Nicktendo

The third goal after the sending off was abysmal. What the hell was Bailly doing??! Weird day yesterday. I hope this continues all season. I was mega impressed with how Leeds played against City, think we might have got the win had the crowd been there, we dominated large periods of the game and had City on the ropes. Feeling confident we can stay up this season and more performances like that should keep us in the top half.

When I was watching a livestream on Epic launch day, they didn't have this feature. You had to open the playlist menu again and choose. No idea why they thought it was a good idea to remove this, but they did. Seems it's been addressed now.

Yeah, the meltdowns have been hilarious. I think it's a great addition and looks wonderfully unique. As @Glen-i pointed out, they have really gone to town on this character. Joker has never been on a Nintendo system. Snake and Cloud are synonymous with Sony. Bayonetta made her name long before the Wii U game. I don't understand the salt, but still, it's funny. I DON'T LIKE THE THING. While "Steve" might not be an instantly recognisable character or anyone really of note, it's hard to ignore the fact, and it is a fact, that Minecraft is the best selling video game of all time. If anyone doesn't like this addition, I have a secret for you... For anyone who is disappointed and already bought the full DLC... Well, that's on you

Devil’s advocate, but these big publishers going to Microsoft or Sony rather than Amazon, Google or China is better. It’s not ideal, granted, but it could be much, much worse. I expect more acquisitions to come over the next few months. Just the way gaming is heading, unfortunately. In 5-10 years, it’s likely going to be the same as choosing a streaming service is now, which exclusives do you want more? As gaming moves to a service based economy, having powerful, exclusive IP is going to be the biggest factor in making profit. Konami, Sega and maybe even Ubisoft will probably be the next big ones to fall. Indies are gradually going to be scooped up as timed or permanent exclusives. Ideally, companies will play ball and make their games available in more places for greater access, but we’ll have to see how it plays out. I can definitely see each console manufacturer having a “service” with exclusive games - their own GamePass. However, all this probably works in Nintendo’s favour, which I’m not going to complain about Their IP is unmatched, as we’ve seen from the astonishing sales of Switch games that the other two manufacturers can’t even dream of achieving with their respective first party games.

The new update is horrible. The menus are garbage, really capture that F2P look 🤢 and you can’t jump straight into a new game again with a single button press. They’ve screwed the in-game item economy even harder than they already had done when Epic bought them out. I’m done with this game. Screw Psyonix for selling out. The removal of options is awful. Forcing you to sign a new EULA for a product you already own is embarrassing. I’m not giving Epic any of my information to keep playing this game. A real shame, but I’m not going to cave to Epic’s demands to continue playing, even if it was my game of the generation. Seems like a few people on Steam feel the same way, but I doubt it’s enough to make Psyonix notice. Going to keep spending money on and playing games I want to support. I like Steam and I like Nintendo. The more Epic try to hold certain games hostage and try to unfairly power their way into the industry, the more I’m going to actively avoid anything they’re involved in and keep supporting devs and companies who don’t sell out to them even more strongly. There are plenty of games to go around Had a fun 1200 hours with Rocket League. Broke into diamond and was improving very slowly but consistently. Time to move on, forget about this game and focus on something else.

I bought it on Steam on Friday night. Are you sure it’s not on there?

Maybe because they own 40% of Epic Games? I think it would be extremely naive to assume they have “zero say” over what they do. In fact, every move Epic has made since Tencent paid $330 million for that 40% has been at trying to break the dominance of US and Japanese companies in gaming.

Finally, the best DKC game. Guess I will continue my online sub after all... Nintendo always find a way

Look at the first letter in each paragraph

I put 30 or so hours into it before putting it down and getting lost when I came back to it. It's a solid RPG, with great mechanics, amazing graphics and a superb soundtrack. The issue for me was the story and the pacing. I don't like how it's broken up into 8 sub-stories. I found myself enjoying some quite a bit and being bored by others. It makes it worse if you cannot invest a lot of time in it over a short period. However, it's a lovely tribute to 16-bit RPGs and definitely worth playing if you have the time to put into it.

My fantasy team is ready. Who ran the league last year? Willing to do the same again? We had good numbers last year. I can do it if no one else wants to?

Vettel -> Aston Martin basically confirmed. (now confirmed: https://the-race.com/formula-1/our-verdict-on-vettels-aston-martin-f1-move/) Shame for Perez. Hope he finds a drive for next year. Watching Stroll beat Vettel is gonna ruin his legacy... well whatever was left of it.

