You mean the one that was hilariously unfinished as a retail release?

I imagine the other factor is the tooling at the chip fabs. When you can make an entire microcontroller that small, for 20 cents apiece, why bother continuing to make less powerful chips? We can just do this now.

Reading the article, they mentioned “medical devices and earbuds” as potential use cases.

Reading another commenter say it has 16k of flash memory and 1k of RAM in a 2x4 pin package, so even if the core has some speed to it…what exactly are you going to achieve with that?

Other than being 32-bit it’s not too far from the specs of an ATTINY85. I have a couple of those kicking around to play with, it’s 8k of flash, 512 bytes of RAM and 512 bytes of EEPROM and with an external oscillator it can be clocked at up to 20 MHz.

Let’s take my cordless router as an example. It has a brushless motor that can turn at ~20,000 RPM. The microcontroller would have to be able to read the shaft position sensor and make changes to the H-bridge or whatever circuit is driving the motor two if not four times per revolution. How many machine instructions do you think each of those operations takes? Ten? It also has to at least occasionally look at the speed selector to vary the motor RPM, and is probably monitoring the battery or communicating with the battery pack’s own controller to prevent the nine or ten ways you can kill lithium cells by using them.

You’re probably approaching the limit of what you can do with 16k of flash, 1k of memory and 6 IO pins.

It’s going to be about equivalent to the ATMEGA328P you get on a garden variety Arduino can do, albeit with a lot less IO. You’re probably looking at the speed controller in a power tool or the onboard computer of a Qi charger or something. In a lot of cases, you just need something that can run a few lines of C.

I am reminded of my favorite moment from The Modern Rogue, on the subject of implantable RFID chips:

Jason: “Can I crush it up and snort it up my nose?”

Bobick: “If we made a list of things you could do, that would be on the list.”

What a fucking waste of time this must have been.

At some point you’re going to struggle to put a capable x86 machine in a device that small.

“We’d prefer you didn’t use the word “Source” in the game title. You wanna sell Black Mesa on Steam?”

Valve has made an emasculatingly large amount of money this way. Following in the footsteps of Id Software, Valve has been very open with their development tools. I don’t know about the very earliest copies but the ZOMG GOTY edition of the original Half Life included its SDK on the disc. Counter Strike and Team Fortress started out as mods that Valve just…hired.

Releasing the tools to their customer base and then hiring the cream that rises to the top is a strategy I struggle to get mad at.

Subnautica 2 will be optional co-op.

I think he started doing that with Lichdom: Battlemage.

I think I watched the Zero Punctuation episode on it. Was that before or after he started pronouncing colons as dry heaves?

No, I do not pre-order games. I have joined some early access campaigns for games I was very interested in, like Kerbal Space Program and Satisfactory, but…generally “pre-order” is something the BIG studios that are all owned by Microsoft now do, they don’t need the funding to get the game done. Meanwhile, Subnautica wouldn’t have made it to 1.0 without their early access campaign.

Especially now that games are often distributed via internet download rather than physical disc or cartridge, it’s not a matter of making sure you can get a copy. The last game I pre-ordered was Majora’s Mask.

Are they finally shipping them? They announced that phone like 647 years ago.

Been playing a game called Buckshot Roulette, came out in 2023. You play Russian Roulette. With a pump action shotgun.

My phone is already slim. Most of it is a quarter inch thick. It makes it hard to hold already.

I’m not sure how you arrive at that conclusion, “most people already have a TV so it’s not considered an additional purchase, a computer monitor almost always is.”

If you put yourself in the shoes of an average parent Christmas shopping for their 9 year old at some point in the last 30 years, well there’s a Playstation 2 for $299, a controller is included, a memory card is $40, and then we’ll buy 3 games for $60 each, so that’s about $520. We’ll hook it up to the living room TV we already own, it comes with the cable we need to do that, that’s all we need to buy. Or, let’s go over to the computer store and buy a gaming PC. We chose the PS2 era so ~2002, we’re looking at a Windows XP machine with probably a Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of RAM, a 256GB hard drive, a CD-RW drive and a DVD-ROM drive, plus an earlier Nvidia graphics card. Buy it from HP, Compaq, Dell or someone like that, you’re probably looking at $800 to $1000 for the PC itself, then you’re going to need to buy a computer monitor because the graphics card probably only has VGA out and your TV doesn’t have VGA in, so that’s another few hundred bucks you’re going to spend. It likely ships with a basic keyboard and mouse so you’ll get by with those.

