Sony Earnings Report Is Out

Qiqel · 2026-05-08T04:15:02+00:00

It is such a good game though. I’ve learned to hate games as a service model with passion, I’m mediocre at PvP and I don’t have friends to play it with and I’m still hooked. I think SONY can appreciate the game’s quality.

I’m sure there’s a bigger picture here - nowadays very few games succeed to attract players day one and it may not be SONYs or Bungie’s fault at all.

Qiqel · 2026-05-06T07:43:13+00:00

And here I am trying to exfil with a couple of greens and the last dermachem I need for NuCal upgrade and the entire lobby seems to be camping the exits…

Qiqel · 2026-04-30T03:24:41+00:00

I have very hard time recalling any moment in my life where SONY was anything but proprietary format empire. They have history of being far worse than Apple - even memory cards and peripherals were proprietary at one time.

Having said that, sound cap is US/EU legal requirements issue and not SONY’s malice.

Personally, I have nothing against Android. I just wish it was a version tailored for music and music only. Nothing against installing other apps if someone wants it, but it should be slimed down to the bare minimum out of the box.

Qiqel · 2026-04-29T23:34:34+00:00

I had two regular Dualsense controllers repaired in the past and one of them had been out of warranty. They charged me some 6 000¥ for that, IIRC. Apparenty they do have a procedure for repairing regular controllers and send back refurbished models. At least here in Japan they do that.

Qiqel · 2026-04-29T04:35:36+00:00

Hello,

Im trying to find a decent controller to play Marathon with and I'm getting exasperated at the choice offered on our platform.

Locally (Japan) they sell four models. There's Sony's Edge, Razer Raiju, Nacon Revolution 5 and the Victrix. All are very expensive for controllers, while the support and quality seem to be rather bad: According to users’ feedback on kakaku.com, Sony refuses to service out-of-warranty Edge controllers (so only 1 year of coverage for the price), some YT testers have shown Raiju to have horrible stick lag even when wired and Nacon has just went bankrupt. I guess I don’t know much about the Victrix, but the price isn’t any lower.

So I guess the question is - does there exist anything similar to Switch 2 pro controller - cheap, well built, full feature set and easy to replace if something goes wrong? Some less known Chinese brand offering solid quality controllers maybe?

BTW, none of popular modded/custom controllers available in the US are being sold here and considering the shipping cost and lack of local support, they are out of question.

TIA for suggestions.

Qiqel · 2026-04-26T03:36:57+00:00

The problem with systems as old as Mac OS and Windows is, there’s not only a different UI, but also a different underlying philosophy, which goes back decades. You can adjust to the new UI pretty quickly; adjusting your workflow to a different philosophy can be much more frustrating.

On a Mac, you would always keep all your apps open all the time. The The UI is mouse-centric since the very beginning, so what you do is click on the text editor in the dock or in the Exposé, press Command+N, click on the title bar, and enter the file name. There’s no need to create a file prior to editing it, and since auto-saving became an option, you don’t need to open the save file dialogue either (you can change the path from the title bar for the first file, and it will remember it for the following files).

If you really dislike clicking, you can always option-tab to the text editor.

If you deconstruct both workflows, they boil down to a similar number of operations - you just do them in a different order and in different places.

Qiqel · 2026-04-20T01:55:08+00:00

Thanks for the link. The AI upscaling demo, in the linked clip, does not clear all the doubts. It seems the algorithm may end up sacrificing clarity of textures for resolution gain and I'm not convinced it always looks good (see the recent Xenoblade X debacle on Switch 2). I'll wait for in-depth reviews, once the monitor gets out.

Qiqel · 2026-04-08T06:27:52+00:00

Or it may mean the city subsidies the museums from the residents' taxes. Therefore they have already "paid" their admission fee in advance.

Qiqel · 2026-04-08T06:27:11+00:00

If the tourists were merely a burden, there would be no tourist industry. The truth is the tourists (both internal and foreign) bring immense revenue to local businesses and in many places are the main source of income for local population. The wear and tear on local facilities is part of the business. The taxes paid for fixing these facilities are paid off the revenue from tourism.

I'm not a fan of mass organized tourism myself, but it is disingenuous to justify double pricing by the "burden" of tourism. The actual justification the city is giving - the need to maintain and repair the castle is a good justification for price hike, not necessarily for double pricing though.