I honestly think that once people lose access to GamePass after a year or two or three of simply having it there, they'll end up being lifelong customers. They're essentially beta testers who are gonna be so addicted to this thing once their "free" sub ends, they'll keep coming back. I reckon MS was gambling on completely changing how these people play games. Once they're in, they won't want out and MS was happy to take the upfront hit of basically giving it away.

Yeah this is where I'm at to be honest. Nothing that MS has shown so far (bar Infinite) has made me think they'll have anything of note in the next 18 months. Xbox Series S is tremendous value with GamePass and I would love to have one for the bedroom - but it's going to be an easy way to play indie games and third party games without needing to use Steam Link and piss about with controllers and Apple TV. Forza and Rare Replay would be obvious benefits, but 90% of their first party games are coming to PC anyway... The Sony presentation was much better than the MS one and the games looked next-gen in the way they didn't in Microsoft's. I've got a couple of PS4 "exclusives" to go through on Steam and have just started Death Stranding. If Sony continue to deliver quality exclusive games (even timed exclusive ones), I'd be pushed towards a PS5 mid-way thorough the gen, but a Series X is completely out of the question. Would much rather get a new graphics card and stick to Steam.

1) AllStars. Finished 1 and 2, halfway through Lost Levels, which has actually been much easier than expected. Did the 128 lives trick on 1-1 so not using rewinds, but I've only lost about 10 lives so far as of stage 5-1. The game is great to be honest, much better than I remember. It's no harder than Smeagol's Mario Maker levels Murder By Numbers is still getting rotation, the difficulty has massively spiked now, I'm close to the start of the final chapter. 2) Hyrule Warriors 2. 100+ hours in the Wii U and 3DS games. The BOTW backstory makes this even more interesting. Such a shrewd move on Nintendo's part in making BOTW into a trilogy. While I'm annoyed, to some extent, that this is an asset flip and a sequel to a game that no one really asked for, I'm super excited to play it and learn about what happened 100 years ago... Day one. 3) -1 4) I'm really keen to play both Galaxy games again, and I'd like to go back to Sunshine. I hope these games get a separate release and that they eventually port over Galaxy 2, but I'm not interested in this package as I've made clear countless times already

Install locally

You were completely right until you used that first (

This: A small subsection of N-Europe provocateurs: Sane people:

As I said in the Fortnite thread, I don't buy this argument. It's their store, their rules. It's exactly the same as walking into Wall-Mart and setting up shop without paying commission. Apple have less the 25% of the Smartphone market. i.e not a monopoly. For people who care about these things, there's Android. The past 15 years saw people flock to Apple and Android because they built the best OS. They shouldn't be punished for that. Apple did this without some of the biggest apps who eventually buckled because their market share become bigger and signed the deal with Apple. This is the market working as intended. No one wants to leave money on the table. You can still buy subs to Amazon Prime and Netflix and countless other apps through company websites and use the apps without giving Apple a penny. Using the app store has security benefits to the end user. Same with buying an e-shop voucher or game through Nintendo rather than a third party site. A smarter move would have been Epic removing ALL in-app payments on mobile and asking users to pay for v-bucks through the web, Epic Game Store or whatever. They could have even set up a website - v-bucks.com and got everyone to buy v-bucks there as opposed to through ANY store on mobile or console. The have the financial capital and incentive to do this, but this isn't about them making more money, it's all leveraging Fortnite to end Western tech hegemony. If you are on iOS, you are available to a billion eyes. Now you can argue that discoverability could be better, but I believe that's a separate argument entirely. Apple's business model does not deserve to be destroyed because they did something well which people clearly like. In regard to the console stores, you can bet your bottom dollar EA, Activision and Ubisoft would set up shop in an instant and make their console stores the only way to buy their games. This is much harder on the PC as their storefronts were garbage compared to Steam. They came crawling back in the end, but they definitely made a go of it. Setting up a simple webpage on a console is not going to be hard, and let's remember a lot of console gamers are kids. To them it won't make an iota of difference. The PC Master Race types are much less likely to be hooked in to setting up yet another storefront, as we've seen with some of the backlash directed at Origin and EGS on PC. Indie games would probably continue on the platform store though as they likely wouldn't have the financial clout to set up a store. I'm in agreement with D-Cubed here. Interested to hear how you think it's different. Why has it changed? If it was fair then, why isn't it now. Just because the payment model in mobile games has changed, why should Apple be the ones who suffer? Microtransactions are clearly what the public wants (even if we don't). Full price and Fremium games are also stuffed to the brim with this now though, on all three platforms. Should the big 3 also change the 30% as a result? As I stated in my second post, I think 30% is fair, but I'm open to hearing any argument for a lower number. I don't think that number necessarily has to change, I just don't see how anyone would really benefit from it changing outside of developers who already do very well out of 70% if they build a game people want to play. I suppose the main issue for me with the 30%, and something that I perhaps didn't think about before, was that it makes the platform holders less inclined to curate their content. For them it's better to have an open marketplace with no holds barred and claim a clean 30% on everything. That's why you have ludicrous stuff like 4,000 games being released on Steam in a calendar year and why the e-shop has got slowly worse over time. I would still maintain that the good games will always standout though, but Nintendo, MS and Sony (and Apple for that matter) could do more to highlight the best stuff.

