crispy4000

I thought the online in Smash 4 was pretty bad. A huge improvement over Brawl, but trash nonetheless. How does the online feel compared to 4?

Sounds at least as bad as Smash 4's, which wasn't great. Congrats Nintendo, you lost a subscription sale. ... I'm sad to also say that Icons died. Got review bombed by 4chan and was subsequently shut down. That's a real shame, because even though it had some input lag (apparently Ultimate's is as bad or worse!), the rollback netcode was legit. Their 3-player free for all matchmaking was awesome for the short while it was a thing. Even with 3 players it still felt better than any Smash game I've played online in any circumstance. All this makes me sad that I even enjoy these games. I just want to have fun playing platform fighters online. Nintendo seemingly doesn't give a shit about that, and the fanbase isn't willing to support games that actually do it right.

I'll install the Epic launcher for free Subnautica, and some other free games down the road. Like Uplay and Origin, I'll likely never purchase anything for the client unless the deal was insane or part of a good bundle.

You first need to explain why historical lows aren’t more relevant to this discussion than today's prices. If this is about finding deals and saving money, it only makes sense to look at the former instead. If Amazon sells a console game for $30 today when it was $25 on sale last week on PC, that doesn’t equate to console games being cheaper. Instead, we should be comparing historical lows, price depreciation over time, quality and frequency of bundles, etc. Even used game pricing, if we truly want to get into the nitty gritty.

I can already tell most of those comparisons you just posted are botched because you're not taking into account historical lows. Use isthereanydeal.com. Shadow of the Tomb Raider gave that away immediately. That game got a TON of attention for dropping to $30 on Steam the month of release, where it was first cut to that price. With all its storefronts, PC gaming does require shopping around a bit for a good deal. But it's really not that hard with that site, Enhanced Steam, r/gamedeals, etc. With off-steam platforms too, several of those comparisons are also fucked. Historical low for AC Odyssey is $25 on Uplay. Fifa 19 has been $27. Etc. ... Yes, there are games like SC6 which get Black Friday sales that beat out PC. Or Monster Hunter World, which saw a late PC port. But again, those are exceptions, not the norm. From time to time, console games will be cut to cheaper lows. But not generally.

I disagree with almost everything you've said about pricing. Steam keys are consistently the cheapest way to buy most games. There tons of reputable Steam key storefronts undercutting Valve these days. Purchasing console games on Best Buy/Amazon etc typically won't match those lows unless you're buying used-physical (and even that's not always the case). Indies too, where the price differential is even more obvious. As for PC games exclusive to different launchers, they also tend to slash their prices more dramatically than on consoles. You're still going to pay less going through those launchers than resorting to Best Buy and the like. Plus you can still add shortcuts to Steam for big picture mode, library management, etc. Not perfectly ideal, but still cheap. The biggest exceptions I find are games that launch on consoles first, PC later. Those do tend to drop in price sooner on consoles, which is logical. For pretty much everything else, buying games on PC is the cheapest route, and Valve's key distribution policies have driven most of that. ... Almost forgot about selling trading cards. If you really want deeper discounts, it's easy enough to generate them yourself. If I'm buying anything on Steam itself, I'm using stored up wallet credit.

My copy might not even arrive until next Friday. But that's okay, life is busy this week, and I've got stuff to catch up on beforehand.

All these competing PC launchers are mostly an inconvenience IMO. It's terrible and I hate it, but at least I can still launch outside games from Valve's client with many of Steam's perks (big picture mode, native DS4 support). I think the problem will always be manageable, unless Microsoft gets too heavy handed in the next Windows revision. With Epic entering the ring, I think we'll see many indies launch there first, then later on Steam with a higher than expected price tag. Hopefully we'll see independent entities like Humble, Fanatical and GMG offering big cuts in these cases, because I think Steam sales will only get worse from here out. The bigger shit is coming later. Competing storefronts won't hold a candle to the future we're heading into with subscription services. Jumping from one of a dozen popular gaming subscriptions will be end result if publishers have their way. Juggling your auto-renewal settings across those services would be an infinitely greater pain in the ass. The gaming industry should take heed from where TV/film subscriptions have gone as of late... but it won't. At least on the PC, the free market should keep doing its thing for a while. I definitely prefer the current system of owning all my games and paying firesale prices for most of them. My hope is that more launchers won't change that. Big picture mode, built-in PS4 controller support, earning money back playing games (trading cards), gaming the marketplace, good game organization features, 3rd party outlets can compete directly with Valve by selling their own Steam keys, etc. It's led to PC games typically being much cheaper than their console counterparts, and opened avenues to insane bundle deals. As someone who hates the idea of portions of my library being subscription walled (in multiplayer, or otherwise), its been a refuge from the rest of the industry's bullshit. That's somewhat ironic considering that there's a layer of persistent DRM underpinning the thing. Steam isn't perfect. Curation efforts are misguided, forum communities are toxic, etc. But the positives still hugely outweigh the negatives.

Nice. Thread keeps on giving!

Apparently it's not even new hardware, but something that could already be bought (for less) off AliExpress.

Far Cry 5 just came out this year. Maybe it's an expansion, or something like Primal?

Best in the biz. Can't wait to see what the place looks like.

More Yooka Laylee. I'm still of the mindset that it's a much better game than people give it credit for, but the 3rd level was sort of weak. Just a bit too flat for my tastes, though the tounge parts had some verticality. Onto the casino level now.

There are already a few programs like that, but they mostly only work with installed games. That's always been the catch-22 for me. In steam, I add Origin/Uplay/etc games as shortcuts to their launchers. Really cumbersome. Steam does have the best tagging system at the moment, and its Big Picture Mode. It'll stay my primary launcher until something better comes along.

True, but you're also leaving money on the table by not being on Steam. ... With Fortnite's popularity, of course Epic would try this. They've got a better shot competing with Valve than anyone else would.

I'm wondering what the industry could possibly do at this point to self regulate. Even if the console and phone OS companies banded together to require disclosure of odds and parental warnings, they'll still have to convince the likes of EA/Activision-Blizzard/etc to reverse course on their PC clients. Whatever this is needs to be comprehensive. I could see future scenario where instead of selling boxes directly, publishers start sell loot pack modifiers to temporarily increase crate odds, or even the frequency they drop.

I was one of those hold outs that bought Zelda for Wii U. Having owned a Switch for a while now (in addition to PC/PS4), that hasn't been my experience. Xenoblade 2 and Mario & Rabbids did the heavy lifting for me. I could have bought the Switch for those two games alone with how much I enjoyed them. Odyssey is good, but I love having console-grade RPGs and strat games on the go. I sunk in far too many hours. I've got Octopath Traveller and Mario Tennis Aces to play next. Torna - the stand-alone X2 expansion - as well. I've heard good things about Splatoon 2 (and its DLC) and want to get on that too eventually. There's a fair chance that Yoshi won't end up as good as any of those. I don't blame you for waiting for a revision, but if you do pick one up, don't ignore the current library. There's some gems there.

Explain.

Not Microsoft publishing? They must have already had a deal in place.

Must have been a limited release then. For those that did grab it, the download expires tomorrow afternoon.

Bump to remind. Download now if you want it.

Next month, we'll do it.

I'm thinking the PS1 might be our next classic console voting thread. This is just too much of a disappointment.

Only the first of those is lacking right now. I don't really like Steam's desktop UI for library management. There's so much right clicking to get things done, I wish there was more drag and drop. But tags are also the best way I can think of to manage 500+ game libraries. I mainly want Valve to make it more sleek.