and resizing. Randomly resize and save any image to jpeg 12 times, and see if you don’t see similar artifact noise patterns. That’s a technical literacy thing and not your fault, but the overconfidence here is. The exact thing you’ve marked above is very typical artifacting that occurs for non-AI reasons.
I also know enough to say that I can’t be 100% positive it was or wasn’t AI at some point in the chain. But I can confidently say nobody has identified credible evidence it is AI compared to a multi-generational lossy resize by a lazy designer (and no, posting a screenshot with a vague circle and “that’s obviously AI” is not great evidence - these are not twelve fingers or mush pseudo text, this is pixel level inconsistency).
The things you and others are pointing out here are very explainable without AI, and AI likely would not be reliable enough to create some of the details you see which survived the lossy compression.
maybe i do then because i just keep staring and thinking “how in the world did anyone sign off on this mess”. if it’s not ai, that makes it even worse.
they’re ass because they’re inconsistent, have aliasing issues, are obviously stretched/squashed, are put against a noisy background, and in some cases are just wrong.
and no, if the name was not on it i would not assume that the ps4 was a ps4. it looks like a modem. and the 360 has a keyhole for some reason.
The reason for the high sales of the PS2 was because it was a cheap DVD player at being nearly half the price of a stand alone DVD player.
Funny by the time I worked at Target when they discontinued selling VHS and a customer was arguing with me about why did we stop selling VHS and I replied, “Dude, buy a DVD player, there’s one on that shelf for $35, its cheaper than a toaster now.” My manager standing next to me wasnt too happy but the customer reluctantly bought the cheap ass-DVD player.
The ps3 was also one of the cheapest blu-ray players at the time. But I’m pretty sure the 2 launched for 3 or 4 hundred, not 500 or 600 like the ps3 so that probably put a damper on sales. I know I waited for the 40gig $400 ps3 version that gen, and the ps3 price is what made me buy a 360 initially instead.
There was also a pretty aggressive format war between BluRay and HDDVD that tempered demand for a little while. I bought a launch PS3 as well, in part because of BluRay.
I also think it was a time where not everyone had an HD TV, nor did most people see a huge difference between DVD and BluRay, so there just wasn’t quite the demand compared to VHS vs DVD. Aside from the graphical stepup to DVD, it also didn’t need to be rewinded and didn’t take up nearly as much space. I think those two were big selling features, that the DVD to BluRay transition just didn’t have.
All true. I also remembered that I actually bought 2 ps2 as I bought my girlfriend’s mom one for a dvd player for Christmas I think. The vhs to dvd was definitely a bigger jump than to blu-ray.
As someone who moved on from consoles between the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo, the PS2 is the only modern console I’ve ever owned, and it was 90% for the DVD player.
How was your manager not happy with this? You not only talked them into a purchase but a purchase into an ecosystem that would likely generate future revenue for the company. There is nothing but positives here?
Probably not, unless Nintendo releases a surprise last iteration of the console which I also don’t see as that may cannibalize Switch 2 sales. A Switch Micro would be cool though
Its 2025 sales numbers are about 4 million, half that of 2024, and that’s with half the year with no successor console. Maybe it’ll beat it, but I don’t feel it’s a foregone conclusion
interesting, all play stations included but only 2 nintendos, not what i expected, but my relationship with gaming has been a bit tangential, so what i know
You didn’t notice the 360 there? Which tbf had its sales boosted by routinely shitting the bed right after the warranty expired. But also killed sales for future Xbox sales. At least for a chunk of people I played with back then.
i didn’t say there wasn’t any microsoft, my comment was about the sony/nintendo ratio, which is funny, cuz sony started producing consoles because nintendo didn’t follow on a promise
Wikipedia seems to think they are. I’ve seen “home consoles” used when you want to exclude handhelds, what makes you say that they’re technically not consoles?
The steam deck has unfortunately sold a tiny fraction of the sales of the consoles listed in the image. I can’t find any exact numbers but the steam deck has sold between 4 to 6 million units.
