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Latest Comments by Purple Library Guy
Cassette Beasts is a wonderful take on monster catching
6 Oct 2022 at 4:13 pm UTC Likes: 5

"Quick, get ready, another monster is coming!"
"Ack, give me a minute, I'm rewinding!"

RimWorld - Biotech expansion announced and a big free update
6 Oct 2022 at 4:08 pm UTC Likes: 1

and as they develop you will get to pick which traits and passions a child will develop.
Ever wish you could have done that with your actual kids? I mean, I wouldn't actually want to be able to do that, at least not full on, dictating your kid's traits seems kind of creepy . . . but maybe an option to add or subtract one trait, or something?

Google gives up on Stadia, will offer refunds on games and hardware
4 Oct 2022 at 10:50 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedjeSeriously. I am actually shocked that MS hasn't just full on forced users to use a 'shim' OS that just launches an Edge browser to access your desktop in the cloud.
Eh, they probably would have by now, but Google got there first (ChromeOS) and now they have NIH syndrome. :grin:

Wine manager app Bottles gets some drag and drop fun
4 Oct 2022 at 4:56 pm UTC Likes: 8

It's always nice to see open source projects sweating the UI. Open Source software has acquired a stereotype of "Totally powerful, if you can figure out how to use any of the power" which is sometimes deserved.

Valve makes Steam Deck custom boot screens easier (updated)
4 Oct 2022 at 4:12 pm UTC Likes: 6

You know, all companies are in it to make money. But making money is really complicated; there's no one sure way. So what I've noticed is there's some leeway for personality (although being publicly traded tends to crush that); everyone "logically" comes to the conclusion that the best way to make money is to be the kind of person they are. Assholes are sure that the only way to make money is to be an asshole. Decent people tend to figure you can make money by being decent. So you get Valve with the instinct to say hey, if we enable our users to do cool stuff that'll probably result in money down the road somewhere, whereas many other companies have the instinct to say hey, if we make sure we control everything and our users can only do what we tell them, that'll probably make money down the road somewhere.

(Then there's business schools; the job of business schools is to try to mold everyone in the money-making game into uniform assholery.)

Steam Next Fest - October 2022 Edition is live now
4 Oct 2022 at 4:01 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: Valck
Quoting: PhiladelphusServants that look like fusions of man and machine that you'd find in Bosch. It's really something.
I take it you're not talking about Bosch the appliance maker ;)
I see you haven't heard about their rogue R&D department. :wink:

Steam Next Fest - October 2022 Edition is live now
4 Oct 2022 at 6:26 am UTC

Quoting: PhiladelphusThe Eternal Cylinder [External Link]
That looks weird and interesting. Might have to get it.

KDE devs talk Steam Deck and their work for it at Akademy 2022, over a million shipped
4 Oct 2022 at 6:13 am UTC

OK, just near-instinctive reaction, haven't crunched recent numbers, but . . . if more than a million have shipped, shouldn't that have had a bigger impact on the Steam hardware survey? I thought the existing Linux user base on Steam was just over a million before the Deck. So like, shouldn't the Deck have pretty much doubled our numbers, shoving us up to the 2% range, rather than just nudging us up to 1.23?

Google gives up on Stadia, will offer refunds on games and hardware
1 Oct 2022 at 12:56 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Mohandevir
Quoting: Mohandevir
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Mohandevir
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Mohandevir
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: KlaasBut it requires a lot more power everywhere else, so it should be avoided at all costs.
It's a nice way to think, but like people who argue against capitalistic ways all the time, it's just not grounded in the reality of how we all live our lives. Should I care about how much energy servers on everything I use cost the planet? Yes. Do I? Not really, I'm just trying to survive and keep costs low like everyone else.
Everytime I read this kind of argument, I'm wondering if the environmental impact of the over the seas shipments of the new devices is taken into account... I guenuinely don't know, but I'm wondering if a few shipments to the likes of google, for their servers with the streaming impact is much worse than 25+ millions of units of consoles or pc being shipped to 25+ millions of different adresses, on huge ocean liners/trucks/airplanes that burns lots of unecological fuel... I'm guenuinely curious.
I don't know... but the 25+ million people will still need a device to access their games either way. Maybe less often, though.
Not if you already have the device, because it runs on a potato. Yes there will be new devices to be bought, but streaming will lengthen your device's lifespan, thus less shipments required.

And think about electronics... Even more obvious with DIY PCs... Parts rarely comes from one place... I don't know. I'm wondering.

Edit1: Seriously, let's pretend we are in a 100% streaming world (absolutely not a wish; I like local gaming too much)... I'm probably still running my old i7-3770 from 2012. No Graphics card, one less shipment. :wink:

Edit2: And now, I'm thinking about all the upgrades I wouldn't have bought afterward... That much less shipments... Yikes!

Edit3: x25 million users? And one device for all services? No need for a Playstation and/or Xbox and/or Steam Deck and/or PC and/or Nvidia Shield, etc... One device that does it all in the form factor that you prefer? Think about all the shipments that gets avoided... Ok. It's highly theoric, but see where it could lead us?
Yeah, except in a real streaming-only world, since there would be no alternative to the streaming services, and there would be only a few of them, they would cut anti-competitive deals with each other and all start mandating the hardware you use, so you'd have various incompatible-with-each-other consoles all over again that you'd have to spend money on . . . not because there was any valid technical reason for it, but because they could.


Not sure about that. Your reasoning revolves around an hardware centric business... Cloud gaming is a SaaS. What hardware you use, they don't really care. What they care about is the subscriptions and the services you pay for. In many cases, those that supply cloud services don't even supply the hardware. Why would they bother? If what you say is true, I wouldn't be able to use GeForce Now on the same device as Stadia. Sony wouldn't have put their games on PC. There is a paradigm shift caused by SaaS.

Edit: What you will definetly see, though, are exclusive games from service to service.
On top of that, I've always heard that Sony and Microsoft are selling their consoles at a loss, explaining the 30% cut in their stores... Don't you think they'd be happy to get rid of that? This and all the support tickets because of hardware failures? Think about it... I can stream my Steam games using the 60$ Steam Link hardware... My Chromecast with GoogleTV is able to do all that for 50$... Do you think there is a lot of money to be made in this market segment? What they want is sell games, not a piece of tech. The piece of tech they care about is on the server side, at this point.
Point. Nonetheless, I think we can be pretty sure they'd come up with some way to end up costing consumers as much as before, or more because the market would be more concentrated.

Trombone Champ is my new favourite rhythm game
30 Sep 2022 at 6:42 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Philadelphus
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Philadelphusit would probably sound cacophonic. :grin:
As I recall, he played a lyre, not a trombone. :grin:
Wait, you're telling me trombones aren't just modern lyres?!? :shock:
Apparently in organology (something I had never heard of before five minutes ago) lyres are part of the zither family.
Ahh, I just wanted to say "zither". Zither, zither, zither . . .