aspro said:

Pleas look forward to my latest hardware review (deep bow):

http://gameunder.net/gameunderhome/2017/8/8/namco-negcon

Looking forward to the now obligatory JoGcon review.

Remember the days when you got that shot of dopamine from accomplishing something in a game instead of seeing a pavlovian tag pop up on your screen?  Those were the days...

Of course, one could argue that the days were in fact those preluding said days, in which you'd play outside with actual people and actual sweat.  Rose tinted glasses I say, the days, those were not them.

So Disney is taking their movies off of Netflix so they can have their own streaming service. This kind of sucks because it's just going to be yet another service for people to subscribe to. Personally I still prefer to get my movies on blu-ray but this is just indicative of all these companies wanting to run their own services for their products. I think that ultimately this is going to be pretty negative on the entertainment industry as a whole because all these different services just continue to fracture the industry further and further.

SupremeAC said:

There was an interesting bit about this on the radio just today.  The next big thing apparently will be services that act as an extra layer on top of all those different streaming providers, that will switch from one service to another depending on what it is you want to view. Want to watch somt Got?  It'll switch to HBO. Bambi? Over to Disney. Apparently Apple is investing big in this, and if it works, where you pay the services based on view time instead of a monthly fee, I think it'd be beneficiary to all.

Now that sounds like a great idea. Certainly much better then having to fully pay for several services because the entertainment that you might be interested in is spread out all over the place.

Fucking bullshit bosses like Detlaff can really ruin an otherwise great game.

I'm talking about this boss in Blood and Wine for The Witcher 3 and his cheap as all hell bat attack.

So a huge update for Yooka Laylee just released tonight. Really great stuff added...I've been waiting for this before really getting into the game. Gonna have to get around to it soon. Plus an update on the Switch version...

Archangel3371 said:

So Disney is taking their movies off of Netflix so they can have their own streaming service. This kind of sucks because it's just going to be yet another service for people to subscribe to. Personally I still prefer to get my movies on blu-ray but this is just indicative of all these companies wanting to run their own services for their products. I think that ultimately this is going to be pretty negative on the entertainment industry as a whole because all these different services just continue to fracture the industry further and further.

I have a few thoughts:

Streaming is streaming, like Pocahontas said

"What I love most about rivers is

You can't step in the same river twice

The water's always changing, always flowing"

So, you know, if something is on Netflix or Hulu or some other service, it's all ethereal. We have no ownership, nor should we feel any sense of it over our media.

I also abhore hearing people complain about EA's Origin or GOG.com -- "Why can't it all be on Steam? Why do I have to have all these logins?" which brings to mind the Dead Kennedys "Give me convenience or give me death".

I'd rather have a healthy marketplace of choice where many flourish rather than have a monopoly in PC gaming, and the same must go for TV streaming as well, as big a fan of Netflix as I am.

Finally the point about splintering, and all these choices kinda sucking. I completely agree it does kinda suck. But the end result is that we have so many, many more choices of entertainment than when there were four networks, or even in the adolescent age of cable TV where, as Bruce Springsteen sang, "Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on" . Or as DEVO wrote, "Freedom from choice is what you want, freedom of choice is what you got" --- or maybe that was Marx (Richard Marx )

edgecrusher said:

I guess the big problem is when you start getting charged to use every service. Like on consoles, if you own all three & want access to full online areas you have to pay for it on all three now. On top of your Internet bill.


If you have amazon video you have access to hbo now, but only if you also pay up for that. All this adds up.


In terms of EA, it's just lame that they stopped putting games on Steam. If they want their own service, fine. But let people buy the games where they want at least.

I think that at one point the market will be so fractured that people will just end up chosing what services to subscribe to, and which ones they can live without.  At that point the services with less appeal will start having a rough time and will be willing to listen to propositions in which they get paid on a per view basis.  In comes some third party who'll take care of the dirty coding stuff and the distribution of the fees, and we've come full circle back at one storefront where everything is available.

As for comparing TV streaming services to game storefronts, they're two different beasts.  For the latter ones it's mind boggling that there isn't any software yet that just combines all your stores into one main page.  If it can be done for messaging services and email accounts, it should be easy to have a program that just groups all games from all stores together and runs the required ones only when purchasing/playing on them?

Let it be Archie, I'm pretty sure Aspro was drunk while writing that.    At least, I hope he was.