I cleaned up this blog and removed over 300 personal entries and old rants.
I stopped posting on Medium.
I no longer comment on the Internet and I also do not allow comments under my own content.
I closed my Linkedin account in December 2024 and could no longer access it myself – but Linkedin being the platform that it is kept my profile alive and I could not do anything about that. I now revived my account on that platform to regain some control over my profile and my data there, but I severed all of my Linkedin “connections” because, let’s face it, it’s the worst platform in existence and it serves absolutely no purpose for its users – only Linkedin the company profits from the user data that it can mine there.
I still maintain my YouTube channel, simply because I am very interested in learning more about video recording and editing and I also care deeply about gaming. I refuse to typecast myself, so I might occasionally also post videos about other topics there. But I will not engage in online discussions with random people who might want to post something under my videos and thus I will always keep the comments section closed.
And that is because I wholeheartedly agree with what Lada Gaga so eloquently said about Social Media:
“Social media, quite frankly, is the toilet of the Internet.”
“PlayStation seems to be going all in on their next gen with a handheld and a home console. Valve is going to also have a home console with their steam deck. Nintendo is doing pretty well. The only one that’s not competing anymore is Xbox. Xbox is dead.”
And this is my response:
Valve is only working on reference hardware – at best. Valve is now in the OEM business and they will not compete with their hardware partners. All that Valve EVER cared about was to bring their Steam store closer to their customers. That is their business: Operating an online shop for games. They are not in the hardware or platform business. They are running a store, that’s all that there is.
The reason why they ever began working on SteamOS goes back to the times of Windows 8, when they were afraid that Microsoft might close down Windows to only allow for the installation of software from the official Microsoft store (which never happened). SteamOS has always been just a safety net for Valve.
And now they can safe themselves a lot of money because they have Lenovo to bring that store front to you. (I happen to own a Legion Go S, currently with SteamOS on it, but I don’t have any fanboy illusions about Valve, Steam and SteamOS. It’s just a platform where I occasionally buy some stuff because I can’t get it DRM-free on GOG.)
That rumored Valve “home console” will just be an AMD Mini PC (basically using AMD notebook chipsets) with SteamOS pre-installed on it. Get yourself a (rerfurbished) Minis Forum HX90G, HX99G or HX100G, put SteamOS on it and you basically can have the same thing right now – those little machines have a powerful Ryzen notebook CPU with a dedicated mobile Radeon graphics card, just what Valve is testing currently. And yes, those little Minis Forum machines really rock and SteamOS runs extraordinarily well on them out of the box.
Sony has lost interest in hardware several years ago. They have invested significantly into their global network infrastructure and data centers. They, too, have been preparing themselves for cloud streaming for years now. They do not see a future in traditional console hardware, they are simply forced to still support it because of their existing customer base. Their internal long-term strategy is very similar to Microsoft’s Xbox strategy: They see PlayStation as a platform – a platform that is not bound to specific hardware (which is the reason why those PC ports of Sony games exist in the first place). It’s only that Microsoft has always been several steps ahead of them with that long-term vision.
For literally several years now, Microsoft has clearly and openly communicated that Xbox is a platform – not a console, not a specific piece of hardware. They don’t care what device or client you use to stream their games.
That strategy fits perfectly into their corporate-wide Azure strategy. As Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, once said: “Azure is the computer of the world.”
As always with Microsoft’s long term plans, things progress a bit slower than originally planned and envisioned, but have no doubt that they eventually WILL get there.
The new ROG Xbox Ally (without the X) was clearly designed as a cloud streaming device while the ROG Xbox Ally X is also intended to still install and play games locally (for those who are willing to spend the extra money). You will see that the cheaper version will sell significantly more units – and you will see that more and more gamers will warm up to Xbox Game Pass and cloud streaming on this device over the next years. And in a few months, once it becomes generally available, every PC gaming handheld will be running this new “Xbox Windows”.
