I think most people crying today simply weren't around for the launch of steam. I sure as shit remember when Counter-Strike got forced over to steam and the login system was swamped so it was effectively impossible to play half the time. That was almost a month after launch of HL2 and steam was still an atrocious pile of barely working.

Nullity wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 15:36:

thestryker wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 15:34:

Nullity wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 13:35:

thestryker wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 13:19:
Might have to just pick this up on EGS so more of the money ends up in their pockets.

But more money won't end up in their pockets, it will end up in the publisher's pocket (unless they're self-published, obviously). And thus is the great EGS con.

They're self published and it would have taken you as much time to look that up as make this comment.

I thought about that, but figured it was worth posting anyway, since many people don't realize this, and the message was still important.

I'm not saying your point is wrong as it very much isn't, but I'm just tired of the endless EGS bashing for the sake of EGS bashing.

Nullity wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 13:35:

thestryker wrote on Sep 8, 2021, 13:19:
Might have to just pick this up on EGS so more of the money ends up in their pockets.

But more money won't end up in their pockets, it will end up in the publisher's pocket (unless they're self-published, obviously). And thus is the great EGS con.

They're self published and it would have taken you as much time to look that up as make this comment.

I really enjoyed their hybrid tower defense/shmup X-Morph so had joined their discord. Turns out they allowed modding of The Riftbreaker demo so you can play a basic survival mode. There are all sorts of other random mods, but that part impressed me the most that they were all for people experiencing another aspect of the game they didn't give direct access to.

Might have to just pick this up on EGS so more of the money ends up in their pockets.

I'd buy a shirt if it guaranteed me a video card at a reasonable price.

Cutter wrote on Aug 11, 2021, 20:47:
Who says Sony or MS aren't losing money on their consoles? My understanding was they were always loss leaders anyway as where the real bread was were the games and online services.

During their most recent earnings meeting Sony's CFO announced they weren't being sold at a loss anymore (the $500 specifically, I believe the discless $400 is). I don't know about Microsoft because they're cagey about specifics when it comes to money, but I'd assume they are likely being sold at a slight loss.

With AMD's MSRP being $380 for a card which in prior generations would sit in the $250 +/- $25 range it's already absurd, but then you see AIB MSRP on these are insanity. I've seen mention of $420, 500 and 550 in reviews so far, and that's before the scalping happens. All of this for a card whose performance starts plummeting once you go over 1080p because of the cut memory bandwidth and lower cache size. This is also a PCIe x8 card which means if you were trying to get it for an older PCIe 3.0 system you're looking at potential (depending on game played) lost performance due to bandwidth.

I need a new video card to actually push the resolution of my new monitor, but I'm also not willing to play the idiotic pricing games that are happening. Nvidia shifted the market +1 tier of pricing during the 20 series, kept it there with the 30 series and AMD was all too happy to join them. The difference now is that there is no such thing as a mid-tier card and the closest would be the 3060ti at $400 MSRP (cheapest EVGA MSRP is $470).

Too many consumers also seem to be willing to just eat these costs which is helping to keep things expensive. Some people have been trying to point at supply issues/increased material costs, but at the end of the day if Sony can sell a PS5 without losing money at $500 (UHD BR, SSD, 8c/16t processor, 16GB RAM with 192GB/s more bandwidth and higher performing GPU than the 6600XT) this is just rampant unchecked capitalism at work.

I for one look forward to all restaurants being Taco Bell.

Bill Borre wrote on Aug 6, 2021, 12:17:
If retro games are profitable I'm surprised we don't see more licensed lapsed games make their way back. Licenses must be difficult to negotiate.

I think that's exactly it: untangling the web of licenses can be enough of a nightmare nobody bothers. It can also be exceptionally bad when a big publisher has a key license, won't give it up, but also won't do anything with it.

