Also noteworthy that not only are PS5 sales behind PS4, but the PlayStation’s competition has almost entirely disappeared, and that hasn’t resulted in more PlayStations sold.
And this coming release will be the first time I’m not going to bother about a new Nintendo console going back to the original. For context, I even like the Virtual Boy. Nintendo has done everything possible to make themselves unlikable.
Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”...
I also started with GTA V in the last few years. I sometimes describe it as an interactive movie rather than a game.
That’s not meant to be insulting. It’s a very well told story with perfect social satire. The characters are excellent. If you judge it the way a movie is judged, it’s very good. The one thing is that the story should have finished with the big three-way shootout instead of Franklin’s choice. Otherwise, very well put together.
As a game, though, it’s mid. There are several mechanics where they teach you to do a thing, but it never comes up again. Money is no longer a limitation after the first heist is done. Owning a business isn’t likely to be profitable for the length of a likely playthrough.
I accepted most of the morally questionable stuff. It comes with the series, and you’ll either have to accept it or not play. It’s balanced out with obvious social satire; it’s aware that this is not how people should act in real life. It’s a game for mentally mature players who understand that none of these are good people. That mental maturity doesn’t necessarily come with age.
However, I drew the line at the paparazzi storyline. Just felt too sleezy. The FIB torture bit also came close to me, but in-game, even Trevor didn’t feel comfortable with that, and he’s a monster.
Only other part I skipped was that damn yoga bit. Glad the game let you skip it while still progressing, because I don’t know what it wanted me to do.
I’m a little surprised it got so many 10 out of 10 reviews at launch. I guess the draw distances are impressive for a game that worked on the Xbox 360, and it uses those draw distances for important artistic effects. It makes it feel like a real city. But there are bugs that prevent progression years after release (albeit with workarounds most of the time), and some of the mechanics are bolted on. It’s a 9/10 movie and a 7/10 game that averages to 8/10.
It’s AI at this point. Nvidia considers the gamer division to be vestigial. They were a $700B market cap company that was primarily known for gaming GPUs. They are now quadruple that with AI, and that’s even with some recent hits to their stock price.
The article puts the cutoff for “old” as being 6 years or more. Officially, Factorio was released in 2020, but we all know that any other studio would have considered it done years before that.
Steph Sterlings’ recent video hits it directly. The big publishers see Balatro doing well, so they go copy Balatro. They spend a lot of effort looking for the next Balatro in all the wrong places. Their attempts to copy it will fail, because people who like Balatro will just play Balatro. This will continue until there’s a new indie darling dominating the sales charts, and then they’ll try to copy that.
IIRC, the steam release is based on a mobile port, and it’s bad. Maybe they fixed it since release, but I dunno.
PSX version added some anime cutscenes, which are nice. Problem is that loading times are horrible and happen as part of every battle.
I seem to remember the DS version being recommended. Otherwise, the SNES version is always good to find on the high seas.
It’s more approachable than most RPGs from the era. It has no random battles, and tends to avoid situations where you advance a character wrong and soft lock yourself. More hardcore RPG fans find it too easy, but it’s a classic for a reason.
Right, Dolphin had an encryption key in there for the Wii that was hardcoded in. That is apparently the one bit of legal leverage Nintendo has to keep it off Steam, though being Nintendo, they would likely fight it, anyway.
In any case, the key could be a user provided configuration option, or tools for ripping games could do the decryption on their own. Either should keep the code safe from Nintendo being able to win a case. Though again, doesn’t stop Nintendo from trying and exhausting your ability to fight it.
Correct. The license (at least, the one I read for Red Alert) is GPLv3 with some additional stuff. The additional stuff is mostly about not using EA trademarks in your version or showing any connection to EA itself. So it appears that a clean room asset swap would be allowed as long as it includes the title screen.
When I first played Red Alert, it was on a computer with a 6.4GB hard drive, and I had no idea how to fill up that much space at the time. I think we’ll be fine.
Linux, not Windows–Windows provides little that can’t be done on Linux in this space
AMD, not Intel–AMD just has better products at this level (any level at this point, really)
720p–going higher doesn’t provide much at this size except suck battery life and requiring a more powerful GPU
Price
Now, price is partially because Valve can afford to subsidize the cost and expect to make it up on Steam sales. I’d be remiss to ignore how they’re making their money. Still, they’re also able to have a good price because they didn’t try to make it as powerful as it could be, but as powerful as it needed to be.
The techniques you’re thinking of are for documents sent by email or some such. You add innocuous whitespace or typos that are unique to each one, and send them individually. If one leaks, you can match it to the employee who received it. That doesn’t work for screenshots of Slack.
So, Starfield was a disappointment (in my opinion). The story isn’t interesting. The lore and world-building do not make sense. The game mechanics do not mesh together. (And it doesn’t run well on the Steam Deck.)...
Lots, but only a few that are worth a damn. I’ve come to call them “Han Solo Simulators”.
Its a genre that seems to attract a lot of half baked game designers. Make a big universe sandbox where you fly a spaceship to space stations and planets and moons and trade stuff and do pirate shit or anti-pirate shit. Lots of people have this idea, only a few make anything good out of it. Doesn’t seem like it can go wrong, and yet . . .
Battlecruiser 3000 AD is a particularly infamous case of 90s Internet lore. By all accounts, it did eventually patch the game up enough to be decent, but it took years to get there. At release, the game’s installer would crash for most people. However good it might have ended up, the Internet drama was better than the game ever could be. Look up “Derek Smart” if you’re interested.
The X series is one I want to like, but it’s been really buggy for me. Like rage quit when it destroys my progress kind of buggy. I haven’t played X4, though.
