Tag Archives: Steam

February 13, 2025 · 04:10

The enemy of fun

We all hate advertisements, we do. We merely have been lulled to sleep to accept that these things happen. My initial setting for the new IP was to benefit in game-line advertisements and now I see that ‘Valve Doubles Down On Banning Forced In-Game Ads In Steam Games’. As such I say “Yes! Someone else figured it out too”. It feels like some level of vindication. You see, I thought I was alone in this, but Valve is not a simple gaming location. It is the original place of Half-Life and that is the game that set the tone in the two thousands and is now worth billions. 

They set the tone and are now doubling down on “Banning Forced In-Game Ads”, which fells me feel vindicated, and it is the fourth element that I heralded in my IP, four parts that set my console setting apart. Games, social media, no ads and collective cohesion. All parts that make any console great. So I am feeling mighty good (a little less as I never was able to see it), but the overwhelming feeling that I was right all along makes it up to some extent. The article phrases it as “a customer gets blocked after a certain amount of playtime and has to pay to continue and keep their progress. These types of monetization are considered predatory and are not allowed in Steam games.” Exactly how I felt about it. I’ll be honest there is space for some advertising, because it allows for unification of people, but not on time lines and not in games. I was adamant in this. And lets face it, to set the space to unifies one group of over 500 million gamers (among others) was the idea I tried to sell Kingdom Holdings. 

You see, to get access to over 50 million Muslims in past one and up to 200 million during phase two was overwhelmingly appealing. You see Kingdom Holding had in 2022 $13.6 billion and my solution allowed it to speculatively grow it by 50% in phase one would be appealing to any investor and whilst they are in whose main interests are financial services, real estate, tourism and hospitality, media, entertainment, petrochemicals, aviation and technology. To grow the setting of entertainment by that much in what I see 1 swoop and gather the view of millions would be seen as interesting to people like Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud would seem interesting (apparently I was wrong), and in that same setting neither was Andy Jessy seemingly interested to grow his business by an expected 50 million consoles during phase one. So I must see things wrong. Yet the vindication now shown by Valve gives me the idea that I was right in more then one way and such there is a doubt within me. What am I missing? 

So on one hand I saw what Microsoft missed all along (they miss a lot) and others (like Google) stepped out of that field, so I am wondering what I am missing. The numbers are speaking in my direction, the elements are in my favor and as Unreal Engine 5 gives rise to the option on one branch we see a near complete setting. In that same setting we would see that there are 32.5 million small businesses in the United States, and a growing number are Muslim-owned. I lack specific numbers as I do not even know whether they are collected. Yet in this one source gave me that around 2020, Muslims around the world spent a total of two trillion U.S. dollars across the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, fashion, travel, and media/recreation sectors. The largest market for Muslim consumers is the halal food and beverage sector. It expectedly grows from 2 billion to 2.8 billion in 2025 (Source: Statista). As such the growth of that nature is nearly unprecedented and I tired to handle a level of unification and here was my solution that enabled it. So I am in doubt, on one hand my predictions are coming through in several ways and on the other hand it seems to be missed by the two (optionally three) people who are on the forefront of it all (Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud and Andy Jessy/Jeff Bezos), so what am I doing wrong? Oh, and I went through one of the purest players in the world, the gamers. You see gamers can ‘infect’ their enthusiasm on the audience around them, I have seen that happen for over 30 years. 

So what was I doing wrong? Are there players who are walls around these people? If they cannot get a slice, no-one can? Well there is one player they never thought of. It is Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent and Tencent is hungry for more markets and America with their anti China sentiment played (hopefully) right into my hands. The idea that I am that much right cannot be a simple ‘delusional’ setting as some say. To much went my way of thinking in this. 

So what does it take for some people to see that there was more than laying off around 14,000 managers to reduce costs and improve operations, I get that trimming is at times required, but what do you do when you are offered a simple upgrade of billions in the first phase? Tell me, and I see if I can around that. And now there is another path (hopefully granting me my coins) and I have been brooding over this for almost three years (one does what one can).

