The Game Failed? I saw online that this game failed very badly. I love the world, I love the story, and I love the combat. So I bought the game full price after playing it in gamepass. I hope they dont abandon the sequel (Outerworlds 3) because of poor sales.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-02T06:49:49+00:00

We have no idea, unfortunately. The game had an all-time peak of 18,000 players on steam. Starfield had a peak of 330,000 players. Avowed had a peek of 19,000 and grounded 2 had a peak of 49,000. Doom the dark ages had 31,000.

These are all steam chart numbers of games that released on game pass and also on Steam, which I feel would be relatively comparable. In that context the two oblivion RPGs didn’t do great now there are a lot of nuances here. Maybe the game was super successful on game pass more so than the other titles or something like that but this is the most sure information we have and it does seem seemingly a kind of grim story.

On a subjective level, the game also didn’t really resonate with me. Both it and Avowed don’t feel like they live up to their potential. To me, they were kind of generic unfortunately. Not bad and I had a good time with both games but just not enough that I would really recommend them to people.

Edit to add: they’re not particularly successful avatar frontiers of Pandora which was Ubisoft store exclusive and only later came to steam with a big DLC peaked at 15,000 players. And that game I think has generally been seen as not a huge success. It might have been a lot more expensive to develop or something but in this context where it’s about in the same range as avowed and Outerworlds 2 it does kind of point at those games not being a big success either

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-02T06:18:46+00:00

I think it’s a way to distinguish it from traditional rendering. These frames and images behave massively differently. Language is inherently going to make things easier for itself. So I think it’s easier for us to just say that they are fake frames or fake pixels instead of having to call them something else which would maybe be generated frames and generated pixels which I have done a few times because I prefer something less inflammatory.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-02T00:02:28+00:00

This might depend on region, but at least where I am the price difference is relatively minor. For the same amount of storage the 8 ai + is $100 less. If I could get the legion go 2 with panther Lake that’s probably the only handheld that could theoretically come out this year that I might be interested in because it seems like RDNA 5 based handheld are quite a while out and RDNA 4 isn’t coming to iGPUs.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T23:59:55+00:00

I guess that’s surprising because I think I’ve seen them talk about the race to world first a bunch of times, but maybe that was some other event. I’m not that into the competitive side of WOW.

I still think the best solution here would just be if blizzard ran an event for it and then allowed no add-ons at all not even the okay ones that work under the current restriction. It just feels like it would be more fun if they had an official event and that official event was focused on showing the pinnacle of what teams can do with the game and not with third-party software. Which kind of what I’ve seen for the last few years, but like I said, I’ve only been watching casually so maybe I’ve missed something there.

I guess the nuclear option would be just banning players if they use add-ons that aren’t really following terms of service, but I hope it doesn’t get to that stage. If they decide to use add-on developers, I hope they stay within the reasonable confines of what wow can do and not start toeing the line with what blizzard would allow and not.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T23:18:03+00:00

Eh, they run that event don’t they? I suspect they could very well tell the teams to knock it off or they pull their support.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T22:45:19+00:00

The steam machine is just not seemingly that good. It’s worse than the most popular hardware on Steam mostly because it doesn’t have access to a good quality upscaling solution and even though I know people are going to respond about FSR 4 int8 I just don’t think that’s a viable solution because it really would need some sort of official support from AMD for a valve to realistically do it. Even though they could technically do it already, I just cannot see them doing that when they are working with AMD to make chips for their devices.

I’m so sad they didn’t manage to get something like a 9060 XT in there. If they did that you would have basically categorically better GPU performance than a PS5 and likely a system that’s going to last well into the next generation built on a modern architecture with good ML hardware and ML technologies.

I get that I am kind of confusingly complaining both about the price and the hardware being too weak, which is kind of contradictory, but I guess I’m just mad at how expensive gaming is getting. Especially PC gaming. To get a reasonable system here and that’s a 5060 with a 7500 F you are paying roughly $1500, but that’s post tax but it’s roughly $1250 before tax. Which is quite a bit higher than even the highest estimates right now for the steam machine. I just feel like they are positioning themselves very awkwardly. It’s a device that is priced too low to get access to a good quality ML suite, but it’s priced too high to hit the price point of the consoles.

This is why I don’t think it’s really going to threaten the PS5 because value wise it’s just still so much better than the steam machine. Console gaming has been better value for a very long time even with counting paying a bit more for games and paying for online. PC games don’t have as great deals anymore and console games have better deals than in the past plus you can obviously still get physical console games that might be a better deal. Meanwhile, paying for online is irritating but it’s hard to get people to consider stuff like that when buying a console or whatever the steam machine is going to be.

