Skip Navigation

ampersandrew

@ ampersandrew @lemmy.world

Posts
70
Comments
1472
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • An Update on Cities: Skylines II - Development moved to Iceflake Studios

    Jump

  • The only explanation I can come up with is that they're a studio that reliably ships finished projects, and maybe that was all Paradox was looking for.

  • An Update on Cities: Skylines II - Development moved to Iceflake Studios

    Jump

  • Echoes of Paradox moving Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 to The Chinese Room for some reason none of us on the outside understand.

  • Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers

    Jump

  • I don't believe I said anything like "all games deserve ongoing maintenance".

  • Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers

    Jump

  • If it costs them nothing, then what does the cost of servers have to do with anything? If someone else wants to run servers at their own expense, that's their prerogative. Why would you have an issue with a bad game remaining playable? That's valuable history that everyone can learn from.

  • Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers

    Jump

  • In this case, the ask is to release the server binary and allow users to point their game to a different server when the official one is gone.

  • Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers

    Jump

  • What do you believe the cost to Sony is for community-run servers?

  • Valve's new hardware will NOT be loss leaders

    Jump

  • Your entry level PC is what I would have called high end as little as four years ago. I built a machine in 2021 with a Ryzen 5 5600x and an RX 6800 XT; it still runs the latest UE5 games at high settings. I would call that above and beyond entry level.

  • Valve's new hardware will NOT be loss leaders

    Jump

  • Yeah, leaving it ambiguous like this leads to wild speculation, and I think you misquoted that with your own assumptions. You might be right, but Digital Foundry seems to think $400-$500 is possible. Given the cost of my own mini PC, which is older and requires higher margins than Valve can get away with, I would even believe $400-$500. But we just don't know. Everyone's best guess for the price of this thing has a low floor and a high ceiling, which will make this all really funny once we know the actual price.

  • Valve's new hardware will NOT be loss leaders

    Jump

  • that will cost more than a console

    Is that part of the quote? Because I just saw "priced like an entry level PC, not like a console", which was more ambiguous than saying "priced like a console". One man's entry level PC is $300, and another's is $1000. I have a mini PC with the power of a PS4 Pro, which I'd easily consider entry level, and it cost me $530 about a year and a half ago.

  • The Turbulent, Seven-Year Saga Behind Hit Game ‘Dispatch’

    Jump

  • I liked it a lot. It's engrossing enough to make you just want to keep going to the next episode, and it's beautifully animated. Other than the story stuff, the gameplay loop is just This is the Police, and I think this improves both the Telltale design and the design of This is the Police by way of pacing. It did still leave me wanting more as a video game, but as a story and a comedy, I loved it.

  • Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers

    Jump

  • The correct lesson to take away from it, that they won't ever do, is to release multiplayer games in a way where they can live on without constant updates or a central server.

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    The Turbulent, Seven-Year Saga Behind Hit Game ‘Dispatch’

    www.bloomberg.com /news/newsletters/2025-11-14/the-turbulent-seven-year-saga-behind-hit-game-dispatch
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Sony’s Concord Is Playable Again Thanks To Fan-Made Custom Servers

    thegamepost.com /sony-concord-playable-again-custom-servers/

  • While we eagerly await the second coming of Steam Machines, it's worth remembering what a gloriously awful mess Valve got itself in over a decade ago

    Jump

  • So, funny story, I bought it as the Windows variant, because it was $50 cheaper for some reason. Bloatware subsidies, maybe? My roommate and I tried it for a little while, but using Windows from the couch sucked so much that I put SteamOS on it. My roommate only booted back to Windows to play Hearthstone. I just rocked whatever SteamOS would let me play local, since streaming games from my desktop in the other room wasn't cutting it for me. I played through KOTOR2 on that machine, on SteamOS, and had a great time.

  • While we eagerly await the second coming of Steam Machines, it's worth remembering what a gloriously awful mess Valve got itself in over a decade ago

    Jump

  • Why would you spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a PC that used a brand-new operating system and had a gaming library a fraction of the size of that of Windows machines?

    I had one of the old Alienware Steam Machines. I know it wasn't a popular answer, but my answer to this was that Windows was atrocious for the living room just like it's atrocious for handhelds today, and I had easily and cheaply amassed a large library of Linux-compatible games even back then by way of Steam sales. But this wasn't even the only problem. We only had OpenGL ports rather than lower level and more performant APIs like Vulkan. Running a marquis Linux title like Shadow of Mordor would come with a sizable performance hit compared to the Windows version, even when run on exactly the same hardware, and that would also require a machine that cost $200 more than a PS4 that could run the same game just as well.

  • Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]

    Jump

  • I've got a bit of a VR library, but the new ease of setup with this one does have me considering how I'd use the virtual display features. Even with trackpads, a lot of mouse-driven games aren't great on Steam Deck, but I'm replaying Baldur's Gate 2 right now and wondering how the mouse controls might work out in VR.

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    new Steam Controller Steam Machine and VR headset Steam Frame coming in 2026

    Steam Hardware

    store.steampowered.com /sale/hardware

  • PlayStation State of Play Japan airs this Tuesday, November 11

    Jump

  • There is, because we expect more fidelity now than we did in 2011, and Skyrim was built on some existing bones. When you're trying to make a game like that in Unreal that you haven't done in that engine before, it's going to be smaller (if you're smart). Baldur's Gate 3 didn't get to be that big without building on Original Sin 2, and the same can be said for Elden Ring; perhaps without a pandemic in the middle, those games might have even been made in more reasonable time frames than 5 or 6 years.

