"The problem is that most people who played Doom: The Dark Ages did so for free on GamePass", then the problem is GamePass as an unstainable business model. Nobody "played for free" on GamePass. They paid a subscription to access titles that in turn are supposed to justify development costs.

Asha Sharma: we’re cutting a quarter of the workforce and foie gras’ing a New Vegas 2 out of Obsidian Gamers: classic Mr. House move 😂😅

Google's search results AI overview is consistently laden with factual inaccuracies and I've noticed it's almost always because it's sourcing info from a Reddit thread and has no way to distinguish legitimate, official information from opinions, theories, and speculation posted by users.

Love what I'm hearing about Blood of the Dawnwalker, particularly its use of time as an economy. We need more RPGs that completely embrace causality and friction with how you choose to engage, and steer away from heroic power fantasies where all problems have a perfect gamified solutions.

Awful film that cemented my Nolan cynicism, with some of the absolute worst sound mixing in a major production.

So, to be clear, id's 2016 Doom was successful enough to spawn two seemingly commercially successful sequels with DLC, while developing rendering technology shared between two studios, including a recently commercially successful title, and this wasn't enough for 50% of their workforce to survive.

Paradox should do a Vampire: The Masquerade themed Crusader Kings.

Watch the reasoning behind the id Software tech/engineering team layoffs be that Microsoft has signed a deal with Epic to push Unreal Engine 5/6 into as many Xbox games as possible.

Gutting the coders at id is a cardinal sin, only possible through great evil.

✅ Metroid Prime: Remastered HDR/4K patch for Switch 2 ✅ Metroid Dread HDR/4K patch for Switch 2, with added plaintext "METROID 5" logo to intro for posterity ✅ Metroid 6 for Switch 2 (successor to Dread) ✅ Super Metroid Remake that faithfully retains the pixel art and midi ost ✅ Samus marries me

That's a wrap on Bloodlines 2. Feelings much as before: as a "Bloodlines 2" it's dreadful, as a "video game" on its own merits its mediocre at best, but I cannot understate how invested and engaged I was with the narrative, and satisfied with its culmination. Wildly fun story here.

One of the things that bothers me about a pure-digital future on consoles is that it reinforces classism through capitalism by 'pricing out' lower socioeconomic demographics from their ability to engage with art. It increases the fiscal barrier of entry and there will be many impacted.

The only reason you should pay for art is to reimburse the artists for their skill and time in creating the thing you derived meaningful value from. Not to support an Industry. Not because of law. We live in a wildly unfair, economically imbalanced capitalist world. Dont get so hung up on rules.

Sony killing physical releases before remastering Bloodborne.

Aaand I only just read Sony are closing the PS3 and Vita digital storefronts. So if there are any digital exclusive releases bound to either of these platforms, and you don't already own them, they'll be formally inaccessible and lost to time. Unless you emulate. As you should. Fuck Sony.

Also fucking lol at the state of technology being astronomical cost increase of memory/storage combined with a digital only future.

Microsoft this week: We're laying off half the industry. Sony: We're ending physical games. Nintendo: have u seen this splatoon weapon we call it the bloblobber

Sony killing physical disks is going to be weird for Australia, where physical copies are often $20 - $30 dollars cheaper than Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo's digital storefronts. More often than not, I can pre-order a game from JB Hifi or Amazon, delivered to my door at launch, for less than digital.

me when i invite people to my garden

I think what really fucking pisses me off about this inevitable tsunami of layoffs at Microsoft is that it was destined to happen, one way or another, in some form, the moment Microsoft decided to spend stupid money buying everyone and everything. Mass consolidation should never, ever be celebrated.

Asha "Saviour of Xbox" Sharma showing up to save xbox or some bullshit i dunno

The LCD on the Switch 2 is ass. I have zero issues with the size and resolution, but the very first thing I noticed was how much motion blur Mario Kart World has in portable mode. It's not unplayable or anything, but I genuinely think the pixel response time is worse than the OG Switch.

A reminder that when the tsunami of layoffs and studio closures hits: the definition of good/bad PR is defined by what makes shareholders happy, not what GamersTM think. Sometimes these two groups intersect, but generally these corps do not give a shit about image beyond that which fosters revenue.

Im enjoying Bloodlines 2 enough but good god does calling it Bloodlines 2 do a colossal disservice to any strength the game may have. This fundamentally, at its core, has none of the DNA that forms the interactive ethos of Bloodlines 1. And that's fine, if it wasn't called Bloodlines 2.

*sigh* time to make this happen and reconcile the journey

Slippy, no!

*battlefield theme intensifies*

For the dance sequence in Alan Wake 2's live action film, Yötön Yö, Sam Lake reunited several people, including his parents, who had assisted providing faces/identities for characters in Max Payne way back when, given the tiny budget at the time, and I just think that's neat.

I'm not adding anything new to the conversation, but the Bungie situation is what ultimately happens when Capitalism Manifest is the driving ideology behind a creative industry. Functionally, capitalist industry has no inherent caps or regulators for revenue goals, and endless growth is impossible.

"I would like video games to exist."

That was sick. Big thumbs up for Indiana Jones. Machine Games thoroughly, marvellously captured the spirit and tone of the first three films without reliance on memes, kitsch, or gaudiness. It's shot, written, and executed exactly as it should be for its source material, unbelievably so.

Rockstar could charge a base fee of $200 for a download code pressed between two freshly pinched turds and GTA6 would still be one of the most profitable game launches of all time.

Is it wrong that the one thing I'm most excited for in GTA6 is that the protagonists are a super hot sexed up power couple?

the three genders

Steam Machine RAM lottery is more absurd than the price.

heck yeh

Stupid beautiful tech in a stupid beautiful game.

Thinking I'll treat myself to some Cat Power tickets.

5.1 million views in 11 hours for a 32 second cover art trailer.