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"93% of Gen Alpha prefer playing on mobile..."

"Millennials and Gen X tend to be loyal to platforms or genres – now, the younger generations tend to be more loyal to specific experiences. They no longer identify as gamers – they identify as players of a specific game."

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— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 29 July 2025 at 16:46

Shout out to the millennials on social platforms that got kerfuffled last week by my musings around exclusives and the Gen Xers that did the same on (ewwww) LinkedIn.

C'mon Xers. Stop posting on LinkedIn so much. What are you even doing.

Also, let the past go. The past is the past. It's donezo.

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 29 July 2025 at 16:48

Anyways we are right in the middle of a fundamental, foundational and monumental shift away from the console warz of yore to the games-as-platforms battle of the live service behemoths of the future, and what's happening tangentially around the industry can in no small part be attributed to this.

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 29 July 2025 at 16:51


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Here are the Q2 2025 US best-selling title rankings for PlaySation (revised from yesterday, oops), Xbox and Nintendo platforms. Ranked on dollar sales, physical and digital from participating publishers (see my pinned).

Apologies for the error in the chart I posted yesterday. Good eyes, internet.

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— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 30 July 2025 at 16:10



Machiavellian said:
Shaunodon said:

Look how you've already resorted to conflating two separate issues.

The fact that these laws have already spread to blocking 'social features' on gaming platforms, means their intentions were obviously polluted to begin with. It had nothing to do with protecting children.

Both the law makers and corporations are in bed together when it comes to overreach and abusing their power. We should be protecting our rights from both of them, not trying to simp for one or the other and trying to give reason to their obvious greed for power and money.

I am not conflating any issue, I am ask you exactly who is it that you are directing your ire at as I stated.

You say these laws have nothing to do with protecting children and I ask you this question, where is your proof of that or is this just a feeling.  I am not denying that is the case or not but what are the examples you have that this was not a measure put into place because of abuse that has happened.

So you are saying these laws were instituted by corporations and law makers wanting your personal data.  I do not believe I agree with this because they pretty much already have your data if you ever bought anything online using their services you already provided said personal data.  I do not know but this seems to be a reach here to me.  There are so many ways that your personal data is already online and available to be cross checked and verified already that there really isn't any real need to make a law to do so. 

What exactly would be the gain from the corporation side in this particular situation.  What personal data that they are asking for they can use for whatever purpose?

I honestly can't tell if you're naive or just willing to do play Devil's advocate regardless of how far it takes you. Either way I can see this going nowhere already.

This is just the first step and the tip of the iceberg. If people don't defend their rights now, it's destined to only get worse in the future.



Machiavellian said:
Tober said:

That 3rth party age verification company is not running on fumes. It costs money. So it will either increase gaming cost or they sell your data. Probably both.

Isn't that illegal to do in the UK.  Not really all that up to date on EU laws and so forth but I thought you have to get the user permission for that.

Every time you press except a cookie, your data is brokered by hundreds. Often you cannot reject all cookies, because 'essential'. 

In this case you will not even have a reject button. The money to fund this has to come from somewhere.



That’s what you get when you vote in the far right masquerading as the Labour Party. Thank fucking god we’ll never have a Labour Party in power ever again come the next election.



Ride The Chariot | ‘25 Completion

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VersusEvil said:

That’s what you get when you vote in the far right masquerading as the Labour Party. Thank fucking god we’ll never have a Labour Party in power ever again come the next election.

Just saw this gem from the Labour Party floating around on Twitter as well

These kind of draconian measures are definitely going to drive voters away. 



Meanwhile I just saw Youtube is rolling out AI to detect if a user is under 18 or not, if Youtube determines that the videos you watch align with the viewing interests of a teen or a child instead of the viewing interests of an adult, it will override your claimed age and age restrict videos if you don't verify your age.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/youtube-is-using-ai-to-verify-user-age-by-browsing-activity/ar-AA1JALHe?ocid=BingNewsSerp



shikamaru317 said:
VersusEvil said:

That’s what you get when you vote in the far right masquerading as the Labour Party. Thank fucking god we’ll never have a Labour Party in power ever again come the next election.

Just saw this gem from the Labour Party as well

These kind of draconian measures are definitely going to drive voters away. 

He seems to have forgotten he wasn’t voted in, people just voted the Torries out. He’s a man who stands for nothing leading a party for nobody. He spent 14yrs watching the Torries fuck the UK and the only thing he could come up with was … they weren’t fucking the UK hard enough. 



Ride The Chariot | ‘25 Completion

In gaming news, I'm pretty burnt out on open world games lol. At least 90% of my gaming time this year has been Starfield: Shattered Space, STALKER 2, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and Oblivion. And I've put over at least 100 hours in each of them. I'm gonna be going on a hiatus from open world games and relax with the likes of THPS 3+4 finally and looking at reviews, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound looks to be a banger! Squeezing in Donkey Kong Bananza as well.



You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind

Tober said:
Machiavellian said:

Isn't that illegal to do in the UK.  Not really all that up to date on EU laws and so forth but I thought you have to get the user permission for that.

Every time you press except a cookie, your data is brokered by hundreds. Often you cannot reject all cookies, because 'essential'. 

In this case you will not even have a reject button. The money to fund this has to come from somewhere.

You are not telling me anything I do not know, what I am saying is why would Law makers and corporations need a law to get your data when there are so many ways that data is already giving out and freely sold between corporations already.  Why institute something that bring focus to something they already get for free with no effort.  

If they wanted to have easy access to your data, then instead of making laws, they would just deregulate instead.  Much easier to deregulate and allow unfettered tracking of individuals online than making some obscure law based on children access to adult content.