Though "those little notifications on each platform that tell you 'Your Friend Jane is Now Playing Slime Rancher'" could theoretically be construed as a form of praise, I think it's more likely in context that the correct quote is that "the [Game Pass] model complements" the dev's games, not compliments them.
@KITG_Group_BrunoB Allow me to put on my nerd glasses and explain that Mjölnir was never cursed or otherwise enchanted to explicitly return when thrown; Thor merely achieved that effect by judicious use of his and/or the hammer's ability for Mjölnir to be retrieved at its owner's command.
Anyway, this thing would be a work of absolute mad brilliance if it wasn't ruined by the incredibly tacky, profoundly unnecessary, and practically instantly out-of-date commercial logo plastered all over the side. Pity.
The headline really does this story a disservice; the actual Twitter thread doesn't in any way say that this dev was unhappy with Sega.
Rather, it reads as frustration over the realities of software development ("We knew going in that there would be a major time crunch...", "We asked to do major fixes near submission but weren't allowed due to submission and approval rules."), especially unforeseen bugs that can arise during the integration of individual components. It's an affadaivit to fans that they acknowledge the problems, they're capable of fixing them if given enough time, and are ready and willing to do so if given the chance.
It's human nature to try to put scandalous human narratives on things, but this isn't a human problem, it's a computer one.
That response is peak Microsoft - this is the same company that has for the last decade or two been pushing towards forcibly taking control over the guts of their Windows OS away from the end user because they don't think they can be trusted with them. And sure, consoles are a very different sort of beast when it comes to consent and user freedom, but this smacks of the exact same philosophy.
At the risk of sounding preachy, in the Microsoft ecosystem, customers aren't independent individuals with control over their own systems, but rather zero-salary employees to be managed and administrated like any other. Been that way since they shot themselves in the foot with the pre-lauch game-licensing debacles of the Xbox One, been that way even longer in Windows, still that way today.
I'm just amused by how the mood lighting in the 'back-to-back' shot makes it look like these were sized for somebody with feet about 4" long.
Come to think of it, shoe sizes are kind of important for boots in general, and if only 117 pairs of these are being made... well, even if a scant few of them did end up going to earnest fans instead of internet scalpers, there's about zero real chance of them actually being usable, much less used, as real footwear, innit?
I'm quite amused by those controllers, and not specifically perturbed over keeping them clean, but that much fur seems like it'd just make the grip too loose to be practical; I can't help but imagine the hand grips sliding around to and fro in one's palms under all that hair as a game is played.
@Fenbops A more detailed explanation, from IGN's coverage of this (warning: it's squicky, as one should probably expect):
In terms of the removed masturbation references, Dalcò made clear there's no visualisation of masturbation or sex in the game but "it's the context that has been considered inappropriate".
That context is that the references take place while the player is in a psychiatric hospital that practices religious as well as medical treatments. Dalcò says this is based on historical fact and real-life accounts.
"These were places where patients were compulsorily admitted and where they often spent their entire lives," he explained. "They were total institutions, like prisons, restricting every facet of a person's life and, as such, masturbation was one of the few things patients were able to do.
"In terms of this specific scene in Martha is Dead, the player walks in a field dotted with huge crosses with mask-wearing dolls hanging from them. A voice-over narrates the experience of living in an asylum, commenting that 'there was this one young woman who would pleasure herself all day long... incessantly, to the point where she would bleed.'"
The pic is in poor taste. Imagine if Sony somehow bought Bungie out from under MS, and before the ink on the deal was even dry a Sony exec updated their profile pic to them grinning while they and Master Chief formed a human "PS" together. It's gloating, pure and simple, and there's really no call for defending it, whatever your stance on fanboyism.
Sound design seems notably on-point from that very brief clip too - the mix of music and ambience filled the audio space very nicely, and the item jingles meshed reasonably well with it. If those couple of seconds hold up when extrapolated over a few tens of hours, that'd help the experience a lot.
Ah yes, who in the galaxy hasn't heard stories about the famed Beskar Plastic, signature material of the Mandalorians, and cornerstone of their very society. Its price? Astronomical. Its strength? Practically mythical.