But in the end, my blog has had the goods that long, so there is no setting of “You are telling us that now?” There was a clear indication (mailed to them too) and the blog has the three years of stages online. My only defense so that some cannot make claim to “other sources” I feel that I did the right thing, but did I? The is the question I ask myself. You see, if only I see it, it can be called delusion, but more and more things out there (also in print) show that I was right all along. Now that we see the Valve story out there in Hot Hardware (at https://hothardware.com/news/valve-bans-ingame-ads-steam) and several others show that my train of thought was correct all along. 

That was the little nag that was keeping me awake this Thursday (at 03:00). Try to have a great day today. Me? I am walking into Mordor as a challenge, so how happy could I be?

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September 18, 2020 · 01:29

On the way to a destination

It was yesterday that I came up with the Vatican game, a way to expose the truth and let it be seen to everyone who wishes to know. It was a stage where I got to design original gaming IP. I have original 5G IP, but the games (TESVII, Watchdogs IV), they are all based on IP others made. I came up with other gaming IP, but the Vatican view is 100% my IP (as a game that is). It is also intoxicating to design original IP. Originality is the food of life, in originality we trust, the rest can fake it until they make it.

Yet the intoxicating side is there, it will always be there and everyone creating or designing original pieces can concur. Yet in the light of the PS5, we can see that the intoxicating part tends to take over, especially as I spend $3 on a MAC game, only to be haunted by the bugs. Then I got a dose of irritating steam, I set up that in ONLY want to see MAC games, but I get every PC game in sight, can people not design anything without massive flaws? Oh and Apple is not off the hook, but I will tell you about that soon enough. I think back to the ideas of ME:A(1,2), Mass Effect Andromeda, both parts 1 and 2, in a very different coat, but that is not what is driving me today. Neither is it the new Mario 3D bundle out in 8.4 hours (when the shops open), no now is about the idea that is moving in my mind, left right centre, up and down. It was an idea I had written about before, a game that is based in Amsterdam, in about 500 years when the population is zero. It is set to people with two life cycles, a normalised on and a biological one. The biological one has no needs, nature preserves it in every way, the normalised one, needs tools, needs technology and it needs sustenance. Yet the two cycles are opposing one another and what heals one, will kill the other. I got the idea watching Aftermath: Population Zero, in this series we see scripted AI showing us what buildings will look like after 300 years and no population to maintain anything. This got me to thinking, what if we set that to a city (Amsterdam) and we deploy it parameters? It sets the stage where every game will be different, more importantly your neighbour playing the same game will get to face a different Amsterdam. That was the premise, so not only do yo get to seek for technology, it will be in a different place, optionally in a different building, in another street. It sets a different stage to survival. Yet this is merely one facet, the other facet is to adapt to a new stage, a stage where the plants that sustained you become poisonous. That too is part of the game and Amsterdam with all its canals will be about plants and water plants. So there I was considering the drive, curiosity can be a drive, but it is not powerful enough. Yet in all this there is a stage, and in that stage does technology drive us, or do we drive technology? 

