Ghost_MH

In Fortnite's case, I don't know how long Sony could get away with eating the bad press. That is especially true with new consoles on the horizon. We probably would have seen more Epic "mistakes" like enabling crossplay here and there; especially toward the ramp up of PS5 pre-orders. That's why Sony is stupid for not getting something out of allowing crossplay. Sony thought they were negotiating from a stronger position than they actually were and that always comes back to bite you. I doubt Epic wins their lawsuit against Apple in the US. If be amazed if it does. I'm the EU? That's a completely different question. The EU has always been more hostile toward perceived monopolies than the US has been in decades.

Is CoD and GTA bigger than Fortnite on Playstation? I know CoD is HUGELY popular on PC and sometimes gives Fortnite a run for its money when you include PC gamers. I'm also pretty sure Fortnite is bigger than GTA no matter the platform. Fortnite is a $9b franchise and nearly half of that money comes from Playstation players. That's likely why Epic was willing to push so much Playstation branding. That's also likely why Sony was both willing to cave on crossplay and then invested in Epic, themselves. Sony is taking their 30% cut, so that's a lot of money no matter what. I mean, @ThreePi is right. All business negotiations are slimy. I don't think Epic was threatening to cut they're UE license. Were they threatening to increase costs/cut Sony's discount? Absolutely. In the end Sony got nothing but bad press and some shares of Epic stock. That's all on Sony. They should have gotten something out of that deal. Instead ask we got was a limp wristed press release that they were changing their stance with Fortnite as the beta.

Epic was right here. The vast majority of gamers minus some weird Sony fanboys were clamoring for crossplay. There was no scenario that Epic wouldn't get crossplay working on Playstation because Sony could only cover their ears and ignore they're customers for so long. Epic was offering to tightly integrate Sony's tools into UE, brand they're own E3 presentation was a PlayStation event, and make sure to have everyone know Sony was the hero here. Instead, Sony came out looking like they were dragged into allowing crossplay and then followed that up by invested hundreds of millions in Epic. Sony is really bad at negotiations it seems.

Because audio encoding still kind of sucks because most people just don't care. Just think about how great phone screens have gotten while phone speakers are still pretty shitty.

I'm down...

It's probably safe to assume Ethereum's growth is currently tied to the explosive meme growth of NFTs.

Not really his son. More like his great great great great great grandson.

There is 0% chance Apple doesn't know how much they made for their commission from the App Store or how much it costs to run/support. If they don't have that information readily available then it's because they've purposefully decided obfuscating the data is in their best interests.

Someone correct me if my brain done broke here, but... He's a demon in search of revenge against Bi Han and the rest of the Lin Kuei who murdered everyone in Scorpion's own clan, similar to what happened in the movies. In the games, if I remember my Mortal Kombat well, Scorpion basically sells his soul to a demon necromancer in order to get his revenge on Subzero. In exchange for life as a demon asking revenge, he'll help conquer Earthrealm. In this movie we get Bi Han killing off the Shirai Ryu and Scorpion as a resurrected demon, but we never delve into the stuff with Quan Chi. I would assume a sequel would be about Scorpion working for Quan Chi to conquer Earthrealm now that he's gotten his revenge.

A source for Steam's most favored nation clause? Lawsuit claims Valve is abusing its market dominance to keep prices high | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM The lawsuit also names developers including Ubisoft, CD Projekt, and Devolver Digital. Steam's rules only apply once the game is up on Steam. If a dev is taking pre-orders on their own sites prior to its launch on Steam then that wouldn't run counter to Steam contracts. Humble's lawsuit against Steam is a little more nuanced. They're arguing that even Steam keys should be allowed to be sold at a lower price than on Steam, itself. That is, Steam allows devs to sell they're own Steam keys without Valve's 30% cut on there own site. However, they aren't allowed to cut they're prices by, say, 20% to entice gamers to their own storefront even if their game doesn't use Steam for anything more than distribution. That leaves 90% of gamers going directly to Steam since it's already they're platform of choice rather than go to a dev's own site or service to pick up games. Like I said, it's more nuanced than the suit from earlier this year. Humble Bundle creator brings antitrust lawsuit against Valve over Steam ARSTECHNICA.COM "At bottom, Valve’s scheme imposes a massive tax on the PC Desktop Gaming industry."

Everyone should do this, at least with voice chat between people that aren't members of each other's friends list.

Damn the subway scene was brutal. That was a great, tight eight episodes. I'm curious to see how they go for the next two seasons and where/how they diverge from the comics. This was a good interview... Invincible: Robert Kirkman Dives Into Season 1's Emotional Roller Coaster and Finale WWW.CBR.COM Invincible creator Robert Kirkman talks the series' changes to the comic book series, the story's real stakes and the scene that brought him to tears.

What? He died a few weeks back? How did I miss this? I love his work.

Free for us, but 30% for developers. They weren't doing it for the goodness of their hearts, but yes, it was a major offer back when they first started. I mean, I've had my Steam account since 2005. I remember what the 80s and 90s were like for PC gaming. It sucked, but those days are behind us. Bandwidth and cloud storage is a commodity and Valve is doing nobody but themselves any favors by blocking games from being discounted on other storefronts, even if it has nothing to do with Steam or any Steam keys. Either way, I'm trying to argue why complaining about Sony and Microsoft's 30% against Valve's is silly because the console manufacturers offer more to consumers and developers alike. They sell hardware at a loss to create a market for selling games in an environment where not everyone is interested in PC gaming. Epic has their own PC and Android storefronts and even for them, the VAST majority of they're money comes from sales on Playstation and Xbox. I've never owned an Xbox and the last time I gave Sony money was for Horizon Zero Dawn on EGS, but before that it was for the PS2. I have no horse in this race, but the difference in what they offer to consumers is plain as day and makes the argument for their 30% cut FAR easier than Valve.

