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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • You summed it up pretty well. Consoles are basically dead at this point. Sony is hurting too.

    Both companies badly mismanaged this last generation and there’s a significant sentiment that the value of the consoles wasn’t justified. Why would consumers want to buy another one?

    Sony should have done the subscription model in the last generation. They would have buried Xbox.

    Xbox has a chance now if they become a competitor to the steam machine, but the price will have to be much better than that system. If it isn’t free, then it will need to offer steam as a marketplace.

    The only way either system could survive any other way is if they went handheld like steam deck or switch, but that might be even harder.


  • This CEO sounds worse than the last. With a declining brand, making games exclusive is only going to make the brand tank harder.

    Their next system needs to be free, or nearly free (~$100), but with a required subscription. Game pass needs to switch to a model that has a lowest tier at $10 or $15 per month that allows 3 games per month (from the whole catalog, you pick the game and it uses 1 credit, resets at end of every month) up to a premium tier at $35 per month that has unlimited play. Free console with 3 year subscription to the premium tier.

    Console specs should be 4k at 60 Hz. $900 without subscription. Announce this the day after Sony announces the PS6. Sony would be screwed, especially because they are already releasing most of their games to all consoles simultaneously (per the most recent summer games fest).

    In 3 years, raise the price of the lowest tier to $20 with 5 credits per month. Offer a 6 month discount on a 1 year contract for any accounts which have completed their 3 year subscription.




  • That all makes sense though. By definition, popular games are liked by many people. Popular games are talked about more. People expect popular games to be listed. Many people will doubt these publications if they fail to list several of the most popular games.

    I’m sure there is some money changing hands too, but that can only do so much (maybe move a game a little higher on these lists).

    Popular and good (for you) are not the same thing. Games can either, both, or neither of those things. It is only when we think about large numbers of people that popular and “good” become correlated.




  • I think Steam already presents a large enough market to be enticing for indie devs.

    A quick check shows that Steam likely has more monthly active users than Xbox, PS5, or Nintendo. I’m sure a large portion of those groups overlap too. So indie devs are likely to develop for PC first.

    While I’m excited for what they just announced, I don’t think it will significantly change these numbers.


  • Yes, you have to trust the company storing the passwords.

    A good company can store passwords in ways that are secure to most hacking attempts. It isn’t impossible to break the encryption typically used, but it is difficult enough that most thieves will not have the resources or time to make use of the data. They want the low effort password databases, not the difficult and expensive ones.








  • Sure, they probably work great when you have your *passkey manager on the device, but that’s not when I need to have backup routes into my accounts. When using a new device, or someone else’s, having even a complicated password that can be typed or copied-pasted has way more functionality.

    As far a I can tell, using passkeys would only risk locking me out of my accounts. Everyone else is already effectively locked out.


  • While the lock-in issue is annoying and a good reason not to adopt these, the device failure issue is a tech killer. Especially when I can use a password manager. This means I can remember two passwords (email and password manager), make them secure, and then always recover all my accounts.

    Passkeys are a technology that were surpassed 10 years before their introduction and I believe the only reason they are being pushed is because security people think they are cool and tech companies would be delighted to lock you into their system.