Being the market leader, Sony will have a much harder time making larger acquisitions than MS did, and this ABV merger didn’t exactly breeze through.

It’s hard to block mergers based on a company involved being a monopoly if none of the companies involved are monopolies or will become monopolies.

Regulators have to come up with a different set of rules to block “large but not monopolistic mergers” without also just effectively protecting the actual leader in a given industry from competition.

That’s not what “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” means. You just came up with three numbered items to correspond to the fact that there are three words in the phrase.

That applies to open software standards, what does it have to do with buying cash cows?

It has no real meaning anymore. It’s now a phrase people throw around as effectively a meme. You won’t get anything but a wrong answer to this question.

IIRC they did sign the deal that let’s the continue to get releases for a couple more years…

It is ten more years. If Sony isn’t able to come up with a decent alternative in a decade, well, I won’t exactly feel sorry for them.

You have the PSVR2 which is comparably priced but requires a PS5 console. You have the Valve Index which is $1k.

So, it may not be “cheap” but it’s definitely cheaper than some of the alternatives.

Only problem was that I forgot to get a memory card so I couldn’t actually play the games that my coworker gave me, but hey it works!

That’s an interesting take on “works” for a game console. Being able to play games seems like a pretty important piece.

Its alright for people to dislike Dark Souls or not want every game to be a Souls-like. Not too mention that there weren’t really any actual criticism of Dark Souls in the post. Makes the rest of your comment fine of as defensive more than anything.

BG3 is definitely the better roleplaying game.

Only in the context of the specific set-pieces provided within the game though. You have no way to work outside of the very specific rails that BG3 provides for interacting within the game.

If Skyrim is a mile-wide but an inch deep, then BG3 is an inch wide but a mile deep.

Elder Scrolls games don’t really have any direct competition.

Just releasing a slightly improved version of Skyrim would make that game the “ultimate fantasy simulator”.

They are such different games that direct comparisons don’t seem very useful.

Larian is actually a pretty large studio at this point.

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I’m excited for Starfield but buying a Bethesda game on release week is probably a bad idea. Let them get a few patches out first.

Both Skyrim and Fallout 4 were fine at launch. Skyrim definitely had some bugs, but the idea that was an unplayable mess on launch is a made-up thing.

Exactly what I was going to point out. Armored Core has always been a relatively niche series, that has never reviewed that well.

The fact that it’s reviewing in the 80s (at least so far) is a marked improvement over previous entries.

…much cheaper blocks can perform the same task just as well.

We don’t actually know this since no one actually test it, just to be clear.

Unless you are going the “My minivan works just as well as Ferrari for driving to work” angle, which isn’t what the high-end tech segment is really about.

It’s called a PC. All consoles are based on them. Develop for PC first… problem solved.

If the goal is to make game development easier, then PC seems the worst possible option to choose.

Still, casual gamers did think Linux couldn’t game.

The parent comment is right. Most people don’t think about Linux. Ask a ‘casual’ Swtich owner what OS the Switch uses, and their answer is probably going to be pretty close to the answer that a similar Deck user would give.

A few Devs decide to be contraian to the praise and then the media decides it a huge backlash.

They are not even criticizing the game.

The opinions are basically either “Smaller studios won’t be able to replicate BG3” and “Not all games/RPGs need to be as deep and long as BG3”.

Honestly, nowadays it feels more like an indie studio is more of an indicator of quality than AAA. Most of the games I buy and enjoy are indie/small studios.

Larian is about as indie/small as Bethesda was when Skyrim released.