Quoting: Guest

Quoting: ExpandingManThere's quite a lot wrong with steam's review system, and frankly I spend more of my time bemoaning it than celebrating it. However, this is a great example to show that, whatever may be wrong with it, there are huge advantages to having user feedback built so prominently into a storefront. While the fact that so many people are playing the game suggests there's another side to the story, 9% positive reviews out of 10^5 is a sure sign that something is terribly wrong. When blizzard puts the game in their own isolated ecosystem it's far easier for them to pretend they didn't do anything wrong, but in steam they're, at least somewhat, held accountable for their despicable monetization shenanigans. I can only imagine that this kind of feedback has served as an underappreciated good incentive for other developers over the years in ways that have gone largely unnoticed.

They won't be held accountable. They'll just go complain to Valve and get all of the negative reviews removed.

They can't get articles like this scrubbed though, I'd still take the win ;)

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Quoting: GroganWhen I play that tonight, I'm going to pretend every headshot is Ubisoft :-)

Or better yet, stop supporting them by playing their games?

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Quoting: trinuksoIt is possible to trick Ubisoft Connect not to update it. In %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\version.txt it is enough to modify the version to the current one. In this case from 10894 to 10906.

FYI, / is the directory separator, \ is the escape character. Even windows finally caught up to that.

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> Quite a small one this time just hooking up two new extensions

Quite important extensions though. DGC is probably going to be how jobs are launched in the future. And HIC is a major load time and peak memory optimization especially on UMA architectures (which unfortunately desktop Nvidia isnt't).

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: boltronics

Quoting: ShabbyXSo why go through the trouble? Because it's *users* microsoft is buying.

A agree, at least to a point. It's not the only reason, since Activition gave them a very strong incentive.

Activision was threatening to pull CoD from Xbox unless they were cut a better deal. MS would have been getting a worse deal than Sony for the same rights because they have a worse bargaining position, being 3rd place in the console war. By buying Activision, they no longer need to worry about competing on uneven ground, and turn a great disadvantage into an advantage going forward.

Anyway, that's just another aspect to it, although a smaller point in the grand scheme of things (as I'll point out in a moment).

Quoting: ShabbyXAnd with users microsoft can keep its other businesses alive. More users on microsoft platforms == fewer users on other platforms == worse software support for other platforms.

This is incorrect.

In the end, the primary reason Microsoft purchased Activision was not because of CoD. It wasn't even about cloud gaming.

It was primarily about King.

Microsoft is desperate to compete in the mobile space, which dwarfs all of console gaming in potential revenue. These mobile games will not be on fewer platforms. Definitely not. If anything, they'll be on more platforms than ever.

As for CoD, it's is still going to be on PlayStation. It's going to end up being basically everywhere. Sure, this and the other games in the Blizzard/Activision catalogue will help GamePass (and many of the smaller console/PC games will likely remain exclusive to MS and Steam, no argument there), but it hardly means that there will be fewer users on other platforms.

Why is this? Did you watch the Kinda Funny interview? Phil Spencer himself said that Microsoft could release the best games possible on Xbox today, and it still won't stop people buying a PlayStation. At best, people might play games from both ecosystems. PlayStation is too far ahead when it comes to the average gamer's digital library, and unless Sony make some really anti-consumer moves that drive people away (similar to what MS tried to do in the previous console generation), it's going to take a long time before we see that change.

You mention mobile gaming being so huge... ha, the only way I could ever see myself getting into mobile gaming is if Valve makes a phone that runs SteamOS that can physically morph into a Z Fold style phone. We may need Nanites or something... granted, then we'll probably have to go to war with them like in Stargate SG-1...

You and I may not like it, and mobile games may generally be garbage, but mobile gaming *is* huge, much bigger than desktop and console gaming (in terms of revenue).

Not saying I'm agreeing with boltronics on it being the reason though.

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Quoting: boltronicsObviously if you are not interested in those companies, what they do should not impact you to any degree. If there was strong evidence of it negatively impacting your decision to go elsewhere, then that would be a clear case of there being a problem.

On the phone, so I'll keep it short. Think about *why* microsoft is buying all these companies. It's *not* to make money from their games, the price of the company is so high, and the income is so small compared to everything else that makes money for microsoft.

So why go through the trouble? Because it's *users* microsoft is buying. And with users microsoft can keep its other businesses alive. More users on microsoft platforms == fewer users on other platforms == worse software support for other platforms. That's how the merger negatively affects all of us here, even if we never buy activision, blizzard or microsoft games.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismI thought Intel just canned their entire NUC division?

I think the phrase you are looking for is "nuked their NUC division" :D

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Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: ShabbyXHow well would you think it works for gaming on a TV? I can't imagine fanless could handle that.

Since it relies on Intel's iGPU gaming will be restricted to non-demanding titles.

I mean, obviously, but I wouldn't even be sure it would be good for non-demanding titles :shrug:

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How well would you think it works for gaming on a TV? I can't imagine fanless could handle that.

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Quoting: Grogan"Oh, but look at how much Microsoft has done for the computing industry!" I counter that with who knows what we could have had, if not for those bloody creeps throughout the history of PC computing.

Next time someone says that, tell them that multics (in the 60s, before unix) was multi user. First actually multi-user windows was vista. That's a set back of ~40 years. If DOS had file permissions like Unix did, we wouldn't be in a world of rampant viruses. That's a 30-year set back too.

Yeap, they _have_ done much for computing, mostly in the form of ruining it.

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