Nintendo (& the rest of the gaming Industry) Continue to Prove that Gaming is Anything but “Mid” This Gen

We’re 71% of the way through 2025. And while I am glad that my main gaming accomplishment is that I completed Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and have embarked on two other runs (one on PC via my Steam copy and another on the PS5 Pro), I am still in wonderment at how overwhelmed I am with games. Jump Space comes out in a week. And I did not jump right on Borderlands 4 this week. And the Nintendo Direct did not help with that sense of an overabundance of games.


Just a sec for an epiphany moment: while I often sign-up for a month of PS Plus Premium and Game Pass so I have the exposure to the culture and can comment on the subscription services, it really makes absolutely zero sense for me to be enrolled in any type of gaming subscription services. Other than Nintendo Switch OnLine. OK. Back to regular programming.


Jump Space is a mix of Left for Dead and Star Citizen (in my mind at least). I did not play the demo (because Hamp doesn’t have time for demos). And I am usually not about bein’ down with Early Access either, which the game enters on 19 September, next Friday (the day that people will be receiving their new iPhones BTW; fingers crossed, but I digress).

Everything I’ve seen about Jump Space reads to me like the exact kind of game I’d get into . My problem is that it is GAAS, a train I finally got off of after 6 years of that being my main. I already have a copy of Helldivers II on the pile and have not made time to onboard. Another problem is that I have been leaning on sports games as a substitute for that GAAS-lifestyle.

And I have a ton of College Football 26 and F1 25 and MLB the Show 25 I need to crunch through. But the game also has that need for some level of crewing, as it is PvE and with a squad….mostly. I figure L4D allowed you to jump in and solo with bots, so I guess I need to dig around and see what is supported from that aspect; if you are always in a queue waiting for matchmaking with others. I’m not concerned about the queue being long, just if you always need to be with humans and, of course, that necessitating being on comms. Which means it needs a community of not-assholes. Which is rare these days. Not supporting HOTAS is a bit of a turn-off, but controller-support for this type of game might be ok, especially since I would need it to support using HOTAS in space and switching on the fly to controller for FPS anyway.

Much research to do. It’s a good reason to go ahead and onboard to Early Access to check it out, for the meager asking price of $20.


Metroid Prime 4 – this December
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave – 2026
Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 – October 2nd
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book – 2026
Mario Tennis Fever – February 2026

Resident Evil Requiem, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village – 27 February 2026
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined – February 5, 2026
Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake
Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage


Lawd Hammercy. The sheer deluge announced at this week’s Nintendo Direct. This post is getting long so I won’t get into detail on everything I saw that made me hyped as a Nintendo Switch 2 owner. But I will leave off with these two things. Many of us thought Nintendo was down and out, that it had an immense crater to climb out of from the waning days of the OG Switch to reset and build similar hype, that this was just gonna be a slough-step phoning-it-in kinda generation. Nope. From what is going on with content being added to NSWOL to the current lineup into 2026, and how there is a “drop-time to game-next drop” pattern…the battle rhythm and release cadence is right back to In Storm and Sunshine levels. Pure Cinema.


The other thing is that it defeats the “gaming is mid” this generation narrative. There are too many games to play that meet a wide, wide array of consumer tastes. Anyone on that tip is either someone with an extremely narrow band of satisfaction and overly pretentious, an aged curmudgeon who feels like the last good game was in 1999, or someone disappointed in what their preferred platform is putting out and unwilling to move.

One thing I will say is that the gaming industry is absolutely moving on without you. I’ve had times in my life when I’ve grown weary of “today’s TV”, or “today’s movies”, or “today’s music” of the time. In those moments, I’ve watched or listened to old stuff (the wonder of the age of digital access and hardware-agnostic services) or just stopped participating. I would highly recommend to those people to do the same. And leave the rest of us alone with your belly-aching.


