Why is this story suddenly getting posted to dozens of communities that in seeing in my feed?

It’s one 73 year old tribal elder who complained that today’s youth don’t respect tradition. This same story has been pre-printed for thousands of years.

I think there are populations of both patient and impatient gamers on both.

The absolute worst platform is Nintendo. You might as well buy the game on launch because it’s still going to be the same price 10 years later. Or even more expensive in some cases.

Consoles have been moving to digital, but they still have physical games. I can’t go to a local store or eBay and buy used Steam games. At the same time, Steam has great sales that do a lot to offset that.

In general I think media hypes up new releases, and there’s blame to go around omamong publishers, media outlets, and media consumers for that. But most online discussions on games are going to default to new releases unless it’s a specific “patient” or “retro” community. So it’s easy to underestimate how many people are fine waiting a couple of years. Or how many kids are waiting until their birthday or Christmas to play a game.

Sony has been paying that toll and, per the article, plans to continue to do so.

Am I missing something here?

What do you mean by “shifted to”. Was there ever a time when these were more common on consoles?

The game widely attributed to starting “micro transactions” was MapleStory, a windows MMORPG. PC games adapted online features like digital-only delivery, DLC’s, and micro transactions before consoles even had the capability to do so figures out. Even before online capabilities, I remember going to game stores in the 90’s and seeing “expansions” for PC games, which is what we used to call DLC back when it was physical.

When think “microtransaction”, I think of a handful of different games immediately. MMO’s, which are much more common on PC (chat features, complex inputs requiring a keyboard, add-ons or other enhancing programs running in the background). Simulation games (the Sims, Truck Simulator, Farming Simulator, Cities Skylines, Civ, etc) that usually are much easier with a M&KB than controller. Multiplayer battle games like MOBA’s or shooters (Valve has DOTA 2, TF2, CSGO and most others are either PC exclusive or multiplat). When I think of Sony in particular, I think of their cinematic single-player experiences. Which may have some DLC, but I don’t associate with predatory micro transactions like cosmetics or P2W schemes.

Consoles have tons of that too nowadays, but it seems like kind of weird to act like PC users are somehow less interested or susceptible to predatory pricing schemes.

Both pale compared to the mobile market though.

https://www.techspot.com/news/103189-ps5-becomes-sony-biggest-money-maker-crushing-past.html

Seems like almost every business area of PlayStation is doing well. Hardware, subscriptions, DLC, other micro transactions… The PS5 just became officially their most profitable generation.

They’re looking to maximize revenue and profit by expanding into the PC market. It’s great to see because it gives consumers more choice. That absolutely should not be interpreted as any sort of sign of weakness for the PS5. The PS5 seems to be doing better than the PS4 did, and the PS4 did well. They have crushed Xbox to the point where people are speculating Microsoft might want out of hardware. The Switch is harder to compare against because it’s near (really should be past) the end of its life, but the PS5 has been selling at a faster rate.

PC gaming is just starting to get back in track after a few down years for hardware sales (largely related to supply shortages and price gouging, especially GPU’s). But it’s starting to turn around, and it seems like Sony wants a piece of that. The question should not be “why is Sony pushing PC ports”, but “Why is Nintendo not porting to PC”.

Square-Enix has been mismanaged for decades and I don’t think is worth paying attention to.

Is the CEO underestimating patience or is the author overestimating?

It’s not as if PlayStation is struggling right now. The PS5 seems to be selling pretty well.

Not to mention that consoles and PC’s are indirect competitors. A lot of people want to use a controller form their couch without jumping through hoops. Gen Z is trending away from desktops and laptops entirely in favor of mobile devices.

I feel the same and I think I’ve narrowed it down to a handful of things, in no particular order.

1. The environment design. Fallout is mostly wastelands, with just a few settlements scattered around. Everyone is fighting each other, plus the monsters that are encroaching on civilization. Everything is a shabby remnant of the past shoddily cobbled together. Even the entire settlement system in Fallout 4 is based on gathering scrap and taping it together. In Skyrim, you can mine and process the minerals to make the nails to put your house together. Skyrim has ruins and remnants of past civilizations, but a lot of the buildings and infrastructure are still in good condition, and there’s fresh growth. The wilds of Skyrim are much more diverse than the wastes of Fallout. Fallout 3 in particular has the annoying green filter on everything unless you mod it out. It doesn’t feel like there’s really a world left to save- it seems like everything is doomed to chaos and anarchy.

2. “Survival”. I would not put Fallout in a list of survival games, but it does borrow a lot of elements from the genre. I understand what they’re going for, but I don’t like the resulting gameplay. Constantly scrounging for weapons, ammo, and resources getd really boring really fast for me. Managing health and Rads too. Every combat effectively takes twice as long when you factor in the time you spend to recover the resources you used.

