I started Trails in the Sky on PSP and haven’t been able to stop playing trails games since. Not the best in the series, but definitely where you want to start.
I made an mbin account to jump to whenever kbin stops functioning, which has been more frequent than I had expected. Each time I end up subscribing to more and more magazines over there to reach parity with my kbin account. Mbin hasn’t been enough of a carrot on its own to make me want to switch completely, but it’s always been working fine and even slightly easier to navigate. I’ve just got this lurking hunch that kbin will eventually end up like Artemis, the way it feels ignored at times.
I’d say that’s because PCs have become more console-like. I’m personally gaming a lot on a deck now, although I still have zero desire to hunker down behind a desk and fiddle around with a mouse and keyboard, tinkering with settings and whatnot. Deck is a nice middle ground, and having access to a lot of older PC classics is fantastic.
I’m probably just getting pessimistic with age, but corporations just see dollar signs with subscriptions and reduced expenses with digital distribution. Then they will outlive you and me.
It may be objectively better for players to have physical copies of their games installed on hardware they have dominion over, but we are unlikely to be around to prove that to our great grandkids. We can’t even guarantee even our own children will care enough to try to tell theirs. I’m almost certain owning physical copies of digital content is going to be for niche hobbyists in the future.
Most of these also want to lock down their VR as a platform, instead of being ubiquitous hardware like a monitor, and I think lack of standardization is gonna hurt them in the long run by narrowing their audience.
This. This is what I believe is holding back this tech more than anything else. Even pricing. Just make the hardware and let people play with it however they want, just like they could when PCs first became a thing.
As inclined I am to agree with you on a personal level, kids these days are trained to think games just come with MTX, and all bonus content in a game that isn’t a loot box is just paid DLC. All Microsoft has to do is just make this the easiest way to get Xbox games, keep it going long enough, and people eventually won’t know any better or even care anymore. Then they ratchet up the price to make it feel like they’re still profiting from console sales as well.
I'll give it less than a week until someone puts an app meant for something else on the App Store that actually just solves this problem for everyone. Then less than 6 months before they make it subscription only.