From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


If there were more people still paying attention to the newsgroup I'd be making some joke about staying up late for football instead.

Play:
--=--

Turbo Boost Racing (PS5) - Hah. The only thing funnier than a PS5 game
that's only 200 MB on the disc is one that's pretty well unplayable.
It's clear this game is really intended for online (or local)
multiplayer from the way that it's all twitchy and as much up to chance
as it is to skill. It's not a racing simulation, it's a racing party
game. That's okay and that's perfectly valid, but it's also not what I
want out of a racing game. At least the light-up steering wheel
peripherals are a laugh.

Persona Q (3DS) - Almost done with the first floor of the tutorial
dungeon. I wish that the slow pace were tied to the narrative and the relationship building like it is in the actual Persona games, but it's
obvious that this particular story is meant to occur after all these relationships have been built. I don't recall that it was so tiring to
draw the map on the touch screen back when the Etrian games were new
some *20* years ago, to say nothing of the eystrain that goes into
bouncing your view up and down between the two screens. I think where
I'm landing is that I really wanted this game to more closely line up
with my memory of how nice the Etrian games were when I first
experienced them, and it's clear that this format really hasn't aged all
that well.

Want:
--=--

My Taki Udon SuperStation - Tantalisingly close to me now. It cleared
customs just before the US bank holiday and should be here any time this
week. This is the consolised FPGA system known to slightly more sane
people as the MiSTer, only with some controller ports and an optical
drive already attached. Either I have the real systems ready to go or I
have other alternatives for playing any games this thing could provide,
so my most likely use case here is just to set it up as a permanent Sega Saturn substitute.

Bin:
-==-

Game shopping - So Sony announced that they won't make any more game
discs past 2028. Games previously released on disc can be reprinted and reissued at great expense at the option of the original publisher, but
all new games for Sony systems past the cutoff will be digital-only. And
the way they manage that data means that those games will never, ever be converted for physical release. I'm not going to pretend that I'm representative of the games market, as Sony is applying some defensible
(if mercenary) maths to their calculation around ending physical media.
But what this amounts to is that Sony has decided only to chase the top
70 percent of the market, which is twenty-or-so multiplayer games that
never benefitted from a physical disc and earned the lion's share of the licence fee for the platform owner. That means they looked at the money
that guys like me were spending and decided that they could do without
it. I don't have any fear of missing out because I have a deep and
robust backlog of games I haven't played much, which was only possible
because I bought the physical media for each of those game releases. So
I have plenty to play, and soon will have nothing to buy.

-KKC, who had a Yank bank holiday weekend and still didn't get much done.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

If there were more people still paying attention to the newsgroup I'd be making some joke about staying up late for football instead.

The only real allowance for that having been that pubs were allowed to
open until 5am says so much about England, for better or worse.

Play:

Outrun 2006 (PSP) - for some reason, when I play the Outrun 2 SP mode
(or equivalent) I have this habit of either going for goal A or E, so
the easiest or hardest. I blame the game for literally pointing to the
initial left fork and saying "EASY", as intuitively this seems like a
hint that you pick all-left for easy and all-right for hard. Which...
I suppose you do. So it might be fair to say that this is not one of
my more successfully developed arguments. Anyway, this is mostly a
roundabout way of saying that I really pushed the boat out this time,
and did the other goals for once.

Minecraft (Android) - as much as I wanted to check out some additions
from recent updates on this (which I haven't really done lately), I
soon abandoned that idea as even just the mundane act of partially
upgrading my base's farm from wheat to potatoes was a stark reminder
of how much you have to fight the awkward touch controls on this
version. It's hard to describe how this combination feels - great to
have full Minecraft on a phone, yet rubbish to have these controls and
such high battery usage (as understandable as that is). I can see why
I haven't played this version too much, at any rate.

Want:

To play some of the Outrun 2 tracks again, another thing I rarely seem
to do (unless you count Flagman). Or maybe actual Outrun 2, for that
matter.

Bin:

Nothing, though I do share some concern about this business:

Game shopping - So Sony announced that they won't make any more game
discs past 2028. Games previously released on disc can be reprinted and reissued at great expense at the option of the original publisher, but
all new games for Sony systems past the cutoff will be digital-only.

Personally, I'm torn on how to feel about this one. Obviously I have
some great memories of playing physical games of all kinds, a fair bit
of that having been on PS1/PS2/PS3. But I went basically download-only
on consoles sooner than most, I think, and arguably sooner than it
made much sense to (it was quite a PITA to start making the switch on
PS3 with how poorly it handled installs and updates, and the pricing
on PSN was often ridiculously high). So from my twisted perspective
there's a sense in which it's almost a surprise that discs getting
dropped hasn't already happened. But if new game availability on
physical media is ending in general, that does still feel a bit
unsettling after so many years of tapes and carts and discs.

