SplooshDmg

@CutchuSlow MS and the CMA have apparently agreed to a small divesture relating to cloud in the UK. The deal will probably close on Monday. FTC can try to appeal, but there simply isn't enough time for them to get any sort of judge to do the work for them to stop anything. FTC can try to fight MS in the administrative court to force a divesture, but considering how badly MS just humiliated them, that probably wouldn't go their way either. Some of us have been saying from the start that it basically takes an act of God to stop a vertical merger, and this basically proves that.

@HonestHick Truly unreal this stuff is. The CMA took a look at MS's legal team and decided to settle. Now with the utterly unholy profits of ABK flowing into the Xbox division, they should be able to invest considerably more into content for the platform. Hard to think that in ten years Microsoft might very well be the highest revenue grossing gaming company.

Take that, ya bunch of yellow bellies!

The status of Lina Khan is currently: Big Mad.

@somnambulance Everything is slowing down. The proposed remedy for inflation is basically to slow the economy down. That's been the point of jacking up the interest rates, is to basically encourage banks to stop lending and consumers to stop spending, which is a Sisyphean task. This of course has its own repercussions, but the inflation problem has to be addressed one way or another, and the options are pretty limited.

As I mentioned above, my wife was laid off from her job doing website design for a marketing company, and two months later she's found a solid job working for a non-profit organization. She's seriously sent out something like 300 resumes looking for a job in her field and it was mostly crickets. I work in an accounting firm, and flat out, it is no exaggeration, times are currently tough. Most of the small businesses I do financial work for are just absolutely swimming or sinking, depending on what type of service/product they offer. We've had several close down permanently, or just struggle to even pay the owner. Interest rates are high, labor is high, goods and materials are high. Basically, everything sucks right now.

It sucks, but it is what it is. There are layoffs all over creation right now, especially in tech. My wife was laid off from her role with an e-commerce company just out of the wild blue. One day she was building websites, then randomly got a call and they told her she was gone. Total pain in the arse this stuff is.

@BeerIsAwesome Sorry, I got confused. I thought the Call of Doodie was something else entirely.

@NEStalgia The begining of it was a total slog. That's not my fault. But hey, I'm glad I stuck with it. It's just Like A Dragon all over again. The first six hours are painfully boring, then it turns into game of the century, all of a sudden.

@Banjo- Oh, maybe just the part where you said you find it odd to complain about this. Which is basically the same as telling us to all hush up and take what they're willing to give us. You do you, mate. I'm not replying to this comment section again. I have other stuff to do.

@Banjo- The reward program is an entire program, it is not limited to searches you would have just naturally made on your laptop or phone. They have been consistently lowering the reward points given for completing daily and monthly tasks. People have every reason to not like that. This article highlights that what was was normally 2000 points is now only 1000. That's a huge difference. They expect us to do the same thing for less. I'm sorry, but I won't cheer for that.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yup. We're basically just volunteering to work for MS to generate them ad revenue, then they give us a sliver of it. I'm not against it, but they're really making this a lot harder sale than it used to be.

@Banjo- That's not my point. I use the parts of MS Rewards where I find the ROI to be worth while. But I also think it's naive to think this is just "free". It's anything but. We've invested time into this, not money.

@Banjo- Nothing that requires my time is actually free. My time has value, same as my money. If anything, time is actually far more valuable resource than money, because once it's spent it can never be earned back.

@NEStalgia I love the obnoxiousness of these duo sessions. Like, I never knew I needed 45 second JPOP duets right in the middle of combat.

I know I wasn't feeling it at first, but this might have actually become my favorite Atlus game.

I have to think this is per result of the Game Pass price increase. Don't raise the price of the rewards, just lower the available points instead, resulting in more labor and engagement to attain the needed points. I've basically gotten to where I only do the daily stuff on the PC, because I can just do it at work on company time. But to chase every last point available between console, PC and mobile just has an awful ROI, in terms of time sank, at this point.

@NEStalgia Oh, no. I think she's developed just right. Her character that is. She has a great set of... Personalities.

While we're on the subject, I think it's about time that Nintendo does a remake of Elite Beat Agents.

@NEStalgia Man, Tsubasa sure has some large... Hands.

@NEStalgia It's like Doki Doki Literature Club. But... Way worse. It's basically a dating simulator, but the girl you are dating is a completely mentally unstable internet streamer. So, she might occasionally be inclined to kill herself. It's up to you to save her, but you can't save her.

@NEStalgia Random, but I just bought Needy Streamer Overload on Switch. I fear I've made a mistake.

@NEStalgia Eh, I hardly think she's making them tiptoe. Game Pass has offered crazy good value and she's approved probably $80 billion worth of M&A. In the years prior to 2018 stuff was surely a lot tighter, but I think it seems like so long as they stay in the black expense-wise, she doesn't seem too bent out of shape. That was my take-away from her testimony, anyway.

Xbox's problem all along has been software. When there isn't meaningful software to sell, revenue is going to be lower. There's not as much point putting hardware into the market when there really isn't software to drive sales. Retailers may not sell it all, then you have sunk costs on inventory that isn't moving that could have been used elsewhere. I think Xbox is really just still kind of laying low this gen. Once the studios all get software churning out, I think stuff will be different. But as it stands right now, MS is just still waiting for the goods to cook, and their hands are kind of tied until then.

