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
One of the joys of learning languages is getting to be equally annoyed at anglophones thinking ending words in "o" and "a" is hilarious and at Spanish speakers thinking that adding "ing" to random words counts as English.
I've been increasingly frustrated with clickbaity coverage and headlines. Credit to Polygon for being just as obviously opinionated as Gamesradar but titling and writing their piece way more professionally.
I mean, yeah, Ubisoft's lawyers are arguing that the arguments of a lawsuit against them are wrong, that's hardly surprising. Given that they're being sued for taking down an online game they would certainly argue that they had no obligation to keep the game online indefinitely.
It's an interesting case and there are... creative arguments on both sides, but being mad that Ubisoft would argue that the text of their EULA applies seems so weird.
For the record, and because I'll be hounded for this, I've signed all relevant petitions to request regulation about digital ownership that creates an obligation to provide offline versions or access to server code. I'm all for making it illegal to build planned obsolescence into software. That doesn't mean I'm not bothered with bad journalism that I happen to agree with.
That's nice. Gamecube replicas are a bit of a niche case, but there are plenty of expensive fight sticks that would be great to use if compatible. I guess we'll know for sure once it's out.
Trump raises tariffs on China to 125% but announces 90-day pause for other countries – business live
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I mean I, for one, do appreciate the extremely cheap Chinese imports we are about to receive overe here in sanity land. You think nobody in Europe is buying American cars now? Give it a minute, they'll be giving out BYDs in cereal boxes.
This is true.
It's also true of the partial download carts for Switch 1 that don't include a full playable version of the game in the cart.
Presumably the digital back-compat on the Switch 2 means the Switch will live a lot longer usual for Nintendo platforms, and we don't know if there will be a backwards compatible Switch 3.
But in practice, this is just an iteration of the Switch 1 version of the same thing. It's not great. I avoided both the mandatory download carts and will likely avoid these ones, but it's not a bigger deal than it has been for the past five years or so.
They said it about the DS at the time. It was meant to run in parallel with the GBA as a "premium" thing for adults. They said it about the SNES, too, actually.
This bit of random outrage is fun to me because it's something that has been Nintendo's official stance since the early 90s, but it's swung back around due to Don Mattrick being such a charisma black hole that what used to be the natural, go-to response to "how come the new, more advanced version is more expensive" has now become a genuine snafu.
PR is not about reality, it's about perception.
I genuinely can't tell if milking outrage is more prominent in gaming than elsewhere. I guess not, because... I mean, look at the planet in general, but it does feel like gamers got to that state of mind first and do it best, at least.
So it seems this may just refer to "official support" and the piece of news is at least misinformation-adjacent, but it does make me wonder if there is any forwards compatibility with the Pro Controller. There are plenty of solid alternatives for Switch 1 and that wasn't particularly picky about taking in third party devices.
Not sure if anybody has brought it up in the news deluge.
I'm confused. The article you linked seems to very clearly agree with me:
In terms of performance, the Switch 2 is clearly more powerful than the Steam Deck before we even start talking about cooperation with NVIDIA, DLSS upscaling, and tighter game optimizations possible when developing for a fixed console hardware platform.
I mean, yeah, that tracks and is verifiable. It's a more power hungry APU (although admittedly on a larger node), it has more cores on both the CPU and GPU side, a higher resolution and framerate screen. Storage seems to fall somewhere between the cheaper and more expensive Deck models and, while it has less memory it's also... you know, a console, so there's presumably less overhead and the RAM itself is a bit faster, which is very relevant to APUs. The Switch 2 is built on Ampere, while the Deck is on RDNA 2. Both launched in 2020, but I think it's not controversial to say that Nvidia had the edge on both features and performance for that gen.
It is absolutely true that Nintendo traditionally latched on to older, less performant components paired with hardware investment elsewhere, but the Switch was a huge outlier there. If you consider it against handhelds it stood alone as the single most powerful one. Granted, the Vita was the closest comparison and that was a whole generation behind, but I can't stress enough how outclassed it is against the original Switch. The need to push a TV display from a mobile chipset ended up making the Switch a genuinely beefy handheld.
The Switch 2 is interesting because besides iterating on that requirement it also seems like a very deliberate response to the Deck and PC handhelds. It seems intentionally designed to be competitive against the current set of those. I wouldn't be surprised to find that Nintendo pushed the price and performance up a bit specifically for that reason, frankly. It seems egnineered specifically to not feel outdated at launch, even if it will presumably be outclassed again in a couple of years.
And for the record, I'm not "white knighting" Nintendo. They're famously ruthless, litigious and quirky bordering on unreasonableness. Not white knighting (or grinding an axe against) Valve, either. They're also ruthless and quirky bordering on unreasonableness, although clearly much, much better at PR with core gamers. I am actively hostile towards Nintendo's approach to a number of things (primarily emulation) and to Valve's approach to a number of things (primarily their gig economy approach to game development and their monopolistic tendencies). Not rooting for one of them doesn't mean I'm rooting against either of them, or that I don't acknowledge the things they do well or poorly.
I see what you're saying, but I think sci-fi is in a bit of a different place there. Neuromancer is concerned with what's coming. It's not painting a 2000s of the 80s, it's painting the future of a present.
Predestination is a bit different in that it's a time travel story. In Neuromancer (or Blade Runner, for that matter) the technology is not about extrapolating technology, it's about extrapolating society.
It's not impossible for sci-fi to be coded to a time. I don't think you could make Strange Days today, it's so ingrained into the idea of the end of the millenium and the rise of the Internet. It'd be different even if you kept the setting. A nostalgic look back instead of an anxious look forward.