3. Guns. I know there’s a schism in the Skyrim community between those who mod in guns and those who don’t. I see a few problems with guns in Skyrim, and most apply to the vanilla Fallout games too. BGS just isn’t great at gun play. The feel of the weapons, the environmental design, ammo distribution, enemy AI, physics engine, the sound design… BGS isn’t particularly great at any of it. When the ranged combat is a supplemental element of the gameplay that’s fine- Bioshock has 2 great games despite mediocre combat mechanics, and the Elder Scrolls games are similar with their bows and ranged magic. Fallout puts the ranged combat front and center, and it falls apart.

4. Progression. I think this is why I love Skyrim, and the source of it’s commercial success. I was no stranger to RPG’s before Skyrim (both videogames and tabletop), but the ones I enjoyed were imusually in spite of the leveling systems. Usually a lot of grinding and overly complicated systems with points, skills, abilities, etc.

Fallout uses one of my least favorite systems- general experience gained (mostly through combat) that leads to an overall character level increase, which then grants points that can be used to improve specific skills. You want to get better at lockpicking? Go kill something. Barter, speech, science, repair, medicine… The answer is to kill something. Improve the Energy Weapons skill? You can kill something with Small Guns or Melle and it’s just as effective. It completely disconnects the actions you take as a player from the development of the character.

Skyrim is the opposite. To get better at lockpicking, you pick locks. To get better with a shield you use a shield. It’s both intuitive and satisfying. Other RPG’s boast more complexity, flexibility, or realism, but I think Skyrim really hits the sweet spot between accessibility, realism, and customization.

This also ties back to the survival aspects I mentioned earlier, because I also felt like equipment was much more important in Fallout. Your damage there is often more about what gun you’re able and willing to use than anything to do with your character. In Skyrim, a character with a high one-handed skill and perks can have pretty good damage with just about any one-handed weapon. There’s variance of course- you can tell the difference between an iron sword and dragonbone. But the smithing and enchantments mitigate a lot of those differences. If you haven’t focused on enchanting yet you might choose a lower-pedigree weapon with a better enchantment.

5. Lore. This is subjective of course, but I think Skyrim and the rest of the Elder Scrolls just has better lore. The alt-history of Fallout isn’t terrible, but it’s hard to compete with thousands of years of over a dozen races, various factions, and pantheons of gods interacting with each other. I love reading the books, listening to the dialogue, finding carvings and paintings in the textures or on the item models. Fallout’s lore is mostly either “where were you when the bombs fell?”, “that asshole leading a group of roughians is being a real jerk”, or "Wow Vault-Tex was really unethical ". My wife and I have spent dozens of hours watching YouTube videos breaking down ES lore- everything from speculation about the godhead and very nature of the universe to the one NPC who is vaguely connected to a faction thought extinct.

I use Steam Link on the Deck to do this often. Personally I just leave it in 16:9- the Deck just displays horizontal black bars to get from 16:10 to 16:9. For me that’s just part of the Deck experience because even a ton of games I play locally are 16:9 only, or even 4:3.

You can choose to match the resolution as well. On your host PC go to steam -> settings -> remote play -> [advanced host options] and look for something like “Match desktop resolution to client”.

It also depends on what you are doing. I find that more resource-intensive games are often better streaming- better battery life with less heat and fan noise on the Deck. So changing the individual game settings to 1200x800 works well.

I don’t use that just to access files though. I have several folders on my desktop set up as SMB shares and installed another file explorer (Nautilus) to access it. I mostly use it to move around PS2, GameCube, and Wii roms- everything else is either just permanently on my SD card or I’m able to regularly install via Steam.

For non-Steam game saves, I set up SyncThing to synchronize across devices.

For what it’s worth, I got into the series a bit late myself and didn’t play AC1 until probably 2012 or 2013. I asked people at the time whether it was worth it to play AC1 or if I should just skip ahead, and everyone told me to skip ahead for a lot of the same reasons you said.

I’m not sure why I bothered asking because I decided to just play AC1 first anyways and still managed to enjoy it.

If you’re new to the series, it’s still fun just to run around and climb things and kill people. The story was actually interesting and the Animus was a really cool concept. The occasional shift to present day gameplay helped keep the historical stuff fresh. It doesn’t have the overwhelming volume of useless collectibles strewn about everywhere like later games have.

I haven’t played it since so maybe it’s aged worse than I remember. It doesn’t have dozens to hundreds of hours of gameplay and side quests in a huge open world. But for a dozen hours in a game focused on a linear main story it was pretty good. Like if you took down the walls of the hallways in Uncharted.

Any word on a Citra replacement? I remember a while back I tried to look for an alternative just for compatibility for certain games and I couldn’t find much. It seemed like Citra was the only good option for actually playing games. When you add in that the 3DS is no longer sold or supported, plus the hardware gimmicks that led to most games being exclusive to that platform, and also the sheer discomfort my adult hands experience trying to hold such a small device, I’d really much rather play those games on the Deck or with a controller.

