Can this business model survive a recession?

IIRC Witcher 2 used eON which is also some sort of translation mechanism. But yeah, native port is not a guarantee of stability. Wine/Proton is a guarantee that you’ll be losing performance on overhead due to those being a reverse engineered reimplementation of Windows libraries. It can be mitigated due to Linux being more performant and/or less bloated with adware. Regardless of all of this, we should be making comparisons to as-is performance because that’s what ultimately matters to end consumer.

It is very common for people to joke about how big their backlog is. I’m not sure we can call buying things you’re never going to play as frugal. I’m on autism spectrum and do both regular and digital hoarding occasionally but I’m a bit more mindful about it ever since I admitted it. Many people seem to be in denial.

Most games on Switch 2 will be bespoke ports while Deck will run Windows versions through a compatibility layer because Proton made devs forgo Linux native versions. Those tests were done in both handheld and docked. For handheld there are pros and cons for both but Switch looks much better, has better battery life (although with more dips below target framerate). Docked Switch simply blows the Deck away but that’s not a real life scenario really as you’ve said.

This is not a one-off, Switch is just newer hardware that’s carried by DLSS too. If you game on a budget you can buy and sell used copies on Switch as well. Not as simple decision as you make it out to be.

Digital hoarding is a mental disorder same as any other form of hoarding.

Probably depends on location. Games are stupid expensive compared to typical income here. I make pretty good money but I wouldn’t be able to justify games at current prices if it wasn’t for second hand market and Game Pass.

They did a healthy mix in 1+2. This is just too little, seems like they opted to cheap out on it.

I know plenty of console gamers who buy physical copies of newest releases, complete them and sell them on local Craigslist equivalent. They hold a handful of games at most. Not really possible on PC anymore.

Could be, I’m in Eastern Europe so there weren’t that many servers and I hung out in maybe a dozen or so. You’d also expect this area to be the hive of scum and villainy but it was mostly nice people playing in general.

I have something like 500h in TF2 from back before Valve killed it with lootboxes and I haven’t really experienced porn sprays. I think people didn’t want to risk VAC ban from a paid game.

I guess the point was that if you have a very low performance ceiling it acts as an equalizer of sorts. An indie developer doesn’t need to be as much concerned with competing with big AAA publisher if the end product will not differ that much in graphics and graphics, for better or worse, sell games.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

I’m cool with not designing games to be online-only from ground up. Your concern was noted, video game lobby.

via https://bsky.app/profile/tapirfortuna.bsky.social/post/3lsynahvgtc2y

Apologies for my scatterbrain. In that case I’d go with BotW because it’s shorter/focused (others will say it’s too minimalist) and you’ll get to experience a modern Zelda game. Also, if you don’t own Switch 2 it runs good enough while TotK was just a bit too much for Switch 1.

TotK is better in every way but BotW is once in a lifetime experience due to how contemplative it can be. You’re not going to play both at the same time and they benefit from playing in order. If you’re low on cash buy some used copy of BotW off someone on Vinted* and sell on Vinted once done, then do TotK.

* or Craiglist or OLX or whatever is used locally where you live

Gamer seems to be a weird term because most don’t consider someone playing Candy Crush a gamer. Kids playing Nintendo games are a bit of a different breed too if we go by that measure. There’s also loads of older folk that grew with some sort of Nintendo system or started to appreciate what they’re doing later on of course. Among my group of older millennials in a country with very little Nintendo presence it seems like Switch is something you buy for your children primarily.

Will start posting Wine news because some people think Proton was wished into existence by Valve ;)

Please support CodeWeavers who have been funding this for many many years.

While Chrono Trigger and FFVI are among my all time favourites, they’re kind of like an prog rock superbands. They’re a pinnacle of the era, impossible to top in their own categories. But if you know where to look there are probably some guys doing stuff as impressive, if not more, out of their garages. Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes come to mind.

That’s kind of unfair assessment for Microsoft. There’s been more well rated games than HiFi Rush (even if closing Tango is a travesty). We should be applauding that they no longer lock their games to a single platform (despite fanboys crying over it). GP pricing increased but it’s still great value for the money and the best deal around. Their main franchises get new entries consistently and there’s been new IP too in the meantime (Indiana Jones is a joy). I think they ran out of publishers that wanted to participate in backwards compatibility program but I’d be surprised if ActiBlizz catalogue won’t join it sooner or later.

Honestly, what are the titles that Sony released in the past 5 years that aren’t sequels or remakes? I’m super confused how Sony is getting away with this.

As to Valve. Why is Microsoft stopping physical sales bad but it’s ok when Valve does it? Valve killed physical sales for the entire platform.Once they got a monopoly sales with deep discounts ended. Can you really trust Valve with backwards compatibility and long term support over Microsoft? One has a history of abandoning stuff when they no longer find it profitable, the other is probably best in class still. When I moved from PS4 to XSX it was because I could sell my physical copies, something not possible on PC. End goal for Valve seems to be Android for games where they exert power over some Linux based platform with their app store - that’s no good for any of us. And that’s without addressing elephant in the room that Valve is no different if not worse than EA when it comes to gambling.

I don’t have favourites and use what I think is best for me at a given time. I’m deeply confused with what other gamers are choosing for themselves.

Nintendo gets plenty criticism and rightly so and what we traditionally consider to be gamers opt to use other systems. The thing about Nintendo is that their main customer base aren’t gamers but kids. For now I wouldn’t look too much into sales figures of Switch 2, it’s mostly a measure of huge stock available at launch.

MS reputation when it comes to gaming ain’t that bad. They scored some wins over the last two years with lots of decent titles available day 1 on GamePass while Sony is stuck doing remaster after remaster. Nintendo isn’t doing all that hot either reputation-wise. So maybe not great but the bar is set low.

Honestly it’s freaking weird how bad XSX is doing compared to PS5 - both are about the same performance-wise unlike previous generation, games are cheaper thanks to GP and there’s such an overabundance of games that lack of exclusives doesn’t hurt that much. I guess that’s just inertia from previous gen but even then Xbox is a budget conscious pick so you’d imagine they’d sell better.

This is a Hori product, official Nintendo camera is much better (but also kinda overpriced).

If you don’t want to see their faces you have to stay in the lead.

I like muted looks since it goes into a living room. Bought XSX over PS5 for this reason (among others).

As to usefulness, it’s a toy. Making faces while overtaking someone in Mario Kart for all to see is pretty funny.

They see all the money Valve and EA is making on gambling, they’d be stupid not to try it too.

EA is considered to be relatively okay place for devs to work at - no crunch, okay salary, predictable environment. It won’t be automatically replaced by a better one.

I’m not sure how that solves the problem.