Quoting: GuestDo you paladins really think Valve owns no patents [External Link]?

Patent portfolios are a sad norm in the modern industry. It's what you do with them that makes the difference.

They are the nuclear deterrent equivalent of business, a "lawsuit weapon" arsenal that can be used both for offence and defense. I.e.: if you lawsuit me for your patent I counterlawsuit you with mines ensuring mutual destruction.

And then there are trolls. Who do what your average troll would do with a nuclear weapon. Use it to blackmail people and get some cash.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat is true. I'm sure the Switch itself sells at a loss, after all, and the other consoles.

That is most likely true at console launch, when it's of paramount importance to get the majority share of the market to reap the benefits of network effect. You only have 1 console launch. But after that it's not a given anymore. There was a lot of speculation back then at xbox 360 and ps3 time that m$ and Sony stopped selling at loss after 3-4 years and were in active territory since ages.

The last generations though suffered pc competition greatly, they had to reduce iteration to just two years so probably they never had the time to compensate.

Nintendo however is a different player. It doesn't use superior hardware as it's selling point. It's totally possible Nintendo sells at production cost at launch and then start to gain something already after a few months.

Funny thing. Everyone is 100% sure consoles are sold at loss, nobody challenge this accepted fact. Yet in EpicVSApple Epic couldn't provide any piece of evidence or even some clue that this is a fact, despite this being a fundamental piece of its theory and despite having both Sony and M$ support. This at least should suggest something on consoles real manufacturing costs.

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Am I a boring uninspired person if all I want from Valve is a new steam link device? A new Controller would be nice I guess but not a game changer.

Apart from that, there is actually a healthy market of handheld PCs right now... kind of like the nintendo switch but without the switcheroo things attached. I guess having a steamOs or just a steam client optimized for such devices would open interesting perspectives for tinkers and brave OEMs alike.

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Imho Stellaris is in good shape now (not exactly a given with pdx games).

Perhaps if someone wants to try it it could be a good idea to directly try the test build since (among other things) it speeds up the game sensibly by increasing pop growth.

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You're drunk Pdx, go home! 1st April was more than one month ago.

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There is no way that busines model is going to beat a steam library / nvidia now combination.

Stadia could in theory carve itself a niche with games that exploit fully its cloud nature and the unique possibilities it offers. Kind of like Nintendo. But since they shut down their game studio I think they killed the only interesting thing they had to offer.

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Quoting: Nugrudwhen was the last time SteamOS was updated by Valve? Does anyone still use it?

If I were Gaben I wouldn't spend resources into SteamOs until Big Picture and Proton are polished. After all the deficiencies in those areas were the cause of failure of the Steam Machine initiative.

It will be interesting though to see if Valve will try another time to push SteamOs when the time comes or if they just leave it to community projects like this one. The advantage of community projects is that they might have less legal and commercial issues in integrating third party stores into their distro. Assuming any store other than Steam start supporting linux ofc.

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Quoting: MisterPaytwickIt's some good news but it could get worst depending on the IPO result. Imagine it being Tencent or Facebook acquiring it, I'm not sure it'd be better, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a problematic.

Depends what you mean by being better.

M$ issue is that it slowly corrupt and destroy any social app it touches. Messenger, Skype, Skyper for Business (God save us!) and even Teams (though Teams design imho was good, the issue I had with it was that it was down 2 days per week when I was using that - before covid. Dunno how's now. My new employer uses SfB. Sadly.). So bad would mean non viable Discord in 3 to 5 years, but likely an attractive alternative will appear and people would flock there as they always when it comes to M$ building crappy walls.

FB and Tencent though are good at what they do so I don't think they would destroy Discord. On the contrary. But one uses his services to spy and manipolate you while the other spies, then profile and occasionally even censor you. So either you bend the knee or you outcast yourself to some open source and free alternative... with the other handful of outcasts.

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Oh come on. One good thing in gaming and it goes shit. Fuck this.

Skype, Skype for business, teams... How many apps do they have to crapify to be satisfied. I can't wrap my head around how M$ ruins everything it touches. And they even hire good engineers. How is this even possible.

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Quoting: GuestFunny, my save game will be obsolete again before i can scrape the surface of the game. I like this game but i am too casual for it. It is for people who clock hundreds of hours in a game. And fast enough as not to be caught in an update.

If you bought the game on Steam, when the update is released before starting the game just roll back to this patch. Et voilà. No more patch release countdown. You can finish all the games you want at your pace.

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