I’m not Master Roshi and my home is not Kame House.


Although the phone reception is not bad.

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Jan 27 2022, 11:40 AM

You had your chance, MS. Too late now.

Sony Acquires Bungie for $3.6 Billion.

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 1 2022, 09:45 AM

Cant be picky with noble excuses like "we want our independence" when money is depleting in the coffers. Noble doesnt feed the mouth or put food on the table. In the end had to whore themselves out back again. My dear "Mistress Bungie", what will your next excuse will be? Feministic suffragettes? Wokeism?

One quote I read in another forum:



On a more deductive, "put on your thinking cap" mode, this quote I read brings up a good point:



That or pray the content you want are multiplatform, and nobody go exclusive. Or pick a platform and pray the games you want will land on your platform of choice.

All this happening as the result of that one terrible word: EXCLUSIVITY. If the strength of your platform is due to exclusivity, watch your house of cards crumble when your competitor nullify that strength by buying out your exclusives. In the end, the platform that remained neutral and accepts all with no discrimination or no exclusivity with complete flexibility will endure in the long run. All IMHO of course.

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 1 2022, 10:37 AM

MS should just buy Konami now and put them out of their miserable Pachinko lives. Konami should be cheap, judging from how "non-news worthy" they've become since Kojima left.

Then revive their IPs, all the Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Contra, Castlevania and Zone of Enders.

This would give MS a foothold in the Japanese dev market and getting Japanese content into Xbox.

Hurry, Sony has eyes too. And their wallets are open now too.

Console wars now makes no sense when the Xbox and Playstation having adopted PC architecture since their 8th generation consoles. Time to consolidate with PC. Unless they plan to build custom chip-based consoles again. We've seen how terrible that has been, PS3 now remained lost in its own space, unsalvageable by any console-based backward-compatibility. Brute force emulation is spotty at best, I'd count myself lucky if I can finish my Persona 5 PS3 ISO emulated on my PC without some issues thanks to the unnecessary complexity of Cell.

In short, exclusivity only hurts the players. Unless you're the niche few who build museum of consoles, owning all consoles, and all formats of games on these consoles, be it cartridges, discs or other obscure formats just to keep contents exclusive to your platform. It's more towards ensuring the survivability of the platform owner than for the benefit of the players. Otherwise, would you think Nintendo would've surviced until now? They've long past their expiry date when it comes to being obsolete, the only thing that's keeping them breathing above water are their exclusive content on their exclusive format of not-an-SD-card cartridges. All this is to keep them surviving as long possible long past being relevant.

Imagine a fully consolidated platform with all games, from Xbox, Playstation or Nintendo, all on one platform. You only have to maintain one platform, invest on one platform, not buying 4 separate hardware just to plat games you want because they're exclusive on one particular platform only.

Consoles are sold at a loss (initially at least, until they're mass produced in bulk with streamlined cost effective manufacturing processes), console makers are only accepting that loss to ensure their survivability later in the life of the platform from software sales. With gamers not tolerating escalating game prices and scaling back in their game purchases, this "take the loss from hardware sale first, recoup from software sales later" mentality doesnt work anymore. Time to consolidate. Into one neutral, all-inclusive platform. Do we wonder why Xbox and now Playstation games are on PC now?

Nintendo will continue to be Nintendo. They remain on their chosen hardware specs to only prolong their own survivability as a console platform.

The acquisitions keep on coming!

Microsoft got Activision Blizzard. Sony got Bungie.

The biggest megaton acquisition of all!!?



This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 1 2022, 12:15 PM

Then we're stuck forever paying the "gatekeeper fee".

What "gatekeeper fee"? The cost of having to buy a console to access content gated behind a console platform. Until it's consolidated behind a universal platform.

And there lies the problem. We all want our chosen platform to be the chosen one, to be the one used to consolidate all the games into. You've invested a lot in games and content on your chosen platform, if you had to move to another platform just to consolidate, that's starting from scratch. Nobody likes starting from the bottom, again.

Personally, for me, I guess I back the most likely platform, that have the most content I want to play on, and base my future purchases of games and content on that platform. I've already given up on Nintendo, although, a simple torrent search can net the latest Switch game playable on Yuzu or Cemu on PC, so not much loss there. I'm monitoring Sony's PC releases like a hawk, and see if I can live with their delayed releases enough to forgo a PS5 version. Xbox is just a GamePass machine to me. And I dont play multiplayer anything. I guess that simplifies everything.

Here we go. First steps on consolidation.

Microsoft Deal for Activision to Be Reviewed by FTC in U.S.

The unique thing about PC. You dont have to get in at a "gatekeeper's fee", if you've already got in earlier on a cheaper "gatekeeper's fee" 5 years earlier for example. Obsolence is less likely with PC, only less powerful where settings in game can dropped.

With consoles? How likely are you to hang on to a PS3/XB360 to play a specific game that only exist on that platform? How long will that PS3 or XB360 lasts before you end having to become your own technician and replace every leaking capacitors on a decade old motherboard? It's somewhat mitigated by Microsaoft's backward compatibility efforts, but it's not 100%, meaning you having to keep that decade old console you have in storage alive and in tiptop shape.