It is important, but for different reasons. With ‘Dubai may be as indebted as South Africa if dissenters are right’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/dubai-indebted-south-africa-dissenters-200917095907711.html) we see the stage we need to see. Even as we accept “Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings include Dubai’s local bank borrowings to make the calculation, arriving at an estimate of about 290 billion dirhams ($79 billion). The debt burden could equal 77% of this year’s gross domestic product, according to S&P, comparable with what the International Monetary Fund predicts for South Africa and just behind Oman”, consider that the UAE has a population that is less than 10 million, about the size of Sweden, yet the debt is half of that of Sweden and here is the kicker, nearly every nation on the planet has crushing debts, so who has the actual funds that allow for these debts to continue? In a stage where we are polarised against nature, we need to see that embracing nature might be the only option left. Should you doubt the and of course, you can, consider the debts out there and consider that we are handing the debts to the next generation. In all this, IP is the only way for some to keep the next generation afloat. My version of Amsterdam was more spot on than even I realised. And if patent are the next currency, or at least the grounds for basic wealth, I am sitting decently pretty, but is that enough? I reckon that the next generation will see a very different stage of life, one that is not set on what is, and what they are entitles to, but what they can conquer, what they can overcome ad nature is a bitch when it comes to adversity. There is no denying that we are in a state of change, but our governments have gone the way of the dodo and the ostrich. They merely latch onto the largest payday possible and they cloth for bad weather, but that time has come and gone, it is no longer on what we can overcome, it is about what we can survive. You see, the owners of the debts could decide t cash in, and where does that leave us? Some even set the stage by claiming that there is good debt versus bad debt, yet in the end, all debt is bad and we need to catch on. As I see it this is the first generation that is worse off then the previous generations, in addition to that, we have created a life of legalised slave labour, legalised discrimination and legalised inequality. I wonder if we realised that when we were young, did we realise that this was a stage that we were signing up for? We might want to blame covid, but that would be wrong, perhaps it drove it to the surface, but the weak spots were already there. Even as CNBC gives us ‘What Would It Mean If U.S. States Went Bankrupt?’, yet it is too late, the US is already there, with the $25,000,000,000,000 debt, we need to accept that the annual interest would be no less than $150,000,000,000. This implies an amount that taxation is not getting, in addition to that, there are the spiralling costs of keeping the US alive (infrastructure) and it is not the only nation facing this, Japan is also on that scale and the EU is almost there, but they are all in denial that this is so, they are all setting the stage that they will overcome this, so how is that? Covid-19 brought it to the surface a lot faster, but we were already there and those who want to survive, will need to change to a patent grounded economy, which means that China has a decent advantage, so does the US and Japan less so, the EU is pretty much toast. In this everyone is in denial. You see the US amounted to $3.5 trillion collected taxation, but that is before the funding of the US started. When we take this into account, we see that the US was already $900 billion short, and that is before the $150 billion interest hits them and they are not alone, it is not merely an American flaw. Japan and the EU are on the same horse, not as big, but still a massively large horse of deficit. So when this collapses (when, not if) we see that the economic value of any nation will be the patents that they hold and as such, I personally feel that I am sitting pretty and with two new IP concepts created this week alone, I wonder where I will go next, I heard that the pastries in Monte Carlo are super yummy! (Piers Morgan told us that much) and bless his heart, I do like my pastries, so where we end up being, it will be in a very different economy soon enough, how soon? Well that depends on the powerbroker holding onto this failed horse, they like to stay ahead of the debt curve, surfing that wave for as long as they can before the wave crashes, it will drown a massive group of fin-tech people, but those who survive will come to worship the nations with patents, and as the new economy comes up, will you understand that you are merely driving these exploiters, or will you demand a fair system? Because that demand went so well the last time around. 

No matter what destination you go to, the currency you currently have will no longer have value, it is a harsh reality, but it is the one we all signed up for and the only one that the powerbroker accept, they have too much invested in the idea that their arrogance is the only one that ever mattered. 

 

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October 6, 2017 · 18:45

In case of your death

I was surprised to see a Eurogamer article on the steam account of dead people (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHLFUbU5ceI). The article is interesting and puzzling all at the same time. You see a view that is interesting, mainly because Eurogamer is merely voicing issues that the audience bring to their attention. Now, let’s be fair, the maker Chris Bratt also mentions the bulk of other users of this approach.

It is puzzling because I reckoned that people should have known better. You can leave your physical products behind, but digital products will not transfer. That part has been a clear issue for decades (yes, not years, but decades) it comes with clarity that certain services, especially digital services are services, not goods with a clear setting of ownership. Digital ownership tends to remain with the maker of the product and you the gamer, or user are merely ‘leasing’ that product for the length of your life and in plenty of cases not even that long (read: annual fee).

