I’ve been told I’ve been grandfathered into legacy pricing on multiple occasions by multiple companies only to have every single one of them force me off old pricing.

Was that in the US or Europe?

Tiny DLSS has about half the overhead in terms of frametime cost but sacrifices anti-aliasing on moving objects. Video weighs pros and cons of using tiny DLSS with bigger input resolution (Star Wars: Outlaws) vs full DLSS with smaller input resolution (Cyberpunk 2077) but the point of video is to show those differences directly. In my opinion lack of AA in motion is a bit overstated as it’s relatively hard to notice without magnifying glass.

Circana Research data for 2025Q2. It’d be hard to get to the top of all-time sales given that Microsoft started releasing their stuff on PlayStation very recently.

Ultimate was $20. Still an enormous price hike.

Xbox Studio Games are responsible for most of the current top 10 best selling games on PlayStation. They don’t have that much interesting stuff in the pipeline though.

It was the only incentive for most people.

The most baffling thing is not the price hike - it’s the price hike combined Xbox Game Studios release roadmap looking barren compared to the last 2 years. What is this $30 supposed to pay for? Severance packages?

You’re not able to refute that you eat poop for breakfast. Goodbye.

I’ve said it many times before, Bloomberg, FT and WSJ might be owned by neoliberal vampires, but by $deity, work ethic of their journalists is on another level to everyone else, probably because they have so much money. Admittedly, their souls are probably being sucked out in the process, but unless you have something against the article itself it seems like we’re wasting time debating integrity of Jason Schreier.

Go culture war somewhere else please.

You might try to keep track of every new release but you’ll never be able to listen to everything coming from local bands that haven’t managed to make a bigger splash even if they objectively deserve it.

I’m hyperbolising of course with the numbers. It’s a problem in loads of forms of media these days and if you happen to consume couple of different kinds of media / genres then trying to do that means you’ll get swept by never ending tides and discoverability is just part of the problem. We no longer have bandwidth to consume everything that’s worth consuming.

This isn’t some neoliberal conspiracy. Jason Schreier is a respected journalist and given his track record so far there’s no reason for this kind of silly accusations.

There are hundreds of Masters of Puppets daily probably but it’s hard to tell because so much stuff is coming out, which is an issue when we want artists to be able to afford food. At this point I think civilised countries should be exploring how to fund video games like we fund other forms of art.

In other company shakeups, Satoru Shibata will assume the role of chief executive officer while continuing as managing executive officer and corporate director at Nintendo Co., Ltd. Pritchard will also join the Nintendo of America Board of Directors and serve as an executive officer at the parent company.

https://steamdb.info/app/546560/ says otherwise. Also, Alyx A) predates Steam Deck by several years and B) Steam Deck is not a VR platform. Citing a game that predates Steam Deck as proof that “Valve doesn’t release native ports anymore” is a stretch.

Alyx had a native port. It doesn’t anymore as shown on Steam DB. This is because since Proton nobody cares. Not a great long term solution.

I already stated that CS2 is native and Deadlock 1.0 may be as well, should they follow the example set by CS2. You literally replied to a comment stating that.

CS2 is just CS which had a native port. I won’t pat Valve on head that they aren’t doing more games dirty like they did with Alyx. Won’t speak about Deadlock until it releases, we’ll see.

Well, that’s on you. https://www.half-life.com/halflife/25th exists nonetheless: “Now Verified on the Steam Deck (and our native Linux runtime has been set as the default)”

Completely missed it, very nice, thanks. There’s even a Mac port, will check later.

HL: Alyx had a native port, it’s Proton only now. Is CS2 or Deadlock native or Proton?

I’m not aware of any new Valve HL1 remasters and Black Mesa was an indie effort. Similarly TF2 is being ported to ARM Macs by indie teams now that source code is available and Valve couldn’t be bothered.

Steam on Linux provides a fixed target set of libraries because it’s kind of hard to release native games on Linux (you have to include a crapload of libraries you expect to be installed otherwise, which Steam solves).

Larian is essentially styling now. Even Valve doesn’t release native ports anymore and went as far as removing some in favour of Proton versions.

Star Wars: Outlaws, 15 hours in.

It’s Star Wars Assassin’s Creed Witcher essentially. There is a touch of what I call Ubisoftosis (map with a million pins) but they didn’t overdo it this time. Main story is okay so far, sidequests are nothing to write home about but somehow it all comes together very nicely because systems play off each other constantly.

The first hook is the setting of course. I’m not a big Star Wars fan but I appreciate how richly detailed it is. I can’t help but compare it to Starfield where travelling is a chore and Outlaws does everything right. Even with fast travel available I usually travel to my spaceship on speeder or on foot, launch from the ground to orbit, punch in hyperdrive and land in the same way. It’s so seamless and fun!

My squirrel brain remains entertained because of the exploration & upgrades loop. There’s lots of environmental puzzles that are really well done and equipment rewards are usually worth it. On top of that you have abilities that you gain by performing certain actions, some of which can be a bit of a puzzle too, similar to how achievement work usually.

Kessel Sabacc is Star Wars Gwent, surprisingly fun for how simple the rules are. Switch 2 version includes Sabacc related DLC which is nice.

Technical side is really impressive. I didn’t think I’d see games with RTGI on Switch 2, especially not at launch. It does crash from time to time though but I haven’t lost more than a minute or so of progress thankfully. The game really benefits from playing on the go as you can quickly score some side jobs and leave main story for when you have more time at home.

The biggest drag for me are spaceship parts. The ship handles horribly and controls are weird. I have no fun spinning while chasing red arrows. If I could I’d keep Southpaw control scheme strictly for those parts it’d be bearable but alas…

Best 7/10 game I played in a while.

That’s the case because of the capitalism of course but somehow Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft were mostly able to restrain themselves in that regard. I guess they face more scrutiny because their finances are public and Valve can pretend to be your friend because you don’t know how much money they print with electronic gambling. Valve has more in common with EA here.

I’ve looked into this back in the day and once you factor in price of the adapter it comes to a similar cost and looks really clunky. Even though looks don’t matter because it’s at the rear, I’d be worried I’d break it because it protrudes so much.

PS5 originally launched with 825GB drives and Slim increased that to 1TB - they’re reverting that change now.