They were pretty damn fun. Other games like C&C Generals were a blast too!

We have since upgraded to beer and boardgames, which still hold their charm.

Is anything in the tech world interesting or good any more? I remember being excited 20 years ago for new inventions. Now its slop, slop, slop, authoritarian surveillance fascism, slop slop slop

Foss projects and indie games are about the only interesting thing now.

I'll go back to 2005 soon as someone invents a Foss time machine !

So the pick me finally shows her hand.

Imagine a non-FOSS time machine

We've successfully transferred your right foot to 2005! Please subscribe to our Premium plan to unlock full-body transfers.

Once we created standards to create everything we see today it became to expensive to invest in alternative home grown solutions. Sadly with the focus of maximizing profit over innovation most ideas just revolve around the existing infrastructure in place to do what they want. I hate it as well and everything feels very stagnant.

Worth the weight

i think this is a bit over dramatic. seems more the next logical step in the "console" world

The idea is great because it didn't come from Microslop. It's going to be a Steam Machine competitor.

Nah, it's been pretty clear for some time now that the next Xbox would just be a PC. I don't think they got this idea from Valve. I'm sure that Valve helped shape their plans, though.

Non-FOSS time machine? It's 2005 as a service. Monthly subscription.

Also the Steam Deck can already take over that role if the Steam Machine is too much of an ask for you. When they're restocked, that is.

There is a huge difference between waiting for an update and installing a game that may not work. It’s a huge difference then fiddling with settings and configs to get it to run smoothly or not crash

And this is why Sony pulled games from PC. The Steam Machine was just another reason. PCs in general are now consoles too, and Sony is afraid their traditional console loses meaning.

If you want to stay a console gamer you’re going to have to switch teams …

I thought that said switch TO Teams, for a moment, lol

Ironically, there are a couple of things in the tech world right now that I'm extremely interested in. But you would likely downvote me if I mentioned them.

Good, I'm sick of playing lowest common denominator console ports. Develop for PC and let the consoles have the degraded experience, not the other way around!

That and large shitty patent laws

Here's hoping 🤞

I do not trust that Microsoft will be doing anything other than pushing subscription-based streaming. Call me when they have a robust storefront selling games on par with Steam and hardware that allows you to play these games on or offline. Until then, imma press X to doubt.

I still tune into TechQuickie every once in awhile and I noted how start the difference is between shows like that today and five years ago. All news is bad news anymore.

We have transferred your clone to 2005, please step into the incinerator.

I had to read it several times to understand what you meant, but I suspect that you're right.

Buying a full pc that will end up being potentially limited to gaming doesn't really make sense. Valve has a solution that's more integrated and probably better suited for most consumers.

You got downvoted for mentioning you'd get downvoted! OK, I'll bite. Based on OP's comments, As long as it isn't in AI, surveillance or Microslop WIndows, maybe you have found something for us all?

So what, who cares about downvotes on Lemmy? Even one more person finding out about some awesome tech is worth it!

As long as it isn't in AI

Afraid I can't help you, then.

It's really quite ironic, this is the sort of tech that science fiction has been dreaming of for decades. And now it can't even be mentioned in tech-oriented forums, can't even be hinted at, without mobs of negative-nellies dumping on it.

Ah well. I continue to have fun with it, downvotes can't stop that.

Dreaming of, or warning about?

Consoles meant something back when commodity PC hardware was not good at playing games - at least not for a consumer-accessible price.

The specialized rendering processors of the NES and SNES and Sega Genesis could push pixels without all the distractions a CPU has, in away they were the first GPUs (although modern GPUs do a much more generalized job).

You don’t need that anymore though, a PC can do it all. You don’t even need to be on a specific OS anymore for most games.

Form factor or other novel hardware is going to be the only thing anyone can do; I think this is why Nintendo didn’t bother to make a behemoth console and try to compete with PS5

Sounds great honestly, locked down console hardware is such an aging concept. If Valve manages to pull off the Steam Machines, it's proof that we've past the age of consoles. Except Nintendo I guess, they've always been a special case somehow.

this is the sort of tech that science fiction has been dreaming of for decades.

No it isn't. LLM's are a fucking technological dead end and will never reach AGI's.

Quit sucking off Sam Altman and go look into actual AI research, douchebag

Unfortunately they're just a fucking AI-bro. Not worth your time

You just can't quit bringing up your ai girlfriend, can you ?

I’m anxious about being on the layoff list because I submitted my self-appraisal without reading the step that says: use ai to summarize your assessment and copy-paste to the summary field. Dammit, I wrote it myself

Quite true.

Well, I guess the most games-oriented thing is that at the moment I'm generating some cover art for some music I generated earlier to use as part of a tabletop roleplaying campaign I'm in. Custom art, custom music, stuff that a few years ago would have cost me thousands of dollars to commission (and therefore that I would never have dreamed of commissioning - it's just for me and a couple of friends). That's pretty awesome, IMO.

This is going to be one of those "Torment Nexus" things, I take it?

You'll note that I was asked.

Saying this is the death of the platform is stupid. Worst case, it's at least better than current Xbox, which doesn't have the option to play PC games. Yeah, it's going to have all of M$'s spywhere and AI slop, but so would any MS device. I'm not buying this crap, but if you already wanted an Xbox then this is an improvement. Yeah, you're better off with a PC, especially one running Linux. This has been the case for decades, yet the consoles still sell.

That sadly maybe a requirement. Let’s hope not haha

Death of the “platform” as in dedicated hardware designed purely to play games.

Going forward “Xbox” games will just be Windows games.

So yes by my definition, it’s dead as dead as Elvis …

Is anything in the tech world interesting or good any more?

Steam Machine?

Is that the show with the liars and thieves?

Handheld emulation devices

I mean, Sony & Microsoft consoles are basically PCs with a custom OS now already (PS4 onwards, and Xbox One both used x86-64 CPUs).

There are fewer and fewer reasons to buy a specific (and expensive) piece of hardware that is less flexible in terms of functionality than the alternatives, so this is Sony trying to protect their own fiefdom.

Fuck ‘em.

Good riddance. All consoles are cancer, by their walled-garden nature.

I've been enjoying the advances in escape room games. mc2games makes some good ones.

The HL2 VR mods are pretty good if you have a headset. Reloading a gun with your physical hands is pretty immersive.

There's been a silent rise in mystery-themed (Ace Attorney adjacent) games in the East recently. The mysteries get better and better.

Russian games have been innovating a bit to attract Western customers. "No I'm not Human" is one of those. There are also some Russian visual novels that are good thrillers.

Of the games China makes that aren't gachaslop, some have tried to innovate. This one syncs what the character doing with real world time. So if it would take 10 minutes for a character to do something, it would take 10 actual minutes. The game doesn't even have to be on during those 10 minutes, so it can be something where you check in every now and then.

This is the logical progression—the console wars were bad for consimers. I don't mourn Xbox.

Isn't the whole point, since the Xbox One, that they didn't want it to just play games? We don't consider it dead just because it does more stuff. I guess you can have whatever definition you want for your personal view, but I don't really think anyone else would agree with it. It's still going to be a Microsoft controlled platform that's typically in the living room on a TV. Most people would say it's dead when they stop having a device in the living room, not when that device gets extra features.

It’s a show about tech news?

that's stupid. If I wanted a PC I'd have bought a PC.

I didn't get one and my kids didn't get one. Microslop!