Honestly this is what is confusing me the most about Xbox’s move here. They have spent the better part of 10 years dumping exclusives specifically to become the next Steam. Now all of a sudden they care about console sales again and it doesn’t really make sense with the direction they have been going.

Mr. Ed.

Valve is one of the few companies that has historically honored people’s bequests and allowed bequeathing their libraries to others after they die. Unlike say Apple who has outright said that your iTunes purchases disappear into the ether when you die.

Most of those guarantees involve mailing your receipt and the proof of purchase to the company along with a letter explaining how you were not satisfied before they will get around to mailing you a check for the $4.73 in 8-12 weeks.

Then they shouldn’t have allowed themselves to be bought out.

I was blaming Microsoft for what they became 20 years ago.

The problem with what you’re saying is that they’ve always bought out other studios and then fucked them up. Going all the way back to their original IP Halo; Halo was a product of Bungie, a Mac exclusive game company at the time. Halo was originally going to be Apple’s big jump into gaming. The release of Halo was delayed to port it to the Xbox and today… today Bungie barely exists and all of their IPs are owned by MS.

Xbox was a passion project, Bill Gates was obsessed with getting Microsoft into the living room. Once Bill Gates left, and later Steve Balmer left, there was nobody left who gave a shit about this passion project and it became a money grab. So Microsoft went back to doing what it does best, buying people out and running their IPs into the ground.

A lot of times we’re talking about something that was actually designed in the 80s or 90s, maybe not even by a company that exists anymore or in the same country where it’s currently being produced.

The most annoying part is the number of good mobile OSs we have already lost over the years to these two; Symbian, BB10, Windows Phone, and WebOS come to mind just off the top of my head. Not to mention the projects that have struggled for traction like Mozilla OS and Ubuntu Touch.

Edit: I misremembered, it was called Firefox OS, not Mozilla OS.

Yeah, that’s why I brought up DACs and Betas (and linked the SNES CD article), Sony has been trying for decades to own the current popular format itself. What’s been funny to me is they finally succeeded with Blu-ray and now it’s not even been 20 years and they’re ready to throw in the towel. Even betas were manufactured for nearly 50 years and they lost their format war. What was even more embarrassing to Sony is not just that Sony and Phillips had jointly created the CD standard, it’s that Sony had had to deal with Phillips after losing to Phillips on cassettes and then again on DACs (Phillips version being the DCC, which in the end also lost to CD). As well Phillips was readily working with JVC who had made VHS.

I am also not an expert in this area, however AFAIK being capable of being class action doesn’t make it class action. The Sandy Hook families sued Alex Jones and the number of plaintiffs didn’t make that class action either. As well, in Oklahoma right now there are 100s of similar cases against State Farm regarding hail damage payouts and despite intervention from the state AG these have not become a class action. From the information we do have at least one household invited at least one other household to join a lawsuit and they declined, beyond that we don’t know that there are even other plaintiffs to begin with.

Joining a lawsuit like that wouldn’t automatically make it class action.

They’re worried the sound drove down the price of their home, but they didn’t join the lawsuit… I’m officially confused.

Doing something that lowers the value of somebody’s house is usually a pretty slam dunk way for that person to be able to sue you. The article doesn’t mention if they have some sort of weird attachment to the house, but otherwise why wouldn’t you just wanna take the money and move somewhere else in the same town or otherwise? Especially if it’s already been four fucking years.

The PlayStation line exists entirely out of spite. Sony didn’t start it because they liked video games or even because they wanted to be part of the market. It exists entirely because Sony wanted to screw Nintendo over after being screwed over by Nintendo. When an entire product line exists for spite at a company like Sony, that has already taken people to task over betas and DACs, for instance, it’s never going to be something that is sustainable because now that they have ‘beaten’ Nintendo they don’t know what to do with the product line.

This is pretty much what’s happening to Xbox right now too, the only reason Xbox exists is because Bill Gates had a small obsession with getting Microsoft into the living room and since Xbox was a passion project and now nobody who had that passion works at Microsoft anymore they don’t know what to do with it and are just ringing it dry for money.

I have socks with grippy rubber on the inside heel that, very successfully, prevents this.

I like how now all of a sudden we forgot that you can make a gun out of hardware store plumbing… this seems like an intentional way to make sure that people can’t make things without paying the oligarchs. I think the fact that we are getting close to being able to make 90s level tech in garages is scaring the tech bros.

The argument is about digital goods not just video games, but for the record they absolutely did.

The iTunes Store is older than the Steam Store.

Most of the apps you’ve bought you can still download even if they’ve been delisted, note the AOL apps here. The only reason you can’t re-download them like the one in the middle here is if it no longer works on the modern OSs.

Just go to AppStore>User Icon>App & Purchase History.

I remember the trackball on mine would light up different colors. I had a Pearl.