- 0 Posts
- 55 Comments
To provide a relatively decent source: https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalog/1997-Sears-Christmas-Book
Around page 286. So 1997 christmas season, Starfox and Goldeneye going for $80… FFVII for $60…
N64 had the challenge that every single game was a circuitboard, so that inflated costs. Nowadays the price is for just the right to download a copy.
Yeah, AAA productions:
- Must be multiplayer, ostensibly because people ‘demand’ it, but a narrative easy to believe when you know players are stuck with your servers and you can effectively shut down the game when it no longer makes money for you.
- Relatively fewer games to be made, no chances may be taken. Conventional wisdom tells them that people got over turn-based in the 90s, so even the FFVII remake refused to do real turn-based, while Clair Obscur showed that it was still absolutely welcome gameplay.
Business folks calling the shots over the artists cut back their hours and insist they let the slop generator make up the difference.
Every corner that can be cut to make running the business cheaper does get cut, and this is a pretty big possibility of corners to cut. It’s worthwhile to adamantly express the market for quality work.
People have repeatedly in this thread talked about how it also added details that were not hinted in the original, and in part it looks like adding makeup, which could totally undermine a character or setting if they are unlikely to care about our have time for makeup.
Characters that have barely survived in the wilderness for weeks somehow wearing lipstick and eyeliner and eyeshadow… That’s the sort of thing that can happen with this approach.
Probably not so much as “better” as it would be “almost as good for cheaper”.
The bespoke AMD part is an exercise in cost management. iGPU is more affordable but usually pretty low end. The bespoke AMD solution is an iGPU bumped up to a nearly on par with a mid tier discrete GPU.
If released with same generation of tech, I would expect the steam machine to have higher performance but at a disproportional higher price.
I could see a refusal to use codegen as a potential liability, but that’s not “skills”. The biggest thing about codegen is you have to review it and just lower your expectations that the code comes from a technique dumber than the dumbest human intern you have ever seen and approach it with supremely thorough skepticism. It’s exhausting how dumb it can be and how you have to be paranoid for every single piece of output. But it’s not a “skill”
Yeah, but in relatively small volumes and mostly as a ‘gimmick’.
The Cell processors were ‘neat’ but enough of a PITA is to largely not be worth it, combined with a overall package that wasn’t really intended to be headless managed in a datacenter and a sub-par networking that sufficed for internet gaming, but not as a cluster interconnect.
IBM did have higher end cell processors, at predictable IBM level pricing in more appropriate packaging and management, but it was pretty much a commercial flop since again, the Cell processor just wasn’t worth the trouble to program for.
Unlikely.
Businesses generally aren’t that stoked about anything other than laptops or servers.
To the extent they have desktop grade equipment, it’s either:
- Some kiosk grade stuff already cheaper than a game console
- Workstation grade stuff that they will demand nVidia or otherwise just don’t even bother
On servers, the steam machine isn’t that attractive since it’s not designed to either be slapped in a closet and ignored on slotted in a datacenter.
Putting all this aside, businesses love simplicity in their procurement. They aren’t big on adding a vendor for a specific niche when they can use an existing vendor, even if in theory they could shave a few dollars in cost. The logistical burden of adding Steam Machine would likely offset any imagined savings. Especially if they had to own re-imaging and licensing when they are accustomed to product keys embedded in the firmware when they do vendor preloads today.
Maybe you could worry a bit more about the consumer market, where you have people micro-managing costs and will be more willing to invest their own time, but even then the market for non-laptop home systems that don’t think they need nVidia but still need something better than integrated GPUs is so small that it shouldn’t be a worry either.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Sometimes, but evidently not currently. Sources seem to indicate that only Microsoft seems to say they are selling at a loss, though it seems odd since their bill of materials looks like it should be pretty comparable to PS5…
I’ll agree with the guess of around $800, but like you say, the supply pressure on RAM and storage as well as the tariff situation all over the place, hard to say.