Here’s a picture of a computer catalog circa 2000 of Pentium III grade systems advertising prices just shy of $1500 AFTER a $500 discount for a complete desktop setup, probably including the OS and probably some shovelware. And now it’s time to buy some games.

So if you started with the Playstation, you’d have to spend a thousand dollars on a television before you broke even on cost with an equivalent era gaming PC and accoutrements. Oh and you’re going to have to set up the OS and install the games you buy from CD, which has a chance of just not working at all because Windows is flaky. Oh no, that Windows 98 era game that’s still on store shelves in 2002 doesn’t work on Windows XP because of something called NT, you don’t know what that means and little Joshua is pissed. Maybe I should have just bought him a Furby.

===

That said, I am a PC gamer, in fact I’m a Linux gamer. I’m typing this on my Ryzen 7700X/Radeon 7900GRE system with a 34 inch 1440p 144Hz monitor and 5.1 surround sound system. I play some hardware intensive games like Satisfactory, I also do my CAD design work on this box. It’s a vastly superior toy to any game console ever made and it’s also a profoundly useful tool.

I felt the need to reach back to the PS2 era because I don’t believe the current crop of game consoles offers the same value proposition. As I think you’re trying to point out, TV and movies nowadays are fucktrash and people are abandoning them, and it’s increasingly likely you don’t own a TV at all because why? The consoles are getting more expensive even though they are still sold as loss leaders, and their making everything they can into a subscription, they’re gonna wring the cash out of you somehow.

If someone with no AV equipment at all asked ME how to get into PC gaming, I’m gonna recommend a Steam Deck. It’s got everything you need to start playing, no accessories required, excellent UX, repairable hardware, can run LibreOffice, you can plug it into a monitor or television when/if you get one, and you don’t have to be a lizard people oligarch to afford it. Oh and at this exact moment in history it isn’t the flickering stub of a once tall candle with its successor waiting in the wings like the Nintendo Switch.

For most of the history of home video gaming, a television was primarily purchased for viewing broadcast, cable or satellite TV programming and/or watching movies on tape or DVD. A household that was going to buy a video game machine almost certainly already had at least one television and a game console would be one of the things attached to it. The investment would be considered already made.

That has been true of PC gaming for very small stretches of its existence; PCs have rarely worked on the living room couch so you usually set up a desk scenario with a dedicated monitor. The average PC buyer of the last 30 years would buy a monitor along with the computer.

Yes, if you have no AV equipment at all and want to get into video games you will have to buy some kind of monitor. The typical unwashed mass who has absolutely no AV equipment and wants to play video games will likely buy a Nintendo Switch because he hasn’t heard of a Steam Deck.

We’re talking about the Japanese domestic market, right?

So? How many people bought a Switch to play Breath of the Wild and basically nothing else?

People have been buying Madden and Call Of Duty reliably for decades now. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or cheap, there are people who identify as “a person who buys Madden and Call Of Duty.”

Thoughout history a typical gaming machine could run you over $1000, game consoles often cost under $400. Consoles are very often sold as loss leaders to promote software sales, PCs are not. Oh and that’s just the cost of the box itself; a console is usually designed to attach to a television which has built-in speakers and consoles usually have at least one controller packed in. Computer monitors are sold separately as are any sound equipment. Normie PCs like Dell Inspiron Basic Plus machines might come with a keyboard and mouse but gaming PCs sometimes don’t because they expect you’re going to buy premium peripherals. You’ve got a desk to put this on, right?

Oh also there just isn’t much of a PC gaming culture in Japan. It may be increasing now but in the land of Nintendo, Sega and Sony they play console games.

On the other hand, a PC is good for things that aren’t gaming, like work or something.