Why, I heard a full breastplate of the stuff was almost able to stand up to a blaster shot at half-strength once - the hole was so tough to see that after they pried it off the bounty hunter's corpse and gave it some touch-up paint, a scalper was still able to resell it for nearly full retail price!
@mousieone Mercury Steam and Wayforward are coups for Nintendo in that they're the exact opposite of Microsoft buying Bethesda - insofar as they've produced any Nintendo-exclusive games, it's been not because they've been bought out or moneyhatted (to my knowledge), but either because they've been eager to work on valuable IPs Nintendo developed from the ground up, or because Nintendo has fostered vibrant and substantive collaborative development partnerships with them.
"It's unclear whether there's any meaning behind these codes, or whether they're just a random assortment of numbers."
It's surely not a coincidence that all three strings of numbers represent actual dates from the last thirty-odd years. The odds of that happening from random number strings are virtually nil.
Everything he said about VR systems and the Quest 2 could be applied just as easily to the bog-standard wireless Xbox controller as it could to a theoretical VR headset, with implications that would be interesting if they weren't already pretty much old news anyway.
I'm no fan of crime, but the full article detailing this incidentally discusses quite a few ways in which gift cards are already used by Microsoft and other companies for ends about 99.9% as shady as this guy's were. Between devaluation, non-redemption, intentional obfuscation and psych manipulation, and tax dodging, the "legal" corporate pipeline for separating money from consumers via gift cards is every bit as sophisticated and intentional a pipeline as Kvashuk's illegal one for giving it away to them was.
You know what, I take back what I said before - I suppose I am a fan of what this guy did. Self-serving though he may have been, he was also objectively a modern-day Robin Hood with bad English. It's tough to be 100% mad about that.
If a game that first released on PC less than a year ago can be considered any kind of "classic," cult or not, then the modern world is officially moving too darn fast.
@Carck The guy the story quotes is literally doing exactly what you complain people don't do, and putting the responsibility for broadly shaping aggregate consumer decisions on the big company here - Microsoft - instead of trying to blame individual consumers.
If Microsoft really wanted to save energy, they'd call the setting what it sounds like it actually is - "Always On" instead of "Instant On." Selling consumers a naming fantasy that their system is going from absolute zero to full throttle at the flip of a switch doesn't give them any compelling reason not to choose it; making it clear that they're actively choosing to waste energy would at least catch the momentary attention of anyone who bothers to turn the lights off when they leave a room.
Not that I'm one to talk; I tend to leave even the consoles I don't play for months or years at a time in similar states. Hmm. Maybe I should revisit that myself.
Ok, I've watched this half a dozen times now, and I still can't figure it out... why does the center touchscreen slide down when it's opened, just to slide right back up again???
Also, honorable mention to the apparently inflatable joysticks that somehow extend to be taller than the entire handheld is thick.
@WesEds Since I've got a de facto degree in hollow jingoism due to being from the US, I can confidently say it's just a boast of their national identity of rugged outdoorsmanship. It's an intentional poke in the eye of traditional formalwear, but that'd be meaningless if denim versions of such were their actual tradition, so... no. Pretty sure Canada didn't really go through some mysterious national tuxedo shortage decades ago precipitating a wholesale inversion of their clothing markets.
...All that said, that's a damn fine looking controller, if it isn't a photoshop. I'll bet that denim finish would look and feel awesomely novel, for the slice of users relaxed enough not to sweat it to pieces in marathon white-knuckle gaming sessions, and responsible enough not to trash it with crumbs and food stains. I'd love to get a chance to try it out in person.
Tough luck for the Mandalorian (the character) getting second billing in his own show's promo, being put literally behind the wee babby Yoda in that pic. Harsh but true.
@Dijita Without minimizing your complaint, I'd like to interject that we should all be so lucky as to be woken up in the morning by the clackety button noises of our significant other playing some vidja games. Your boyfriend's literally living the dream!
@mousieone I can certainly acknowledge the possibility of that, at least. The Earth may not quite be Mos Eisley, but it can still be a pretty wretched hive of scum and villainy throughout.