That is a clear situation in the sight of the worrying owner (the maker) of the product. So in case of software products like Adobe, Microsoft and other players, the digital arena is granting access to, to the person that paid for these services. So when that person dies, the service will be gone, because the service is no longer required for the person who bought it. In my view it is simple and clear, because this is how it has always been. Now that people are actually thinking for the first time on what happens ‘afterwards’, only now are they considering the consequences of their initial forward thinking part to embrace Steam (as a first example). So, even as their might have seemed to be an advantage, having the physical copy will always be better. So now we see that people are catching on. Yet in light of a growing nagging population, do they have a case? You see they purchased a service, not a product, the difference is not what they do, but it is the stage of physicality, the lack of a media carrier. Even then it is not a given that you have any options. The history of software products has had the setting for the longest of time that the purchased products were not transferable. Ashton Tate with dBase 3 and 3 plus (1979) is one of the earlier examples in Software, the bulk of all Microsoft products, although Windows was usually not linked to a person, but a computer. So the phenomenon is not new or unique. So why is it now getting more and more limelight? Well, people are now starting to catch on that their thousands of dollars of games are linked to their identity, to their account and when that is gone, what has been bought is gone too. We can argue on it and also argue on how valid any discussion is on the products that do come with a physical element. What is a given is that as time progresses, the option to own for life a product will fail too. You see, there is a valid case that a product bought is set to the original buyer and no further. The greedy players like Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Ubisoft have been playing with that setting for the longest time. And let’s face it; they do have a point (to some degree). They promised to service your gaming needs, not those of your children and grandchildren. Now, when this is a single player game, a case could be made to transfer the disc to whomever it ends up with, yet there is also a clear case that the services and support are set to the original buyer and without it the game cannot continue. It might be regarded as an open and shut case, but is that truly the case?

We have seen it be done for decades, but was that a legally acceptable reason? I am merely leaving the point of view open to debate. Should a game be allowed to be transferred? Is it fair on the makers of the software products for this to happen? Nowadays we are waiting for the maximised utilisation, the greed driven makers on the minimum option and to some extent the truth tends to be in the middle. This is not because it is fair, but because it is expected. We grew into the expectation of ownership from books and gramophones. Only when the time of digital installation began, only at that point did we see the change towards the expectations that the makers had on ownership and with the age of parchment and gramophones behind us, the consideration of set service terms were not truly on the scale it needed to be. Yet now, with the cloud, with digital ownerships and with downloadable content we are seeing the shift where we are no longer the owner, but the authorised user of the digital product. Now we have the shift that the industry wanted and perhaps in the view of some was entitled to.

In all this we need to realise that the power of creation is not merely remastering of older versions it is the need of revenue for the makers to continue their development and is it fair or unfair to allow for this path? It is at times depending on the point of view that the person has, and n that setting the software industry and the user are unlikely to see thins eye to eye. Some like Sony have the option to link one account to all the devices, so three people could be playing at the same time (each on a different system), some give options for multiple users for a few dollars more and some will try to fetch cash from every user. It is as I personally see it linked to where our expectations are and through history they have been set in favour of the user, now with the cloud and with digital versions that ‘advantage’ is lost to the users and it is largely depending on the others on how they allow us to set this in motion.

Eurogamer is all set towards the need of a champion with references towards Bruce Willis, but is that fair? The best setting is one that Microsoft tried (best for them that is). They wanted to disable the option of pre-owned players and that got buried real fast. Now, I am on the gamer’s side when it comes to a physical product. But in case of Mass Effect, can we truly expect that multiplayer accounts are transferred? Is it fair to continue digital server service ‘ad infinitum’? I personally do not believe that to be fair. Yet in that same push, I think that a physical copy should not be linked to one person, to one owner, but in that as the future comes pushing us, the wrong stance to have. I believe that the intertwining of services, physical and non-physical will stop or enhance the push for limited authorised access.

It is merely my view and perhaps a wrong one, but I am willing to consider that we as users must accept this shift. In this it will become more and more important to have a full physical game. We see the setting of patents in the requirement of manufacturing and physicality, yet now with the cloud and distributed usage (including cloud gaming) we see that every unit is part of the whole, so as such person X with license Y will become part of the whole implying that person X2 with license Y is another entity altogether, I will go one step further that as each player becomes a mere key of the machine, we see that physicality is set in hardware and software and as such, the combination becomes its own dimension, meaning that transfer of ownership becomes a thing of the past. Yet this also spells dangers in other ways, because as non-repudiation becomes a larger issue, any element (like email address) becomes an absolute setting, so that we are in danger of stopping ourselves to move forward with a second email address, a thing we saw with Ubisoft in the past. So once we lose our e-mail address through hackers we could in theory lose whatever we purchased through that medium. Now, most have their own registration system, yet what happens when that depository is lost, damages or altered? That is the part that is not fixed and is unlikely to be properly addressed for some time. It is even more conceivable that our children will in their lifetime see the need and growth of identity implants. Perhaps even more than one and it is at that point that the digital age of ownership takes another leap, perhaps a much larger leap than we have seen in the last 25 years. It opens up whole new ranges of opportunities and dangers. The question will sooner become, which one tips the scales of balance and how will it affect all?

