But it is instructive on what FOSS development can be. Parts of the development are made open source to encourage adoption, then jet parts aren’t to ensure that forks aren’t successful.

The Deck basically validated the handheld industry

I feel like the Nintendo Switch did that more, since it collapsed its console and portable lines into a single product. A Steam Deck doesn’t look that much different than a Nintendo Switch in its portable form.

To address other points, Microsoft has used Xbox as a trojan house into console gaming, using its PC gaming development to subsidize Xbox development as Sony used its hardware division to subsidize PlayStation development.

The strategic deployment of Xbox on the PC is probably the largest strategic threat to Valve and Steam, which is why Valve developed a way to play Steam games on a self controlled OS.

That already happened with Android.

Successful deployments of Linux for consumers are going to include a DRM app store.

You’re not wrong.

But I point it out because a lot of these decisions to create freer platforms without advertising puts the cost of creation on the creator without a way for them to make money. People want their high quality content without paying for it.

Why should the goal be engagement? Why not have the person provide the media for free via Peertube and accept that capitalism is bad?

Few people want to pay full price for their phone.

I find that most of them hangup when they hear Google Assistant pick up.

How did they gimp it?

You’re also hitting issues with asset creation. You need a larger team to create assets for AAA games than an indie game.

That may be the way consoles go.

We aren’t seeing the kinds of innovation happening in hardware that justifies dropping backward compatibility and the AAA gaming market hasn’t released games in the quantity they did before.

So Sony and Microsoft can update the hardware in a way to maintain backwards comparability and game companies have the option of developing to the current generation only, both generations with different graphics, or the older generation.

England sacrificed a lot for their two world wars and one world cup.

It kind of does.

You get user lock-in as users buy more games, making it so Steam is always a store to buy from. You can’t deplatform from Steam. At that point, you can’t replace Steam with another DRM platform to pay existing games. That creates a large customer base which becomes a must add for vending new games.

It isn’t a hard monopoly, but it helps create a soft monopoly.

There is already a lot of work in generative game design that doesn’t involve AI, including a lot of procedurally generated items. There is also a lot of bad generated designs as the inputs allowed to be changed are not sufficient enough to create enough variance.

The Nintendo 64 was really the last time Nintendo tried competing on hardware specs for the console market.

After that, you had a major electronics company subsidizing hardware to gain market share and a major software company subsidizing development and software graphics tools to be used also on their computer systems as the two different competitors.

Google publishes an API for different transit agencies to follow. If you can parse that, you’ll have the same information Google has.

Note that not all transit agencies provide the same data.

You can do that without AI.

Video games in general were able to develop within walled gardens.

It feels like the problem with consumer grade VR has less to do with being in a walled garden and more to do with not being a compelling product.

Especially since Paradox already destroyed SimCity and is publishing Life by You.

What?

I would have upgraded if they didn’t include the UI changes. I don’t know why Microsoft keeps trying to make these big UI changes given that they have a built-in audience of power users that have optimized since XP.

I’m honestly surprised Valve doesn’t buy out the company.

If anything, I see this as Microsoft trying to kill what the Steam Deck can become.

Right now, the Steam Deck is one of the best selling Linux computers. You are also starting to see other manufacturers look at the Steam Deck and compete against it in hardware while using Valve’s free software. From that, it isn’t much of a jump to putting Valve’s Linux stack in desktops and laptops.

Honestly, it doesn’t make sense at this point. Warner Bros Discovery is burning the place down to sell the remains as charcoal.

Guess kids are doing to have to be happy with Pregnant Elsa Spiderman Joker Grocery Store Abortions.

It does when it is one person trying to get a group of people trying to switch platforms.

But that’s a problem with a lot of AAA developers. You can’t make a AAA game that isn’t a Skinner box for a price that players will pay.

Part of it is that modern games are getting too expensive to make, especially with all the assets to the fidelity given by current technology.

Samsung wants to make its Android devices look different from stock Android to help get user lock in.

Chinese manufacturers follow Samsung’s UI since it has become the premium Android product in a lot of markets.

Do they? I wouldn’t be surprised if AWS even charges Amazon.com full retail for hosting. The point is the company has a lot of different business units that report up to the CEO, and business units generally act like mini companies.

The accounting of charging full retail to other business units is a lot cleaner than giving preferred rates and making it harder to understand the finances of what is going on with the different business units.

A CEO may be willing to operate a business unit at a loss for strategic reasons, but they have to understand that said business unit is costing the company money.

Why should AWS subsidize Twitch?

From the point of view of AWS, they make money whether they host Twitch or some other streamer. If Twitch can’t make money paying retail hosting, the decision of what to do with it has to be made by people who control Twitch.

Then that is kind of fucked up. WotC is the part of the company keeping Hasbro afloat right now. Activist investors had wanted to spin off WotC because the rest of the company is performing that badly.

Firing from WotC makes no sense.

And it is possible there may not be any firings at WotC. This is the only well performing part of Hasbro.

It is more that iOS isn’t the market leader. If iOS had Android’s marketshare, Apple would have lost its case.

There are a lot of idiots out there. It is likely that they are trying to design for them.

Kind of.

SimTower really leaned into building traffic control. You would need to do things like build commercial spaces to get escalators, then demolish them to artificialy increase the number of floors you didn’t need elevators for.

Project Highrise is mainly an economic sim. You need to plan out expansion to meet contracts or get to sustainability before running out of money. The argument regarding elevators in that game is more when you can afford them or you are forced to buy them because the building needs them.

I disagree. I feel more like Steam has been focusing on being able to decouple from Windows. The hardware it has developed was paired with other initiatives to move beyond the Windows desktop. They are now at a point where they’ve basically created their own Switch that can run without Windows.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Steam finally makes consumer Linux on the desktop a thing.

Got to hide the porn games.

Or it would be made by an indie studio.

But it looks like they did incorporate DLC into the sequel; it just isn’t obvious. The current implementation of extractive versus value added industry looks better than what they did with Industries. The quantity of different transit types also feels like an equivalent to a couple of DLC for the original game. I also feel like the sequel’s approach to power would also be most of a DLC for the original.

It isn’t perfect, but it looks like Collosal Order at least implemented a lot of lessons learned from the original game. It doesn’t seem as empty as C:S at launch.