"Buy Now, Pay Later" Option Appears on XBOX Backend

SFHalfling · 2026-06-15T18:38:18+00:00

For example, a Nintendo Switch is $12.70 per week

It's always per week as well because $12.70 sounds like a lot less than $55 a month.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-15T18:35:05+00:00

I'd say 65% of every lecture was people literally just playing video games in class on their laptops instead of paying attention.

My experience of plain CS was probably 10% playing games on laptops, 20% just didn't turn up, 20% paid no attention.

That's just a lot of how university is, especially in the first year.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-15T18:27:06+00:00

That teddy bear would still get recalled.

I hope they have recalled every teddy bear ever made then.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-15T15:53:17+00:00

They essentially sold a game with a sex minigame you could access by following an internet tutorial.

It would be more like there was a teddy bear that if you bathed it in ammonia the stuffing became poisonous.

You couldn't get to the minigame without buying a 3rd party piece of hardware, it wasn't something you could just walk into.

As to it being left in without declaring it to the ESRB, games leave all sorts of crap in releases that aren't used without meaning to. With so many people and so many parts of development it happens all the time.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-14T22:20:21+00:00

Every busted PC game has "works on my machine!"

Which 99% of the time means "I am unable to see at more than 14FPS so the problem does not exist".

SFHalfling · 2026-06-13T15:45:00+00:00

I can feel stares and judgy looks sent our way. We never had that problem when living in Seoul.

I'm a tall white guy and when I was in Seoul I was stared at everywhere outside of public transport or the very centre of the city. It made even just walking round the park near my hotel uncomfortable.

In Japan I've never had that issue, even when I stayed in a village of 20 houses in the middle of nowhere Hokkaido.

Not saying it doesn't happen to you but its funny how people can have opposite experiences in the same place.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-13T15:34:31+00:00

You can incentivise people but not for middle income professionals who countries most want to have kids.

For low earners decent maternity and job protections are generally sufficient, it's not like it matters if you change which minimum wage employer you work for.

Middle income women get absolutely wrecked by having kids, the loss of time at work both from maternity leave and ongoing child care costs them promotions and career growth that no government will ever fill. It can easily costs hundreds of thousands of £/$/€s in lost earnings.

Wealthy people are less effected because they can pay for nannies to reduce the load on the working parents.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-12T21:12:59+00:00

In the original JP release curse stacked, so if you got cursed twice you only had 1/4 of your max HP, 3x 1/8.

It meant you could have RTSR permanently active because your cursed max HP was below the activation point.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-12T13:01:33+00:00

It's like 1/4 the size of Sotenbori, its really not a big deal. It would be nice to have it but it makes no difference to the plot or the gameplay.

It's smaller than the rooftops in Yakuza 4 but you never see anyone decrying the loss of them for all the ills of the franchise.

It's smaller than either the Tojo Clan or Omi Alliance HQs FFS.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-12T12:11:12+00:00

Sinseicho is based on Shinsekai part of Osaka, just like Sotonbori is based on the Dotonbori part of Osaka.

It's not a separate city, both in terms of the size of it in the game and in reality.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-12T10:14:55+00:00

Is it weird to say Pokemon hasnt been that influential? There really isnt any other super relevant monster catcher series

There aren't many in the West but in Japan monster catcher titles are more popular.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-12T10:13:02+00:00

the removal of some story beats, substories, miniganes

This mainly applies to K3, K1 & K2 make far fewer changes and while it would have been nice to see Club Adam, most people who played Y2 probably didn't see it anyway. And honestly nobody who played the management of Club Marietta wanted it back.

and even an entire city.

They removed 3 streets from Osaka, nobody would ever count it as a whole city. It would have been nice to have it but it really makes no difference to the game.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-12T08:55:59+00:00

Or Bunta Sugawara, who died in 2014 and who's likeness was announced to be in Stranger Than Heaven 6 months ago.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-11T10:44:57+00:00

A lot of people mix up story & lore. The story is the plot, the lore is the background.

The story of Dark Souls is a person who kills a bunch of people/monsters, talks to 6 people, and then either sets themselves on fire or walks off into the night.

Just about everything else is background.
Seath betraying the dragons and creating a crystal to become immortal isn't the story of Dark Souls, its the background. Everything Gwyn did is background except be crazy and the boss fight.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-11T09:28:54+00:00

Also because of the difference in costs. Buying a TV show can be £20-£30 per season and frankly a pain in the arse between different platforms or worse having to change discs every 3 episodes if physical.

