Saudi Arabia, among others, was criticized for its campaign in Yemen, its oppressive islamist policies including executions, and its role in the region. It is similarly protected by Western interests.
I flirted with journalism before getting my degree in CS.
It's not an exaggeration to say that the faculty and many of the students were almost proudly "bad at math" and basically bad with tech too, other than learning the basics of a Macbook.
Doesn't have to be that way and many journalists are smart, great people, but there's a weird self fulfilling culture when it comes to tech. Not totally sure about how tech focused writers would be similar or different.
“In many cases, they got into journalism to stay away from math.” Journalists love to joke about how we suck at math.
Edit 2: I guess I was bringing up my experience to be an example of how many journalists do not have a strong grasp of technical concepts and sometimes are almost proud of that. So it doesn't surprise me that many may have struggled with Mastodon.
That being said, that attitude is far closer to the average user than, say, the user base of this platform, which is likely far more tech savvy. Streamlined user experience is not a bad thing if you desire mainstream use and is something that could be improved, though Mastodon has been making strides in that regard.
No I think this is worse. It's not a deal. These are all first party studios now essentially, through nothing but the purchasing power of a trillion dollar company. They will and can be as locked as Microsoft prefers.
There were 360 deals before PS4/PS5 deals. There were Xbox One deals even during Sony dominance, like Tomb Raider. Sony is just one player, but the others are not angels.
Nothing here stops those deals from continuing.
What has happened is that the second or third largest third party publisher's studios and "IP" now belong to a first party publisher.
And I predict more acquisitions, and thus consolidation, will come from Sony.
Grandmas, young people. Most people are notoriously far from financially savvy. Many overpay or fail to track their subscriptions.. If you didn't know at least one person paying for a subscription they didn't actually use in the last month I would be surprised.
You have to keep up with your gaming habits long term to keep up with the subscription costs, basically never replay anything (especially not long RPGs that can take you months to finish), not waste subscription time playing non-GamePass games, or remember to cancel. And Microsoft, like most subscription services, are banking on people maintaining subscriptions they aren't fully using.
No subscription deal is ever a good financial decision long term and companies know that. Most people keep their subscriptions running and will end up paying more long term.
That's not even getting into the "ownership" vs renting aspect.
Most of them have already been named but the ones I'd choose are:
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
The Last Guardian
Journey
The Last of Us
The Last of Us Part 2
Half Life 2
Bioshock
Mass Effect 2
God of War (2018) / Ragnarok
Kentucky Route Zero
Limbo / Inside
Abzu
And similarly RDR2
Edit: I could also potentially consider Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. Similar to the other first person games I listed, they designed their environments so that certain features are prominent as you move forward into them, which to me qualifies as this type of "cinematography" or framing we're talking about in games
I have and it's good and cool.
Well maybe not gatekeeping. But hating corporations...