No Man’s Sky was an infamous mess at launch. Unlike Battlecruiser 3000 AD, it did eventually change its reputation, but it was a long, hard road. I played it a few years ago and found it uninteresting, but basically playable.
And then there’s Star Citizen. I’ll just leave it at that.
Anyway, the Elite series is probably the most successful for single player or smaller multiplayer, and Eve: Online for massively multiplayer.
Scalpers were basically non existent in the 4xxx series. They’re not some boogieman that always raises prices. They work under certain market conditions, conditions which don’t currently exist in the GPU space, and there’s no particular reason to think this generation will be much different than the last.
Maybe on the initial release, but not for long after.
Nvidia claims the 5070 will give 4090 performance. That’s a huge generation uplift if it’s true. Of course, we’ll have to wait for independent benchmarks to confirm that.
The best ray tracing games I’ve seen are applying it to older games, like Quake II or Minecraft.
That would be the point, yes. Balatro has cards and chips, but chips are just there for keeping points. If Balatro is 18+ for gambling imagery, then so should Solitaire. That would be stupid, so Balatro shouldn’t get it, either.
Right. I feel like they were a self correcting problem all along. They get buried in Sturgeon’s Law and that’s the end of it.
Except for that one guy who tried to copyright claim Steph’s channel. That guy needs something more. Like any kind of consequences at all for false copyright claims.
It’s about the same as the inflation-adjusted PS3 price, but here’s the thing: the PS3 had a difficult first couple of years. If not for the Red Ring of Death, Microsoft could have come out ahead that generation. One thing Sony is good at is capitalizing on its competitors’ mistakes, and combined with price reductions on later models, they pulled out a victory. Being >$750 inflation-adjusted dollars at launch wasn’t why it won.
Given the contemporary examples, they weren’t wrong to think so. Everyone was trying to make a console in the 16/32-bit era.
PC Engine/Turbografx
Phillips CD-i (only sorta a console)
Atari Jaguar
Neo Geo
Amiga CD
Some of these are better than others–I’m fond of the PC Engine–but none can be called successful. Neo Geo is somewhat of an exception because it was used as arcade hardware. Some others here are the butt of jokes. There’s also a bunch of Japanese consoles around this time that go nowhere, and are little more than fodder for retro gaming YouTube channels.
This is the part they’re actually getting at. Not that the fundamental game design is for everyone (which, yes, is what they try and fail at), but rather they’re responding to people who think they’re failing because they put a woman as the protagonist in some game or another.
And I feel like half of that 20 years was based on FOMO. “I better get the next Assassin’s Creed or I’ll miss out”, and then it’s all the same crap but they still sold a million of them. People do eventually wise up to FOMO.
That said, lawyers can send a C&D letter for anything. Doesn’t mean it will hold up in court, but they’re betting the target won’t want to pay that kind of money to fight it.
Nearly 5 years in, PS5 sales remain neck-and-neck with PS4 | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Also noteworthy that not only are PS5 sales behind PS4, but the PlayStation’s competition has almost entirely disappeared, and that hasn’t resulted in more PlayStations sold.
Derek Smart unveils ACE Platform, a multi-blockchain ‘virtual town hall of engagement opportunities’ | Massively Overpowered (massivelyop.com) angielski
Ubisoft says you "cannot complain" it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren't "deceived" by the lack of an offline version (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”...
Nintendo Switch 2 Direct Megathread (www.youtube.com)
Figured it’d be nice to have a spot to talk about this. Link is to the upcoming direct on their channel....
Let's discuss: Grand Theft Auto (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Chrono Trigger Is Timeless (www.dcgameblog.com) angielski
Nintendo has sent a DMCA notice to Ryujinx forks (lemmy.world) angielski
GitHub link to Nintendo’s claim - all the details you need are here...
EA has open sourced a bunch of old Command & Conquer games (github.com) angielski
I’m not well versed in C&C, but it’s always good to see more games open sourced.
Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming (www.theverge.com) angielski
It looks like someone at Activision is leaking Slack screenshots to right-wing X users (www.gamedeveloper.com) angielski
Angry Video Game Nerd 8-bit - Announcement Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
GTA VI Might Inspire Other AAA Developers to Price Their Games at $100 (80.lv) angielski
After shutting down several popular emulators, Nintendo admits emulation is legal (www.androidauthority.com) angielski
Are there any games like Starfield? angielski
So, Starfield was a disappointment (in my opinion). The story isn’t interesting. The lore and world-building do not make sense. The game mechanics do not mesh together. (And it doesn’t run well on the Steam Deck.)...
Nvidia Announces RTX 50's Graphic Card Blackwell Series: RTX 5090 ($1999), RTX 5080 ($999), RTX 5070 Ti ($749), RTX 5070 ($549) (www.theverge.com) angielski
Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Balatro is rated PEGI-18 and Among Us inspires disgruntled people with medical needs. What other video games have been secretly eroding the very fabric of American society?
Title.
PEGI gives Balatro an 18+ rating for gambling imagery angielski
Clown emojis all around
Sniper Elite Resistance dev defends asset reuse - “if they’re there to use, why not use them?” (www.videogamer.com) angielski
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"The father of PlayStation" says everyone at Sony thought the PS1 would fail when it was first pitched (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Ubisoft's Board is Launching an Investigation Into The Company Struggles (insider-gaming.com) angielski
This is going to be one of those “Ubisoft investigates Ubisoft and found that Ubisoft did nothing wrong at Ubisoft”-situations, isn’t it?
Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, Inc. (www.nintendo.co.jp) angielski