@NEStalgia Fair enough; you seem to know more about these things than I do, so thanks for the explanation. @mousieone I don't actually find a 12 pack of water odd, though, and not all of the substitute goods being thrown in are as carefully chosen - in the account I relayed, Mr. Dickens' wife even commented to him before the box was opened that it seemed very suspiciously light. It appears, to me at least, that items are more or less just being reboxed to create a plausible excuse that something got mixed up in the warehouse, to keep the blame from being placed irrefutably on the delivery driver for a package outright going missing during delivery.
@NEStalgia @mousieone One of the staff on PureXbox's sister site PushSquare described this scam happening to him firsthand (with a PS5 instead of an XSX, obviously), and it certainly didn't sound like "not considering consoles high-value goods" was the problem - in his account, the author watched the tracking on his device as it got as far as being dispatched for delivery one day, with an Amazon van even driving past his house - he'll, he even waved the driver down and asked him to his face if there was a package for him - only to be mysteriously postponed as not delivered for the day. The next day, when the delivery was made (with his wife even having to read the driver back an Amazon-provided code to accept it, in a misplaced attempt at security) the box had been opened and resealed with clear tape, and had a Nerf gun inside instead of a console.
Amazon can throw all the high-value-goods-security it wants at its warehouses, but that doesn't stop scumbag drivers at literally the last mile from raiding a box and trying hamhandedly to frame it as a "mixup." It does make Amazon asking this guy to "return" the bottled water that they never themselves sent in the first place extra stupid, though.
@Kamalen Your platitude about freedom is technically meaningless, as far as I can tell, but the absolutist sentiment I understand behind it is just flat wrong. No legal marketplace in any developed country today is 100% free and unregulated, and you wouldn't want it to be.
Likewise, your assumption that any law outlawing organized scalping would be impossible to construct without doing more harm than good, based on a few half-hearted strawman and what I can only assume is a deep-rooted disdain for the idea of creating laws in general, is similarly incorrect. The existence of laws already forbidding other types of market manipulation is evidence enough of that.
@Kamalen Your post is framed such that it presumes that a free market is a good thing, and therefore if it gives rise to organized large-scale scalping then that must also be good, but you've got it precisely backwards - the existence of such outrageously parasitic things as this is an argument against a no-holds-barred unregulated free market.
A marketplace in which this sort of behavior was illegal would be slightly less free, but significantly more fair and efficient.
@Luigi_Skywalker Good for you; now imagine you lived in a society and industry that didn't force one parent to be utterly consumed by their job in order for the other parent to be able to afford to raise their child.
By the by, according to the contest's official rules, if you do manage to be one of the first 15 people to solve the puzzle and find the contest entry form, you'll be required to submit a 1-minute video to convince Samsung to choose you as one of the five finalists for their little PR game show. Said video will be judged by:
Originality/Uniqueness: 30%
Ability to Communicate Clearly: 25%
Relevance to the Contest Theme: 25%
Persuasiveness: 20%
So basically, no boring or uggo geniuses need apply.
Generational shenanigans and outrageous price aside, isn't it kind of pissing all over the actual Star Wars source material this is supposedly an homage to to make a controller with a "Mandalorian pattern reminiscent of beskar steel" but not (I assume by lack of mention) coat, or even accent it, in real metal?
I only watched about halfway through the first season of The Mandalorian, so I'm hardly an expert on the matter, but as I understand it the actual materials that go into Mandalorian armor are important.
@JON22 It probably doesn't mean much coming from an internet rando like me, but best wishes and good luck to you, man. This year has been the absolute worst.
@BAMozzy Yeeeah, I can forgive the definition of "gone gold" being a little bit fuzzy in this day and age, but when I'm literally seeing page ads on one of PureXbox's sister sites proclaiming "Cyberpunk 2077: GONE GOLD" while it's still reasonably recent news that the devs have been conscripted into crunch time until release...
All I know is that technology is awesome, and I'm not talking about video game consoles. Just the fact that we can say "Hmm, I'd really like to shoot a video of this thing, but it doesn't actually exist. Eh, not gonna let that stop me - c'mere phone, WE DOIN' THIS," is frankly awe-inspiring.
...And also more than a little unsettling to dwell on, but that's another story.
It looks like Turkey's model of the new Xbox also has a slightly different case, with silver highlights instead of green; not sure why they changed that up: https://amzn.to/2SimP3F
Each team member putting in an extra day of work for the final six weeks will logically only be buying the studio six days shaved off of the date the game is ready to be released.
