While I agree that letting all those rumors unattended for a good week was not a good marketing move, and made it look like the company is a bit “directonless” like you said, to say it did “untold damage” to the brand sound like the sort of drivel a die-hard irrational fanboy would say. Most sane people out there know…

As someone else mentioned already, we can’t compare things to how it was in the 80s, because the world back then was completely different than the one we live in right now.

Bingo. People keep thinking that it hurts businesses because it leads to less sales, but they only look at individual sales and completely forget that it’s all about revenue, not # of units sold. Selling games is only ONE avenue to get revenue. If you get a deal with Microsoft that gives you a nice sum of money to put…

Its important to remember that video games are not the same as movies, there’s a lot of games I love that I simply cannot play anymore, just because of how tech has changed.

Funny that you talk about BestBuy. I don’t know about the US, but in Canada, I just stopped caring about them (and I’m literally what should be their prime target market). In Canada, you have to hunt in the store to find someone, their “latest tech” is often what was hot 6 months - 1 year ago, they don’t even honor…

Oh, I know that. I don’t blame them. They’re just doing what they’been told to do. Not their fault. But it doesn’t change the fact that from a customer perspective, it’s annoying as hell and makes me want to avoid setting foot in there for the rest of my life.

The problem I see with retail, is that they are in competition with online storefronts, but they NEVER try to capitalize on what makes them different and then simply complains that online stores are making things hard for them.

This simply shows that the people running those companies have NO CLUE about what people…

I’m not talking from a “technical” point of view, but more from the angle of what games are inherently about. What I’m saying, is that games are nowadays more like an “engineered product” that feel like they’re created according to a checklist of stuff that needed to be included in there to match whatever metric huge…

I still haven’t seen a single PS5 available for sale in a physical store. So yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it.

But I experienced the exact feeling you’re talking about earlier just before the Holidays, when I walked into a Best Buy and bought an Xbox Series X right off the shelf. It felt a bit like the “old days”.…

All of what you described kind of highlights why I’m more or less into the new generation of consoles (and games). Don’t get me wrong, I got a Series X this Holiday season and I’m super happy about it, but it mostly comes down to the fact that I have access to a super huge library of all things Xbox since the original…

But I don’t want really interesting shit. I want the most and the best exclusive games.

Cool for you but where I live, a basic 3070 costs $100 more than an Xbox Series X. Like, if you already have a PC and only the cost of the GPU matters to you, like, fine, go for it. It might make sense for you.

Funny thing is I was a definite advocate for the whole “PC gaming costs less” mantra for a long long time,…

Buy Android devices

The thing that everyone never factor into the equation, is that while, yes, games are costing more to make (duh), your average AAA game these days has a potential pool of buyers that is just insanely bigger than what it was in the NES and SNES days.

Registering for the event to get a reminder gets you one for an event that start on Thursday 8pm and lasts until Monday 1pm. LOL!!!! Somehow, setting up calendar events is too complicated for Valve’s staff (got the same thing when selecting Google calendar or Outlook calendar - ICS file).

Also, is it 8pm L.A. time…

When you pay for cable TV, you’re NOT paying for the TV content, you’re paying for the delivery of said content to your house.

Ha! The infamous gaming FOMO...I used to be under that spell when I was younger... mostly between the PS1-PS2 era... Don’t know how I was able to keep up (truth, I wasn’t able to, to be honest). So much time and money spent in buying the latest and greatest.

We always have to take these “we’re losing money with every sale” with a HUGE grain of salt. Many countries have laws that prevent companies from selling products at an unreasonable rate below cost. (Usually antitrust laws)

Yes, it was. Everyone I know who played it back then knew about this. Same with the infamous Konami code in Contra too. Everyone knew those. Apparently, some didn’t, but from my experience, most that were around back then did.

I swear to god this one of the most surprisingly accurate metaphor I’ve read about good old American capitalism and the “American dream”.