I would agree with your last statement, but in the case of Xbox i think it is by design. They already excitedly talk about windows handhelds being the future and its because the console market has almost always been a loss, even back to the Sega selling massively under production cost to try and take ground from Nintendo. Games were always what made the profit.

In the case of Xbox, their business model for a long time has been moving to a live service streaming model, i don’t think they want to be in the console market. If they can move their app on all kinds of devices, they can skip the investment of the console and instead focus on what the real profit driver was all along.

The long dark is one of my favorite games of all time and I have to say, I don’t know how you can say just the cover photo looks similar. Here are some very similar things I noticed:

1. You have a picture of an in game menu that looks exactly like TLD
2. The way the flare and torches are handled is wildly similar, especially in your video where you are holding off wolves.
3. That frozen body with snow all over it? It literally looks like it was copy pasted from TLD.
4. You mention that there will be two modes, story and endless, very much like TLD too. I would wave that as a coincidence if everything else, including the name of the game, feel like a rip of TLD.

I can’t just look at these things and think it is a coincidence, they are all so similar.

I would have been more likely to wishlist and had less of a negative reaction if you:

1. Didn’t act like there is nothing similar between the games and owned up to the fact you were inspired by such a masterpiece of a game.
2. Actually was bringing something new to the table here, most of your trailer is showing everything I know from TLD, if you have new proprietary systems and ideas, like cooking why aren’t you showcasing them? All I see is an animation for cooking.
3. The game looks really rough at the moment, and I respect the ambition. However, when I seen 2024 as the release date and this is what there is on show, I can only assume the rest of the game lacks the same polish.

I do wish you luck, but in my opinion as someone from your likely target audience I would not purchase your game.

I’ve been saying this to my friends for a good while. I would take it even further than that too.

My prediction has long been that since they were thinking about getting rid of it anyway, and they are shifting focus, that what you predict will happen and that eventually either Xbox will not exist or the Xbox of the future will just be a streaming dongle like the firestick. Just a little app store with controller and you stream all of your games over wifi.

They sell it for dirt cheap and no legit console can compete for basic gaming. Sony will still have a hardcore market, especially with vr and their first party titles, but most of the casual crowd would buy a 50-100 dollar “Xbox” so fast and just pay for game pass. It is a no brainer for Xbox, consoles are always a major loss of money and they don’t want physical media anyway.

Edit: “We have a different vision for the future of gaming. A future where players have a unified experience across devices. A future where players can easily discover a vast array of games with a diverse spectrum of business models. A future where more creators are empowered to realize their creative vision, reach a global audience, unite their communities, and succeed commercially. A future where every screen is an Xbox.”

While they announced new hardware they were real hush on it, just that it would shake up the industry. While I’m sure they would say that regardless and a lot of people say a handheld, either way I don’t think it’s just a console. A handheld would allow exactly my prediction to be possible but it wouldn’t be as cheap.

That quote feels like it nails exactly what I expected though. It might be some time but I do think it will happen and their whole narrative seems to be moving away from Xbox being a console.

The issue with ET, just like today, was circumstance. A bunch of suits came to a programmer with almost no time to develop the game and shoved it out the door. The reason it’s cited as the industry killer is so many people bought that trash game they lost faith. There was so much shovelware back then.

Nintendo learned from that mistake, that’s why they had their console on lock down. If you didn’t have their blessing, you didn’t make a game on their platform. There was a lot of lawsuits towards Nintendo because of that, but their intense scrutiny is why those games were generally quality and why they revived the home console industry.

Today we are back to where we were with the Atari, companies that don’t have the skills to develop certain games are being asked to do it, often under extreme deadlines. Look at what happened with Gollum, basically a modern day equivalent to ET imo. The reason the industry almost died is because so many people got burnt by things like ET. You would think it’s bound to happen again, and it might, but then again people still preorder stuff post disasters like no man’s and cyberpunk.

There are a lot of mistakes that could be learned from in that era of gaming, but damn if we aren’t hellbent on repeating it.

Ah man, I feel like I’m coming down with a video format

I have the HP envy 360, I have the Ryzen 5000 series not Intel. I'm a software engineering student that also leans heavily into the enthusiast side in terms of any kind of software, and I haven't ran into anything I can't do with this. I don't game on it though so I can't speak to that, I use other hardware for it. The touchscreen works well, I picked up some styluses for it that have different tips based on what I'm doing and I've done anything from note taking to art. I also fold it for watching YouTube and stuff sometimes or reading. The battery life is pretty good, if I'm doing heavy stuff i usually have to plug it in before I hit the end of the day. Lightweight stuff I've had it last a couple days.

The laptop comes with windows 11 but I have a dual boot setup. It runs fantastic in Linux or windows, this thing is a little powerhouse. The only issue I had on install of linux (I'm using debian) was that it didn't recognize my wifi adapter but it wasn't a hard fix. Otherwise it just feels fantastic to use. Its light, sleek, and stylish in a modern way if those are bonuses for you. Feels good to type on, and has an aluminum case. Other than my steam deck it's probably my favorite piece of tech I own.

Larian (baldurs gate 3) is massive for being indie. I think where your misconception comes from is the term indie. The term comes with a lot of predetermined expectations and definitions, but in spite of this fact very large studios can be indie.

Of course it feels weird to label a studio as large as larian indie when compared to the likes of supergiant(hades) or two brothers of bay 12 who created dwarf fortress. None of the three are technically any less indie, but one certainly feels more indie, doesn't it?

Sweet, I'll check them out myself. Thanks for the suggestions

If you're into gaming I would suggest

• NoClip (video game documentarians about modern video games)
• video game history hour (general video game history done by the video game history foundation)
• insert credit ( almost game show style, the hosts have only a few minutes to answer all kinds of questions about games, the gaming industry, or even opinions.)

Otherwise I really enjoy

• behind the bastards ( kind of like deep dives into shitty people of the world and what makes them tick)
• cautionary tales ( true stories about disasters, humon error, and catastrophies )
• 99 percent invisible (weekly episodes on all kinds of deep dives into things that often go without notice in our lives, the most recent episode covers the history of album art for example)