Not the first democracy, debatably the first representative democracy out of a liberal revolution, by a couple of years. One of the first written constitutions.
But you know the big difference in how the US handles democracy? It has sacralized its foundational moment. France got there at the same time, and they're on the fifth full refresh. There are vanishingly few examples in the world of liberal democracies that haven't updated their systems in a major overhaul at least once. The same exceptionalism that leads to the debatable-at-best "first democracy" factoid makes it impossible to fix the very obvious flaws in the system.
I do agree that it's weird to have lived through Bush and 9-11 and Iraq and now think of it as a quaint fun little thing. We all protested and felt righteous and Stweart was on TV when it was cool and fresh to do political comedy that way and it seemed like rock bottom.
In fairness, the headlines written around this were generally atrocious, save a few (shout out to IGN and the original reporter, which may or may not have been techradar). Sure, in most of those you could read a more complete quote inside, but... staying at the headline isn't just a gamer thing. Clickbait is dangerous for a reason.
And also in fairness, the point he's making is still not great. I mean, he's the guy in charge of their subscription service, so I wouldn't expect him to be too negative on the idea, but he's still saying that it's a future that will come. Not that all models will coexist, but that a Netflix future for gaming is coming.
But yeah, gamers can be hostile without justification and often default to treating every relationship with the people making the games as an antagonistic or competitive one, which is a bummer. In that context, letting this guy talk was clearly a mistake.
No, that's where the service provider's backups are stored. I don't have the ability to make my own. That's a huge stretch and very tortured logic. And even if I went for it, by not being able to make backups at my pleasure I'm still being impacted, so... still, by definition, a negative impact on the paying customer that people pirating the same media don't have. They just Ctrl C Ctrl V that stuff.
I would have to sanity check that math, honestly. I am so sporadically in so many of my media subs that if we counted by watched items as opposed to all items you get access to it may break even.
That said, I'd be lying if I said I don't have BluRays still shrink-wrapped that I haven't watched, so I guess it does cut both ways.
Yeah, I thought we had figured this out after Twitter. Or Reddit.
FWIW, I did not remove my subscription, but I did respond to the recent price bump by downgrading to a lower tier, and we're still sharing it (if they ever shut us down for that I'm certainly not paying a second sub, but so far the locations are close enough and it's used rarely enough in one of them that it's never been an issue).
The big thing that I did was to go back to physical media and home streaming. Boycotts won't work, but that? That might. At least it'll make it less likely for physical media to be fully eliminated as an option.
Oh, it makes sense. I think there's a place for subscription services, absolutely.
I don't think a transition to subscription as the default model for gaming makes sense, though. Which was the point of the question and the implicit goal in the answer. And even if it did make practical sense (if people "got used to it") it'd be bad for the art form and the industry on the aggregate.
Alright, I was only gently pointing it out because what he actually said is still a pretty bad take, but at this point it's just annoying.
No, he didn't say that.
He said that gaming subscriptions won't take off UNTIL gamers get used to not owning their games. Wihch... yeah, it checks out.
The all-subscription future already sucks, can we at least limit our outrage to the actual problem? I swear, I have no idea why gaming industry people ever talk to anybody. Nothing good ever comes of it.
Yeah, and it can get stuck in customs. It's a good thing to do if you're there for a bit, even for a layover, but it's harder to buy. Still, man, for that price gap even if you get taxed you'd probably be at worst flat with the official release. That's a 30% hike, plus 10% you're losing in the currency exchange. It's a lot.
I'd maybe shop around. That can't last forever, and a cursory search right now already shows some offers with 50 euros cut off that sticker price (in Amazon.de, for one). Of course that's also for the worst model, so... you know, modern phone pricing.
They specifically said "sub 6 inch display", this is 5.9 inches. I'm meeting the brief here.
I mean, the other answer to that is that he could go for the vanilla iPhone, but they also said they want an Android phone, so this is the smallest thing with fairly high specs you can find right now and it's stil a couple fractions of an inch smaller than the small iPhone.
Woof. Depending on what bucks those bucks are that's... a weirdly large, unjustified difference. I didn't know that was the case. I don't get it, for that money you could just order one from the US and have it shipped. Even with customs fees you'd break even.
Still, that's a lot and the region differences suck, but given the lack of options it's still ticking boxes. Plus flagships are like 1.5k these days, somehow, so... that's midrange pricing? I don't know how we got to that being midrange pricing, but apparently that's where we are.
Since it's narrow it gets you most of the way there in terms of grip. You still have to wiggle it and claw your way to the top of the screen, so if you're sensitive to that you may still miss a shorter phone, I suppose.
And yeah, no punchole, expandable storage, front facing speakers, a headphone jack and expandable storage (that you can hot swap, no less). It's an amazing collection of common sense features you can't get in any other flagship. I hope they stick with it for a while.
This basically, which at that point rolls all the way back around to piracy, so hey, if you find an easier way to access a comparable file maybe it's all shades of grey anyway.
If they have access to remove the media from your library on their end, then it's a license and not a purchase.
That doesn't mean they don't owe you access to it, though. The fact that there isn't a word for "I've acquired perpetual access even if I can't back up the file itself" doesn't mean you shouldn't have the right to continue to access the media. Or to demand that right to be upheld in court, for that matter.
I mean, you can "buy" stuff in Amazon Prime Video off service. Unlike Netflix or other platforms, they will let you "buy or rent" streaming movies, which is the same as finding the movie on the Amazon storefront and buying the digital copy instead of a physical copy.
Now, does that mean they won't yank it? Not really. A digital license is a license, not a purchase. Is the word "buy" or "own" inaccurate? I'm hoping not, because like the Sony thing showed, platforms are desperate to not have the courts improvise what rights they owe the buyers on digital purchases.
I'm still buying my movies in 4K BluRay, though. And working on ripping all of them for streaming at home, now that I finally have the space.
Not the first democracy, debatably the first representative democracy out of a liberal revolution, by a couple of years. One of the first written constitutions.
But you know the big difference in how the US handles democracy? It has sacralized its foundational moment. France got there at the same time, and they're on the fifth full refresh. There are vanishingly few examples in the world of liberal democracies that haven't updated their systems in a major overhaul at least once. The same exceptionalism that leads to the debatable-at-best "first democracy" factoid makes it impossible to fix the very obvious flaws in the system.
I do agree that it's weird to have lived through Bush and 9-11 and Iraq and now think of it as a quaint fun little thing. We all protested and felt righteous and Stweart was on TV when it was cool and fresh to do political comedy that way and it seemed like rock bottom.
Good times.