April 21, 2020 · 01:27

Vote Ogre

Even I, on my best day can get duped, we all have it in ourselves to fall like a little guppie taking in hook line and sinker and then wiggle like today is the last day you ever do the macarena. I will not go to deep into details, for several reasons that have nothing to do with my ego, but I fell like a crackwhore falls for a brick of pure H. There is no denying it and there was no gold at the end of the rainbow. Even I, Mr Doubting Anyone can be gotten to. As such the fake coronavirus details out there, are the worst kind of details to follow and to belief (not that I do). In this there are always exceptions. In the first rely only on a real newspaper for the actual and factual events (like the Times, the Guardian, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe) the list is not super long but it is renowned. In all this the source matters. Yes, even in these forms some will ‘misrepresent’ the cases and elaborate on a percentage whilst the cases are abysmally small, but they will not lie, as such reading the entire article is important. In that same trend The presentation on the Covid virus by Governor Cuomo was exceptionally good. He was clear on issues and explaining the numbers. It is a 50 minute presentation, so it is long, but you see the goods. As such it is a little upsetting to see that it had 950 thumbs up and 1400 thumps down ratings. As such there is a chance that more and more people ignore the well brought news. The press conference was covered by several sources as such searching ‘Cuomo’ on YouTube will get you there. His view is important because New York represents 1/3rd of ALL US corona cases. New York has a massive population packed together and it is only a first indication of the issues that Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston could face and if the mobs are pushing to end lockdown, the worst is yet to come for the US. 

There is no guarantee where it hits, how it hits and how many it hits, but there is every chance that the greater cities will need the NY numbers when their deuce is up. 

We tend to go by the deceitful part of the numbers, on how the US is the largest place to get hit (and that is still true), yet the truth is that the US is half the size of the EU and they are at present in an abysmal place. Like the nations of Europe, the US states will have to stop everything for a much longer time and that realisation needs to set in,and it needs to set in fast. 

I could go into reverse psychology and tell them to continue the current path, because 2 dead full time workers in the US means that optionally one in the EU or Commonwealth is regained. I wonder if they ever saw it that way. They are all booing the 22 million jobs missing, but a lot of them are tems and hospitality. Consider what happens when the dead jobs of IT are replaced by EU jobs. The IT field is much more global, and these bosses mostly consider their bonus check, at present I have received 4 international offers, the move towards Europe is already starting by some. In a more greedy setting, as Google runs dry in the US, Huawei can buy my 5G IP, it is that simple. Big business pushed for mercenary tactics when it suited them, now they are not the choosing side and I go where the money is, they taught me that, and they had no problem with short changing loyalty when it suited them. 

There is a larger issue in play, even for the ‘pros’ like me, it becomes ever easier to mistake news and fake news, the difference is often no longer visible and the media when they hunted clicks and views are in part to blame, so when they cry ‘foul’ over fake news, whilst they opened that stream themselves is a little hypocrite, don’t you think?

And it gets to be a lot worse, the speeches from the White House are giving the indication that one elected official is more interesting in setting his ego to a good place, than consider the health and safety of his fellow Americans, I myself have a Republican side and I have never been so ashamed of anyone doing the acts we see, merely to look good whilst over 40,000 Americans are dead and a lot of them have not been buried yet, in addition, there is every indication that the total of non surviving American will double, optionally even triple. In addition to all this there are all the voices shouting on how we were not ready. It is true to some degree and to some degree governments all over the world will hide from the responsibility that these administrations and the ones before them had, yet what we all forget is that this situation has not happened since WW1. The Spanish flu would kill as some numbers give between 40 and 100 million people and in those days only the rich could afford to travel, nowadays we have been spreading the virus all over the planet, in that regard, the damage could end up being worse. Yes, medicines available are better now, but there is no vaccine, there is no real treatment, the strong will live, others will not, that is the short and sweet of it.

In all this, we need to realise that we either stand together or accept the loss of a neighbour, as such the protests in the US are completely out of whack. Will I be wrong? I truly hope so, but most of the factual information I rely on gives a much darker future. We need to change the mindset we have and tht is shown as we face the setting in India which is currently unknown, the numbers are incorrect and there is a much larger stagewhere we see that the Indian government has no idea what to do. They are smaller than the US having to deal with a population close to 600% of what the US has, consider the entire US packed like Manhattan and you get the idea just how uncontrollable that setting is. The Mumbai region alone is 55 million people and there is no way that this can be contained as soon as cases become visible. One will infect 25-50, as such the 12,000 cases stated cannot be correct, yet the setting is that there is no way to find all the infected, there are not enough resources in the EU to identify the cases that require treatment in India and as such the curve goes from bad to worse. In my mind there is also no way that the US is so far ahead of India in cases. It takes one person to travel from region to region (on a train) to end up infecting most of the train and we are shutting our eyes to that danger.

As such, when you see the optional troll stepping in and telling you that everything is safe, step back and vote Ogre! Do not believe him/her, and in that mindset, do not believe me either, find out what is true from factual sources like renowned newspapers (preferable not one owned by Rupert Murdoch).

 

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April 20, 2020 · 00:30

When walls close in

I had an interesting day, my mind designed another game, I dreamt of a new movie and I considered what comes next in the entire Covid mess. I will say upfront that it is all speculation, the issues skating close to the truth usually are. It all started with the news. The BBC gives us ‘Trump: A safe gradual and phased opening’, which might be nice and OK, yet the people who actually know about sickness and disease think it is a bad idea. With 2,347,887 sick and 161,138 dead people some will get to say ‘I see dead people’, and they might be telling the truth. I will not waste your time to consider the 739K sick people in the US and the connected 39K dead people, the math there does not hold up completely because of the timeline and the speed at which it pushes through due to large cities like New York. And what do hundreds of Americans do, people without any level of medical education mind you? They protest against the Covid rules, they are the source of propagating the disease and that is good. You see Wall Street and its vassals need to learn the one lesson they forgot about, if you bank on a consumer based wealth cuve, you need actual consumers and the US lost over 39K consumers. Their debts cannot be collected and the curve changes. Even as some Texans push to reopen to open their business, we will see that the rents are due but a lot of customers will stay away. Open business without mindful consumers spending money. Yes it is the time for Amazon to really reel in the cash, but in the end, the shops still lose. And remember resident Trump making some waves in proclaiming against all evidence that the mortality rate of Covid would be no more than 1.8%? It is over 5% in the US at present. No one seems to be asking the right questions. The economic model must be adhered to and the EU is starting to realise that it is a mere tool in the needs of the US, AUS has not figured that out yet, but they will, or perhaps AUS will become the 53rd state of the US. All speculative options at present,something that will be merketter as the A state of the US.