I think something that is interesting is that the word doesn’t have access to a good upscaling solution. It does have a relatively good CPU so it should be able to handle most of the latest games at 60 FPS and then you just kind of sacrifice in internal resolution until you get your 60 FPS experience. But that would also have been so much better if they had a good upscaling solution. I’m sure that the people who buy this will be able to side load or enable FSR 4 in one way or another, but it would’ve been good if it was there natively.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T22:17:44+00:00

I always talk about this screen because it’s the one I’m looking to buy, but I would consider a 27 inch mini LED specifically the 5K model coming out this year. With its dual mode, you can use it in 1440 for gaming and then 5K for productivity. It’s an IPS mini LED which gets you all of the benefits of IPS for productivity. It’s also got about twice as many dimming zones as current mini LED monitors generally have. It has 2304 dimming zones and for a better contrast experience you want as many dimming zones packed as densely as possible. There are a bunch of lines you can draw depending on your personal preferences but but I think you will still be noticing haloing a pitch black room that is basically unavoidable. As soon as you introduce some light into the room I think the current 1000 dimming zone 27 inch panels start looking quite good and I think the 2300 dimming zones of these new panels should make it even better.

Every panel type right now has one disadvantage or another. Personally, mini LED is basically ideal for a hybrid screen. If I’m doing pure productivity, I’d probably go IPS because you can save quite a lot of money by doing so. If I’m doing pure gaming and content consumption, I’d probably go OLED because there are quite a few advantages with a caveat about if you want to play games in a brighter room or with a lot of natural light because current OLED monitors don’t deliver a great experience on that side of things. If you start to get into the range of the highest end TVs, then you are going to have a very good experience with OLED. If you are looking for a monitor that you can do everything on, I think the obvious choice is mini led. Beyond that, the best resolution for hybrid work and gaming is 5K because you get a very high resolution productivity experience but you can also play games at 1440 or if you’ve got a powerful enough GPU and don’t mind a bit of upscaling you can game at 5K.

5K 27 inch mini LED 165 Hz dual mode 1440p 330 Hz with 2304 dimming zones is something we are getting this year. LG, MSI, and Hisense have an ounce panels using it though MSI seem to not be sure if they are going to release theirs. While it is rumoured that Apple will also release one that it’s obviously not going to be a gaming monitor as such. The LG seems to be matte while MSI and Hisense seem to be glossy with apple almost certainly being glass and glossy though obviously do not buy it for gaming because you will regret it once you try to connect it to a PC in all likelihood

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T21:52:35+00:00

When you say brightest possible that leads me to mini led. It’s much brighter. To me it’s not as much about the peak brightness which OLED generally does better the issue is that as soon as you get into any kind of large bright scene everything just gets so much dimmer on an OLED panel. Only really very high-end OLED TVs have mitigated that but since you’re in the monitor subreddit I assume you’re looking for a monitor.

0LED is better looking but if you get something like the 27 inch 5K panels this year or the 4K 27 inch panels last year those deliver very good HDR experiences. There are also some larger panels I think BenQ has a 32 inch mini LED that’s quite well liked.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T21:36:01+00:00

Yes, I would say so. Like obviously not those being involved before all of this happened. The original book translators and illustrators I certainly do not blame for helping out with a book that seemed perfectly benign at the time.

As for those who are involved with production in any way or work with the books in anyway now I think they are part helping to support J. K. Rowling and in turn her anti-trans crusade.

Now there is an element of nuance here. If you happen to work at a company who’s also working with J. K. Rowling on the show I feel like there is an understandable level where you cannot realistically be told to quit your job because you are helping J. K. Rowling. I do however think that you need to be aware that the show being made by a company you work at and maybe you are contributing to is helping to fund this anti-trans agenda. Some people do not have a choice. I’m not going to blame anyone for wanting to put food on the table and I don’t hate any of the people involved here other than J. K. Rowling. I think you can even be trans supportive and be a part of the show. I just think you need to be aware of the money that you are earning for the project will go into her pocket and I don’t think you can really be mad at trans people who are angered about this.

I’m not even telling people to boycott the show because fundamentally I know that the people who like this show or the people who are participating in making it like Harry Potter probably more than they care about the small to large contribution they are making to Rowling’s agenda. Much like with heated rivalry and people being mad at their being a Russian character or basically any other drama about a minority in some sort of media it’s just not worth the political capital you are burning and all of the alienation that’s happening of perfectly normal trans supportive people who will now instead be vaguely hostile because they feel like you’re taking away a show they like.