So in case of your death you might be confronted with the implants of your parents, the implants of peers and siblings. In this the law is actually not ready and it is not as simple as what will happen with your games. Because as the setting is fixed it will be about bank accounts, available funds and set funding of growth and wealth. In all this we will see shifts and we will ponder where the rights of services will be set. In this it will go beyond commercial versus NGO, it will be about the shift that identity enables us to hold and that will shift the movements that we are able to do. It will be a new level of hindrance and perhaps even a step towards global discrimination, because when you realise that the age of implants is already here, consider the impairment that some people will have by allowing these changes to the body and to the external extremities.

For those in IP it is a great time to get involved with block chains and non-repudiation, because the game of games, gaming and software will be changed to much larger degrees than people realise and the initial changes as some realise them to be at present are only the tip of the iceberg.

Enjoy the weekend.

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January 9, 2016 · 17:14

What did you expect?

This all started with an article in the Guardian last December, in the air of ‘it was a day plus one before Santa‘, the title ‘Game shares fall 40% after profit warning‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/23/game-shares-fall-40-percent-after-profit-warning-xbox-one-ps4). You see, none of this should be a surprise to anyone. When we look today we see all these ‘what will come in 2016‘ articles (read: multiple) and that is JUST the Guardian, not even a serious gaming source. Another article kicks of one of its paragraphs with ‘E3 WILL BRING SURPRISES‘ and then it reverts to the mundane “This year, we can expect Nintendo’s new machine and plenty of VR games but, beyond that, little is known. And that’s just how we like it“, if that is so, then why waste space on it in January whilst that event is 22 weeks away. Ignoring the event for no less than 10 weeks would not have been out of place. That article ends with ‘A YEAR OF BIG GAMES‘, where we see the quote “but most exciting for gamers are the big sequels“, with several mentions of games that had been delayed from 2015. What they all forget is an element the mentioned article will give you.

So let us take a look!

The subtitle is as good a place as any to start. It states ‘Gamers failed to buy enough games for new consoles to make up for a steep fall in demand for older formats‘, so how about giving the reality of the games which means the subtitle should have been ‘Game developers fail to deliver quality, they failed in many cases on delivering on time, some delayed until 2017, creating a new level of gaming uncertainty‘ that subtitle would have been on point. Assassins Creed is one of those titles, Unity failed massively, the reason for mentioning it is because Syndicate did not become the success it could have been mainly because of Unity. A game that used to be sold out on special editions is now getting flogged for $50 including art book, statue, extra missions and soundtrack. A game sold at 33% of the initial value, new in box. Yes, I give you right now that Syndicate does not deserve to be regarded as a failure, but it remains a non-success. It still has an amount of glitches and issues that go back all the way to brotherhood, they have never been addressed. Mass NPC issues remain and the list goes on, yet again, the graphics department delivered, sound delivered too. There are in mission issues, yet for the most they did work OK, in a few cases they were actually decently brilliant. Yet in all this the NPC issues rose. For example, I can get attacked and the police does not act. I pull a knife and they all start shooting, even in my own (read: liberated) areas. The fact that they act on me is one thing, the fact that they do not act against my attackers is another thing. It becomes even more a joke when a fellow Rook NPC keeps on pulling his knife against my kidnap target alerting the police who now has a go at me too, all scripted screw ups that were not addressed. Yet overall the latest AC is not a failure, in the same light that I placed the Ubisoft business model in the past, planning for non-failure also means that you will never get an exceptional success. Perhaps Ubisoft will catch on at some point (one would hope, would one not?)