In my view there is a lot of overreaction regarding the flu, yet I am willing to accept that it is done to lower the curve and to keep casualties down, OK, I get it. I might not like it, but I get it and that feeling remains absent for a lot in the US.

Andin all this as we see the reactions to investigations on the World Health Organisation, I am content to write those names down, the pretentious Marise Payne who is all about bi-partisanship. The interesting thing is that this all happened right after the accusations by President D. Trump, yet not unlike the Huawei situation no evidence of any kind was ever produced, and again the A state of the US is following. It is one of those times when ‘bipartisan’ seems to meen, ‘a tool for the US’. 

Why am I here?

You see a flu this amazing where mortality rate is in the sewers and all over the place, jumping from 2% to 10% whilst there are over 100K patients in that country is not natural. There can always be some fluctuation, but if you merely look at Germany and France, where the amount of dead people are apart by almost 500%, there is a larger issue, that issue is that there is more to the disease and nations are in denial of that part, yet blaming China makes it all OK, or so they think.

Let’s make sure that I am not stating that they are innocent, I am stating that so far we see no evidence of any kind and the open hostilities of the US towards China are not set in any light in the media. That too is a piece of evidence that needs to be illuminated.

The stage where Marise Payne is stating that the WHO should not run the investigation and that she is stating that China should allow for transparency whilst she herself is in a doubtful stage is unmentioned. I agree that the coronavirus needs to be investigated, yet it needs to be done by the right people, the fact that she wants to invalidate the WHO from the get go is weird to say the least. In all this the first station of the flu is healthcare and they have been underfunded for over a decade, the health of consumers was overplayed and the effects underestimated. This is visible in AUS, the UK, many nations in the EU and the US. I know too little of Japan to add them to the list. 

THese consumers are adamant and directly involved, because without them the Wall Street formula fails and someone is finally realising it. Forbes stated on April 13th (a Monday) ‘Wall street Wobbles as investors ignore the science of Covid-19’ and there we see “its transmissibility and mortality rate are known to health officials. All of this information has been communicated publicly” yet there are clear open souces out there as well as the numbers in Germany,Spain, Italy and China that makes for a shoddy case in both matters and the people are just ignoring it. The article shows a few other parts and also the fact that when it comes to Wall Street, it is erratic, especially when the numbers go down and that is what will happen, as the US surpasses a mortality numbers of 50K, we will see panic by investors, especially as the disease does not differentiate between the rich and the poor, the worker and the abuser, a flu that merely kills. And when they realise that the death rate in the US is five times that of Germany, we will see initial inklings that there is a larger play and it is not seen in the death numbers, it will be seen in the stage where economies cannot get started because it requires consumers and they are dead. Yet the total deaths is lower than those in Syria and Yemen, so why bother now?

Because now they are consumers that these companies vie for and they no longer answer their phones, and for the most the health officials are ignored to avoid the danger that the message is too negative. As we see in the UK that the NHS people are wearing aprons instead of gowns. As they are on life support, we see a much larger danger. A nation where health care falls away, it took 114K patients and 15K deaths to pull that off, so when will Americans realise that their numbers are a lot worse and their levels of inequality. The Guardian gave us ‘Profit over people, cost over care: America’s broken healthcare’, and no one in the US is actively investigating that part? Australia is almost in a similar place. 

It is not the beginning or the middle, this is the beginning of the beginning and things will get worse. I wonder how many people realise that, even as we see all kinds of numbers, when we do get sick and healthcare falls away, the world has a problem and the US will be one of the first ones to learn what happens when the Wall Street formula cannot be matched. For them profit is everything, lives are not.

So whilst you are in lockdown, consider the fact that when the walls fall in, it is not a case of the walls falling in, but you have been placed in a coffin and you are a number on the covid stats, no matter where you live. And optionally, you will be one of the forgotten, especially as the BBC and others are stating that these numbers are so much higher than expected. In the UK has 2,000 home care locations with the Coronavirus, yet ABC claims that their numbers are not to be found, so how high is the problem and what else is unknown at present. So whilst we are not in possession of the numbers, some are still willing to blame China, all whilst for too long too many places left the border open until specifics were known, that failing in foresight is also unmentioned in many places, I wonder what that investigation will bring to the table of Marie Payne, if she looks at it at all.

 

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April 19, 2020 · 03:34

Hoping the best

The earlier piece was merely the introduction, it matters as we all make choices, we all embrace what appeals to us. I have seen this path all the way going back to the VIC-20, and it was a good path. I have seen on system after system how new players made true innovation happen. If we consider the Atari ST/CBM Amiga, it was the ground where Psygnosis made several steps of true innovation in gaming. There was Westwood (Command and Conquer, Red Alert), Bullfrog (Populous, Dungeon Keeper), and there is no escaping the one true original Faster then Light with Dungeon Master.  The list goes on, whether you accept it or not, but the bulk of all new games created have a foundation towards the old originals. Many have forgotten, and many never knew. There is no blame here, we all have our history with games and gaming, some started with Candy Crush, some have been around when games were not cool.

We grew up watching games evolve, when it was limited to the hardware of a system. The foundations of civilization and Elite were set to systems with only 64 Kilobytes, as such you can imagine the creativity that these people needed to employ to get past these hardware limitations and get beyond this. 

As new systems are coming, so is the need for new IP, new ways for software companies to create a cash incentive. Some rely on microtransactions, the option to grind for time and push for additional paid incentives. Yet the treasure trove that is there, the trove that is absent of IP protection is a worthy chest full of new makes. Most have forgotten that and as they try to find a way to appease Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and optionally Google, they look for what not yet is and forget the amazing benefit to investigate what was. A simple list of titles Millennium 2.2, Paradroid, Seven Cities of gold, Laser Squad, Chipbits and even the Ultima series. All games mostly forgotten by all but the seasoned fans. I would mention System Shock, but that is being remade at present (hopefully being released in 2020).

Games that are not merely ported, but games that can be upgraded in all kinds of ways, the new consoles allow for much more options as they are almost 1,000 times the power and ability that the CBM 64 had. I am not merely talking about a new version of a game, but a game with additional sides and more depth then before. 

Consider the option of a game that could be out in under a year, all upgraded to the max of the new systems. That is the race they now face, that is where the initial coin was. Microsoft (and Sony) are at present in the setting where gaming is backward compatible and I am fine with that. Yet you as a gamer, would you prefer a PS4 or Xbox game, or a PS5/Xbox One X game?