@NEStalgia Yeah, I mean, I don't see a day where the Xbox division is making a 40% profit like Azure, but Xbox is obviously allowed to operate at a lower margin and still be allowed to exist. But Lol yeah, I absolutely died when the FTC didn't question her. They would have gotten nothing good from that. Amy is scary, and that's coming from an accountant. But she's crazy good at what she does.

I think the conundrum is it's difficult to invest money into a lower margin division, when that money could be invested into a higher margin division. It's just hard to explain to investors. "We had to fight in the console war, so that's why we did it, even though this has historically never worked out that well for us." I think as it stands, Xbox turns a profit, but the economics of the exclusivity deals don't make as much sense for MS. They've chosen a different path than Sony. Phil said it on the stand. They don't want expenses, they want assets. Amy seems quick to approve assets for the division, but not huge expenses that probably yield petty results. Which really, I think she's making the right call. People can say what they will about consolidation, but I'm fine with it. Genshin Impact just eclipsed PS's profits. Fortnite came out of nowhere. Fall Guys was a totally random game from a new studio. There are new hits being born all the time. For every one that gets bought, another will eventually take its place.

@NEStalgia Honestly, I'm supportive of the ABK merger, mostly because in reality I think they are a good fit for one another. It basically completes Microsoft's shopping list with one transaction. We have to take a moment to reflect that the Genshin devs made a larger profit than THE ENTIRE PLAYSTATION division last year. I get what MS's game is here, and it makes perfect sense. I really couldn't care less about the console war side of it. Xbox operates at a considerably lower profit than the rest of MS, and Amy Hood seems like she really wants to fix that. This seems like a pretty quick way to do that. People act like Xbox just has access to blank checks because daddy MS is rich, but they definitely don't. Amy said they have to turn a profit, even if it means manufacturing less hardware in a quarter. She doesn't seem willing to just burn money on this division.

@NEStalgia The judge actually called the FTC out on that. There was ample time to do this, and instead they waited to come all the way down to the wire, completely on purpose because they know the consequences.

I don't see any future with ABK if the PI is granted. However, I think MS will go on an absolute shopping spree for smaller studios. I have long said that this ABK failing is probably worse news for PS fans than ABK succeeding. I think a lot of people are more upset about Starfield being exclusive, than the idea of CoD still being multiplatform. But seeing MS's demeanor in court, and their internal discussions... Just laying down and calling off the fight doesn't seem to be in the cards now.

I think ABK will be fine, regardless.

@NEStalgia Kotick said flat out if the PI is granted, the board at ABK isn't going to continue to pursue the merger. So, this is it. This is D Day. I'd say there are legal work arounds for the CMA and the UK, but if Corley gives the FTC this, it's done.

@BeerIsAwesome I just needed to see the part of the testimony where Phil Spencer accused Jim Ryan of pooping in his bed. Oh, wait. Wrong case. My mistake.

@NEStalgia I think regardless, the only real crime here is that this trial wasn't televised. This was probably as close as we'll ever get to the OJ Simpson trial, but for gamers. What a missed opportunity.

@NEStalgia I'm going to roll the clock back to last summer, when we were talking about the issues Nvidia faced when trying to buy ARM. It was the same thing. Different story and case entirely, but the same thing from regulators. The biggest issue for regulators was no matter how many times Nvidia said they were going to this or that, the answer was always just, "We don't believe you." I think the thing that will really determine the injunction or not will be if Corley truly thinks the FTC could win against MS, if MS were willing to draw this out, and they aren't. Even if there are issues, as she stated, MS has already cut deals and agreed to regulation. A regulated deal can easily be pro-competitive, but nowadays the regulators don't feel like enforcing behavioral remedies, I guess because it requires them to work for their salary.

@Tharsman Yeah, honestly a lot of my fleeting feelings with Game Pass is that sometimes these are just games I want on Switch. P3R for example. Sure, it's going to be on PC Game Pass, but these games are so huge. It's just one of those kinds of games where I love the portability and being able to just grab it and chip away at it little by little, rather than being forced to sit in front of the TV for a hundred hours.

Steam is truly phenomenal. I'm so chuffed with the PC Game Pass app for not having cloud saves on all PC games. I just lost my Pillars of Eternity save thanks in part to me being dumb, and me assuming PC Game Pass was cloud saving everything. But those cloud saves on Steam are part of what makes Steam Deck work. Xbox def needs to work on the cloud/cross save thing and not only include that in newer titles. These are still Windows Store versions of games, I don't get why there's no priority to cloud save people's games.

@Banjo- I def think should could deny the injunction. The FTCs swiss cheese lawyers managed to land some hits with the cloud theory of harm, because I don't think there's any talking your way out of that one. I think that one is purely just how serious is the person making the judgement taking this "cloud market" thing. I kinda got the idea she seemed kinda 50/50 on it. I'm def not calling anything in my mind yet. So, I think regardless of the verdict, it isn't down to the console market, but this seemingly bogus cloud market. We'll just wait and see, I guess.

