You’re probably just too young to remember. Come, stay a while and listen.

In the before times, you would have to check a paper booklet which could tell you the “days”, “times”, and “channels” a tv show or movie would “air”.

If you weren’t at home, or wanted to watch two things playing at the same time on different channels - you would miss out. This was a big deal at the time, because television was a social experience you would talk about with friends at school, or colleagues at work.

Before DVDs became commonplace, many homes had VCRs that were capable of recording these shows or movies onto cassette tapes that you could then watch at your convenience. But once DVDs became the home “standard”, VCRs were getting mothballed and homes needed a new device in order to record said shows.

Along came TiVo and other similar DVRs; capable of recording directly onto spinning discs of rust lovingly called “hard drives”. This would have been in the early 00s, before Netflix was ever a thing - and digital media distribution as we now know it today was limited to piracy, and required expensive broadband internet access.

As a bonus fun fact (unless I’m mistaken), that PSX hybrid was Sony’s first implementation of the much-loved cross-bar interface, later found on both the PSP and PS3.

My new favourite meta game; is it written by AI, or by someone Autistic?

SQL - understanding how to interact with databases will be an incredibly useful skill for whatever rabbit hole you next want to fall down.

They didn’t; GameTheory on YouTube actually went through the numbers pretty recently, and of all the games available physically - I believe sales were ~50:50, or slightly trended towards physical.

There’s a difference between region hopping from Europe to Latin America in a short period of time, and Switzerland to France/Italy/Germany/Austria - all three of which have major cities within ~3-4hrs.

So as long as the Steam Machine is eligible for purchase in one of those nations, this remains a viable option.

If you want to keep sole ownership (ie. invoice in your name, your CC etc.) and can’t go through a friend/relative in a neighbouring country - you could use a VPN and a freight-forwarding service in said country?

I’ve utilised similar methods in the past to get EU-only goods here into Australia.

I am surprised that these tables are able to support the weight of all of the CRT TVs in the thumbnail - I can’t help but think we’re only seconds away from disaster.

You’re probably not wrong; consoles moving to x86-64 likely was a death knell.

It’s too long to post here as a comment, but I believe that the PS3 stumbling early (price, giant enemy crab etc.) resulted in Sony JP losing control of the Computer Entertainment division to Sony US, and it was that shift that signed console farming’s fate all the way back to before the release of the PS4.

The fact that the whole X/O remapping was forced onto Japan is just one example of this relative loss of power.

We’re well past the point where even if a console generation doubles the number of polygons it can process over its predecessor - it will be difficult for us end-users to be able to discern much of a difference.

We will likely get to a point where 4K120Hz may be possible for some titles with AI support in the next generation; but given Sony’s decision to not make discs of future games - they can go fuck themselves.

This is my own personal rule, so therefore I obviously think it’s the most correct definition:

Once a “next-gen” (eg. PS5) console becomes “current gen”, then the previous “current-gen” (eg. PS4) console becomes “last-gen”, and the previous “last-gen” (eg. PS3) console becomes “retro”.

Wait, what - you actually made this?! 🤯

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It does, not sure if they will ship to the ol’ ex-convict colony 😅 - but I’ll definitely check it out.

This has been on my eBay Saved Searches for so long - it never had a local release here in Australia, so I’ll need to import from the UK.

Issue is, it’s not exactly cheap, doesn’t come up for listing very often, and often gets bought out pretty quickly.

It’s up there with Suikoden, Suikoden II, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, Ghost in the Shell, Bishi Bashi Special, Un Jammer Lammy, and ofcourse Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as high-up on my PS1 collection hunt list.

I’m a little too young for the Commodore 64 - my introduction were a friend’s Amiga 500 and a hand-me-down Amiga 2000 - but these look awesome enough that I would buy it just to display it, if only my hobby budget wasn’t already ridiculously over-stretched this year!

Seconding @SippyCup@lemmy.world here - if you have a smartphone that’s less than 5 years old, long-term I think it makes more sense to use that with a split/mount controller (something like an 8BitDo Ultimate or Razer Kishi V2).

The world is not America, there is no chance this would ever possibly happen.

I don’t think the personal market will completely die out, but it will definitely shrink by a significant percentage over the next ten years or so.

We’ll see a considerable volume of gamers move to thin clients, ditto for businesses, casual use (email, browsing, consuming media etc.) will continue to switch to mobile devices.

PCs will still exist as a hobby for enthusiasts, but we’ve definitely seen peak-component sales.

I recognise Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo… …but what’s that last one?

Bought my first car using cash, this was the early 2000s - and was (at the time) the most available way for a teenager to transfer funds to another person.

I will say, my heartbeat walking out of the bank and to my mum waiting in her car would have set a world record high.