>>25045
Aldi had them for £230 last Black Friday and I believe Tesco did the same, but I could have sworn that they were cheaper than that before prices shot up due to lockdown anyway.

>>25044
I absolutely remember Argos having an offer in April because I budgeted for it. They were immediately out of stock because they'd all been bought up by scalpers and then sold for considerable mark-ups. Same story on Amazon where retailers were sold out and all you could get were scalpers or companies in HK where you'd be waiting for months if it arrives at all.

Then I realised that there's nothing on the Switch I'd want to play that couldn't be bought for my laptop and I have no use for a portable device.

>>25046
What is going on here? Why is the mascot for Black Friday a Christmas carrot? Why is L I K E the most important word in that copy?

>>25048
I can't explain the LIKE - maybe they're saying you will LIKE their bargains? Pretty pisspoor if so - but Kevin the Carrot has been Aldi's Christmas mascot since 2016, and Black Friday is considered the start of the Christmas shopping season.

https://www.aldi.co.uk/kevin

Laddo has bought a Switch. I forgot how expensive Nintendo games are because they rarely go down in price.

Google Stadia Premiere Edition has been reduced from £70 to £20, might be worth it at that price just for the 4K UHD Chromecast.

https://store.google.com/product/stadia_specs?hl=en-GB-store-3827733

>>25313
bits of that make the chromecast look locked down, or I may be missing something?

>>25314

It's a completely standard Chromecast Ultra. They're knocking them out cheap because a) nobody wants Stadia and b) the Chromecast Ultra has been discontinued and replaced with the newer Chromecast with Google TV.

>>25315
Those new Chromecasts with Google TV are pretty good - the interface is zippy and clean, it makes me 7ish year old Sony Bravia seem like a perfectly standard new telly apart from the bezel (which even then is shy of a centimetre, but looks gargantuan compared with modern screens).

>>25313
Bought one despite not having a TV for the chromecast. Annoyingly you can't use the controller wirelessly apart from for Stadia, but I've heard it's still decent, and will probably be a bit better than my wired X360 controller held together with tape. Might give the CC to my sister for christmas.

>>25317
Despite an estimated arrival time of two days ago, it hasn't even been sent for dispatch yet. I feel like they might not have as many as they sold.

Microsoft plans to buy Activision Blizzard for nearly $70bn

Microsoft says it plans to buy major games company Activision Blizzard in a deal worth $68.7bn (£50.57bn). It would be the biggest acquisition in the company's history and is expected to be finalised in 2023.

The move means Microsoft will take ownership of gaming franchises like Call of Duty, Warcraft and Overwatch.

Microsoft claims it will help them grow their gaming business across mobile, PC and consoles along with providing building blocks for the metaverse. This deal is the biggest in gaming history and comes a year after Microsoft bought another influential gaming company Bethesda for $7.5bn.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-60042409

They're not fucking about.

>>25406

Games are big money nowadays, right? Doesn't it completely overshadow the film industry, for example?

>>25407
A quick search online suggests they're on par, with both in the US$40-50 billion region.

As a side question, is the overall revenue of the gaming industry really a very good indicator of its quality and cultural worth? You hear it brought up a lot that the games market is rivalling film/TV for its income, but I always think a deeper dive and some other metrics need to be considered. It's like when Americans insist the US is a first-world country because of its high GDP, despite the absolute shitshow that their day-to-day life is.

>>25406
If this means that CoD games are coming to Game Pass, particularly on day one, this could be a very beneficial move for me. CoD games don't go on huge sales very often, and £70 for the cross-gen edition of Vanguard is ludicrous. If I can get them for a reasonable subscription fee, I'd be over the moon. The new Rainbow Six game is day one Game Pass, soon I'll never have to buy a game again!

>>25409
I've never actually managed to play Cod, but it seems a bit nuts to me that games I associate with my PlayStation childhood, like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Crash Bandicoot, are now owned by Microsoft.

>>25410
Yeah it's odd, but then you look at it and see Crash and Spyro have both been multiplatform for over 20 years. Their Playstation exclusive years were a small part of their overall history.

Asda are having a clear out of their old Switch bundles.

>>25412
They've also reduced the Switch Lite + Animal Crossing bundles to £80, but I've seen lots of people complaining online that Asda staff are hiding stock so they can buy it themselves.

