Microsoft works in mysterious ways. Another oddity is how the Microsoft Store version of The Evil Within is a more-updated, more-featured version of the game than every other version including on console, and I don't think they've ever acknowledged it. It only released when they bought Bethesda, so maybe it's a similar story here where they're just putting out some unreleased work.

Or maybe not idk I'm not omniscient

My $300 Brother laser printer that does everything works just fine because it wasn't designed to be a money-siphoning piece of shit.

Valve.

Not new management, but they definitely changed direction. From Portal 2 to Half-Life Alyx was a dark age of live service titles and hardware. Fortunately, it seems like they're finally getting back to their old selves?

Alyx was supposedly their re-entry into releasing games (hopeful that HLX is good), the Steam Deck caused them to go back and fix several of their titles (plus do the huge Half-Life update we just got), and while they're not exactly making their games as open as they used to, they're letting the community handle things like TF2 events and L4D2 patches.

So, I dunno, cautiously optimistic for their future. At least as long as Gabe is running the company.

I cannot extract a silver lining out of this announcement no matter how hard I try. This is like Activision announcing that the next Call of Duty will be made by Mojang, they're just so fucking grossly incompatible with each other that it makes absolutely zero sense.

Gonna be real with you, this is a terrible take. I'd much rather have games pushing boundaries at the cost of some bugs rather than a bunch of the same old regurgitated elements over and over to be safe.

GTA3 had plenty of bugs, the Purple Nines glitch being particularly infamous. Literally nobody out there is saying "wow, I wish they'd stuck with the top-down style games instead of going 3D because this bug has seriously inconvenienced me."

Paper straws and bicycles won't solve the climate crisis. What my lib friends and I are doing doesn't really matter when just a handful of entities make up so much more of the environmental impact.

We could stop those entities...if it weren't for the cons constantly blocking any attempt to help the greater good.

Pretty much meaningless after TLOUP1 launched as "Steam Deck Playable" and was nowhere near that. I don't expect FromSoft to screw it up, but the label has been shown to not be a guarantee.

First problem is getting the people talking to their children to care about privacy. I'm a grown-ass adult and it's hardly at the top of my priorities, regularly using Google services with Bing as my search engine to get me Microsoft Rewards points I can blow on games.

It's going to be even tougher for a kid whose friends are all on TikTok and who has no money (and would probably be delighted to learn about services that pay miniscule amounts for data, like the Amazon and Google Play ones in addition to the Microsoft one).

I mean, yes? People have been waiting on this game for 13 years and PC has only gotten more popular since. Rather than do the three most popular platforms that the game isn't on, they did two. If they've managed to port it to the Nintendo Switch of all things, they can spit out a half-baked PC port.

I mean you can ignore the slew of other older games getting ported to PC over the years, be it the Xbox exclusives, PlayStation exclusives, Capcom console exclusives (Dragons Dogma, Dead Rising, Devil May Cry), absolutely countless numbers of JRPGs and similar, and more, but that doesn't make me the ignorant one.

Like Gabe Newell once said, piracy is a service problem.

The last two things I pirated were No One Lives Forever, a game that's completely delisted on all storefronts, and Ratchet & Clank, because Sony can't figure out how to add the PS2 versions of games to the PS5 and I refuse to stream it (data cap) or lug around my PS3.

Both I would've purchased legally had they not made it a pain in the ass.

It's a global solution, not just localized to specific areas. No ads on my account on my Xbox, PS5, Switch, Google Home speakers (YouTube Music), Fire TV Stick, Android TV, Roku, my roommate's Roku, or anyone else's devices anywhere else, in addition to places like my phone and PC where I just use uBlock Origin.

In addition, I'm actually just splitting the family plan across three people, so it's like $7.64/mo, which isn't bad.

After having watched Sony rest on their laurels for the last entire generation while doing effectively nothing for their platform except releasing new games, I am pushing for competition. The only company who's seriously improved their platform in the last decade has been Microsoft, working on backwards compatibility, accessibility features like copilot and the adaptive controller, a full Chromium-based browser so you can do anything from your taxes to playing Mario 64 in-browser on an Xbox, and easy $20 dev access so that users can install Retroarch and have better backwards compatibility than people who actually own PlayStation and Nintendo consoles.

I want that for other platforms. I own a Switch and PS5 because I feel obligated to in order to play games. I own a Series S because I want one and I consider it a good value.