I think it’s a response to the sentiment that Sony somehow got bit by selling PS3 at a loss because it triggered some huge supercomputing purchases of the systems that Sony wouldn’t have liked, and that if Valve got too close to that then suddenly a lot of businesses would tank it by buying too much and never buying any games.
Sony loved the exposure and used it as marketing fodder that their game consoles were “supercomputer” class. Just like they talked up folding@home on them…
I think that one was also significantly a publicity thing, they made videos and announced it as a neat story about the air force doing something “neat” and connecting relatable gaming platform to supercomputing. I’m sure some work was actually done, but I think they wouldn’t have bothered if the same sort of device was not so “cool”
There were a handful of such efforts that pushed a few thousand units. Given PS3 volumes were over 80 million, I doubt Sony lost any sleep over those. I recall if anything Sony using those as marketing collateral to say how awesome their platform was. The losses from those efforts being well with the marketing collateral.
That’s just pointing out upgrades carry a large price, not that the base model is at a loss.
Which is a super common strategy in pre built, especially in systems that can’t in theory take third party upgrades. Commonly a mobile platform will charge a hundred dollar premium for like 20 dollars worth of UFS storage. At least at some points PC vendors have done DIMM SPD lockouts to force customers to first party so they can charge a significant multiple of market rate for their parts.
I doubt anything in Apple’s lineup is sold at a loss. They might tolerate slimmer margins on entry, but I just don’t think they go negative.
I think that was overstated. Sure there were some “fun” projects for fun or publicity.
However supercomputer clusters require higher performance interconnect than PS3 could do. At that time it would have been DDR infiniband (about 20 Gbps) or 10 g myrinet.
Sure gigabit was prevalent, but generally at places that would also have little tolerance for something as “weird” as the cell processor.
OtherOS was squashed out of fear of the larger jailbreak surface.
There was no mention of motive, just of the consequences. Microsoft going the Apple/Google path was/is an existential business threat to a company like Valve. Microsoft’s coming up short on MS Store mitigated the risk, but still you have a platform that is geared toward Microsoft subscription revenue.
Just because those business concerns factor in, doesn’t detract from the positive ways that it has gone so far.
Pretty spot on, it was so worth it to remember, that Valve actually seemed to remember.
Their first go at it was “make a viable platform and the developers/publishers will make the effort to come over, and hardware partners will step up with offerings because of Valve’s brand strength and fear of the Microsoft Store screwing everything up”. That didn’t work, and Microsoft Store also didn’t pan out as far as Valve and others feared, but they have been kind of screwing up the platform particularly for games as they chase other things that would be subscription revenue instead of transactional revenue.
Valve learned they needed to work harder to bring the platform to the Windows games, so heavy investment in Proton. They learned that they had to take the hardware platform in their own hands because the OEMs aren’t committed until they see proof it can work for them. They learned that the best way to package their improved efforts was with a “hook” with mass-market appeal, enter the Steam Deck, recognizing the popularity of the Switch form factor and bringing it to the PC market at a time no one else was bothering.
So now they have a non-Android, non-Windows ecosystem that covers handheld, console/desk, and VR with a compelling library of thousands and thousands of games…
This is more thinking about material cost rather than relative value. If you save money on the passthrough and incur a few costs above the Quest 3 but nothing dramatic, then I’m just saying the pricing needs to be in the ballpark of Quest 3. Better value by making smarter choices that may not have a cost impact (e.g. using a maintstream high end SoC instead of a niche SoC, putting the battery at the back instead of making it front heavy).
Of course they may be hampered by different business needs. Meta affording to risk more money than Valve can risk might drive higher price point, but it would be unfortunate.
The SoC may be better, but I don’t know that it would be more expensive. Meta went with a more niche SoC and Valve selected a more mainstream, newer SoC. Better specs, but also larger volumes so cost wise I think Valve should be fine. Comfort certainly seems like it should be better, but I don’t know that I see more cost as a factor versus just making better decisions.
The wireless dongle certainly can be a thing in it’s favor, just thinking that on balance there’s some things that should contribute to BOM price and some that should save on BOM price and it should, roughly, be in the ballpark of Quest 3 when all is said and done, not 2x the cost.