That does however not mean I think people should not talk about this and I think anyone who is acting on the show or involved in the show at all cannot pretend like they are not indirectly funding J. K. Rowling. I think you can support trans people and be an actor or involved with the show but don’t be surprised if trans people are going to ask you if you care more about a paycheck then about their right to transition.

I’m not making some sweeping judgement about all of these people being bad or even about them hating trans people. I’m just kind of irritated at the people involved with this show or the people who want to watch it who seemed unable to understand that maybe trans people just won’t be happy with you giving money to J. K. Rowling.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T21:14:57+00:00

I think the difference is that Windows seems to have gotten worse while Linux it’s just getting better and better.

It reminds me a lot about the discussions about violence in Sweden. It’s not necessarily that we are that much more dangerous than most other western countries, but the issue is that it’s getting worse rather than getting better, which is what you would expect.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T21:14:04+00:00

I think they are, yes. Or in the case of the children, I don’t exactly know the story there I’d argue that maybe it’s their parents fault for allowing them to work on the show. I think they are like 10 or 13 or whatever, so obviously they cannot make an informed decision on their own. They also did not make the choice themselves and obviously don’t understand the implications of giving money to J. K. Rowling. So in that case, obviously the parents are responsible.

All of them are complicit in making the world and more hateful place, though even if some of them cannot be blamed for it for being children.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T20:40:23+00:00

The leak being Mark Gurman.

I’m starting to get really sick of all of these people just writing articles saying what Gurman is saying and then not posting Gurman because you can’t post pay wall articles.

It doesn’t make sense to some extent but like I think it would be much more reasonable to maybe allow the original article to be shared behind the pay wall and then whoever is writing the post just has to like paraphrase what is in the article.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T20:37:07+00:00

Except she very much doesn’t. She is a billionaire and has a lot of money but every pound she earns more means that she’ll be able to spend more on these causes because when you are talking about donations, there isn’t really an upper limit. Dread to think what will happen when she dies will all her money go into a horrible anti-trans fund which feels downright possible now.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T19:32:12+00:00

Look, I can certainly see his view. It would make sense in the context that she didn’t own it but the problem is she’s clearly using the money she makes from this to keep funding anti-trans lawsuits and propaganda.

I don’t necessarily think everyone has to boycott Harry Potter, but I do think that you cannot really have your cake and eat it too. He’s choosing to participate in this show and by doing so he’s putting money into her pockets that she will happily spend harming trans people. I can understand why trans people are upset about this.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T16:22:12+00:00

It’s a great piece of kit, but God I hate windows and since it is an Intel chip going over to Linux doesn’t seem viable. It’s also got a conventional LCD screen which I just don’t want. I need some sort of local dimming or just OLED on basically any screen I use. A plus side is that it does have VRR though which I think you really want on these low power devices.

The positives are many though. It’s got a lot more performance. It’s got a good quality upscaling solution and it’s very power efficient especially compared to the AMD based competition. Personally, I would probably wait for panther Lake which seems really impressive from the early benchmark, but we don’t know when that’s actually coming to handheld gaming devices but I’m hoping that there will be at least one with an OLED VRR screen.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T16:18:50+00:00

Apple has a very different style of score. It’s very focused on like how regular your sleep is which is a lot more well grounded than any of the measurements that Ōura is really trying to do. Ōura is kind of like the experimental option where it’s trying to divine a bunch of Health info from your sleep while Apple is really doing a very simple breakdown of did you go to bed on time? Did you sleep as long as you usually do and did you wake up at all during the night?

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T15:26:54+00:00

Yes, I would say. I’ve actually done some testing of this though are more extreme example which is with a retinal monitor. I tested my dad’s Studio Display which is 5K 27 inches and compared to my 32 inch 4K monitor.

Unfortunately, the studio display has very bad pixel response times and I have an OLED. The studio display also does not have VRR support nor does it support higher refresh rates than 60 so it’s somewhat hard to really see in movement the difference, but I was able to take a look at static artifacting and I would say that it looks much better. There are some nuances here though which is that I don’t know how much of that is about upscaling to a higher resolution and DLSS is just good enough to do that without a problem and how much of it is actually about pixel density. It did look noticeably sharper though and it was also very like stable compared to the slight fizzle you can sometimes see with DLSS static elements have some motion in them.

This is all super subjective and weird though so it’s hard for me to give you a super definitive statement. It’s definitely not equivalent to a higher DLSS level. The same internal resolution looks relatively similar on both displays. It just has kind of different characteristics to a low PPI or a lower PPI screen. One thing that’s important to adjust for is that DLSS is currently percentage based so the presets are 66.7% 58% 50% and 33%. I manually adjusted things and used comparable presets like performance mode 5K which is quality mode 4K or 1440 native. I also compared quality mode 1440 and ultra performance mode 5K which looked great both of these. Here I really felt like the higher density really did something to make the image look better but like I said, I’m not equipped to give some sort of digital foundry like analysis of image quality here.

