Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve been living the Android tablet lifestyle pretty much since inception. While many will have the impression that the Motorola Xoom was the first Android tablet, dozens of tablets were released by Asian manufacturers and sold as weird one-offs before tablet use of Android was officially supported. The product descriptions of these were always sketchy.Continue reading “It’s Been 13 Years; Will Google’s New Policy Finally Fix the Android Tablet App Ecosystem?”

Ben Thompson posted an article on Stratechery this week that paints many parallels between the Hollywood Strike with things I have been calling out as warning signals. Potential impacts from subscription services that could have a disruptive impact on the gaming industry. The ongoing conversion of games to Software-as-a-Service, where it is taken beyond aContinue reading “The Parallels Between the Hollywood Strike and the Games Industry – Part I”

In general, my feeling about subscription gaming services is that they are just yet another thing I have to manage. To make sure I am consuming enough of to justify the cost. Which means I have to establish criteria; work out mathematical formulas. Determine thresholds of acceptability. Measures of effectiveness. It becomes work. They areContinue reading “Gamers Have Relationships with Content – Subscription Services Change that Relationship (Part 1)”

As much I’ve wanted one in the past, I don’t think I would be very much interested in an Xbox Handheld Gaming device today. It would have the same market problems that the Vita had. It would be pinched somewhere in between the Nintendo Switch, the smartphone that everyone is basically required to have today,Continue reading “A Handheld XBox Would Fail; a Handheld Microsoft Surface Might Not”

I know. I thought it was frivolous, too. A manifestation in the worst vector of over-zealous fanboism. Some small group of, seemingly, unknown gamers from California, New Mexico, and New Jersey, have re-filed their contention over Microsoft’s efforts to acquire Activision (sorry; “merger” is too courteous a term). While the original case was dismissed inContinue reading “There Are Positive Things to Say About the Gamer’s Lawsuit against Microsoft”

I want to write a feature post here over the next few days about my favorite Open World games. It’ll be a doozy. But first, I felt the need to set table stakes with a problematic part of the narrative going around on Open World Games. “Not every game has to be open world”. TheContinue reading “Setting Table Stakes: Not Every Game Has to be Open World”

Battlestation 3 is all rigged for my next arc of livestreams, scheduled for Sunday February 19th through Tuesday the 21st. But a few weeks ago it did not look like Battlestation 3 would ever be used for livestreaming again. Or much of anything. I was having a massive heat problem in the box, which IContinue reading “Rigged for Streaming – Because I don’t Care About Gaming”

Recent indications have come out that Microsoft knows full well that its Game Pass subscription service cannibalizes sales of new games. There are reasons why this is ok, and worrisome suspicions that gamers should have that it’s not. And reasons why the analysis of impact of this nature of business, now being admitted to byContinue reading ““This deal is getting worse all the time.” – CMA’s Provisional Findings Report Proof that Microsoft is the Empire”

Companies do this all the time. The typical social media response is to call market positioning of a given product a “miss”, when the reality may be that the company didn’t make it for you. People said the RTX 4000-series was a miss. People who were already on 3000-series GPUs. The truth might be thatContinue reading “Understand When a Company says it doesn’t want you as a customer”

I am often concerned that AMD treats its PC gamer customer-base like a hobby. Unconvinced that it takes said marker seriously, or just uses it as a test and demo population sample as an RDT&E field for its console parts. I ran Radeon cards for a bit over a year. Specifically the XFX AMD Radeon™Continue reading “Is AMD Devoted to the PC Gamer Market, or is it just a step-ladder to its Console Business?”