Drafted on my iPad Air 13” (M3) 256GB using a Magic Keyboard (USB-c) and Magic Trackpad (Lightning) in the app “MyDiary”

The Fading Red Team: AMD’s GPU Struggles and the Xbox Lifeline

I often lament the days when we had more GPU manufacturers on the board, providing more suppliers and helping keep prices down. The days of Voodoo and Savage are long behind us. And not too soon after they were taken off the board were nVidia and ATI charged with colluding in an effort to arrange illegal price-setting on the market (though never found guilty; but where there’s smoke there’s usually fire). Again, fewer suppliers on the market does not yield positive outcomes for consumers. It is one of the reasons I push back on console warriors who insist they want to see either Xbox or PlayStation die. We should always be asking for more competitors to enter and remain in the space, not less.

It’s an interesting convergence of thought…GPUs and console platform owners…now that we are hearing just how bad AMD market share has gotten in the DIY / AIB GPU space. PCGamesN reported yesterday that that market share might be a low as 6% for AMD now. This despite the supposed bonga launch of the RX 9070 XT, which I’d always felt was an overrated product with overly-vaunted assumptions on uptake and sales.

I say interesting convergence because it casts a fascinating light on the announcement this summer of the tighter partnership between AMD and XBox.

A partnership that is at least a component of the dynamic that is bringing us the ASUS ROG XBox Ally & Ally X. As a pre-amble, there are some thoughts I disagree on with some of the more popular takes out there making the rounds. I do not think that this is the same old thing as the typical CPU down-select for the nextgen console that it has always been. Where, if they so desire, Intel, nVidia, and AMD make unsolicited pitches for XBox to allow their silicon to power the XBox Next (I say unsolicited because I don’t think Xbox asks Intel or nVidia for their bids anymore, just AMD). And then, depending on the capabilities offered, pricing, volume, and confidence in the vendor, Xbox makes a choice on one.

I also do not agree with the Moore’s Law is Dead outlook that this is an arrangement to just bring stock AMD APU SKUs to XBox in order to get XBox cheaper prices. I am believing in the dream that this is a more tightly integrated go-to-market strategy for XBox that will yield custom silicon, much in the same vein as the A-Series processors that now power Apple’s entire lineup. I expect to see custom X1, X2, X3…X-n+1 processors that power the next XBox. Yay verily, that designation may really mean an XBox chipset that consists of an AMD APU along with a custom Microsoft NPU, or at least Microsoft AI/ML code (Co-Pilot) that runs a highly tailored variant Co-Pilot productization layer under the hood; possibly running local inferences from an on-console NPU, with reach-back to nearby edge servers running a “Gaming RAG”.

And I do believe that money exchanged hands in this new partnership, in an amount exceeding what Microsoft would have formerly been paying AMD for R&D for the nextgen silicon. That this deal constitutes essentially integrating chip design in-house by contracting AMD to do part of the lift.

A move that is basically Microsoft establishing what will act like a joint-venture between the two, versus buying a PA Semi and entirely in-housing chip design (and then carrying all of its associated overhead).

The point of all this is to ask the question, does this outlook seem more feasible given AMD’s continual backslide in GPU market-share for the DIY and integrator market? Was the conversation an extension of the “We’ll never out-console Sony or Nintendo?” Phil putting his arms around Dr Su’s shoulders and saying “And just like us, you will never out-GPU nVidia.” I’ve talked before about how this leads to the “line of products” that Sarah Bond talked about that would be XBox’ in multiple form factors, and in a productization way that makes WAY more sense than the current slapping of a label and an XBox button on products that they are doing today. And can render more elegant approaches to backwards compatibility than streaming through the Cloud of only Play Anywhere titles.

As a Silicon Nomad who loves gadgetry…a veteran of TabletPC, Windows Phone, Zune, Microsoft Band, Surface, Surface Duo, and Sidewinder peripherals…and who still believes that one day we will get a true Courier product….I’m going to hold on to this notion and hope it bears fruit. But who also acknowledges that this partnership with XBox may have been borne out of an act of desperation by AMD who may be realizing there is no way to eke out a profitable market position and market-share to warrant its consumer GPU business.

Who Really Sets GPU Prices? ASUS, NVIDIA, and the Retail Markup Dance

When Queen Elizabeth I signed the death warrant of Mary, Queen of Scots, she claimed she never directed her secretary to actually submit it to the Privy Council, and hence was not directly responsible for Mary’s execution. That’s a bit macabre of an analogy, but I’m on an intense history kick right now. And it is a bit of the way that I take ASUS’ commentary that it cannot stop how prices are set for buyers on its GPUs.