YES! YES! YEEEEEEESSSSS!!!

Microsoft announce a great price for their console and people still prefer to talk about Sony.

I think they may go for it. Remember, the Switch is the same price in the US. They will undoubtedly bundle in a game for Xmas or they will reduce the price by $50 or so. Same in the EU. Regarding the U.K., I'd expect the same and a price cut of £50 to make it £229. Honestly though, I don't think they really need to do this. They don't have any (announced) big hitters coming up for Xmas outside the ports, but I think they're not after the same market. Yes, some parents will opt for the Series S, but I still think the Switch will sell like hotcakes regardless of the price. My prediction is that the price doesn't move but we see a digital game or two bundled in.

I agree. I think they'll fail massively, but I'm also worried at what the fallout of a heavy defeat could be. They've definitely got more up their sleeve. Do we think 30% is fair? Would 25% be better? 15%? I believe 30% allows the big 3 to price their consoles more competitively and gives them an incentive to do better in terms of how they distribute content. I think it also plays a role in how often we get access to deep sales as 30% of a tenner multiplied many times over is better than 30% of nothing. Overall, I think 30% is consumer friendly, while also being hugely beneficial in allowing the console maker to thrive and reinvest into giving us bigger and better games. I would also argue that 70% is fair to developers as they gain access to a wealth of customers - currently 200 million if they launch on Sony, MS and Nintendo. We've already seen that the EGS store doesn't pass the saving on to the consumer, so while the devs do get more money - more people are still buying the games on Steam (outside of exclusivity) as the service is MUCH better for the average consumer. Who would benefit the most from a 15% cut as opposed to a 30% one? My guess is it would neither be the consumer nor the platform holder. Make a good game and it will make millions, regardless of the cut you get.

So as we all know, Epic Games is currently suing Apple for "Maintaining a monopoly" on its App Store and Apple products. They believe that the 30% cut platform providers is unfair and argue that they as developers should be able to distribute their own games on smartphones without paying the platform holder a cut of the money for this privilege. A privilege which essentially boils down to access to more than a billion customers. However, that's not what I'm getting at here, though I encourage anyone who isn't aware of this situation to read up on it as it could affect all digital marketplaces in the future. I want us to imagine a situation where Epic Games wins this lawsuit - and going forward, platform providers cannot maintain a monopoly over distribution on their products. Given the recent news that Xbox Series S is launching at £249, it's clear to me that MS is taking a MASSIVE loss on this console in the hope that they can recoup the costs via GamePass subscriptions and, more importantly, digital game sales. The industry standard, outside the EGS, is a 30% cut to the platform provider. This includes, but is not limited to, the following five companies: Apple (US) Google (US) Sony (Japan) Nintendo (Japan) Microsoft Xbox division (US) As we know, the final three companies make the majority of their profit from digital sales and subscription passes on their platforms (consoles). The reason these consoles are sold either at a loss, or a very, very thin margin of profit in Nintendo's case, is because they know they will make the rest of that money back in the future. Essentially, they are betting on getting enough people into the ecosystem to make this economic model sustainable. Remember the $599 PS3? That was still sold at a huge loss and people completely baulked. Times have changed, and barring a catastrophe from Sony, it's unlikely they'll go that high again. They can afford to go lower because the future returns are basically guaranteed. [Enter stage left] Epic Games / Tencent. If they win the lawsuit against Apple, Sony, Nintendo and MS wouldn't have a leg to stand on having their various stores as the only point of access to the end-user of a console. Think about this - Who has the most to gain from this 30% cut legally being ruled unfair? Who has basically unlimited backing and can afford to run at a loss because they are propped up by a communist state? Which nation is trying to gain a dominant position in the global tech market despite leaking foreign tech companies left, right and centre thanks to COVID, sanctions and tariffs? Maybe, I'm crazy, but I think Tencent are playing somewhat of a long game here and basically trying to destroy Western tech from the inside out. Their Fortnite propaganda video was a rallying cry to their teenage followers to boycott the "unfair" Apple. Who's to say this will stop there? I think the big 3 console manufacturers are next in their sights, and with it, the dominance of the US and Japan in the global gaming market.