  • Gamepad for Linux Gaming?

    Jump

  • Not me, sorry. On desktop Linux, I'm always wired, and the bluetooth always just worked when I needed it on Bazzite or Steam Deck, connecting via the controller setup in the Steam menu, but maybe someone else here will know.

  • Gamepad for Linux Gaming?

    Jump

  • Yeah, Xbox controllers are pretty much standard. Comfortable, not overpriced, great compatibility with everything, no fuss. Newer ones, from the past several years now, will have Nintendo-style d pads, now that the patent has expired, and connect via bluetooth for wireless play or with a USB C cable to save on batteries. Speaking of batteries, it uses AAs, which means that you can actually swap them when they get low, as opposed to PlayStation controllers where batteries don't last long and they aren't really exposed for you to access them. I'm not going to tell you Xbox controllers are the be-all, end-all, but there's a high chance it's all you need.

    EDIT: Even though I use Xbox controllers all the time, I forgot that the newest Xbox pads actually have d pads that are even better than Nintendo's design. They look funky, but for my money, it's the best d pad out there.

  • To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub

    Jump

  • Well, I’d argue if there was no money to be made, then CNET wouldn’t have purchased GameFAQs.

    I've heard lots about acquisitions of games media as they've nearly all gone independent lately, especially Giant Bomb, who was part of this family. CNET certainly believed it could make them money, but hardly any of this stuff made anyone any money as they changed hands multiple times. At the very least, it could benefit from economies of scale around securing ads in one deal and displaying them in multiple places, but advertisers paid out less for traditional ads on static web pages at the same time that video ad spending was increasing.

    But the clean break idea that print guides existed and then GameFAQs came along and killed guides just doesn’t fit the timeline at all. It’s off by 5-10 years, at least.

    It didn't happen overnight, much like GameStop.

  • To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub

    Jump

  • Alright, sure, a pivot to the collector's market makes sense, but it makes sense in the same way that GameStop pivoted to Funko Pops, you know? Neither GameStop nor Funko is bankrupt yet, but it's pretty clear what caused their decline.

    FWIW, guides going back to paid professionals wasn’t as much due to video. Video is still crowdsourced for that stuff. It was visual guides in html with a bunch of images and reference, I think.

    Emphasis mine, that's exactly my point. Video is crowdsourced and leads to revenue, while GameFAQs crowdsourced guides don't. When I look up a YouTube answer to a question about the game I'm playing, and they have 4 minutes of preamble describing the problem before they show me the solution so that advertisers like their video better, it sure seems to explain the A->B. Speaking for myself, embedding images in guides never made them that much more useful to me, and the era we're in now where the likes of IGN are taking over text based guides just leads to far more of them being incomplete and never finished.

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ Is Postponed Again — to November 2026

    www.bloomberg.com /news/articles/2025-11-06/-grand-theft-auto-vi-is-postponed-again-to-november-2026
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Pillars of Eternity – Turn-Based Mode Beta Announcement Trailer

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Linux gamers on Steam finally cross over the 3% mark

    www.gamingonlinux.com /2025/11/linux-gamers-on-steam-finally-cross-over-the-3-mark/
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    including video games

    Amazon cutting thousands of corporate roles

    www.gamedeveloper.com /business/report-amazon-cutting-corporate-roles-across-key-departments-including-video-games
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    March 19 2026

    MOUSE: P.I. For Hire | Official Release Date Trailer

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Microsoft Pushes Xbox Division to Hit Higher Profit Margins

    www.bloomberg.com /news/articles/2025-10-23/microsoft-pushes-xbox-studios-to-hit-higher-profit-margins
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    More than 1,200 games journalists have left the media in the last two years | VGC

    www.videogameschronicle.com /news/more-than-1200-games-journalists-have-left-the-media-in-the-last-two-years/
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Even Xbox developer kits are getting a big price hike

    www.theverge.com /report/803237/microsoft-xbox-devkit-price-hikes-developers
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    PS6 and next Xbox console are both aiming for 2027 release, separate reports claim | VGC

    www.videogameschronicle.com /news/ps6-and-next-xbox-console-are-both-aiming-for-2027-release-separate-reports-claim/
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Cecil Stedman Gameplay Trailer | Invincible VS

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Scoop: Ubisoft cancelled a post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed last year

    www.gamefile.news /p/scoop-ubisoft-cancelled-a-post-civil
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    The Outsiders, studio behind Metal: Hellsinger, is being closed by Funcom

    bsky.app /profile/locust9.bsky.social/post/3m2jumlqlmc2m
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    Game Maker's Toolkit

    How Games Do Destruction

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    Jake Baldino asks a lawyer to explain what this buyout means

    the EA Situation is crazy

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    prices going up

    Updates to Xbox Game Pass: Introducing Essential, Premium, and Ultimate Plans - Xbox Wire

    news.xbox.com /en-us/2025/10/01/xbox-game-pass-ultimate-premium-essential-plans/
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    It's official: EA is going private.

    bsky.app /profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3lzxzk5aifs2w
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Electronic Arts nears roughly $50 billion deal to go private, WSJ reports

    www.reuters.com /business/electronic-arts-nears-roughly-50-billion-deal-go-private-wsj-reports-2025-09-26/