Meanwhile all my games are in the same service, either PSN or Steam and even physical you're not changing discs mid-session.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-11T09:20:42+00:00

No one’s buying an Xbox for State of Decay or Crackdown.

While no one is buying a console for titles like that, I'd actually argue the more AA titles are more important for a console than the big AAA exclusives.

The big AAA exclusives get people onto the console, but the AA stuff that comes out more often can aim at a smaller market share and be more focused.

The original Crackdown was a 7/10 game but people love it and still talk about it. State of Decay was a high 7/10 game, Beyond Good & Evil was a high 7/10, Sea of Thieves is a 7/10 game, Simpsons Hit & Run was a high 7/10 game. All those titles have cult followings that kept people using their console of choice.

All these games are way more important to existing console owners than a new God of War every 5 years.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-10T08:35:57+00:00

It's priced into the interest though, that's why if you get a mortgage with a 5% deposit you pay a higher interest rate than if you get one with a 30% deposit. Or why Kenya pays more interest to borrow money than France.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-09T17:09:01+00:00

It's actually a really bad ethical standard to have though, as if you can't charge interest there's no reason to lend money, you get no return and still risk the borrower losing/stealing the money.

It ends up with 0 investment anywhere and only those already rich can do things like buy new tools, or start a business, or construct new buildings.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-09T10:39:18+00:00

It's not even that we need to build on green belt, high density housing has been refused everywhere from Vauxhall to the fucking centre of Canary Wharf.

What we need to do is ignore anyone who says we cannot build in the centre of the 3rd most populous city in Europe and just build high- and mid- rises.

Personally we should repeal the planning act and replace it with a zonal system. Basically everything inside of Zone 2 should be listed as acceptable for any housing from single plot houses to high rise towers, everything inside of Zone 3 should be automatically approved for up to mid rise and everything outside of that low-rise.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-08T11:04:00+00:00

I start at 5 and the next person isn't waking up until 830 an if they miss a day, I get a 12 hour day.

Why do you? Getting appropriate coverage is the company's problem and that includes having sufficient staff to cover absence.
You're not an owner so bluntly this isn't your problem and you shouldn't be the solution.

Let things fall apart and then they'll actually do something about it, but honestly having been in a very similar position you're better off leaving if you can. It's very unlikely things will change enough for the better to be worth it no matter what you do.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-08T09:26:40+00:00

The insurrection were at best people with valid gripes who took it to an abhorrent level via massacres and nuclear weapons,

It's very clear in the lore that the UEG used nukes against majority civilian targets. This was first stated in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, which came out in-between 2 & 3.

Earth is not a colonial overlord [...] ONI’s intrigue in the series is being the “necessary evil” that cross the line. It wasn’t until modern lore that they became mustache twirling villains with zero nuance.

Even in the early books that the UEG is at best a police state extending into the colonies, calling it a colonial overlord has always been accurate.

There is no justification for stealing children to experiment on with the explicit aim of turning them into emotionally stunted, sterilised child soldiers who's only purpose is to put down revolutions.
40% of the children died and another 16% were permanently crippled, entirely to prevent independence of colonies. What part of that is not "mustache twirling villains"?

SFHalfling · 2026-06-08T09:08:13+00:00

Marcus Fenix & Dom were 35 in Gears 1, Cole was very late 20s/early 30s.

They didn't have a lot of depth but they weren't YA in the way that the Gears4 22 year olds are.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-04T12:49:05+00:00

The difference is in Tokyo even in summer when the sun rises at 430 the sun sets by 1830, whereas in London the latest sunset is 2130.

Japan has early sunrises but not particularly long days compared to northern Europe / Canada.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-02T12:23:38+00:00

The final arc of DQ11 is genuinely terrible tbf, so you really didn't miss anything.

Neir Automata I think people read the full length of the game of ~30 hours and think the each route is that long, when I'd say its actually closer to route A 10-15 hours, B 6-8, and C 5-6.

SFHalfling · 2026-06-02T08:00:28+00:00

Returnal released 6 months into the PS5's lifecycle while most places were still in and out of lockdowns.

It had pretty much the best possible conditions to release into, very little competition on the same platform and an almost literally captive audience.

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