Hard disagree. Most trailblazing console ever with one of the strongest lineups of first/second party games we’ve ever seen. Yes there were some shoddy third party ports but you didn’t buy it for those.

People moan about the controller but forget it was the first time a joystick was used and the only real issue was the redundant left prong. Loved the feel of the Z button for shooting games coupled with the Rumble Pak.

Oh right I see it’s like a quality vs quantity thing. To me I’d pick quality (as that is what triggers my nostalgia).

If I want quantity there are thousands of modern indie games I’d rather play.

I agree, not common, which is why I don’t understand the “only 20 or so great games” take.

Can you list 20 great first party games on any platform?

Yep, chuck Rumble Pak in there too.

Did platform fighters exist before Smash?

Did proper 3D platforming with free camera exist before Mario 64?

Did third person adventure games exist before OoT and has anything drastically changed the formula since?

Not to mention all these games shipped fully built with no updates and amazingly few bugs.

It seems as though OP didn’t actually experience these things at the time so making a post about nostalgia for them is strange. Firing up an emulator and going “These games don’t hold up now.” is entirely missing the point.

Pretty sure the aforementioned list makes up for one mid Castlvania game.

We referred to Rare as a “second-party” developer at the time. So sad when they got bought by M$.

To answer your question on third-party games, some of my favourites were…

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

Vigilante 8

Extreme-G

Snowboard Kids

Turok

Bomberman 64

Resident Evil 2

San Francisco Rush

This doesn’t track, Rare were banging out so many good games and as others have mentioned the Star Wars games were also awesome.

I feel you are also still missing the point about trailblazing. There was more gameplay innovation than anything since.

Yes my list was not exhaustive either and tried to focus on exclusives to make the point.

Good point.

Unlikely many of the games of the current gen will hold up in 25-30 years…

Many of the first party games on those systems broke new ground and much of modern gaming wouldn’t exist without them.

Woodwork dweller here, you seem to have forgotten:

Majora’s Mask

Star Fox 64

Jet Force Gemini

Donkey Kong 64

Diddy Kong Racing

Excite Bike 64

Paper Mario

Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door

Pokémon Stadium

Yoshi’s Story

Pokémon Snap

Mario Party

Felt at the time that there was always a high quality “AAA” release on the horizon interspersed with some of the greatest games ever made. Many of the gameplay techniques these games pioneered during the transition from 2D to 3D are still used to this day.

Obviously a lot of them don’t stand the test of time a quarter of a century on but we haven’t had a system with the same consistent quality of games for a long time, if ever, IMO.

That’s why I mentioned those other console exclusive features. Anyway the original point was about cost and I think the Series X was the best value for money at launch this gen…

• Half the price of building a similar PC at launch.

• Rewards are higher on console so recoup the cost more than PC.

• I use Game Pass on both PC and Xbox with a single account to play multiplayer so cheaper on that front.

We’re half way through the generation now though. PC parts have got cheaper, Game Pass Ultimate conversion ratio has dropped and rewards are drying up so probably wouldn’t advocate it anymore. PC likely to be better value next gen.

I always gamed predominantly on PC but this generation I did the maths as PC parts had become over-inflated so decided to give console a try. I still think it was a decent decision for this generation…

Game Pass can be had waaaaaay cheaper than that and you can get it all back and more in rewards points.

I spent £450ish on the console at launch including controller and a game. Equivalent GPU was £500 or more at the time.

Spent £150ish on Game Pass sub from November 2020 to July 2026 which has allowed me to play countless games I never would have bought outright.

I’ve made over £700 back in vouchers with over 2 years left to accumulate more. Spent half of it on games, and controllers, headset, etc. all of which I can use on my PC. Plan on saving the remaining vouchers to put towards my next PC build.

This is without mentioning other console benefits like low maintenance, Quick Resume and the fact I can use one copy of a game to play with two players online.

eXpLaIN hOw im OuT oF pOcKeT.

Yep my sentiment entirely.

I had actually written a couple more paragraphs using weather models as an analogy akin to your quartz crystal example but deleted them to shorten my wall of text…

We have built up models which can predict what might happen to particular weather patterns over the next few days to a fair degree of accuracy. However, to get a 100% conclusive model we’d have to have information about every molecule in the atmosphere, which is just not practical when we have a good enough models to have an idea what is going on.

The same is true for any system of sufficient complexity.

This article, along with others covering the topic, seem to foster an air of mystery about machine learning which I find quite offputting.

Known as generalization, this is one of the most fundamental ideas in machine learning—and its greatest puzzle. Models learn to do a task—spot faces, translate sentences, avoid pedestrians—by training with a specific set of examples. Yet they can generalize, learning to do that task with examples they have not seen before.

Sounds a lot like Category Theory to me which is all about abstracting rules as far as possible to form associations between concepts. This would explain other phenomena discussed in the article.

Like, why can they learn language? I think this is very mysterious.

Potentially because language structures can be encoded as categories. Any possible concept including the whole of mathematics can be encoded as relationships between objects in Category Theory. For more info see this excellent video.

He thinks there could be a hidden mathematical pattern in language that large language models somehow come to exploit: “Pure speculation but why not?”

Sound familiar?

models could seemingly fail to learn a task and then all of a sudden just get it, as if a lightbulb had switched on.

Maybe there is a threshold probability of a positied association being correct and after enough iterations, the model flipped it to “true”.

I’d prefer articles to discuss the underlying workings, even if speculative like the above, rather than perpetuating the “It’s magic, no one knows.” narrative. Too many people (especially here on Lemmy it has to be said) pick that up and run with it rather than thinking critically about the topic and formulating their own hypotheses.

David, is that you?!

As always, it’s a trade-off between convenience and ability to tweak.

When it comes to gaming, the convenience slightly edges it for me at the mo. Enjoying Game Pass, play anywhere, Quick Resume and have made all the money back I spent on the Series X through Microsoft Rewards twice over.

Next upgrade will be a tough call though.

Surely you still have to update drivers and OS?!

I dual boot Linux on my PC and run it on Raspberry Pis. Let’s not pretend it requires zero maintenance.

You are correct by the technical definition, I apologise for suggesting the Steam Deck is not a PC lol.

What sort of things do you run on yours? I’d have thought it being a handheld it wouldn’t be that useful for anything I’d want to run on it as it wouldn’t be always on or connected.

My preference is a dedicated desktop box I can upgrade and potentially run some services like DNS, PiHole and some automated scripts on. I’d rather spend the money on that and keep using the Switch or cloud gaming when I’m on the go.