Steele Johnson wrote on Jan 19, 2023, 10:16:
I think I read somewhere that the layoff mostly impacted Sales and Marketing, and not Engineers/Developers

A lot of them were in the HoloLens and Edge departments. I cannot say what percentage impacted what division though.

Darks wrote on Jan 19, 2023, 00:36:
I don't understand the Starfield layoffs when that game is getting close to release. The 343 I totally understand. Seems really odd they are laying off the starfield team to the point where its imp[acting the development of the game. Really odd!

It doesn't say specifically that they are on the Starfield development team, just that there's a non-zero number from Bethesda Game Studios, and I'd expect that any layoff would impact development across the entire board. Last I heard there were over 400 people employed by both Bethesda and 343.

Prez wrote on Jan 18, 2023, 22:55:
Not a good look after they spent $68 billion dollars acquiring Activision. Beyond that, 10000 people all looking for another job at the same time is not a good thing. That really sucks because a lot of them are either going to be unemployed for a long time or jump at any job that can at least provide food and rent. I really don't like corporations.

I know of a few people who were either part of or worked with those who were laid off. They said that the packages they obtained varied from complete severance to options all the way to obtaining re-employment in other divisions after X amount of time. The ones I know personally also alluded to them knowing for a while and the company assisting in getting settled elsewhere in the industry but didn't tell me much more because of various NDAs.

RogueSix wrote on Jan 13, 2023, 18:12:
So they giving away Starfield for $1/month? Great idea. Can't wait for them to complain about shitty sales in future post-mortems. It will be a huge mystery why it flopped.

Funny enough, Gamepass has shown an increase in purchasing of games available on the service.

That said, you'll only get away with 1 month at $1, and if Starfield is completable for the average consumer in said month, then there are other issues to deal with...

SMITE wrote on Jan 8, 2023, 17:28:

I apologize, I was hoping that you were actually an intelligent person and knew that there's a horrible comparison being made here. I'm sorry for assuming that, won't happen again.

So, you're the same guy who was just accusing me of arguing in "bad faith." Right? The same guy?

As always, the hypocrisy is just breathtaking. And you can't even see it.

Who was the one trying to argue that trans is a political agenda?

SMITE wrote on Jan 8, 2023, 17:00:

DarkCntry wrote on Jan 8, 2023, 16:21:

SMITE wrote on Jan 8, 2023, 15:33:
So you think it's perfectly fine for private companies to fire or blacklist anyone accused of being a socialist or a communist as happened in America during the 1950s? You think there's nothing wrong with punishing someone for their political views?

Duly noted.

Political standing is a whole different ball game to civil rights...but you know that and want to apply a bad-faith argument here.

You guys always go back to the same handful of tactics over and over again.

I apologize, I was hoping that you were actually an intelligent person and knew that there's a horrible comparison being made here. I'm sorry for assuming that, won't happen again.

Mindreading:

but you know that

Who are you to tell me what I know or believe?

Again, I apologize for assuming you had a modicum of intelligence to be discussing this, won't happen again.

Accusations of dishonesty:

want to apply a bad-faith argument

And I get it. It's much, much easier to pretend to read someone's mind and to accuse them without evidence of being dishonest, than it is respond to their actual argument.

You are claiming that gender ideology doesn't involve "political standing," but that's ridiculous. Women had to fight for years for the right to have single-sex spaces and now some men want to take those spaces away from them again, this time in the guise of "civil rights." But you don't get to just violate someone else's civil rights in the name of your own. There is a conflict there and rather than face that conflict honestly, a tiny but highly influential minority want to just ignore it completely and punish anyone who won't comply. There's a writer who lost her book contract merely for liking a single tweet from JK Rowling. That's insane, especially when most people agree with Rowling and not the gender activists. And they don't agree with her because they're "hateful bigots." They agree with her because they believe that biology is real and women's rights deserve to be protected.

Using "gender ideology" like you are is literally a dog whistle. I mean, here you are arguing that trans people shouldn't be afforded the same rights as men or women.

