Will

The point they’re getting at is that these devices are people’s computers and they have absolutely no freedom to decide how they buy content for it. Apple have a huge monopoly on these users spending that almost certainly stifles competition. If you buy a crappy Android phone then yeah, it will suck. If you buy one in the same price bracket as an iPhone you get a pretty decent device. It’s not really got all that much to do with the app stores available on it. I don’t think this is the correct analogy. It’s wanting to sell your product but there is only one shop in town that forces you to use their currency and will block you from any attempt to access the residents in any other way. They provide a really nice experience, but the customers also have no choice to go elsewhere if they want to. Epic are saying other people should be allowed to have a store that these people are free to choose to use should they wish to. Which is completely fine, but their argument is that this shouldn’t be the one and only way people can access content. If ultimately most people don’t care, but having additional choice would be a good thing overall, isn’t something like this a move in the right direction? Of course Apple and Google are not going to open this up on their own, but it doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.

I’d be tempted to say nobody, but Epic are probably the most bad of all of them. All they want is to move extra money to themselves, it’s nothing to do with customer choice. I agree with that, but does that mean no other store should be allowed on the device? I’m pretty much an all-in Apple user, all my devices are Apple and pretty much all of my content it bought through it, but I wouldn’t be against other options being available. It’s funny, Fortnite is one of the better free to play games in that it’s not play to win and I think skins are fair game on the microtransactions. But Epic/Tencent are desperate to take as much of the money for themselves as possible. I’m not really sure which way any of this will go, but I do think it’s good to challenge some of these businesses every once in a while.

Oooh me too! Went out and ordered this today: Being delivered on Monday. Can’t wait to stop working on our outside table and get comfortable.

Sounds pretty fun! Will definitely watch it in the run up to Christmas at some point.

I don’t quite get why the battery life is so important. The DS4 is absolutely terrible, but when it runs out I just plug it in and carry on playing. What environment do people play in where they need to charge a controller while playing with another one?

Oh for sure, our whole apartment is built around the aircon, there’s no way you could put this setup into somewhere that wasn’t designed with it in mind. I’m actually surprised new builds aren’t built with integrated air conditioning, not just window design. In Japan the winters were way colder than the UK and the summers way hotter, and we had the integrated aircon that could both heat and cool. The temperature inside was always perfect. If I could design my own place back home I’d 100% do it with this in mind.

Never before have I spent so much time looking into the stats of my air conditioning. We have five 9,000 BTU units in our apartment and I’d say dependent on what we’re doing we have some combination of two of them running 24/7. What’s good about ours is most of the mechanics are outside of the apartment so they make basically no noise inside - I’m not sure what those all-in-ones are like for that. 9,000 is enough to give you a chill in a normal size room if you put it on the lowest setting, for sure. 12k and I imagine you could really make yourself uncomfortable in the opposite direction.

I think it should, right? When we do pigs in blankets at Christmas or have the bacon that we’ve wrapped the turkey in it’s great with all the sauces. I’ll definitely try including some next time!

They must really be unhappy with the reaction to the game, REALLY unhappy. It’s crazy that they’re not going to have the biggest game there at launch. Honestly I’m not really sure how they can compete with the PS5 at this point. I think this is probably their only option to have something compelling for launch. I could see them doing something even longer than six months. Maybe anybody buying in the launch window gets a year and then something special to go alongside the Halo launch? But this is a great point. People spending $500 on a new console are not doing it to get access to a load of old games. Agree that it’s good for the hardcore but yeah, don’t see it working for them with the masses (though it’s arguable that really only the hardcore buy in the launch period anyway). It could really screw them up. If the game doesn’t live up to expectations after the delay I can see it throwing the console off track for years to come. I’m sure it might happen like this at some places but in my experience with a delay like this the project would usually be re-planned with new milestones and sprint objectives. I’d imagine this delay is all based on making the game more ‘next-gen’ than it seemed in what we’ve seen so far, which will give quite a specific scope of work. That said, I’d still expect they will be working way too much all the way up to launch to get it done.

Hopefully the post is a bit quicker in that direction. Both Japan-Singapore and Singapore-UK seem to be up around 6 weeks no matter what you send at the moment.

