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✕ Windows Phone
✕ Microsoft Zune
✕ Microsoft Cortana Speaker
✕ Xbox Kinect
✕ Windows Automotive OS

It's not that there isn't a market for this kind of product, see Steam Deck & Nintendo Switch -- it's just that I don't trust Xbox or even ASUS to craft a compelling product.

My expectations are that it will basically be another "Zune", "The iPod/Nintendo-Switch Killer", it will be good and terrible at the same time. And then get canned once the company decides to do the next round of big layoffs and everyone will forget about it and it will become a N-Gage or Nintendo VirtualBoy.

My expectations are set extremely low, and I expect it to be too expensive to compete with Switch and Deck and to get too hot and overpromise and underdeliver plus a terrible experience mixing shitty desktop gaming dialogs and login screens with a small form factor screen that makes it impractical.

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No FSR4, no interest, no buy!

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Yeah Steam Workshop is great. Got XCOM2 WOTC with Long War mods up the clacker! (400+++ mods, somehow working)

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All I can say is that I am glad they are resetting the world on June 16th.

I went into the game tutorial. I got into what they referred to as the "Vault" and started clicking. When I got back to my character I had nothing on my torso, legs or feet. In other words, I was naked. I then had the brilliant idea to reset my character. When I reset my character, I had to rename my character. I tried the same name as I had previously and it would not accept the name. There was no error message, so I assume the name was considered "taken"...

Bottom line:
I am naked and nameless in the land of BitCraft! No way I am heading to town!


[Edit]
I could not figure out how to get my previous character name back. I did find my clothes in my inventory though.

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This is a real threat to the Steam Deck. Valve should've been faster. It took them 3 years to make SteamOS available on a single third party device. Valve was also slow at getting retail stores to support their OS. After 3 years only the Legion is available in retail stores, and some markets are still completely missed including big markets like Chine, the Middle East and North Africa. By end of next year you'll find this new Windows initiative available on all third party devices and you'll find it available world wide, destroying the SteamOS market share in no time.

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Why do I have the feeling that Asus used one of Titus' debloat scripts on Windows and slapped a so called full screen app on it and there is no involvement of M$ at all..

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Interesting! It looks like they plan to sell it during early access, but go f2p upon full release. I wonder what their monetisation strategy is after that point. I see there's a demo for it, I'll have to give that a try!

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omg yes!! Love a good nextfest :) Are there just a ton more this time around than last time, or am I just imagining that?

After I enabled Proton by default few years ago, there has been more than you have time to play. I couldn't find any actual numbers for each year, but this year doesn't seem to be making any records. Might be just the new normal.

I played two demos today, both enjoyable, but neither caused urge for immediate wishlist.

Rentlord: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3546440/Rentlord/

Rentlord is Balatro inspired "deckbuilder". Instead of cards, you buy properties and collect rent. There are multipliers and jokers (though game calls them plugins). There's bit less randomness as without plugins the profit would be static. Demo gives you a taste, but hopefully final release has lot more content.

Wander Stars: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1575810/Wander_Stars/

Wander Stars is vaguely deckbuilder like game with anime theme. Anime theme is even followed by re-using same animations, which was back in the day used for budget reasons. Though at least animation looks gorgeous.

It's built around the cliche of shouting movement names before doing them. In Wander Stars the movement names are actually constructed from verbs and adjectives and they each have slightly different function. In overall it's maybe slightly too simple after you understand how everything works (it's bit more complicated than what I explained). But at least map view has other things than battles and plot while not highly original has potential for some drama later on.

Kind of still on the fence adding it to wishlist.

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LOL that's a great analogy

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I've been reading through the comments, leaning one way, leaning another. I dunno.
On one hand, this is certainly intended to be a threat to the Steam Deck and a counterattack to block any rise of Linux at Windows' expense. And, Microsoft has certainly had quite a bit of success in that department in the past. And, it has the money and the power that should make its actions important and dangerous. There are so many reasons to see this as big news.

But somehow, I feel like Microsoft does not have the organizational and programming mojo any more to pull this off. The killer grifter instinct is diluted through departments and meetings and focus groups and hack marketers. I'm less disturbed than I perhaps should be. I feel like this is Darth Vader planning the pre-meeting meeting to determine the agenda for the future meeting to decide whether and potentially on what timeline to use the Deathstar to destroy Alderaan. The meeting won't decide anything, but Vader will force-choke the guy who forgot to bring doughnuts.

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I think the problem with Microsoft entering the ring is that you know for a fact they won't play nice at all, and they will resort to more monopolizing practices which they have the power to, if they must.

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omg yes!! Love a good nextfest :) Are there just a ton more this time around than last time, or am I just imagining that?

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the top model with an AI chip [...] probably over 1k$ USD

Yeah, because I KNOW SOOO MANY GAMERS that get SOOOO FUCKING EXCITED by AI in Game Consoles!!!

Reads like this greentext making fun of Xbox for being out of touch -- https://youtube.com/watch?v=EJB80Xsj5BY

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^ Prey is probably up there in my top 20 games of all time. It was just SO SO SO SOOOOOO good. I can still vividly remember the station, the big huge monster scaring the absolute SHIT out of me that first time, reading all the little notes on the mimics, etc... Just masterfully done.