>>25416
£80 is almost cheap enough to tempt me so I can play Pokemon games in the garden and use it as a slightly-too-big MP3 player, but then I remember you still have to buy games for full price. Not sure I can go back to that kind of thing after so many years on Steam. Thanks to the rapid expansion of the Chinese middle-class the Lunar New Year has already ushered in another massive Steam sale.

>>25412

The switch is getting on a bit now, isn't it? I'm quite surprised Nintendo haven't pulled their usual stunt of realeasing an XL version, a Lite version, an XL new-lite 3D version, etc etc...

It must be due for a bit of an update before long though.

>>25418
The OLED version came out a couple of months before Christmas.

>>25419
The OLED version is rather nice, as it happens. There are only a couple of games on it so far that really do it justice, but Metroid Dread was developed for it and you can tell as it look grand.

>>25418
The 'new' Nintendo 3DS was quite controversial, for having certain features and games that couldn't be played on the previous 3DS/2DS systems. Think the key exclusives for the 'new' model were SNES Virtual Console games, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Fire Emblem Warriors. Nothing particulary exciting, but people didn't like their console becoming obsolete due to a slight upgrade. With the Switch, which has way more mainstream appeal, they probably could get away with releasing an upgraded model, as Sony did with PS4 Pro, and Microsoft did with Xbox One X. But it's a gamble, they don't want to alienate their loyal fans.

Personally I think the Switch is too underpowered for me. For every beautiful smooth running game like Super Mario Odyssey and Metroid Dread, you have dozens of third party games which run like shit and/or need to be streamed. I'm not a graphics snob, but playing Shin Megami Tensei V at 20FPS while my console whirrs like an aeroplane, not a great experience.

>Japanese technology giant Sony says it will buy video game developer Bungie in a deal worth $3.6bn (£2.7bn). The US-based company is best known for the Destiny and Halo gaming franchises.

>Sony says the deal will give it control of Bungie's franchises and access to its live gaming services, as it aims to "reach billions of players".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60210450

>>25436
Franchises, plural?

>>25437
Marathon's back, baby!

>>25436
Destiny is maybe the most boring shooter on the market. There are nuggets of brilliance in the enemy backgrounds, but the gameplay is tedious. I beat 2's campaign at launch, and I can't remember any set pieces, any story beats, anything of note. It's the gaming equivalent of muzak. It exists, nothing more. Does not begin to touch the greatness of Halo. I doubt Microsoft are quaking in their boots knowing Sony have Bungie.

>>25441

Destiny 2 got even worse once they made it free to play, I jumped in and played for a while because it was free but without going into an engaging campaign it just turned into a mildly distracting shoot-n-loot with no stakes or interesting story to hook you.
Clearly there was a plot to begin with but you sort of had to dig around the main hub to find the missions, and then they were disjointed and not that interesting anyway. I much prefer indie FPS games lately, and Doom, but Doom is a whole beast unto itself now.

Are PS5s worth it yet? I've got a Series X, but the PS5 appeals to me for its own exclusives, particularly Final Fantasy XVI (though I believe that's only a timed exclusive). Are God Of War and Uncharted and TLOU and Returnal worth dropping £500 on a new console. I see PS now has a Game Pass style service, anyone know if it's any good?

>>25794
Not really.

>>25794
Didn't Sony announce last month they were raising the price of the PS5 due to inflation?

Picked up an Xbox One. I know I'm a generation behind but what games do I start with?

I've had a look on The Game Collection and they have Fallout 4, Dishonoured 2, Titanfall 2, Shadow of War, Mothergunship and Red Faction Guerrilla, amongst others, for £2.95 each so that seems like a good place to start?

>>25813
I'm sure you could find a very cheap 1 month trial to Gamepass Ultimate which should provide access to a lot of newer games. There are tricks you can do to get 3 years worth of it for <£100

Some good picks on your list. Maybe also Halo: Master Chief Collection, Dark Souls, Forza Horizon, Hollow Knight, Ori and some of the older CoD titles maybe.

>>25813

Those are all solid games, save perhaps Red Faction, which is just a bit bland, and much, much older than the others. It's the sort of game that would be in that 99p bin if Game still existed. Hang on, do Game still exist?

