Valve when they opened pre-orders for the Steam Deck
Weirdly so is Nintendo these days.
In any case I'm not sure what "percentage of units sold/manufactured" implies there. Everybody has some stock of their products. Selling through your stock isn't much of a metric unless you're doing limited runs on purpose. If Valve was selling these faster they'd manufacture them faster.
I mean...
Not to take anything away from the Steam Deck, it's a very cool piece of hardware, but the Switch 2 beat its lifetime sales in what? Three weeks? I'm not even saying it's better, but I think people should get a sense of the scope of PC handhelds in general compared to consoles and the Switch specifically. And I say that as the owner of multiple handhelds, the Deck included.
3 Km is what? A half hour walk? I've lived in multiple European countries in my life and never been that far from a supermarket.
I mean, I definitely have walked that much daily. My longest walk to work I can remember was maybe 40 minutes. In some places where I'd take public transportation for like 20-30 min I've walked for an hour when I felt like it instead.
For groceries I don't think I'd take that with me that far walking unless it could go in my backpack. But seriously, if you don't have a shop in that radius around you in Europe you need a car anyway because you're out in the middle of nowhere.
But also, in European supermarkets you can normally get big grocery hauls delivered that far away. Just go there, buy your stuff, pay, book a delivery. Lots of old people who can't carry heavy weights do it. They still go to the shop, though.
Some are full games, some are an empty cartridge with a key to download the game (which you can resell but not download if the servers go down). Some are a box with a code inside printed on a piece of paper (which gets associated to your account and you can't resell or download without servers).
There is a warning on the box for the two that don't include the playable game, but the fact that you need to know that or read the warning is a bit of a problem. And I don't particularly like the idea that Nintendo is deliberately confusing the issue to make people believe that buying the game in a box has no advantages.
I like the Switch 2 overall, but some of the weirdness they've done to make game licenses and physical games more complicated kinda sucks for reasons both intended and unintended.
Nah, they did it with Youtube videos.
But on the underlying point of "everybody is freaking out about AI things that good old big data had been doing for years with zero pushback" I very strongly agree.
Nah, some thoughts.
But not everything is black and white. And in the spectrum of grey there are plenty of in-game sales that are better than the alternative.
Again, I would much rather buy the characters one by one and have the all-in-one box come out later than have to wait for the big box and pay full price for it.
I am genuinely baffled about why you think that's worse than "pay me for the game every month or I take it away". I am even more baffled by how you think that distinction is somehow logical beyond personal preference. Your being adamant about this doesn't make it make sense.
What's "plenty"? 50%? 40%? 10%?
I know 100% of GOG games are DRM-free, on Steam not so much.
I think people believe that if a specific third party DRM vendor is not listed on the Steam store page then the game has no DRM, but that's not the case.
I wouldn't consider pretty much any Steam game DRM-free or yours-to-own at all by default in that they do not provide an offline installer. You can remove the need to have Steam running after the first download in some games through relatively trivial ways of bypassing Steam checks, but if you want to keep them independently of Steam you still have to store a loose files install of the game, which may or may not like to be portable. Utimately having easy to remove DRM and having no DRM aren't the same thing.
Also, no, definitely not a longer ETA than Switch 2 physical games. A longer ETA than Switch 2 physical cart keys, but you can also resell those, so I guess different pros and cons. I really don't like people jumping onto the idea that all Switch 2 physical releases aren't full physical releases. It plays Nintendo's game of blurring the lines between physical and digital releases. Full cart releases, including Nintendo first party releases, are full physical games and will work indefinitely with what you get in the box.
I don't "delight in their exploitation", I am one of the people who buy this stuff.
I am not a victim just because you decide I am. I have some say in this.
So hell yeah, bait me, daddy. To this day, Dragon Ball FighterZ is probably the best gaming experience I've ever had. I was there at ground floor, bought every character, watched every tournament, got competitive. I ended up with three copies of the game, all 100%-ed and with hundreds of hours of play.
And the only thing that bums me out is that they had to bail out of it early, presumably to go make Marvel Tokon.
I will be on ground floor for Tokon, and I will be funding that mouse engine with a bunch of piecemeal cash, I'm sure.
And I need you to listen to me when I tell you that it's going to be on purpose, that I'm not a victim, that I hope that treadmill lasts for a good long while and that the game is good enough to support it.
So please spare me the benevolent outrage. I don't need your protection from my own taste. I would very much appreciate an offline-playable version of the game I can buy with all the DLC down the line, like I did for Marvel vs Capcom 3 or Street Fighter IV, and thanks to the weirdly wholesome interaction between developers and the FGC I may actually get that at some point to support tournament play. But otherwise? Nobody is complaining. You can go save somebody else.
And hey, I say this being a big fan of single player games, and a big supporter of physical media and game preservation. But you come here to tell me that some of my favourite games —and I'm talking game-changing experiences I cherish deeply— should have been illegal and I just don't know better? Yeah, not gonna fly, Hillary.
Wait, in what world is a subscription a "rational consumer purchasing decision" where buying characters for a fighting game if you want them as they come out is not?
I would prefer to pay for in-game content of any kind, cosmetics included, over paying a subscription for a game. Any day. Especially if the content is characters, as is the case in LoL or Street Fighter.
And yeah, I bought three 3D Street Fighter games. And a bunch of characters for each. Even a costume or two. I am extremely on board with that. Money extremely well spent, as far as I'm concerned.
