Things like this are enough to make people briefly think about Linux. And no, my PC did not "need" any of this. The only need here is shareholders need for more subscription revenue.

Something I find interesting about xbox discounting game pass, but removing CoD, is that it's a tacit acknowledgement that the ABK deal was part of the reason for pushing the price up, and acquisitions/mergers pushing up prices is the one thing that anti-trust regulators are supposed to care about.

What this chart says to me is that we shouldn't have to be thinking about a PS6 until the PS5 can get down to US$300. Maybe $350 at a stretch.

Even if DLSS 5 didn't look like it was trying to apply 'beauty filters' to videogames, the core premise that games should be aspiring to photorealism needs to be questioned more.

Enjoyed my brief time with Botany Manor - it's not often you get to play as an old British Green(e).

Indie devs everywhere:

It wasn't enough that the whole AI boom is based on taking everyone's writing without compensation, now a company is claiming the right to imitate real writers just because their work is publicly available.

MIO is one of those "most screenshots could pass for concept art" kinda games, and I'm really digging it.

I'm clearly not a big fan of any of the big AI companies, but Anthropic just made Trump throw an ALL CAPS tantrum, and for that I salute them.

Seems like a lot of game journalists want to write about what "went wrong" with Highguard, as if the default for games is that they're successful out of the gate and have plenty of runway to iterate towards greatness, and something really uniquely unfortunate must have happened here.

Is it weird that this is happening only after america decided everything should be gambling?

"We opted you into AI ads that misrepresent your characters, you should thank us for doing it and if you ask us to stop we might not" is really an amazing summary of big tech at the moment.

Getting my 4-yearly reminder that curling is rad. A stone can be in motion for over 20s, which I think makes for a super-suspenseful sport.

The future we were afraid of vs the future we should have been afraid of. c/o @404media.co

Obviously the idea of a forced confession is a serious one, but when you send out a manifesto, then livestream your murders and get caught at the scene with the murder weapon, it seems like you've effectively confessed already. www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/christchu...

Perhaps in the not-too-distant future we will look back and wonder how any tech startup (even one that can raise tens of billions of dollars from investors) thought they could ever compete with this.

I really enjoyed my time with South of Midnight. It's hard to identify any particular gameplay idea that hasn't been done before, and maybe a bit tighter, but the vibes are great. Really the best kind of 7/10, and an easy gamepass recommend.

You gotta love it when a judge has the confidence to effectively say "I'm not just telling you that you're wrong, I'm also telling you that you're evil".

Like 3DTV before it, this is a nice reminder that something isn't "the future" just because the people making it say so. Consumers still get to decide if they care about something and are willing to pay more for it.

People are making fun of the copyright irony here, but the real highlight is that they're still implying that ChatGPT is going to create new breakthrough medications in the near future, with enough confidence that they've thought about monetising it.

Stories like this one seem to be increasingly common, and it's amazing that the response from the AI company seems to be along the lines of "Yeah, but we told him about a helpline when he got suicidal, so that's our job done" futurism.com/artificial-i...

Trying something new this year - reportedly the highest royalty payments to artists of all the music streaming services.

Every year I like to play a little game called "Spot the mobile game nominees".

Sanzaru made the highest-rated Quest game on metacritic, and that wasn't enough to keep them on. Is anyone still optimistic about the VR gaming market?

Wellington on good evening.

Imagine what might potentially exist if a company pledged to spend $108B creating new media instead of buying stuff that already exists. They wouldn't of course, because they don't actually have that much money, but still....

Kudos to Dell for being willing to admit that branding everything with AI didn't help sell more computers. www.pcgamer.com/hardware/del...

6X? Is this the new "But our razor has 5 blades!"?

Some day we will look back and agree that the real Stranger Thing was Netflix agreeing to fund that show for five (probably increasingly expensive) seasons.

Start as you mean to go on I guess 😁 #Puzzmo puzzmo.com/play/circuit...

So proud not to have skipped leg day even once this year.

Enjoying a traditional [long] white [cloud] christmas in Wellington.

A 3-under for christmas - what a gift 😁 www.minutecryptic.com

Cirque du Botanic Gardens

I was not at all prepared to see the first ad for a boxing day sale, starting before christmas. What are we doing here people?

A story in two images, and a message for all marketers.

But not like.... THAT fragile, right? I'm sure it's fine. 😟

Annual reminder that Geoff Keighley does not run the game industry, and none of the challenges it faces will be solved if he utters the right incantation. Let him run his entertainment show. #TheGameAwards

I hope someone at MS is regularly reminding the top brass just how bad things could get from them if people start seriously asking "Is Linux the best OS for gaming?"

Really hoping that some time in the next decade we can get a tech trend that doesn't make it more expensive just to own a PC.

An incredible result - Meta made everyone give up using their products as an actual social network, so they can't have a monopoly on social networking.

That's a 1/4 Concord 😟

If you allow people to place bets on such minor things as "What kind of pitch will they throw on the first pitch of an innings?", you make it trivial to rig bets in a way that would look completely innocuous to almost any observer.

I'm old enough to remember when we'd get a new GTA every couple of years. This delay gets us to >13 years since GTA5 launch.

Feels a bit odd to be in "Most Anticipated" when you can totally just give us money and play the game today, but early access is funny like that. Anticipate away!

This seems to be another classic case of assuming you can solve any problem just by throwing money at it. Except in this case the only problem they seem to have identified was "Someone else is making money that we would prefer to be making", rather than any consumer need.

This company is projected to earn about $13B this year (revenue, not profit) and they have already committed to spending over 100X that much. It feels like the only two possible outcomes of this are to become one of the most successful companies ever within a year or two, or spectacular failure.

"I've just finished the weirdest section of @doublefine.com's Keeper" - Me, about to be proven wrong, again.

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days now has 100 reviews from players who have spent 100+ hours in game. One of them is a thumbs down from someone at 230 hours, who has since added another 60. Maybe we'll win them over in the next update? 😁

Pretty pumped about getting this and also about playing something other than Silksong. Something that doesn't stress me out nearly as much ideally. #2ActsIsEnough