TwinIon

There will be an optical drive in Scarlet. As someone that has bought 4K Blu Rays, that makes me happy.

I spent a while playing over the weekend and I've quite enjoyed it. It's actually a bit harder than I expected, which for the most part has been welcome, though other times it's proven frustrating. There have been a number of times where, if I missed one jump, it was faster to just reset the time loop than it would be to make my way back and try again. Especially because, for the more difficult areas to reach, there might be a lot to discover, so you want as much time there as possible. Also annoying, there's no way to reset the loop without quitting to the main menu, so I just end up killing myself. For some reason I expected puzzles, but it's pretty much just a mystery and exploration game. Which is fine, but I was expecting some simple Witness style puzzles, which I think the game would have benefited from.

If it's only two episodes, it's possible, though unlikely, it makes it out in 2020

4x performance is pretty meaningless in practice. You can't really encapsulate the overall performance of a system in a neat way like that. In the end, it'll depend on what devs chose to do with it. The X1X is a good deal more powerful than the One, but it's often not particularly noticeable. Things like draw distance and frame rates will always be dependent on the game. I'd bet good money that a lot of the best looking games don't make 60FPS, especially if they go hard on the ray tracing. I suppose the metric that will matter most is how much more effort devs put into the Scarlet to make it stand out. It's pretty clear at this point that MS wants devs targeting the whole Xbox ecosystem. I'm sure Halo will look great, but how much other games take advantage of the new systems will remain to be seen.

Dark Phoenix is a poor X-men film taken on its own merits, but it's a horrific way to end the franchise. It's a film that is internally inconsistent, but it's the inconsistencies between films that really punish those of us who have actually watched the previous entries. It's not nearly as bad as Apocalypse, but it doesn't really improve on the last attempt the series made at adapting the Dark Phoenix saga. The X-men movies have always been well cast, but rarely well scripted or well directed. It's a series that has lasted 12 movies over 19 years, and it's a shame it will end on such a whimper.

There are now two ways to stream Xbox games: the previously revealed xCloud, and now, console streaming. With xCloud, it's a Stadia like, cloud based streaming service to various devices. With Console streaming, your Xbox One becomes a streaming server, allowing Xbox games to be played anywhere. They didn't really give a lot of details on how this will work, or what exactly is launching in October (is it xCloud and console streaming, only the latter?). Personally, I like the idea of console streaming, but I mostly want it to work on other TVs in my home.

I wonder if all this ruckus is going to hurt the chances of the USMCA passing.

I think it's kind of a bummer that Apple has decided that enthusiasts should just be buying iMacs. The Pro is a hell of a machine, but it's obviously meant for real Pros in a way that a Macbook Pro or an iPad Pro is not. The latter two are expensive, but very reasonable for anyone who just wants a really great laptop or tablet. The iMac Pro is not meant for someone who just wants a great desktop. At this point it's hard to imagine them making a ~2-3k desktop that the enthusiast, but not pro market wants. It's not exactly a new revelation, but when I would read comments about what people wanted in a Mac Pro, I think I was primarily reading those thoughts from people who wanted to buy a high end desktop, not a server class professional workstation.

So we know it will have: -SSD -Hardware ray tracing -"8K support" -Variable refresh rates up to 120 -Zen 2 / Navi based So, nothing surprising. Seems like it'll be a real question of price / performance over One X.

If they announced a PSO3, I'd be interested. I don't know much about PSO2, but it first released in 2012, so I'm not too hopeful it's a game I'd be interested in playing.

After that super long gameplay reveal we got before, why spend so much time and effort creating another CG trailer? I was almost hopeful that it would come out this year, but I suppose April is very reasonable.

I hate open office spaces, so I wouldn't want to work there, but that's a cool design for a building. I love interesting skyscrapers, and this: is far more interesting than this:

Couldn't they have told us anything about the game? I suppose it being a scarlet launch title makes sense. It'll be interesting to see the scarlet vs One X comparisons.

I'm excited. There's a lot of potential, and we get to play it this year.

If the quality of games was entirely dependent on the quality of the mythology, I'd be more interested. As it is, a gameplay-less trailer just doesn't do much for me.