Ambrosia feels very different. Still great! But just different. It's a lot about the comfy feeling of powerwashing goop off of stuff + cool scifi setting + figuring out what happened to the station (so that's the part that's probably most like Prey). But the entire demo is pretty much powerwash goop, collect samples, read interesting lore, try to piece together what happened. There's no combat at all that I saw. (I quit after the first bit, so maybe there is after that? I had seen enough to know I wishlisted it!)

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The base ROG Ally X is already $1147 here in Sweden so this beefed up version will most likely be even more.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/3677220/The_Demons_Told_Me_to_Make_This_Game_Demo/

The Demons Told Me to Make This Game is a Time Loop game and a cosmic horror narrative adventure about demons, monsters, evil cults, bloody rituals, and Elder Gods.

You play as Dark Wisp, a disembodied spirit who is unable to interact with the physical world directly, but instead can possess people and speak into their ears, influencing their behavior.

Your hosts have agency and will keep trying to act on their own accord, but you mustn't let them do that. They're dumbasses, and without your help they will imminently perish. Fortunately, you have control over the flow of time, so you can undo their stupidity whenever you want.

Make choices. Experiment. Explore different timelines. Learn what you need and help your hosts survive. After all, they're the ones destined to save the world.

Works great via Proton, and Steam Deck compatibility is promised for the release version. I have played the demo and liked it very much, waiting for the release.

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I'm pretty sure the base model is DOA as in "it brings nothing new to the table" and the top model with an AI chip... $$$$$$, even if Microsoft undercuts it. Probably over 1k$ USD, thus leaving the low end/affordable market to the Steam Deck.

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For some reason, "Ambrosia Sky" reminds me of "Prey", going by the trailer. Which could be a good thing, as we'll never get a sequel to that game, unfortunately.

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Be Valve,
> does nothing
> competition keeps self-eliminating
> wins

Memetax ( https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/780/308/9f8.jpg )

--

Although Xbox makes some content that I have liked over the decades, they are their own worst enemies and getting in their own way. Being always online, unable to play unless there is an internet connection, forced to install console updates prior to playing a game, or even on first boot is completely and totally unacceptable.

I got no love for these hoes.

I do not love these hoes.

There's no social goodwill to borrow against through decades of reputation. The only reputation they have is `FUCK YOU SHEEPLE -- GO BACK TO SLEEP` ( See perfect circle, go back to sleep song )

Still, more players in the game is better for consumers, so I look forward to seeing what counter moves Valve makes in the coming years, I can't wait for Steam Deck 2 to go HARD.

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Lol, right. I believe it when I see it. The number of times of them promising a release, only to not deliver anything, must be some kind of record in itself.

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I'm sure they want to promote as something like Steam's Game Mode, but Microsoft can't seem to resist piling on their crap and forcing users into it. Even if it's not there at launch, eventually, they'll be tempted to ask users to install OneDrive, Copilot, etc. They can't help themselves. The sad thing is that a lot of people who already game on Windows will just accept it or even prefer it because of Microsoft's monopoly on PC gaming OS architecture (i.e. all the games they want will "just work").

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Well, it seems like teasing the date is getting them lots of publicity. Why would they want to undermine that?

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Wartales started out awesome for me. I love turn based rpgs. And the overworld is SOOOO well done with the unique graphical style, and exploration, etc...

What killed it for me was the insane difficulty + permadeath of squadmates. It took me SOOOO long to get a good squad built up, like in terms of real life hours spent, and then the game would hit you with scenarios where it's pretty much impossible not to lose a squadmate, which in terms of "winning" is still totally fine. BUT that person is gone forever, and often times was important, so now I'd have to go spend another forever finding and recruiting a decent replacement with the right perks, etc... To me it just felt like a massive FU to the respect of a gamers time investment. For a while I tried to play the scenarios with no deaths at all, but the frustration levels got so high I just gave up entirely.

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damn are we the same person?!?! LOL. Same here. I tried it maybe 2/3 yrs ago and it was SO HARD I just gave up. And I too beat it as a kid!

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They'll never change.

They'll never change... they'll never change ! ever since they were 95, always the same ! couldn't keep their hands off the monopolistic practices... and they get to be a leading PC publisher ?! What a sick joke !

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Not to pretend I know how schedules and game releasing work. But if they're sure it's at most *checks calendar* 5 months away from release, how are they not comfortable with making an official date now ? Feels rather strange.

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So let's teach the readers a bit of logic and statistic.

Windows Media Center: epic fail
Windows Phone: epic fail
Xbox: epic fail
Xbox Portable: ?

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Imagine if Half-Life 3 comes out before Silksong

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Mad respect for the people who throw themselves into this world and make these features possible. Without them, Microsoft would have yet another monopolised hook into developers with DirectX.

I find it laughable that they're subtlety trying to reinvent PC gaming on their recent marketing by advertising games for "XBOX PC". They'll never change.

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This is a pretty sweet bundle. I got it for Medium, which I've been meaning to try for quite a while, but I've also had my eye on Black Book and Potion Craft, so this was an easy purchase. I might even try Wartales - I saw 2dKiri streaming that a few months back and it looked pretty good, even if it's not really my bag.

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