Often times, including this time for sure, changes like this are made after the review period specifically so that they’ll fly under the radar from press. But also, they may just be informing their readers who didn’t know the last several times Capcom has done this.

Open source does not mean that the intellectual property is free. There’s a lot of good that comes from this, and it’s not like those games are expensive.

Correct. Doom and Quake still cost money as well.

I don’t have to give a shit “about their next live service game”

I care quite a lot about game preservation. This isn’t defending EA; it’s praising this particular action. Again, this can’t be taken away from us, so it doesn’t matter what their next shitty behavior is. It doesn’t take away from this being good news.

Fall for what? They did one of the most pro-consumer moves they possibly could. It’s legally solid and irrevocable. It doesn’t mean I have to give a shit about their next live service game or be happy that they monetize soccer video games with gambling for children.

Are you okay? They open sourced some classic video games. They didn’t roofie your drink.

Not when they do this.

Given the things I’d like to see GOG investing in, it sounds irresponsible to buy Times Square ad space, but that’s just a gut reaction that’s not based on any real numbers.

I think what I’m getting at is that, from my perspective, the only thing that’s really in Skyrim’s favor compared to Avowed is how big it is, because if I wanted satisfying RPG systems or such, I’d find them elsewhere. I enjoy both real time and turn based games, and nothing about Larian’s RPG systems require them to be turn based, so it would be nice to see more of those kinds of systems in games like Bethesda’s going forward, but given how Starfield turned out, I doubt we will. Bethesda gives all of their NPCs schedules, there’s physics at play, and NPCs will care if you steal their stuff, but those systems never seem to manifest in anything more interesting than putting a bucket on someone’s head so they can’t see you thieving, so I’m not really missing anything in Avowed when those systems are absent.

I think attributes and upgrades tie back into gameplay, but we also all ended up playing stealth archers, and even if you never put stats into something that made things like lockpicking easier, it kind of didn’t matter, because the minigame wasn’t difficult and lockpicks are cheap. I think Bethesda’s games at least up to Skyrim have been great evolutions of the medium, but it also feels like, for all the work they put into their systems, they never got anywhere close to what Larian has built since Skyrim’s release.

To each their own, but Bethesda’s games are all too often criticized for having breadth but not depth, and as time has gone on, I’ve agreed with that more and more. Avowed is scoped smaller than an Elder Scrolls, by a lot, but its depth appears to be in its combat.

It’s worth keeping in mind what’s different here though. If the Steam Deck came out in the early 90s, it wouldn’t be analogous to the Game Gear; it would be competing with the Nomad. It plays the same games as a PC but handheld, so it’s capturing specifically the market that wants to extend that library to be handheld as well. Every Switch sold is handheld, but outside of the Switch Lite, we don’t know who values that system for its handheld capabilities (I basically never used my Switch handheld back when I actually used it). There was also literally no competition for it when it launched, so it will be interesting to see how many opt for a handheld PC instead when the handheld part is what they’re looking for.

Additionally, there’s this rising market segment of mini PCs that are powered by the same tech that’s in these handhelds. I’ve got one that I like to bring around for local multiplayer games, and if you only ever intend to use a computer at a desk for basic documents and web browsing, they can undercut low-end laptop prices for the same level of power and run the same operating system. Based on recent rumors, this tech could wind up in a new crop of Steam Machine-esque consoles very soon but with the library problem more or less solved compared to ten years ago.

If you’re just looking for sales numbers, which we haven’t had much of for a long time, the long and short of it is:

4M Steam Decks since launch, 2M of all of its competitors combined; expected that all handheld PCs sharing this AMD tech will sell about 2M more this year.