I’d patent my well-honed technique for not playing Microsoft games but I want to share it with the world, free of charge.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, would you be so kind and repeat after me: abandonware and indie games are the future!
Entertainment these days is only found in the shadows of society
Yes, that’s how plenty of 60s’ and 70s’ sci-fi stories were about finding gems in the dust, and much of XIX century gothic stuff.
That’s sarcasm. Each time is like no other, but also the grass is always greener 100 years ago, and it’s always somehow better and worse at the same time.
But then, of course, there are tendencies and periods which won’t be remembered kindly or won’t be remembered at all.
I have only one question about that title - why the hell would anyone play a game with ads? People play games to relax, to get some rest from society, or to have some personal time with their friends mowing down cockroach hordes or something like that defending their city-fortress.
Until competitors are able to develop and sell games without such ads, people will just play those.
and it’s always somehow better and worse at the same time.
Humanity is always on a meandering route between utopia and dystopia, never arriving at either.
why the hell would anyone play a game with ads?
It’s Microsoft. They made Embrace, Extend, Extinguish their way of life for decades. They can’t conceive competition. And they’re not really that interested anymore in the consumer market. They want to squeeze whatever they can from there before the market shrinks and aim their products more at the premium and business market who has all the money these days.
I can agree with the assessement on how the company is aiming to bleed dry the market and is aiming to take over the business market. But honest question: what are we to understand by premium?
But even the business market is fickle. The company I work at had a scare recently with a serious security breaching. Nothing was admitted but I suspect the vector of attack was the informal Whatsapp network used to run day to day communications and it’s AI. The installed Microsoft security solutions were as efficient as a collander. I can’t imagine what was leaked. That costs money.
Most companies these says aim for the top 10% of the income market, so rich families and businesses. The bottom 90% is losing purchasing power so not a priority these days. Sounds rational short term and is probably disastrous long term. It’s a great target for China to take over, so when AI pops and they want to return to the consumer market, it’s already taken.
Hopefully they don’t license this patent out so it’s really easy to avoid
I was just thinking about that. I can’t imagine Microsoft licencing it cheaply, so I would think other companies would be losing money over this.
If anything, Microsoft made us a favour. (As long as they won’t continue their journey becoming Disney of gaming, I guess sigh)
They’d likely license as a percentage of revenue, not a specific dollar amount, which would make it more available to every studio and they’d theoretically make more money from the added ad revenue.
Microsoft keeps finding innovative ways to make owning its products feel like renting them. You buy the Xbox, buy the game, maybe pay for Game Pass, and Microsoft still patents a way to interrupt you with ads. At this rate, the final boss will be a 30 second unskippable commercial.
They fucked themselves when they went on their buying spree of studios. Their idea was literally that they would own every game studio, making a GamePass a necessity that they could charge whatever they wanted for.
Their quest inflated the price of every subsequent studio they acquired, leading them to take on so much debt that they had to shutter the studios they’d just purchased, and now they have to make a ton of money on every game–but that’s not how games work.
Just capitalism things…
But they didn’t even have to shutter many of the studios. Many of them were profitable. Microsoft just didn’t want the competition and they decided the studios weren’t obscenely profitable
oh if thats the case follow the developers of said games and teams and ignore any ip they using to make said game completely the old story franchise name is meaningless when people realize that then it can move forward. follow the devs people not the company that hold the ip and patents always. companies are leeches
Pretty clearly they were looking to corner the market, then. Disgusting. I would hope they went out of business, but that would leave Playstation as the de facto monopoly, and they are already killing themselves to enshittify as it is.
The only winning move for the final boss is to put down the controller and go outside.
Love it!
me vs the 36 hours unskippable ad final boss.
Damn, by patenting it they’re actually doing us all a huge favor.
Everyone will simply avoid microsoft games and no other gaming company can copy their stupid ideas.
Based
Until they license this out to every triple a studio and they all do it. Now I’m off to play more Tiny Terraces
Shhh for christs sakes man, don’t give them any ideas
OK, hear me out, let’s start a patent troll corp. and file for all the enshittification ideas ahead of the studio owners.
That’s… genius. So there’s gotta be a law against it already
Microsoft will file anyway and fuck you in court.
Good call on their part. Wouldn’t want anyone to steal their dog shit idea.
Oooo, that happens and I’d make it a point to contact the manufacturer/creator of said advertised product or service and politely inform them that because of the interruption of MY TIME, while relxing in a game, I will now never, ever consider their company, goods or services.
Make it formal, concise and final and if possible send it to the CEO. You want that one to come down on the head of whomever decided to insert themselves into a player’s game - get them in trouble with the boss - with a vengeance.
It often works.
While I agree people should oppose this, I really don’t think the head of Microsoft gaming decision or the current Microsoft CEO would care about your letter and most likely it wouldn’t even reach them.
I think they mean if the advertised product. So like if Kleenex buys the ad space they’ll let kleenex know they’re boycotting them and why, not Microsoft.
Drinks a verification can
Fuck Microsoft.
That’s So Microsoft!™
Isn’t there some kind of group that patents awful ideas so nobody else can use them?
Apparently that group is called Microsoft.
Fuck yeah, this is going to save some serious time. Will cut down the non video game ad watching time I need to do by a lot probably.
Gamepass lower tier with ads - when?
“… while you’re playing them.” — that’s ambitious at this point.
As if I wasn’t already interested in the Xbox.
