Being the market leader, Sony will have a much harder time making larger acquisitions than MS did, and this ABV merger didn’t exactly breeze through.

It’s hard to block mergers based on a company involved being a monopoly if none of the companies involved are monopolies or will become monopolies.

Regulators have to come up with a different set of rules to block “large but not monopolistic mergers” without also just effectively protecting the actual leader in a given industry from competition.

That’s not what “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” means. You just came up with three numbered items to correspond to the fact that there are three words in the phrase.

That applies to open software standards, what does it have to do with buying cash cows?

It has no real meaning anymore. It’s now a phrase people throw around as effectively a meme. You won’t get anything but a wrong answer to this question.

IIRC they did sign the deal that let’s the continue to get releases for a couple more years…

It is ten more years. If Sony isn’t able to come up with a decent alternative in a decade, well, I won’t exactly feel sorry for them.

You have the PSVR2 which is comparably priced but requires a PS5 console. You have the Valve Index which is $1k.

So, it may not be “cheap” but it’s definitely cheaper than some of the alternatives.

Only problem was that I forgot to get a memory card so I couldn’t actually play the games that my coworker gave me, but hey it works!

That’s an interesting take on “works” for a game console. Being able to play games seems like a pretty important piece.

What information in the leaks do you think prove how dangerous Microsoft is?

I’m not really talking about preferences. I’m asking more about the niche that games like Skyrim/Fallout/Starfield fill. If it is so simple to just make “Skyrim but better” or “Starfield but better” then where are all the games from other developers that are just that?

Or from another angle. Where is the Path of Exile for Skyrim?

It’s like that that old programming joke:

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.

I actually backed the original Kickstarter.

If it’s close, when is the release date?

The small improvements they have made in Starfield are alright, but it feels like the bar was set with Skyrim and they can’t even really match something from 12 years ago.

Or maybe game development is just hard? Why haven’t other “better” developers created a game that improves upon Skyrim?

Look at Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s “small improvements” to the type of game that Larian has been working on for many years at this point.

Bethesda’s seeming disdain for anything that could be considered a fun and seamless mechanic is frustrating.

Or that the technology available doesn’t really make this type of setup reasonable?

Star Citizen is trying to do this and it’s been how long with how much money spent?

Would Starfield be a better game if they sacrificed the quests/content/companions and just made a game that was more like Elite Dangerous or No Man’s Sky?

That’s fun, that’s what I wanted, and I don’t think it’s really expecting that much.

I mean, CIG has been trying to make a game that does what you want for the last 13 years and they aren’t close yet. Maybe it’s not as easy as you want it to be?

No one is really posting content to any of the alternatives really. Maybe if you are really into crypto-hype or other very niche topics, there will be a little content. But not much.

To be honest, I never use Wordpad.

Either I just need to edit something quick, where Notepad excels, or in going to use just about any other option for text editor or word processor.

It’s surprising to see how much attention this is getting. And I can’t help but think how many people commenting about it actually use it to any real degree.

I think you can explain much of the lack of lower scores by the fact that the games that would get lower scores are also likely to be ignored by just about any established reviewer.

There are thousands of games released every year that a site like IGN will never review. Would you find it valuable for IGN to scour Steam or the Switch eShop for terrible games just to use more of the score scale?

Its alright for people to dislike Dark Souls or not want every game to be a Souls-like. Not too mention that there weren’t really any actual criticism of Dark Souls in the post. Makes the rest of your comment fine of as defensive more than anything.

BG3 is definitely the better roleplaying game.

Only in the context of the specific set-pieces provided within the game though. You have no way to work outside of the very specific rails that BG3 provides for interacting within the game.

If Skyrim is a mile-wide but an inch deep, then BG3 is an inch wide but a mile deep.

Elder Scrolls games don’t really have any direct competition.

Just releasing a slightly improved version of Skyrim would make that game the “ultimate fantasy simulator”.

They are such different games that direct comparisons don’t seem very useful.

Larian is actually a pretty large studio at this point.

I’m excited for Starfield but buying a Bethesda game on release week is probably a bad idea. Let them get a few patches out first.

Both Skyrim and Fallout 4 were fine at launch. Skyrim definitely had some bugs, but the idea that was an unplayable mess on launch is a made-up thing.

Exactly what I was going to point out. Armored Core has always been a relatively niche series, that has never reviewed that well.

The fact that it’s reviewing in the 80s (at least so far) is a marked improvement over previous entries.

…much cheaper blocks can perform the same task just as well.

We don’t actually know this since no one actually test it, just to be clear.

Unless you are going the “My minivan works just as well as Ferrari for driving to work” angle, which isn’t what the high-end tech segment is really about.

It’s called a PC. All consoles are based on them. Develop for PC first… problem solved.

If the goal is to make game development easier, then PC seems the worst possible option to choose.

Still, casual gamers did think Linux couldn’t game.

The parent comment is right. Most people don’t think about Linux. Ask a ‘casual’ Swtich owner what OS the Switch uses, and their answer is probably going to be pretty close to the answer that a similar Deck user would give.

A few Devs decide to be contraian to the praise and then the media decides it a huge backlash.

They are not even criticizing the game.

The opinions are basically either “Smaller studios won’t be able to replicate BG3” and “Not all games/RPGs need to be as deep and long as BG3”.

Honestly, nowadays it feels more like an indie studio is more of an indicator of quality than AAA. Most of the games I buy and enjoy are indie/small studios.

Larian is about as indie/small as Bethesda was when Skyrim released.

WEI prevents ecosystem lock-in through hold-backs
We had proposed a hold-back to prevent lock-in at the platform level. Essentially, some percentage of the time, say 5% or 10%, the WEI attestation would intentionally be omitted, and would look the same as if the user opted-out of WEI or the device is not supported.

This is designed to prevent WEI from becoming “DRM for the web”.

At least this acknowledges that this proposal would in fact be “DRM for the web” if the only thing from preventing it from being that is an additional measure unrelated to the core implementation.

Not to mention, what prevents a future release of the feature either turning the percentage to 0% or removing the hold-back entirely?

I don’t see the value in complaining about things that haven’t happened yet.

Still better than cable ever was. No long term contracts, extra fees on bills, tons of useless channels and tons of ads.

I think people forget how bad cable TV actually is if they haven’t used it for a while.

It’s more the core of how Discord works then anything. The fact that it’s hard for knowledge to persist, leading to channels just being people asking the same questions over and over.

And it’s not really indexable or searchable, so even if people are trying to provide good information, people are going to struggle to find it.

Did nobody read the article?

Doesn’t sound like it. Some people even admitted that straight up.

I don’t see anywhere they are saying that they are getting rid of installed Windows, just providing a different avenue of Windows usage, something to compete with the ChromeOS type of uasge.

“Further than that” meaning banning links in general?

But they can still get news from Facebook, they just won’t be getting it from “news outlets” specifically.

How will Canada be better off?

Isn’t this the opposite of what’s happening? Facebook posts can’t contain links to “actual sources” but can contain “random links”?

Well, they won’t be able to get their news from “news outlets” specifically linked on Facebook. They will still be able to get their news from other sources on Facebook.

Not sure if that’s actually an improvement though.

One of the better examples of form over function. I really disliked actually using this mouse whenever I had to.