Hmmm . . . OK, thinking about software as a service strategies . . . maybe if I were Microsoft and a ruthless greedhead, I'd launch the thing with full and easy Steam (and various other things) support. Then, in a couple of years, maybe with the next generation device, the basic experience would be just Xbox-and-MS-store, whereas a relatively full Windows OS experience (along the lines of SteamOS' desktop mode) would be a paid subscription. And of course, Steam would be in that full Windows OS experience . . . just a co-incidence, of course nothing to do with blocking Steam . . .

And then either people fork out (in which case, profit!) or they mostly don't, and in the second case I'd cancel the subscription service because it's not popular, leaving the customers captive to only Xbox-and-MS-store and Steam frozen out.

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Too Americana for me in my current mood, I'm afraid. Just not really feeling like being nostalgic for the Twin Towers.

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Intellectually, it seems clear to me this is a major threat. Microsoft have the money, they have the motivation, they have the track record, it seems like seriously bad news. But somehow in my gut I'm finding it hard to take it seriously. I feel like Microsoft kind of lost their predatory mojo years ago and just don't really have the stuff any more to pull off a major disruptive move.

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Guess I'm not the target audience for this sort of thing. I'm just finding myself thinking "OK, this doesn't look like a place to put it to actually use it. So, instead couldn't I just plug it in and put it on the coffee table or a bookshelf?"

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So I wonder if this is one of those "The overlord company is losing money bad" situations, or just one of those "The overlord company isn't making money as fast as the shareholders gripe it should, so they're cutting a source of short-term losses to use the money for share buy-backs, at the expense of future revenue" situations.

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Pixeldrop . . . you're trying to tell me Adobe did something ethical?!

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I don't play racers, but the trailer sure looks like it has that sort of "Chaotic but hypnotic" thing down pat.

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I dunno. These things usually aren't, as far as I can tell. And when it comes to art, which for games seems to be the big issue, it seems like it is possible to tell.

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There does not exists a reliable alternative to kernel AC.

Come to that, as far as I can tell there does not exist a reliable kernel AC either, so six of one . . .

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Maybe they just mean "Volcanoids" will play better now.

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