But this is not about Ubisoft, they are just one element in a group of many.

The quote: “However, independent retail analyst Nick Bubb said he was “staggered” by Game’s profit warning after John Lewis boasted of strong sales of computer games earlier this week. “We had just begun to wonder if Game Digital might be a good recovery stock,” he said. The department store said gaming and console sales were up 180% in the week to 19 December, picking them out as one of its Christmas bestsellers“, but based on what was this? Special in house deals with 2 games? Places like EB Games are offering new 1TB consoles with 4 or 5 games that is quite the Christmas pick. Oh and what are the numbers? When you normally sell 10 consoles 180% really does not amount to that much. I would think that Nick Bubb would have done his homework a little more meticulously, or perhaps staggering was a factor after he learned that £2290 is not something that gives price to 180% (I am not saying that I know their sales numbers, but I am asking why no one else is making a clear investigation there). And on what margins are those placed? A £299 console is one thing, one with 3 games at £279 is a good deal for the buyer, but it equally means it is a product without margin for the shops.

Yet the big UK player Game should have known that this issue is a lot more clear, so the statement “Game said a 20% rise in sales of games for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 had not offset a 57% slump in sales of older Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games” is a mere given, something they should have known going into the holiday season. You see, many big titles have been delayed, what was coming before Christmas is now coming in March and in a few cases in April. Big titles have not been the success they were supposed to be and in all this So when another article in the Guardian one day later reports “According to the industry body Ukie, sales of new boxed console games in the UK fell 6.3% in 2014 to £935m, and were overtaken by the 17.6% rise in sales of digital console and PC games to £1.05bn“, we should ask the question that Stuart Dredge might have been trying to hide within the text. The issue is “The Steam Winter Sale has gone live today, Dec. 22nd, and runs until January 4th“, yes ‘in sales of digital console and PC games‘ translates to Steam sales for PC games, a place where games were down by 50%, in several cases even down by 80%, so as many game shops have a non-return or exchange policy for PC games (which does make perfect sense), people are happy to download a few 4GB packages (in some cases not more than 2) and store that on their multi-Terabyte drives and the list included discounted games like Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid 5 and Just Cause 3. So, when we know this, the ‘staggered’ response by Nick Bubb comes across as extremely insincere. Perhaps he did not do his homework? How can a person in that field not be up to date as to what Steam does and how that impact the shops, you see Steam has done this before, so it can’t have been that unexpected.

In that same issue we have places like Game and EB Games. In some cases they rely on fans who want their new upcoming Dark Souls 3 (the apocalypse edition) and that game will likely sell out in mere minutes, yet the dangers when a shop is losing space to a stack of Charing Cross editions, because the previous version was so bad is in equal measure not that weird a surprise.

There is still one other part that links to this. You see, we all play the way we can, some only play the way that they can afford and Microsoft has been dubious in several actions, the issues now arising from the Windows 10 update give more towards the fear that at the earliest moment Microsoft will close the valve on ‘pre-owned’ games, a side people rely upon because the average working family no longer has a spare £50 for a new game. Hell, most people in London are hard pressed to have £50 for simple things like food, so how is the drop in revenue such a big mystery?

The UK (as well as many other places on this world) have been dealing with a sliding cost of living crises. It has been around for 2 years and too many people are ignoring this fact, in any normal household games will be the first one to vanish from any budget consideration, which gives rise to the growing need of places like Steam, because between no gaming and playing a game 2 years old at £5, people usually tend to know what to do. The interesting side is that many of those games do not need the latest hardware, actually, those steam consoles will support the bulk of those games on high quality settings, so the Nextgen consoles are losing their footing, a fact that someone like Nick Bubb should have been aware of straight of the bat.

Are you still confused?