Digital Trends reported earlier this week on an interview with ASUS’ VP of its Multimedia Business Unit. The big takeaway is that ASUS’ commentary would lead one to believe that they are the oppressed, caught in the pincer between nVidia and its retail partners.

Germany said the same thing in World War I. That the war had been thrust upon them and so they were given no choice but to attack France in an effort to defeat them before Russia could overcome the Austrians. Pincered between Scylla and Charybdis, as it were.

I’m inclined to give them some percentage of leeway in the veracity of their view. They don’t have much say in the prices nVidia sets on its chips. And once they set a wholesale price, the downstream retailers then mark that up based on scarcity, additional supply chain costs, and other sundry bits.

The argument collapses a little, though, when I look at the ASUS Direct site and see similar markups on cards that they are theoretically selling directly, or at least, even if through a second party, with less of a markup than you would expect to see on Amazon, Newegg, or at Best Buy. And those markups run similar to what nVidia lists on their own site for direct-to-consumer sales. On the ASUS site, there is a single 5090 being sold at MSRP. Of the other 14, the cheapest SKU is $1000 over 5090 MSRP. On the nVidia site, no 5090s are being sold at MSRP.

I expect that for AIBs there will always be some markup due to overclocking, piggy-back fans, or whatever other add-ons are included. But I expect the SKU lineup to go from MSRP to however much higher they want. But that there be SOME supply being sold to people at MSRP or a skosh over.

But as ASUS says, part of the formula is consumer willingness to pay. And since the dawn of graphics accelerations cards 30 years ago at $30, consumers have always been willing to pay a bit more generation over generation. And consumers have yet to band together and boycott GPUs, or organize themselves into buyers’ cooperatives or cartels.

So maybe the egregious prices are not the magnitude of problem they are claimed to be?

Mafia The Old Country and Lost Soul Aside: Quiet Entries in the UK Charts

We won’t see NPD sales data until the 8th of October. Fortunately, between the last update of 27 August and before October, we can take a look at UK and Japan sales data to get some indicators of how some titles are faring on the market. NintendoLife just published the most recent UK weekly sales data and over there, there are some movements afoot.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater gets off to a raucous start, debuting at number 1. One reminder that the UK charts are entirely based on physical sales, and so all data comes from POS. While Gears of War: Reloaded lags in at number 3, that is at least partially because only the PS5 version received a boxed release and so was tracked on the UK charts. It is a bonus perk for XBox owners because on XBox it is an upgrade to Gears of War Ultimate Edition, the 2015 release that went to Xbox One and, in 2016, to PC. And the free upgrade goes to owners of the title on both platforms (if they bought the game before 05 May 2025). Meanwhile, the shenanigans make it difficult to hash out early what the uptake and engagement of either Gears of War Reloaded or Helldivers II has been since the two titles arrived on Xbox last week, and the former also debuting on PS5. Seeing the NPD engagement numbers will be interesting. Helldivers II also did not receive a boxed edition release for XBox in the UK.

While Mario Kart World did not break into the NPD Top Twenty from the July sales data, it does show up on the UK weekly chart from last week, coming in at number 2. And while much ado was made about the XBox published titles selling on PS5 when the NPD charts came out, it should really be highlighted just how much EA prints money.

Five titles on the NPD chart out of July, including F1 25, which is not nearly as popular a title in the US as it is in the UK. And EA Sports FC 25, the year old soccer title soon to be superseded (in just 24 days, in fact), showing up at number 18 on last week’s NPD charts from July, and STILL selling bonga in the UK as of last week, in at number 5.

Mafia: The Old Country in at number 8 bodes well; there should be more Take Two IP’s talked about than just Grand Theft Auto, so I have high hopes. Lost Soul Aside, while not off to a great start on PC in the US (Steam user community reviews are Mixed, with a 56% approval rating), it shows up on the UK sales chart at number 14, which would be just off the PS5 physical sales. Not bad.

