Why is this story suddenly getting posted to dozens of communities that in seeing in my feed?

It’s one 73 year old tribal elder who complained that today’s youth don’t respect tradition. This same story has been pre-printed for thousands of years.

Lol a good chunk of those “breaches and hacks” are either unrelated to PlayStation (Sony Pictures being the most notable) or had no impact to users.

I don’t care if they leak their source code for games or if their social media account gets socially-engineered. Even an outage from a DDOS isjust a minor inconvenience. According to the source you posted, they haven’t had any issues leaking PlayStation user data since 2011, over a decade ago.

Security concerns are valid for everything you do on the Internet of course, but are you bringing that same energy to Valve for the security issues Steam has had over the years too? The 2023 issue with dev accounts getting hacked to inject malware. The 2020 issue with the “Steam Sockets” library. They had their own data breach similar to Sony’s in 2011.

It’s funny to me because tons of PC-exclusive games also require accounts on Steam and no one cares.

The requirement is dumb, but the attention is also disproportionate because of console war fandom.

It released too late and was way too expensive.

I say this as someone who grew up in that time period and has fond nostalgia: it has one of the worst libraries of any console. Depending on how you count (the different regions, the 64DD, what counts as a “game”, etc) there were 200-300 N64 games. That may seem like a pretty big difference between 200 and 300, but in comparison the PS1 had, on a conservative count, 4,100 games. If you want to say only 10% of PS1 games we’re good that’s still more good games than the N64 had games.

There are a handful of titles that will be remembered as some of the greatest games of all time. The two Zelda games, Super Smash Bros, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Paper Mario. Personally I like the Pokemon games too. But the list falls off pretty hard after that.

I love 3D platformers and collect-a-thons, but I could never get into Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, or Donkey Kong 64. They all feel rudimentary to me, similar to Jumping Flash on the PS1. Maybe it’s because the N64’s joystick was so uncomfortable and loose. Crash Bandicoot 1 came out in the US before Mario 64 did, and in my opinion it was more fun, looks better, sounds better, and holds up better today. And then there were two more Crash games, plus the Spyro trilogy which I consider even better.

There are “cult classics” for the N64 that I think are only remembered like that because of the lack of other options. Blast Corps for example is a unique and creative little game. It’s fun to play for a bit, but was that experience really worth the price of a whole game? It almost feels like it could have been a side mode in something like Twisted Metal.

There’s so many games it didn’t have. Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, and Final Fantasy are perhaps the most famous. Even a lot of games it did have were much worse- Resident Evil 2 and the Tony Hawk series are big examples where the cheap storage of the PS1 was clearly better. I remember I had a mediocre PS1 game called Battletanx that was pretty fun. Later on in high school my friend had a modded Xbox that emulated N64 games and I recognized that title, so we played through the co-op. It was still fun, but the textures were mostly replaced with flat colors and it was hard to see what was going on. I thought there may have been an issue with the emulation, or maybe the ROM was for some beta build or a hacked version, but… No, that’s just how it looked on the N64.

I didn’t mind the 3-prong controller. Honestly just having handles was already an upgrade over the SNES and Genesis. But the controller itself feels so cheap. The buttons all rattle around loosely and feel mushy and unsatisfying to press. The joystick is hard plastic, too tall, and flaccid. The plastic itself is a downgrade compared to its predecessors and to the Dualshock and even Saturn controller.

I still have my N64 and the handful of games I got for it. It had some of the highest highs of any console, but little else.

What makes you think the PS5 isn’t growing how they need it to? It’s outselling the Xbox and it isn’t close. In a less direct comparison, it’s outselling the Switch. It’s outselling what the PS4 did, and that was successful. I don’t understand where this sentiment that the PS5 is struggling is coming from. The second half of your first sentence even mentions that they’re really dominant right now.

I also don’t understand “PC overtaking any one console”… Like, how is that even a comparison? When was the last time there were more consoles than consumer PC’s… The SNES era? I’m not even sure about that, you might need to go further back.

Even if you want to talk about just gaming, that’s tricky to even start to compare. The closest I can think of is that according to this Steam averaged 120 million monthly users last year. According to this, PSN averaged 118 million monthly users in Q4 2023. That’s pretty much dead even. I don’t think it makes sense to add other platforms to the PC side without adding in Nintendo and Xbox to the console side, in which case… Consoles have more users and it’s not close. And they both are just a fraction of the mobile gaming market anyways.

Sony has absolutely proven that they can generate the unique exclusives that sell consoles. That’s… Why they have the best-selling console right now. Their strategy is working. You could say this about plenty of other consoles at points in the past (PS3, WiiU, 3DS, GameCube, N64, Xbox One). If you even said this a couple years ago about Sony struggling to manufacture PS5’s fast enough that might make sense. But they’re currently dominating the home console market. So I don’t understand why you think they’re struggling or need to drastically change the way they do things?

Just to clarify- what strategy are you predicting that they will change?

That was explaining the delayed releases for PC, not saying they would never come to PC.

In this example Ragnarok came out in 2022, so there probably isn’t much meat left on the PS5 bone with this one.

