It could also be a strategy to then lobby and make everyone else give up their stores, levelling the playing field.

Microsoft seems to be preemptively doing that already.

Preach. Studios that make games with anti cheats and what not should reconsider how they handle Linux as they’ll only get even more players, who’ll probably be even more loyal due to their Linux compatibility. I know cheating is a big issue in online games, but adding invasive kernel level code to detect that is just adding system level vulnerabilities just to prevent cheaters from cheating seems like an overkill. It’s not like cheating mouse and keyboards don’t exist and cheaters have evaporated entirely due to anti cheat.

Because I’m more curious about why things are the way they are just like the author, and would like to understand this with more data points, only making the comparison more helpful. I’m not saying author “should” consider impact of shader compilation, but I’m saying had they done, we’d understand the difference better.

They added asus vs Lenovo drivers data points, which alone tells us that driver optimization is responsible to a great extent. All I’m saying here is more data is more helpful.

Maybe even after taking care of that, the difference is huge, which will tell us its not enough to have precompilation of shaders. Maybe it does reduce the gap, telling us that potentially dx11 games might tend to do similarly.

Saying “RTX 5060 is better than 9060 XT” with 5 games tested is one level of comparison, but if they are grouped into RT and non RT games, games with 8gb and 16gb VRAM requirements, games with and without nVidia partnership, isn’t that just more detailed and an even better comparison point?

Biased to what? Point of comparison is to figure out why things are the way they are and use that information to get the best of both worlds? It’s not very helpful if the conclusion stops at “x is better than y”.

Going deeper into “why” Proton is doing better in 3/5 games but not in 2/5 will only help users of both operating systems to make better informed decisions and get everyone closer to root cause other than “bloated windows” or “just use linux”, potentially even leading to improvements to both sides.

While the bloat exists, even debloated windows wouldn’t match proton because that’s not the only reason. Despite bloat there are two games in this test the actually do similar or better than SteamOS. This means there’s a confounding reason for the difference, not the bloat.

It’s not a slight, as I said it’s a doubt, not criticism. I’m not saying “did the author EVEN …”

I think Microsoft is too big to make sensible and timely changes. The company needs to be broken up. Windows, Office, Azure, Xbox, Bing, all need to be separate companies with their individual sustainable business plans, or else let free market decide their fate. Same for Apple and Google.

Take aways:

• Sample set is of 5 games
• Lenovo drivers are much slower than Asus
• There are 2 games where windows is neck to neck or better, 3 where SteamOS is far ahead

Some doubts:

• Did the author run the benchmarks few times to rule out shader compilation. 99%ile would be helpful.
• I wonder if it makes sense to test DirectX10, 11 and 12 games separately to better understand where Proton has an edge.
• I wonder what all settings can be tweaked in Windows to find potential fixes (core isolation, cpu boost, power profiles).

Point is Microsoft and OEMs need to do better, however not every game or subscription services work on Linux, so in the interim time users should know what they can do to close the gap better.

Microsoft has been weird with this game. They hyped it up as launch title, game for 10 years, when it was far from ready. They released it a year later, with decent multiplayer and single player, but slowed down right after season 1. They woke up and got Forge working and then slept again. Even the recent showcase had the usual ESO and FO76 updates but nothing about Halo Infinte. Now they are teasing something new for next year, without even asking users to consider playing Halo Infinte in the interim time.

Even Forza Motorsport plan seems to be similar. Hyped game as ‘platform’, meh launch, even meh support, no mention in their showcase.

I think the issue here is DirectX, so unless there’s meaningful changes to how DX works internally, DXVK at this point can always be a step ahead with all the changes it can make without tech debt to worry about. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why Series X despite being stronger than PS5 on paper, struggles to match performance in non zero count of games.

He? You mean she, Carrey Patel?

So how much did they make?

I wonder if Microsoft’s shopping spree induced FOMO in Sony and they ended up buying shit. Sony already had the best studios but they chased live service for no reason.

Word

Devil’s advocate: they created a new studio with all the lessons and right core employees who understand the space the best.