Last WeekThis WeekGamePlatform Split
NEW1Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
12Mario Kart World
NEW3Gears of War: Reloaded
44Hogwarts LegacyPS5 32%, PS4 31%, Switch 25%, Switch 2 7%
35EA Sports FC 25PS5 34%, Switch 31%, PS4 21%, Xbox 14%
26Donkey Kong Bananza
NEW7Kirby and the Forgotten LandSwitch 2 85%, Switch 15%
78Mafia: The Old Country
NEW9Story of Seasons: Grand BazaarSwitch 2 59%, Switch 41%
1010Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4PS5 53%, Switch 2 25%, Switch 15%, PS4 4%
611Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate
1412Sonic X Shadow GenerationsSwitch 42%, PS5 27%, Switch 2 16%, PS4 14%
813Minecraft
NEW14Lost Soul Aside
915Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
1716Mortal Kombat 1PS5 98%, Switch 1%, Xbox 1%
1317Grand Theft Auto V
1218Super Mario Party JamboreeSwitch 71%, Switch 2 29%
NEW19Evercade NeoGeo Arcade 1
1820Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Unionization at Xbox: Momentum, Math, and Misconceptions

One of my biggest pushbacks to those who were proponents of the ATVI acquisition was this notion that it would lead to mass unionization of the employee base. I’ve made staunch arguments that high-salary technical professionals who have huge bargaining power on the human capital market are not interested in unionization. When we dilute our earning potential with mid- and low- performers in high-salary labor categories, our maximum lifetime earning potential is actually blunted. We will earn less over time, impacting how much we can put away for retirement, what schools we can send our kids to, how well we can take care of aging parents. While collective bargaining will work to bring others up, there is a band of employees who it will definitely hurt in the pocket. While overall job security MAY be improved, the risk-reward calculus often makes us lean towards risk and the likelihood that “we will be ok”. 

That being said, there is definitely a movement afoot that is gaining momentum at Xbox. One that cannot be ignored. One that has seen some 2400+ employees out of the Microsoft Gaming Division unionize since the ATVI acquisition closed. Near as I have been able to count, these numbers include:

  • 600 from Activision QA
  • 500 from the WoW Team
  • 241 at Bethesda
  • 461 from Zenimax OnLine
  • ~160 from Blizzard SFD (Story and Franchise Development)
  • ~450 Blizzard Diablo Team
Quote from RPS article: “With every subsequent round of mass layoffs, I’ve witnessed the dread in my coworkers grow stronger because it feels like no amount of hard work is enough to protect us,” said Kelly Yeo, a Diablo game producer and member of the organising committee member. 

The Blizzard numbers include the most recent unionization of about 450 workers from the Diablo Team as recently reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun. This puts the total number of unionized employee within the gaming division at about 10%.

Now, before we run off to the hills to say I was wrong (which I wasn’t), let’s put on the table a few things worthy of considering.

  • It’s  interesting that all of the unionizations have been at studios that XBox has acquired as part of the 2017-run-up of acquisitions; no reports of unionization at The Coalition, Turn 10, 343i (now Halo Studios), Rare, Mojang…at least not any of major note
  • While it is true that these numbers are nothing to scoff at, more employees have been laid off from the Microsoft Gaming Division than have unionized. As much as possibly twice as many. Granted, that may put the unionization percentage at closer to 13 – 15%
  • How much of this is caused by Microsoft’s own behavior in the rampant layoffs and the lessening assurance of job security, rather than the way you’d think being part of a large organization with a large capital base and, if you believer the ad copy, the way in which Game Pass was supposed to protect employees?

I will note that, while it is true that when unionization does happen in tech, it is typically in your lower-salaried labor categories (artists, writers, QA, editorial, etc), some of these unionizations appear to moving across the line and incorporating some of your more highly paid hands-on-keyboard staff.

At the end of the of day, it’s a good thing that this is happening. The unionization; not the mass layoffs. It is bad that the former is happening more widely as a direct consequence of the latter. It would be preferred if that was not needed as a catalyst. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues if the threat of layoffs abates. I would also say it is not necessarily indicative of a mass industry trend. It is happening most prevalently at Microsoft. Not PlayStation, Nintendo, EA, 2K, Ubisoft, Capcom…there have been some smatterings, but nothing nearly so centralized in one employee base. Is that because Microsoft is benevolent and allows it? Or is it because things are so bad, so uncertain, at XBox? And how many of the employees who were caught up in the mass layoffs were parts of the pools that had been unionized? How much of a chilling effect has been placed on the movement? 