ITT: a bunch of people saying “I won’t”.

You’re probably in the minority. There’s 16k subscribers in this community and, currently, about 30 million active users on Steam. Most of them have never heard of Lemmy, and heck a lot of them probably were never on Reddit. The PS5 has sold 50 million units- that’s over 3,000 PS5’s for every subscribed account here.

A lot of users here have PC’s that approach or exceed the PS5’s capabilities. You have fancy expensive monitors, a nice desk and chair, a gaming mouse and mechanical keyboard. The people this CEO is talking about don’t. They may have an old desktop from the pandemic, or a laptop. They might just use their kitchen table as a desk.

Or, heck, they might not even have a desktop or laptop at all. It’s still early, but there have been studies suggesting that Gen Z and Alpha are using PC’s less and doing more of their computing on phones and tablets.

Overall I thought it was great that Sony started releasing their games on PC (and especially through Steam, usually with pretty decent PC ports). It’s great to give consumers more options. Delaying the PC release probably means more time for the devs to work on the port (Sony’s PC ports have been mixed on launch, but even the bad ones have gotten fixed pretty quickly afterwards, and it’s been a while since the last one). Delaying PC versions seems like a pretty reasonable compromise.

Sony absolutely did sell consoles directly to consumers. That’s how I got mine lol.

Sony has absolutely no interest in enabling scalpers. They gain nothing, and in fact lose out on revenue because of it themselves. The PS5 initially sold at a loss, with the assumption that buying games, accessories, and subscriptions will turn the whole ecosystem profitable for Sony. Scalpers arent buying subscriptions. They probably aren’t buying games because the digital market makes the supply close to infinite. They probably aren’t buying accessories because the supply was similarly not restricted. So the only thing scalpers are doing is giving Sony a loss, delay the consumer’s ability to buy anything that’s profitable from Sony, then taking more cash out of the hands of consumers that, arguably, might have been used to buy more games/subscriptions/accessories. Sony has absolutely nothing to gain and quite a bit to lose from scalping.

Scalping affects all kinds of industries. It’s only even possible when demand exceeds supply at a given price point. I have no reason whatsoever to believe Sony was purposefully restricting supply (it was in their best interests to produce as many units as possible).

Any further action restricting scalpers would be the responsibility of retailers. Sony can’t just force Target or Wal-Mart to incur additional expenses to start tracking who is buying PS5’s and restricting those. Even when retailers do it, it’s usually a joke to work around. Heck, the minimum-wage employees tasked with enforcing such rules might be the ones doing some scalping to try to supplement their income.

The only way to eliminate scalping is to make it unprofitable. One way of doing that is… Just don’t buy from scalpers. But consumers cannot organize and behave rationally like thaf- the free market is often a downward spiral of bad decisions, and a lot of casual consumers just don’t care about spending a couple hundred dollars more.

The other way is to raise prices. If Sony and Wal-Mart are selling something for $500 and a scalper can flip it on eBay for $900, getting $400… That means that consumers are willing to pay $900 for that item. Perhaps it should have originally sold at retail for closer to $900? But then the narrative would be that Sony was overcharging- that the PS5 was a luxury item for rich people only. Even if it sold out, the stigma would stick for the whole generation (like the PS3).

Sony made a product everyone really wanted and charged less than they could, and you want to blame Sony for actions of all the people between you and them?

You said the experience of building a PC was great (it can be- I’ve built several myself), but aren’t you forgetting about all the shortages, supply machines issues, and scalping that happen within that industry as well? I never saw pictures of cryptofarms with tens or hundreds of PS5’s hooked up. NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD have all received criticism for not doing enough to prevent scalping for various product launches over the past few years- are you bringing the same energy to them?

Nintendo arguably has restricted supply artificially with things like Amibo and there were allegations they did so with the Wii as well. Are you boycotting them?

It’s perfectly fine to just… Not want a PS5. PC’s are good too, and a lot of people have both.

Tough call between the Dualsense and the Dualshocks 1-3.

The Dualsense has great features, but is large enough and bulbous enough that I’m forced to use a full palm grip. That’s good some of the time, but sometimes I like a lighter finger grip that the earlier Dualshocks allowed for. I think of it similarly to claw vs palm grips on mice. A full palm grip on either can get too sweaty over time. The Dualshock 4 is a bulbous mess that fatigues my hands. On all of them, the plastic feels premium and sturdy and really fits well together. Plastic molding is an art, and they are good at it.

I have a few 8BitDo’s and they are all good too. The Pro-2, SN30 Pro, and Ultimate C (their naming conventions are flour of control). A bit cheaper feeling than the Sony offerings, but still pretty good.

The Xbox Series controller is… Fine. The plastic feels cheap, the face buttons feel cheap, it’s too big and requires a palm grip, the R1/L1 buttons feel cheap, the d-pad is one of the worst in history. The analog sticks almost feel great except they’re too tall.

Shout-out to the Steam Deck for feeling phenomenal. Also shout-out to the RetroBit Genesis controllers- they feel really good, but the lack of sticks and fewer buttons than most modern controllers makes it hard to use for modern games.

