warm

I’d rather Blam! be doing both.

CSGO was peak, before they added agent skins. Then competitive integrity was thrown out the window. CS2 actually downgraded a lot of the game, I’m still not sure it functions fully now.

They butchered community servers and don’t seem interested in supporting that scene the same as in the past. So there’s no “fun” until they give it to us. The game is just for siphoning money, more than it has been in the past. The entire industry is like that and new consumers are accustomed to it, so it’s never going to change and it’s probably why Valve jumped on CS again.

I think it’ll settle after a while, covert items will come back down in price. Really good change from Valve. Though removing MTX entirely would be preferable.

They dont want people buying the old games, even their 15 year old ones are still full price on purpose. They want you in the latest game each year, exposed to all the predatory extra-transactions, then they want you to do that again the next year and the next and the next… the games are not priced like that because they “forgot”, it’s a business strategy.

AAA is just cash grab, they haven’t been good or innovative games for a long, long time now. They are very good at marketing to the masses though and they have the pricing tiers laid out perfectly to extract as much money from people as they can.

They start off with their massive price tag like $70-80, plus the deluxe editions for $100-120 for any suckers who want a fucking extra skin. Then after a couple months when sales slow down, they put it on sale for like 20% off, then a couple months more, its like 40% off and so on. DLC has kind of fallen off, as they get people stuck in the battle pass and cosmetic buying loop instead (people are crazy).

If a AAA game looks interesting to you at all, you are literally best just waiting a few months or more, it’s a win-win, you either buy it it’s actual value or you get the reviews that its a disgusting broken mess or was completely over-hyped (it’s these last two 99% of the time).

Steam sales are for getting them older games a bit cheaper, good indie games are worth their price tag multiple times over honestly so unless you are tight on money, I’d support the developer regardless of sales.

I wish Steam would put the 3rd-party requirements nice and obvious above the buy button. Along with “uses AI content”, “in-app purchases” and “always online requirement” banners too. And more too, every game should be shamed before users get to the buy button.

So they just want MKBHD basically.

It’s handheld, which is already a major difference to the other consoles, along with the little Wii style control options.

They aren’t selling it because of processing power, or necessarily the gimmick aspect, but on portability and “affordability”. That makes it a more compelling product than gimped PCs that cost twice as much.

But the Steam Deck has started to carve into that market, with many other lower quality ‘PC’ handhelds appearing too.

I think Nintendo will survive the longest, the Switch is a handheld with gimmicky features which appeals to kids and families. They have strong IPs, people will buy literally anything that says Pokemon on it. They are very anti-consumer, but that doesn’t matter to most unfortunately.

Xbox and PlayStation are essentially just heavily restricted PCs, so they don’t really hold the same value as a Switch might.

It’s just that people order online mostly these days. Sony are also doing this with their PlayStation.

Honestly though, consoles are dying breed.

NewPipe or a fork. I personally use PipePipe. The interface is much nicer than anything else, no over the top “modern” design, just simple and functional.

If it includes marketing then yeah, it’s mostly that. $700M is an absolutely absurd astronomical amount for what CoD is, on a purely development basis.

Sledgehammer Games. They never really kept the cycle, they kept fucking up and others had to come in to help etc. There’s got to be disatrous management at the studios.

You cannot convince me it cost $700M to make any of the recent CoD games. They are rehashes of each other. That has to include literally every dollar spent during the games development lifecycle across all studios and the publisher, right? Otherwise they are just pissing money away.

But Larian themselves released a buggy mess even with early access for 3 years? Why did they rush it out?

Fuck EA and AAA in general, but like practice what you preach Swen. You aren’t the small studio you think you are anymore, you have nearly 500 employees.

The inevitable, it was always going to rise, it was loss-leader to get market share.

Yeah, they used to constantly offer $1/month, I’d take that for a month and try a game I was interested in. I got value there, but I’d never pay more than that and certainly not on a recurring basis.

Legally sure, but what people mean is you have a copy and there’s no DRM/online check-in to execute it and play it. Steam offers DRM-free titles too, it’s entirely up to developer discretion.

Didnt do Playstation any good, their online service was still just as shit, they just pocketed the money. I think consoles reached their peak anyway, PC is a much more accessible and appealing option now, the market is shifting.

Not that I was buying any of EA’s products for the longest time, but now I definitely won’t even consider it for a second.