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Aug 5, 2021, 16:38:

thestryker wrote on Aug 5, 2021, 13:29:
With Delta surging I'm not sure if I'll go see it in theaters, but I like theaters existing so I very much hope streaming opening day dies. Aside from WB/Disney the studios seem to be giving a 3-5 week truncated (pre-pandemic was 45-90 day) theatrical exclusivity window which seems a lot more reasonable.

I can't understand this. People need to realize that theaters are literally too dangerous to go to now, in most of the US, let alone the world. It's simply too early for greedy studios and theater corporations, let alone actors/directors/talent with bad contracts to try to force people back into theaters. Try again in a year, at best. In the meantime, everything should be simultaneous streaming release, renegotiate contracts if you have to, and yes, some theaters are simply going to go out of business. It's a shame, but the time of carefree group gatherings is gone. People refuse to get vaccinated and refuse to mask up, so that's what we get.

Nobody should be risking the lives of themselves and their family to try to see Suicide Squad (or insert title here) in a movie theater.

So you're saying home viewers can't wait 3-5 weeks to see something and will put themselves at risk to see it in theaters? That just makes them stupid. There is no reason for day and date streaming except to kill theater revenue to make more for the studio. That's the singular reason this is happening.

I saw Black Widow last week with a total of 4 people in the theater and two of them were together. Nobody was hanging in the halls either so yeah pardon me while I low risk go see a movie on the big screen. Safer than going grocery shopping, but I'm not going to stop doing that either.

To me the most amusing thing has been every TV spot I've caught for Suicide Squad has mentioned Guardians of the Galaxy.

With Delta surging I'm not sure if I'll go see it in theaters, but I like theaters existing so I very much hope streaming opening day dies. Aside from WB/Disney the studios seem to be giving a 3-5 week truncated (pre-pandemic was 45-90 day) theatrical exclusivity window which seems a lot more reasonable.

eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 5, 2021, 12:50:

RogueSix wrote on Aug 5, 2021, 12:11:

eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 5, 2021, 12:02:
If this turns out to be an elaborate scam company then that will be fun ;)

Not sure if serious or...

So just for the record: Embracer = THQ Nordic AB so chances of "an elaborate scam company" are slim at best

The same was said about Wirecard Just a bit skeptical nowadays and of course, in jest (for now)

Was looking up western game publishers recently and aside from Microsoft they're actually the highest valued one much to my surprise. Guess someone's got to be making sure consolidation keeps rolling.

Kxmode wrote on Aug 4, 2021, 15:03:
I get that the "A" and "B" in ABK mean Activision Blizzard. What does "K" mean?

King from when they bought the company behind Candy Crush.
bah ninja'd while typing, oh well gonna leave it

Slick wrote on Aug 4, 2021, 15:04:
Don't hold your breath.

Diablo 2 remake comes out in a month, and it will sell millions, and the investors will be happy, and no one's heads will roll.

The only way this changes is if consumers change their habits, and none of them care enough to NOT play the 20-year-old game they sorta kinda remember as being good.

People act like corporations are so evil, it's bullshit, the people who give them money despite them being evil is what keeps them afloat. We could shut them down tomorrow if we could ever agree on anything.

But this state of the world where we can't even agree that a deadly virus = bad then good fucking luck LOL.

Sadly got to agree, but hey me and two friends won't be buying it now so our irrelevant 3 sales will at least not be there!

DrSquick wrote on Jul 23, 2021, 14:47:
OMD2 was probably my favorite two person co-op game I've ever played! I progressed through the whole campaign with a friend, and it is so much more fun with two people!

I'll need to look into OMD3 and see if they got rid of the freeium garbage that was the one after OMD2.

The OMD3 monetary structure is the same as OMD2: up front cost and then potentially expansions down the road. The first expansion when it was on stadia cost $10 US, it's included in this release of the game, but I'd assume future ones would be similar.

jdreyer wrote on Jul 23, 2021, 12:34:
This is a different tone compared to their aggressive response yesterday:

The DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past. We have been extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation, including providing them with extensive data and ample documentation, but they refused to inform us what issues they perceived. They were required by law to adequately investigate and to have good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation, but they failed to do so. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court. We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family. While we find this behavior to be disgraceful and unprofessional, it is unfortunately an example of how they have conducted themselves throughout the course of their investigation. It is this type of irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California.