Definitely more to wait and see here on how this will turn out. But hopefully there is at least some good coming out of it.

From Comstock to Console: How Age Verification Laws in Gaming Echo Old Moral Crusades

Gamers in China already lead a life where they are required to verify their identity in order to game online at all. Not just to reach certain types of content. Because gaming time and online access are regulated in China, gamers have to verify their identity more often than not to game at all over there. Now western gamers are getting a taste of this medicine in rapid-fire machine-gun fashion. Serves them right; the growth of amoral behavior and spread of social decay in the west is weakening our society from within, contributing to institutional corruption and the erosion of civic virtue. OK, LOL, maybe not all that, but we do have our share of problems.

It is interesting that western gamers seem to be getting caught in a pincer of moral warfare rules involving everything everywhere all at once. Already caught up in the whirlwind of a rogue Master Card policy that has been weaponized by the moral patronage, gamers have seen the loss of gratuitous content on Steam and itch.io; or at least the overt visibility of that content on those store fronts. But additionally, as VGC reported yesterday, Steam and Xbox are now going to require age verification due to the roll out of laws meant to ostensibly protect minors online in the UK.

While VPNs and using selfies of Sam Porter Bridges appear to be a way around many of the implementations of these policies, it is daunting that we are in a new era of Comstock Laws revisited. Funny that those were also propagated by an effort to chase the Victorian-era moral reforms of the UK. And so here we go again. People coming up with and enforcing these policies should also remember the outcomes of the Comstock Laws. Social backlash, but more importantly clandestine circulation.

As Ian Malcolm said, “Life finds a way”. The Comstock Laws pushed some conversations out of the public into semi-clandestine distribution. This led to the rise of black markets to circulate porn and contraceptives, amongst other things. If the internet should have taught us anything, it is that kids (and adults) will find ways to access sexually explicit content. And in almost every case, some of the methods and markets that spring up as work-arounds to access this content will be decidedly less safe for minors and less security-conscious adults.

Truthfully, we should just let people have access to the content. The erection of roadblocks will almost without question wind up making things worse.

Before Warzone, There was Hexen (and Heretic)

Earlier today, NintendoLife ran an article indicating that two of the classic shooters of the late 90s was back. Unannounced. No fanfare. No bravado. Just a simple, stripped down posting to the Nintendo eShop. A shadowdrop. Heretic and Hexen were two of the seminal shooters that helped cement the FPS shooter as an institution in gaming beyond the foundations that Doom and Quake had laid. And its arrival on the store, on a platform other than XBox, is poignant in a time following Raven Software being impacted by Microsoft’s recent round of layoffs.

Raven has been one of my favorite studios since I discovered the Soldier of Fortune series back in the early 2000s when I entered by second foray into the PC gaming space. I actually missed Heretic & Hexen during their original heyday and arrival as a new PC title. I got a copy of Hexen bundled with my first GPU,  a Diamond Monster Fusion, that I threw in my Intel Celeron powered Packard Smell before I started building my own rigs. I never did much more than pick at it. But I’m downloading this $14.99 remaster bundle to my Nintendo Switch 2 right now.

Raven has been subdued from visibility since it got acquired by Activision and then got incorporated into the Call of Duty machine. And then again by way of second-hand acquisition via MSFT acquiring ATVI.

But I have always believed that they were inside the machines doing the work, even if that belief was born solely out of nostalgia. I believe they have been the principal hands in putting together some of the single-player campaigns, handling campaign structure layout and mission design. But they have come to the fore as principals in leading Warzone. They are the core of the CoD team, central to much of the integration, back-end connectivity across the multiple titles, and handle the HQ launcher. This particular remaster is done by NightDive, which is carving out its own legacy as port & remaster experts in the industry, and it’s a shame Raven Studios couldn’t participate. I’ll have to be satisfied that their legacy has found a way to peek out from behind the veil of CoD via second-hand means. And hope they remain protected in this tough time of industry upheaval while inside the belly of two beasts.

