That still doesn’t include most of the data necessary to reach this conclusion, and furthermore the bigger issue is that THE ARTICLE ITSELF DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY. It is an unbacked claim that we cannot verify. If he can’t share the data because ris propriety, he shouldn’t be making the claim publicly.

He’s looking at software sales in a vacuum, and he is probably correct that any singular piece of software would sell more units if it were released on more platforms. That’s not new or interesting: that’s obvious.

What he’s missing, even in the screenshot of claimed data he has, is everything else.

Consultants like this are not trustworthy sources. They’re trying to sell their own product.

Does he have access to the proprietary sales data of Nintendo, Xbox, Sony, Valve, and Google?

I’d be shocked if he did, because those companies are all big enough to have their own in-house departments for that. He’s trying to sell consulting services to smaller publishers. Consults don’t get paid for saying "well I don’t really have enough information to say that for sure*, they get paid for making executives feel smart.

He’s backing it up by misusing data. He’s lumping games together and assuming that they all would hypothetically have the same market characteristics, then extrapolating that to other games.

As an example he brings up how the Pokemon Company has released basically the same software on both Switch and mobile platforms. Which is true, but that does not mean it makes sense for Nintendo to release Tears of the Kingdom on mobile. We can already see that Nintendo knows this because they maintain Mario Kart Tour separately from the console versions. They’re entirely different business models, control schemes, and experiences.

I would argue that a more complicated analysis is required than just saying “multiplatforms are better than exclusives”.

He also just briefly glosses over what is the main BENEFIT to manufacturers: the profits made on hardware sales. There is not a lot of publicly available information, but we do know what each company tends to do. Nintendo prices their hardware above cost, so for them the additional hardware sales could offset the reduced software sales. Xbox prices their hardware at a loss, which explains why they valued exclusivity the least and have finished last in hardware units sold every generation since the original Xbox. Sony usually sells PlayStations at a loss to start the generation, but through hardware revisions and scaling ends up turning them profitable after a few years- a more balanced approach. And we see this reflected in their approaches to exclusivity: Nintendo is super-exclusive, Xbox is loose, and Sony is somewhere in the middle.

You also need to factor in how exclusives impact the ecosystem. The marketing budget for Mario Kart World Tour is not merely helping them to sell the game, but also to sell consoles. And not just consoles, but controllers and cases and branded SD cards and the USB camera and extra docks. It also encourages more software sales: the same person buying Mario Kart World and a Switch 2 might also buy other Switch 2 (or Switch 1) games. Even if they buy 3rd party games, Nintendo is still getting licensing fees. So if they release these big games on other platforms they might gain some revenue, but they lose out on a lot, plus they have to pay licensing fees to Sony/Xbox/Google/Apple/Valve to sell on those platforms.

If we were just discussing software sales in a vaccun then this would be accurate. Any 3rd party publisher has a much easier equation to determine which platforms to release on. Will the additional costs (development of a port plus the fees and asded marketing) be less than the revenue from additional units? It’s a bit complicated because some consumers have multiple platforms and will choose just one to buy the game on. This also helps explain why Sony delays the PC releases: they want to sell as many units overall as possible, but they also want anyone choosing between PS5 or Steam to be pushed to PS5 where their margins are higher.

The author doesn’t have anywhere near the data required to do any of this analysis, so he’s reaching a fundamentally flawed conclusion.

This may just be me, but I see delayed exclusives as basically being equivalent to multiplatform releases. Especially for single-player games.

If the Attorney General is complicit in covering up a child sex trafficking ring, the political norm would be to fire them, and potentially investigate them and prosecute them for obstruction of justice.

So the question becomes: how much did Biden know? And considering that even I fucking knew that there was an Epstein list the government was sitting on because it was reported years ago, I have no qualms about blaming Biden for this.

I hope the Dems are able to press this issue to gain political support against Trump because that would reduce the suffering of literally the entire planet, but the Dems also need to learn a lesson from this. If the Clintons were on the list I want them prosecuted to the full extent of the law, the same as Trump. If Biden and other DNC leadership were complicit in a coverup then they should be prosecuted too.

The thing is, those costs are already built into their margins and they have acceptable thresholds for them. Do porn games in particular exceed that threshold? We would need their proprietary data to determine that.

My hypothesis would be that these games have much lower rate of these charges. The reason being that these sorts of games are already subject to stricter restrictions and parental controls. I would expect the strongest association with charge backs and fraud investigations to be with games that are recurring subscriptions (people forget to cancel) or micro transactions. Which could include both pornographic and non-pornographic games.

I would also expect to see spikes in charge backs for specific games at specific times. Like when. Publisher adds Denuvo or some other draconian malware, or when 2K decided to add launchers to their game that hurt Steam Deck compatibility, or when some update happens that ruins gameplay, or when some executive comes out and says something stupid. But those would be events, not trends.

