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It’s amazing how so many people are falling into the trap and arguing against or even in favor of Microsoft’s CoD argument.
A single game of whatever size or importance is not the problem. But it’s in Microsoft’s best interest that the discourse keeps being this lacking in nuance and centered in aspects like this.
Nobody needs CoD to be Successful.
Nintendo switch says “sup?”
Who buys a Switch to play CoD?
Nintendo has their own IPs to carry them, I don’t think CoD is helping them much, if at all.
It’s such a weird take, i don’t remember any platform CoD had impact.
PC was big before, Nintendo is doing their own thing, smartphones were big before and Sony / Microsoft had both CoD anyway
Yeah, if anything consoles made CoD big, people willing to pay for fucking online are also willing to pay 60 bucks each year for the same game…
This was just more MS propaganda so they could buy Activision and consolidate. Further harming gaming competition. It shouldn’t be taken as anything but twisted truth for a profit.
Yeah this isn’t news.
I’m conflicted. On one hand, monopoly is absolutely bad.
On the other hand, Kotick is an abusive, greedy asswipe who is directly responsible for some of the worst trends in AAA gaming; the sooner he gets the boot, the better we all are.
My conflict lies more with how Sony fucked up gaming with their exclusive deals for the last decade or so and now Microsoft is pulling the Uno reverse on them, where I as a PC gamer lean more towards Microsoft. That’s the part of this merger I personally like to a degree.
Two decades. There was the dead years between ~2004 and 2012ish where both MS and Sony played the exclusive game. Then MS realized they could double down and get PC exclusives as well as Xbox, but with PC they don’t have to eat the hardware costs
I still think it’s stupid Microsoft sold of so many studios they had, early on in the 360 era.
Kotick is an abusive, greedy asswipe who is directly responsible for some of the worst trends in AAA gaming
And that’s why giving him a payout is good?
the better we all are.
I don’t think I’m better off when Blizzard games will be exclusive to MS platforms.
I dunno if he moreso deserves the boot or the sword at this point.
As in, criminal penalties for basically running a harassment ring, if applicable.
He’s reported he wants to leave. Because he’ll become an even bigger billionaire. But there’s no guarantee that we’ve seen, is there? He’s egotistical enough he may want to stay on.
MS has lately had a fairly light touch on their acquisitions. They just want their profits to be theirs and to use their IPs to push Xbox sales.
But even if he leaves, it’s unlikely MS is going to radically shift their games to be more consumer friendly. CoD and King already prey on children and make bank doing it. MS isn’t throwing that away.
And is it confirmed that Kotick will leave after ActiBlizz bought by MS? Usually for big company purchase like this, the key people will be kept and/or integrated to main company
Why can’t the steam deck run COD exactly? Is Microsoft trying to ship it as some alien UWP app
Malware labeled “anticheat software” that wants obscene access to low level OS information and is a massive security liability.
The driver-level anti-cheat that was used by Genshin Impact and then later on ransomware should always be brought up on the topic of anti-cheat.
A new whitepaper published August 24th to Trend Micro explains how the perfectly legitimate driver mhyprot2.sys was used, absent any other parts of Genshin Impact, to gain root access to a system.
I think maybe you should re-evaluate your definition of “perfectly legitimate”.
Let’s punch a huge hole in the OS and go from there. That sounds perfectly reasonable.
I could maybe somehow understand it, if it would bring you absolute safety from cheaters, the funniest part about this is, the cheat devs are still above them, so just throw in the towel of trying to destroy the safety of legitimate players devices if you are still losing anyway.
Just like the
Mafioso“perfectly legitimate businessmen” who offer fire insurance and personal injury insurance door to door, after dark. Be a real shame if something were to happen.I can understand that bugs happen. It’s absolutely possible for well intentioned software to have a fatal flaw that leads to catastrophic security breaches.
But there’s no scenario where a game having that access is defensible. It’s gross overreach that can’t possibly be in good faith and you deserve all the hate you get if anything bad happens.
The way people who cheat talk about input modifier devices leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so I can understand why a driver level system was considered.
Cheaters in online games really are the worst type of people because they feel entitled to ruin other peoples games. It’s one thing to “level up” your solo experience. It’s a different thing to intend to ruin someone else’s.
Even if we pretended it was possible for their anticheat to work (it isn’t), it’s pure unredeemable evil to think it’s possible for there to be a scenario you’re entitled to that access.
If 50 percent of players were cheaters without that access and literally no one ever cheated again with it, you would be a monster to consider using it. It should be a criminal offense with mandatory jail time to the CEO and board of directors for every single computer it’s installed on.
