Thanks for sharing these gems. I can almost feel the exasperation in some of the emails and their replies.

Still trying to get through Animal Well. The cat disc keeps tripping me up as I need to make it to the final flame with the fake disc.

Also picked up Tears of the Kingdom again, trying to complete all the shrines.

Same, but in summer. The 24/7 nearly equal intensity daylight does a number on your internal clock and experience of time. 10/10 for wildlife though. Puffins everywhere. Plus whales, seals, walruses, and polar bears in the wild are such an impressive thing to see.

Solasta actually plays pretty well with an old Steam Controller and the right controller mapping, but I can see where you’re coming from on a controller without a touchpad input.

Not here to comment on whether you are right (because you are) but more to report the whiplash of realising 20 years ago is still in the 2000s. Mentally, 20 years ago puts something early nineties to me.

Personally, I think the first golden age ended with the decline of the shareware model that was used by many of the classics in the nineties.

Sure, it wasn’t the decline of shareware that ended it, but de decline of the model went hand in hand with the rising cost of development and longer development timeframes that ended the games boom of the nineties.

That’s my take at least. Might just be an old man with rose tinted (shareware) glasses.

That’s exciting - I’ll be keeping a close eye on this as it’s likely what will make me switch to Linux for gaming in the near future.

HORI has been around for a good whole, and they make what are arguably the best aftermarket Nintendo switch controllers.

Thanks! Sounds like decent progress hady been made in this area already. I’ll keep an eye on this project so that when 24H2 drops I’ve got a way to avoid turning my headset into e-waste.

That sounds pretty promising. I know the headset camera-based controller tracking will be a pain to implement, but at least there’s some hope for people that plonked down 600+ bucks for these devices. Some, like me, just a month ahead of the eol announcement…

I think this is still the most played game on my Switch. I need to stay far, far, away from this if my productivity is to survive.

I’m looking forward to this. Lego games always seem to deliver on capturing the spirit of the original work while adding some (often much needed) levity and charm. Having played HZD and having struggled to get through Forbiden West, I am looking forward to their take on the franchise.

The video also includes this spin. Sounds like they tried to do an interesting retelling of her recruitment into the Carrington Institute, making her a double agent or something. I’m intrigued.

It’s a shame some of the cool features such as the eye tracking and HDR are going to get lost in the transition. It might still be worth it to replace many of the soon-obsolete WMR headsets on the market, but only if Sony adjusts the price of the headset accordingly.

I know. I’d just like the market to be more than a defacto monopoly with Meta selling 85% of all headsets. Especially given their privacy track record.

The HP Reverb G2 v2 was the highest resolution headset on the market for a while. And it comes with the same headset solution the Index uses.

Sure. It has some flaws, such as the hand tracking accuracy not being as good as some other headsets (some people felt the inside-out tracking wasn’t as accurate as traditional lighthouse based approaches, but it’s still plenty accurate for pretty much any game I’ve played with it) but at the price point this occupied when new there was really no better value for people that wanted a headset with as little setup as possible and absolutely fantastic fidelity and resolution.

It’s a true travesty that Microsoft can just axe the entire platform with no way for users to continue using their still perfectly functioning devices.

Fair. It’s my main reason for not owning an Oculus headset. Sadly Microsoft decided to turn my WMR headset into e-waste later this year, so I will need to find a replacement in due time.

Didn’t they introduce Oculus accounts because of the complaints about having to use FB accounts?

I really want to see Valve champion PCVR as much as FB has been pushing stand-alone VR. There is a decent-sized market there, but it feels like more and more large players are existing VR, leaving FB/Meta as the only one left standing (see Microsoft killing WMR, Sony pretty much abandoning PSVR despite it being the #2 selling VR platform). And as much as I commend Meta/Oculus for their innovations and continued research in this space, I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interest to see the market get monopolized by Meta.

You’re not wrong, but as privacy conscious consumers we have more ways to force Microsoft and other tech giants to bend the knee than just disengaging with their product and leaving less savvy users to fend for themselves. One such example is legislative action, take a look at how the EU has been wielding their internal market to force companies into more pro-consumer practices. Another is class action lawsuits, there’s a long history of successful suits resulting in lasting change.

You might not agree with me on whether those options are the right path forward here, but I feel that we, as security and privacy conscious owners have a duty to speak up about these things for the majority that can’t or won’t due to their technical abilities.