Just because something happens doesn’t make it okay to generalize that behavior across an entire identity.

“Mansplaining” is a pretty mild example but we can look at other more extreme ones. One of the most classic is racists who love to say “Do you know 50% of crime is committed by 13% of the population?”, and use that as justification to the idea that black people are inherently more likely to be criminals. And they may occasionally walk it back and try to say shit like “not you, you’re one of the good ones”.

Or it’s like someone who feels as though they got taken advantage of in a business deal saying they got “jew’d”. And then trying to say “well no I’m not antisemitic, but I’ve personally seen and heard of Jews conducting business unfairly. And it’s common enough that the term has arisen, so it’s gotta be somewhat true. And if you are a Jew who conducts business fairly then I’m not talking about you”. If you encountered someone trying to say that, you would be quite correct to respond by saying “wow that’s actually really fucking antisemitic”. And this is the exact same thing you are trying to argue with the word “mansplaining”.

I’d argue this also violates their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders as this reduces their volume.

“Karen” is a character, a specific trope. It happens to be a woman, but there is no inherent generalization that all women are Karens. It’s gender-specific so I would use something gender-neutral instead, but it is not generalizing behavior across a group of people. The biggest issue with it is that it’s unfair to people named Karen. Also maybe it’s just me but I haven’t seen or heard anyone use this in a couple years now.

I haven’t heard anyone use the words “Phillistine” or “Luddite” as insults in probably more than a decade. If anything, I’ve seen the Luddites get a bit of a resurgence in popularity as an important early labor movement against capitalists. A lot of their concerns turned out to be true, and we are seeing parallels today with the rise of AI.

“Barbarian” means someone who is non-Greek, and later the Romans used it to mean someone who is non-Roman. This is a similar example to “retarded” where it is context-dependent. The word “mansplaining” does not stem from an inoffensive use like this, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing it up.

Eat the Rich and All Cops Are Bastards are fucking based, because being wealthy and being a class traitor are choices these individuals are making, not identities. I would call serial murderers monsters, and racists pieces of shit.

I’d say “nice try” but really this attempt kinda feels like you’re just throwing shit at the wall in the holes that something sticks. It’s almost impressive how hard you are fighting to feel good about using sexist microagressions.

I focus on bigoted thinking.

Who are you to judge which groups are the most or least impacted by anything?

If someone supports trans rights but hates black people I’ll call them a bigot. If you support women’s rights but hate men I’ll call you a bigot. This isn’t a quantitative evaluation. Bigotry is bigotry. It costs you nothing to stop using sexist language, whether that’s sexist against women or men.

1. As someone else already commented, NVIDIA does a lot more than make GPU’s. In fact, they don’t even make GPU’s, but rather design the chips. The chip manufacturing, and usually the board built around the chip, are outsourced. Chip manufacturing monopoly is a separate issue.

2. You can still break them up. I never said it would be easy. You could spend semesters in law/business school studying the process, but basically the FTC and/or DOJ would open an investigation into NVIDIA and do market analysis to determine the best solution. It would probably take a few years and smmillions of dollars to have all sorts of experts involved. I could pull some idea out of my ass for you here, but it would be just as worthless as anything else random person on Lemmy would propose.

3. Government subsidies have failed pretty spectacularly and cause more messes than they solve. Look at the dairy industry- it led to overproduction of milk, environmental devastation, the government spending billions of dollars, and contributed heavily to obesity in the US today. Or the oil industry, which is just a huge mess now (also in part because so many of the child companies of Standard Oil that WERE broken up were later allowed to re-merge). They could still be explored as part of a comprehensive solution, but I’d be skeptical of their effectiveness. Even a market with 2, or even 3 competitors if you add Intel, would probably not be sufficient. For consumers, for strategic redundancy, for employees, for board partners, for manufacturing partners, and every other business partner.

So you’re clearly just arguing in bad faith. Falling for regulatory bodies to do their jobs, including a thorough investigation and evaluation of possible solutions, is nowhere close to saying “I dunno, do something”. So I have to wonder why you’re arguing in bad faith. Do you own NVIDIA stock perhaps?

What “plenty of alternatives” in the GPU market are you referring to? NVIDIA has a 92% share of the market. This may be a surprise if you slept through your history class on trust busting, but you do not, in fact, need to have 100% market share in order to be deemed to have monopolistic power under US law. The rule of thumb for most courts is 50%, though that is not statutory and can vary from case-to-case.

Also, what Trump HAS been doing is exactly what you suggest: sitting on his hands and allowing NVIDIA to exercise it’s monopoly. He hasn’t done anything at all yet, just like he has not yet deported Musk or cancelled the contracts for any of his companies. It’s all theater, and until I see any actual action I’m just going to assume he is shaking them down for more campaign contributions. Or maybe engaging in some good ol’ stock manipulation.

They’ve tried for years to “encourage competition” and that’s exactly what got us to this point.