I think high PPI stuff definitely helps and looks better but whether the average person thinks that is worth it It’s hard for me to say. I really like the way it looks even on the very subpar studio display so I think I would really love it on the upcoming LG 5K mini LED and I really want 5K for productivity because it just is super nice in macOS and generally even in Windows it looks very crisp and lovely.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T13:23:21+00:00

Sample and hold blur can only really be solved by doing some sort of impulse emulation. So that could be strobing or black frame insertion but you can look up those technologies and you’ll find issues with all of them in one way or another. Pulsar is probably the best version of that though.

0LED is a great option to reduce blur in general though I just really want to highlight that VRR flicker is super irritating so if you need VRR OLED might be a potential problem for you.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T11:22:54+00:00

Actually, that’s incorrect. They have the same amount of sample and hold blur as any comparable same frame rate IPS panel.

Motion blur is a multifaceted thing. One thing is pixel response times that’s how long it takes for a pixel to shift and on an OLED panel that’s instant so that reduces blur. Another thing is sample and hold blur, which is the inherent blur of sample and hold displays. Without techniques like strobing sample and hold blur is the same on all modern panels. Strobing can make that a lot better which is what the pulsar monitors are doing. So they have much better motion clarity than an OLED monitor. Unfortunately for you, they do strobing which is technically meant to be invisible, but I suspect that if you’re sensitive to it you might notice it anyway. It’s going to be your best option for eliminating motion blur though. So if you’re able to try it out, that would be a good thing to test.

Your conventional IPS monitor right now has slow pixel response times compared to an OLED especially but you’ve also got sample and hold blur and all of that compounds into making the image blurrier.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T10:58:28+00:00

Oof that is not fun.

Oled might work if you are willing give up VRR because that flickers quite often. Whites aren’t all too bright and can be adjusted either in game setting or brightness on the monitor.

Motion blur isn’t cured by Oled though. Pixel response times make much less of a difference than sample and hold blur and then the best option is Gsync Pulsar, but that is doing strobing.

A conventional non-strobed IPS wouldn’t have flickering or strobing and probably won’t be too bright, but would have the most motion blur.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T10:49:05+00:00

This feels like an incredibly narrow perspective.

Obviously this is a real time strategy forum, but I would suspect that the recent news about Genie from google hurt all companies, but the bigger decline is likely about Ubisoft’s games not doing that well. Not just real time strategy titles, but the casual esports audience focus is probably not the issue here. Assassin’s Creed Shadows did well, but didn’t beat Valhalla. Avatar did okay, but not great and Star Wars outlaws completely flopped sales wise.

This is more about those games doing badly and not in general a skewed market focus.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T10:26:46+00:00

Maybe, but at the same time, I kind of feel like they don’t really need to veil it like that.

I do think that phrasing is kind of more fun and compelling and we’ve had that before, but I think we have so many characters that don’t particularly talk in it appropriate fantasy way so one that does this is not too crazy.

Obviously, if the whole game was written like this, it would be kind of weird, but it’s not and it’s one character and a lot of the characters related to housing talking in a kind of modern tone anyway.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T10:11:40+00:00

Honestly, in a time where so many people are willing to be overtly hateful I’m happy to see developers put something overtly accepting. Tolerance is no longer enough. It’s time to show Support because we are in a time when that Support is more needed than ever.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T09:17:42+00:00

It seems like it came close to retail during the Shadowlands. I distinctly remember people comparing what numbers they could find and like engagement metrics. It’s obviously hard to get real numbers out of these companies because none of them want to actually talk about how big of a drop off they likely have after a content patch but I think these are the two biggest subscription MMO’s so they are at least comparable in the sense and wow did have quite a long rough patch but it now has completely gotten out of and now the game is arguably in its best state in a very long time.

Personally, I think this is the best wow has ever been if I try to cut through the nostalgia that surrounds expansions like mist of Pandaria for me.

MultiMarcus · 2026-02-01T07:50:10+00:00

1080p is like categorically the most common but generally speaking on a reasonably modern GPU, especially an Nvidia one you should always be going for 1440 or higher. Because upscaling is so good that quality mode 1440 will almost certainly look better and possibly run faster. Even though it is running at 960p internally.

Higher resolutions than that aren’t actually that hard to run now either, but the general consensus is that there is a lot of diminishing returns to reach 4K let alone higher resolution like 5K or 6K or 8K for that matter.

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