I am not going to Speculate what these two larger players will do, yet I believe that the game makers will have additional options, they merely have to look into the right direction. I personally believe that there is a larger option here and the right developer will find a lucrative business, especially with players like Ubisoft being in the shape it is. Consider No Man’s Sky, in 2015 very few knew of him, there was a trailer out and that was it. Less than 5 years later everyone in gaming knows him, one title did that. People might think of him one way or the other, but he is there and he produced a game everyone remembers, that path is open to any developer who is willing to make a run for the gold.

It is great that some want to create a new level of IP, yet with 1.2 million games out there over time, making and creating something new is becoming increasingly difficult. Yet close to 25% of the games out there are old, forgotten and no protection on that IP as it remained unregistered. There is an awful lot of digital gold in the out and the open getting ignored.

This is the opportunity that the big three have, all three have systems capable of supporting an evolved and upgraded game that would stand up to any game created today. That is before you consider the options that are out in the open. EA made a game in the early 80’s called ‘Murder on the Hindenburg’, now combine it with the 1993 game ‘Iron Helix’ and you have the making of a new game, optionally first person with a zepplin mapped out and the need to find a murderer. As you have a library of NPC people you can replay the game again and again with different outcomes every time. So it would be a whodunnit heaven for anyone that loves the genre. Add to this the option to select the detective you play (and the strengths and weaknesses of them) and the game becomes something more. More evolved, deeper even as we merely are in one large location, yet does it need to be? 

All options from two individual games that became more than the sum of both. It took me 5 minutes to work that out, and I am but one person. So how many new games are there at the heart of being picked up by others?

There is a great time ahead for gamers, but will they face that utopian future? Time will tell.

 

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April 19, 2020 · 00:39

Sources of negativity

We are all binomial in origin, we like yes/no, we dislike yes/no, we hate yes/no and we love yes/no, yet most of us hide this in long winded excuses of reasoning, we all do that (including me). I partially hate Microsoft for what they did, for how they destroyed something that was pretty fabulous, I am upset with Ubisoft or how they squandered excellent IP and hid into the woodworks and made a quick buck, destroying the IP they created in the meantime. And as such as I was looking online for a few more tidbits as we approach the demise of Xbox, I came across a few items that puzzled me. 

I love Bethesda, I do not love all their products, which is fine. I am no lover of Rage, but others are, and that is fine. On the other hand I love Fallout, but was never a fan of Fallout 76 and that is fine too. I prefer my games not online and single player. Still, I accept that this is a pathBethesda went on, we all have growing curves and there is a collection of people (a large one) who do like Fallout 76. Perhaps the evolution of Fallout 76 will turn into Fallout 176, Fallout 276 and whatever comes and I will like it at some point, but the barricade that is out there is not one that Bethesda created. In another story we see the interaction, ‘Call of Duty: Warzone console players are turning off crossplay to escape PC cheaters’ it is merely one reason why I hate online play, I do not really hate it because I loved online Mass Effect 3, I was addicted to it, but the world has enough cheaters, when I game I want to get away from that and play on a level playing field, as such I focus on single player only, and in that my taste goes wide. 

As time went by I must have invested tens of thousands of dollars in console gaming, I agree when people say that it is wasted money, but that was my choice, I had a good job, my last ‘true’ vacation was in 1998, so when I get home I need escapism and puzzles, or challenges all at the same time and the consoles provide. It got me to the first issue on consoles, the pricing YouTubes are a little redundant and obsolete when you realise the origin.

When I look back, I started with the VIC-20, then the CBM64 ($1349) with disk drive. Overtime I evolved my systems. CBM Amiga ($700), Atari ST ($700) and there was the PC to use (I’ll get to that soon). As a gamer and reviewer I had made some waves, as such the Sega Dreamcast was free (christmas present from Sega), the Sony Playstation (I forgot what I paid for it, but it was less than the N4) The Nintendo 64 ($699) and after that I pushed towards the Sony PSX-II ($899). It was followed by the Nintendo Gamecube, a machine I loved. After that there was a small lull, I got the Xbox at the end of its lifetime for free with my mobile and it brought a few highpoints. We are now getting close to the time where everything changed. I was happy with my Xbox, the controller was a little bulky, but I have large hands, so it was a blessing in disguise. I played several of the games and Time Splitters 3 was an awesome trip, so good that I got it completed to 98% in hard mode. Then Microsoft upped the game, the Xbox360 came and I truly loved it, it was close to perfect in many ways, the 20GB drive was a little small, but you could upgrade it to a 120GB and within a year I did. Gaming life was close to perfect. I mentioned Time Splitters and it matters, there was the clear claim of backward compatibility and I fell for it, yet soon thereafter I learned the hard way that it was not and I never got Time Splitters 3 to 100%, the first annoyance was created. In all honesty, it is close to one defect in its life cycle. I too received the red rings of death and Microsoft replaced it, as such I was 3 weeks without my 360, but that was not an issue, the replacement was faster, the resolution was clearly better and gaming was at an all time high. Microsoft was a clear player in all this. The next step was the PSX3, Sony had always been great but I was not drawn to the third version, I was actually still enjoying the PSX2 (as well as the GameCube). So it was a nice relief when I bought a new TV and the PSX3 was part of this as a bonus, to be honest, I was not drawn to the PSX3, I did love the games I played on it, but overall, until Metal Gear Solid IV, games of the patriot arrived, I was not madly gaming it. As such, when it did the shift was starting to happen. 

Before that time the Xbox360 had 70% of my time, the GameCube 20% and 10% was for the PSX3. MGSIV was the first game to attack that pattern. Sony would give us more games on that system that impacted the consoles.As Sony got more adapt in exclusive games, the PSX3 would consume time: God of War 3, Infamous(1 and 2), Ratchet and Clank, Beyond two Souls, Gran Turismo and the end there was the Last of Us, Sony was reacquiring the timeline. Even as I had Oblivion and Mass Effect 3 on my Xbox, the timeline had shifted to 40% X360, 40% PSX3 and 20% Gamecube. Sony was back through great games, just like it did before and Xbox was not to blame. In all this I did not mention PC Gaming and that was on purpose, from 1989 onwards my PC was for gaming and I had more often than not the best of the best. A soundblaster card? I had it and when the first games came needing the better processor I had that system. Unreal Tournament, Black an White, System Shock(1 and 2), Wing Commander (1,2,3), Red Alert, Populous, Ultima, the list goes on, it was when Thief came that I ‘woke up’, I had a really good Diamond card yet Thief forced me to upgrade to the Diamond Viper 2 (no regrets) and the realisation set in (around 2003). Gaming is about the graphics card, sound, storage and the processor and at that point a graphics card was $600, the soundcard $500, and storage came as is. As such a console was a lot cheaper and my need for gaming was fulfilled. Only two years later a high end graphics card was $999 and as such console gaming was becoming increasingly cheap.

