True, I'm definitely doing arm chair analysis. If I was in charge, I probably wouldn't have entered the console market at all. I'd probably have tried to build steam. That had to be easier if you own the OS, too. On the other hand, they utterly fucked up "Games For Windows! Live" or whatever it was called.

Yep they definitely missed the boat on that one. Which is why I think they are so keen on turning Xbox into a platform. With how PC hardware is going, they have a chance to take back some market from Valve and maybe convert people from Playstation as well. The risk here is that they can’t sell the “consoles” at a loss, so they will be undercut by Sony by a significant amount of money. But their answer to that is probably “it doesn’t matter, everything is an Xbox now, the console is for the enthusiast market”.

Bold strategy, we’ll see if they can pull it off.

You wouldnt happen to be on linux would you?

I remember at the time titanfall came out, the mechs moving like a human was a selling point. I do agree though it is odd to experience when its not a novelty.

Not fixed later, fixed maybe.

Can’t wait till the indie wave wakes up the realization that there is a goldmine of 90s games that were incredible. Star control 2 for one could probably be mistaken for a new indie hit nowadays.

Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.

If they're still functional, thankfully there's the Stop Killing Games movement.

I love the movement that has gotten. I’m cheering for it.

Yeah, I think the decline is a drop in a bucket considering. I know plenty of people still buying the Switch 2 etc. on launch day.

The hobby is getting more expensive while income left over after cost of living is going down. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

I've been playing X-Wing. The mad lads who built XWVM have essentially modernized the game and got it working on and with modern hardware, while strictly preserving its feel. It's amazing.

We desperately need to ban all forms of real money gambling in games, or at least prevent kids from accessing it.

Oh shiiiit, do that and come back and talk to us when you get to the time travel level.

Are we just in the phase of the medium where technology isn't the defining quality. It would be slightly weird to try to stay at the forefront of, say, novels without any regard for reading classics. Why shouldn't games be the same?

BLS jobs report was a beat, +140k jobs and unemployment down a shade. I agree with you on the themes but it doesn't help to cherry pick data.

Old people be stealing

Exactly this. The new game cycle these days is:

• Game is announced with shiny video showing all sorts of cool stuff.
• Release date is announced.
• Game is delayed.
• Reviewers/early access people get it, turns out it has none of the cool stuff form the announcement video.
• Game is delayed again.
• Game finally comes out, with 3 different tiers that are like $80, $100 and $120 CAD depending on if you want the version of the game that's 30%, 40% or 50% complete.
• Game doesn't work.
• After about two years and 10 DLC packs you have about 80% of the functional game, the other 20% being stuff they were supposed to add but just never bothered, what are you gonna do about it? By this point you no longer care about the game anyway.
• Sequel is announced with shiny video showing all sorts of cool stuff, devs promise they've fixed all the broken stuff this time for real.
• Company gets bought by EA or Epic, all devs are replaced.
• Game is delayed.

Like genuinely who wants to bother with that nonsense anymore TBH.

The BLS jobs estimate report is utterly garbage data.

Go look back over the last year or two.

Look at how many times, and how many jobs they revised down from the report 1 or 2 months prior.

All the idiots that watch Jim Cramer for financial advice are the same idiots that never bother to follow up on the BLS revisions.

Also, the BLS jobs estimate is an estimate that goes through a whole bunch of layers of dependency on other statistics like estimated populations growth.

Meanwhile the ADP is much more directly based on actual payrolls, from actual money going out to actual employees.

You should maybe learn how to actually compare the methodologies behind various sources of data before you accuse someone of cherry picking.

...

Also the unemployment rates that are widely reported on don't count people who've been unemployed so long that they fall out of the labor force.

In our modern economy, if you fall off the treadmill, you stay unemployed for that long, you'll likely never get hired in that field again, or at least not without having to start out at an entry level or junior position, because of how absurd companies are with job requirements, how every job opening has 1000 applicants in 72 hrs, how something like 2/3rds of those job openings are fake and will never hire anyone.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylrobinson/2025/04/02/why-no-one-is-hiring-you-and-its-not-your-resume/

Maybe they can ask their AI to inspect the size of everyone's nose? Maybe that's the trick to get us to buy more AI chips in our games and TVs and phones and cars and in our fruit probably. There's gotta be AI in our food somewhere.

I'm current stuck in a long term cycle of mainly Project Zomboid, Factorio, Valheim, Oxygen Not Included, The Lone Dark and Rimworld, were when I'm fed up of playing the last of them, it's been long enough since I played the first one that it's once interesting to play it.

Even when I manage to be fed up with playing all of them at any one point, I still have other progression games with complex emergent gameplay (often but not always games which have algorithmically generated game areas) like Kenshi. 7 Days to Die or OpenTTD that pull me in and if that fails, I can always pick up one of the old open world roleplay jewels such as Skyrim and play that.

I've barelly tried anything else in the last couple of years and of those only Oxygen Not Include was the only one with any lasting power and I picked that one years ago.

It's not even because I can't afford it (though out of principl I refuse to pay more than €20 for a game) - whenever I try an AAA game nowadays (always games that came out years ago) it's almost invariably an inferior experience that either feels too constrained or doesn't have enough gameplay variety and complexity to be fun for long.

Yes, I am using Arch btw
Sorry but I couldn't resist the opportunity