Neuromancer has the same problem, only on top of everything else it's also just vaguely futuristic, so it's not like the 80s look and feel is integral to the story (in case the endless rehashes of the stories for the past forty years hadn't proven that).
We'll see. The worst case scenario is we're thinking this through more than the people making the actual thing.
I think that's itself a bit of a problem. Is Neuromancer futuristic or retrofuturistic? It's one thing to adapt Dune, which may be from the 60s, but is in such a weird technological tangent it may as well be The Lord of the Rings. Neuromancer is THE FUTURE specifically as seen in the 80s, which now ranges somewhere between nostalgic, prescient and quaint. And actually done right elsewhere in the actual 80s.
I still think it is relevant enough you could get away with making it THE FUTURE as per the 2020s, but then people who envision it like you do (which is legitimate) would feel it's out of place, I suppose.
Look, it's not my job to figure it out, but let's at least agree that if it is doable, it is at least a big, big challenge.
I legitimately thought you were talking about Nintendo hardware there for a while.
As far as we can tell the Switch 2 seems like it's a bit ahead of the Deck, which is on the low end of the current batch of PC handhelds anyway. I don't think the quality of hardware is the differentiating factor here, one way or the other. I also don't think "anemic" was what the Switch felt like at launch. It was somewhere between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One, which was only slightly inadequate for a home console and incredibly bulky for a handheld in 2017. "Not pushing any interesting boundary" is somewhere between extremely opinionated and outright incorrect, quite frankly.
I have to say, it's a bit surprising to see all the hostility from... I don't know who this is. PC master race bros? Steam fanboys? You'd think that last group at least would have some fondness for the Switch, given it effectively invented the entire segment of modern hybrid handhelds. Not that I have a horse in that race, there are pros and cons of both, I own both and I think both are pretty great. The Deck effectively replaced the Switch on my rotation, then it got replaced by a Windows handheld and I assume the mix will lean slightly more towards the console end when then Switch 2 comes out, then swing back when newer PC handhelds come out. I am fine with that.
I find the last point interesting, though. What IS a "cultivated garden" platform? I don't know that I think of Steam in those terms at all. Steam is a software platform that just happens to be tied to someone else's hardware and OS and seems very unhappy about it. From the perspective of a PC user I think Steam's dominance is a problem. For one thing because my storefront of choice is GOG (screw DRM, thanks) and for another because the entire point of an open platform is competition. From the perspective of a console user Steam is... well, not that. It's a PC gaming thing, so I don't see it as direct competition in the fist place. Which I guess is why I'm more weirded out than anything else to see people taking sides this aggressively.
For sure. That said, Batman is on the other end of the spectrum, where a bunch of iterations of THE Batman were already there in the first place. For the most part TAS is conceptually Tim Burton's Batman: The Cartoon, it just so happens that by 1992 you also could pull from multiple generations of comics and shows as well.
The problem with Neuromancer is it doesn't have a definitive, iconic iteration, let alone multiple. The closest you get is Johnny Mnemonic, which definitely isn't it. Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell or The Matrix are all more of a definitive iteration of Neuromancer than anything Neuromancer (besides the book, obviously).
Sorry, I may be too old to know this off the top of my head. They won't let you watch a "not for kids" embed unless you're logged in? Or is that for a separate "sensitive content" flag?
I will acknowledge that when it's tested in court. And I mean internationally.
The notion that copyright is absolute as long as the content is hidden behind any and all DRM is nonsensical, as is the assumption that literally any function not enabled to the user on purpose is illegal to use. I suspect the reason nobody has had to really defend that softmodding their console and dumping their owned keys and carts is legal is that no game maker, Nintendo included, wants to see how that goes in any way that would set a precedent.
I genuinely don't know enough about the project to know if that tracks. As with anything, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until it's an actual thing and see if they figured out something that doesn't seem obvious.
I'm just... you know, also ready for it to suck for all those reasons, too.
Come on, it's a Star Wars Memes forum. We've all seen the thing.
Alright, so this is one of those things where I keep reminding people that Star Wars movie canon and Star Wars franchise canon barely overlap.
The reason Obi Wan gives Luke for lightsabers in the first place is just cool factor, too. Lightsabers just seem classy. Nobody says it's particularly powerful, just that they're old fashioned and "less random and clumsy" than blasters. Luke handles his like a toy, Obi Wan pretty much gives it to him as a memento, he says he "almost forgot" he had it stashed because Luke's dad wanted to hand it to him but his uncle didn't let him. Obi Wan uses one in plain view of people and nobody even goes "Hey, look, a Jedi, I thought they were gone". Hell, they sit down for a pint and a bit of bartering with Han immediately after that. The Empire officers, who at this point clearly don't particularly respect Vader, seem to think he looks like a goofball waving that thing around and making grandiose claims about the power of the Force when they're literally sitting inside a showstopper doomsday device.
All the justifications for how little sense lightsabers make and why only Jedi seem to carry them is after the fact retconning of the barely-coherent implications of the original movie.
I'd be far from the first person to point out that the shot the planet killer beam right past a couple of operators with no guardrails or anything. It isn't even clear how they got up there in the first place, frankly. You can even see them flinch when the beam goes past them.
Clearly the Star Wars universe has never been big on health and safety.
Be honest, you were ready to do some hounding, saw that tackled preemptively and decided to pivot. I can see the hounding intent from here. Those ears are so droopy you're becoming a better boy as we speak.