Maybe you’re the one who should educate yourself before jumping into this conversation. The history of US anti-trust action is the history of repeated success stories where they are able to introduce competition by breaking up companies like Standard Oil or Bell Telephone, and it’s worked every time… Until future administrations allow those child companies to merge back together again, which is why we once again see these huge corporations once again obtain monopolistic, or at least oligopolistic, power.

Do I need to explain why “idk actually taking any action or enforcing any of the laws that have existed for over a century seems really hard. We should just allow the megacorporation to continue with their 92% market share” is an even worse idea?

And you alluded to another issue with this. “The backbone of many industries around the globe”. GPU supply isn’t just a matter of allowing privileged people to play their vidyagames. They are a key strategic resource used in a ton of industries, including strategic military functions. The US has already been slowly pushing for more domestic chip production under both Trump and Biden, encouraging TSMC to build their fabrication plant in Arizona for example.

Also it’s really ridiculous to expect some random person on Lemmy to have a solution to such a complicated and nuanced thing that is so dependent on proprietary information to get right. I’m not claiming to have the solution, but it’s obviously a problem and functioning governments have solved this repeatedly throughout history. Even if I did want to propose a more detailed solution you could, rightfully, point out that it’s not possible to do such a thing without inside information about NVIDIA’s operations.

That’s for the FTC to figure out. I could speculate baselessly here based on what I know as a member of the general public, but really it would have to start with an FTC investigation and evaluation. Potential breakup plans would be evaluated alongside alternatives: fines, additional regulations, additional monitoring. I don’t think the FTC (or their equivalents in other countries) would have the balls to consider nationalization, but in my opinion that option should always be on the table for consideration at least.

Very carefully.

Seriously though that’s a job for the FTC and their peers on other countries. It would start with an evaluation to confirm that NVIDIA does indeed have monopolistic power (they reportedly have 92% of the GPU market, which is waaaay over the thresholds of most courts for determining that), which would lead to an investigation and discovery process. I’m not naive enough to think breaking them up would be simple or easy. There isn’t enough publicly available information to do anything more than speculate on what a breakup would look like.

There are other remedies available too. On the extreme side there is nationalization, while on the more moderate side there’s fines or additional regulations.

Honestly breaking up NVIDIA would probably be great for all 3 of those groups of done right. They’re effectively a monopoly that has been leveraging their position to price gouge their customers for years.

I don’t trust Trump to actually do that though. He’s probably just using this as a threat for bribe money.

Lol you have no idea what I focus on. You’re just reaching for a personal attack. Also it’s weird that you specify “white” men when I purposefully have not, because as far as I can tell there’s no racial component to the word “mansplaining”. Are you assuming that I’m white for some reason? I’m not sure if I’m white or not - kinda depends on who you ask.

Bigoted thinking is bigoted thinking, and I call it out when I see it. It’s fundamentally flawed. It’s bad science and bad statistics and leads to incorrect conclusions. It’s the same kind of thinking that eventually leads to bigger things. You cannot in good faith argue for fairness while allowing unfairness based on some arbitrary scale. You seem awfully comfortable turning a blind eye to prejudice when it doesn’t impact you.

You’re engaging in stereotypes, and stereotypes are harmful. Even positive ones, like the idea that Asians are good at math or women are nurturing.

The inequality people have suffered from bigotry throughout human history is horrible, but that does not justify bigotry against people who resemble old bigots.

You can say “minority teased”, but the modern word is “micro aggression”.

It’s pretty damning that most of the arguments you’re using here to justify the word are the same ones racist use to justify using the ‘N’ word, or any other bugot uses to justify their bigoted language.

So when someone says “hey did you know 50% of the crime is committed by 13% of the population”… Sounds like they are describing a common experience. So by that logic does that mean it’s not racist to say black people are criminals? If a black person got offended by that would you tell them “we don’t need to get #notallblackpeople” about this.

For large swaths of western history Jewish people had a disproportionate control of banks and the money supply. Does this mean that the conspiracy theories about Jewish cabals controlling the world aren’t anti-Semitic?

How common does an experience have to be by your logic in order to suddenly make generalization and prejudice acceptable? If one trans person gets caught sexually assaulting a woman in a public restroom does that mean JK Rowling was suddenly right all along?

And you clearly did not understand what I wrote. I came up with the closest examples I could think of and then explained how they were not applicable to the situation.

It seems like you really just want to be able to have a little bit of bigotry, a little bit of hatred. As a treat.

Anti-pedophilia is antisemitism

This kind of reminds me of how every several years it seems like a group of pedo’s tries to portray themselves as an oppressed minority, and try to “join” LGBT+ spaces. Hard to say how much was genuine vs anti-lgbt astroturfing. I wonder if they will pop up again in all this.

So your ex-husband was an asshole. Cool story, but the world is full of condescending assholes of all kinds and polite people of all kinds.