Great to see it. I moved on to following Jeff Gerstmann and Nextlander as those guys were always what Giant Bomb was about to me, but very cool to see the brand get to live on and finally escape corporate ownership. Wish them the best.

Yeah, I joke with my friends that game quality is inversely correlated with install size. 100GB+ open world or multiplayer game? Probably mid. 50MB indie game? Probably stays installed for the next 10 years.

I hope this works out for them. Ori is an awesome game and I’m interested in the new project. I wishlisted it because the videos of it look great but I usually don’t buy early access games. Was planning to get it when it officially launches.

I feel like we keep seeing this headline. “AAA studio says current prices can’t support current budgets”

I almost never buy games at $60. I buy everything on sale, and there are constantly sales and way more games than I can play. They can charge whatever they want, I personally will be paying less.

Will the market bear $80 games? Maybe. I feel like a better strategy would be to reign in scope and budget and sell games at prices most people can afford. But who knows?

The Switch Lite is exactly this. $200 handheld that runs first party games. There are android handhelds like the Retroid pocket 5 as well.

A Steam Deck Lite would be incredible. Small, cheap, linux-based, and powerful enough to run indie games and some light 3D. I think that form factor basically needs an arm cpu though.

Yeah I loved Giant Bomb back in the day, but it was all about the people. With Vinny, Brad, Alex, and Jeff gone I just moved on to their new projects and stopped paying attention to Giant Bomb. Nowadays Giant Bomb is just a name to me.

Yeah the comments about Steam being a monopoly are weird to me. Steam has a huge market share, but they don’t own the whole market and they don’t try to prevent you from buying your games elsewhere. Proton even works on non-steam games. I’ve used it to play WoW private servers on Linux.

If Valve isn’t a pro-consumer company, then I don’t know what company could possibly fit the criteria. They’re not perfect, but they’ve earned the trust they have. I’ll trust Valve until they give me a reason not to.

One of my favorite games ever. Seriously one of the best online experiences I’ve ever had.

Only if a wave hits it.

The cassette cases are really cool! I keep my Gameboy games in custom DS cases. It’s really nice having all of my gba/DS games looking uniform on the shelf. I kind of wish the Switch had kept that form factor.

I’ve got the 8bitdo Ultimate Bluetooth and it’s great. I finally upgraded to it from my old Xbox 360 wired controller. I would say it’s a worthy successor. I assume the wired versions are solid too.

I agree, sales are constant (at least on PC) so I almost never even paid the $60 price tag. They can keep cranking up the prices but more and more people may just wait for sales. I know Nintendo games don’t go on sale very often but that makes the ecosystem even less attractive. $450 is in the range of a Steam deck.

Inflation or not, prices can only go up if the market will support them. If people are unable (or unwilling) to pay the higher prices, then prices basically can’t go up.

One of the things I really like about the Switch is that I can actually buy a whole physical game that doesn’t need an Internet connection. Sure, I have to check a website first, but I can at least curate my wishlist with games that are complete on cart.

At least them giving it a new name makes choosing games easier, I guess.

I think achievements are great for when you’ve finished a game but you want to keep playing it. A fun, additional challenge for when you’re not ready to be done with a game. Emphasis on fun though; you could easily design boring or frustrating achievements.

Yeah it sounds like a lot of people were hoping they would buff defense options. They gave a slight buff to sidestepping and then proceeded to buff offense even more.

I love how the SP looks. The original feels better in the hand but the clamshell looks so good and it feels great to open and close.

I’m tempted to get a foldable as my next phone because I miss that design.