Is that worth the tradeoff of not only hemorrhaging money in overtime pay, but non-trivially lowering the quality of both their employees' work product and life balance for a month and a half? Not a question I could presume to answer, but as someone with no stakes in the matter, it looks like an exceptionally costly bargain for a pretty small reward.
@NorrinRadd Uh, that's already happened once before; PureXbox was killed off for quite a large part of this generation before it was relaunched. Accusations of PushSquare leaning heavily at times into being an agenda-pushing fansite instead of an objective Playstation news site aren't baseless.
Anyway (general comment follows, no longer addressed to NorrinRadd), as a loosely-attached Xbox consumer, I'd suggest to MS that they take this opportunity to clean up the absolute mess their naming scheme has become. If you were just walking into the following naming history blind, would you be able to make any sense whatsoever out of which were which?
GameConsole
GameConsole Series S
GameConsole Series X
GameConsole One
GameConsole One S
GameConsole One S All Digital Edition
GameConsole One X
GameConsole 360
I'm not bothered by spiders, but I have a friend who's been known to jump back and scream a bit from even seeing photographs of them, so I can sympathize.
@BlueOcean It's a mental trap to say that the PS4's home menu is "just" a row of icons - its simplicity and lack of clutter are a significant feature imho, not a shortcoming.
Comments 53
Re: Xbox's Latest Limited Edition Controller Is From Another Planet
The Moon is not a planet!
Re: Slime Rancher 2 Dev: 'Xbox Game Pass Was An Easy Decision For Us'
Though "those little notifications on each platform that tell you 'Your Friend Jane is Now Playing Slime Rancher'" could theoretically be construed as a form of praise, I think it's more likely in context that the correct quote is that "the [Game Pass] model complements" the dev's games, not compliments them.
Re: Xbox Has Created A Series X Console That's Literally Thor's Hammer
@KITG_Group_BrunoB Allow me to put on my nerd glasses and explain that Mjölnir was never cursed or otherwise enchanted to explicitly return when thrown; Thor merely achieved that effect by judicious use of his and/or the hammer's ability for Mjölnir to be retrieved at its owner's command.
Anyway, this thing would be a work of absolute mad brilliance if it wasn't ruined by the incredibly tacky, profoundly unnecessary, and practically instantly out-of-date commercial logo plastered all over the side. Pity.
Re: Sonic Origins Dev 'Very Unhappy' With SEGA Over His Part Of The Game
The headline really does this story a disservice; the actual Twitter thread doesn't in any way say that this dev was unhappy with Sega.
Rather, it reads as frustration over the realities of software development ("We knew going in that there would be a major time crunch...", "We asked to do major fixes near submission but weren't allowed due to submission and approval rules."), especially unforeseen bugs that can arise during the integration of individual components. It's an affadaivit to fans that they acknowledge the problems, they're capable of fixing them if given enough time, and are ready and willing to do so if given the chance.
It's human nature to try to put scandalous human narratives on things, but this isn't a human problem, it's a computer one.
Re: Halo's Raunchy Eighth Episode Has Left Everyone In Total Shock
@Xiovanni Sure, but given that there's also a Kansas City in Missouri, I think it's safe to say that Missouri just loves company.
Re: Xbox Engineer Explains Why Smart Delivery Forces Series X|S Version
That response is peak Microsoft - this is the same company that has for the last decade or two been pushing towards forcibly taking control over the guts of their Windows OS away from the end user because they don't think they can be trusted with them. And sure, consoles are a very different sort of beast when it comes to consent and user freedom, but this smacks of the exact same philosophy.
At the risk of sounding preachy, in the Microsoft ecosystem, customers aren't independent individuals with control over their own systems, but rather zero-salary employees to be managed and administrated like any other. Been that way since they shot themselves in the foot with the pre-lauch game-licensing debacles of the Xbox One, been that way even longer in Windows, still that way today.
Re: These Limited Edition Halo Boots Are Out Later This Month
I'm just amused by how the mood lighting in the 'back-to-back' shot makes it look like these were sized for somebody with feet about 4" long.