Is the Series S 1TB worth it? It's about £280, the Series X is about £480. I don't care about discs, I have a big Xbox library from when I had a Series X, and I have a Game Pass subscription. I use a 1080p telly.

From what I've seen online, Starfield runs at 30FPS on both, Elden Ring about 45FPS on S and struggling to reach 60FPS on X, Dragon's Dogma 2 looks fine on both, Cyberpunk better on X but S looks fine for my needs. Basically if it runs at 30FPS (or over), and doesn't look like complete shit, I'm happy. The only game I've dropped due to graphics in recent years has been Pokemon Scarlet because that was 15FPS N64 graphics.

I know the Series X is good, but that £200 could be useful or buy me games I want for if I get an S.

>>26444

I don't have either but 200 quid bought me an entire VR headset last month. It's a lot of money for a few extra FPS.

I'm weighing up whether to get a Steam Deck. Am I right in thinking:

- This is a better option than something like an ASUS Rog Ally, Lenovo Legion Go or another handheld?
- It'd be worth going for the OLED but a larger memory isn't essential because I can always add a memory card.
- It'll probably be reduced in the next Steam sale.

>>26656

The Steam Deck is generally a much more seamless experience if you've got a library of games in Steam. Every game on Steam is rated for Steam Deck compatibility on the store page. If a game is rated as Verified, then it'll work perfectly out of the box with no configuration required. Other handhelds run Windows, so you're far more likely to need to fiddle about to get games running well.

There is a MicroSD slot, but loading times will be slower than for games installed to the built-in SSD. It's not a problem for indie games, emulators or watching video, but it is very noticeable for AAA titles. The SSD is user upgradeable, so if you're looking to save a few quid you could buy an older Deck with a 64gb SSD and upgrade it.

The LCD screen is fine, but the OLED is slightly larger, considerably brighter and runs at 90Hz instead of 60Hz. Nice to have, but far from essential.

Valve have opened up SteamOS to third-party manufacturers and we're expecting to see the first devices announced at CES next month, but we don't know about pricing or specs yet.

>>26656
I grabbed one a few months back. A refurbished LCD model with a 512gb internal drive for about £340. From what I understand it's a lot easier to run things with it out of the box than a similar windows device for basic console-esque use.

If you've kept up with free games on Epic or have Amazon prime you can install a thing called Heroic Launcher and access non steam games easily. Also works well for emulation with just about anything up to switch.

There's a bit of fannying around if you want to pirate anything and you can't play some of the big online games due to antipiracy measures.

Worth mentioning with a dock or usb-c hub you can use one of these as a desktop for light to medium gaming.

Refurb steam decks are back in stock.

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamdeckrefurbished/

Would this be better than a Steam Deck?

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3636512

>>26726
Don't ask us, ask Steve "Gamer" Nexus.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1y7DyDe2w

(He wasn't very positive).

>>26727
I don't know what someone is meant to do with this data. Are there people swayed by one device having slightly louder sound at a particular frequency range than another device?

>>26728

A device with spikes at particular frequencies will sound more annoying than one with a more even distribution, even if they measure the same on a dB meter. GN's whole shtick is extremely thorough quantified testing, because YouTube is absolutely saturated with hardware reviewers who just give a subjective impression.

>>26728
I agree with otherlad. It might seem like overkill, but when most reviews on YouTube are just some bloke doing an "unboxing" video, and written reviews exist solely to get you to press an Amazon affiliate link, Gamers Nexus are right to go the extra mile.

>>26728

I find their videos hard to watch in full because they are just so dry and information dense, and I am more of an ADHD retard than autist retard. But when you want the straight hard data served raw and unfiltered, GN is where you go.

Anyway to answer your question, yes. We've probably been spoiled by devices nowadays being so quiet, and we'd get a shock to the system if we went back in time 10-20 years and remembered how loud everything was, but I expect it matters rather a lot to all those gamer dads who have to play their SteamDeck in bed while the missus is asleep.

>>26727

What does Mr burke like honestly... Guy just slates everything like he hates his job.

>>26792

The 9800X3D, the Arctic Liquid Freezer, the Fractal Design Torrent and catgirl femboy waifus.

>>26656 here again.

Bit the bullet and ordered a Steam deck. £459 for the 1TB OLED refurb model, just waiting on shipping from the Netherlands now.