Not all kernel level anti-cheat are the same. Riot’s Vanguard and whatever Battlefield 6 uses requires TPM and SecureBoot and they quite invasive. I believe Vanguard just runs in the background even when you’re not running the game which is awful. Arc Raiders devs made some pragmatic concessions to allows the game to run on Proton and Steam Deck which is pretty good.

IGN put out a first preview video of Arc Raiders couple months ago and it was borderline hit piece. The quality of the video was unbelievably bad. They made the game look muddy, dated, and choppy. This wasn’t IGN trying to showcase the game on some realistic typical gaming hardware. In reality the game is well optimized and visually really good on moderate level hardware. I hear the game looks fantastic on consoles. Maybe they’ll do a full review now that the game is finally released but I question the journalistic integrity of IGN.

Raising the price of hardware twice since May and now raising the price of game pass by 50% is not something a company would do if they’re interested in competing against Sony or Nintendo. Clearly Microsoft has thrown in the towel on XBOX. Only thing left for Microsoft to do is announce cancellation of next gen console altogether and do layoffs. I don’t know when that will happen but it’s inevitable at this point.

50% price hike means Microsoft is basically betting that less than 1/3 of the current subscribers will cancel. Microsoft is also betting that some will not cancel but just downgrade to lower tier instead. If more than 2/3 of the subscriber remain a subscriber then Microsoft will come out ahead.

At one time XBOX fanbase were so desperate to play games like Halo and Gears of War that they were wrapping their dead XBOX 360 in a towel and putting it in an oven to resurrect it. That sounds so insane but it actually happened. Fast forward to now, Microsoft has raised hardware prices twice since May and now raising price of their game pass by 50%. Clearly they’re no longer interested in increasing XBOX market share or even retaining it. They’ve pivoted their strategy to milk their current XBOX fans as much money as they can until the brand is completely dead.

People keep saying $32k was stolen by malware. No, that did not happen. Malware did not reach into someone’s bank account and withdrew $32k. Here is a simple fact. Crypto is not money. If your brain says something like “it works just like money, or it’s worth just as much as money so it’s basically money” then you’re most likely to get scammed at sometime in the future by putting your actual real money into crypto. It’s that simple.

Microsoft spent billions on XBOX brand over over the past 23+ years but seems like they’re just done with it. They must know raising the price for the second time will be a final nail in the XBOX coffin. Is there a plan for a next XBOX? Does it even make sense to make the next XBOX? Is there even a reason for anyone to buy the next XBOX? Currently Microsoft’s marketing message is basically just spend $400 to $800 on a hardware and then pay $10 to $20 monthly ($120 to $240 a year) indefinitely for access to games but if you stop paying the monthly fee, you have an expensive paperweight because you own nothing. Oh and game pass price could go up at anytime over the lifespan of the console.

I was watching a streamer playing this game on AMD 9800X3D with RTX 5090 GPU on 1440p and was barely able to get 100 fps. All the settings were on medium with DLSS Balanced turned on. This game is definitely not optimized.

I was planning on picking up B4 when the GOTY edition goes on sale for $20-30 couple years from now. I figured performance issues will be solved by then. Now I think I’ll pass.

Game pass business model needs to fail because if it succeed we’ll be buried in post capitalism dystopian reality where we don’t own anything.

Yeah. Similar sentiment here. For me, spending $20 is my special way of flipping the bird at Nintendo and every other greedy AAA studios for wanting to jack up the price of games.

Extraction shooter market is getting crowded quick. It’s probably wise move by Tarkov devs to bank some money before Arc Raiders comes out on October 30th. I have a feeling Arc Raiders just might dominate the extraction shooter market for broad general audience. I’m sure more hardcore extraction shooter fans will stick with Tarkov but I don’t see Tarkov will appeal to the masses. I hear developers of The Division might be working on an extraction shooter too. It’s quite ironic since they accidentally stumbled onto the extraction shooter idea and just now figured out there may be a demand for the genre. There is Marathon but I have no idea what’s going on with that game. I’m not sure if Bungie or Sony knows what will happen to that game.

If game developers don’t think their product is valuable enough to be preserved, why should I think it’s worth money and buy it?