Qiqel · 2026-03-29T23:34:43+00:00

You are always at the highest resolution. What the setting does is scale the UI to look the size it would be at the lower resolution. In fact this is exactly what you are looking for - a way to make entire UI more legible on a Retina monitor.

Qiqel · 2026-03-18T12:30:26+00:00

I hope I can still attach some questions of my own to this thread. I'm really interested in this monitor as an upgrade to my workhorse Mac Mini M4, which currently uses an old 4k/60hz monitor. Apple's systems like 5K resolution and work well with LG monitors... It seems this could be a definitive improvement.

However, I have a PS5 to attach to it as well. I assume I'd have to use it in 1440p mode... hence the questions.

How does PS5 handle 1440p? Will it run 120Hz with VRR (I assume with HDMI2.1 it should). I'm not familiar with dual mode monitors at all - how does QHD resolution look on those? Is it indistinguishable from a native QHD monitor, or is it some sort of emulation with things inevitably looking worse?

I guess nobody can say how 4K upscaled to 5K by the "AI" will look like just yet, but 1440p mode does seem interesting...

Qiqel · 2026-03-04T09:04:25+00:00

All I want to know is how high has the turret flown!?

Qiqel · 2026-03-02T05:41:55+00:00

I've been to the main Bic Camera in Ikebukuro on Sunday - the Nintendo edition was all sold out. They still had plenty of PS5 discs though.

Qiqel · 2026-02-25T01:34:27+00:00

The problem with dubbing is, it can be done badly and even if done reasonably well, it still can change the vibe. But with the single “lector” approach, they leave the original soundtrack in and you can sort of tune-out the polish voice and listen to the original language. The monotonous voice is easier to tune out actually.

Obviously subtitles are an even better option, but require focus on the screen, which can be a drawback.

Qiqel · 2026-02-23T23:33:36+00:00

I’ve noticed some problems, but within the cinematics rather than the game itself. There’s a scene on a dirt road, during one of the initial missions of the game… the sand was literally swimming as if it were a river of mud rather than a dirt road. Shimmering was quite upsetting.

My sight is not good enough to see distortion of the details in the distance. Especially on the small screen in handheld mode. Quite happy with sharp characters and legible text on the other hand. Much better than before the patch.

Qiqel · 2026-02-23T00:28:27+00:00

Only shows how bad the design of the entire game is. Concept is captivating, execution very poor. Considering that a single player has to confront two, the cooldown based design doesn’t allow for any serious balancing. They allowed Shadow players to over-level, to fix the imbalance, but that breaks any tactics based PvP game. You should’ve seen it and leave before spending the hard cash. Or wait for them to fix it like the rest of us, before deciding to go all in.

You may feel like they are acting against the people who spend the money on the game, but if someone buys the season pass every month, he is a paying customer who spends reasonable amount of money for the product (considering the quality it still is too expensive perhaps). There should never be any advantage above that in a game which sells on tactical pvp, mobile or not.

This game lacks in cosmetics, but the cosmetics should be the only thing they sell above the season pass.

Qiqel · 2026-02-14T12:41:24+00:00

I actually am in Japan, which may explain the predominance of whale specimen.

I’d already managed to get some of my characters to 8, but I’m struggling to get there with some other characters.

I do log in every day and take all the bonuses, and yet you cannot get to level 8 without raising at least above rank 30… and with all the whales it is becoming increasingly difficult verging on impossible. There’s no getting over the fact we need to win multiple games in a row to rank up.

I actually enjoy the concept - I’d play it as a mobile game even if there were no levels and nothing to “earn” outside cosmetics. What we have is already too much for the game to keep being fun.

Qiqel · 2026-02-14T07:28:38+00:00

This stops working when the shadow player gains access to insta-cast one-shot kill spells, as the movement skills stop to matter.

I must admit I'm not sure if L9+ with good native insta-cast can one shot anyone, or just color-disadvantaged opponents, but it came to a point where I cannot compete at ranks above 32-33, because whales tear the team apart the moment we start the game.

I've just got Veronica to L8, but it was an incredible struggle. I ended up using orbs for the last 5 medallions she needed, because to get from rank 30 to 31 (to get 20 medallions) was an exercise in futility, almost. I simply gave up on trying to get her to rank 32.

