No, they’re probably doing it too. They definitely did it in mobile phones, suing Apple for having phone call ringer silencing tech in their phones for instance; I would be surprised if they aren’t doing it in gaming too.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m not even saying I disagree, but I don’t think those move the needle on public sentiment like the Sony and Microsoft stuff. “Well, I don’t pirate Switch games, so my console won’t get bricked.” vs “Hey! But I buy physical copies of games!” and “Hey! They’re laying off a bunch of people, and I can imagine how that would feel.”

Honestly, what Sony is doing to capture platform lock-in isn’t substantially different from what Nintendo did. They were just quieter about it, or maybe they phrased the announcement better, or maybe they just get away with it because it’s not as visceral.

I don’t know how big a hit they actually took from that. If you ask the average gamer, I don’t know if they even are aware that it happened. I think the Sony physical media thing and the Microsoft layoffs have broken containment much more than the Palworld thing, though I don’t have any evidence of that.

I mean…on one hand, it’s pretty easy for Steam Valve to be doing well. They’re the only major platform that’s released a new console this year (except for Nintendo), they’re the hardware manufacturer with the biggest recent success (except for Nintendo) in the Steam Deck, and they’re the only major platform without any well-publicized egg on their face (except for Nintendo). It also helps that they basically own the entire PC space outright, where the other platforms are fighting amongst themselves (except for Nintendo).

But that brings up the Italian-plumber-with-a-powerup-that-turns-him-into-an-elephant in the room. Nintendo has been doing really well, too; and while, since the Wii, they’ve largely abandoned the power gamer space to the three players mentioned in this headline, the Switch 2 was a crazy release.

Obviously, Steam has made a lot of great bets that have paid off, they’ve managed to keep up customer goodwill by limiting anti-competitive behavior and focusing on good product and service over vendor lock-in, and they’re clearly the least anti-consumer player in the space right now. But Nintendo’s strategy of “make the games so compelling and polished that people won’t care about the lock-in” is basically the polar opposite, and it’s working too; so I don’t know how well we can draw conclusions about the industry from this.

Ooh, active hostility toward people who might consider switching. Another bold strategy.

MacOS doesn’t.

Anymore.

Windows doesn’t.

Anymore.

The only one that does is Linux, the one that no one in the grand scheme of things wants to use.

So you think making it harder to use is the right path for greater adoption? Bold strategy.

No one […] should want

The moment you’ve written those words, you’ve already lost. Because they obviously do want it, and operating systems have supported it for decades, which means it’s perfectly reasonable for people to expect it to continue.

“Grim” says ye.

“He he hee ha haw ha haaa haaaa heh haa ha ha ha hee haa haaaa haaaaw…!” says I.

I’ve tried that. For me, it’s also about the app ecosystem and the way multitasking is implemented. But also, perching a Bluetooth keyboard on my lap while the tablet was up on top of something else just separated things in a way I couldn’t reconcile in my mind.

How do you write anything long-form on a tablet? You seem to live a different life than me, if you find laptops redundant.

Or that Framework goes out of business.

Even if they do, they use mostly off-the-shelf components, and the designs for the stuff that isn’t are open-sourced. You can still repair them even if Framework doesn’t exist.

The tech debt always gets paid one way or another. Either preemptively, as part of ongoing maintenance; or after a data breach in the subsequent lawsuit and settlement; or in the slow, inexorable trickle of increased infrastructure costs and lost business from slow dependencies and ineffectual bandaid solutions.

It’s just newsworthy when it happens to companies.

and developers

Windows developers largely use Windows Server or Enterprise, neither of which have telemetry, spying, ads, or AI, depending on group policy.

I’m a little confused by the inclusion of .NET. Most Windows developers actively use that.

I wonder if they see the constant, gigantic updates to the framework distributable and think that’s a bad thing somehow.

It’s just like the Nvidia > OpenAI > Oracle triangle, but all on a single balance sheet. Hey, that’s efficiency!

We’re not at any kind of crisis point.

Blu-ray discs are still perfectly usable. A quad-layer Blu-ray could still hold a modern AAA title like Call of Duty, and a good many indie titles. Maybe it won’t be able to hold GTAVI, but we’ve put games on two discs in pretty much every console generation.

After AAA games get too big for Blu-rays, there’s still flash memory. Nintendo has been using flash carts for two console gens with no problem; there’s no reason Sony and Microsoft couldn’t design their own flash cart slot. The nice thing about those, you probablynever have to change compatibility due to file size ever again; since flash memory is always getting smaller. And if you design the physical object correctly, you can leave room for a lot of extra chips.

But that’s not all. Nobody would be complaining about the end of hard copies if the publisher just gave you the files to do with as you please. No DRM, no “anti-cheat” crippleware, no day one updates that finish the actual game, no launcher.

Deliver that via online service, add some retro game preservation projects, and now you’re a Good Old beloved pillar of online game storefronts.

The way we estimate on my team is to break tasks down into related subtasks that will take one day or less, then add up all the subtasks. It’s worked pretty well.

Not to mention, 14 days is three weeks, not two. Unless they’re hiring someone to work your weekends for you.

Blocking browsers is exactly the opposite of what I want. I want a phone that’s only a browser. For me, using a browser on a mobile device is enough friction that it discourages me from using it for the stuff I intentionally uninstalled, like social media.

Give me a phone with a phone app, SMS/RCS app, RSS app, and camera app and nothing else, and I’d be perfectly content.