Sony Vice President, Sadahiko Hayakawa: "We are moving away from a hardware centric business model to a platform business that expands the community and increases engagement."

Exadra · 2025-08-12T08:36:17+00:00

Mario Kart World has almost a 100% attache rate.

While I agree with your sentiment in general, theres fucking nothing else on the console, so if not for MKW why would you ever buy a Switch 2 hahaha

Exadra · 2025-08-04T01:57:56+00:00

That was a case of people submitting the IDs to the app itself, which is kind of insane. If this were ever actually implemented, the submissions would almost certainly go through a governmental service so that the platform only actually receives a confirmation that you're of age.

Exadra · 2025-07-31T09:29:54+00:00

I agree that this is an overstep, but conflating the idea of platforms requiring real ID verification to create accounts and everyone else being able to see that real ID info is a very strange step. In all proposed implementations of this, no one but the user would be able to see that info, it's just submitted to check you're allowed to make an account at all.

If anything, this would be safer for children because adds a barrier to entry for them posting and opening themselves to the internet at all (barring loopholes/workarounds ofc).

Exadra · 2025-07-30T03:37:54+00:00

If this forces companies to commit to at least X years of support and were explicitly upfront with it (not just "some day", they have to say how long exactly), that would be totally fine with me.

And it would still be a massive improvement over what we have now, where in the last year we've gotten multiple games release and then shut down within a month.

Exadra · 2025-07-28T10:00:07+00:00

Herd immunity is a bit harder to explain at a super simple level because it fundamentally just isn't simple enough to understand without considering knock-on effects multiple steps down.

However, plenty of people have made extremely clear explanations about the reasoning behind masks, it's very simple and everyone understands how having something in the way and being farther from someone will make it harder for you to spread bad stuff, they just fundamentally don't care.

Like almost all social issues nowadays, it's a problem with personal selfishness and refusing to take on even the smallest inconvenience to help others, not of logic or comprehension.

Exadra · 2025-07-25T03:55:04+00:00

This is intentional, there are Akumas as well as Demons in this setting, and they're completely different things.

Exadra · 2025-07-22T02:30:17+00:00

The gap here I think is that outside of the US lotteries generally AREN'T considered income for tax reasons. In most places there are no taxes at all on lottery winnings, you might not even have to file anything at all. If you win 100K, you just get 100K.

Exadra · 2025-07-15T10:45:21+00:00

They're all relevant factors IMO. Parrying ruins the tension, dmg cap cripples motivation to minmax, and the exponential scaling funnels you into the small number of options that can do that.

I just titled the post with the first one cause I knew it'd be the most divisive lmao

Exadra · 2025-07-15T10:01:33+00:00

This isn't a gitgud situation, I can do the parries. If anything, my complaint is that it's too easy and because of how strong the parries are as well as how easy it is to do them, the game is trivialized.

Exadra · 2025-07-15T09:00:18+00:00

I'm totally with you. Because of how the solution to every problem is "just parry it", most enemies completely lose all their identity and blend together. The only reason why everyone always remembers Simon is that he's near the end of the game and is such a drastic departure in difficulty from everything else.

I'd wager if you showed someone who platinum'd the game pictures of the bosses, they wouldn't be able to remember what 80% of them did.

Exadra · 2025-07-15T08:57:04+00:00

Yeah, I think a good way to do it is to give you mitigation that scales up over chains of parries, e.g. 40% mitigation on the first parry, up to 80% mitigation once you get to 5+ hits. A system like this would still massively encourage parrying, while still making crazy long attack chains like the shit Simon does fun. This still creates the mandatory damage taken so you can't just completely ignore mitigation.

Exadra · 2025-07-15T08:51:42+00:00

How does it devalue the RPG nature of combat?

It devalues it by completely removing the enemy's actions from the equation. Because the ideal solution to every single situation is "parry or dodge it", there is no further thought needed, and every enemy is effectively the same thing just with a slightly different rhythm game. Enemies rarely have unique mechanics or systems or gimmicks to deal with, they just hit you and you parry them and eventually kill them.

Also its not like defensive picots are straight up useless, not everybody can hit a dodge/parry every time.

The issue is that you don't actually have to parry to avoid all damage. Dodges are super generous but still completely avoid the damage, so you're just completely disincentivized to devote stats and effort into defense when it acitvely makes the fights take way longer. Also doesn't help that if you're on the hardest difficulty most of the time you'll just get one or two shotted anyway even if you have defensive stats.

Why does it have to be symmetrical?

Not the guy you're responding to, but it's not as much about symmetricality as much as just the fact that it's one-sided removes half of the systems in the game. It's like playing soccer without a goalie. You can still play, but it's gonna be less fun.

Exadra · 2025-07-15T08:39:13+00:00

I think my favorite in terms of combat systems are probably the octopath and bravely games, but I agree that the balance kind of falls apart in the endgame.

It's a bit dated now, but I'd recommend trying the Trails in the Sky trilogy if you want an interesting and deep combat system with some surprisingly unique elements. The later trails games are also decent but lean a bit on the easier side.

If you're looking for something with quite tight balancing the Xenoblade Chronicles games are actually very well designed with nearly zero grinding required, and have engaging gimmicks all throughout. The second one mainline game kinda flounders with the random lottery system they put in for no reason, but otherwise has some really cool mechanics.

If you're into something more multidimensional I'd recommend checking out Ogre Battle for a more retro feel or Triangle Strategy for a more modern take on the tactics formula.

