It seems like they are moving away from hardware sales now that they’re pushing their console exclusives to PC/Playstation. They really are trying to push for gamepass, but I feel like that’s going to alienate their core fan base that has invested into their ecosystem.

They don’t seem to be concerned with communication either, which is concerning considering Sony and Nintendo both seem to have better outreach in the past decade. Such a strange shift from when the 360 dominated the market despite having red ring of death issues.

I’m not entirely sure why places do this. It will cause distrust in your product and cause people to find the service elsewhere or for free.

My parents are finally getting rid of it. The one thing I’ve noticed, though, is that not having a subscription service means I’m very unlikely to get off my butt and watch tv/movies. Which isn’t a bad thing, I guess I just value other entertainment more?

I’ve wanted to watch the boy and the heron for a while. Maybe I’ll get to it eventually, lol.

Everyone else, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

I’m a very casual downloader. I rarely download and it’s usually older content like movies or retro games. But my personal method has been do a ton of reading. Find chatrooms, forums, etc, where people discuss this topic and read up on the various sites and people’s experiences with them.

Have a separate device if possible. One you’re willing to wipe if something went wrong. I’ve also heard of people sandboxing downloads to try and keep things safer, but I’ve never personally tried it. My assumption is that the older and less complex a download is, the better, but that could be pure ignorance on my part.

For example, if I’m grabbing a GBA game, it’s one single file. There’s less to visually scan, and it’s easy to see if there’s something that looks off. This isn’t always the case, though. For example, one .exe file could ruin your entire machine.

Something newer like a more modern PC game release, I would pick it from a list of sources that people claim are safe, and then basically hope and pray that I didn’t just infect my machine lol. At that point, I try to also look for any suspicious behavior, or if i notice any kind of slowdown, issues with the machine, etc.

Generally speaking, anytime I’ve infected my machine (that I know of), whatever virus protection I’ve been running has caught it and prevented issues. But generally speaking, I would assume that unless you’re downloading simple stuff, you’re taking some risk.

One of the best gifts I got for someone else (and myself I guess because we enjoyed it together) was all the episodes of Reboot. To be honest, I’ve been at a loss as to what I would even sail the seven seas for right now. I have too much of a media backlog to warrant finding something new anyways.

I guess you’re right. I guess I was thinking better service would equate to more sales /less worry about piracy

Why not just provide better overseas support for anime and manga?

I’ve been playing Mario Galaxy 2 for the first time. It’s pretty good, but I’m wondering what the hype was about. Perhaps it’s a product of its time in a way, but overall, it’s still a lot of fun. I keep dying at stupid parts, which is really funny. You can tell the developers really pushed their skills to the limits as all of the levels seem like they’re really well done.

I’ve been streaming a playthrough of Ghost of Tsushima, and I recently got to the DLC. I think the game does so many things right, but I have a few minor gripes. Overall, I really like the atmosphere and the world design. The environments are gorgeous.