That’s really cool that someone thought to preserve this and put it on display in a museum. It’s like a modern historical artifact from the golden age of computing.

“Shouldn’t we wait for reinforcements?”

“I am the reinforcements.”

• Vagrant Story, PS1

Yeah, this sums up the situation quite nicely. I have nothing more to add other than saying it’s one more reason why it sucks to be a Floridian right now. We already had it bad enough with the oppressive summer heat and lack of seasons here, but now we’ve got some of the worst state leadership in the country to add a nice cherry on top of the shit sundae.

He’s just that good at business. Acting like he wants to bang his own daughter has always been a 4D Chess move. /s

Haha, wow. This is a perfect metaphor. Well done.

I wouldn’t say that I’m against subscription models as an option alongside a traditional purchasing paradigm for games, but if what we’re seeing now is simply a trojan horse for a wholesale upheaval of that traditional purchasing model sometime in the not-so-distant future then I’d happily see it fail. Just in general the constant push toward an all-digital gaming future consistently concerns me.

But I’m old. I’d be willing to bet that most young people and teens gaming today probably couldn’t care less about that prospect since they’ve never experienced this medium during a time before digital distribution, day 1 patches, etc.

Do they? I’m not so sure.

While exclusives certainly limit access to those who own a certain platform, they also usually benefit from being developed for one specific piece of hardware in terms of polish, stability, etc. Some of the most ambitious and polished games ever made have been exclusives, mostly on Sony or Nintendo platforms.

They also help to engender a distinct identity for each platform, IMO. This is a more ephemeral thing, mind you, but I think that both Sony and Nintendo have succeeded in carving out a clear brand identity for themselves via the kinds of exclusives that they’ve gotten onto their platforms from their stables of first- and second-party developers. Does that make sense, or am I just talking out of my ass at this point?

More options is always better for consumers, of course, but I think that exclusives also come with their own set of unique positives as well. I’d be curious to know how most people feel about this topic. I could very well be an outlier here.