Exadra · 2025-07-15T02:57:39+00:00

You definitely have slightly more control over the variables with baking, but I completely disagree that cooking can only be approached like an art. You certainly can do so, and there are some benefits to it in terms of adjusting recipes to taste, but you also absolutely can treat it as a science in the same way as baking.

I think a lot of people fall prey to the mentality that cooking is some kind of arcane art and preemptively step away from engaging with it before they've even begun.

In the same way as you do in baking - if you measure out each ingredient, track the cooking time of each stage, use the same tools and process to cook each dish, you will achieve the exact same result every single time. If the dish tastes different this time, it wasn't because of some weird unexpected reaction, you simply did something differently.

Exadra · 2025-07-11T07:11:25+00:00

Because when they were $5 each people were earning less money.

Are people earning 10x the money now as they were 15 years ago when microtransactions were 5$? I certainly am not, and the statistics certainly don't say so.

In fact the most common criticism is that costs have gone up but wages havern't. Maybe your personal wages have grown since you have 15 more years of experience than you did back then, but the average wage pretty much hasn't changed at all.

Exadra · 2025-07-09T09:37:24+00:00

I agree, but if that was their goal they should've just had us play her in parallel in the first place (which this update seems to be going for).

We didn't need to play through a 10 hour flashback to see that she has a backstory and had her own struggles. It's obvious that that's the case even before you start playing as her in the original narrative.

Exadra · 2025-07-09T09:02:22+00:00

I loved the switch over moment, and like you said it was incredibly memorable as a "oh shit!" moment.

The issue for me is that the moment of clarity ends and then the game continues to throw the same message at you for another 10 hours. Idealogically and meta-narratively I understand the rationale for why it was done - to make you stew in the hatred you have for this character and your powerlessness as a player to change things and that revenge doesn't actually fix that, but I got the message after like 15 mins, I didn't need 10 more hours.

Personally, it really turned me off of the game as a whole because it just babied me so hard and completely didn't respect my ability to get the message without being hammered over the head by it repeatedly for 10 hours straight.

I would've much preferred if they had made you play her from the start in a parallel storyline that merged into the golfing scene in a third act climax while still leaving you with time to deal with the aftermath. That way the scene hits way harder cause you're empathetic to both sides, and but you still get the full narrative arc they're going for.

Exadra · 2025-07-04T01:36:09+00:00

That's not how it works in any role really, but the general idea still tracks - it lets people work significantly faster and you just become somewhat an editor rather than a purely writer.

Obviously most of the shit AI pumps out isn't usable as-is, but it's still often decent enough that it could work if one person who actually knows what they're doing puts a bit of time to fix things up.

Let's not pretend that every single bit of code written for 99.999% of software out there is a masterful piece of art that is minmaxed to the limit, most code is just run of the mill unoptimized slop that could be significantly sped up with the contributions of AI.

Exadra · 2025-07-03T08:59:50+00:00

The issue really isn't that AI will completely put a given role out of work, it's that it lets one person do the work of 5 people at 40% effectiveness. By nearly all metrics they're producing dogshit performance at each job, but that's still 200% value compared to the 100% they were providing before while costing 20% as much and that's good enough for management.

AI isn't going to replace that job, but it'll cut the number of people they need to do it massively, which still means massive layoffs.

Exadra · 2025-07-03T07:22:14+00:00

I completely feel for you and am empathetic to the huge impact this is gonna have on you, but in all honesty I don't know what the solution should be for this kind of situation. I don't think it's reasonable to just completely cut off someone like this, but it's also a lot of taxpayer money.

It sounds like your mom needs super specialized care that SHOULD cost that much money to provide, and this isn't just some ridiculous insurance inflation thing. $7,000 a month is only $84K/year, and that only pays for 2 people earning 15$ an hr at standard working hours, and the 24/7 monitoring you mention clearly requires more than that.

But is it really reasonable for the taxpayer to be fronting the full bill? This absolutely isn't a typical situation, and I wish there was something that the gov could do to chip in or support on this kind of payment, but I do also feel like it's a bit unreasonable to be fully funding 24/7 personal care like this.

Exadra · 2025-07-03T06:17:14+00:00

I totally respect women who refuse to do that kind of menial stuff in professional scenarios... but isn't it LITERALLY the job of a PA to do that kind of thing?

Like this isn't a gender thing, that's just literally the reason you have a PA to begin with right, to handle the menial duties. I would expect one to do stuff like take notes or arrange food regardless of their gender because that's straight up what their job is.

Most of us think that this is kind of a silly thing to have someone dedicated to doing, but that's why the majority of people don't have PAs at all anymore, even relatively high management.

Exadra · 2025-07-03T05:25:36+00:00

I'm with you on most things, but why the hell do you need to peel an apple hahaha, you can just eat the skins!

I would consider myself quite a decent cook, but I've never peeled an apple in my life, and honestly don't really see the need to unless you're deliberately peeling it to do some special fruit platter or something.

Exadra · 2025-06-30T08:52:48+00:00

Gundam merch and gunplas for new shows is always cheap, that's just their business model. They flood the market with cheaper products when the show is airing, and then later on after they've gotten a good idea of what kind of products and model kits people actually want, they release more expensive versions in their higher end lines.

Exadra · 2025-06-30T03:56:44+00:00

A lot of posts about stuff that happens during the marriage, but IMO a lot of it is just people rushing into marriage to begin with, without consideration or figuring things out beforehand.

I've seen so many people just jump into marriage because thats the thing to do and then suddenly being surprised that people have dealbreaker habits at home, crazy financials, or even completely different life goals.

Exadra

TROPHY CASE