This all matters, when we are confronted with the pricing of the Xbox One X and the PS5, we forget that what came before was a lot more expensie and offers less, it was also the time that we started to realise that we need increasingly more space, the Xbox360 and the PSX3 already taught us that, as such the faults in the Xbox were more than merely stupid. Sony solved it by letting people selecting a larger drive and replacing the old drive, Microsoft had not caught on and would not catch on for the entire life cycle of the Xbox One, it is only now that they are seeing the light and their other flaws (always online) are showing that they are no longer to be the trustworthy system and trust is everything here. 

So when I see this tyrade of options and systems and whether I (and many other gamers) are willing to pay only $500 or are willing to pay $550, I wonder if these people realise that they are continuing a consumer base that goes into pillions and they have spent a massive amount of money. Microsoft is also making the mistake to hunt towards the most powerful systems whilst good games is where it is at, so where are the great games?  This is where Ubisoft comes into the mix, exclusive or not they went from great game maker to mediocre game maker and you merely have to look at the exclusive sony titles to realise that. Whilst the creation of titles gave them 90+% games, we now see that 80%+ is the best they can muster and for the most pushed deadlines and marketing promises that cannot be kept are the cause. The lack of proper testing is another matter where they failed and it impacts the choices of consoles we have, because whether we want to accept it or now, Ubisoft is a big deal in console gaming and as they fail, the exclusives are where it is at and there Sony wins, it is a landslide win. To get the greatest games we need Microsoft and Ubisoft to get back to the top or we need someone to replace them, it is that simple.

Players like Bethesda, Capcom and others help, yet the more the merrier (in the high end gaming cycle) and we are all starved for good games and the consoles are a driving force.

Let’s hope that this gaming force is driven to the max at the highest peaks for years to come by as many players as possible, for in that setting the gamer truly wins, no matter who tops the bill.

 

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April 16, 2020 · 23:50

Marketing fools

We are at the moment getting drowned in YouTube videos on who will win the next console wars. Or the most a lot of videos are a marketing approach from both sides mind you. Even as the bungles and stupidities by Microsoft makes me go towards the PS5 alone, there are however a few exceptions, they do exist. The first is theGamer who gives us a few clear parts. 

Like the BS approach we saw Microsoft had brought in the previous approach, the given fact is that the Xbox does have more teraflops, yet what does it mean? Faster is not essentially better and speed is limited to the slowest part and in the case of Microsoft that seems to be the drive. Sony has optimised gaming to such an extent, that Spiderman will play on the PS5 in 0.8 seconds (against 8 seconds on PS4). They are bringing cartridge speed to the console and that is a huge advantage. To be honest, there is something you both need to know, BOTH consoles will have the option to an internal SSD expansion, so it seems that Microsoft is repairing one of their more stupid decisions, they only needed 8 years to learn this. 

Sony showed recently how their SSD works in speed and it seems that it is able to process well to close to 100% more data uncompressed and over 25% more data compressed, it seems that teraflops really don’t matter too much when your system is that much slower. Yes the initial drive on the Xbox is larger, but both can expand and so far I have seen a 3TB option for the PS5, as such there is no issue on storage, yet there is a larger issue on the setting on drive speed and that implies that the Xbox is already lagging at the start of the race. The second movie I watched was about the Decline of Xbox by the Act Man. I felt like him, mainly because I loved my Xbox 360, I only got the PS3 as it came as a free extra with my new Sony TV. Microsoft had that much advantage and they squandered it in one E3 meeting. After that the Xbox Flaws started showing up and it made me resent my Xbox. I actually only got it for 2 games, Subnautica and Elite Dangerous. The second one is a game that I have loved since the early version on the CBM 64 and what I saw on the Xbox was overwhelming. Here is a console that could have been the number one, yet they lost it on senior managers that see greed not games, revenue not fun and it showed in that disastrous E3 meeting where we heard ‘always online’, and ‘no lending games’. Greed enticements that would destroy a console from the very beginning. There is the harassment side to marketed pushes and bullying people to be online and it did not go well for Microsoft from that point onwards. The video has a lot more, including a few things I never knew, and it might not matter but they were nice to know things.

Now,as we are 6 months away from the next line of consoles, we see that Sony is taking the gaming lead again and Microsoft seems to hide behind their teraflops. Yes they have more, but consider that in the big three they are in third position, their most powerful console is behind the weakest console of them all (Nintendo Switch), which gives you an idea that those in charge are not ready to take the price home. Now to be fair Spencer is a massive upgrade, yet Microsoft had him fight the good fight with one hand behind his back for almost three years. They lost cool, they lost exclusive titles and a marketing team that had to do a 180 degree on physical games and cloud gaming twice. Yet that group has a unique view on spin.

Although some critique in that video is a little harsh, it is not that wrong, and there are still flaws that are very unlikely to be fixed at present, as such Sony is not just off to the races, it is close to be the only consideration for the upcoming console purchase, within two consoles the positions are beyond reversed and Microsoft did it to themselves.

As Microsoft keeps on focusing on power, more and more gamers are watching what they are actually getting for it, as such, I believe that Microsoft will make another mistake before the launch, we will see ‘demo’ options for 8K gaming, and how great it is. Yes, it will be good, optionally even great and if there was an 8K AC Origin, I would play it again, yet the one little part missing in all this is the fact that is the small fact that an 8K TV starts at $7000, that is a decent one, some are $10K and more, with the B&O version being mentioned at €13,500, which is almost $20,000. As such most 8K TV’s, will be in the immediate future unaffordable to 90% of the gamers. 

So how happy am I?

I am not, you see Microsoft had pushed Sony to its limits in their Xbo360 era, I doubt if the PS4 would be that much better if Microsoft was not breathing in their neck. Now that this setting is gone, there is every indication that the jump from PS5 to PS6 will be a lot less appealing. Competition drives good hardware for gaming and that is what we are about to lose. 

Even as we see that a lot of the damage at that disastrous E3 was repaired by
Phil Spencer, he still has a lot of work to do and the current approach of what we see marketed in the form of Gigaflops and ‘high dynamic cool’ games, all whilst we see a larger base of changes that make the claim pointless and it ends being a mere race of Microsoft fighting not to be overtaken by Nintendo even further. At present their option to surpass Sony is close to ludicrous. 