Open your wallet, consider your bank account (your present balance) and now go to any gaming store and get a new game. How many of you will actually do that? As I see it, 40% cannot afford it, 60% does not want to do this because they either do not care for games (which is fair enough), they have other bills to pay (which is fair enough too), or they are waiting for one of those delayed games, because they can only afford a game 3-4 times a year. These are given situations for well over 80% of the people in the UK, in addition it is a similar size in most of the EEC nations, so why exactly are we surprised on these sliding scales? I cannot answer why many readers are surprised (many might be genuinely surprised), but we should ask a few serious questions when retail gurus like Nick Bubb are absent in comprehension. In that case we should be asking a few other questions.

And games are not out of the woods yet, not for the near immediate future. Yes, most of us will run towards No Man’s Sky the day it is released (in around 22 weeks), but consider how we as gamers (millions of us) find fun and joy in a $20 game named Minecraft, or on the Tablets on a $5 game named Blockheads, how long until the analysts are catching on the hyped inflated games galore for PC and next gen is a massive marketing mesh that is short term, based upon a turnover need from the initial 21 days of release? We will always want games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, GTA, Diablo 3 and a few others, but that list is a lot shorter than those marketeers will admit to and the large players remain in denial. Hoping on a new shooter online where people do nothing more that run and ‘super jump’ on all levels like it was the first version of Unreal Tournament. How long until that gets boring and old? The remake Doom might be the first one that infuses life into that group, a mere original gems in a mountain of too many fake crystals.

Yes, we will see a few games we all want, we will see games that we thought we wanted because as games developers rely on hype, they are equally extremely unwilling to give out review copies until AFTER the game is released, because it would hurt numbers and the press at large (the real one and the gaming press) tends to be too often in need of advertisers to actually do something about it.

Finally we get back to Ubisoft, but now for very different reasons. You see, they are offering something called a ‘humble bundle’, which one place stated costed $1. I cannot verify this, but the offer (regardless of price) includes:

  • Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six
  • Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3
  • Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
  • Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist ($10 or more)
  • Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier ($10 or more)
  • Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction
  • Beta access to The Division

One source implies that the price is open, but if you paid a few bucks more (like $11) you got a few additional beauties. I was never a Rainbow Six fan, but a huge Splinter cell fan and even only those games at $11 is an impressive deal, so when you consider this, when you see that PC gamers are offered a steamy steam life with excellent not so new games, in a price range that most people could afford, how is the 40% drop in shares of Game still a mystery?

The gaming world is in an uproar, because they did not tap the vein of quality when they should, they did not press forward for true non-annual innovation when they could, leaving marketing to make the call on hype, instead of truly addressing their fan base needs. An expensive mistake that has led to the downfall of the biggest players (EA and Ubisoft), gamers are realising more and more that indie developers will bring what they desire, a great gaming experience; and only now is the press at large considering that the need of advertisement revenue and the need of their readers base is not aligned, the question becomes how will this be addressed?

I do know that when the press is relying on a ‘staggered’ Nick Bubb for gaming, too many people might be looking in the wrong direction.

 

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July 26, 2015 · 21:03

A steamy deception?

As I started to dive into the world of hardware just to satisfy my renewed addiction for Elite (now Elite Dangerous), I thought it was my duty to keep a relatively normal approach to this. This is purely because I am a student on a budget and I need to make certain that I keep a normal life after paying my bills, so as I have been weighing the options, the views of re-entering the world of PC gaming is one that comes with several traps, even though some people entering this field are not realising this.

For some this jump is riddled with confrontational choices of lesser applicability.

In my case, Elite Dangerous does not take an over the moon graphics card, so I personally have an advantage, but many other people are not gifted with that option.

So as some ‘diss’ the PS4 or the Xbox One, because they are ‘only’ consoles, be wary of the dangers of factors you might not be taking into account.

In my previous blog ‘Getting back on the horse‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/19/getting-back-on-the-horse/), where I consider the costly dangers of a PC, my alternative thought was to move towards the new Steam Consoles, let’s face it, a steam console is basically a console for PC games (via Steam). So why not consider that?

Well, let’s take a look:

As I personally see it, Steam itself is misinforming the people from the very beginning. You see, in gaming, graphics is key and when we see ‘Alienware Steam Machine‘ with the mention  NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX GPU 2GB, yet it doesn’t not mention, whether it is a Titan, a 980, or a 740 or anything SPECIFIC, you better believe that the non-mention could set you on the short end of the equation.