Come to think of it, shoe sizes are kind of important for boots in general, and if only 117 pairs of these are being made... well, even if a scant few of them did end up going to earnest fans instead of internet scalpers, there's about zero real chance of them actually being usable, much less used, as real footwear, innit?
Re: The Internet Is Fur-eaking Out About Those Sonic Xbox Controllers
I'm quite amused by those controllers, and not specifically perturbed over keeping them clean, but that much fur seems like it'd just make the grip too loose to be practical; I can't help but imagine the hand grips sliding around to and fro in one's palms under all that hair as a game is played.
Re: Martha Is Dead: Here's What's Censored On PlayStation, But Included On Xbox
@Fenbops A more detailed explanation, from IGN's coverage of this (warning: it's squicky, as one should probably expect):
In terms of the removed masturbation references, Dalcò made clear there's no visualisation of masturbation or sex in the game but "it's the context that has been considered inappropriate".
That context is that the references take place while the player is in a psychiatric hospital that practices religious as well as medical treatments. Dalcò says this is based on historical fact and real-life accounts.
"These were places where patients were compulsorily admitted and where they often spent their entire lives," he explained. "They were total institutions, like prisons, restricting every facet of a person's life and, as such, masturbation was one of the few things patients were able to do.
"In terms of this specific scene in Martha is Dead, the player walks in a field dotted with huge crosses with mask-wearing dolls hanging from them. A voice-over narrates the experience of living in an asylum, commenting that 'there was this one young woman who would pleasure herself all day long... incessantly, to the point where she would bleed.'"
Re: Konami Is Doubling Down On NFTs To 'Preserve Content As Commemorative Art'
They're really putting the "con me" in "Konami" these days, ain't they?
Re: Xbox Exec Responds To Being Criticised For 'Trolling' PlayStation Fans On Twitter
The pic is in poor taste. Imagine if Sony somehow bought Bungie out from under MS, and before the ink on the deal was even dry a Sony exec updated their profile pic to them grinning while they and Master Chief formed a human "PS" together. It's gloating, pure and simple, and there's really no call for defending it, whatever your stance on fanboyism.
Re: The New Smurfs Game Is Surprising People With Its Impressive Visuals
Sound design seems notably on-point from that very brief clip too - the mix of music and ambience filled the audio space very nicely, and the item jingles meshed reasonably well with it. If those couple of seconds hold up when extrapolated over a few tens of hours, that'd help the experience a lot.
Re: Stalker 2 Is Getting NFTs, And The Developers Have Explained Why
So basically they're making a piece of DLC and only auctioning off a single code for it. 'Kaaaaay.
Re: Xbox Has A Stunning New Mandalorian 'Beskar Edition' Controller, But It'll Cost You
Ah yes, who in the galaxy hasn't heard stories about the famed Beskar Plastic, signature material of the Mandalorians, and cornerstone of their very society. Its price? Astronomical. Its strength? Practically mythical.
Why, I heard a full breastplate of the stuff was almost able to stand up to a blaster shot at half-strength once - the hole was so tough to see that after they pried it off the bounty hunter's corpse and gave it some touch-up paint, a scalper was still able to resell it for nearly full retail price!
Re: Xbox's Comments About 'Gatekeeping' Are Met With Heavy Criticism
@mousieone Hmm, yeah, looks like I misread which comment you were replying to. My bad!
Re: Xbox's Comments About 'Gatekeeping' Are Met With Heavy Criticism
@mousieone Mercury Steam and Wayforward are coups for Nintendo in that they're the exact opposite of Microsoft buying Bethesda - insofar as they've produced any Nintendo-exclusive games, it's been not because they've been bought out or moneyhatted (to my knowledge), but either because they've been eager to work on valuable IPs Nintendo developed from the ground up, or because Nintendo has fostered vibrant and substantive collaborative development partnerships with them.
That's netting exclusives the right way.
Re: Xbox Game Pass Players Have Discovered Hidden Cheat Codes In SkateBird
Quality aside...
"It's unclear whether there's any meaning behind these codes, or whether they're just a random assortment of numbers."
It's surely not a coincidence that all three strings of numbers represent actual dates from the last thirty-odd years. The odds of that happening from random number strings are virtually nil.
