It could also be a strategy to then lobby and make everyone else give up their stores, levelling the playing field.

I love folks over at lemmy :D

Microsoft seems to be preemptively doing that already.

Something that’s very different, unique, with its own touch to everything.

1. There’s very little explanation about the story despite a lot of really high quality cut scenes
2. The combat is turn based but also very real time due to parries, dodges, jumps and what not
3. The turn based combat is very addictive and yet very easy to understand.
4. The art, you probably have never seen stuff like you see in the game
5. The dialogues are really well thought
6. Music, fresh.

Basically, they are doing a lot of stuff that isn’t what you commonly see in games yet it all works really well together.

[…] The formula to make […] Game of the year is stupidly simple, but somehow it keeps on getting lost.

The studio made their game because they wanted to make a game that they wanted to play themselves.

They didn’t make it to increase market shares. They didn’t make it to serve a brand. They didn’t have to meet arbitrary sales targets or fear being laid off if the didn’t meet those targets.

Furthermore, the people in charge forbade them from cramming the game with anything whose only purpose was to increase revenue, and don’t serve the game design.

• Sven, Game Awards 2024

Clair Obscure: Expedition 33. 60 hours in, still going through all the content in act 3. It’s really addictive, beautiful and fresh.

What if we make a new language that extends it and makes it fun to write? What if we call it c+=1?

I think the issue here is DirectX, so unless there’s meaningful changes to how DX works internally, DXVK at this point can always be a step ahead with all the changes it can make without tech debt to worry about. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why Series X despite being stronger than PS5 on paper, struggles to match performance in non zero count of games.

That’s how competition works!

He? You mean she, Carrey Patel?

So how much did they make?

I wonder if Microsoft’s shopping spree induced FOMO in Sony and they ended up buying shit. Sony already had the best studios but they chased live service for no reason.

Word

Devil’s advocate: they created a new studio with all the lessons and right core employees who understand the space the best.

It ain’t powerful enough for modern titles sadly. I’m trying to say that there’s a space where Valve made steam machine with niceties of SteamOS and power of say PS5 can really thrive.

There’s some nuance.

• One of the bigger issues about PC gaming these days is the shader compilation stutter. Valve is able to precompile and upload these for SteamDeck, so a fixed hardware “console” from them will solve this problem too.
• SteamDeck is pretty weak but games are still sort of optimised for it. Same would be true for such a console, making devs focus on a target platform directly.
• Assembling PC yourself can have its own issues. You may not get all the ROPs, or a new Windows update may break your games, or you may occasionally update drivers to make a game more playable without black screens, or wouldn’t turn on with a controller when set up as a “console”. I’m not saying it isn’t doable, but there is an audience for consoles who would love whatever SteamDeck has done for handheld but in console form, and may not want to bother with setting everything up. Valve can disrupt that

Steam can’t release a “console” soon enough.

“Fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some cash for our console, it’s called xCloud”

I would like to predict the future too but alas I’m quite bad at it

Yeah you’re right. It is quite a lot, especially with this kind of an IP and expectations to deal with