It wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’ll probably do the job. Depends on what you want to do with it. There’s fewer people choosing this path, which means that when things go wrong, you’ll have fewer sources of information to help.

Some old Dell office PC with a good amount of RAM and an SSD would be just as well.

If it’s enough negative thoughts pile up, they’ll eventually breach a threshold where people avoid the company. I was looking forward to Metroid Prime 4, but I’m thinking of skipping it now.

I’ve seen very little worth playing on any consoles. Conversely, my problem with the Steam Deck is finding time for all the games I want to play.

deck just fails at new games.

That assumes the PS5 has games worth playing in the first place.

I can’t wait to buy movies from Sony only to have them invalidated a few years from now.

It’s about the same as the inflation-adjusted PS3 price, but here’s the thing: the PS3 had a difficult first couple of years. If not for the Red Ring of Death, Microsoft could have come out ahead that generation. One thing Sony is good at is capitalizing on its competitors’ mistakes, and combined with price reductions on later models, they pulled out a victory. Being >$750 inflation-adjusted dollars at launch wasn’t why it won.

Given the contemporary examples, they weren’t wrong to think so. Everyone was trying to make a console in the 16/32-bit era.

• PC Engine/Turbografx
• Phillips CD-i (only sorta a console)
• Atari Jaguar
• Neo Geo
• Amiga CD

Some of these are better than others–I’m fond of the PC Engine–but none can be called successful. Neo Geo is somewhat of an exception because it was used as arcade hardware. Some others here are the butt of jokes. There’s also a bunch of Japanese consoles around this time that go nowhere, and are little more than fodder for retro gaming YouTube channels.

Sony took a big gamble and won.

And I feel like half of that 20 years was based on FOMO. “I better get the next Assassin’s Creed or I’ll miss out”, and then it’s all the same crap but they still sold a million of them. People do eventually wise up to FOMO.

. . . our goal is not to push any specific agenda

This is the part they’re actually getting at. Not that the fundamental game design is for everyone (which, yes, is what they try and fail at), but rather they’re responding to people who think they’re failing because they put a woman as the protagonist in some game or another.

Some people really don’t understand layered security.

Too many of them are programmers.

Which, incidentally, would probably past legal muster. You can get pretty close to the source material, and as long as it’s your own custom art, it’s not infringement.

That said, lawyers can send a C&D letter for anything. Doesn’t mean it will hold up in court, but they’re betting the target won’t want to pay that kind of money to fight it.

Also, Iron Bands of Bilarro in DnD 5e, but I’m not sure how far back the history of that item goes. DnD 3.5 had Iron Flask that works kinda the same, but Iron Bands is more similar to a Pokeball.

There’s a model that id used for open sourcing their engines. The source code is open, but the assets (textures, models, sounds, etc.) are still copyrighted and you still have to buy the game to get them legally. This means the company still sells copies on Steam or wherever, and games that replace all the assets can still sell them without any licensing costs, too.

I’m a little surprised this model never caught on. Even id only ever published the engine to the previous game–Quake 3 was open sourced a little after Doom 3 was released–and the practice seems to have stopped when John Carmack left.

Possibly because nobody has tested it in court, or some other subtle legal issue?

Sony will try to drag this thing out at least one more generation. If that goes like this one–and it has room to actually go worse–then Sony will have to make some hard decisions.

I mean, it’s just DNS with an extra field type.

Unions can organize without the government having any protections. It’s very difficult to organize that way. It’s difficult to organize even with the most union-friendly government imaginable. But either way, it can be done.

Unions in the US have been shot by police at before. Hard to have less government protection than that.

The savings happened before 2005.

Also, software is a volume business. They have far more customers now to cover those costs. This is why a lot of tech doesn’t follow general inflation trends.

Or, you, know, if the market doesn’t support high budget games, then don’t make high budget games.

And there was a big decrease in per unit costs of production switching from cartridges to optical media. Not quite as much in the switch from optical media to downloading, but some.

Did they pass those savings on to customers?

Note that he’s calling for the base price to increase, while also getting rid of predatory monetization tactics:

“I don’t love the artificiality of pricing structures post retail,” Douse wrote. “Use the inflated base price to upsell a subscription, and use vague content promises to inflate ultimate editions to make the base price look better. It all seems a bit dangerous & disconnected from the community.”

I’d be fine with this combination. The problem comes when publishers want to increase the base price while also keeping loot boxes and the rest.

I’d also be fine with smaller games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less.

Minishoot Adventures is a twin stick shooter with a 2D Zelda-style map.