Obviously this won’t be 100% in every area in the world, but even in your own example you listed another cheaper franchise right nearby, therefore it is not the only option.

I haven’t been everywhere but I live in Canada and I’ve been to the US, UK and Southeast Asia and in all of those places this is true. There are towns that will literally just have a Subway or similar cheap franchise, but places with a McDonalds will almost always have another option.

This is just categorically untrue. People go to McDonalds because they want to, even if they may not want to admit it.

A McDonalds franchise is, by far, one of the most expensive franchises to own and operate. They have strict rules on where you are allowed to open one and startup costs are in the millions, most are owned by investment groups and people who own multiple franchises.

If you have a McDonald’s, you have a market. So you most certainly also have a Subway, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, etc. Some of those franchises literally just plant themselves wherever a McDonalds is placed because it’s cheaper to do that then it is to do the market research yourself.

Yup.

1. The VAST majority of people play this kind of game on console.

2. PC has infinite configurations and therefore is harder to test for.

That’s it. It’s way more work for way less users. When they release for Xbox and PS5, they are basically testing against two fixed PC builds, and that’s it. The other stuff is a factor, but a minor factor at most. Those are the two big reasons, everything else is an afterthought, and there is no big conspiracy at play.

Plus, literally every Rockstar game in modern history has been released on console first and then PC, if it gets a PC release at all. Why would this be any different?

Someone needs to browse AliExpress more.

And even then it was only $20. The last time it was over $99 was 16 years ago.

90+ on Metacritic may be what you’re thinking of, those can be more arty films that may or may not appeal to non-critics. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes is usually the opposite, crowd-pleasers that appeal to all audiences. Nothing amazing or groundbreaking, but a movie pretty much anyone will at least enjoy.

Since RT is just saying what percentage of critics thought it was watchable, high RT percentages just indicate universal enjoyment, they don’t say anything about HOW good the reviewer thinks the movie is.

I feel the exact opposite. Nightdive is doing EXACTLY what everyone should do.

First, Enhanced Edition to drum up hype and put the true original title back on the map. Then, the ground up remake to provide a new and refined experience.

This what they did with System Shock 1, and it worked great. I wish Capcom would do this with Resident Evil. I love the Resident Evil Remakes, but the originals are their own experience and having them available too in the best quality they can on modern platforms would be awesome.

I agree but I don’t think that contradicts anything I said. This is definitely a long term plan to end up with a gaming focused OS that people can use instead of Windows to reduce their reliance on MIcrosoft. It’s definitely a long term decision.

However in the short term, a Steam Deck with Windows would have been far less exciting. Developing WebKit also was clearly a plan for a much better web landscape too and cost far more than Safari ever generated until it was in iOS.

I only take issue with this being cast as some altruistic act, which it isn’t. It’s just one of those situations where the goals of the community and the company align, because the company is very focused on delivering a good user experience above all else. This is a great move for everyone involved and Valve deserves praise for that. But that’s no reason to be naive to how this greatly benefits them.

What profits did Valve say that to exactly? They were shipping a device that didn’t have an existing OS that worked for it. I know companies have been shipping handheld PCs since the 90s but they never took off because the experience of Windows on a mobile device sucks, full stop.

I’m very happy they did this and it will help lots of things, but it’s about as altruistic as Apple making WebKit open source. A massive boon to the community that did help everyone, but the goal wasn’t altruism. It was to create a software solution where one didn’t exist to improve a for-profit device.

Plus, not having to pay Microsoft for OEM Windows licenses helps too.

Not a lot. Simpler signup flow and ecosystem, more twitter-like timeline and features, better discoverability and some communities that aren’t on Mastodon. FOSS diehards can mince about it all they want and blame idiot users, but the simple fact is people who don’t live and breathe technology still have lots to offer a social network, and Mastodon continues to alienate them in design and in community. Lemmy does too.

I like Mastodon and Lemmy, a lot. I prefer them to the alternatives. But I just signed up for BlueSky and I’m enjoying it a lot even routed through the Mastodon bridge, simply because there are more diverse communities there, whereas my Mastodon feed is 90% tech and dev people despite spending hours and hours hunting for people I used to follow on Twitter. Getting big App.net flashbacks.

Don’t Look Up.

Apparently Brazilians make a variation of beef stroganoff that uses ketchup. If I had been signed up for these alerts I could have done something to stop that.

There is also the Xbox Game Pass release, which is my favourite.

The XBLA version looked great but it’s inaccessible, the Switch version hasn’t gotten the graphical upgrades and the N64 version is hampered by awful controls that don’t age well.

The XGP version solves all of this. It’s not perfect, but I did enjoy my time with it.

Same boat. I think I’ll prefer Mlem in the long run but the Memmy dev is just cranking out updates like nobody’s business so it’s a lot more functional right now.

Another tip, browse All in your instance for a while, especially as new communities are popping up like crazy right now. Sub to them when you see them.

Somehow the fans are always the first to know.

Once Apollo is gone for good, I’ll delete the app and that’ll be it. Reddit has too much useful info for me to block it entirely similar to Twitter. But also like Twitter, once the app is gone from my phone my usage pretty much drops to zero. I’ve already replaced Apollo with Mlem on my homepage, but I’m leaving Apollo installed until the end.

NOT LEMMY!!

They have what you’re talking about, they’re called web forums. They have bad UX, high barrier to entry, and only contain nerds and enthusiasts that live and breathe that one thing.

That’s the opposite of what something like this is trying to be, which is building communities that can interact with each other. Scaring away users is antithetical to that goal.

This really comes off as elitist nonsense honestly. It’s like saying that anyone who can’t fix a car doesn’t deserve to drive one. People shouldn’t need to understand the inner workings of everything to be able to participate in it.

I think there is, and that is just do stuff! Upvote, comment, engage, submit posts. Obviously helping confused individuals directly if you see them also helps, but simply using the service and engaging with it will ensure that more people join, and stick around when they see something worth returning for.

Most of the tech users that ditched Twitter for Mastadon when 3rd party apps were killed actually stayed, and still engage with that service. The other communities I followed on Twitter didn’t, and that’s because they joined a ghost town when it came to their interests. Lemmy is far behind where Mastadon was then in terms of overall capability and client options, so this is a big hurdle to overcome. Everyone has a part to play :)