I am not very familiar with the gaming industry (casual gamer only) but, while the argument is true, the conclusion that the big players can apply monopolistic practices without constraints leaving smaller players unaffected, is simply false.
“So, what Valve invested in was WiNE, a protocol […]”. Ah, game journalists; the profession where sniffing glue will actually give you an advantage
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Has the steam deck succeeded? It’s a cool device but less than 2% of steam users bought a deck. It’s not as big as any active console. It’s working to gain support but I hope the next stepping stone will be steam releasing a desktop OS made for desktop usage. (It won’t be though. It will be a steam deck hardware iteration.)
Oh yeah it did, they weren’t going for mass adoption, but there was a niche market that needed it and they filled it. Preorders took a year to produce. Being successful and profitable didn’t use to mean literally every person needed to own one
Still, I’m working off the data we have. I wouldn’t make the assumption it’s been successful or unsuccessful. We can look at known failed steam hardware such as the steam link, controller, and the steam machine partnership. All 3 served the same niche and weren’t successful. That said, we don’t know what success looks like. Was the Vive successful? Was the index? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Controller#Release_and_reception shows that there were a million units sold and while differently priced than the steam deck, still similar in sales to the steam deck.
Also, Valve is already confirmed a Steam Deck 2 is on the way and shortly: https://www.pcworld.com/article/1555020/valve-says-the-steam-deck-2-is-years-away.html so it’s not that the original Steam Deck is a “failure” as it is an experimental piece of hardware created to make a jumping off point for Valve into the console market. That said, if I truly had to guess, and this is just a guess, Valve probably didn’t make their money back on the console. It’s an investment into the console market and success is determined by different things. Valve would have likely seen the Steam Deck as a success as long as it didn’t have major hardware failures and did what was asked of it. Which it does. It’s absolutely what you ask for when you ask for a handheld PC. So, that’s why Valve might not need CoD on the Steam Deck. It’s not trying to outsell a Switch or XBox. It’s trying to gain a foothold and not be a disaster. It successfully did that.
Lastly, It’s important that hardware is typically sold not for profit but to get people in the door to the console ecosystem. Buying games is where it’s at and Valve already has a major step up on that. Steam didn’t need CoD but Valve needed CoD (and other games) to get to this point where they can fail or not even seek profitability on hardware to expand their store audience.
The article you’ve linked seems to say the opposite of what you’re suggesting — that a second iteration of the Steam Deck is coming soon. That’s not the impression I get from the linked article at all.
But even that aside, I would argue that the Steam Deck has been uniquely successful. Sure, the Deck may or may not end up being a “one and done”, flash in the pan piece of hardware that fades into relative obscurity in the face of competing hardware… but it proved that the idea of portable PC gaming was possible and affordable, and inspired plenty of manufacturers to dip their toe in the same arena. And almost every single one of those devices, whether it’s sold by Valve or Lenovo or whoever, will be running — and selling games on — the Steam marketplace.
That was the goal of the Deck, and in that regard it’s been a great success.
When I said the Steam Deck is coming soon, I mean soon enough that it’s “years” away. Not soon as in coming in the next 2 years but soon enough that they are already iterating on it and confirming that they are making a new one.
whether it’s sold by Valve or Lenovo or whoever, will be running — and selling games on — the Steam marketplace.
But a lot of them are installed with Windows and the biggest competitor is the Rog Ally which straight up advertises Microsoft GamePass on their site. Those competitors are as likely to use Steam as they are to use Epic, GOG, Microsoft, or Itch. The Steam Deck uniquely is made by a marketplace company. You could possibly get some storefronts on the Deck but realistically it’s a Steam device and most people will use it for Steam games.
That was the goal of the Deck, and in that regard it’s been a great success.
With less than 2 million users using it and a lot of that 2% already being in the Steam marketplace, it’s hard to say if they’ve seen the increase in-store purchases as they hoped.
It’s not even available yet in my country and im sold, among a dozen of my friends.
Sure and that’s great but it’s better to look at these things with a better lens than just your friends or people who surround you.
I genuinely think it’s successful enough for it to continue.
Also great that so many people are using Linux now without even noticing.
Also great that so many people are using Linux now without even noticing.
Android is the most popular OS in the world though…
Wouldn’t that be several million units with the size of Steam’s userbase? Of course established consoles are more successful but that doesn’t sound like a terrible start, especially for a handheld.