Their system and OS needs an overhaul, and if I am correct, Sony will have the option to launch their (highly speculated) internal social media named GameBook, if that happens and Microsoft cannot counter it (apart from marketed pushes to your page), there will be no second round, it could mean the end of Microsoft as a gaming platform, apart from what Google and Apple brings to the next year. There is a chance that they will nibble on the market share cadaver that Microsoft brings and that leaves Sony as the big winner, which is also a little bad. As both machines were true competitors, they upped the game and both delivered cool gaming experience, now that push falls away, there is every indication that Sony will remain at the lonesome top making their need to remain on the edge of gaming also a lot less likely, so I do hope that Microsoft ups their game, right quick.

 

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April 13, 2020 · 02:02

Shaping visions

I have been considering and reconsidering the events that unfold and the view I have on them. It is a first need, the ability to monitor the self in us. Without it a lot of claimed speculations revert to mere ranting. If we cannot set the critical eye on ourselves, the ability to disseminate data, to extrapolate optional wisdom from events goes wrong in all the places, as such I feel it was important to reconsider what I am, and where my mind is.

When we see ourselves as a greater part of us, we see and we speculate on the visionary that we could be, but that does not happen without the critical eye that we cast towards  ourselves. 

Visionary

The visionary has these elements in play, even as that person is contemplating idea after idea,there is an invisible machine that is directing focus towards goal again and again until the job is done. One of the most famous of these visionaries were Bill Gates and SteveJobs (last century) and they were followed by the Google Smurfs (Papa Smurf and Clever Smurf), there were more visionaries, in several fields but not in fields I work in, so it is hard to recognise these people, you might know of 1-2 visionaries in your own field, the real visionaries and those who market what they come up with as visionaries are not the same.

No matter how clever these visionaries are, they need dedication and focus. 

Dedication

Dedication is the hardest and easiest of the two elements. Dedication tends to be fueled by passion and interest, nearly everyone has it and they all have their own interests, this is the easiest way to fuel dedication, look at anyone that was passionate about an interest that they have (not talking about the horizontal lambada), take sports, hobbies, gaming, or photography, whichever your interest has, that interest is mastered much faster than anything else. Not merely through reading or learning, but beyond that you start to grasp a much larger part of it and we have seen this in the last few weeks as people paused from the run of life to the contemplation of actuality. It is the part I was confronted with 3 days ago when my mind designed a new TV series, only to end up with a larger part towards my novel, there was no interest to do that, but that is what happened. 

Focus

Focus is only one part, it is the most pronounced part but there it is. Focus is sometimes replaced by enthusiasm, yet without discipline whatever effort you make goes back to zero, into the void of largely wasted time. Most people (myself included) rely on logic, yet it relies on us to remain rational, we need to toss emotion over the railing, because if we do not do that, we are royally screwed and that is the hidden trap. Dedication fuels emotion towards the goal, and when we rely on logic, emotion is a hindrance, not a subjective supporter,if we accept that too late, there is already a larger damage in play and we ignore that damage until it is too late.

In the coming year because of what we faced, the visionaries will decide on what happens next, they will be heralded, especially in corporations that have been marketing iteration as innovation Microsoft anyone?) yet the visionaries will bring true innovation, innovation that gives these people a much larger hold on what happens next. 

As the world is looking towards solutions, the loud screaming marketed voices of corporations are trying to be the one everyone trusts. Yet that would be wrong, in this instance we need another Steve Jobs, he had an interesting role, he was not merely the innovator, he was able to recognise innovation when it was in his neighbourhood, an element that many ignore in him. Yet having a person like that is not enough, there will be a much larger need to silence the false claims, they all want a slice of the pie, yet the deciders are seemingly unable to recognise true innovation,at least that is how I see this happen. 

If we are to evade the dark hole that we are currently digging for ourselves, we need real innovators, we need a real path towards creating a new economie, not pouring money into the hole in the short sighted way that Mario Draghi did twice, we need to focus on actual innovation and as I see it, the funds are drying up faster and faster. It is in that part that there will be new players in town, the silly people on Wall Street made a guarantee for that. And there is also the larger problem, they have a huge grasp of politicians all over the world (who will actively deny it), and there the problem becomes visible, the people who were in charge want to be in charge again and with their needs and the friends they have to feed, anyone else loses out. 

Now we get to the real problem, what is it you want, a solution or a delay? Only true visionaries will aid us, and the entire Corona issue pushed the problem forward for too much, we might want to listen to the people proclaiming that it will be fine, that it will resolve itself, yet wonder how much issues we see with only 110,000 deaths. What will happen when we lose a lot more? We can argue on the numbers, yet consider the issues in France and Germany, almost the same amount of patients, yet one country lost 14,000 people the other one 3,000, yet the media is not asking the questions that need asking and no one is wondering why? We might get angry again and again why Donald Duck (I meant President Trump) is talking about a ‘Chinese Virus’, all whilst it is a case of the flu, and there is no evidence of any kind that it was created by the Chinese, but that is how things go in America, ask Huawei if you doubt it.

As I see it, we need visionaries to get is past these difficult times and into a new economy. I believe that this is the struggle we see during this year and the next. For the rest of the world it becomes an interesting time, the more stupid actions the US governments starts, the less of an option they have to stay ahead of several games. Even as we see fragmentation on 5G because of the Huawei actions that the US starts, we see that Europe is less and less inclined to follow the US example, as such China now has a real chance of becoming the dominant trade partner in the Middle East, not the US. Soon we will see that the US slips into third position there and from there the sliding lag only increases for the US. 

No matter how that plays out, at this time it is almost the only step they have left, they placed the real innovators out of bounds and even as Google is trying to stay ahead in that game, there is every indication that they might consider moving their patent floor at some point, to gain the benefits they have now, the US might soon lose its appeal for that. I have no idea where they would go, but I see that there is an overwhelming need for my IP to move towards China, not because I like it, but because it is safer for me. When we get to that point, it does not matter whether you are an innovator or an iterator, you need to be where your value is and there is a larger initiative playing. 

The annual IP report that congress got in February 2019 was indicative in this, I will let you decide on this yourself (it is the Feb 2019 report and I will add it as soon as WordPress fixes their system. No matter how we slice it, the direct future requires innovators and a lot of them running wherever they are valued. I can only speculate on how it pays out and I wonder who else sees it that way. It might just be me and it might be illusional or delusional, but I wonder how you see it when you take a step back from all the media articles and take a rational view of what we are given and why we are given it in this way, it will be a first step in recognising what actually needs to be done.