Re: Modder Claims You Can Use A Standard SSD In The Xbox Series X|S Expansion Card Slot
@John117 Just fyi, optical fibre and fibreglass are extremely different things. Internet over the latter would be... slow, to say the least.
Re: Random: Happy Gilmore Was Almost Turned Into An Original Xbox Game
I kind of hate that I could actually believe in that somehow working.
Re: Xbox Doesn't Want To Go Down The PlayStation VR Route, Suggests Phil Spencer
Everything he said about VR systems and the Quest 2 could be applied just as easily to the bog-standard wireless Xbox controller as it could to a theoretical VR headset, with implications that would be interesting if they weren't already pretty much old news anyway.
Re: Report Reveals How Microsoft Employee Stole $10 Million Via Xbox Gift Cards
I'm no fan of crime, but the full article detailing this incidentally discusses quite a few ways in which gift cards are already used by Microsoft and other companies for ends about 99.9% as shady as this guy's were. Between devaluation, non-redemption, intentional obfuscation and psych manipulation, and tax dodging, the "legal" corporate pipeline for separating money from consumers via gift cards is every bit as sophisticated and intentional a pipeline as Kvashuk's illegal one for giving it away to them was.
You know what, I take back what I said before - I suppose I am a fan of what this guy did. Self-serving though he may have been, he was also objectively a modern-day Robin Hood with bad English. It's tough to be 100% mad about that.
Re: Terrifying Cult Classic Song Of Horror Creeps Its Way Onto Xbox This May
If a game that first released on PC less than a year ago can be considered any kind of "classic," cult or not, then the modern world is officially moving too darn fast.
Re: Xbox Series X Fix Could Save A 'Large Power Plant's Worth Of Electricity', Says Climate Scientist
@Carck The guy the story quotes is literally doing exactly what you complain people don't do, and putting the responsibility for broadly shaping aggregate consumer decisions on the big company here - Microsoft - instead of trying to blame individual consumers.
Re: Xbox Series X Fix Could Save A 'Large Power Plant's Worth Of Electricity', Says Climate Scientist
If Microsoft really wanted to save energy, they'd call the setting what it sounds like it actually is - "Always On" instead of "Instant On." Selling consumers a naming fantasy that their system is going from absolute zero to full throttle at the flip of a switch doesn't give them any compelling reason not to choose it; making it clear that they're actively choosing to waste energy would at least catch the momentary attention of anyone who bothers to turn the lights off when they leave a room.
Not that I'm one to talk; I tend to leave even the consoles I don't play for months or years at a time in similar states. Hmm. Maybe I should revisit that myself.
Re: Random: Xbox Users Struggling To 'Quit' Games Due To Menu Update
"It looks like you're trying to quit a game. Would you like help?"
Re: Random: This 'Xbox Series Z' Mock-Up Has Blown Up On TikTok
Ok, I've watched this half a dozen times now, and I still can't figure it out... why does the center touchscreen slide down when it's opened, just to slide right back up again???
Also, honorable mention to the apparently inflatable joysticks that somehow extend to be taller than the entire handheld is thick.
Re: Random: Xbox Canada Shows Off 'One-Of-A-Kind' Canadian Tuxedo Controller
@WesEds Since I've got a de facto degree in hollow jingoism due to being from the US, I can confidently say it's just a boast of their national identity of rugged outdoorsmanship. It's an intentional poke in the eye of traditional formalwear, but that'd be meaningless if denim versions of such were their actual tradition, so... no. Pretty sure Canada didn't really go through some mysterious national tuxedo shortage decades ago precipitating a wholesale inversion of their clothing markets.
...All that said, that's a damn fine looking controller, if it isn't a photoshop. I'll bet that denim finish would look and feel awesomely novel, for the slice of users relaxed enough not to sweat it to pieces in marathon white-knuckle gaming sessions, and responsible enough not to trash it with crumbs and food stains. I'd love to get a chance to try it out in person.
Re: Xbox Is Giving Away Two Special Star Wars Mandalorian Controllers
Tough luck for the Mandalorian (the character) getting second billing in his own show's promo, being put literally behind the wee babby Yoda in that pic. Harsh but true.
Re: Random: New Xbox Series X Ad Reveals Master Chief Is Actually A Cat
Relevant section of the video begins at 2:30, for anyone who don't have time to sit through no navel-gazing pap.
