Movies: I like to playback raw video files with a desktop video player. I settle for nothing less. I would gladly pay a few doubloons in exchange for a movie video file download but nobody offers this, (except for GOG that one time with a paltry selection of films).

Games: “Hey we released this new game buuuuut you’re going to need to purchase an entire separate computer system we call a ‘console’ because we refuse to compile the game binary for PC OSes, nor provide the source for you to do so yourself”

I interpret distributors and publishers treating me as a second (or third) class citizen as carte blanche to acquire your content and make the necessary changes to make it work on my environment of choice.

  • Mad_Punda
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    172 months ago

    I find your take hilarious - that compiling a console game for PC would be trivial (and to support that very different platform) and that devs/publishers simply „refuse“ to do it.

    Now, open source is a different topic and I can’t really estimate the effect it would have if it was standard across the industry.

    • Որբունի
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      72 months ago

      Current consoles use x86_64 and Vulkan/DirectX don’t they?

      The Switch is ARM so not terribly exotic.

      • Mad_Punda
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        42 months ago

        That’s still a far cry from the heterogeneous environment called „PC“.

    • @LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.orgOP
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      12 months ago

      If I went on a tangent about how game makers shackle themselves to vendor lock-in schemes like DirectX, then this little post wouldn’t have been quite as fun and digestible.