The JoyCons are awful. Most 3rd party options are better but I still haven’t found one that I really like.

The GameCube and N64 both feel kind of cheap. I think the plastic is a bit thin, and the sticks and buttons rattle around slightly.

What are you talking about?

Sony’s Japan studio’s own library was always gimmicky games that were basically tech demos- Ape Escape was for the Dual Analog controller, LocoRoco for the PSP, Gravity Rush for the Vita, Knack to be a pack-in for the PS4, and games for VR, Move Eye toy, etc. In fact it’s kind of hard to find games they did on their own because they’ve always been mostly a support studio even going back to the PS1’s launch lineup, and they are continuing that. There have been several studios that make original games that started as part of Sony Japan that have been spun off into separate teams too.

I’m struggling to think of many studios Sony has closed. Sony London studios was similar to Japan- mostly just games to go with hardware gimmicks like the EyeToy, SingStar, and Wonderbook. It’s even harder to find studios that Sony has purchased and then closed or turned into a support studio- I guess you could count that Psygnosis was purchased and merged into London studios back in the 90’s, but considering they went 20 years between that merger and closing I doubt there were many Psygnosis devs left there.

A quick search pulls up PixelOpus, a tiny studio Sony formed from 9 college grads with a couple of industry veterans to lead them They released 2 small games and were closed last year.

I don’t mean to be too defensive of Sony- they did close one of their own studios and laid off ~900 people this year. But it’s not really a comparison to Microsoft who now has a long history of buying 3rd party studios, mismanaging them, and closing them.

I’m also confused about your comment about Xbox making more single player games than Sony. First of all… I would expect that to generally be true. It looks like Sony owns 21 studios while Microsoft had 40 as of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. And while a lot hasn’t been announcedwith release dates, we know of a handful of single player games Sony has in the works- Horizon 3, TLOU3, Ghosts of Tsushima 2, and new IP’s from Bend, Housemarq, and BluePoint. Plus Wolverine, and you could argue whether Physint should count or not since that’s a partnership between Kojima and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. If you’re trying to imply that Sony is abandoning single-player games or something that’s pretty far from the truth.

I wonder how many promises Microsoft made to the FCC and other regulators about how their mergers and acquisitions wouldn’t result in layoffs?

Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: EA on-line activation and Origin client software installation and background use required.

I’m good thanks

You can also do the opposite though. The Switch had 0 backwards compatibility. The GameCube, N64, and SNES had 0 backwards compatibility. Hopefully this article is legit.

There was a C-tier PS2 game called Airblade that was basically that

Counterpoint: what if older societies already put in place censorship laws that were so successful, they effectively scrubbed any cultural memory of similar “works”?

Perhaps we should write our rules based on what we want in the future rather than what our ancestors did?

Do Europeans use metrinomes now?

Most baking doesn’t require the precision of weighing. They are rough proportions, not an exact science.

An experienced baker, or really any kind of chef, will learn over time to make minor adjustments based on a lot of stuff. Maybe a bit less sugar, to taste. Maybe a difference in the brand or exact type of ingredient compared to what you’re used to. Maybe it’s a particularly dry day and you need to add more moisture to the dough.

If it’s something I have a lot of experience with I don’t even bother with measuring at all, just eyeball it.

Lemmy simply hasn’t been enough content. I still use Lemmy (obviously, I’m here) but I also supplement with other places.

For example, I used to enjoy the sub for one of my favorite sports teams. A lot of posts tended to be articles from the same handful of news outlets. Now instead of reading through Reddit I just have that website up and routinely check for new articles.

I use the Google News app occasionally. It usually sucks.

I also use Instagram a lot more. I only reluctantly downloaded it and created an account because my wife and a few friends wanted to send me things. Then I used it more when my band released an EP as a way to promote that. For pure entertainment rather than informational purposes, I usually go to Lemmy first and exhaust what is good quickly, then go to Instagram after.

I know it sucks. I don’t like having an app from Meta on my phone. I know it can become an unhealthy habit. But I also drink and eat junk food, so there you go.

Pokemon Sword and Shield.

Rose is trying to move the country off of fossil fuels and onto sustainable green energy. Somehow Gamefreak manages to portray this as being a terrorist and extremist. How dare he try to move Galar away from coal?

I’ve been meaning to re-watch Korra, but I remember even the first time I watched it being a bit disappointed in the “enlightened centrism” where they are trying to paint every conflict as pacifists vs extremists.

I think it’s similar to looking at BioShock 1 and BioShock Infinite. There’s a lot of writers out there who just use politics and ideology as a setting for the conflict rather than actually being central to their message. It’s simply a solid formula to make a villain: take any sort of stance and push it to violent extremes. Comstock is a religious zealot, Andrew Ryan I don’t think ever even mentions spirituality if I remember. Ken Levine’s message in the two games is not about religion, but extremes.

There are benefits. It makes the villains more nuanced and relatable. It gives the protagonist room for doubt and allows for some of the “good” guys to take on antagonistic roles. But Korra also ends up supporting an oppressive regime, and Booker DeWitt gets shoehorned into fights against the people rebelling against his enemy because… Reasons?