Probably supporting Linux and open source is now evil or so.

Yeah, it sucks for the people who lose jobs. OTOH after the ABK takeover, Microsoft was suddenly by far the biggest games publisher and no regulatory body had any problems with it. Now Microsoft’s own incompetence is taking care of that.

Of course. That‘ll be €90 for the remaster.

Well, graphics got better but games didn’t evolve much.

Did the author run the benchmarks few times to rule out shader compilation.

Why should the author rule it out? Honest question. If shader compilation leads so worse real world experience for gamers on Windows than SteamOS, it is a valid point to include.

It still doesn’t do anything to steer me toward a Switch 2 over a Steam Deck

Who’s claiming that giving away your Deck is a necessity?

The gimmick gets more gimmicky.

No idea why you’re so dismissive. Metroid Prime 4 with a proper mouse is a great outlook.

Its talking about the newer SteamOS 3.0

SteamOS 3.0 was released March 2022, so more than 3 years ago.

Is it? Or did they choose Arch because of the ease of setting it up with all the latest software the community was already packaging?

That’s an illogical either or question because it’s both. Valve moved from Debian to Arch because of its more recent upstream packages, yes, but Valve’s upstream contributions in turn made Arch (and the other distributions) better for gaming.

I still don’t understand how blocking individual EU countries conforms to the EU single market.

Steam has about 80% of the PC digital distribution market for new releases.

So it is a bad thing now that Steam makes new releases more discoverable than the other storefronts that have a larger installed base than Steam?

Microsoft’s store has a close to 100% penetration of home installation of Windows 10 and newer.

Opening Microsoft Store: Boom, top spots for Microsofts properties (Activision Blizzard sale, Minecraft, Candy Crush).

Switching to the Games tab: PC Game Pass, more Activision Blizzard sale, COD Black Ops 6 with a dedicated banner, more Minecraft, more Candy Crush.

Visiting one of Microsoft’s other game stores, Battle.net: 100% Microsoft exclusive. Not just Blizzard games but Doom, Avowed, Sea of Thieves, PC GamePass. That’s unregulated Microsoft on full display. Not a single 3rd party game even available but the rest of the Microsoft catalogue integrated after the takeover of Activision Blizzard.

Compare that to Steam: Huge banner advertising the sale promotion of EA.

Scrolling a bit further down, Microsoft games advertised, some convention for narrative games.

Nobody but Microsoft and Epic are to blame for their huge installed bases not converting to sales of 3rd party games. Mostly advertising their own properties and paid exclusives.

All your emotional outbursts do not change facts.

It’s not about how easy it is to compile

But it is. It is what defines the cost of supporting a platform.

The install base is too low right now.

The installed base of Switch2 is 0% right now.

10 Bn for Steam revenue this year, by the way.

So still far off anything resembling >50% market share on PC. Good to know they’re still not a monopoly.

The money flows to Valve because Valve doesn’t need to make ANY games at all, pay for exclusives or do anything else.

So Valve is not engaging in any anti-competitive behaviour as well as pumping resources into Linux support to break the Windows hegemony? Great!

Especially since the fanboys paint any attempt at competing against a monopolistic actor as an anticompetitive act, somehow.

Yeah, these people are very strange. I mean, it’s a fact that Microsoft is the convicted monopolist because of the grip Windows has on the industry, the same Microsoft that bought Minecraft, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard King to become the world’s single biggest games publisher and their Windows-exclusive PC GamePass is also growing (surely at least partially thanks to Microsoft “continuing to misuse its Windows operating system monopoly” to promote their other services).

And yet, there are people who put the sole Linux supporter in the same corner, as if that company had anything approaching Microsoft’s market power. Not even the EU thought Valve was important enough. Microsoft, Apple, Google, ByteDance, and Meta are Digital Market Gatekeepers, not Valve.

There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway

Except for the fact that their entire technology stack already supports it and making Linux versions of their games is a compilation step away. Their Tencent buddies at One-Notebook would surely make a OneXPlayer with EpicOS. “Comes with Fortnite and get free games each week”.

They’ll never grow to the size of Steam, and that’s okay.

EGS has a massive installed base because of Fortnite.

Do they officially support Linux yet?

Unreal Engine has official Linux support since ages. Unreal Engine running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is what movie CGI creators often use these days. It’s a highly lucrative market they’re not going to give up.

Epic Online Services supports Linux as well: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/eos-get-started/platform-support (which includes Easy Anti Cheat)

So when Fortnite and Rocket League have no Linux versions, it’s just because of lack of will, not anything technological.

Assassin’s Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty? Not big enough. Still have to deal with Steam.

They don’t have to. OK, maybe Microsoft has to because they are the actual monopolist and making the Activision Blizzard franchises available on storefronts other than Microsoft’s own is to keep the watchdogs away.

Also, none of the franchises are exclusive to Steam, so Steam has no monopoly.

It takes being significantly bigger than the entire Epic store to even consider not doing Steam on PC.

That sentence makes no sense. Fortnite is exclusive to EGS, therefore it cannot be “significantly bigger than the entire Epic store”.

Steam has no policies that forbid offering games on other stores, Epic has policies that makes certain games timed exclusives to EGS.

What makes EGS unattractive compared to Steam is the simple fact that Epic chooses to most prominently display their own games on EGS. Valve does front page banners, fests, that window that opens with every Steam launch, etc. and goes out of their way to make everything from big launches as well as solo dev indie games discoverable.