 

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April 11, 2020 · 00:28

Creativity wins

It has been a hard 2 weeks, for most workaholics the entire shutdown issue is a little larger than normal, gaming or not. So to treat myself I decided to design a new TV series (we all have jobs), it did not turn out the way I expected it, yet it was still a win for me, as it enabled me to set a plan for 30,000 additional words to my novel which is at present (excluding the addition) at almost 57,000 words, so I feel that I am now beyond the 50% marker. To be honest it is an addition I actually did not see coming, and that’s the beauty of creativity, it takes you at times in unspoken directions. 

It is almost like a dream I had, which I cannot recall at this time. I wanted to remember it, but some dreams take a weird flight, they tend to delete themselves from memory, in the end it is still a win for creativity. 

There are more elements linking to all this, but for now, that is all I have to say about the elements involved. I had some notion to try and connect the initial idea on ‘How to kill a politician’, but that is a separate project, I saw that early on. Yet the lockdown is throwing my levels of creativity in overdrive and I am actually less happy about that. On one side I do not mind, but there I believe that there is a link between my creativity and the dreams/nightmares that follow the dose of creativity that I enjoy when I am awake. It seems to me that the brain can give in one direction, and after that gives in the other direction. It is a speculation, but it is based on a world, or a universe that seeks balance, a balance that is almost universal. Instead of the initial idea that I had that action in one direction,implies the need for inaction in another direction. Unlike a computer, the brain does not accept inactivity, it actively rejects it, which beckons me to consider whether I can direct activity in a direction. I know that I can to some degree, but I am not yet aware if this can be pushed to certain limits. There is plenty of  materials on this, but there is less available and less reliable information available to push the dreamer from a dreamer into a lucid dreamer. The benefit is real and direct, if we get control of our dreams we get to utilise the strongest computer ever built (the human brain) in other ways. Whether it is to complete another branch of my IP, another story or another idea, we need to complete it and these weeks are showing us all that the workaholics get another part to play, to push new boundaries in the fields we work in. I do not know if it can be done, but the idea is a larger push towards new ideas and that is an addictive push to face. 

The important part in all this is that this is not merely my journey, I believe that the entire Corona lockdown has a much larger impact. Others are facing a similar journey, the dreamers, the creators and the makers are facing a side they have not been pushed into to a much larger degree and this lockdown is pushing it to the surface. We have been running to keep up with the payments and bills we face and forgot to take time to ourselves. Inthe last two weeks we have had loads of time to ourselves and it seems to show to some people that there is a lot more in them. I would not be surprised that some bosses fave a new era, where their employees have surpassed them and are making the most of what they can o next. For me not much changes. I had set the stage where I can write, I can consider and I can design, That will continue, yet now there is an optional new field where the dreamers and designers at Microsoft, IBM, Apple, HP and a few other places will figure out that innovation is not what marketing says it is, but what the designer makes it. That might over time be good news and we might actually see more innovation, instead of iteration marketed as innovation, the difference is massive. 

The entire Corona event might have losers, yet there is at present a chance that there are also a fair amount of winners and that is the silver lining that no one saw coming.

  

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April 8, 2020 · 23:35

Secretary of the Nanny

Something happened last week, it was seen in the BBC news when we were given ‘Captain pleads for help over outbreak’, in this case it is Captain Crozier of the USS Theodore Rooseveld. I initially wondered how they dealt with other flu scenarios, taking into consideration that except from him and his CO, the people on that ship are pretty much all of them in the lower than 1% mortality rate group. Most people in Las Vegas would give their wife, oldest daughter and mistress for those odds, so why is there an overreaction? 

I was uneasy with the entire ‘No one has to die’ approach. This is a warship and here my Merchant Navy knowledge, training and education is a little help. I understand and accept the hierarchy that is important on EVERY boat, Article 2 is about the responsibility of the ship’s captain (ZAR, when I was in School) and I remember that part (reference to the Ships Collision Regulation). Yet it is larger and harder on a war vessel. I do not envy the situation that Captain Crozier found himself in, but the entire stage is an altered one, and the alteration matters. 

It requires me to repeat the part that I gave three days ago, the age based mortality curve. 

80+ years old 14.8%

70-79 years old 8.0%

60-69 years old 3.6%

50-59 years old 1.3%

40-49 years old 0.4%

30-39 years old 0.2%

20-29 years old 0.2%

10-19 years old 0.2%

Consider that the bulk of a naval vessel will have people between 20 and 39 years of age. This Captain is setting the odds against a stage where he runs the risk of optionally losing 8 people, and that is in a stage where complications set in. Lets not forget that military staff tends to be in much better condition then the average person in that same age, so optionally the risk for these groups is 20%-30% lower than the numbers we see, and I admit that this is slightly speculative, yet I feel that this is correct. As such I stand behind the Secretary of the Navy, or as we could consider the nanny of Captain Crozier,who set himself up in all kinds of ways. Letters ‘leaked’ to the press, the view of the navy and a few other matters makes me a supporter of Thomas Modly and the actions he took in this (name calling disregarded).

Yes, we want all crews to be 100% safe, but it is and remains a war vessel, there are priorities that need to be met and on a crew of 4000, losing 8 people is not nice, but not unrealistic either. In all this, the entire ‘plead for help’ was massively stupid, and he knew this, mainly because he would have send any considerations on the pandemic to the Admiralty (its American equivalent) and that does not seem to have been the case.

Perhaps there is a side where I am wrong and I should not call his actions ‘massively stupid’ yet there are other actions he could have taken and if it is not written down it does not exist, it is that simple in political actions and this was in part a political move, lets make no illusions on that. In this, it is my opinion that the call by Joe Biden (stating that the firing of Captain Crozier was close to criminal) is wrong, or at least this is how I perceive it to be. The Captain called doubt on the functioning of an American Warship and that is never OK. I cannot tell you what is the right action, but the visibility was wrong, there are rules, regulations and visibility of those in charge and most civilians do not understand it. That is not their fault, but there is a given where the function of a warship even in peacetime is extensive and we forget or shut our eyes to this and in civilian life that is fine, in the eyes of defence it is not. 

Showing your optional enemies that there is weakness and handing this out in a letter is folly, my mind remains focussed on who ‘leaked’ the letter, because that is the larger enemy in all this, not Captain Crozier (unless he leaked the letter).

 

 

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April 6, 2020 · 11:09

5G? Gesundheit!

OK, to be fair, I never saw this coming. In all this, even in the rage of panic and stupidity, I saw a deprived population that had left leave of its senses, the fact that they would abandon common sense even more than usual was a little bit of a surprise to me, so when I saw the news ‘false coronavirus 5G theory‘, I was actually dumbstruck for about 5.7 seconds.

