Gaming

Had to, as in "they didn't have enough experience to optimize the games". Same for Super Mario 64. Some programmers decompiled the code and made it run like a dream on original hardware.

One of the reasons I skipped the other consoles but got a GameCube was because all the first party stuff was buttery smooth. Meanwhile trying to play shit like MechAssault on Xbox was painful.

I was hoping that eventually smartphones would evolve to do everything. Especially when things like Samsung Dex were intorduced, it looked to me like maybe in the future phones could replace desktops, running a full desktop OS when docked and some simplified mobile UI + power saving when in mobile mode.

But no, I only have a locked-down computer.

One company put a stupid fucking notch in their screen and everyone bought that phone, so now every company has to put a stupid fucking notch in the screen

I just got my tax refund. If someone can show me a modern phone with a 9:16 aspect ratio and no notch, I will buy it right now

I miss physical keyboards on phones

Rush on the N64 had octagonal tires and real damage! I still play it every year or so.

I don't know what kind of games you're playing. No seriously, what are the names of the games you're playing and where can I download them?

My guess is a lot of convergence to a smaller set of known game engines. Godot, unreal, unity, plus a few others and some in-house like valves source.

I could be wrong but I presume in the past almost every game was made with its own custom engine. Now a lot of them have the "unreal engine" look.

But I'm not complaining. Looks great to me and leads to better performance and fewer bugs in the long run. Of course there are some caveats

Games look samey because Game Studios don't have ideas anymore. They just try to sell 20 h of playtime - that is essentially empty. It's literally just a bunch of materials and "common techniques" squashed into a sellable product. In the early times of gaming, people had ideas before they had techniques to implement them. Nowadays, we have techniques and think the ideas are unimportant. It's uninspired and uninspiring. That's why.

Yeah, but the Wii was a very underpowered system, and it didn't even have HDMI. That transition wouldn't have been as stark going from PS3 to PS4.

I know you're joking, but these probably have the same poly count. The biggest noticeable difference to me is subsurface scattering on her skin. The left her skin looks flat, but the right it mostly looks like skin. I'm sure the lighting in general is better too, but it's hard to tell.