Kingdom Hearts Diary Day 25: Winding down on Dream Drop Noble. Definitely my least favorite in the series which is saying a lot... Hate the drop aspect as I whined about before, story is nonsense at this point, game play with flowmotion is finnicky as hell and messes up basic attacks, don't like the monster system, should have just kept the last one in BBS. So much backtracking with having to do everything twice... Low point right now. Hoping I can move on this weekend.

More to follow.

This still just formalities? 

You forgot the Ukraine one^

I love the "Rare sucks because they don't make the types of games that I want them to make, anymore"

Imho, Viva Pinata and Sea of Thieves are amongst Rare's best, I played Rare Replay and honestly, I know it was a different time so it's unfair to judge them by todays standards but I hated most of them, Lol.

But Sea of Thieves is arguably one of Rare's most successful games ever now.

I'd doubt they would announce anything this E3, acquisitions take months so it would depend on when they started, I don't know if they would have been negotiating acquisitions during Activision-Blizzard's approval but maybe they'll start now because they have to internally realise that ABK isn't happening now.

The narrative fails on two parts.

Firstly it fails because it's exactly what they have been doing, over the past few years they've hired hundreds, they still have a large amount of open positions, they've opened studios in new locations for a few of their studios for further expansion and upgraded the HQ of others. They've expanded the studios in pretty much every way that you can think of.

Secondly it fails because that simply isn't how a business works, that money is earmarked for acquisitions, Microsoft using that money takes absolutely nothing away from being able to invest in their own studios, if Microsoft took $69bn from their bank and said "We're using it all on our Xbox Game Studios!" Shareholders would fucking kill them, Lol.

What would they even spend $69bn on their currently owned studios on? Want Microsoft to open 100 extra studios or something? Lol.

People act like this $69bn is all Microsoft has...Don't worry, they have billions extra sitting in the bank and they make billions every year to feed Xbox.

Worth saying that Double Fine is their own choice not to seek huge expansion as well. They've very clearly in the past said that they prefer to be a smaller studio, they don't want to be filled with hundreds, I believe it is something to do with not losing the culture of their studio.

Obsidian has actually said something similar in the past, they said they like their small teams and don't want to become a massive AAA studio, that may change if they want to do Fallout (I know Feargus wants to do it) but they've already confirmed they won't start a new project until late 2023 IIRC.

Not every studio wants to expand to huge numbers.

It was almost definitely something in the works and near completion before the CMA made their decision, it is likely more for Europe's benefit anyway to convince the EC.

It doesn't really matter, Microsoft could sign a deal with every Cloud Gaming Provider in the world, aside from Google (Lol), Amazon and Sony, big and small, they could all say they support the deal, the CMA will still say all those Cloud companies are wrong, they know what is best for them and block the deal still, Lol.

Activision and Blizzard games are already on Boosteroid. I had no idea about that. Boosteroid Games » Current List 2023 [daily updated] (cloudbase.gg)

I believe unlike Geforce Now they do not get approval from publishers before featuring their games. I don't know the legalities of that but I've never really understood why Geforce Now needed permission. They aren't selling the titles just letting you rent a PC to play whatever games you already own on it.

Services like Shadow let you play anything, they certainly won't have legal troubles as they don't advertise the games you can play just give you a cloud pc and let you do whatever you want.

I won't be playing Redfall on release. I've pretty much liked everything I've seen about it and I'm confident it's a good game, but there's many other games I'm playing right now so might as well wait for 60fps patch.

In Sound Mind, Shadow Tactics: Blades of Shogun, Minecraft Legends and The Last Case of Benedict Fox. Also just bought Stranded: Alien Dawn which looks like a really promising survival/management game.

Yeah, Boosteroid has a lot of titles which aren't available on GeForce Now...For now.

The moment GeForce Now exited Beta and became somewhat popular, publishers all over started yanking their titles off the service, including Activision. They want Nvidia to pay them for the right to stream their games and Nvidia refuses. Nvidia probably doesn't want to hurt relationships with developers either so they just accept it and remove the titles, Boosteroid has no such relationship so they may fight it more.

Boosteroid is a small company which barely anyone knows about so the big boys don't bother with them, but if it becomes popular, I expect we will see publishers starting to demand approval and payment from Boosteroid as well, exactly what happened with GeForce Now. It'll be interesting if it stood up in court though.

"Unfortunately, buying games today isn't as simple as "owning" them. What you're typically buying is a license, and that license comes with strings, like DRM. One of those strings is the EULA, the interminable license agreement in front of some games that may say you can't mod the game or use it in particular ways. As Patrick Klepek pointed out in his reporting on GeForce Now, some EULAs specifically forbid using a cloud service to stream the game. Blizzard bans cloud computing along with selling your account or exploiting bugs to duplicate game items. Blizzard also claims ownership over mods, which is pretty shitty."

"Even if a service like GFN isn't forbidden by a game's EULA, though, it's not purely a hardware service. GeForce Now includes an app and interface for selecting games, including art and descriptions of those games. It's a curated ecosystem, and currently GeForce Now only allows you to play games that Nvidia claims are compatible (when you choose to launch a game, it locks the cloud server's permissions to ensure you can only play that game). I haven't gotten an answer from Nvidia about whether or not bespoke work goes into ensuring these games run properly when streamed from the cloud, but regardless, you're not renting a blank slate cloud computer: it already has Steam and other stores installed, and every compatible game is already installed on a network drive that your virtual machine connects to."

The controversy over GeForce Now, explained | PC Gamer

That's really shitty lol. Ideally these services shouldn't need per-game approval at all. If anything they are a benefit to the publishers as it increases the audience they can sell to, those without a console or gaming pc. They still get paid so not sure why any third party would have an issue with it unless they were running their own cloud service. Having control like this opens the door for publishers to accept money-hats from cloud services like GFN, Boosteroid etc for exclusivity. So them making even more money. Charging you for the game as normal still and then charging the cloud provider too.

If you pay $70 for a PC game you should be allowed to play it on any PC, even a remote one.