Every analyst I spoke to said that gaming hardware costs were only going to keep rising, with most analysts giving an estimate of somewhere between 2027 and 2029 before prices began to ease, if they eased at all. As Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, explains, "The increases happening now are lagging indicators, not the peak. Platform holders and manufacturers run on long-term supply contracts and inventory buffers that initially shielded retail pricing. As those contracts expire, companies are renegotiating component costs at today's inflated rate, and that pressure is industry-wide."

And there doesn't seem to be a definitive ceiling for these prices. Elliott continues, saying that pricier hardware is only an issue for platform holders "when it chokes off a pipeline of new, spending users. And right now, that pipeline is still healthy. [PlayStation and Steam's] ecosystems are still growing, and the PS5 generation will also be extended by a long cycle of cross-generation games."

It's a little different for handheld gaming, though, especially with Nintendo just having entered a new console cycle. "While console manufacturers can and will continue to subsidize the cost of their hardware, components costs continue to rise faster than the rate by which they are subsidizing – this is especially true for Nintendo," says James McWhirter, senior analyst at Omdia. "We expect further increases to the price of Switch 2 in 2027."

Mat Piscatella, senior director at Circana, says there is a price ceiling. It's just that no one will really know what it is until someone hits it. "Some very tough choices with long-ranging impact will have to be made by all hardware manufacturers both now and in the coming months when it comes to pricing and production," he says. "Yes, at some point there is a viable price cap. What that cap is, however, is still a bit of a mystery, and dependent upon numerous factors, both quantifiable and not so much. This market has never before been in this position, and we're learning many things about it as we go."

My most anticipated game of 2026. Looking forward to lots of chill exploration and puzzle-solving with friends!

Game is coming out in August 4th on Steam, Switch 2, and PS5.

The same thing happens every summer—the jaded, cynical monster inside me mopes around and pretends he's not going to get excited about SGF (and before it, E3) announcements. There are too many of them, and I've been around too long to become a victim of hype.

And every summer, the hype starts bubbling away anyway, more and more, until it engulfs the jaded, cynical monster. There's usually one announcement that does it for me. This year, that honour went to Guild Wars 3.

I've been a fiend for MMOs as far back as my addled brain allows me to remember, but it was Guild Wars 1 that really turned me into an MMO guy, staying up until 4 am, the glow from my screen emphasising my beautiful, pallid—some might say "corpse-like"—complexion. I expect Guild Wars 3 might spell doom for my social life next year.

I’m going back and playing older games (and some newer ones). Games I played as I was younger, games I never played but saw on shelves or heard referenced over the years, and games from franchises I’ve heard about for a long time. A long and fun road ahead. For the most part I have original hardware but I have used FPGA and Software emulation too. I’d like to just post some thoughts as I go through with no regular cadence. Not a review.

Just finished Prince of Persia Sands of Time on PS2. I have to say, a bit buggier than I recall. I had originally played it on a different system. Camera controls are jank and the audio seemed tricky. Often lines were delivered really quietly and someone else would be super loud.

All that said, what a great game! Gameplay usually felt solid, characters were all interestingly designed, and the sound design overall was fantastic. Loved it and glad I replayed it.

Short ish (7hrs at 98% complete). Felt like it had great pacing, good mix of action and story, great voice acting, and fun writing. Has a bit of fan service which was annoying but overall, loved it.

Directly following it up with Prince of Persia Warrior within. What a tone shift lol.

Anyone play it back in the day or revisit it recently?

geteilt von: https://feddit.org/post/30521857

Yesterday, the Protect Our Games Act (AB 1921) has passed on the California State Assembly floor with a 43–16 vote! Now it heads to the California State Senate, and this is where it needs your help!

If you live in California, or know someone who does:

Find your State Senator here, then go to their 'Contact Me' page and submit your support for AB 1921 - the Protect Our Games Act. Please include a short explanation as to why you support games preservation.

If you live in another state, or know someone who does:

Send your support to the Chair of the Senate Privacy Committee here.

Everyone around the world can also help!

Help exposure by reposting / sharing one of these links in your circles:

• Reddit
• X / Twitter
• YouTube - Broadcast Yourself
• Instagram
• Tik Tok

You can e-mail the Senate Privacy, Digital Technologies, and Consumer Protection Agency at SPDTCP.Committee@sen.ca.gov and express your interest and support for this bill internationally.

French volunteer needed in Paris...