I can still play my boxed version of Wing Commander game in its disc format.In a DOSbox format. You still cant claim full compatibility with a console only 2 generation back, and end up having to either keep spare consoles lying around or maintain whatever you currently have and pray it'll last or force to become your own technician.

This is why I believe in PC. There is no monopoly in PC. Cant afford Nvidia? Buy AMD. Dont like AMD? Buy Intel. Dont like any of the current offerings? Buy second hand working hardware from 5-10 years back that still can play at 1440p60 right now. No monopoly in games either. Dont like Steam? Buy from (yuck!).....Epic Games store. Want your games DRM free? Buy from GOG. PC is the antithesis of monopoly. If there were ever any signs of monopoly, its population will immediately rally to the underdog. How else do you think ATI/AMD survived the oppressive rule of Nvidia and Intel in GPU and CPU market until now? Until you see AMD flourishing in CPU side now, and Intel is now the underdog and the roles are reversed, no monopoly.

Th PC platform is so vast with so many opposing competing players with not a single one of them holding any monopoly. The PC population is the epitome of open competitiveness. Sometimes to the point of extremes, right into hackery and cheating. But that's the nature of the beast that holds 28 million players simultaneously online at the same time, and that's only on Steam.

Personally, I dont care about online multiplayer, so the cheating and hackery means little to me. It may be the biggest sore point to you if you play online or subscribe to these "games as a service" and probably the reason why you avoided PC. PC to me as a single player is the perfect sonsolidation platform for all other platforms I've wasted "gatekeeper fee" on just to keep playing the games I spent on that gatekeeper library.

One platform to cover them all. You determine the cost on hardware or "gatekeeper fee" you want to pay to get in and the quality of the content you want to get in. That flexibility and freedom to choose how I want to play is very appealing to me.

I can spend to build the most overkill PC behemoth capable of 8K60 right now, or the cost effective, svelte small form factor PC that you can hide behind the TV that satisfactorily plays 1080p60 if you dont see the point going any better than that. Or the Steam Deck at 720p30 even. Play at any price, anywhere. Choices.

Sneaky edit: SteamDeck website just went LIVE!

Again, I'm looking at this from my own perspective of a single player only person who loves flexibility and freedom to get into my games at any price I choose to get in, at a quality settings I choose to get into. Only one problem though, the games I want to play are spread across several gatekeeper platforms that require paying "gatekeeper fees" to get into when these gates are arbitrarily there only to keep the gatekeeper hanging on to their dear lives, by hoarding those content behind the gate as exclusives. I've said my dues earlier on about platforms who rely on exclusives as their strength to keep themselves alive. Someone will come along to ruffle your house of cards.

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 1 2022, 06:16 PM

Getting back into topic, new update on Microsoft Flight Simulator available now. New Australia content for you to fly over. I still have the game on GamePass installed, time for an update now!



94 new handcrafted points of interest
4 new handcrafted airports (plus extra high res detail added to 100+ other airports)
YLRE – Longreach
YMBT – Mount Beauty
YPBO – Paraburdoo
YSHL – Shellharbour
5 new Bush Trips
Tasmania
Southeastern Australia
Sea to Desert
Great Barrier Reef
Northwestern Kimberly Coast
5 new Landing Challenges
Brisbane
Shellharbour
Mt Hotham
Katoomba
Mabuiag
6 new Discovery Flights
Gold Coast
Sydney
Perth
Darwin
Melbourne
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

I wonder if I'll recognize some of them. From the air or on ground. Too bad no YSTW......yet (or if).

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 1 2022, 06:01 PM

To further prove PC platform's worth as the consolidator for all games:

A little ol' game just got Steam Deck Verified, the seal of approval from Steam Deck rigorous internal testing that the game runs flawlessly on the Deck's 800p60 settings. The flexibility of a platform that allows a game to run 4K30 on a slim form factor build, right down to 800p60 on a portable handheld PC, slightly larger than the size of a Nintendo Switch, this is the reason why PC will be the enduring platform. Its flexibility.



Think about it. A game as beautiful and hardware-pushing as God of War, VERIFIED to run flawlessly on a portable handheld PC you hold in your hands. Running God of War.

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 2 2022, 10:00 AM

Reason why I preface it with "I/Me" dont play multiplayer. I'm not disputing the merits of multiplayer, I'm just saying I dont play my games as multiplayer.

Reading comprehension is a basic requirement. Understand?

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 2 2022, 11:57 AM

Supermassive Games trademarks five new The Dark Pictures titles

Not sure if there are any fans of these types of games here. No cheating and hackery in these games, for sure, no multiplayer. (insert eyerolls)

Feels very weird for Tango Gameworks, a studio under Zenimax Asia, now under Microsoft Xbox Studios umbrella, having to honor their previous exclusivity commitment to release a game made by a studio under the Xbox umbrella of companies, one year exclusive to its competitor's platform, and will only be available for release on its own parent company platform Xbox, one freaking year later.

