Embark’s Art Director Robert Sammelin has said in the past about matchmaking: “It’s quite complex, so we do analyze behavior and match accordingly.”

And then one YouTuber’s anecdotal experience. Wow, sounds conclusive.

No, no, that can’t be right. Randy said the game was super optimal. 🤔

I guess that means I’ll buy it when the full story is finished and all the episodes released? 🤷 I just don’t have any interest in buying half a story.

Edit: okay, read the article. Kind of odd, in so far as they already have everything finished, but they’re doling out the game in pieces. Maybe as a kind of marketing strategy?

I don’t really get it, but at least they have the game done and are planning to release it at a reasonable price. 👍

I’m sure Silksong will be good - Shovel Knight was good. But I wonder if they’ve kept the price relatively low to move into the impulse buy territory, because even they know the amount of hype around the game is flash in the pan.

I’m struggling to understand how Sony could force it on a technical level when Microsoft controls the default PC OS. Could maybe try a legal route, but I’m not sure how they would argue it.

I’m glad that PS5 owners get to play Forza, but overall I don’t have a lot of confidence in Microsoft’s ability to stay in the hardware market, which is concerning for everyone as I think Sony will leverage that position to raise their prices on their hardware and on PSN.

Xbox has said it will be producing a new console next gen with powerful hardware, but I will probably stay away, despite owning a Series console this gen.

In the UK at least there’s a persistent cost-of-living battle being fought, so we’re not spending as much as we were, and large game production has reached a tipping point where the number of purchasers aren’t growing but costs are increasing, so: studios contract; or games are taking longer to make; or games are made with a smaller scope. So basically, there’s less to upgrade your console for.

I mean, for me personally, everytime I think of upgrading from a Series S I find it hard to justify because most games run quite well.

All sounds pretty sensible. I do think it might feel annoying waiting minutes to download a model for the sake of generating a line of alt text the first time, though. It would probably be quicker to write the alt text.

It also didn’t release as a physical copy. New digital releases in the UK at least are always pretty expensive, whereas with physical copies there’s at least a chance of a small discount from a retailer.

It’s really quite bad imo, but it’s surprising considering how the consoles are basically the same, hardware-wise - the Xbox on paper might even be technically more powerful.

I think that if they’d been able to get out there with a couple of great 1st party games early in the generation it might have helped swing the market in their direction but they didn’t and now it doesn’t matter.

Sony is also encountering similar issues in terms of the cost of games being unsustainable and Moore’s Law kicking in. The difference is that they’re making games that move consoles and Microsoft just aren’t.

At this point, I don’t know what strategy Microsoft has at this point. If you say “Xbox everywhere”, what does Xbox even mean any more for the enthusiast? I don’t think Xbox is done, but if they were looking to be HBO before, they are now going for the Netflix approach - high quantity content, mediocre product - and possibly alienate the existing audience they have.

I say this as an Xbox Series S owner, I’m happy with my purchase, but as a consumer I don’t think I’ll be upgrading my console to anything Microsoft ship any time soon.

I think if you read through this and take it at face value, there is a pretty clear picture of what happened: https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2024/03/30/a-microcosm-of-the-interactions-in-open-source-projects/

I can imagine them carrying on making consoles this generation but long-term Microsoft is a services company and over successive generations they have failed to recapture the lead from Sony since the 360. Ultimately, they just want to make more money and struggling in the hardware business is not an exciting place for them to be in.

I say this as a Series S owner: the writing is on the wall. I will likely not be purchasing another Microsoft console after this, though I’m not sure they’d be interested in releasing one. I want to buy and own games I can play locally on a piece of hardware, which probably means I have to return to Sony or go back to the humble PC. For anyone currently on the fence seeing this news, I don’t know why they’d consider buying into the Xbox platform and tying in all their gaming purchases.

I know it’s vastly underpowered compared to even the Xbox Series S but I still think there’s something magical about the way you can have these fully fledged gaming experiences in front of your TV or in your hands while on holiday using the same hardware. Of all the consoles I’ve owned, it’s probably my favourite.

The redesign is literally pointless and currently achieves nothing. I find that the user’s profile button having moved to the bottom-left so goddamned weird, as is the “Activity” button moving to the no-mans-land of middle of the sidebar.

I would be extremely surprised if at least one upgraded model of the Xbox doesn’t ship with a disc drive. It would completely alienate a section of their user-base that want a more powerful box and care about owning physical media. They also made this mistake before with the Xbox One - which Spencer himself has mentioned as a key reason why there’s such a gap in sales volume between XBS/X and PS5 - so to make the same mistake again would be doubly confusing.

Edit: just seen this story corroborated by multiple outlets, so this may well be the real deal. And if so, super disappointing and fucking duuuumb. As the Xbox Series X OG console becomes more and more the outlier, what are the chances that publishers will just stop producing discs for retail completely? So basically, really piss off your early adopters. I own a Series S at the moment, but I’m more likely to just switch to PS5 Pro model when it comes round instead of stick with the Xbox Series consoles.

This is a brain dead decision and nothing short of a complete 180 will perhaps save them, but even then the reputational damage is severe.

It is silly. The CMA has tunnel vision around this, and because the streaming issue was essentially the main point of contention this change in the deal puts them in a position where they’d look like hypocrites not to let it through. Microsoft just capitalizing on their ignorance (rightly so).

It’s a great base for general desktop use as well as server. Been using it on my PC for years now, and aside from a few 3rd party repositories it has everything I need. It just works and continues to work.

Even if you ignore the time it takes to download for those with low speed connections or data caps, the issue is made worse by a lack of competitively priced storage options for the Xbox Series consoles. PC owners by comparison have it much easier.