SKG is in urgent need of a French gamer that can meet us in Paris on June 8th. This is for a brief television interview - for a story that is being prepared. Beyond the SKG representative, they also wish to interview a local / French gamer and film some seconds of gaming. If you fit the profile and availability, please contact us urgently! You can open an 'inquiries' ticket on the unofficial community server at: (https://discord.gg/TCE6uXwsBe).

Supplementary...

We would like to thank our supporters from all over the world for their continued efforts. It is with you that we have together paved the way for a tomorrow where we have a choice to keep the things we buy and play the games we love when we want to play them. Please remember that your strength is our strength and now we need it more than ever. This is your movement. We are here to give you - the gamer, the consumer - a voice that can be heard by those who we have elected globally to make a difference. Let us call on them together and make sure that the industry with whom we are petitioning against will stop killing games once and for all.

SKG Forever!!!

Update from the SKG Discord

cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/4180150

Shitter link: https://x.com/thewitcher/status/2059560461872373812

Medallion's humming... that can only mean one thing! It's time to announce The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past! ⚔️

This brand new expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will take you to the Path with Geralt of Rivia once more. It’s being co-developed with @Fools_Theory and is coming to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 in 2027. Stay tuned for more information in late summer. ⏰

I like the oppressive atmosphere, tension and the use of stealth. Interesting to see what kind of reviews the game will get, at least there is lots of hype.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/43119841

Hello, i was wondering if there are any good indie games on steam to try out. Can be free or paid, i don't mind if there's no native linux build either (i play stuff with wine/proton anyways lol) and i don't mind the genre. I've been thinking of trying something new as of recent so i thought i might ask it here.

Thanks!

Bungie have announced that they are putting together the final update for Destiny 2, bringing to an end the live service shooters 12-year run. The game itself will continue to exist for players to replay the content that already exists but nothing new will be added.

Behind the announcement, as told to Bloomberg by their sources, is the news that Bungie face "significant" layoffs as soon as the update is out the door.

Most transportation games are super shallow:

• trains simply turn around on the platform
• there is not enough road traffic to actually necessitate advanced traffic planning, or then the driver AI is too stupid to make use of more complicated traffic solutions
• airplanes simply clip through each other
• pedestrians are just decoration that is randomly generated when the player is looking
• people are not individual agents

In factorio, trains are done quite well, except that the trains can drive curves with arbitrary small radii at arbitrary high speeds.

In cities skylines, road traffic is done relatively well, but vehicles are not simulated at any depth, and behave dumber than human drivers.

In workers and resources soviet republic, there seems to be a nice people simulation, but the traffic and train simulation is super basic.

In transport fever, laying rail tracks at low curvature and inclination and creating roads with low inclination is interesting, but the rest of the simulation is super basic.

Is there any game that simulates the different modes of transportation and their interaction well?

• pedestrians should halt traffic when crossing a crosswalk
• road traffic should be smart about choosing lanes
• trains should be forward only, unless there is locomotives or drivers stands at both ends
• planes should follow reasonable holding patterns over airports and have vertical separation on routes

And many many more things. Designing a good transportation network is challenging in the real world. Why can't we bring that real challenge into games?

For a long time, the common wisdom was that game consoles would usurp PC gaming, leaving it a niche hobby, ignored by the greater gaming community. And indeed, for a long time consoles were the most popular way to play mainstream games. But recently, especially since the release of the current generation of consoles, the very opposite seems to be coming true. PC gaming has been expanding while consoles falter.

Looking forward to the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles, analysts are predicting $900 as the low end of possible pricing--and that number is seeming more and more optimistic. That's a lot of money to spend for a dedicated machine that, for most console owners, is just used for playing Call of Duty or the latest football game. Consoles are becoming too expensive for all but the most dedicated gamers to justify--especially when gamers in their teens and early 20s have grown up in a world where a console is no longer needed to play the vast majority of games.

I'm just going to leave this here. Linked by my college roommate.

Civilization VII is set for a major update that finally let players stay as one civ through all Ages, as the boss of parent company Take-Two has admitted: “we got it wrong.”

Civilization VII is over a year old now, and has fewer players on Steam than both Civilization VI and the 15-year-old Civilization V. When Civilization VII launched, players highlighted issues with the user interface, a lack of map variety, and a lack of features they’d come to expect from the franchise. But some veteran Civ fans also didn’t get on well with the dramatic changes developer Firaxis made to the game.