Now to get hands-on with the Heretic + Hexen remasters in handheld mode.

Chronicles of Distraction: Why I Still Haven’t Returned to Destiny 2

This past Sunday, DBqHams, one of my co-hosts on the Enough 2 Keep Going weekly video games podcast, talked about his return to Destiny 2. In many ways, I was jealous. I keep a short list of games that I have every intention of getting back to, including GAAS games. And inevitably, I am unable to do so. Constantly following the glitz of the shiny new thing that is constantly dropping in the gaming industry, I am easily distracted and these things present an active impediment to getting back to every title in the backlog I want to. It is doubly painful for GAAS games, because those are things that require an up-front time investment to reacclimatize to. Remember your build, your gear, much less the in-game mechanics. And then strike out on a worthwhile vector that returns some rewards for that grind and the ever-present allure of the next character progression or loot drop.

I bought The Final Shape. And have yet to make any meaningful progress to getting to it. I said I would start a new build. That I would play through all of the chronological content that was available. I especially wanted to do another run through The Witch Queen campaign. And so, in the course of chewing through this huge on-ramp I’d created for myself, of course, I was distracted yet again by the constant deluge of new releases. And so it sits in my backlog.

Listening to him, through several rounds of Q&A from yours truly, because I desperately wanted to know why he went back, I was both convinced and deterred. He is the same as me; has The Final Shape campaign and hasn’t played it.

His response, was, in some ways alluring. What brought him back was the exquisite gunplay of Destiny 2. A yen I admit I also have and also defines what took me back to playing the Halo Infinite campaign. But it also made me think about all of the baggage I mentioned before. Because while I too love the gunplay, I do not think I could unbuckle myself from my OCD enough to go back just for that. I would want to jump in ten-toes deep. And now that I am back to playing story stuff, I just don’t know if I have the heart to get back into any hard-core GAAS games.

We’ll have to see.

Why Ken Levine’s Judas Deserves Praise—And Why That Bugs Me

I’ve been a fan of Ken Levine’s games since the very beginning. With the exception of Tribes: Vengeance, his repertoire reads as the list of some of my favorite games that it is. Eurogamer ran an article today that discussed his upcoming game, Judas. A game whose reveal trailer at the 2022 The Game Awards show garnered significant buzz.

Levine, a game designer who numbers amongst the list of PC Game’s New Game Gods from 2000, is working on a new game called Judas which will be a single-player adventure game. The focus of the game will be on telling a story and creating a traditional gaming experience rather than online or multiplayer features. The game is expected to have a classic feel similar to older video games. Levin’e specific quote from the article was “You buy the game and you get the whole thing. There’s no online component. There’s no live service, because everything we do is in service of telling the story and transporting the player somewhere.”

I like Levine’s words. Games that are made in the service of the art rather than those made in the service of commerciality…we need more of that these days. But I also know why this interview and the article were run and why it will get much praise. And that causality sticks in my craw. The root of the message’s popularity is that gamers feel like microtransactions shouldn’t exist. And they frequently revolt against them. Helldivers II. Anytime they show up in a paid game. Anytime the cost of skins or a pack is deemed egregious. This in games that are built entirely on microtransactions. Such as Call of Duty, one of the repeat offenders; a paid game. Because the people playing the paid multiplayer have the same store put in their windshield as the FTP Warzone people.

Microtransactions do not bother me. People complained about MTX being in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. And they called Helldivers II, a PvE game, “pay to win”. I’m sorry…what PvE mode are there enemy human players who are victims of pay-to-win in Helldivers II? They don’t bother me because I can be an adult and not participate. Destiny and CoD players scream loudly when a Skin pack is too expensive. My response to that is “So don’t buy it”.

So it eats at me a little bit when articles like this come out and people are driven to doing victory laps for the game. It’s even more a shame when, while they laud it for no MTX, they will send an entirely different market signal by balking at paying $70 for the game. But the big kicker is, there shouldn’t be victory laps over this sentiment because we should all be able to resist participating. And if and when we do, and the MTX-ridden game goes on to be successful anyway, we should be equally adult enough to understand that we are not the market and the market has signaled its demand.