Interestingly Kanada-Ya recently opened a branch super close to where we live. Will have to give it a try, Tokyo Diner I went to many years ago, seem to remember it was good for lunches. Cool that there is a cocoichi there now, always liked it there. Those prices though... wow! I do wish someone would open an authentic Japanese Izakaya in London, I’ve often thought it would be a good thing to start up. Surely it would be massively popular yet nobody ever seems to do it.

What are your top places? Seems like it changes every time I’m back. We tried to find decent Japanese last time we were there and came away disappointed - would love to have some recommendations on places to try.

Lifetime ban I hope? You have my vote.

At least make a device play it with the TV off or something. If the metrics are good then they’re more likely to make additional episodes that might cover something you do like!

Was saying to a friend it actually makes things much more interesting when they bring the ‘wrong’ tyres to a race weekend. The whole point of what Pirelli have been mandated to do is spice up the racing through quickly degrading tyres. When most of the races can be done with one stop it’s not really hitting that target IMO. It was a good race from a strategy point of view but didn’t lead to too much on-track action which was a shame. Bottas doing another terrible job of defending his position didn’t add much to the show. When Lewis can have a bad weekend and still cruise to second place it doesn’t give much hope of a close title fight. I do love these back to back races though. I hope the short weekend format of Imola works well and they do more triple (or more!) header weekends in the future.

Amazon is finally getting a bit of a foothold here so have been thinking of signing up to Prime again, this is a pretty nice addition to the incentives. When I read the title I thought they were renaming the whole Twitch platform, glad they’re not doing that at least.

Simple but delicious, Bacon and Brie roll.

One of the great things about living in a place with this kind of horrible weather year-round is that we have heavy-duty aircon built into every room. It really is a joy to be able to sit in whatever temperature you like while the sun and humidity boil away outside.

F1 2020 Predictions Game Round 5 Results More tyre woes for Mercedes and Red Bull take their first win of the season, maximum points for this race were: Pole - Bottas (10) Fastest Lap - Hamilton (10) 1st - Verstappen (25 + 5) 2nd - Hamilton (18 + 5) 3rd - Bottas (15 + 5) 4th - Leclerc (12 + 5) 5th - Albon (10 + 5) The results for this round: @BowserBasher - 42 @will' - 40 @Goron_3 - 30 @Mandalore - 27 @Nicktendo - 15 @bob - 15 And the overall standings (previous total in brackets): @will' - 233 (193) @Mandalore - 158 (131) @bob - 155 (140) @Nicktendo - 126 (111) @BowserBasher - 87 (45) @Goron_3 - 75 (45) Spanish Grand Prix Predictions: Pole - Bottas FL - Hamilton 1st - Hamilton 2nd - Verstappen 3rd - Sainz 4th - Bottas 5th - Perez

Tried to add everyone posting in here to my PSN friends list, if anyones playing later today will try to join in.

He’s not really saying anything with that though. It’s obvious Sony will have a relationship with anyone capable of developing for PS5 and that those developers will either have content and/or games available to discuss as exclusives for the system. It would be more surprising if deals hadn’t been discussed. I’m not saying he’s wrong, and I’d say it’s a safe bet that we’re going to see a lot of exclusive “stuff” during the launch period coming up. Just don’t believe everything a journalist who’s closest touch point to games companies is a (often 3rd party) PR guy representing the best interests of whatever they’re talking about that day.

Woohoo! Won my first episode. Such a good game.

I think it’s good to discuss all view points, I certainly have seen the most value in this thread from reading, thinking about, and responding to other people’s thoughts on these issues. That is totally nuts. I think America really needs to have a look at it’s constitution and laws and have a long think about ripping them all up and starting again.

Oh that sounds great, will definitely be watching.

In practical terms very little. It’s the same track, run in the same way, with all regulations for the race the same. The one sporting difference is the use of softer tyres across the weekend, so the race is likely to be two stops as opposed to last week’s one. The main reason for the difference is just as a way of identifying the races. Traditionally there has only ever been one British Grand Prix (and one race of each country) and they want to maintain that. If there were multiple British Grand Prix this year then it could throw records out of whack, would remove from the prestige of the event, and would just be generally weird for the sport. Put simply, the only difference is the name.