But what this amounts to is that Sony has decided only to chase the top
70 percent of the market

My hunch is that they hope most people will switch if it becomes the
only way new games are released. Some may stubbornly cling to the old
ways, but clearly I can't imagine what that would be like, he said
posting to Usenet from Emacs running in a terminal on a Pi 400. :-)

-Rus.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

In article <ozV2S.108810$zZu2.91646@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

Bin:

Nothing, though I do share some concern about this business:

Game shopping - So Sony announced that they won't make any more game
discs past 2028. Games previously released on disc can be reprinted and
reissued at great expense at the option of the original publisher, but
all new games for Sony systems past the cutoff will be digital-only.

Personally, I'm torn on how to feel about this one. Obviously I have
some great memories of playing physical games of all kinds, a fair bit
of that having been on PS1/PS2/PS3. But I went basically download-only
on consoles sooner than most, I think, and arguably sooner than it
made much sense to (it was quite a PITA to start making the switch on
PS3 with how poorly it handled installs and updates, and the pricing
on PSN was often ridiculously high). So from my twisted perspective
there's a sense in which it's almost a surprise that discs getting
dropped hasn't already happened. But if new game availability on
physical media is ending in general, that does still feel a bit
unsettling after so many years of tapes and carts and discs.

It's more than unsettling. It's clearly exploitative. I don't watch a
lot of Youtube commentary, but the one guy I do like to keep up with is
making the point I like to bring up, in that eliminating physical media destroys the secondhand market. That also makes the barrier for entry
into the hobby higher because there's no functional way to get bargains
or see what was previously popular. You will only buy what the big
companies sell and when they want to sell them, and I'm not willing to
live with that.

But what this amounts to is that Sony has decided only to chase the top
70 percent of the market

My hunch is that they hope most people will switch if it becomes the
only way new games are released. Some may stubbornly cling to the old
ways, but clearly I can't imagine what that would be like, he said
posting to Usenet from Emacs running in a terminal on a Pi 400. :-)

I'm sort of hoping that the exact opposite happens. I'm imagining a
world where all of the used and retro prices go up, but then those
stores find a way to thrive by incentivising trade-ins. It's unlikely,
but I hope for a resurgence not unlike what we have with vinyl records
now.

There is sort of a weird analogue to be observed with music, in that you
can actually manufacture a record player now without any network
connectivity or licence fees, and reliably assume that any vinyl record pressing from the last century will still play on it. There is no
similar avenue for a PS3 reprint to be enjoyed because there's no modern system that will play PS3 games without all that lawyer-ing going on
behind the scenes. If I were a buffoon I'd start dreaming about
open-source gaming platforms supported by big development shops, but
that's likely a bridge too far into fantasy land.

-KKC, who needs some breakfast.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

I'm imagining a world where all of the used and retro prices go up,
but then those stores find a way to thrive by incentivising
trade-ins. It's unlikely, but I hope for a resurgence not unlike
what we have with vinyl records now.

As much as I might have previously joked about physical bits having a
warmth to them that you just don't get with downloads, I do think
there's a good chance of some sort of revival eventually. Maybe the
trick would be to present it as buying your backlog in physical form,
so that (like modern vinyl?) the publishers don't have to worry too
much about customers actually making use of the disc. :-)

-Rus.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

In article <W5z3S.63017$oTs8.32319@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

I'm imagining a world where all of the used and retro prices go up,
but then those stores find a way to thrive by incentivising
trade-ins. It's unlikely, but I hope for a resurgence not unlike
what we have with vinyl records now.

As much as I might have previously joked about physical bits having a
warmth to them that you just don't get with downloads, I do think
there's a good chance of some sort of revival eventually. Maybe the
trick would be to present it as buying your backlog in physical form,
so that (like modern vinyl?) the publishers don't have to worry too
much about customers actually making use of the disc. :-)

That leads you to the other danger though. Limited Run is the American physical publisher that ripped me off not long ago, and who have been
caught more than once shipping unusuable product. Megadrive cartridges
with dodgy electrical connections, 3DO games that are just burnt CD-R
discs and not properly stamped CDs, Switch cartridges with no code on
them at all. What we need to do is not create more companies like
Limited Run, who presume that their market is collectors who won't check
the quality of the physical media.

Incidentally I did give them a chance to make good on their mistake, but
they refused my request for a refund on the reasoning that having
shipped me the wrong item still counted as a legitimate purchase. So
I'll continue to defame Limited Run in public as long as they haven't
made good on that.

-KKC, who should have had a stronger drink with dinner.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2