I mostly use my TiVo, but I also use a Chromecast for a bunch of stuff. In the past I've used a Fire TV, Apple TV, and I have a Roku TV. I think the chromecast really shines with random stuff that you don't want to use all the time. Yesterday I wanted to watch an Indy Car race that I hadn't recorded, so I downloaded the NBC Sports app, logged in with my cable credentials, and was able to cast it. That whole process is easy on my phone/iPad with a Chromecast, but it's a pain to find a new app and login on most streaming boxes. For something like Netflix that you watch all the time, it's so much nicer to have a real interface and a remote, so while I like having a Chromecast, I wouldn't recommend it be the only streaming option on a TV. The quality of Chromecast apps is also extremely variable, but that's a longer rant. For most people, I think the Roku is probably the best option. It's cheap, easy to use, and will allow you to stream pretty much everything. The interface is kinda ugly, but it works and gets you to your content asap. Being provider agnostic is probably a real benefit. If you're really into the Amazon ecosystem, there's some small benefit from a Fire TV, like Echo voice control, but I doubt most people will get much out of that. It pushes Amazon prime and rentals above all else, so if you do spend most of your time there, it's great. It's not hard to get to other content, but it's not shy about being Amazon first. If you're really into the Apple ecosystem, then there's a real benefit to the Apple TV, and it's by far the most polished device, but it's a much higher price that's otherwise hard to justify.

I hadn't seen anything about this one. For $15 I think I'll check it out.

I know people like to hate on the "new Blizzard," but I feel like there's still a core competency that still exists there, and a willingness to cancel another big FPS game demonstrates that they do still care. I feel like the common thread of those long post-mortem pieces on failed games is the inability to admit when something isn't working. At least Blizz is still able to do that. Hopefully the games they do release live up to their potential, but I'd rather read about a potentially cool game that got canceled than see Blizz waste more years forcing through a bad game.

I imagine this will be a fun watch: I just read the New Yorker piece on what Chernobyl got horribly wrong, and I feel like the overall criticism is horribly vague, or directed at dramatic devices that I find easy to forgive. Yes, it's probably true that a scientist like Legasov would have known how the system works, and there would have been fewer direct threats or direct challenges, but I can forgive those artificial moments for the drama they produce. The amalgam character of Khomyuk exists to show all the alternative viewpoints and outside expertise that various scientists brought to the disaster. She's a convenient narrative device, if not a very accurate one. The big lie, according to the New Yorker, is that Dyatlov was not particularly responsible for what happened. Instead it was simply a matter of "a system digging its own grave." My reading of the series is that's exactly what Dyatlov represents, but the New Yorker doesn't address any specifics as to what happened to cause the disaster. From the little outside reading I've done on this subject, I feel like Craig Mazin did his best to accurately represent exactly what happened, as far as we can tell. Maybe we should have spent more time with Dyatlov before the disaster to better understand all the incentives and deficiencies in the system that explain his actions that night, but it certainly seems like the mechanics of the story were correct.

I'd never even heard of the dev. Were any of their other games any good?

I understand that Amazon AIV works slightly differently, I just don't think it's unreasonable to put 4K behind a paywall. It's a high end feature most people don't care about. Saying Netflix had no competition is pretty silly. They were competing against TV. They were simply a different content distribution method before they were also competing as a content creator. That's a very similar situation to Stadia. Their primary competition is a series of entrenched competitors that have owned the market space for decades. The difference is that Staida won't have that space to themselves for quite as long as Netflix did. I think there's a very good chance that Stadia never takes off, and obviously there are still a lot of questions with the service, but I think a lot of people are criticizing it for things that are pretty standard practice because they don't like the idea it represents.

The Verge confirms that "like any other free-with-Stadia Pro title, it’s only available so long as you keep paying that $10 monthly."

On the Stadia website, under Stadia Pro, it says "Additional free games released regularly: Yes, starting with Destiny 2: The Collection" So there will be some kind of selection, but we don't have a real indication as to what it will entail quite yet, other than Destiny 2.

Netflix does paywall 4K content behind higher levels of subscriptions, and 4K costs more in physical media as well. Most streaming services don't even offer 4K streams, so I can't imagine it's a huge deal for most people. 1080p was good enough for Game of Thrones, I don't think 4K requiring a subscription is going to be the deciding factor for people playing Farming Simulator on their phones. When Netflix launched, they had zero exclusive shows. Same with Amazon video. Stadia is launching with two we know of thus far. According to The Verge, here is the known list of games available, with more announcements following at E3: Complete List of games: Bandai Namco - Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 Bethesda - DOOM Eternal, DOOM 2016, Rage 2, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein: Youngblood Bungie - Destiny 2 Capcom - TBD Coatsink - Get Packed (Stadia exclusive) Codemasters - GRID Deep Silver - Metro Exodus Drool - Thumper Electronic Arts - TBD Giants Software - Farming Simulator 19 Larian Studios - Baldur’s Gate 3 nWay Games - Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid Rockstar Games - TBD Sega - Football Manager SNK - Samurai Shodown Square Enix - Final Fantasy XV, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2K Games - NBA 2K, Borderlands 3 Tequila Works - Gylt (Stadia exclusive) Warner Bros. - Mortal Kombat 11 THQ - Darksiders Genesis Ubisoft - Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Just Dance, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, Trials Rising, The Crew 2 I imagine we'll see the selection of Stadia Pro titles at E3.