I’ve consistently refused to buy in to Game Pass. I still buy physical games where available. If it’s only digital, I’ll get the Steam version for my Steam Deck.
I wish I didn’t go all in on digital, but then the space not taken up by physical media (in my case, >1,000 games) is also valuable to me. I’ll have to settle for keeping copies of whatever isn’t DRM locked, and obtain pirated cracked versions of whatever is.
Um… you need to sell that Mac and build a computer with DDR4 and maybe a 40 Series NVIDIA GPU (so as to not pay the high prices on both fronts), slap Linux on it (I’d recommend Mint or Pop_OS!), and learn how to set it up for gaming. That’s stupid otherwise.
Yeah, that’s unfortunately the conclusion I’m reaching. I was hoping there was an angle I hadn’t considered yet.
Maybe I’ll just give in and do a year sub to GeForce and then reassess prices next Xmas. I definitely can’t afford to build a new machine now, but a lot can happen in a year.
With the Mac Mini’s use, that is completely understandable. I tried to find something that fit your price range, and couldn’t find squat. However, you might want to take a look at Cevo, which is a Taiwanese ODM, that many of the Linux computer makers utilize.
Mac user as well. I have an M2 Pro mini on my desk, and a base M2 MacBook Air.
To be fair, you didn’t specify in the OP why you bought the Mac. Their comment is fair, and this is coming from a guy who doesn’t like Windows. It’s also a bad recommendation: you’re not gonna get a good deal on the Mac that would get you a comparative PC. Your best bet would either be a used Switch or a used Xbox Series S, or maybe a PS4 (Xb1 sucks).
That said, you can get a comparable PC for $575, but you won’t get $575 for a $575 Mac selling it secondhand. The fallacy with that suggestion is you’ll get about 2/3 what you paid at best and that’ll put you in a much worse spot. Now you might be able to get a Chinese PC with everything on the chip like the Mac mini is, with 16GB DDR4 and something like an i3 dual core that will do some of the things the Mac will do, but it won’t have a Windows license, you’ll need to pay for that or get Linux. Still a bad idea if your new Mac works and you’re happy with it.
I made my comment entirely based on the picture, which is kinda my bad but I’m leaving it. I read the text after. I blame my autism.
That being said, you didn’t buy the Mac for gaming. If you did that’s on you. Heroic is good for some Steam games. M2 Pro isn’t great for gaming. I suspect you have an M4 base with 16 or 24GB of RAM (doesn’t matter in most cases). That’s a more capable machine. Still not great. Macs are not gaming machines. GeForce Now is a decent way to go if you have Steam games. You only need to pay the $10/month price to get decent game streaming, but only if the latency is good enough based on your location. If it’s not, the $20/month tier isn’t going to help. It’s just better graphics.
If you are buying new, $575 isn’t going to get you a lot.
But if you buy used and don’t mind lurking on second-hand platforms for a while to find a good deal, you should be able to get something decent for that amount.
I figured the 2004 release as the PS2 slim turned the tables again, but that was still before the Wii came out in 2006. It’s possible that story only counted the original PS2 and this chart counts both, though.
Great review! And wow, this thing looks fantastic. After using a horizontal retro emulator, I wasn’t sure if I would ever want a vertical one again. Horizontal just immediately felt so much more comfortable for me. But this one definitely looks tempting. Also, the vertical handheld I have, a Miyoo mini, is really small, so maybe that’s part of my ergonomics problem.
How do you feel about it running android instead of whatever version of linux like the other handhelds they offer? I have been looking at the rg35xx Pro. I currently have an original rg35xx from before the chip upgrade.
It has pros and cons I love how Linux has SO many options, and community builds are almost endless. But then again, Android gives you so many advantages. Emulation is a breeze, and if you adopt a front-end like Beacon, it can launch straight into that.
Android made me download a ton of 4:3 cartoons (looked amazing on the screen!), listen to music, and emulators are so very easy to use on there.
I think it’ll come down to preference, but to me Android is an asset on this one. Thinking of GameHub Lite, for example.
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