Re: Poll: What Are Your Thoughts On The New Xbox Series Controller So Far?
@Dijita Without minimizing your complaint, I'd like to interject that we should all be so lucky as to be woken up in the morning by the clackety button noises of our significant other playing some vidja games. Your boyfriend's literally living the dream!
Re: Amazon UK Customer Reportedly Receives 12 Pack Of Water Instead Of Xbox Series X
@mousieone I can certainly acknowledge the possibility of that, at least. The Earth may not quite be Mos Eisley, but it can still be a pretty wretched hive of scum and villainy throughout.
Re: Amazon UK Customer Reportedly Receives 12 Pack Of Water Instead Of Xbox Series X
@NEStalgia Fair enough; you seem to know more about these things than I do, so thanks for the explanation.
@mousieone I don't actually find a 12 pack of water odd, though, and not all of the substitute goods being thrown in are as carefully chosen - in the account I relayed, Mr. Dickens' wife even commented to him before the box was opened that it seemed very suspiciously light. It appears, to me at least, that items are more or less just being reboxed to create a plausible excuse that something got mixed up in the warehouse, to keep the blame from being placed irrefutably on the delivery driver for a package outright going missing during delivery.
Re: Amazon UK Customer Reportedly Receives 12 Pack Of Water Instead Of Xbox Series X
@Tharsman I would have tagged you on my last post if I'd seen yours before writing it; from one guy's account, it certainly sounds to me like these consoles are being swiped by the delivery drivers. Here, I found the link I was looking for: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/11/soapbox_having_my_ps5_launch_day_nerfed_by_amazon
Re: Amazon UK Customer Reportedly Receives 12 Pack Of Water Instead Of Xbox Series X
@NEStalgia @mousieone One of the staff on PureXbox's sister site PushSquare described this scam happening to him firsthand (with a PS5 instead of an XSX, obviously), and it certainly didn't sound like "not considering consoles high-value goods" was the problem - in his account, the author watched the tracking on his device as it got as far as being dispatched for delivery one day, with an Amazon van even driving past his house - he'll, he even waved the driver down and asked him to his face if there was a package for him - only to be mysteriously postponed as not delivered for the day. The next day, when the delivery was made (with his wife even having to read the driver back an Amazon-provided code to accept it, in a misplaced attempt at security) the box had been opened and resealed with clear tape, and had a Nerf gun inside instead of a console.
Amazon can throw all the high-value-goods-security it wants at its warehouses, but that doesn't stop scumbag drivers at literally the last mile from raiding a box and trying hamhandedly to frame it as a "mixup." It does make Amazon asking this guy to "return" the bottled water that they never themselves sent in the first place extra stupid, though.
Re: Retailer Cancels Xbox Series X Orders From Scalper Group Due To Error
@Kamalen Your platitude about freedom is technically meaningless, as far as I can tell, but the absolutist sentiment I understand behind it is just flat wrong. No legal marketplace in any developed country today is 100% free and unregulated, and you wouldn't want it to be.
Likewise, your assumption that any law outlawing organized scalping would be impossible to construct without doing more harm than good, based on a few half-hearted strawman and what I can only assume is a deep-rooted disdain for the idea of creating laws in general, is similarly incorrect. The existence of laws already forbidding other types of market manipulation is evidence enough of that.
You're misguided in both sentiment and practice.
Re: Retailer Cancels Xbox Series X Orders From Scalper Group Due To Error
@Kamalen Your post is framed such that it presumes that a free market is a good thing, and therefore if it gives rise to organized large-scale scalping then that must also be good, but you've got it precisely backwards - the existence of such outrageously parasitic things as this is an argument against a no-holds-barred unregulated free market.
A marketplace in which this sort of behavior was illegal would be slightly less free, but significantly more fair and efficient.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 Boss Apologises For 'Harmful' Crunch Comments
@Luigi_Skywalker Good for you; now imagine you lived in a society and industry that didn't force one parent to be utterly consumed by their job in order for the other parent to be able to afford to raise their child.
