crispy4000

It's one thing to shoehorn some gimmick into an existing thing. The larger issue with VR at current is that it isn't a great fit for modern game design. That could also be its strength, if enough killer apps stuck to what's good about VR interfaces versus what's not. That's proved to be a tough nut to crack. Perhaps. I could see its enterprise use in simulation/training/artistic environments for some fields. And of course, gaming, while its making devs money. But the effort Meta has gone to try and portray it as a mainstream productivity and hangout tool is pretty far reaching at this point, IMO.

Most recently, 20XX. The final boss gives you several rounds of guaranteed, unavoidable damage. That's absolutely dismal design for an action rogue-like.

I brought these up more to show how 'the future of' trends could prematurely die or morph into something less exciting. They aren't directly relatable to VR in terms of user experience. Different products. If VR loses traction in the here in now, in its 2nd/3rd generation of consumer products, I think there's a much greater challenge for it to be enticing by the time headsets could be made more affordable.

Building a more comfortable, capable headset doesn't change the fundamental weaknesses of VR as an immersive interface. Namely, walking in first person being substituted with some other control method divorced from reality, or you being limited by the physical space of a play area. Your guess is as good as mine if we ever see VR treadmills aimed at addressing this hit mass adoption. Or if people will generally prefer to play games that way as opposed to sitting their ass on the couch. Either way, I don't see these headsets & hand controllers doing it by themselves. I do question if it really is the future. It wasn't too long ago that we were being sold 3D televisions with fancy viewing glasses. The technology works. No one gives a shit anymore. We're past its moment. VR can't fall into that trap if its going to stick around in a meaningful way. Even motion controls only stayed mainstream in games for as long as they were fashionable. (ie: When's the last time you swung around a joycon?) One thing's for sure, the pricing of these devices isn't making a good case for VR today. Neither is Meta's stock falling off a cliff.

VR games aren’t currently limited by the comfort of the headset.

Yeah, the concept of VR has been of interest for decades. Meta’s trying (unsuccessfully) to capitalize on that. On the gaming side, I really don’t think it’s proven itself as the future people initially billed it to be. Everyone knows the limitations now, there’s less to dream about with it considering.

In what way? Surely not the pricing.

VR always felt to me like it tried to fill the motion-gaming hole that the Wii left, but focused on the (rich) individual instead of family fun. I'm still somewhat shocked they've kept enough enthusiast interest to keep the experiment going this long, yet so out of reach of the mainstream.

Way too pricey for a gimmick.

I think you can blame that more on the reporting, and Sony’s naming scheme being so non specific. It’s impossible to know what just “PS+“ refers to anymore without specifying. I doubt we’re ever going to get Extra/Premium numbers by themselves.

Sony doesn’t distinguish between sub tiers or types in their quarterly reports. PS Now would have been included in their gaming “Network Services” category previously. Their revenue from the segment as a whole is up by ~10 billion yen from the previous quarter. Don’t know if they’ve said anything about it meeting expectations or not though.

How else could revenue per subscriber increase if they lost users? Numbers from their quarterly report are here if you want the full breakdown. Sony calls the segment “Network Services.” Sony Q2 2022 earnings results saw PS Plus subscribers down, but revenue up WWW.SHACKNEWS.COM Since the PlayStation Plus revamp, Sony lost nearly two million subscribers, but revenue from PS Plus is the best its been in over a year.

Smallest batch in a while. All recent freebies and Amazon stuff. Humble Choice sucks this month.

Booted up Ori and Will of the Wisps. No surprise, it looks to be amazing. Tried some Hot Wheels Unleashed as well. It's competent, but feels like it needs something more to it. Maybe that's just because the AI at the start is completely braindead. I'll try to wrap up Ghostbusters and LM Dark Moon this month as well. Missed the Halloween boat with them.

Played a bit of Ghost Song's recent demo, surprisingly it didn't hook me. Got a Tian Ding demo as well from Next Fest but haven't tried it yet. Somerville honestly looks like the standout here, even with Pentiment and Vampire Survivors. Edit: This post aged poorly. Lots of neat stuff leaving: Art of Rally (Cloud, Console, and PC) Fae Tactics (Cloud, Console, and PC) Next Space Rebel (Cloud, Console, and PC) One Step from Eden (Cloud, Console, and PC) Supraland (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Not surprising given the money cow CoD is, and how they can still leverage it as a Games Pass boon. On that note: Phil Spencer Would 'Love' to See Call of Duty on Switch - IGN WWW.IGN.COM After a lot of back and forth between Xbox and Sony about Call of Duty's availability on other systems should the upcoming Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard go through, Xbox head Phil Spencer has just tossed another piece of hardware into the mix: the Nintendo Switch.

Dread’s final hours put it over the top for me. It’s not my favorite Metroid, but it’s an expansion of what went right in Zero Mission. That’s hard to beat. With Psyconuats 2, it just felt like Schaffer got a bit too overzealous about his writing carrying the game.

GOG.com WWW.GOG.COM Download the best classic and new games on Windows, Mac & Linux. A vast selection of titles, DRM-free, with free goodies and 30-day money-back guarantee. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Collection on GOG.com WWW.GOG.COM JAZZ IS BACK! The nefarious turtle, Devan Shell, has built a time machine as part of a d Hell yes. I played a ton of a demo of this back in the 90's.

Not gonna lie, I still use siftd to keep up with things. Surprised it hasn't died yet.

Nope, but that's cool.

So there's this gaming news post I'd like to share. However, it's a twitter video with a one sentence summary that doesn't give it proper context. Not going to bother screen capping it.

Eh, I'd put Metroid Dread a notch higher of what games I've played. Psychonauts 2 is truly great, but I had my issues with it by the end.

It'll just hemorrhage users if his edicts cause enough friction. User engagement is ultimately what every social media platform has to answer to. Playing devil's advocate... If Reddit teaches us anything, we're more prone to handwave cesspools when they're managed by collectives and hiveminds. People like Musk and Zuckerberg being the face of their shitholes causes more people to question them and pressure change.