I’m not. You can still buy valid 12 month Xbox Live Gold subscriptions for under £40, close to the £36 before Game Pass took over. Fuck the new price. The Gold codes translate to Game Pass Core. But if you want Ultimate, well don’t let me get between your lips and Microsoft’s expensive arsehole
The moment Game Pass wouldn’t let me cheese the system and get it for like $1-2 a month, I quit bothering with it. I knew they were trying to get people hooked and raise prices. It was only like a year later and then even my friends canceled theirs.
I buy games heavily on sale, or sail the seas.
Luckily my gaming PC is more than good enough to ride out the next 5 years. knocks on wood. 5800X3D + 6800 XT.
For anyone else cross your fingers the GabeCube isn’t too expensive $$$.
You can make the argument that they do not belong because their primary businesses are Windows, Office, and AI. But if you’re looking for them because of Xbox, Bethesda, Mojang, or their other brands, that is where they would rank. Between NCSoft and NetMarble, with a USA flag.
Edit: ~4B$ seems way low for Microsoft… I dunno what I was thinking. Leaving the mistake for context. Maybe I meant $3.9T? But again that’s not just gaming. Gaming is a drop in the bucket for them and Xbox is failing and Bethesda has sucked for like 10 years or more now, closer to 15 if we’re honest. Mojang (Minecraft) is successful and Obsidian is killin’ it, but in the grand scheme of things? Microsoft doesn’t matter here.
That’s the old price. GamePass Ultimate went up briefly from $14.99 to $19.99 then doubled (from its original price) to $29.99 per month.
I got locked in at the original price. Better yet, I got the GamePass All Access deal right before it went away. That gets you the $500 Xbox Series X and 2 years of GamePass Ultimate for about 35 bucks a month. If you consider GPU to be $15 a month, that pushes the Xbox down to $480. Not a bad deal at all! You get the Xbox and a 24-month code straight up and make payments (it’s a credit card with 0% interest for that purchase, so you have to qualify for it). That’s why I have an XSX and not a PS5 like I would have liked. I couldn’t come up with $500 straight up for a PS5, but I could make $35 a month for 2 years plus I got GamePass.
I still game on my Xbox (I’m a Mac user on computers — we got Cyberpunk and Blue Prince last year, and I own both on Steam, but they play better on my Xbox). I just buy games on sale. I got the Mass Effect Legendary Edition (remaster of the Shepard trilogy) for $6. That sale is still on. They also have Mass Effect 4 for $3 (or $4 for Deluxe) and the first one (OG 360 version) for $5. Bought all of it. Love those games. I got Hogwarts Legacy for $10. That nasty trans-hating Harry Potter author didn’t have any input in the game and in fact it has a bunch of gay couples and a trans character to spite her. I really don’t like her views and avoided the game for a couple years, but I’m hooked. I love flying around and exploring the castle. I also play Switch games. Those tend to last longer than PC/Xbox games. My wife got Animal Crossing last year and burned out after a couple weeks. I still check in on my island a few times a week. It’s honestly a lovely game.
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.
I for the life of me cannot believe that a nsfw account is arguing with me about confidence while not giving an inkling of evidence themselves. You know nothing of AI “art” and it shows.
Here is a ps3 i generated from chatgpt just now, it details every single thing you stated. The prompt was: “Generate me a Playstation 3 pixel art image”
If you aren’t willing to give even an inkling of proof to your claims, or even try to show proof when talking about jpeg errors then you have no grounds to stand on.
You are defending ai art, weather you realize it or not.
buttons and their colors make no sense and aren’t correlated to a real PS3 controller.
there’s nine status lights and literally status lights on the disk drive.
the text is spelled “PLAYSTA.TION”.
Yes, I’m aware AI can do “pixel art.” No, this doesn’t invalidate the specific examples and logic from my prior posts. I’ve been discussing this is good faith, but you are not, you’re just reiterating and increasing the volume and insults. Have a nice day.
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.
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