Here's how I can put it in the most simple of terms. If you think a person's gender identity is political you must also be of the same mind that a Black person is only 3/5 a human being, after all, it's literally the same argument you're trying to make.

If there are people using being trans as a way to 'skirt' the law, then those people should be punished, but your statements are attempting to punish EVERYONE who is trans because there are an infinitesimal level of people doing nefarious actions.

Since my original reply was swept up in the delete frenzy, you might want to look into things like Klinefelter and Turner syndromes before you try to talk about biology being real.

SMITE wrote on Jan 8, 2023, 15:33:
So you think it's perfectly fine for private companies to fire or blacklist anyone accused of being a socialist or a communist as happened in America during the 1950s? You think there's nothing wrong with punishing someone for their political views?

Duly noted.

Political standing is a whole different ball game to civil rights...but you know that and want to apply a bad-faith argument here.

* REMOVED *

This comment was deleted on Jan 8, 2023, 09:13. Reason: Intolerance (rule 2)

Hardline Mike wrote on Dec 29, 2022, 19:28:

Schkorpio wrote on Dec 29, 2022, 18:40:
but he is a very talented engineer, that's a fact.

If I asked you to back that up, could you? Like what did he do engineering-wise personally rather than by throwing money at actual skilled engineers?

Musk's only talent is the ability to see future success. He doesn't have practical skills despite attempting to sound like he does. His educational background is BS in econ and a BA in physics (which, mind you, isn't much in the way of practical physics applications) that has not applied to much of any of his prior endeavors outside of 'money management'.

That, and being from a wealthy Apartheid-era Mining family.

Bodolza wrote on Dec 31, 2022, 01:15:

The Half Elf wrote on Dec 31, 2022, 00:37:
But I ask this... looking at Twitter as a whole company (pre and post Elon), is it fair to say that the company had over expanded/grown and was bleeding cash for awhile now?

No. Twitter generated $5 billion revenue in 2021, which was a 35% increase year-on-year. They also posted a net loss of $221 million in 2021, which was 80% LESS than their loss in 2020. In other words, Twitter was taking in a bunch of money while decreasing costs. Given the same expenses, a similar YoY increase in 2022 would have made them profitable.

There's also the whole fact that Twitter, as a whole, was mostly in the black except for the one-off payment of a legal settlement of like $200m. It was the books that show this settlement that Musk has been using to validate his "cost-cutting" measures.

jdreyer wrote on Dec 27, 2022, 21:14:
I wonder if this might make MS reconsider its acquisition.

I mean, Microsoft has already come out and said they support unionization if they want to.

PropheT wrote on Dec 28, 2022, 14:45:
I don't really get the complaints about the LOTR series. People talk about the writing and dialog and then compare them to the movies, whose dialog style the show pretty clearly copied and also included things like dwarf tossing jokes.

Outside of the retconning of basically everything involving the Second Age and the included characters, I don't have a problem with that particular show simply because I've moved on from "why is it that they can never take something that is already well-established and not completely rewrite it because of current market trends" to "well, I guess this is what I have to live with".

Ravenus wrote on Dec 25, 2022, 08:19:
Mortal Kombat fans may scorn at this, but I had fun with the first Mortal Kombat movie. Sure, it didn't reflect the game's hyper-violence, but it was a fun colorful (early days of CG rendering) ride with a pumping theme song, and didn't waste any time.

I keep forgetting about the original MK movie...

Christopher Lambert as Raiden is peak Hollywood.

Mr. Tact wrote on Dec 24, 2022, 20:35:
Is there a single movie made based off a game which is actually worth watching except to avoid watching paint dry instead?

As a popcorn kinda movie, the original Resident Evil wasn't horrible, wasn't great but it could've been a whole lot worse (see: all following RE movies).

I also was mostly ok with the original Silent Hill movie.

RogueSix wrote on Dec 22, 2022, 20:26:
-snipped for brevity-

Man the gatekeeping is strong with you.