Hell, the SF6 community at the moment is begging for more cosmetics. They just announced a handful of horny-ass swimsuit costumes and people went ballistic. It's not my bag, but if people like them and they know what they're buying who the hell are you to tell them they're wrong, let alone that it should be illegal?
I mean, it's a straightforward enough transaction. You think bikini Cammy with tan lines is hot and will pay some money for that skin. I get subsidized by your teenage hormones and keep playing the game I like. Win/win in my book.
That's the problem with this train of thought. There's some stuff where you and I agree there are bad practices and we can probably agree on some common sense regulation for them. But if you're going to come at me with a maximalist approach that boils down to "games I don't like shouldn't exist" we're going to disagree.
Which, if nothing else, is a good reason for regulation of creative products to be relatively loose whenever possible. I was not on board with Hillary wanting to ban Mortal Kombat in the 90s because she didn't like hearts being ripped out and I'm not on board with people wanting to ban free to play games now. It made sense to have age ratings in the 90s and it makes sense to have that and other common sense regulations now.
There aren't anywhere near enough of us here for there not not be an "overarching culture and ethos". There are few places on the Internet more ideologically consistent than this, frankly. Self-selection is a powerful force.
Yeah, no.
I like a bunch of games that do this. I've liked games that do this for 40 years.
I mean, technically you just banned all arcade games that ever existed. I liked a bunch of those.
And I like a bunch of free to play games. I spent a bunch of time playing Hearthstone. I'm gonna say that at least some of the millions of people in LoL would like to keep playing what they're playing. I am looking forward to a bunch of new characters in Street Fighter 6. I kinda don't want to go back to the days where I had to buy a second full price copy of Street Fighter 2 just to get access to 4 new characters.
I get that it sounds good to say this when thinking about the worst parts of the industry, but... yeah, no.
I think from the game development side there are pros and cons. There are games that struggle to demand a high enough sticker price that do better under a subscription service.
The problem is that, much like subscriptions elsewhere, these are deliberately underpriced and used as a loss leader to sink competitors and the direct purchase market, so they aren't priced reasonably and it's unclear what the money flow towards creators is supposed to be.
And it'd be one thing if the money was flowing at all, but in the current industry, with Microsoft shedding people left and right while holding a ridiculous amount of IP, both active and inactive... well, it's not a great look for the industry as a whole to be dumping content below cost for the sake of a speculative move. And to make matters worse, I don't think that many people know just exactly how much of a money pit Game Pass is.
And that's before the more fundamental issues with ownership and preservation. Which I have strong feelings about, it's just that they happen to be so strong that I'm typically the one to remind people you don't own your Steam games, either. Would certainly like a fix for that, too.
I mean, the text say the guy honked for going "70 in a 50".
If you take it at face value, the person posting is the asshole and a terrible driver endangering everybody on the road.
That'd be great if it didn't disagree with all available evidence. For all of history patriots have been either cannon fodder or abusive tyrants. On a long enough trajectory, almost inevitably nationalists and eventually imperialists.
One could argue that, much like some flavors of political utopia, internationalism has the advantage of never having been implemented in any practical sense, so they have less of a challenge proving their positive impact, but I'll take it anyway.
Regardless, I find that "making their country better" should be a distant second to "making the world better", and perhaps a close third behind "making the crap you have on hand and the lives of those immediately around you better".
Look, I am not a globalist anarchist. I believe in well structured, effective democratic governments. Maybe I was the right age to look at the EU and think that those don't have to be held to the absurd liberal idea of the nation-state,and that wherever a collective of humans have a common interest there should be governance structured to work with other layers of organization to improve things and enforce rights within that sphere. There is nothing magical about the nation-state layer of government that makes it more spiritually attuned to identity or the needs of the people. It's all administrative stuff as far as I'm concerned.
I'm guessing that's the equivalent of a human going on a cruise and spending the entire thing in the buffet table.
I support this. Seagulls belong in the trash anyway and the human versions should be in isolated vessels out in the ocean as well.
Yeah, well, that depends on who gained independence from whom and whether you think you're independent now. Also on whether you'd be indepedendent from any guys who'd like to be independent from the now guys if they were to be independent.
See, political independence for a group requires that you align with the idea the group has of itself. I don't know that I have that overlap with any particular political delineation, so I may need an organization a touch more nuanced than an independent, sovereign nation-state.
Also, gonna need some citation on the lack of creepy vibe, as mentioned above.
Over here the only similar events I can think of are related to joining the military and taking elected office. And there was significant legal arguing about the last one, to the point where opt-outs and strict limitations were added.
We have one of those, and it'd be creepy even if historically it wasn't debatable that the event itself was for the better.
I don't know that I agree with this.
Perhaps coming from a place where the notion of "country" and "nation" don't overlap one to one makes it easier to see. I wouldn't really be able to tell you what "my nation" even is, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I respect and take pride in culture in all its diversity and complexity, in democracy and in the general sense of human decency. Screw all the so-called nations trying to get me to vouch for them as a political unit, though. Political organization is for buiding roads and hospitals, not for pride.
I am very glad it exists. I may have a problem with owning handhelds. I am the perfect mark for this stuff. I have multiple upcoming boutique handheld PCs I'm actively trying not to overspend on.
But they are competitors. If anything, they are about as similar as they've ever been, honestly.
I'm only reacting to they weird Valve mythmaking that presents them as being extremely successful in the meme up top. Yes, the Deck is a very popular PC handheld, it is supposed to account for half-ish of the entire segment and it's been very well priced for what it is, but it isn't a runaway hit in the large scheme of the game industry and game hardware manufacturing.