Yeah, I will say I don't understand the value add here. I used to be able to have a webpage in a sidebar with Opera back in like 2009. That version of Opera, imo, is still more satisfying browsing experience to me even than modern browsers.
"EA is one of the largest video game developers and publishers in the world."
Yet, it creates zero value. As an added plus EA is a publicly traded company....
What he meant is that company's MO is buying IPs of successful franchises that are dear to many gamers, release 1-2 crappy games on that IP that is filled to the brim with microtransactions which is not well received by the customers (but makes them money), resulting in the death of that franchise. Rinse and repeat for whatever IPs still remain to be bought.
It creates money, but contributes 0 or negative value for the actual gaming industry, unlike other companies like FromSoft that consistently hits the ball out of the park, pushing the envelope on new franchises and new gaming genres. THAT, is creating value.
>which is not well received by the customers (but makes them money),
stated preference vs revealed preference, or alternately, the people commenting about games on HN or reddit aren't reflective of the average EA customer.
That a heroin addict's "stated preference" is to quit does not mean they secretly want to be a drug addict when their "revealed preference" for something deeply addictive comes around.
That argument might work against f2p lootbox games, but that does not explain the "release 1-2 crappy games on that IP that is filled to the brim with microtransactions" phenomena that's described in the GP. Nobody is like "wow this game doesn't have lootboxes? I guess I'm not going to buy it". If someone is buying such a game, to a first approximation they're buying for the gameplay, not because they're addicted to gambling and are buying it to get their fix.
The point is when microtransactions are involved, the gameplay and overall quality of the game suffers, because they are no longer the priority, the microtransactions become the priority. Decisions will be made by the game developers to increase the spending on microtransactions with less regard to the effect on gameplay, and from the studio perspective, this is fine as long as its profitable. In the short term this could be true (despite bad reviews these games tend to still be profitable), but in the long run this is rarely true as they end up milking the loyal fanbase for as much money as possible with the mtx, until there is no one left to milk and hence the IP dies.
This approach doesn't look to add value to the existing IPs, it looks to drain as much money as it can out of whats left of the IP, before shelving it completely (and then coming up with remakes of the old games after 10 years etc.)
Yeah, it’s like saying Netflix doesn’t create value, or Universal Pictures doesn’t create value. I do not agree with the GP. As far as I can tell, openAI has created very, very negative value as of today, financially.
There are certainly a lot of people who do actually like their games, but a lot of their revenue comes from a combination of aggressive marketting and that old P.T. Barnum adage. There's a lot of new gamers born every minute, and it takes being burned a few times before somebody learns to avoid EA products.
Right, the 15 year old paying for Madden 32 doesn't realize that they could play Madden 08 released on the gamecube and have a nearly identical experience, including literally the same bugs and broken behavior as that game from 20 years ago.
Do people get that? Modern madden has worse oddities. Madden 08 wouldn't allow you to put more than 255 points on the scoreboard. Modern madden will completely break before you can even reach that point.
The animation/behavior systems have the exact same flaw where if you run a play for more than about 20 seconds characters just... shut off. They stop trying to run after the ball carrier even!
The knobs you can tweak on the simulation engine are the same on N64, Xbox 360, Xbox 1 X series X X'er hyper X, the damn Nintendo DS!
No wonder companies are so hostile to emulation. They would rather just resell the same game, sometimes with nicer textures.
No the entire thing is on a UPS and uptime routinely will say something like 800 days. I also have a whole-home generator so I'm hoping it stays on forever ;-)
I also back it up online through IDrive and take frequent local backups so I don't care if the entire thing fails.
I never understood why they let Seagate et al do this game about hard drives. If they offer a warranty, then replace the drive to brand new, and shove the recertified, fixed whatever bullshit up your wahzoo.
Noone is gonna give you some groundbreaking tech for your electronic gadget.... As IBM showed when they created the Cell for Sony and then gave almost the same tech to Microsoft :D.
I don’t think they ever claimed that. Every time Mark Cerny discusses PS hardware he always mentions that it’s a collaboration, so whatever works for AMD they can use on their own GPUs, even for other clients.
The companies wouldn't have this specific data if it wasn't for the age verification laws. Companies also work to amass as much private data as possible about their users without any influence from government and are often not good stewards of it.
Let's also not forget that companies like Discord often support and work with governments on these kind of laws because they prefer a consolidated regulatory structure and it has the added benefit of making life more difficult for smaller competitors that may enter the space.
And paying money to software vendors to bundle Chrome with "Set Chrome as default browser" ticked by default. This is exactly the same thing all the malware browsers and toolbars did in the time period too.
Make the fucking old and ugly browser interface customizable. And expose this to webpages, so banks could force you to use the default view.
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