It is a video game console that I have ever seen.

Well, if you would like to learn about and explore Linux as an alternative to Windows, I would be glad to answer any questions you have. I’ve been using Linux as my main or only operating system for all of my work and play for 12 years now.

There are a tremendous number of people out there who do dislike Windows, but have no idea what to do about it. They see their computer’s operating system as an intrinsic part of it kind of how iOS is kind of immutably baked into an iPhone. They don’t really have a grasp on what an operating system is or how to install one, and even if told they’d be paralyzed with fear over the risk of breaking something.

git: 'gud' is not a git command. See 'git --help'.

I think the bowtie goes a bit better with the duck’s inherent ridiculousness.

That would be very on brand for an Aperture Science-like setting.

I know it’s correct but reading “Microsoft’s Gabe Newell” actually made my eye twitch.

Car companies like Ford do that sometimes; what the fuck does the LS badge on my S10 mean? I think it means it has carpet.

When I finished my first run of Subnautica, something definitely came over me. I ran around in my base cleaning up, I organized all my spare food and water in a cabinet “for the next person stranded here,” I released the fish in my alien containment, said farewell to my cuddlefish, parked my Seamoth in the moon pool, turned the lights out in the Cyclops, the whole bit. An amazing adventure was at an end.

Every game in the Half Life series was a corridor.

Which feels a little wild to someone who was “there at the time.” Op For was the one that got the praise at the time for having the cool new weapons and interesting new enemies and such, Blue Shift had normal Half Life weapons, basic armor pickups and I guess some cool level design. Plus I think there’s still backlash against the HD models that came with Blue Shift.

I think it got easier to dismiss the Gearbox expansion packs as non-canon when basically the only thing they kept from them was Barney’s last name.

It may be The Algorithm reacting to my search history but when it shows me Half-Life content it’s often centered around Half-Life 2 or Portal. I don’t get “Cut unreleased content from an old build of Opposing Force.”

I think one thing that might be a factor is, Op For and Blue Shift don’t pose more questions than they answer. Half-Life still has some mystery to it, there’s a lot of intrigue to it, people want to know more about the setting.

Tangentially related note: I had an idea for a video game but no one will ever make it. You almost have to glom onto an existing project. Imagine a normal open world sandbox game like GTA 4 or something, and the normal game is there, but if you pay close attention some of the NPCs are a little weird, and if you follow them there’s a WHOLE OTHER, BIGGER STORY.

Problem with that is you have to make an entire game to hide the “real” game in, and what you want to bet it would be found by people going through the game files rather than playing.

I hit the “Okay we have solved video game graphics” moment when they zoomed in on the hair on Aloy’s face from Horizon: Peasant’s Quest or whatever it was called. Like okay we don’t need to try any harder than this.

Wait are we talking “Ah they took my freakin’ kidney!” Charlie the Unicorn?

The other day I was thinking about the movie Scrooged with Bill Murray, and how during one of the Scenes of Christmas Passed he got his girlfriend a pack of Ginsu knives for Christmas and how that’s on-theme for his character who is obsessed with TV because Ginsu knives were a big As Seen On TV product and how someone on the writing staff must have went to college to think of that.

It’s great, go play it, and I suggest going in as blind as you can.

I once saw a playthrough by Let’s Play Easy Mode, I don’t know how he acquired a copy of the game while knowing as little as he did about it. He correctly guessed there’d be swimming in it and realized about six minutes in that it was a survival game.

I like to give this one hint, which I think is enough guidance to keep you from looking up the wiki and encountering actual spoilers: The answer to “well, now what?” is “go deeper.”

I did that a lot with Subnautica but I think I’ve worn it out. I would make up challenge runs for myself to spice it up and I’ve run out of those. It was my “I want to play a video game right now” game. I kinda wish I had fewer objections to Subnautica 2, because there’s things I like about that game and things I don’t and the don’ts slightly outweigh the things that do.

Factorio released an expansion and Satisfactory hit 1.0 after a long (and excellent) early access campaign. Dobwe count either as a 2024 game?

My favorite was always “dum da dum doi doi.”