Blackmist

Phew, I'm glad that's settled then.

I haven't got around to playing it yet, but what you've described sounds a lot like The Witcher 3 for me.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it enough to finish pretty much everything (except all the Skellige question marks which thoroughly outstayed their welcome), and Hearts of Stone is better than Blood and Wine, but the gameplay was pretty flat throughout, and most of my enjoyment was in the cutscenes and dialogue and following threads to their inevitably grim conclusions. It's not a game that I would ever replay.

It does seem like a very obvious thing to add, and the mind boggles at how it wasn't there to start with.

It's taken this long for Intel to lose gamer trust.

Intel also have lower power consumption iirc, which is useful for laptops etc.

AMD have the best server chips: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

You have to remember that most people aren't "choosing a CPU" as much as buying a PC. If the majority of pre-build retail PCs have Intel, then the majority of purchases will be Intel.

TF2 hats, CS:GO and the scammy gambling sites it enabled, DOTA2.

None of this is really better than what Fortnite does, and there's probably no big players in the gaming market with clean hands when it comes to this kind of thing. The successes take all the attention, and Fortnite wasn't even that big until they dropped the Battle Royale formula into it after the sudden popularity of PUBG.

But for that you can buy a mini PC that runs it locally. What the fuck is this even for?

The fuck is in American Benadryl?

The UK one has acrivastine.

So did Valve but apparently that's fine.

You could all just join Canada if you want to stay connected.

Oh Elon.

Big purchase. Big screen.

I feel like you get to have the odd "failed" console as long as the next one is a smash hit.

Sega had the Saturn and then the Dreamcast just before it was steamrollered by the PS2.

Nintendo had Gamecube not do so well, the Wii was a smash hit, the Wii U again did badly, then the Switch blew it all away again. They've found their niche. The Steamdeck is poking around in there, but I doubt it will get the traction Nintendo have.

MS are at their second duffer in a row, and frankly it looks like they'll drop out in the future to me. They're starting to be about games rather than hardware, even if it's just to try and push subscriptions. The great cloud migration never happened for them. I think they'll go pure publisher in future, even if they hold onto Game Pass.

Sony only really had a disappointment with the PS3. Every other generation has handily destroyed all competition. Even they're doing a lot of PC ports which is nice.