Hi, I’m Cleo! (he/they) I talk mostly about games and politics. My DMs are always open to chat! :)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 25th, 2023

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  • For a short period, yes probably. But Bethesda is a failing studio and so is Ubisoft. EA has popular sports games but I’d guess that’s a very small portion of PC sales considering those games do poorly on the platform compared to consoles. Epic does have loads of money but not enough to float the other companies.

    In my view, Microsoft and their GamePass stuff is the only real competitor that will ever take a small dent out of steams sales, mostly because of the Call of Duty titles being on there now. But in order to take 0.05% or whatever of their sales they had to: own the OS for almost every computer running steam, buy dozens of game studios, compete (and lose) in the physical console market over decades, and they had to buy not one but two of the largest studios out there. To the point where they own a significant portion of the iOS App Store that is orders of magnitude more money than PC games and still they cannot compete with steam on their own operating system.

    If that doesn’t spell out how unstoppable Steam is, I don’t know what will. The thing that might actually hurt Steam is if those publishers were all GamePass exclusives. Even then, Steam would be just fine I think. Crazy.





  • I mean yes but imo the solution isn’t any of that. The problem is that Reddit has super niche communities that people expected to have enough users to build here. That isn’t the case. And we shouldn’t be looking to transplant entire communities because that rarely works.

    People really need to hear this: You need to be cross posting every single niche community post into a more general community. There are too many posts on here that exist in a knitting community but not in a general hobby community that’s more active.

    This is how Reddit works and we need to follow the template. You need strong pillars that people can flock to and then branch out from there. Examples might be r/funny, r/sports, etc. Then if people want super populated places to go and chat and post, those general communities are there. If they’re new, they can find your niche community by browsing the populated places. We don’t need templates for communities, we just need to have a few really populated places with high engagement to promote natural growth.




  • Yes but the main reason those consoles were so shaky is specifically because they did not address a much younger audience. The original Wii kind of tried to but if you look at its best sellers, a ton of them were not aimed at adults.

    The same is true of the Wii U where rather than targeting that audience, they tried to pivot to a more adult console with games like the zombie launch title.

    So most of the success of the switch is just that it finally was a family console again. But keep in mind, they have nowhere to pivot to. That’s why the switch 2 is what it is and why it’s so late. They can’t afford a misstep and they also can’t afford to saturate the only market niche they have left.



  • Good points on the saturation thing. My experience in the vr space is that most companies aim right at the middle of all of those goals and fail as a result. The price ends up lower, but not low enough. Software is supported, but not enough. Software is targeted but then turns out underfunded.

    In my opinion, Sony should have created a headset targeting $300-$400 and then focused not on just making random good VR games but play off of existing titles.

    The reason that works so well is that many people have a favorite PS5 game, why not offer 3D models viewable in VR? Or the maps? Or a shot minigame mode with small bits of content for a low price? These things are relatively cheap to do but have a huge impact on gamers wanting to get into VR.

    Resident evil is a great example of this. The Horizon game less so. Either way, use those titles all the time to your advantage. Try to get a VR camera mode in more 3rd person games. Promote VR movies and streaming maybe.

    You still have this issue though of pivoting out of a catch-22. No software, no gamers, no money, so no software or hardware. The way to break out of that is by maintaining a library of games and adding to it over time as adopters get on board. This is why them ditching PSVR1 killed the second headset. Build that library to a tipping point like SteamVR and Meta are working on, don’t abandon it.

    Sony could’ve done a lot of things to help this push honestly and they did nothing. It’s like none of these companies even know how to exist in experimental spaces anymore and it shows big time.


  • Well even then, if the content was there, people would buy it even at its ridiculous price. You have to consider there is a massive amount of PlayStation users so if only 1% of their playerbase has enough money for this, that’s still a ton of people compared to current VR numbers.

    So I stand by saying the price is a barrier, but not a problem or dealbreaker. The real issue is just that PSVR1 people are no longer getting support, PSVR2 has few games since they don’t include the previous library. And why buy a PSVR2 if you know they’re going to lock your games into that specific headset? Sony put all that money into hardware and has zero idea how to exist in markets that aren’t already growing, so this was inevitable


  • I mean I think VR has a bright future but it won’t be until Meta can gain some serious traction with their headsets that we get some really good games on other platforms.

    Now Meta would assume this is a win but they’re just going to generate temporary traction for themselves and then people will move elsewhere as Valve and Sony are better at both software and hardware. They’re letting Meta do the expensive part, the R&D, for them. Then all of these players plan to swoop in and steal their business. You’ll watch it happen in 6-10 years.


  • I really wish that people would pile on Sony for not having PSVR1 games be compatible with the second headset. I would consider buying their headset just for PCVR and the entire PSVR1 library plus the PSVR2 stuff. At that point if you also own a PS5 like I do, that opens up a lot of games and rivals what Meta is doing.

    I think PSVR2 is dead in the water unless Sony invests a lot into it. Great PC headset but otherwise no. I really think Meta is doing an okay job with their library, so if you aren’t super worried about Meta having personal data on you, bite the bullet there. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with the stagnant SteamVR offerings which only have a worthwhile longer experience a couple times a year.