For just a moment I want you to stop what you are doing, take a deep breath and look around you. If you’re like 95% of the people who would openly call themselves a gamer the scenario should look something like this. Your laptop is rested snugly on your stomach, you only have about 14% battery life left and you’ve already begun planning the treacherous journey over to the power socket for 20 minutes now (you’re just building up confidence).
On the coffee table (assuming you didn’t pawn it for Fable II) among your feet you will find a minimum of 7 empty Mountain Dew cans (not including the one you’re working on as you read this article) a bag of cheetos, pizza flavored combos, your headset and a pile of un-paid phone bills so high you’ll probably just end up gluing them all together and gifting the monstrosity to your many cats as a new scratching post. What happened?! How did you get this way? Well odds are you’re actually lounging in a plush apartment in Spain sucking down 100 year old Brandy and tickling Angelina Jolie’s pinky toe. Now you might be asking yourself, then why Don’t Panic, would you assume I’m a fat slob? And I’m here to tell you that I don’t but THEY do. Let’s discuss this and the other 4 reasons the games industry hates you.
Reason #5
For some strange reason, the public loves to associate “gamers” with “Fat piles of shit becoming exceedingly worthless to modern society on an hourly basis”. Who could possibly be to blame for this cruel injustice?
The Responsible Party
Nintendo
How They’re Getting Rich From Hating the Shit out of You
<Nintendo Board Meeting Minutes>
Employee 1> Let me get this straight; the majority of people consider gamers to be unhygienic, fat slobs?
Employee 2> That’s correct sir.
Employee 1> But that’s ridiculous, A LOT of people play video games.
Employee 2> Well sir, I’m just telling you what I know. Sales have dropped 19% in the last quarter and we need a strong rebound after that whole 64 debacle.
Employee 1> Hmm… well, as it turns out gamers really are fat slobs <wink> and we need to make something that will keep them “active”, and “fit”<nudge>. Scare the shit out of the parents, “Oh, but if you buy that Xbox your children will turn into something even Jabba the hut would be sickened by. We’ll corner the market!
Employee 2> That’s genius! I’ll round up a team of nutritionists, physical trainers and scientists to sit in with our creative team to brainstorm some game ideas.
Employee 1> Hahaha you fool! It’s not going to actually work! They just have to think it will!
Employee 2> But sir, what about all the people who already have Xbox’s and Playstations, isn’t this slander?
Employee 1> Fuck ‘em.
Why Does This Mean They Hate Me?
Nintendo has essentially been cock-blocking (Ummm… not sure of a phrase for the ladies, but I thought about you) gamers everywhere for years now. They’ve turned your passion of great games into a bubbling cesspool of stigma and injustice. Berating the common man with images of families all waggling together (Yeah, run with that in the comments) as one big fit happy family. And it doesn’t end there, oh no. They’ve even begun launching an assault on you, the core gamer. With videos like Wii fit girl clawing their way through the interwebz you too will no doubt succumb to their dark power, voluntarily participating in your own downfall. It’s genius really, evil genius.
I for one can no longer sit idly by and watch them drag our good name through the mud. No sir, no longer will I be subjected to girls looking at me as if I shat myself at the mere utterance of Call of Duty 4. No longer will my parents solemnly shake their heads when I tell them I need to borrow a sleeping bag again for a midnight release! We must rise up! Our only choice is to stand together, stand tall, raise our voices and…….
Oooooooh Nintendogs! I’ll be right back!
Tune in next week for Reason #4 the Games industry Really Hates You and How It’s Making Them Rich.
Oh… and Don’t Panic
Shaz from Pixel Swish: "The ROG Xbox Ally is another step towards Team Xbox’s 'Play Anywhere' strategy, and perfectly embodies the company’s future and how we’re all going to be playing an 'Xbox' in the future."
The funny thing about Xbox going more PC-like is that I’ve been saying this for over a decade and finally seeing it come to fruition. People use to hate the idea, but now are embracing it, and all I want is to be put on the payroll lol.
On a serious note, I think this is the best route going forward for MS. They don’t have to get out of the hardware game altogether. They can make their home console $300 entry & $600 premium home consoles and from there partner with other hardware makers for anything beyond that. Focus on being a publisher and creating a strong OS / Cloud option for other devices like desktop, handheld PCs, streaming devices, etc…
I honestly think they should also look into NVIDIA as well, with NVIDIA starting to make their own CPUs. Their CPU is already on par with AMDs best laptop CPUs of the previous/current generation which is more than enough, and a RTX 5000 / 6000 laptop GPU hybrid (DLSS 4 / DLSS5) could do wonders for them, and bring some much needed diversity back to console hardware.
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I don't know why you'd expect them to still develop new consoles at this point. Ditching all exclusives and putting the Xbox logo on a ROG Windows device is a pretty clear message.
This isn't a good thing for Xbox. It's a long winded goodbye.
For the same reason they still have a laptop hardware lineup even though they have Windows.
Having some kind of retail presence for visibility and marketing won’t really affect them in any way.
I still expect them to have 1 or 2 SKUs that they won’t sell at a loss but will continue the trend of selling way less than the competition (though its still selling millions), just like they have their Surface laptops even though they could happily coast knowing practically every third party out there (or the end consumer) will pay them for the Windows license
You realise thos indicates that their next xbox will be an xbox branded pc right? And will cost pc prices as a result. So look forwards to a 600 dollar and 1000 dollar version with vast performance differences, with the upper range having similar performance to the ps6 that will be like half its price. The 800 dollar rog ally x makes this abundantly clear.
I saw this years ago. I don't see how it took this long for people actually close to the industry.
I said this years ago, mind you I know nothing about computers, but I always thought Xbox would go more PC-like.
As I said, and always said, I know squat about PCs, so I thought Xbox would become modular. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I thought they would build a basic frame/shell and gamers would be able to configure their Xbox how they wish, similar to PC and buy motherboards, sound cards and graphic cards. I don’t know if that’s practical or even possible though.
This was when they first entered the gaming space.
I think consoles are so cheap and punch above their weight is because everything is so tightly designed around each component. Opening up to multiple permutations with modules would probably make it more expensive to build, develop for, and manage. It's not impossible, but probably gets in that gray area where it's not much different than a garden variety PC.
Well to clear up my thought process on the matter, I figured they would every so often within a gen like a pro model system, give gamers the proprietary parts.
Let’s say the original Xbox they built it modular in mind, so certain parts they would manufacture newer slightly more powerful components. That way you can either stay with the original configuration, or swap out the parts you choose, building your own pro. Then when the next gen comes around a new even more powerful components that would put the system in the Xbox360 range. Then another half step to tweak your system to a pro of that gen.
I guess similar to how I see people here talking about new 4080 cards, I’m just making up an example, and every so often people mention nother with a number larger than the last indicating it’s more powerful.
I understand what you’re saying about how it’s much easier to just have a closed system, and much cheaper. It was just something I thought might happen when Microsoft introduced the first Xbox.
"First-person roguelikes like Gunfire Reborn and Roboquest can be quite fun when done well. Another such game is MythForce, which comes from Beamdog, the developer that brought Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 to modern platforms (while mostly ditching the co-op). MythForce features cartoon-like visuals and a fantasy theme, making it quite different from most of its peers. It will soon reach its "final form" via the upcoming Version 1.2 update," says Co-Optimus.
Today, SCS Software officially announced Project Coaches, the next evolution for Euro Truck Simulator 2, adding buses to the game.
That was eye opening and hilarious keep the good blogs coming
Lol ahah, I definitely enjoyed this article.