Sony’s direct competitor is offering this same service for free.

Modern-day capitalism is trying to figure out just how far you can go with prices JUST before it starts angering most consumers, and then set for that.

This. This. x1000 this.

The problem is that it’s only in the f-ing console gaming world that fans are actually ok with this, and even defending this. I’ve actually never understood that.

Yep. And like I mentioned in another post, this is typical behavior in any industry. when you have something to gain, you’re willing to invest in consumer-friendly policies, because ultimately, it’ll bring you more customers and thus more money. But once you’ve become the leader in a definite market, these policies…

It’s exactly because Sony is thinking people will just shut up and pay up, just like Nintendo. Maybe some Nintendo fans put up with it for nostalgia reason, but in Sony’s case, they just have too big a share of the market that they can be confident about people not jumping ship. They just know you’re not going to go…

The truth is that generally, those who lead by a fair margin always start seeing customer service and any consumer-friendly initiative as an expense in their books, because they don’t have a lot to win in it (as they’re already market leaders).

Well, my comparison was more of an overall one, not necessarily focused on story or themes discussed in a game or movie. I agree with your point though. But the trend with many of those AAA games is to not necessarily change a winning formula, as like I mentioned, those games usually represents millions of dollars of…

Videogames have become like movies now, in a sense that the big blockbusters with the big explosions are what’s selling, but they’re usually following tried-and-tested formulas because studios don’t want any risk with the money invested.

I think part of the problem is they’re still doing the same shit they’ve always been doing. It doesn’t feel like the subsequent games change much apart from the setting.

I’m legitimately curious about the drawing power of the “XCOM” brand on people that mostly play mobile games like these. I mean, Marvel, I can understand (especially since the advent of the MCU), but I don’t see XCOM being a recognized brand to most players of these type of mobile games. So in a sense, most will just…

I think they may drop the prices a little bit, but not that much. We have to take into account that the recent GPD devices are quite more fleshed out than what Valve is proposing, in terms of functionality at least. I got a Win Max, and while games might run slightly better on the Steam Deck due to the AMD GPU, the…

but if people really wanted a PC gaming portable that’s not a gaming laptop, they would have caught on by now.

Interesting point. Personally, I don’t think it’ll sell anything over 10 million units, and I’m generous here. Unless I’m missing something. We have to put into perspective that Valve doesn’t need this to sell games as much as Nintendo needs the Switch to sell its games. The whole point of the Switch is that it is…

Same thing here. Not that I think it won’t be fine, but the last Valve hardware I bought (Steam Controller) didn’t have a rock solid build quality imo. It was ok, but nothing more. It felt a bit flimsier than all the other controllers I own.

It’s funny that everyone seems to act like playing PC games on a portable-console-sized PC is now just getting real while I’ve been doing it since many years already on various devices... Sure, this new model from Valve will probably make it easier to do so, and at an attractive price point considering the hardware,…

...budget phones tend to keep a lot of old-school niceties that flagships have abandoned, like expandable SD card storage and headphone jacks

...budget phones tend to keep a lot of old-school niceties that flagships have abandoned, like expandable SD card…

A wider issue that this highlights is how capitalism has been transformed throughout time. At some point in history, the way we were attributing value to things completely changed. Value was in some way loosely, more or less, tied to manufacturing costs. But then this shifted when some “genius” figured that goods…

Same thing for me. And you know what? Seeing all those people thinking this way is refreshing. Maybe they all all different reasons for thinking that, but still, I think that people realizing you don’t HAVE to buy the latest tech just for the sake of having the latest tech is healthy. Just realizing that you may be…

Both are stupid because both leave aside things that are kind of essential to humans.