From where I stand, when everything is said and done, Nintendo will be the only traditional console platform that’s left on the market. They have a portfolio of games and IP that people love and that will keep supporting them on the long run.
Never forget that they sold more Nintendo Switch 1 units than Microsoft and Sony COMBINED have sold Xbox Series X/S and PS5 consoles. Also don’t forget that Nintendo sold more Switch 2 units in the first three weeks than Valve has sold Steam Decks in three YEARS.
Nintendo is doing fine, and they will keep doing fine.
Many people firmly believe that Cyberpunk 2077 is a highly immersive game that takes place in an incredibly fleshed-out simulation of a futuristic city called Night City.
I will make this short:
What breaks the immersion for me the most is that the NPCs (Non-Player Characters) in this game are absolutely brain-dead.
For example, just start a mission when Jackie (your NPC buddy in the beginning of this game) is in the car with you and then start shooting at someone – Jackie won’t even notice any of it or react to the shooting at all, he will just continue with his mission-related dialog, even when the entire NCPD (Night City Police Department) and a bunch of street gangs are after you.
Another example is the boxing coach in the building where you have your apartment in the beginning of the game. The moment the coach sees you, he begins a monologue inviting you for some training exercises – even when you’re shooting and throwing grenades at every person in the vicinity.
I call this random shooting at people the “psycho-test” and the idea is to find out how the game responds to the player acting insane – if it reacts at all. Obviously, Cyberpunk 2077 fails this test on almost all possible levels.
There is an option to talk to any random NPC in this game. But no NPC in this city has anything to say or will even react to you when you are trying to talk to them. Compare this with the 20 years old game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Everybody in Oblivion has something to say. NPCs even engage in random conversations on the streets with each other for you to overhear. And again: Oblivion is now 20 years old and in this regard still far more advanced and sophisticated than Cyberpunk 2077.
The city itself is not interactive at all, there literally is nothing to do outside of a story quest. Not even the tiny things: Buy food at one of those hot-dog stands? Buy a coffee in one of those diners and talk to the waiter or waitress? Forget about it.
Night City is basically just an empty, lifeless and soulless facade. It feels like a version of Lego City from Lego City Undercover from the year 2013 with some adult paint on it – only that Lego City Undercover is at least a funny game with a lot of humor (of which a lot might only work for adults that know all the movies that are being made fun of) and it actually works and delivers on everything that was advertised.
Cyberpunk 2077 still is nothing of what they advertised back in the day – it was supposed to be a city where you can live a life and all of your choices matter and have a direct impact on the world and the story. As it turns out, your choices have zero impact on the story because everything is on rails, there is no life to live outside the confines of the game’s story and on top of it all, the game is still buggy like hell.
There are still game breaking bugs that were in the game right from the beginning, like for example V (the character that you play in this game) all of a sudden not leaving “crouch mode” anymore, which means that the player’s character gets stuck in a ducked, slow moving body position for the entire rest of the game. Or an even that is not being triggered right in the very first mission that you play in the game that prevents the ambulance from arriving and thus preventing the quest to finish and the story to continue.
There are also more harmless but curious and still immersion-breaking bugs and continuity issues in the game. For example in the very beginning, when you drive to the farmhouse where you meet Jackie for the first time, your car will all of a sudden magically face into the opposite direction towards the street although you parked it with the front pointing towards the house – and this 180° turn (invisibly and noiseless) happens while you’re standing in the open door of the farmhouse with your back to the car and the car is parked directly behind you. It’s amazing that after all those years either still nobody from the game’s QA department has caught this – or worse, that they didn’t care about such a continuity detail at all.
tl;dr
I find it mind-blowing that people really still hype this game so much.
They physical Nintendo Switch 2 edition of Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition.
The only thing that this game does really well is being a tech demo for the Switch 2 – if a monstrosity like Cyberpunk 2077 can run on the Switch 2, literally everything else can run on that console, too.