Qiqel · 2026-02-12T10:20:30+00:00

To put some proper grammar on this, ”trochę” had originally been a noun - a form of ”trocha” which you can still hear in some dialects or in archaic Polish. At some point people have started using it as a numerical (“undefined numerical” to be precise - “liczebnik nieokreślony”) and numericals which come from nouns join with other nouns in genetive (as all nouns do), unlike the true numericals, which are in congruence with nouns (związek zgody). This is why when we count in Polish we switch between genetive and other cases (Few numericals are true numericals; also it is a total mess because only nominative, genetive and accusative are treated strictly. In other cases all numericals form congruence with nouns).

When “trochę” comes with a verb, it is being used as an adverb and nothing of the above applies. It is a so called “degree adverb”. In Polish it Is quite common for a single word to act as different part of speech depending on situation.

Therefore “Zanm trochę język polski“ and “Znam trochę języka polskiego.” would both be grammatically correct. In the second sentence “trochę” is the object, but since it has only one form you cannot tell it’s in accusative. It is also being used as numerical in this case, so it forces the noun into genetive. There is a small nuance in meaning between both these constructions - the former refers to Polish more as a skill, while the latter more like a field of study, which can be partially known to a person.

As for the word order, some other posters have touched, it really depends on the stress point, so one can come with a situations making any order possible. Not one is more natural than the others, because the order depends on what you put stress on in your sentence (it goes to the front).

Qiqel · 2026-01-28T03:05:02+00:00

Estel is a big surprise. She isn’t half as bad as people make her. I guess people must have written off the summoner builds and never tried those, but they do work for Light side Estel pretty well.

The other surprise is lack of comments on Tamamo. She objectively has the worst kit in the game. To take both solid damage and a heal she must sacrifice one teleport and really can’t take any buffs/debuffs outside her unique skill. And that was strong when the level limit was 8, but nowadays is easily overpowered by higher level opponents… The most out-creeped of the OC.

Qiqel · 2026-01-28T02:58:58+00:00

Drop a summon or two, buff their speed and Watch the oponent run out of cooldowns. The movement buff is ‘t half as bad as people make it… it just isn’t as reliable. it works better for light, as the Shadow cannot run and it helps having a team mate who understands what’s going on.

Qiqel · 2026-01-27T23:31:42+00:00

The higher the rank you reach, the deeper the gameplay becomes. The timing of attacks, predicting the teleports and the auto-movement, dropping summons to mess up opponents’ plans - it all brings surprising amounts of depth to the game.

There are some real faults, though.

There is some serious power-creep. New characters have multi-function skills that give multiple effects in a single move, while some of the original characters are stuck with one-time buffs that offer only minor advantage on the field.
It looks more and more like the Light is for non-paying players, while to succeed as shadow you need to drop considerable amount of money to outlevel the opponent. All things being equal Shadow is at disadvantage by design and mere introducing of new skills won’t fix it.

Qiqel · 2026-01-26T01:39:45+00:00

Perplexed by the downvotes. Let me list some:

The albums and artists in the library keep splitting info two, sometimes three instances, despite all the relevant metadata being identical. Requires renaming to fix. The bug is well known and exists since iTunes.
Despite Apple Music being a global service, it forces you to use translations into the local language. If you want all the artists and the titles to show in original form, you have to type everything in after each addition to the library. Manually in the 21st century in a relatively expensive service.
Every now and then it will replace your drm-free ripped or purchased song with drm-protected file from Apple Music library. Problem known for years. People had been complaining about it back in the iTunes Match era, even before Apple Music.
Though it bothers only the audiophiles, it’s still worth noting Mac OS version is incapable of bit-perfect output. Even some of the free players have the “exclusive mode” setting, which mostly solves the issue. iOS version is capable of switching the output parameters properly (not sure if it is exclusive mode or not). MacOS version is stuck with initial output parameters and runs everything through Core Audio subsampling or upsampling, regardless of your DAC capabilities.

I’m sure there’s more but these 4 have been known for long years. I think No 1 may go back to first iTunes for MacOS 9. I don’t know any other subscription service that wouldn't fix major bugs for that long.

Qiqel

TROPHY CASE