Not merely the idea that some conspiracy theorists are loons under the best condition, but the fake news that is spreading in a few ways giving rise to the consideration that ‘5G is spreading the Coronavirus‘ is so ridiculous that the personal view of shooting idiots of that calibre before they have kids and create a situation that 2 generations believed that nonsense seems like almost the only option. So as I read “But content that is simply conspiratorial about 5G mobile communications networks, without mentioning coronavirus, is still allowed on the site. YouTube said those videos may be considered “borderline content” and subjected to suppression, including loss of advertising revenue and being removed from search results on the platform.” (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/youtube-to-suppress-content-spreading-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory), I wonder just how stupid people have become in the week I was down and out. I myself have been outspoken and adamant that there is another factor propagating the Coronavirus, yet technology is not that path, it is within us and at some point the clever health people will find it and include us in these findings. 

There is another factor and the numbers (at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) leave me with almost no doubt at all. almost 70,000 dead, and the age station gives us:

80+ years old 14.8%

70-79 years old 8.0%

60-69 years old 3.6%

50-59 years old 1.3%

40-49 years old 0.4%

30-39 years old 0.2%

20-29 years old 0.2%

10-19 years old 0.2%

Yet when we look at the numbers in Italy, Spain, Germany and France and set that against China (Wuhan) the calculation does not completely add up. In this situation I only took these nations as time is a known factor and these nations have enough cases to see a level of stability. Even as some hide behind “Experts say large elderly population, social behaviour and weak healthcare system have contributed to high fatalities“, I personally see it as some people hiding behind a shallow wall with almost zero protection, the numbers are not adding up!

For the math to work over 90% of all corona fatalities would have to be by the 80+ age group (in Italy and Spain) and we know that this is not the case. In other paths I see an option to giggle. In the Netherlands there is an old saying “1 gek kan meer vragen dan 20 wijzen kunnen beantwoorden” (1 fool can ask more than 20 wise men can answer), and YouTube is seemingly getting hit with this expression. There is almost no way to stop a crazy person with propogating stupidity. 

And the problem is not going away I reckon, as stupidity reigns, we see all kinds of forgiveness (they know not what they do) and we ourselves propagate that stupidity. No matter what happens, at some point these people get found and then they end up in court, they get a slap on the wrist and are let go. I reckon that this is the most likely scenario. In all this, I wonder how long we need to consider that path of reinforcing stupidity.

Yet in my mind, no matter how we all push the paths, how anyone would give rise to any notion that the flu was propagated by your mobile is just too insane to waste a second of time on, but that might just be me.

 

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March 23, 2020 · 15:36

Playstation is Go!

Yes, the console war is off to a nice start. It is important to you (the reader) to know that for whatever reason, I am a Sony guy, hence, take no offense and if you are a dedicated Xbox person (no offense taken) then you might not like this article.

The event started last saturday when I saw this article that was massively Microsoft minded and how the new Xbox would be 30% faster, that person went on by throwing teraflops at us and making all kinds of speculated boasts, fair enough, I merely glanced at it and disregarded it to the largest extent. There will optionally be differences between the two, but the difference will be less than 50% (personal conviction) of what that person claimed. In the end, the PS5 will be a huge step up from the PS4 and a decent step up from the PS4 pro.

CCN (at https://www.ccn.com/sony-ps5-reveal-beats-xbox-series-x-without-trying/) gives us “Sony’s PS5 reveal video gets more views than the Xbox Series X trailer after being criticized for being boring and technical“, yes that was always going to be the case, in the end there are two parts, the technical superiority and the games, the first one we can see and anticipate, the second one we can hope for and in coming towards our hopes and dreams the PlayStation has been a lot more rewarding than its counterpart ever was. The one time the other one stood out was when the date was October 27, 2017 and that was the day that Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed Origins. Even as a Sony person I have to give voice to the amazement that the Xbox One X brought at that time. Assassin’s Creed Origins blew my socks off, and as a 4K title it was overwhelming. Yet that was pretty much the only time that the Microsoft console truly shined. As the self-proclaimed most powerful processor system it was surpassed by Nintendo, which with the Switch has the least powerful processor of the three, so that is the impact of superior hardware.

As such CCN gives us “The PS5 video has 13.5 million views compared to the 10.6 million views on the Xbox Series X reveal. This suggests that Sony may not have to try very hard to make the PS5 more successful than the Xbox Series X.” My response would be, Sony listens to its gamers, Microsoft only claims to do so and then does what the bottom dollar presented tells them to do, the gamer is not a consideration (proven twice over), that is how I see it (Die hard Microsoft console fans are allowed to disagree).

For me it is a much more interesting field, even as I am considering two IP’s on the matter, I can clearly see that the advantage that Microsoft created with the Xbox 360 has gone. My personal achilles issues is that the entire matter of storage has not now, not ever been properly addressed by Microsoft since the first One was released, that is 8 years ago. In all that time it was about being online, about being able to download, all whilst we see that on a global play there is a bandwidth issue, it is to such a degree that some people see how some players (YouTube and Netflix) decided to limit the video quality so that they won’t congest the internet in Europe in this Corona beer environment. It had grown to such a degree that Brussels decided to talk to Netflix on reducing internet congestion (at https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-in-talks-with-netflix-about-reducing-internet-congestion/) and the quote “Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton today spoke with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to discuss ways to help reduce internet congestion, a Commission official told POLITICO“, as such a case I saw coming years ago (not on the how it would happen) is seen three days ago in the article, there is congestion and in that environment Microsoft wants to be an ‘Always Online‘ player? As such the Sony solution with their secondary internal drive (SSD) might be a slightly limiting factor, but as it would (speculated) fit the 2tb and 4tb drives from Samsung, the Playstation 5 will have a great situation, and the 2tb SSD version is now $325, which is not required in the initial year (unless the games become really big) I reckon that Microsoft has a lot more to lose, superior processor or not. Even as they come again with their ‘most powerful processor‘ song, the moment the gamer chorus starts with ‘Yet where can we store our shit‘ they will fall silent very quickly, 1TB in 4K/8K gaming will do that. Sony has a similar start but you can add a drive to enhance player needs and 2tb/4tb will do that nicely. I expect that the 2tb drives at the end of the year will be $250-$300, so there is that too.

The larger issues is not merely that, Tom’s guide (at https://www.tomsguide.com/us/ps5-release-date-rumors-specs,news-26954.html) gave us “In his Road to PS5 talk, Cerny gave more details on the SSD again, with the key spec that it could load 2GB of files in 0.27 seconds. That should make for some unnoticeable loading times once game devs get to grips with the new console.” in this consider a Bethesda RPG where the load times in between locations becomes almost zero, the additional joy we get by replaying Fallout 4 and Skyrim, this evolution is one I anticipated, although not the “load 2GB of files in 0.27 seconds“, that is just the icing on the cake. The idea that Elder Scrolls: Restoration (see several other articles) becomes a technical viability opens up a lot of doors for RPG games, in this I wonder what Guerilla games could make of Horizon Zero Dawn 2. It is almost beyond belief and that is before we consider other franchises that offer us more and more. 