“…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The even larger concern I have is that gamers complain about things like this, but will not complain about things that should be addressed and fixed and that there is little reason for companies not to. Windows should be the premiere place to play games on PC. But it’s not. SteamOS is out-performing it in benchmarks. Windows 11 asks me the same three questions after rebooting to take a systems update like its Rick Grimes vetting a potential new Survivor. And we are doing dolphin flips over Microsoft taking the XBox App UI, a poor app that the vast majority of PC gamers do not like to use, and making ease of navigation out of their own operating system.

We still have the same XMB UI design we have had on PlayStation since the PlayStation 2. No innovation, incremental updates, plenty of glitz and chrome. Barely any movement of the ball forward.

Games on an annual release cycle can release new builds every year for more than a decade with the same bug that has been present in the game since the first year.

Microtransactions aren’t the enemy; we are. Stop celebrating the bare minimum in game and platform design. Stop celebrating companies fixing their own f/ups as if they’ve won some championship. We rage at skins, but accept broken systems. Victory laps over no MTX? Please. There are real battles that gamers ignore.

And games do not choose their battles well. We would all benefit from a more unified voice about the things we can change, and less about the things we cannot.

Backlogs, Beavis, and Beholders: A Week in Gaming and Tech

My Gaming Diary – Gamedate 78978.5

What I’ve Been Up To

Games

  1. Call of Duty: Black OPS 6 (PC) – I got an itch to play a lil GAAS last night after I saw SloMo mention that we should get together. I figured I needed to reinstall the game, upgrade it, and upgrade nVidia drivers if needed. I’m not wrapped around the axle about the Season Pass. Just having fun. I do wish that idiotic Beavis & Butthead mess from the recent Season Event would stay out of my windshield. It’s one thing to have an event and allow people to participate or not. But there is an unstoppable cutscene when you first log-in after the event started. And then it routinely pops an animation when you’ve completed stuff on the free tier. I couldn’t even stand Beavis & Butthead when they were on TV. The last thing I want is to have them in my grill in my video games.
  2. Super Smash Bros Ultimate (NS2) – I finally got time to try out my Nintendo Switch 2 in handheld mode. Looks beautiful. I can’t really track with the whole news outlets reporting => screen looks great (during initial hands on after the direct) => screen works horribly now and can’t do 120Hz (last week) => Street Fighter 6 looks awesome and plays great (this week). I’m just leaving it at beauty being in the eyes of the beholder, mine seems to look fine, so I’m not losing any sleep over it. I have absolutely no idea what I am doing in this game. Never have. But I love the eye candy, & it’s tons of fun (though I might not play on the DK levels anymore 😭 )
  3. The Last of Us Part II Remastered – I already had a copy of this on PC via the Epic Game Store. I guess I had a copy on console too, & now I have the PS5 Pro and have returned to console gaming. Game plays great, looks great, feels much more fluid. I’m actually better at combat, although that could be b/c I’ve played it twice to near completion and not b/c the graphics are smoother, frame-timing is better, and a given overall more fluid look and feel, or that I was playing on the DualSense Edge. I’ll just count it as a win for right now
  1. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End – Rolled credits. Thoroughly satisfying. Playing this back-to-back with TLOU2, I am seeing how much Naughty Dog are in their bag with the seamless transitions in-and-out of gameplay, to cinematic, back to gameplay. It’s a really wonderful implementation that earmarks any given title as a Naughty Dog game. While not leaving me with the same post-completion feelings as Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, it def gave me a space to replay the story I’d experienced in my head. My feelings about the characters. It was good stuff. And a good bit of lingering impactfulness to go along with it, which is never a bad thing in the aftermath of a game.

Tech – I’ve been noodling on getting into some retro-tech projects and spent the morning looking for old PDAs and MiniDisc player-recorders on eBay. I’ve bookmarked an HP Jornada and a Sony Walkman Net MiniDisc player/recorder for the time being. I have my reasons with both as to why not pull the trigger now. I had a Palmtop before in a retro phase maybe 18 years ago and got rid of it b/c I could not come up with use-cases for it when I could not ship anything off the device. And I have so much to learn on Minidisc. I have time to give it some more thought and plan how I am going to connect it a PC and transfer music. Amongst other things.