I mean, Sony & Microsoft consoles are basically PCs with a custom OS now already (PS4 onwards, and Xbox One both used x86-64 CPUs).
There are fewer and fewer reasons to buy a specific (and expensive) piece of hardware that is less flexible in terms of functionality than the alternatives, so this is Sony trying to protect their own fiefdom.
Fuck ‘em.

I’m not sure what I’m more surprised by; the fact that there really is a Wikipedia list for everything, or that there are over 100 titles that support that thing!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_Wii_Balance_Board

This is a slight historical re-write.
Blizzard’s parent company since ‘98 (Vivendi) was the larger of two companies at the time of the merger in ‘08, and put forward $2b towards the merger vs. Activision’s $1b.
Vivendi remained the majority shareholder of the new entity, and chose to appoint Bobby Kotick as the CEO.
Activision-Blizzard didn’t buy-out majority control until ‘13 - well after the enshittification began.
I’m in a similar situation with my wife not being particularly interested in games - I’ve had some success in playing LA Noire with her guiding the investigations and interrogations. The jazz soundtrack in particular helped convince her, funnily enough!
Not quite perhaps what you’re looking for, but may work for others with hesitant non-gamer partners.

Echo’ing the other reply, but the Assassin’s Creed franchise (at least up to, but not including Origins) scratches my alt-history itch like nothing else has been able to.
Likewise, both Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 5 (inc. expansions) were absolutely fantastic IMO - and are some of the rare few FPS games I would willingly revisit.
Don’t take the above to mean my opinion of Ubisoft as a publisher is particularly glowing - let’s be honest, most publishers are absolute dogshit, due to perverse Capitalist incentives - and Stephanie Sterling’s segments about them on the Jimquisition should have been the final nail in their coffins.
I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older and more curmudgeonly, I’ve also become more nostalgic for the “good ol’ days” of gaming in the up-to-and-including the PS3/X360/Wii era - so my money has stayed largely away from AAA-publisher bank accounts.

I think it mostly just didn’t feel like a Max Payne game because of the setting. Not New York? Not Max Payne.
Gameplay wise, it was definitely on the right track; and in a way - I remember it fondly as was the last time Rockstar seemingly experimented with game mechanics ahead of incorporating them into the next GTA game.

This is an interesting development, for sure - and not one we will be able to accurately gauge the net impact of for a while.
It does feel like CD Project want to move it off their financial documents (P&L, cashflow, balance sheets etc.), while Michael wants to double-down and focus on building out the historical catalog.
Success will really depend on if GOG can remain profitable through lean years without having to ultimately rely on compromising their morals; and whether they will continue to receive support from modern publishers to help fund the more niche projects.

We are at a point now that games from the PS3/X360 era still look and play well, so newer titles need to contribute something new in order to make an impact.
If a AAA-studio releases a 7/10 title in 2026, it’s not just competing with the 8s, 9s, and 10s also releasing the same year - but also every single such title from the past 20 years!
This will also only continue to get worse in coming years as the backlog of exceptional titles will continue to build.
The only franchises I will pre-order are:
World of Warcraft Collector’s Editions : even though I stopped playing a few years ago now, I still buy the physical copy collector’s editions to add to my collection - I have every one going all the way back to vanilla.
Grand Theft Auto 6 : I have both the PS3 Collector’s Editions for IV and V, feels like getting the same for 6 to finish off that ‘trilogy’ would be apropos.

Data centres aren’t run by hardware manufacturers. When Nvidia/Micron/Samsung run out of enterprise corporations to bilge funds out of, they will return back to selling to consumers.
Does this mean that things will 100% return to how they were in the ‘Before Times’? No, let’s be real - the surplus of under-used data centres will definitely result in a push towards cloud gaming, online experiences and the like - but in an ideal scenario we would end up with more choice and not less.
But again, this all hinges on the current AI bubble bursting in the near future - followed by a pretty bad recession/depression.

The principal of supply and demand still applies, they will cut prices up until the point they either go out of business or they find a sufficient number of buyers.
Companies like Nvidia, Micron and Samsung are currently chasing massive profits off enterprise customers, but will come crawling back to consumers once the AI bubble bursts (assuming they survive the resulting market collapse).
As an example, if Nvidia can turn one TSMC wafter into one AI accelerator that they can sell for $40K, or into ~5 RTX 5090s they can sell for $2K/ea - they will sell as many of the $40K cards as they can, and only use failed wafers to try and satiate RTX 5090 demand.
But if there are no more AI customers, they will be forced to drop prices in order to shift more volume. If they can’t drop prices further due to wafer costs, then they will pass up wafer allocations from TSMC.
If TSMC sees too many wafers free up - they will be forced to drop prices to all customers (AMD, Apple etc.) to try and pick up the slack. They in turn will need to drop prices in order to try and increase sales volumes.
This will have a downwards pressure on prices and a “return to the mean” moment for tech prices. It will just be a painful couple of years until we get to that point, and honestly with the way things are currently going - it will be the least of our worries.

That’s awesome, didn’t even think of how useful AirDrop could be in that situation!
How’s controller support? I have a Razer Kishi V2 I bought way back when to play the Rockstar games, that’s just otherwise gathering dust.
It’s nighttime here in Australia - will load up some files and test it out tomorrow morning! 😁
It’s interesting to see what people genuinely consider to be bad, or maybe they just missed that word? 😅
For me, it would have to be Under The Skin; a solid 6/10 game, in a world where 7/10 is considered average!

It’s not as much a “feel-good” story as comments who haven’t read beyond the headline might make you believe:
The PIF values its total investments at nearly $1 trillion in assets, but a significant percentage of these are hard-to-sell assets with no public valuation; as a result, the NYT reports that the PIF reps have told international investors that it is “unable to allocate” for the near future.
Despite this, a spokesperson for the PIF, Marwan Bakrali, told the newspaper that it had $60 billion in cash and “similar financial instruments”.
ETA: Its not as though they’ve lost a significant chunk of the fund, but rather that a sizeable portion of it is tied up in illiquid assets that can’t be readily sold, or valued and loaned against.
Though there is some mention of some of their investments being in “distress”, so there is at least some good news?

IP/trademarks/copyrights/etc.
This is likely going to be the main reason for the takedown notices, Sony will be exercising their legal rights in order to defend their trademarks & copyrights on Concord assets.
If a company doesn’t defend them vigorously, then any unlicensed works that are allowed to exist are then used as legal precedent moving forward to null/void such copyrights and trademarks.
As an aside, Sony is a global corporation and can likely choose to write down these losses in the most preferred region to maximise the tax offset - so likely either the US, or Ireland.

I’m not saying AI will go away, or not continue to improve - but we are very much at the tail end of the current mania phase, and we will see some market pullback as AI startups begin to go out of business when all of those lofty promises of AI fail to materialise.
Diminishing returns on ever increasing investment, circular investments based on speculative returns, these are all signs of the tail-end of a stock market bubble.

At least it would stop GamersTM from complaining about how “ugly” that character is?