It probably would be niche, but not any more niche than the steam machine, and it would be relatively low investment and low risk. Going full console with exclusives is extremely high investment and thus high risk. They would have to sell enough consoles via those exclusives to make up for what they would make selling the game cross platform, which seems very unlikely. As a publisher, this would also severely hurt relationships with current clients. These are all reasons why they got out of the console game and pivoted to being a game publisher back in the day. I don’t see them making that mistake twice.

The Xbox is almost the exact opposite of what I’m talking about, and I think that’s their problem. There’s nothing special about it, it has no exclusives, and it doesn’t have access to the practically infinite number of pc games, mods, emulators, etc.

So what I’m proposing is just a prebuilt pc. A prebuilt pc with a unique case, distro, and maybe a cartridge slot of some description. And with the cultural cache of a company like sega, I think it could easily earn its spot as a prebuilt living room gaming and media pc, much like the steam machine.

Yeah I’m expecting a repeat of the video game crash of ‘83. I expect some of the behemoths of the industry to go belly up, but I expect smaller studios to survive, or even benefit from the bigger players dissolving.

And games have looked super good enough for like 10+ years. If the future of gaming on your own hardware is tiny arm based chips, we’ll be just fine. Even in the current hardware shortage, there are a ton of $200 handhelds that can play a ton of games.

Oh yeah, now would be a terrible time to do something like that. But when* the hardware market chills out

Hypothetically, if some of these companies start just making little steam machine style computers, with their own Linux distro and themes and etc, do you think they would sell? Like the mini-retro console craze from a few years ago, but just modern computers.

Sell them basically as a console, in this case maybe default to Sega’s store, but it’s still just a Linux PC. Install steam if you want. But out of the box it looks and feels like a sega console. And maybe just promise that it’ll play any game they make for the next 10 years. Which really wouldn’t be much of a promise, just a defined “minimum specs” target for them.

Sega still has a lot of fans, which is why I think something like that could work for them, and it’s way less commitment than making their own walled garden console like they used to do. They wouldn’t be competing for exclusives or even work with other devs and publishers for ports. Just a fun themed pc to get some sega hardware out there again.

I hope this points towards what I think is going to happen, which is an increased push for physical media special/collectors editions.

Maybe even a slight chance of seeing physical PC games in places like GameStop again.

I don’t expect it to ever be mainstream, and probably shouldn’t even expect restocks of most games, but just as a collectors item for fans and collectors. And I think that does fit in with the current business model of places like GameStop, which is mostly collectibles sales.

I had to look up what that even is. So the answer, unsurprisingly, is never. It looks like it might happen if you have a serious muscular and connective tissue atrophy? So really shouldn’t be something that just happens sometimes

Sweet! I’ve been kind of interested in building a pi-based tablet. That would be perfect. (Yes I know about the CutiePi, I’m not really into it for several reasons)

That’s fair. I do find the combat pretty clunky. But I’m also not the type that really cares about combat. I drop most games straight to easy, unless it’s turn-based. I seem to have the reflexes of a cat undergoing rigor mortis. So in games like the Witcher, the combat only serves as a plot device, rather than the point of the game.

What I ended up loving about the Witcher 3 is the characters and the worldbuilding. Even the random basic quests contributed to the worldbuilding for me in an enjoyable way, but only in ways I could appreciate once I was invested in the game.

Just curious, did you make it to Novigrad?

The first few time I tried to play it I did so with my usual completionist mindset, and got bored of wandering around the swamps before dropping it. I replayed it more recently, and just got to Novigrad as fast as possible, and that’s when it finally hooked me. Finished the main game and the expansions, finished all quests except the couple I skipped early game and couldn’t go back to. The start of the game is painfully slow, but when you get into the meat of it, it’s so good.

You will likely need a high power laser to do any actual damage. Class 3b or higher. The kind you need to wear laser goggles for so you don’t blind yourself.

Who knows what kind of bs they could pin on you. Under this administration, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start handing out terror charges for destruction of surveillance equipment.

That’s worst case scenario, but tbh I’d be more worried about bullying from the local cops.