At launch, a full campaign in Civilization VII was one that went through all three Ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Once the Age is completed, all players (and any AI opponents) experience an Age Transition simultaneously. During an Age Transition, three things happen: you select a new civilization from the new Age to represent your empire, you choose which Legacies you want to retain in the new Age, and the game world evolves. The Civilization games had never had such a system, and it proved divisive.

While Firaxis launched a number of key updates in a bid to turn sentiment around, and Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick indicated to IGN that he was confident Civilization VII would eventually prove to be a successful project, developer Firaxis suffered layoffs in September, and the game is still stuck on a ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam — its core platform.

Speaking to Game File now, Zelnick took responsibility for Civilization VII’s struggles.

“Every time there’s a new Civ, the team at Firaxis thinks about: ‘How do we push the envelope far enough that it makes sense to buy this new game? And how do we preserve what people love enough so that they’re not disaffected?’ And we got it wrong with Civ VII, but it wasn’t for want of trying. And again, I take responsibility for it,” he said.

“So we’ve made a bunch of fixes. We’ll continue to make fixes. The game is a really good game. And it’s certainly a profitable enterprise for us. But this is one where I think what we tried to do was a bridge too far, from the consumer’s perspective.”

I just bought a Switch copy of Red Dead Redemption for $30 USD at Walmart and wondered if that'll be the last of its purchase I'll ever make. There's nothing quite like buying a new cellophane-wrapped copy and it makes me sad the physical age of gaming is at its twilight.

Set in the Roaring ’20s, The Sinking City 2 is a survival horror steeped in Lovecraftian dread. Defy an eldritch deity and explore the drowned alleys of Arkham, stalked by the dead, as you weigh one life against an entire city.
Coming this summer to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series.

The first time I thought they might actually get away with it was in 2021, when I first saw Mina Harker. Wizards of the Coast had just released a set of Magic: The Gathering cards titled Innistrad: Crimson Vow, an elegant set with vampires as its central motif. As always, the set came with the usual assortment of alternate illustrations for some of the marquee cards, which was something that I and most people who took the competitive side of the game seriously to an embarrassing extent made a routine of ignoring. This time though, the theme for the alternate art series wasn’t some stupid-looking sideshow—it was Stoker’s Dracula. A select few cards, including some that would be the strongest and most frequently played in the entire set, would have secondary but playable versions depicting recognizable characters from the literary classic.

The problem was that they nailed it. The illustrations were beautiful and restrained, a fun and relatively unobtrusive tribute to Stoker, released right in the middle of spooky season. This included Magali Villenueve’s new drawing of Mina Harker, Dracula’s protagonist, cast here as the alternate version of a card called Thalia, Guardian of Thraben.

The card choice mattered as much as the excellent art. Thalia herself is an iconic character in the world of Magic, and a powerful-enough card that, from a competitive standpoint, you’re usually either playing the card yourself or showing up with a plan to beat her. This meant that Mina Harker, a character with no relation whatsoever to Magic: The Gathering, was now constantly appearing in games of Magic. Between the quality of the art, the ubiquity of the card, and Dracula having a literary sheen far less offensive than both previous and future attempts at this sort of intellectual-property bait-and-switch, people got used to it.

Give an inch, lose a mile. I start with Dracula because of how quaint it is in retrospect, how tasteful. But anyone with even a passing familiarity with Magic knows where that impulse toward a “crossover event” would go. Spongebob Squarepants Secret Lair drops; basic land cards featuring illustrations of pizza from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; a full destruction of the standard format at the hands of a minor character from Final Fantasy. Perhaps something you love is undergoing a similar transformation—endless intermixing with other creative properties such that the barrier between the two wholly blurs, entries released at intervals so frequent that their creators can’t possibly have done a worthwhile job, a lurking sense that someone else is being pandered to in order to keep the line going up. But who? Who, apart from Hasbro’s shareholders or the WotC C-suite, is any of this for?

The answer is fandom. It was a culture of fandom that said We like this to the people whose job it was to exercise editorial control over the art and design of Magic. And if you yourself didn’t like it, well, you were probably already invested in the game enough that you were willing to put up with it. At root, that’s the bet, wherever this sort of corporate decision appears: if you care about something, you won’t go anywhere even if you notice its erosion, all while new customers show up. A Growth Opportunity was making itself clear, at least as extrapolated by sales data. And in the end, isn’t Growing the Game the most important thing of all?