Is it your first time seeing a pussy?
MS prevented you from using other browsers by using vendor lock-in. It was a prime example example of now misunderstood concept of embrace, extend, extinguish. You could download Mozilla Phoenix but you couldn’t use it for everything because CSS rendering in IE was so detached from standards. On top of that you had ActiveX which meant you HAD to use Windows for some websites.
Adding gambling to video games without verifying user age is targeting children with gambling. There’s a lot of convenient combinations of circumstances that Valve is fully aware of and profiting from. I don’t care about plausible deniability because Valve employees were visibly smug and amused when questioned about it. There is no absolving Valve after this.
You blame others for Valve monopoly. Yeah, I said they missed the ship. We have a private monopoly in PC gaming storefronts now and that’s not good. It doesn’t matter if they won fair - they are a parasitic middle-man that makes everyone lose.
Ask yourself and be honest about it: if Valve had a true competitor would their cut be as high as it is now? This is the only thing you should be concerned about, not that they engage in Linux philanthropy or that they make cool games.
Pressure on their web browser monopoly was necessary because IE6 was stifling entire industry. From a legal point of view it’s not illegal to be a monopoly but to abuse that position so there isn’t that much you can do about it, especially in the US. Going after operating system or office suite monopoly should have been done but matters less and less these days.
Valve runs a couple of online casinos that target children specifically, not sure we should be arguing who’s worse here. I think Steam is a clunky piece of software that’s popular mostly because everyone else missed the moment to start competing and Valve gained monopoly unopposed. Other viable competitors tried and failed at even gaining a foothold and are relegated to small niches because it’s impossible to move people who amassed content libraries over the years. Valve skims 10-30% of an insanely large volume of transactions and should be held to a much higher standard. You’re ignoring all of the warning signs because they didn’t screw you over yet.
Why keep pretending that’s not the case, especially now? What else is required? For Kanye to run death camps?
Why use examples of ones that are no longer fascist. I mean, in Italy we have a post-fascist government after all. There are also some fascist states that have endured quite long like Russia or United States. And that’s for plain fascism. Monopolies and the rich extracting money from societies are as big of an issue because unaddressed they lead to fascism pretty much always.
Thank god nobody from this comment section was involved in antitrust cases against Microsoft.
Thanks, I updated the title but will leave the post up so that people who saw the original have a chance to see it.
I usually see Series S as a sole or secondary system so that your kids can game on a budget. When you’re gaming on subscription service you’re not really invested in the ecosystem and I think Microsoft is banking on a low barrier of entry. Unfortunately for them that also means it’s rather hard to retain those people. They might achieve a spectacular success in 2025 and have nothing to show next year.
Yeah. When they had to fight for their user base. Even Tinder was reasonably usable couple of years ago. It paired me with my current partner which must be considered a marvel of technology.
I got it for backwards compatibility since there’s so little worthwhile stuff being released these days. Game Pass is a good bang for the buck so people will keep buying Series S for their kids, otherwise MS would be toast. With titles as good as upcoming ones timed exclusivity might be enough to get some market share.
Better than expected although it’s mostly Series S behind those numbers. I don’t think Microsoft is about to pull a PS3-level comeback but they might catch a breath thanks to how good this year’s lineup is.
I’m not that old but not that far off either. I live in ruins of that civilisation. I walk the remains of a 15 minute city and I know first hand accounts of people who lived it. I can see that my country somehow solved gender wage gap. Was it perfect? It was awful and authoritarian but that’s what you get when being Russian colony. Doesn’t have to be that way.
What’s the 1% that did? I want to see where the bar is.
I live in a post-soviet republic, please rethink what you’ve just said XD
I encourage you to stop idolising individualism because it’s not a virtue by itself. There is a significant difference between state and private monopoly that liberals tend to conveniently ignore. I’m a citizen, not a shareholder.
Nintendo can discount previous gen stuff once Switch 2 releases. Nintendo is likely to have a reasonable margin despite the inflation because they never discounted Switch since it released in 2017, just added more SKUs.
Infrastructure monopolies are the nastiest. This one is so insidious too.