There's something ironic about this. Evidently the designers are not plutocrats.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: BTRESince we had opposite experiences it looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree :)

I guess it would be a bit silly to expect everyone to have the same taste in entertainment. It's not like we're talking about hard facts here so it's perfectly natural to have different experiences. In matters of taste there are only opinions. Professional art experts and critics can go cry in a corner. :P

My degree is in litcrit, so . . . waaahhh!!! :'(

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Quoting: EhvisI actually find the $7.5B figure worrying. Companies don't spend that much money to not get something out of it. I have a hard time believing that this can be earned by selling pro-accounts, so there must be some other vision for how this could be made profitable. I don't think I want to be around to find out what it is.

This. They must have some reason to spend $7.5 billion. "Pocket change" it may be, but certainly on one of those days when you've been gradually accumulating the stuff for weeks and suddenly realize you've got a couple dozen (pounds, euros, dollars) in coin weighing your pocket down. $7.5 billion is more than the Canadian government just paid for an oil pipeline (and they got rooked, at that--ex-Enron dudes totally fleeced them).

So either they have a plan to make a profit from Github, a big enough one to make $7.5 billion worth it. And it seems to me there's a good chance whatever way they plan to make that money isn't going to be something we'll love. Or they have a strategic purpose in owning it that they think is worth shelling out $7.5 billion without getting a profit back. I would expect to like that even less.
Or both.

So, well . . . keep backups, folks.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: slaapliedjeI agree, but the console needs to be standardized in it's hardware. Otherwise it's just a bunch of parts in a box. Developers like a target for performance, etc.

Not really. Mobile and PC markets work fine with variety of hardware available. They are essentially "parts in a box". That doesn't stop developers and users. I don't see why consoles need to be any different in that regard. What's useful are common APIs and system stack. That's where above things I mentioned come in.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI know I'm already annoyed that a lot of games I have that I can't see in their full potential because I don't have an HDR TV or a Pro.

That's why well designed games adapt to different resolutions and hardware capabilities. That's more work, sure, but it's the right thing to do. If you can't see something in full potential because of your hardware, you'll get better hardware. Wasn't it always the case?

Well I guess it depends. Back in the 8bit era of computing, pretty much there werne't outlandish upgrades for the computers being made, you pretty much had memory differences and that was it, but soon there were games that required 48k or 64k.. then eventually 128k. Then the 16bit era came where developers would end up mostly developing for the lowest common denominator, like the ST instead of the STe, or the OCS instead of ECS and then AGA in Amiga land.

Now there are APIs that help with a lot of this and detect the hardware you're running on, though a lot of times you still have to tweak graphic settings when you first start something up for computer games. Consoles are nice because you don't have to do that ever. You pop the game into your system (or download it digitally) and it works. You don't have to mess with drivers, configurations, etc.

Something like the Steam Machine, which was mostly geared toward being a console and not a computer, didn't have that 'turn it on, it works, all your controls are configured, and you just sit down to play' feel that something like a PS4 has. Hell, even this box is going to support different controllers, keyboards, mice, etc. Wonder if it'll support the Steam Controller?

That's the thing, with Console games, you can't just go buy better hardware, it's more like a laptop, where you have to get a whole new laptop. There's a reason why it's referred to as 'The PC master race' because a lot of console gamers just stay away from it because in a lot of ways it's too hard to keep a game library running (with ever evolving operating systems and hardware).

The funny thing is, we all cry for an open platform in a console, but when it comes down to it, that's from a 'PC user's point of view. Console users are of a different mentality usually and just want a box they can press power on to play a game (though that's evolved too into streaming media as well.)

At least with this Atari VCS there will be standard APIs like OpenGL and Vulkan supported, rather than having to use some weird devkit.

In this particular case (and really the Steam Machine case) it's a bit different from normal consoles when it comes to hardware though. Your original point was about developers preferring a fixed target--but nobody's going to be developing games for this thing or Steam Machines, they're going to be running PC games which are already developed to run on very variable hardware. From a developer's point of view, these things are just a few specific PC configurations--they don't really change the target at all. Actually with this thing for the most part there are no developers at all--they're intended to run old games mainly.
The important thing, then, is not that they all be the same, or that they be impossible to modify or attach different controllers to. The important thing is that whatever configurations are sold, are good to go out of the box, with sane defaults and solid integration. Technically, an individual purchaser can't even tell if other purchasers have the same hardware and an identical experience--they can only tell if their purchase works. It is no doubt slightly easier to ensure that smooth experience with just one hardware configuration--but it shouldn't be a huge deal to effectively support a few variants.