Re: Xbox Series X Competition Challenges You To 'Crack The Code'
By the by, according to the contest's official rules, if you do manage to be one of the first 15 people to solve the puzzle and find the contest entry form, you'll be required to submit a 1-minute video to convince Samsung to choose you as one of the five finalists for their little PR game show. Said video will be judged by:
So basically, no boring or uggo geniuses need apply.
Re: Get Your Hands On This Official Star Wars Mandalorian Xbox Controller
Generational shenanigans and outrageous price aside, isn't it kind of pissing all over the actual Star Wars source material this is supposedly an homage to to make a controller with a "Mandalorian pattern reminiscent of beskar steel" but not (I assume by lack of mention) coat, or even accent it, in real metal?
I only watched about halfway through the first season of The Mandalorian, so I'm hardly an expert on the matter, but as I understand it the actual materials that go into Mandalorian armor are important.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 Has Officially Gone Gold, Confirms CD Projekt Red
@JON22 It probably doesn't mean much coming from an internet rando like me, but best wishes and good luck to you, man. This year has been the absolute worst.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 Has Officially Gone Gold, Confirms CD Projekt Red
@BAMozzy Yeeeah, I can forgive the definition of "gone gold" being a little bit fuzzy in this day and age, but when I'm literally seeing page ads on one of PureXbox's sister sites proclaiming "Cyberpunk 2077: GONE GOLD" while it's still reasonably recent news that the devs have been conscripted into crunch time until release...
The "LOL" is justified.
Re: The Xbox Series X Looks Surprisingly Small Next To The PS5
All I know is that technology is awesome, and I'm not talking about video game consoles. Just the fact that we can say "Hmm, I'd really like to shoot a video of this thing, but it doesn't actually exist. Eh, not gonna let that stop me - c'mere phone, WE DOIN' THIS," is frankly awe-inspiring.
...And also more than a little unsettling to dwell on, but that's another story.
Re: Gulp, The Xbox Series X Is Eye-Wateringly Expensive In Turkey
It looks like Turkey's model of the new Xbox also has a slightly different case, with silver highlights instead of green; not sure why they changed that up: https://amzn.to/2SimP3F
Re: Cyberpunk 2077 Devs Will Reportedly Be Required To Crunch Ahead Of Release
Each team member putting in an extra day of work for the final six weeks will logically only be buying the studio six days shaved off of the date the game is ready to be released.
Is that worth the tradeoff of not only hemorrhaging money in overtime pay, but non-trivially lowering the quality of both their employees' work product and life balance for a month and a half? Not a question I could presume to answer, but as someone with no stakes in the matter, it looks like an exceptionally costly bargain for a pretty small reward.
Re: Xbox Series S Console Leaked In Next-Gen Controller Packaging
"Xbox Series" is still a pretty weird core name for a console generation.
Re: Rare's Everwild Is 'Unlike Any Other Game That's Ever Been Made'
"Unlike every other game, ours hasn't been made!"
Re: The Xbox One X Has Officially Been Discontinued
@NorrinRadd Uh, that's already happened once before; PureXbox was killed off for quite a large part of this generation before it was relaunched. Accusations of PushSquare leaning heavily at times into being an agenda-pushing fansite instead of an objective Playstation news site aren't baseless.
Anyway (general comment follows, no longer addressed to NorrinRadd), as a loosely-attached Xbox consumer, I'd suggest to MS that they take this opportunity to clean up the absolute mess their naming scheme has become. If you were just walking into the following naming history blind, would you be able to make any sense whatsoever out of which were which?
GameConsole
GameConsole Series S
GameConsole Series X
GameConsole One
GameConsole One S
GameConsole One S All Digital Edition
GameConsole One X
GameConsole 360
Re: Poll: How Much Do Spiders Bother You In Games?
I'm not bothered by spiders, but I have a friend who's been known to jump back and scream a bit from even seeing photographs of them, so I can sympathize.
Re: Crash Bandicoot 4 To Feature 'Modern' And 'Retro' Gameplay Options
["Perfectly balanced" Thanos meme]
Re: The Xbox Series X Dashboard Will 'Be The Same' As Xbox One, Claims Insider
@BlueOcean It's a mental trap to say that the PS4's home menu is "just" a row of icons - its simplicity and lack of clutter are a significant feature imho, not a shortcoming.
Sometimes less is more.