It ain’t powerful enough for modern titles sadly. I’m trying to say that there’s a space where Valve made steam machine with niceties of SteamOS and power of say PS5 can really thrive.

There’s some nuance.

• One of the bigger issues about PC gaming these days is the shader compilation stutter. Valve is able to precompile and upload these for SteamDeck, so a fixed hardware “console” from them will solve this problem too.
• SteamDeck is pretty weak but games are still sort of optimised for it. Same would be true for such a console, making devs focus on a target platform directly.
• Assembling PC yourself can have its own issues. You may not get all the ROPs, or a new Windows update may break your games, or you may occasionally update drivers to make a game more playable without black screens, or wouldn’t turn on with a controller when set up as a “console”. I’m not saying it isn’t doable, but there is an audience for consoles who would love whatever SteamDeck has done for handheld but in console form, and may not want to bother with setting everything up. Valve can disrupt that

Steam can’t release a “console” soon enough.

“Fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some cash for our console, it’s called xCloud”

Thanks for sharing!

How’s LA noire gameplay holding up?

You’re in for a ride! Make sure you wait for dialogues of NPCs to fully end when passing by.

I mean Skyrim is kinda cool. In similar vain I really really enjoyed Kingdom Come Deliverance 1, waiting for KCD2 to get all its DLCs before I jump into it. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was also pretty good considering its age. I found Control to have a very addictive and unique gameplay. Special mention to The Last of Us part 1 and 2, as they had really seamless integration of gameplay, narrative and atmosphere.

Pretty cool that AMD stuck the landing, rather exceeding the expectations by beating DLSS CNN. Sure transformer model is better but it is slightly more costly too, and this is effectively v1 of FSR with ML. This is especially great coming off of shimmering woes of PSSR.

Now the competitive edge moves from DLSS and RT to Multi Frame Gen and Path Tracing. I find the newer goal post to be less exciting for sub $500 GPUs as the added latency or lower base frame rate isn’t justified, so in a way AMD is genuinely a better choice this time around for the price range.

Let’s hope the $200-400 segment also sees such competition thanks to Intel.

Their other studios on the other hand, oofh.

• Rare: Ever wild (sea of thieves helps tho)
• Undead: State of Decay 3 (almost half a decade since announcement)
• Initiative: Perfect Dark (vertical slice looked good, but maybe that’s all they’ve made so far)
• Turn10: Forza Motorsport (reboot didn’t do anything it seems)
• 343/Halo studios: …

I hope MSFT sees it like Laura does. However it does look like they’ve been kind and patient with Obsidian so far (pentiment, grounded, Avowed pivots from dark live service to rainbow RPG, and sequel to Outer Worlds, an ok release). They’re definitely happy with regularly shipped games of diverse genres and audiences for GamePass. In a way, a perfect studio for a subscription service.

Unless it is spat out by some AI at 126p 10 FPS, it isn’t preservation.

/s

Pretty cool we’ve gone from 360 emulation to recompilation.

Doc be like “Oh I see you’ve returned to the living lands”

When in a rush, throwables.

Ah damn. I wish they add an option for that

Do NPCs get angry even though your charisma is high but the moment you engage in dialogue they get very sweet to you?

Does the crosshair remain active when you aim using the bow?

For me it was going to Skalitz for the first time after the events of prologue. I had 3 bandits attack me right after leaving Rattay, finding out several towns on the way, finally reaching right as the weather turned very angry with thunders and rain, only to find the aftermath of the prologue.

“Y’all have ESO, right?”

Nintendo store’s seal of quantity strikes again.

Scoop!

Thanks for your sacrifice

Depending on how you define all powerful God, Fallout New Vegas

Most definitely. Idk why they thought weekly cutscenes of literally nobodies would be something PvP players would be into.

This is why I think saying live service overwatch likes have no space isn’t a fair explanation to why Concord failed.

Some of the reasons why I think it failed:

1. It was $40 when all competitors at free.
2. We didn’t know or care about the cast of characters but were asked to pretend as if we’re big fans. They were quite generic
3. It had a stank of trying to be better than the rest. Helldivers 2 and Marvel Rivals were unapologetically video gamey games, but Concord felt like it thinks it transcends game and movie industry.