2% of a large number is a large number
It’s 2.6 million. The Vita sold 16 million and the PSP sold 80 million. So to put the 2.6 million into perspective with new handhelds. It doesn’t seem to have done great. The N-Gage from Nokia was 3 million sold units. The 2% is just how many Linux users on Steam there are which is absolutely inflating the numbers. The numbers I see reported specifically for Steam Decks sold are estimated to be 3 million by the end of 2023. I don’t think that many people took Linux off of their Steam deck. Also, the estimate is by Omdia which didn’t explain how they got their 2022 numbers or how they estimate 2023 numbers.
There is a reason nobody makes the Vita 2 or a new DS, you can’t compare the market before capable smartphones with today.
Mobile gaming has shifted immensely, not even the perfect handheld can compete with devices already in users hands and more important pockets.
The Switch is a new Nintendo handheld device. It has the exact capabilities of the steam deck in the plug-and-play sense. (E.g. both come with docks that you can just throw on a TV and start playing with.) While mobile gaming has had an impact on handhelds, I don’t think that prevents the Steam Deck from seeing the success as a regular console.
While I disagree with your core argument about the success of the Steam Deck, I absolutely agree that I’d love to see a desktop variant of SteamOS become available for general use. To the point that I’d likely even finally make the leap from Windows.
It outsold all expectations and was successful enough that it brought several traditional PC makes (Asus and Lenovo) into the market.
It’s obviously sold less than established consoles, but it’s done well for itself. Also even though it’s a small percentage of steam users, it seems to represent some of the more active players/spenders on steam. Thanks to that, steam deck players seem to be an actually significant percentage of steam sales for many games despite the lower number of steam deck players.
less than 2% of steam users bought a deck.
Well seeing as there are a billion accounts and 120M active users, that’s a LOT of decks sold. Numbers online saying 1.2M decks sold which is a lot for a niche PC handheld. There’s already copycats.
Sure, it’s 2.6 million Decks sold (the most recent numbers). It’s a lot but the deck isn’t successful because of the number of sales. It’s Valve finding a foothold in the console market by making hardware that didn’t have hardware issues. The deck is only successful because Valve is already successful enough to take the first loss on a console to prove its hardware. The Steam Deck 2 is likely gearing up to be the thing that brings new players into the Valve ecosystem to really make them money. In a roundabout way, Valve is only successful because CoD and games like CoD are already being sold on Steam so they could amass this profit. So while the Steam Deck doesn’t directly need CoD, Valve needs CoD. Hardware isn’t something console manufacturers profit off of by much anyways.
The deck is only successful because Valve is already successful enough to take the first loss on a console
This may be true(and I wouldn’t doubt it being the case, at least on the $399 model) but it’s pure speculation on your part.
There are a dozen consoles like the Steam deck that didn’t have the impact that Steam had. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_handheld_game_consoles It’s not pure speculation. It’s certainly backed by history. Playstation is the other company that tried this and was big enough to release 2 iterations of a failed handheld that was very good on all accounts.
I was only talking about your claim that they’re selling at a loss, nothing about success or not.
We don’t know their BOM so its speculation that they’re taking a loss. (Unless I misunderstood your claim)
Sorry, I mean the overall loss. Not selling at a loss from a manufacturing point but a loss on the development and research of a console. They spent years just designing and building prototypes of the Steam Deck. It is an assumption but I think a fair one to say that they’ve yet to make their money back from those costs to break into the console industry.
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I think suggesting that Valve need any given game (CoD) or even genre (“games like CoD”) to remain successful is silly at best. Of course Steam, the Steam Deck, and as a result Valve are only successful or even exist at all because of video game studios and publishers. But Call of Duty specifically? Nah man, it’s a blip on the radar for Steam.
Valve are only successful or even exist at all
Only as successful as they currently are.
They would have still been successful based on their games, I think, and without steam to “distract” them, they might have counted to 3 by now.
I’m not specifically talking about CoD or CoD-like games. I am talking about Non-Valve-Games. This is what Microsoft is arguing at its core when it says Valve was successful without CoD. There is a strict argument to be made that no, no they weren’t successful without CoD or third-party games. They likely couldn’t have broke into the console marketplace and arguably maybe they didn’t even break into the console space, PC gaming broke into the console space. Either way, you look at it though, games provided by Sony, Microsoft, and other AAA games made Steam successful. Steam would not have been successful if they didn’t sell CoD games and games of that status.
All my PC gaming friends have one now after that last sale, and I see the internet buzzing about it still.
LMAO as if anyone needs that shit to have measurable success
Z. Zstd.