You see in the end it is not about Sony or their Playstation, it is about the gamer and gamemaker and it seems that Sony is facilitating to an amazing degree to those two, as I personally see it Microsoft is merely facilitating to those embracing Azure, in lesser degree to the game makers and last to the gamers, it is another setting entirely. Gamers are the first priority, Sony learned that lesson when they launched on 3 December 1994, a first try to debunk Nintendo as the king of gaming, they succeeded. So whilst we are all in folds on how much it is going to cost, consider that the Xbox360 was $699 and we all shelled out because we were going to get an awesome experience. That was proven true by Microsoft and I never regretted buying a second one when the red rings of death came to ring my front door bell (two days before Fallout New Vegas was released).

It seems to me that Microsoft forgot about what gamers need and they seem to listen to those who want gamers to take a certain direction, it is not the same. Still there are options where Sony could improve too, not the gaming side, but the connected social media side where we share what we want to share, that side is up for a tremendous amount of improvements, and when they do this considering that people are not always online (consider rural France and Germany) they might just wipe Microsoft out of existence, they don’t seem to care what happens to those gamers without excellent digital path access. As i Personally see it, it is due to a population of gamers without a global scope on the matter. 

The Sony presentation (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph8LyNIT9sg) is nice, but as CCN told us a little boring, still boring or not Google told me that it is #20 most trending videos at present, so boring is nice. Yet the presentation is also important as the OS is part of all this and the improvements in social media we will see before 2022, is lacking at present. As I personally see it both have that weakness and just like I was correct in storage, I expect that the social evolution on sharing becomes a much larger issue down the road and it seems that both are not ready for this part, even as it is not part of the console, it will be part of storage and synching (when possible), as such the console needs a pass through need that developers would have to adjust for and that is at present not a given. Even if it is easy, getting this in place BEFORE the console releases gives the makers of games a lot more to be ready for and I believe that it will impact the success of any of the consoles. 

How am I right?

This is much simpler. We have our friends and our social circles, at times we want all our friends to be aware, yet we have gaming friends and a social circle. They are not the same (for the most in Europe and America they are very different), I think that Sony did not consider this, or rejected this even as their PS3 presentation years ago gave sight of their plans. It was in that case a rejected plan that is now on their plate.

I am not talking about some marketing play, I am talking about gamers talking to their other gamers in an actual way, not pushing them messages (what happens too often). In this Google Plus had solved a few of the issues in the very beginning. Having circles solves it. Circles of connections playing the same game, playing a type of game and the individual messages that you can direct. So another game gets some of the messages and if that person is curious he or she can come look at YOUR wall where you see everything. So you basically have several walls, your wall, your shared wall, and circles and a message will be on some or (ill advised) all walls, your friends can select from your wall what they are interested in, and as you gain gaming fame they will optionally want to see more. It makes for a much easier social media, and that is the foundation of the dictionary “applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking” it is not about pushing content, but sharing content and like in any conversation, when the other party is not interested, they cut off the conversation, that part is often ignored because some players in social media need the traffic and the advertisements to go through, actual social media is about connecting and conversing (via sharing). It is a lesson that Microsoft (for the most) never learned in the last 8 years. Sony did not learn it either, but their solution was not about pushing marketing (to the degree Microsoft did) and as such we were a lot more happy, as well as the fact that we were not required to be online all the time, the system synched when we were (most often when synching achievements).

As this approach is matched with the games, we can select for games where the information goes (all to our wall) but then we can select per game where it goes (those who have the game too), when it is a genre we can also share it with those sharing that interest. So Fallout 5 is initially shared with those who have Fallout 5 and an interest in RPG, these players can then disregard (optionally temporary) Fallout 5 materials or disregard your material. That is a reality too, I have several friends and we shared Mass Effect 3 multiplayer gaming, but only that, as such my achievements in Mass Effect Andromeda was not interesting to them. In this I mentioned ‘optionally temporary‘ as a person starting in a game might not be interested in someone’s achievements who is at 90% (for means of spoilers and optional envy). This too makes for a much nicer experience in social media.

It is the side effect of any facilitating system of news events and achievements.

I believe that the PS5 will have a large base growing much faster if the social media template is set to facilitate to a much larger degree to gamers. Whether it is done or not will not affect the initial need and desire for the PS5, but I feel certain that over time it will be a much larger facilitating and desired part of any console. I also need to emphasize the win that Nintendo had on the switch with the calendar, I am amazed that none of the others see that part. You might not want to share your calendar, but an overview of achievements gained over a week is not something a gamer is not interested in, and the option to keep that calendar for years (an option the Switch does not seem to offer). I believe the option for gamers to open this part (per game) to the developer will be much more interesting to the makers too (as the gamer decides whether to inform others). It allows for an optional  deeper connection between maker and gamer. 

This allows for two elements the first being a direct gauge where the maker can inform (once) the gamer on season passes and DLC options. The second is that we can be aware of updates required on games we have, not blindly updating a game we haven’t touched for weeks (Microsoft actually has a much better system in play here than Sony does).

As we see that the PlayStation is Go! (Thunderbird pun) we see that no matter how great any system is, there will always be space for improvements. Sony however seems to have been listening to its gamers for the longest of times, lets see what the PS5 brings and what the second wave brings. This time around there are benefits and disadvantages for Sony. The last time around the Nintendo Switch was not a factor, this time it is and no matter how strong any system is, gaming is about joy and that is a lesson Nintendo has taken to heart every single time, they did this long before the Nintendo 64 (at $699 in those days) became a reality.

Even as the PS5 players will adjust to “We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5“, we see that the ‘truth’ of the matter is that the largest Sony base will initially be interested in less than 200 of them, especially if they upgrade from the PS4 and never had a PS4pro. 4K will be the larger reason for that. As such even the makers will benefit from the setting where someone did not buy it initially, their title was good on what was and optionally now will be a great added title (especially with patches in place). 

It is still early days, for the most, I am merely anticipating what is and what we will get, not what might optionally be missing. In that regard the Playstation family has never disappointed us (apart from the day one games on PS4) and it is still 9 months away, as such I believe that there will be a lot more information coming our way soon enough, most of that is most likely around the time this year’s virtual E3 hits us.

 

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