I like Jerry Maguire a lot (what can I say, I’m a big sap) but I concur that it’s not really a football movie.

“The Sterling Affairs” was great. Tough to listen to at times, but very instructive. I (like most fans, I’d guess) only knew Sterling as a cheapskate laughingstock but that podcast really went into the depths of how much of a piece of absolute garbage that man is.

I see that the error of not including The Replacements has not been corrected.

I was gobsmacked when I learned that Xbox “physical” copies don’t even have the game on them. It’s no different from buying a digital code except, I guess, in that you have to insert the disc.

Absolutely. I meant “big swing” in the most complimentary way possible; it’s the kind of decision I hope I’d have the stones to make in that position.

It was a big swing, and unfortunately they whiffed. It would’ve been safer to prioritize ES6 or Fallout 5 as the game to drive Xbox sales in the way they were counting on Starfield to do.

Sony doesn’t have a web browser, at least not one that’s accessible anymore. You used to be able to sneak into it by accessing the screen you use to link your Twitter account, but that’s no longer available.

Sony were the ones who bought OnLive and I think they killed it or rolled it into PSNow/PS+.

And that was apparently totally unintentional! Ratzenberger auditioned and got the role in part because he had stage fight training; that’s why he looked so good in that battle scene.

I unironically love House II. I even bought the soundtrack on CD, which was weirdly expensive. It’s a goofy horror comedy, sure, but it has tons of heart. And the Bill Towner scene is fantastic.

Yeah, I think that worst-case scenario here is that Microsoft stops making physical consoles (which I assume would take the form of not making a next-generation console rather than stopping abruptly in the middle of this one) and the only way you can install games natively is to buy a PC.

I thought Maher was fun in House II, but really I think it’s because he was just playing himself - a smug, smarmy douchebag who thinks he’s significantly smoother and smarter than he actually is.

Plus, the way they recently split up the tiers makes “Microsoft GamePass” branding make even more sense than it did before (and it even made sense then).

Basically, people are mad about exclusives if they aren’t on the specific plastic box that they’ve dedicated their lives to.

Every situation is different, but in many cases you’re committed to a certain number of seasons but that’s not guaranteed. There are renewal options at the end of each season and the studio can decide to not pick up that option.

Sure it’s great in the short term, but if you can play everything on a PC, people have less incentive to buy a console. I know I never saw any reason to pick up an Xbox. A thing has to have exclusives otherwise I feel like I’m just wasting my money.

That’s definitely part of it. I use Macs at home as my primary machines and prior to getting a NUC for couch gaming I only had a PC for a few very specific purposes (media server, ripping physical media) so I don’t have a need for a powerful one.

I didn’t mean forced in terms of a legally binding edict being handed down by the CMA or similar entity, I was pointing out that there were no formal agreements in place until the CMA made it clear that they were looking askance at the deal. “Cajoled” would’ve been a more explicitly correct word, but the CMA…

You’re a lot better at branding than Microsoft.

That’s one of the biggest reasons for not wanting to game on PC as a primary (or even secondary) platform. I like being able to turn the console on and play without having to worry about (among other things) whether I need to upgrade my GPU or other components, if my drivers are up-to-date and compatible, did Windows…