Well, the good thing about it (if one tries to see a good thing) is that MS isn't Sony. MS tends to release not only on their XBox, but also on Windows. Which in turns means that we're likely still able to run the game in Proton. With Sony, their games tend to be PS exclusive until they are typically so old that when a Windows port arrives, they're considered retro-games.

Ok, and tbh, is anybody really going to miss what was one of the most toxic companies to work for in America?

Other than that, geesh, did REALLY nobody in charge ever read a Economics textbook to realize that market concentration is bad? Will this stop only when there is only MS and Sony and their two consoles left? Does nobody realize that for a free-market economy to work, it takes a think called competition. And does nobody realize that if companies can spend that kind of money to buy all their competitors, we're not taxing corporations nearly high enough?

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Funny. I have been pondering cancelling my (classic) Humble Choice sub for a while now, because there were many months in a row when I thought the offer to be lackluster. This month had (IMHO) much better games, so I thought, "ok, cool, maybe they're getting back to have at least 1-2 quality games per month in there".

And now this.

First, they can stuff their launcher in a very dark place. I -hate- launchers. I use Steam to organize my games, and that's where I want them -all- to be. Every launcher on top of/next to Steam is just a total waste of time it requires me to start and click though it.
I am not even going to comment on the Windows-only thing, other than saying it's 2022. There is no excuse NOT to deploy on all PC platforms anymore, except indifference and/or ineptitude.

Whether or not I stay subscribed, only time will tell. If I see too many more months with lackluster games I won't ever play anyway, even $12 is too much.

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Quoting: furaxhornyx

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: PhiladelphusAnother interesting question is, how many people not currently on Steam will be buying a Steam Deck?

(Yeah, I know you need an account to pre-order it at the moment, but that might not always be the case whenever Valve is finally able to get on top of supply issues. And people could always get an account in the future after it's released and they've seen reviews/demonstrations from a friend/etc.)

Is there such a thing as a gamer that doesn't have a Steam account nowadays?! :grin:

Console gamers ?

Mobile gamers. Who apparently make up the majority these days, as hard to believe as it is.

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Looking at the list, the two things I noticed were a) how fantastic it is that so many popular games run in Linux these days, and b) how far away from average my taste in games is. I don't own a single one of the Top 10 games, nor would I even think about buying any of them. Maybe except New World, if it wouldn't suck, or have a chance to brick the type of GPU I have. :D

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Wow, Blender is raking in the money these days! Good for them (and us)! :)

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Quoting: TrainDocYeah, let's all just keep our attention on Godot because this is a waste of our collective time imo...

To be fair, I don't think this engine is meant for small Indie studios and one-person devs. This is more for large projects that need all the advanced features and can handle the complexity in return.
It's still great to have, because it's the only FREE engine of its kind, and it might be of interest for large studios that want 100% full control over their project, but still don't necessarily wish to develop their own in-house engine.

Personally, I guess I will stick to Godot, haha!

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Deck might or might not boost Linux adoption on the desktop. It's anyone's guess. But what Deck already DID was giving Valve a reason to throw substantial funds at a piece of software allowing us to run (almost) every Windows game on Linux.
At this point I am not even fussed about how many native ports we're getting. I don't care, as long as the games I want to play on Linux do run on Linux. And with exactly one notable exception, they do. Even if our market share never grows beyond 2%, we've already won. MS no longer has a stranglehold on gaming, because we're no longer forced to rely on devs to take pity on us and actually release a port of their games. We can run most of them without even asking them. And THAT's what Deck gave us.

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Quoting: MohandevirIf you ever come by high-end hardware at a fair price, please let us know.

Casual != High-end

As I said, high-end gaming cannot be substituted by streaming anyway. These people buy dual RTX 3080s to squeeze the last bit of framerate out of their games - they certainly don't want to add unnecessary latency by streaming their game from a server two states away.

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Quoting: STiATI'd happily pay valve 12 bucks a month if I could use it to play my whole library without the hassle of nvidia.

That is honestly the only way I can see cloud gaming to become a desirable thing - as an premium add-on service to stream the games you already own anyway. That way, you can play games on your PC when at home, and on your tablet/phone when travelling. Best of both worlds.
But other than that, I have no desire to rent my games, or have to rely on a service that might or might not close shop tomorrow morning. Or clog my bandwidth with multiple GB per hour just to stream a game that my PC can easily run locally.

Quoting: STiATAnd ye, not an option for competitive players, but for casuals like me good enough. If I had something like that I would not have bought a new gaming PC. That's a lot of month until it pays off buying my own gaming rig.

Honestly, the save-on-hardware argument doesn't hold much merit, particularly not for more casual players that don't need (multiple) high-end GPUs. Unless you really use your PC for gaming ONLY and can argue not to need a PC at all anymore when streaming games, the difference in price between a pure office PC and a casual gaming PC is actually pretty marginal.
This is actually why I still fail to understand the economics of game-streaming. Casual players don't save enough on the hardware to make the streaming subscription the cheaper choice in the long run, and hardcore players typically don't want any extra lag when playing games, so they will have to buy high-end hardware anyway.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut, is it just me or did their hit rate on those side gigs used to be higher back in the day? When was the last time they came out with a Google Maps?

Google's body count is pretty high, and always has been. Stadia is just one of their more prominent failures.

https://killedbygoogle.com/ [External Link]

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