@Tharsman I mean, I think she's right. That's the interesting thing about gaming, and she's even acknowledged that its dynamic and has just been changing for years. There's a dozen reasons a person might choose an a Switch over and Xbox, or vice versa, rather than just "high performance". I think for someone who I'm assuming just does not play video games, she's been pretty objective and has grasped a lot of the more fiddly concepts pretty well.

@NEStalgia Didn't the judge at one point say, "So, you can take a Nintendo on a plane. That makes it better than the PlayStation or Xbox." This judge is a hoot.

@mousieone This has definitely been the most interesting thing that has happened in a while. I'm certainly not counting any chickens, yet. I think the judge did probably about as well as one could have hoped, but I think this is really coming down to how serious she is taking the 'what if's' surrounding cloud gaming. I think had MS tried to buy ABK even just two years prior to when they did, I really don't think they'd have been met with much resistance at all. But this cloud thing that basically everyone can see, aside from actual gamers, is just weird.

@NEStalgia Yeah, I genuinely think Microsoft absolutely obliterated any theory of harm in the console section, but it seems the FTC might actually have a cloud basket for their cloud eggs. The FTCs performance varied between adequate and abysmal, but the bar for the FTC to get their PI isn't particularly high, I don't think. So, the problem really is just all this nascent silliness. Killing a 68bn dollar merger over a future that might never even happen. I remember when 3D TVs were all the rage, too.

@mousieone Yup. That deal was clearly just for Azure services to aid SEGA in specifically developing games for everyone, except MS, whom they obviously hate.

@NEStalgia Remember when people said this strategic partnership was a big nothing burger? Remember when they were sure Xbox would never get Persona? Remember when comments like that aged like milk?

@NEStalgia We're going to have a new category at the Keighleys this year, 'Best Legal Testimony'. It's going to be a tough one to decide a winner, but it certainly won't be Jim.

@NEStalgia Is that why it's awesome? But really, though. You and I were eagerly awaiting this court hearing as far back as a year ago, just for all this industry crap to be dragged out into the light. I just wanna know, is it everything you hoped it would be?

@Krysus Sarah is the one who negotiated whatever the current deal with SEGA is, so she is probably one of the most important people on the team, right now.

@NEStalgia I think we need to resurrect 3dfx and start a new line of Voodoo GPUs, and then everything will be right with the world again.

@NEStalgia This is true. I will now shake my fist angirly. I just want DLSS and gyros. I don't feel like I'm asking for too much here. I assumed in 2023 these would be basic features, but nooooooo. We can't have nice things.

@NEStalgia I mean, it's still going to be 60fps on PC, and it's going to be on GeForce Now regardless, because all Xbox games are being licensed for GeForce Now per the agreements MS already has with Nvidia. This definitely is frustrating, though. Imagine if MS were just paying developers to not utilize gyro aiming on other platforms, because Xbox controllers lack a gyro. Can you imagine how irate you would be?

@MattWithoutFear Digital Foundry is already all over this one. I quote John Lieneman

"AMD is tricking you. You think they're the 'friendly company' as a result of open sourcing FSR2...but then they're out here spending money to block superior options."

@ChromeMud Regardless, DLSS has better performance and better image quality. It's not debatable. You are also ignoring that some people have RTX4000 cards and DLSS 3.0 with frame generation destroys FSR 2.0 and DLSS 2.0. In a game that is potentially CPU bound like Starfield that frame generation matters. FSR 2.0 and DLSS 2.0 help with GPU intense situations.

@ChromeMud It really isn't, though. Most game engines like Unreal already have upscalers built into them. FSR only benefits from being fairly easy to implement into a developer's pipeline where an upscaling solution wasn't already present. I'm not saying it's useless to other gamers with non-RTX cards, but I am never ever going to choose FSR over DLSS. RE4R on PC has an absolutely rubbish FSR 2.0 implementation, that fans seriously modded in DLSS 2.0 to replace the FSR 2.0 and it's a better result than the actual developer implemented FSR 2.0. Also, I'm not sure why I have to care about other PC gamers? Because... I don't, and I shouldn't be required to.

@ChromeMud You obviously aren't paying attention. FSR is not DLSS. They are not even close to comparable in terms of actual results. DLSS is powered by actual AI tensor cores in the GPU handling the reconstruction, FSR is just bare bones software upscaling. You can dig your heels in and be wrong here, I really don't care. These are not an interchangeable replacement for one another.

@ChromeMud Right. It's an Xbox site. You know... We have this icon on our PC that is suspiciously named... Xbox. And we can even download games from it. It sounds crazy, I know.

@GamingFan4Lyf Exactly. Tons of games support FSR and DLSS. This is specifically just blocking DLSS from being an option. Nothing about this is good for anyone. DLSS is an unquestionably better technology than FSR. That's why it costs... You know... Money. Often times when I pay more money for something it's because it actually works better than the free one.

@Relygon This guy gets it.

@themightyant "Here at AMD, we firmly believe if we can't make our GPU's better, we'll pay to make yours worse."