A $1k would break it in this market… The specs suggest a little lower end generally than Quest 3 hardware wise, or in the ballpark (comparable display and optics, lower quality cameras). The only notable improvement is including eye tracking, which is nice, but not $1k nice…
$500 should be a good target, some tradeoffs with Quest 3 (worse ‘AR’, better eye tracking and PC connectivity).
They did at least do: https://www.meta.com/experiences/sid-meiers-civilization-vii-vr/5781689118524197/?srsltid=AfmBOoqbqaOcZk-uwva84T4NpmPU5A6M8h1LPhsJc2EkCyD5ujrcFI_m
No idea if it is vaguely any good or not…
Right, that Steam Deck and myriad of PC handhelds I think is why I don’t consider the Switch quite so uniquely gimmicky… It’s a recognition that normal controller games can be played in a ‘tablet’ with better controls more than a particularly unique, possibly patent protected thing like the wiimotes, or the Wii-U tablet+main display, or the DS dual screens…
In short, if they made their low-spec games ported to PC it’s quite likely to be a nice additional revenue stream without having to compromise the game to be workable on PC. If the Wii-Motes were still a big thing, then Nintendo would have a hard time trying to make PC ports without screwing up their console.
If it’s gone public, then generally going private is a bad thing. It’s usually some investors that are going to do something bad with the company.
A company that starts and stays private may be all the better for it (but that’s hardly assured either). If they are a success and didn’t bring a lot of investors, then it generally means they actually care about the work intrinsically.
Look at the timestamps, the conversation is from top to bottom. So technically I guess he tried to answer, but he probably missed the answer and instead had a tone that happened to match exactly how a scammy email would sound.
If legitimate, it’s probably better that they didn’t get to successfully automating spamming the support system. Nothing screams legitimate requests like bot spamming… Don’t know the tone of his follow ups, but best to take a breath and reset their tone and try again, asking what other details aside from nickname can be used, given their steam access.
A bit off topic, but that’s pretty much a result of “prompt stuffing”. Your prompt is processed into a good old fashioned search query and then the search results are sort of added to the prompt. Basically from the LLM perspective, it seems a request to rework your source material in a manner consistent with your prompt. The LLM is fed the correct answer, so it doesn’t have to answer, it just has to reword the input.
Most will just guess on the spot.
Well no, most would say “I don’t know”. Which an LLM is unlikely to do unless the training material shows that a consistent answer is “I don’t know”. It will give a fact shaped answer that may fail, but it’s at least ‘shaped’ right.
Again, the big problem is not that LLMs are just useless because they can’t do these little specific tricks, it’s that it is important to continue calibrating expectations, particularly as, at this point, people have bet trillions on these things and that’s a lot of money to have people lie and cheat their way to make everyone overestimate them. Without counter perspective, I think 90% of my coworkers would have been laid off already as the executives just soak in unchallenged marketing bullshit from the big players.
Well, not quite, because they don’t have criteria for ‘right’.
They do basically say ‘generate 10x more content than usual, then dispose of 90% of it’, and that surprisingly seems to largely improve results, but at no point is it ‘grading’ the result.
Some people have bothered to provide ‘chain of thought’ examples and even when it’s largely ‘correct’, you may see a middle step be utterly flubbed in a way that should have fouled the whole thing, but the error is oddly isolated and doesn’t carry forward into the subsequent content, as would be the case in actual ‘reasoning’.
For background NPC, sure nothing lost, at least nothing lost that isn’t already being lost in the “put big exclamations/question marks over NPCs with something actually important to say”. Once upon a time there was a nice experience of evaluating NPC text to determine if there’s an interesting side quest or at least an interesting side story playing out in the dialog. But with the push for more credible ambient NPC instead of big cities with like 25 people living in them that has been significantly lost anyway.
True, but it’s at least a rough indicator, and having intact concrete pricing from back then was a bit challenging, and sears catalog came to me as a very well preserved source of vaguely appropriate pricing.