Steam has a more feature rich storefront, but they also aren't dealing with the manufacturing and distribution challenges the console manufacturers are. The gulf between them in vast. Valve doesn't even sell their Index in retail and even then, they're only moving headsets numbered in the low 100,000 a year. Sony is moving more hardware than that every month, at a loss. Valve doesn't do more for consumers and developers than Sony and Microsoft do. Valve isn't selling graphics cards at a loss to get you playing games on PC. The service they provide is very different than the one the console manufacturers do. Do I like the service console manufacturers offer? Not entirely. That's why I do the vast majority of my gaming on PC. However, I can plainly see that they're doing a lot more to make games accessible to folks than Valve is.

They didn't really kill off anyone that people care about. Nobody cares about Nitara. Kung Lao and Kabal will be back as their zombie selves, like in the games. Kano will be back, but with a cybernetic eyeball. Mileena is already a clone anyway, so we can just get another one pop up.

The console manufacturers have an easier argument against antitrust than Steam. They'll argue that they sell hardware at a loss to make up for it on the backend with their 30% cut that they use to fund R&D for their next console while doing everything else Steam does. There's no way anyone can argue that Steam does more than any console manufacturer does. Maybe Nintendo normally selling their hardware at profit eats into that argument, but Nintendo likely gets away with saying that their market strategy is focused on exclusives, including their own self published games as their primary market strategy. Consoles are just much more complicated beasts, especially once we bring retail into the mix. Even Nintendo can argue that they try to keep retail and digital prices in parity to appease retailers and that cutting into their profits there makes the already stained relationship with retailers worse. Either way, Sony can very easily argue in court that the PS5 will have to be sold for like $200 more if they don't continue getting their larger cut and that the market can't sustain a console that expensive. Valve can make no such argument in defense of their 30%. That's why the Humble guy is suing Valve. He's arguing that Valve's most favored nation clause puts devs in a bind. If you're on Steam, you need to sell the game the same price everywhere else. You can't just sell it for $5 cheaper on Microsoft's or Epic's storefronts. I mean, you could go exclusive to EGS but there's a sizable chunk of the market that will skip even games they want just because it's not on their favored storefront. Steam's most favored nation clause does nothing but hinder competition and hurt developers according the the Humble guy's lawsuit. Didn't someone else sure Valve for this very same reason earlier this year or maybe last year?

Netflix has been on a roll with animated features. I know they only bought distribution for The Mitchells vs the Machines, but it's still a great get for them. It's still only April and they've already released this and the not as great but still really good Arlo the Alligator Boy. They still have Lin Manuel Miranda's Vivo coming out in June, Henry Selick's Wendell and the Wild, and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, among others. I remember reading about Netflix betting big on Animation and it shows.

It's out now on Netflix and it's brilliant. It's also legitimately hilarious... Also, also, it's gorgeous. The movie is currently sporting a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021) WWW.ROTTENTOMATOES.COM Young Katie Mitchell embarks on a road trip with her proud parents, younger brother and beloved dog to start her first year at film school. But their plans to bond as a family soon get interrupted when the... Also, also, also, how was there no other thread for this? Beck Bennett and Fred Armisen as a couple of glitchy robots is the best.

I want both as well, but Americans and the media at large can't handle talking about both at the same time. Until now, DC has been getting the lion's share if the attention here. Dems should just shelve DC statehood talks until they have a more solid majority. Until then, they should be talking about Puerto Rico statehood. There are no good excuses there. We're talking about 3.3m Americans with zero representation. Yes, the GOP is going to come up with any excuse they can for any new states, but I'd rather see Manchin explain why those millions of Americans don't deserve a voice.

Because it's DC and it's specifically carved out as not a state. Could that be fixed by just carving out all the not federal land and making that a state? Yes, but that's more nuance than the American people can handle. I'll say this again, but Puerto Rico should be the priority for statehood. There are nearly five times we many disenfranchised Americans on the island.

It was something like that and that's why Shapiro is defending Duggar there, based on the date of that tweet. You know, just in case anyone sees that tweet and thinks Shapiro is going to be feeling any regret here.

A lot of these issues may be COVID related. I do believe this series was supposed to air after Black Widow where we may be getting a more proper introduction to Val. Knowing what kind of person she is would really change how we view her introduction here and what exact Walker signed up for.

He's a OK dude that has the occasional roid rage...which is really bad considering he's also a super soldier. Like nine times out of ten, he's probably going to make the right choice, and then that tenth time, he's yeeting children off a cliff to get answers from a terrorist. If that's where they keep him, he'll be an interesting addition to the MCU. With all the super powered people here, the fact that we don't have more people with anger or other personality issues is a glaring hole.

It's not arbitrary. Ownership gives you control over the item until that time when you no longer own it. You're arguing that there's no difference between having all the Beetles' albums you bought on iTunes versus owning publishing rights to their catalog. They aren't valued the same and they shouldn't be. What's the difference between renting a house and owning a house if you get to live in it either way? I'm not saying digital goods can't be highly valuable. Stocks are basically just digital goods that represent ownership of something else, so this isn't some new theory. There's just a fundamental difference between ownership of an original and buying a copy of something. These NFTs are mostly scams because the artists aren't usually giving up rights copyrights to their images. Cool for those artists that are, but not for anyone that spent $500k on a copy of the disaster girl meme when disaster girl gets to keep ownership of the copyright and a portion of the profits of future sales of the copy they just sold.