I was thinking that exact same thing myself. Funny how the public statement is full of idiotic fire and brimstone whereas the one which goes out to employees is actually damage control.

I played it on stadia (yay free trial) when they first launched it and it certainly had the feel of OMD 1/2. This comes with the first DLC they had released and since I enjoyed the base game I'll definitely be picking it up whenever I get in front of the pc today.

My only warning for fans of the series is that the war scenarios are a fair bit different so if you're on the fence about the game check some videos on those before pulling the trigger.

Kxmode wrote on Jul 20, 2021, 20:39:

thestryker wrote on Jul 20, 2021, 17:42:

Kxmode wrote on Jul 20, 2021, 14:55:
What Intel chip does the CPU equate to?
What Nvidia card does the GPU equate to?

GPU is basically impossible to figure out without more information from Valve, because RNDA2 has roughly a 1/3 increase in ROPs over Vega (AMD's prior integrated solutions), but we don't know shader units or TMU values. The mobile Vega parts also have had higher clock speeds than what Valve is advertising so there isn't really a great comparison there either. Memory bandwidth for DDR4 is about 51GB/s, LPDDR4x is about 68GB/s whereas the LPDDR5 should be about 88GB/s so this will also come into play in a big way. Taking a guess based on the generic things we can extrapolate I'd say the performance should be similar to the Ryzen 7 4800U +20% which would be around the GTX 650 ti.

CPU side is much simpler to guess as it should be about the same performance as the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 4450U which has a rough equivalent of the Intel i3-10100f (at least in geekbench, finding benchmarks was proving to be difficult).

Thank you. Most informative. 🙂

I'd imagine a GTX 650 ti equivalent is more than enough for a 720p display.

No problem. While I'm not particularly interested in buying one the underlying tech is very interesting to me. I've hoped for improved integrated graphics for lower power devices for a long time.

I've got a GTX 650 ti boost (a fair bit faster than regular, but still close enough) in a spare box which does 1920x1200 fine (just gotta drop settings mostly for vram) so I'd bet the Steam Deck ought to do 720/780p really well.

Kxmode wrote on Jul 20, 2021, 14:55:
What Intel chip does the CPU equate to?
What Nvidia card does the GPU equate to?

GPU is basically impossible to figure out without more information from Valve, because RNDA2 has roughly a 1/3 increase in ROPs over Vega (AMD's prior integrated solutions), but we don't know shader units or TMU values. The mobile Vega parts also have had higher clock speeds than what Valve is advertising so there isn't really a great comparison there either. Memory bandwidth for DDR4 is about 51GB/s, LPDDR4x is about 68GB/s whereas the LPDDR5 should be about 88GB/s so this will also come into play in a big way. Taking a guess based on the generic things we can extrapolate I'd say the performance should be similar to the Ryzen 7 4800U +20% which would be around the GTX 650 ti.

CPU side is much simpler to guess as it should be about the same performance as the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 4450U which has a rough equivalent of the Intel i3-10100f (at least in geekbench, finding benchmarks was proving to be difficult).

This shouldn't actually surprise anyone since that's how LPDDR works (note 32bit channels is specifically mentioned, and standard DDR is 64bit).

I'm glad it's running LPDDR5 because that means it'll actually have fairly good memory bandwidth (compared to most integrated graphics on pc) without sacrificing latency for the CPU or power consumption. It's going to be really interesting to see how the graphics performance shakes out.

Anyone looking to get this should also keep in mind the base model is using eMMC rather than a proper SSD so storage performance will be significantly worse than the other tiers.

The base game got a bit repetitive as it went on, but for the most part was still really entertaining. Looking forward to what they will do for this expansion.