I don't think the problem with Steam Machines had anything to do with them coming in multiple configurations as such. Most of the problems weren't even related to that, although one or two were about them coming from multiple vendors, none of whom were even the central one. I think maybe Valve wanted to imitate the success of the old IBM PC itself, with its relative openness and tolerance of clones which arguably led to its dominance over competitors like pre-Mac Apple computers and so on. But if the IBM PC itself had just been a reference design, not a real thing sold relentlessly to businesses by the massive marketing muscle and supergargantuan sales channel that was International Business Machines, the clones on their own would not have been able to dominate the market--mostly wouldn't have come into existence because there would have been no ecosystem for them to join. Valve and Steam Machines was like IBM launching the PC without making any PCs. They were probably doomed even without the various user experience gaps compared to the competition, or the generally lousy price points.

I sometimes think that Valve already realized the things were doomed (or at least would need years to be truly ready) by the time they launched, but they'd kind of promised they would and already put it off a year from the announcement so they just didn't put much energy in, minimized losses and chalked it up to experience. Hopefully one of these days when the graphics stack is all ready and MS app stores start breathing down their necks they will polish the software, team up with some content providers (eg Netflix), put their experience gained from past mistakes to use, mount a big push this time and hit Steam Machines out of the park.

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Quoting: bubexel

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: lucifertdarkVR of all sorts is still way out of most people budgets, the price will HAVE to come WAY down to have any hopes of real success.

I wonder which prices people expect, considering that every VR headset contains two gaming "monitors".

And tracking system and controllers. And everything in the smallest size and weight possible.

It's not about whether the price is reasonable. There are lots of things for which a reasonable price is too expensive for most people to want to buy it. On the internet one can find pictures of this incredibly gorgeous golden gown made from the silk of the golden orb weaver spider. It's really cool and awesome, but it is unlikely to become a mass market item because what with needing silk from a million spiders and stuff it's kind of expensive.
People don't owe it to the VR industry to buy something whose utility to them is not worth what they have to pay for it.

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Whenever I see this game, I can't stop myself thinking "Full Metal Furries".

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Quoting: ZekThePenguinI would be much more excited about an actual Linux anime GAME. Tired of the many visual novels.

As has been mentioned, the Sunrider ones ("Mask of Arcadius" and "Liberation Day" ) are games. There is a sort of visual-novel-like thing happening that strings stuff together, but most of your time is in quite difficult turn-based space battles, and you control a squadron of ships which you get to upgrade in quite varied ways.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: LeopardSo , i'm not a VN gamer guy but i tried that free one ( Sunrider ) to see how it is sexual by Valve means.

So far , there is 0 sexual drawings etc. What was the deal then?

The free version probably doesn't have anything. the other 2 have 18+ patches you can download from the official site.

Just to be clear, the patches are also free. I personally really quite like Sunrider; the battle tactics are surprisingly interesting (considering I really don't think the engine is meant for that kind of thing). It's the kind of game where you can see what seems to you the obvious way to do things and then find on internet chatter that other people are successfully doing it quite differently.

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I've been back to Civ: Beyond Earth for a bit. And, well, I like it, but it's no Alpha Centauri. If someone took Alpha C, updated the graphics a little, brought the controls into the modern era (mouse wheel zoom and such) and otherwise maybe made little modern-finish changes to the UI to be more convenient, made it work perfectly on current Linux, and made no other changes, I would be all "Shut up and take my money". It would still be the best SF 4X-on-the-planet game around.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf I actually did go out of my way to defend the poor and downtrodden Panterra people, and believe I am doing good, I would be a do-gooder.
Because that would only lead to the Panterra people never learning to defend themselves and always require someone to do it for them, it would actually be a bad result.

If you're right, that's a problem. And it's a widespread claim; give a man a fish, yadda yadda. This is the ostensible rationale, for instance, behind many pushes to reduce, eliminate, or aggressively micromanage social programs. There is however a lot of controversy over how often it is actually true. Much data suggests, for instance, that cutting social programs mainly leads not to increased self-reliance but to poverty and suffering.
Whoever's right, the problem is not the intention to do good, but the possiblity that the means chosen to do it may be mistaken.

Mind you, I would tend to agree that a lot of "aid" organizations supposedly helping people in third world countries end up doing little or no good and often a great deal of harm, and so the people well meaningly supporting them are making mistakes. However, that has relatively little to do with the well-meaning people either donating small amounts of money or staffing the organizations at the lower levels. Left to themselves, they might do quite a bit of good. However, the design of these organizations' programs tends to be shaped by their major sources of money, which tend to be either large corporations or first-world governments, both of which have as their main objective not doing good but making sure the third world countries remain good places for foreign investors to extract profits from. So the "aid" is in fact an investment meant to shape the third-world society to its own disadvantage. In short, the problem is not the do-gooders, but the do-badders, and it is not a problem of unintended consequences but of intended ones.

Good people doing things with good intentions can create bad results. But it's less common than many believe. And the Adam Smith myth of bad people doing things with bad intentions creating good results thanks to the magic of the market can happen too, but that is also far less common than many believe. In fact, good intentions generally create good results, and bad intentions usually create bad ones. The problem is that a lot of the most powerful people have bad intentions, and that can swamp the effects of other actors doing smaller things. Being told that it's good intentions causing the problems tends to help us miss the bad intentions that are actually doing so.

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