The Switch is still young. It’s Nintendo’s active console so they’re dedicating more security and legal resources to protecting it, but I’m sure that will be reduced after the Switch 2 launches. RyuJinx is still a solid option, and when you add these various forks I’m sure emulation will be in a good spot in time.

I’m not a copyright expert either, but I would think it goes one of two ways.

One is that the original rights holder of the IP could sue these binders for profiting off of it.

The other is that they can’t because the work is sufficiently transformative, in which case it would fall to he fanfic writer. From there, it probably depends on how they released their work. Some websites might claim ownership of anything published there as part of their ToS. Some authors might explicitly release their works under more open licenses to encourage community involvement. If it was just posted somewhere without addressing these questions (which I would guess is pretty common)… Sounds like a mess for the courts to sort out.

Perhaps one day humanity will look back and ask whether the lack of Internet in the thousands of years prior damaged the development of everyone who grew up without it

This happens again and again and again. At every level, public and private.

The answer is not “filter these people out of these jobs” because very often they have no prior records. Or sometimes someone gets phished. The answer is to stop enabling this in the first place.

I was having a hard time imagining which company this could be. Not that I’m a fan of Verizon or Comcast, but I think they know what side their bread is buttered on. Which one wouldn’t?

Then I remembered Starlink exists.

One i don’t see mentioned here is the PS3 digital download of the PS1 version. You can emulate it on RPSC3.

There’s no benefit to doing so that I’m aware of, and in fact it’s less convenient and probably less efficient than just using a PS1 emulator. But you can do it!

To be fair I think Ukraine benefits from this too

Queue all the people in the comments talking about ad blockers or alternative apps.

Those might be great (and ad blocking is important in general), but I’ve found I ultimately just watch YouTube less.

A good chunk of my favorite creators had been pushing Nebula for the past couple years, so I finally tried it out and it’s pretty decent. I’ve even found new channels there that would have been buried on YouTube. Still tons of room for improvement for the platform, but it’s functional now.

Other creators have their own websites with text content, or podcasts hosted elsewhere.

It’s only a small handful of channels I check for on YouTube anymore. It kind of sucks that it’s mostly small channels where video is a key component and they don’t fit with the edu-tainment vibe of Nebula, and I don’t know of another platform for them. Lots of DIY home improvement, self-sufficiency (not religious or conspiratorial lol), music videos, and channels dedicated to specific videogame franchises.

I know LTT has Floatplane too. I wonder if all of these other videos streaming options getting worse will start driving more people to smaller platforms.

Except it’s not private money. Private vehicles have been heavily subsidized for almost a century in the US. We’ve had decade after decades or tax credits, interest-free loans, and bailouts to the oil and automotive industries. Most local road maintenance is financed with debt, and that debt has started to bankrupt municipalities. Minimum parking requirements encourage sprawl and reduce the tax base by filling these municipalities with land that is economically unproductive.

This all applies to electric too. Tesla famously would not exist if not for years and years of government money propping them up and artificially lowering their prices. Plus all the incentives for building owners to add charging stations, and the billions of dollars going towards expanding EV charging infrastructure in general.

And if you want to optimize for efficiency, personal EV’s are still not even close to buses or trains. Personal vehicle ownership absolutely does NOT make economic sense for anyone except the owners and managers of the companies who profit from them.

American suburbs aren’t ever going to become walkable if everyone just keeps saying “well it’s just too hard to have nice things” and keeps throwing money at perpetuating the problem instead of using that money to get out of the hole.

AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel

Except it’s nowhere near that simple. Manufacturing and shipping batteries is hardly a clean process. And the impact of the fuel is dependent upon the method used to generate the electricity, and both in the US and globally fossil fuels are still used widely for that.

Plus a lot of the pollution and carbon generation is virtually identical for personal vehicles regardless of how it’s powered. You still have tires that wear, tons of plastics and fluids (even EV’s need lubrication), and of course all of the metals involved. Then of course there is road infrastructure: thousands upon thousands of miles of asphalt and concrete separating neighborhoods and habitats. Acres upon acres of impermeable pavement soaking up heat and occupying valuable space that could be used for something more productive.

EV’s are better than ICE options because they at least will get greener as the electrical grid does, but still have the same fundamental issues that all personal vehicles do. You could add in bil-diesel and hydrogen cars too. It’s saving pennies when things like better public transportation and more walkable cities saves pounds.

Ah see this is the problem with political discussion. It turns out he never actually said that.

According to the article, one tiny piece of the $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill he signed committed two federal agencies to be conduct a study on that as a potential solution.

The Forbes article editorializes that significantly to say that beaconing has received the “federal stamp of approval”.

It’s like a kid asking their parents for McDonalds for hours and the parent says “I’ll think about it”.