I present to you: "Ghostwire:Tokyo" made by Tango GameWorks under Zenimax Media Asia, now part of the Xbox Studios, and yet, Xbox is not going to see this game until one year after its release on PS5 this March 24th 2022. That means it'll only debut on Xbox on March 24th 2023, one year later after its PS5 debut.

Vile and disgusting exclusivity practice. This is the best example of why exclusivity only hurts the industry , the players and needs to die.



This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 2 2022, 04:46 PM

I only played the first game, Man of Medan, just to get a feel of the game. Plus I'm familiar with the Ourang Medan mystery, it's based on real life event.

House of Ashes looks and feel very Indiana Jones/Mummy-ish, the good parts of those movies anyway. Or is it more occult? Maybe I'll give that a try once they go on sale on Steam.

I'm also happy that most reviews of Dying Light 2 point towards it being a crappy game with tons of bugs and glitches (in its current state now). I can just delay getting it, only get it later once they fix everything, and by that time prices would've drop to more reasonable level. The game may be a showcase for Nvidia for its suite of GPU features, but no game is worth getting in its buggy state.

I had to live through the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077, even now after more than a year after release, I still cant get 4K60 consistently with my 3080Ti, without lowering settings and end up looking like watercolor in motion. . What a disappointment.......

Are Polish developers getting bad reputation of not being able to release games in working state now? First CD Projekt Red with Cyberpunk 2077, now Techland with Dying Light 2. CDPR used to be my safest bet for releasing good, complete, well optimized games with their Witcher series. Everything went downhill from there.

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 3 2022, 11:49 AM

DLSS only? it's safely above 4K60. Depending on areas with high volume of crowd traffic too.
With RT? It's a soft presentation of DLSS-ed internally rendered 1080p to 4K.

I cant be arsed to look up my settings now on PC, CP2077 has so many toggles and settings to play around, I've left them mostly on DF's recommended settings, with a few choice toggles on my own preference.

In short, it's not a comfortable 4K60, depending on your chosen settings. I can drop it to 1440p and pretend its 4K upscaled by the TV. But that's just lying to myself, isn't it?

I can let the game drop below 4K60 and let VRR take over since C1's VRR window is 20Hz-120Hz, but that's only taking care of the visual side of things, not the control smoothness side of things.

Maybe once the Next-gen update drops for next-gen consoles, CDPR also have something for the PC side too? Hopium is a dangerous drug.

Nope, it depends on what framerate you want with the settings you turned on. The more aggresive the settings are, the lower your framerate is, unless you lower the internal render. It's a balancing act. On consoles, the game settles it for you. On PC you mix and match.

The most punishing is 4K Native, no DLSS, with all settings maxed out. You then turn down those settings one by one and see what you get. DLSS softens the blow by rendering the game internally at lower quality and super sampling it to higher resolution and preserving (or improving) the texture quality at high resolution by utilizing Deep Learning AI. Hence DeepLearningSuperSampling. DLSS.

That too depends if your game is properly optimized. One best recent example of a game properly optimized is God of War on PC.

On my setup, for God of War on PC,
4K Native no DLSS running at 62fps, with the lowest it'll ever drop down is 55fps.
Or 4K DLSS at 120fps frame-capped to the OLED's 120Hz max refresh.

God of War simplifies lots of things unlike the multitude of toggles on CP2077, which I presume will scare off console players who are accustomed to picking Fidelity or Resolution, Performance or Performance+ or high Frame rate settings, and let the console figure out the other settings based on preconfigured presets. God of War PC brings that simplicity to PC, but not obscuring the settings behind simplified grouped settings. You still can access it as individual settings or as part of a preset. Best of both worlds.

On PC the toggles on CP2077 that makes the biggest impact to how the game looks are:

Contact Shadows
Improved Facial Lighting Geometry
Local Shadow Mesh Quality
Local Shadow Quality
Cascaded Shadows Range
Cascaded Shadows Resolution
Distant Shadows Resolution
Volumetric Fog Resolution
Volumetric Cloud Quality
Max Dynamic Decals
Screen Space Reflections Quality
Subsurface Scattering Quality
Ambient Occlusion
Colour Precision
Mirror Quality
Level of Detail

And then there's the Ray-Tracing settings:
Ray Traced Reflections, Ray Traced Shadows, Ray Traced Lighting.

It's a mess of settings. A game tweaker's heaven, but a console simplicity's hell. Pick your poison.

This post has been edited by KomradMikhail: Feb 3 2022, 02:32 PM

Yeah a game that relies on QTE mechanics, reason why I'll wait for deep sale on PC. Not much replay value, although I find that if I return to games like these after a long while, I forget enough of it that I can almost enjoy it again. Almost.

I'm a huge fan on games with good narrative and original story elements, but games like those are rare, far and few in between these days of endless multiplayer MMOs, MOBAs and battle royale games. That fact help me save enough to buy games since very few of them come out every year.