Epic has it in their own hands to make EGS more than the Fortnite launcher. They could promote other EGS games inside Fortnite but they don’t. They host concerts inside Fortnite but nothing to promote 3rd party EGS games, for examle.

That’s a bad look for competition on the PC market. There aren’t that many Fortnites or Minecrafts coming in the future. Gaming investment is drying up and gaming is becoming a cash business, rather than an investment business. And the cash flows to Valve.

USD 45 billion overall PC gaming revenue and all of Steam combined is 8.6bn. “And the cash flows to Valve”? Sure…

For generic SteamWorks integration, there already exists a open source DLL called Goldberg Emulator. If publishers opt for real DRM, the games are not available on GOG anyway.

Also, downloading and backing up the games have to be done by yourself before the storefront goes bust. Distributing GOG games outside of GOG is a copyright violation, unless the copyright holders explicitly allow it.

So, to sum up: You can backup DRM-free Steam games and make them work with little effort.

Reminder that the world’s biggest money makers in PC gaming are not on Steam.

Minecraft isn’t (it’s on Microsoft Store and a stand-alone web store), Fortnite isn’t (it’s EGS exclusive), Roblox isn’t (its own store), League of Legends and Valorant aren’t (Riot Launcher and EGS),…

Meanwhile: Politicians who never had a day of honest work their entire life.

Yes it has Bluetooth support and, naturally, USB C.

Even regular ass USB keyboards work with Switch. Usually not for control input but typing search terms in the e-Shop, for example.

“We’ve updated this article to note that Nintendo has made similar disclaimers with its previous retro controllers, which have ended up working with other Switch games.”

They’re just not officially supporting it. I hope Reto will informally make Metroid Prime 4 work with this the same way as MP1. I don’t like twin stick controls and mouse controls are not feasible on the go.

Didn’t you hear? Just buy a switch 1 if you can’t afford or care for the switch 2.

You can also buy this controller and use it with PCs for an authentic emulation experience.

Oh, so it’s just ragebait and they’re reporting on nothing? I fell for it.

Just read the article for a change and you’d see that it was a later update to the article.

Edit: That’s also literally in the part I quoted.

“We’ve updated this article to note that Nintendo has made similar disclaimers with its previous retro controllers, which have ended up working with other Switch games.”

Rosetta is full emulation. This sounds more like a hypervisor.

I imagine that AMD is more motivated to keep Microsoft/Sony happy than Nvidia is to keep Nintendo happy.

I don’t think it’s about making anyone happy, it’s about feasibility. From NVidia’s point of view, the first Switch was a throw-away project made up of already way outdated components. They literally just gave them the then currently in development NVidia Shield Tablet (meant for PC game streaming and Android apps) and let Nintendo stick the controllers to the side and port their 3DS operating system over. It was cobbled together to have a Wii U replacement relatively quickly.

Adding transistors for hardware-level backwards compatibility probably has more downsides on a portable console than benefits.

an almost 10 years old mario kart is still at full price is crazy

True but at least with physical media you can buy used.

don’t let yourself be scammed.

When entire industries are forming informal cartels, there is little individual consumers can do. That’s why antitrust authorities exist.

Trump Tariffs have nothing to do with the Switch 2 prices in Europe. Everybody incl. Nintendo is just hiking prices because they can.

if they can make an APU that’s affordable

About that…

The AMD Ryzen AI Max APUs for mobile, originally codenamed Strix Halo, could make an appearance in desktop PCs, as hinted by Dr Lisa Su.

What is there to hint? Framework Desktop has been announced weeks ago.

Are they saying third-parties don’t even have devkits yet? That’s a bizarre way to do a launch plan.

The console will be out of stock for at least 6 months anyway.

Musk is helping Meta through “at least Zuckerberg isn’t Musk” aura.

This is a pretty damning “they used assets of when they were under contract”, so, for once, squeenix isn’t entirely in the wrong.

Depends what the contract says. If some line somewhere says that the developer retains copyright if Square Enix cancels their end of the deal, then the developer is correct.

The only thing we on the outside can make a somewhat educated guess on is that probably both sides think they’re in the right. Maybe details of the contract were lost in translation between Japanese and Chinese.

The notable detail I find interesting is that they try to stop the US release of the game whereas the Japanese and Chinese release went ahead just fine and SE only later decided to sue in Japan as well.

Worst case scenario, 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

You can just download the installer from https://ma.zlongame.com/

Kinda. The MS 365 subscription can be ordered from the app store. I don’t know about installing the Office applications afterwards, whether they then can be installed from the store.

Just putting their own games on the platform would be money down the drain

If they heavily rely on some frameworks very much tied to x86 Windows that required massive efforts to port, sure, but usually they don’t for the simple fact that video game consoles and smartphones exist. Microsoft very much supports gaming on ARM platforms, most notably Nintendo Switch. There is no reason why Doom I+II isn’t officially available for Windows ARM.

So you were sticking with Pentium 4 when Athlon was crushing it?

AMD has been better than Intel more than once.

Gaming on ARM is going to have a steep hill to climb until there’s a Proton-esque compatibility layer.

Or even better: The company developing Windows on ARM, selling ARM Surface devices, one of the biggest game publishers after the takeover of Activision could just release their own freaking games on their own platform. Not even the casual games are:

Lol, finally someone noticed that Windows on ARM exists. Microsoft certainly doesn’t even though some Surface tablets are using it. Not a single Microsoft game has been ported to Windows on ARM.

“Rule 9: Use the original source”

So here it is: https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-hardware-report-project-keenan-next-gen-xbox-2027