The steam store does however mention models that do correctly mention that part, they often mention more too, which is good, but all this comes with the hidden trap. For example, the Asus ROG GR8S, which looks extremely pretty with that aggressive redness for the FPS killer amongst us. It offers the option to upgrade memory and storage, but not the graphics card… Oops! Is that not the heart of the gaming matter? Now in all honesty, it comes with NVIDIA® GeForce® 750Ti, which is decent, but it is a little less than one third of the GeForce GTX 980, so how long until we see a 2016 game (or even a December 2015 game) that you cannot fully appreciate on your brand new console? The graphic needs of the PC gamers accelerates a lot faster than the consoles, which is why some games look so much better on PC (Skyrim is a good mention), but it does come at a price.

Now there are more and more places where you get the option of building a steam machine, of course with the added bonus of having parts that can be upgraded, yet at that point we will get too close to the PC again, which means pricing and now with the limitation that it is not a PC, so only for gaming.

So how is this a good idea, or better stated, is it a good idea?

As I go through most new upcoming steam consoles (the bulk ready for release in November 2015), I must admit that the 3XS ST15 (at http://www.scan.co.uk/) stood out of being completely adjustable, yet when we add it all up, we get a £1106.74 system (AU$ 2,355.71), which is more than the above average gaming PC, so how are steam consoles a solution against the gaming PC?

At least with actual consoles, the games will be made for that console for years to come, maximising the game, without you spending a fortune. That was clear the moment you realised that the powerful graphic cards are prices at the cost of a PS4 and an Xbox One combined. So are these ‘new’ consoles a steamed deception?

On one hand, yes, because the steam store does not mention certain essential facts, which is not really their fault, but in the case of Alienware it is likely to become an Alienware issue. As the two models state: ‘NVIDIA® GeForce® GPU 2GB GDDR5’ for a graphics card and the Alienware Alpha at $849.99 states “Fully maxed; giving you all the console you will ever need“, which is great, because from my point of view that implies that this console should come with a ‘EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN X Superclocked 12GB‘, if that is not the case than the term ‘all the console you will ever need‘ is deceptive in the very least! So as I see it, Alienware is setting itself up for one humongous issue when people (after receiving local legal advice), whilst the buyer after this will claim for the fore mentioned graphics card, as to keep the promise ‘all the console you will ever need’.

In my view, the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Australian Law), might soon become popular reading with the steam console gaming community where we now see that the graphics card likely to be included is already not up to par to deal the full ability of either Tomb Raider or Metro Last Light gives voice to the limited truth of the claim and as such Alienware could theoretically end up having to upgrade their $700 system by a lot for the current customers at no charge (as a gamer, I find that path nicely amazing).

This is not a given until settled in court (if it gets there), but in all this, the slippery slope of steam consoles as their release seems to be (as I see it) is shown decently clearly.

Setting an upcoming hype in average equipment, hoping for that day one killing revenue in November 2015 is debatable at best. I wonder what happens to the sales commission in January when the consumers get either their refunds or free upgrades.

So even as we can accept that there is a market for these consoles, the fair fact is that the good machines are at the price of a PC, whilst only being able to do their console duties, which is of course the choice of the consumer. Yet, did this consumer group properly investigate their options and more specifically the limitations that their budgets would bring?

So, what do I have against these steam consoles? I personally do not care, as I decided towards the Xbox One for Elite Dangerous, but overall, when I see what people will want now on steam, and what people will desire next year on steam (like No Man’s Sky, Eve Valkyrie, Star Citizen, Survarium and Asylum). Whilst there are a lot more games coming in 2016 and even by the time Assassins Creed: Syndicate is released (late 2015), what will that game require to fill its hunger for graphical needs? Will the installed graphic card offer the maxed experience?

So even now, in foresight, there is no guarantee at all that many of the steam consoles will offer max gaming whilst the system is still in its warranty stage. The systems that do offer the options of maximising will cost a bundle, which is what steam machines were definitely not about.

For now I will call these consoles a dicey market to say the least, for the rest, time will tell!

 

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