Verno wrote on Dec 22, 2022, 10:21:
Weird to see so many people in favor of the merger, I suspect there are a number of Gamepass users here

I don't look at this sort of consolidation as good for the industry at large. Microsoft can effectively buy up most competitors, leveraging their cash reserves from other business units. Gamepass is a loss leader right now but it's just a matter of time before they are forced by investor demand to raise prices chasing profits. Microsoft has a history of shitty, anti-competitive behavior in everything from operating systems to software to even their videogames unit. I can't even get a headset that works universally because of their shitty proprietary protocols.

So yeah as a consumer, I'm going to go against the grain here and say that I hope this is blocked by the FTC suit, regardless of how I feel about gamers suing Microsoft.

It might have to do with the hypocrisy from those on Sony's side...

Every year Sony hypes up either their increasing stable of 1st party studios they've acquired or they hype up some exclusive they've locked into some franchise (see CoD for example), but the moment that Microsoft finally starts showing interest in getting the same quality of studios that Microsoft is going to hurt the small business known as Sony.

Sony, until recently, showed absolutely no interest in opening their games to anything outside of the Playstation ecosystem whereas Microsoft has shown little interest in losing money by strictly forcing all of their titles only on Xbox, and while Microsoft has shown some pretty shitty anti-consumer bullshit, the Xbox division has shown almost the exact opposite, especially since the release of the previous generation. Say what you will about games as a service, but Gamepass is almost entirely consumer-positive even if they were to jack up the price to $60/month or something (which I don't think they'd ever do because it would be a death siren to the brand). Xbox has also (in business terms) bent over backwards to quell the argument about CoD disappearing from Sony consoles for at least 2 generations, and they have shown more interest in obtaining more overall money than pushing specific hardware.

I should point out that Gamepass is also not a loss leader for Xbox, as it is already a profit maker (some 15% of all revenue) for them, so for them looking to change how it works is probably something that won't come to pass for any foreseeable future.

As for this whole saga, I still am of the theory that Sony is pissed they couldn't wait for Acti/Blizz to completely implode to purchase them for cheap, so they are stomping their feet and crying foul.

JediPunisher wrote on Dec 21, 2022, 16:48:
Any idiot can bring a lawsuit for any reason... At this stage, it means nothing.
MS should gift them a shiny new XBox with lifetime GamePass and be done with it... no strings attached. No harm, no standing, no case.

Or...

Microsoft should turn around and countersue the plaintiff not having a standing and dissuade people from doing stupid things like this again. As someone said, this is a waste of time, money, and the court. Especially since there's not a single peep from this same 'group of gamers' when any other company does the exact same thing.

The best part of the game for me is when you get the ability to go to the movie theater and watch a bad 90's horror movie MST3K-style with three aliens...

The vast majority of people I know are on the other end of the spectrum, they wanted fewer awards and more reveals/announcements.

I can see it, award show fatigue has long set in with most people, let alone those in the gaming industry. People are so disconnected from the corporate side of the industry that awards are just seen as self back patting one another, with very little to any connection to the gaming community at large.

Slick wrote on Dec 14, 2022, 10:16:

ninemil wrote on Dec 14, 2022, 04:31:
Square's incapable of getting anything entirely right. There's always something they manage to fuck up.

Unless Rick Gomez is put back into the game, consider this ReDemaster a hardpass unless you speak enough Japanese to understand the non-subtitled flavour dialogue. Caleb Pierce is absolutely atrocious, and doesn't have a handle on the character at all.

I know nothing of this. You saying this is genuinely not worth the time? Even for say, someone who never owned a PSP but for whom FF7 holds a special place in their heart?

I believe the VA issue was due to timing conflicts, so it's really shouldn't be a big deal. It's also not that far of a stretch to accept the newer actor as opposed to the older one.

As for the game itself, it's a good entry in the story for FF7, just be alerted to the fact that the gameplay is far outside any other title. If this doesn't bother you, you should find an enjoyable experience.