Jess Birch @shivoa@mastodon.gamedev.place

If you want to make the difficulty of your game scale up significantly at the end of the campaign as a final test of everything the player has built, please test the achievement hooks for completing the campaign several times as you get ready to ship. Players would like it shown on their user profile when they beat your final challenge.
Looks like The Riftbreaker only have their custom skirmish mode hooked up to said [Xbox] achievement (from personal experience & checking online).

On the one hand, this is very much "what if the SoCs Sony or MS order for their machines, but a laptop" but on the other hand, 57bn transistors in 432mm² on N5 sure is packing it in (comparison: Xbox Series X SoC on N7: 15.3bn in a 360mm² area).
My only complaint (after Intel are going all in on matrix units): Neural Engine is 11 TOPS for both chips so clearly just phone compat. not for serious ML work (this isn't going to get a DLSS-like without diverting compute units). https://www.anandtech.com/show/17019/apple-announced-m1-pro-m1-max-giant-new-socs-with-allout-performance

I'm not entirely sure they're sticking the landing on this campaign structure (single long tech tree with missions to new areas & even managing several bases at once - kinda how RimWorld expanded out to use the world map only more directed as the campaign generates the order of missions & randomly generates terrain from the biomes to set them in) but it's certainly mixing a lot of modern flavours into action-base building (is this an RTS given you don't control multiple units?).

I was going to say that now Destiny 2 is on GamePass PC (with all the expansions, not F2P shell), there has never been a better time to take a look at the campaign content they built for that online shooter (maybe link to what I said at launch about my campaign playthrough). But then I remembered they "vaulted" that content so you actually can't play it. Ever. Locations missing. And in a few months the first DLC campaign goes the same way.

The Riftbreaker seems like a great fit for GamePass. I hope they find a wider audience with that spin on the RTS formula.

This is good. Far more AAA studios should try it & see how much hourly productivity they gain, talent they attract, & workers they retain over the long term. [When MS Japan trialled this in 2019, productivity grew 40%.]
"In the next few weeks, the Montreal and Sherbrooke studios will be officially closed on Fridays, without changing the working conditions currently in place nor the salaries of employees, thus switching from the 40-hour week to 32-hour." https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/eidos-montreal-and-eidos-sherbrooke-shifting-to-the-4-day-work-week/

If the difference, when they actually enforce boundaries, is going to be if your main download comes via Windows Store CDNs or your own CDNs - how many games publishers who already operate their own PC CDNs & e-commerce platforms are going to want to give MS 12% of their revenue (including DLC revenue from inside the game, even using the pub's e-commerce platform) just to let MS take over? Surely every publisher puts a "store" up for each of their games to get extra slots in the Win Store?

So that new Microsoft Store & revenue split. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16989/windows-11-a-day-one-hands-on/2 😕
The Epic Store is a store, Epic get 100% of revenue using their own e-commerce platform.
But if they put Fortnite directly on the Win Store, MS would require a 12% cut no matter the payment processor.
Is GTA V a game? Or is the Rockstar Launcher, in which you can buy & run GTA V, a store?
Is Roblox a game so 12% cut of in-game purchases or a virtual-world app so 15% of any sticker price but no MS cut for in-app purchases?

Congratulations to MS on the release of a new numbered Windows OS.
I really hope the backport of a new Store (which actually works properly & doesn't require a separate Xbox app just to make it borderline viable for installing PC games) to Win10 happens quickly as it seems none of my Win10 systems are suitable for an upgrade (despite one being a laptop actually made by MS not all that long ago - during the lifespan of Windows 10).

What is the aesthetic intent in Sable from not having any AA options?
Yes, this a game with woefully limited (outside resolution) PC configuration options but even then, you would think that MLAA would be an on-by-default pick (it certainly really cleans up the line art when driver-injected, with next to no perf cost at 4K - the only framerate drops seem to be CPU-side as GPU utilisation crashes when framerates drop).

Microsoft: Oh, you were thinking of maybe unsubscribing from GamePass, playing games elsewhere? How about we stealth drop a 30-50 RPG onto the service which is only a few months old to go with the dozens of other games you could be trying right now? (Scarlet Nexus just appeared on the service here slightly before it was even announced.)

I realised Amazon would certainly be pushing their MMO via the Twitch rewards & Prime stuff. What I didn't expect is that redeeming all that stuff is tied to your Steam account (rather than their MMO going entirely through an Amazon/Twitch account so not needing to be tied to any external user system).

"But when supplies improve, GPUs will surely fall towards SRP. Just have to wait out the bots destroying stock & distorting prices."
*A supposedly reputable retailer with a hundred 3070s in a warehouse waiting for buyers* "Get your year old upper-mid nVidia cards, only $1200 or more each!"

Less people liking what you made isn't an automatic sign of higher quality or some nebulous artistic purity. That's one of the most toxic metrics in art & just the most worthless elitism (which is, in actuality, incredibly tied to modern commercialism & art sales - no one wants to be the dollar store fodder, everyone wants to be in the millionaire gallery while clueless snobs stand round talking about how "well obviously the masses don't understand art of this quality"). /end rant

Make things that connect with people before you think about subverting that connection. Your art can speak to people deeply but maybe not always exactly as you intended or through the path you expect them to take. A11y & providing more routes through which different people with different expectations & ways of doing things can experience your interactive art isn't just a commercial thing, it's making better art that touches more people. Mass appeal isn't "trash".

Even art with no interest is commercial appeal isn't purely meant to speak to the creator. That's the most navel-gazing self-indulgent "I'm a real auteur, unlike everyone else" excuse given by people who make things that don't speak to anyone because they don't care that their craft is about understanding connections & how to reach people.
A book of gibberish? "My art is just too good for you, so how dare you say that it should speak to people. Also translation is gross commercialism!"

What is going on at Squidix or MS for that matter?
Perfect Dark revealed so early (The Initiative formed 2018, announces in 2020, but "we’re still early in development" so late 2023 or even after?) & now it's being co-developed by Crystal Dynamics (& however many unnamed support studios). https://twitter.com/TheInitiative/status/1441190673672114181

Might be interesting to think about the job system that optimally loads a system like this, given predicted characteristics of various tasks that need to be completed & various dependencies.
"Ultimately I spoke with some industry peers about IBM’s virtual caching idea, with comments ranging from ‘it shouldn’t work well’ to ‘it’s complex’ and ‘if they can do it as stated, that’s kinda cool’." https://www.anandtech.com/show/16924/did-ibm-just-preview-the-future-of-caches

Something I didn't realise about the public development of the semi-sequel/expandalone Below Zero is that they rebooted their work on the initial story, moving in a new direction with a new narrative lead after Early Access had already started.
https://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/the-future-of-below-zeros-story/

I wish I liked huge blocky pixel-art more. Seems like there are two big RPG revivals & I absolutely love a 100 hour modern take on an Infinity Engine series but find it extremely hard to get into an RPG that looks like it comes straight out of the SNES era.