Wasn’t that Quake, not DOOM?

Well that tracks as Eli Roth has never made a good film.

Well how do you combat that if you are in a household or shared network with others who aren’t privacy conscious?

I had considered that, but that would mean they are collating and amalgamating data coming from a single IP, which is almost as bad as listening to my microphone. Both are data gathering without my permission.

I’m not so sure. I’m interested in this thread because I had a recent issue like this. I barely use Instagram, hadn’t booted the app for a month or something, only have it to support my SO’s art account. Never comment/DM, just likes. Had a lengthy in person conversation about tattoos and the idea of getting them at current location. I didnt do any searches on my phone or any other device for that matter. Don’t have any tattoos, or ever look at that content on insta (only follow art and wildlife photography accounts). Booted up Instagram that day and was getting purely adverts for local tattoos studios on my feed. Checked my permissions, all disabled. The only explanation I have is that it’s somehow still listening. That can’t possibly be a coincidence.

But they hit so many buzzwords. 20 year old buzzwords even!

Yeah I understand they were all 6th gen. My point was just that it doesn’t really make sense to blame the Dreamcast failure on its timing. Dates also matter:

Late 98 was release in Japan
Late 99 was release worldwide
Early 2000 was PS2 in Japan
Late 2000 was PS2 worldwide
Early 2001 Dreamcast was killed
Late 2001/Early 2002 Gamecube and Xbox

The meme makes it look like the Dreamcast popped up late, but timing was not the reason for it’s demise at all. PlayStation dominating the market, as you mentioned, was probably the biggest one. People knew the PS2 was around the corner and the Dreamcast had barely been out in the EU by the time the PS2 was strutting it’s stuff on the Japanese market.

Yeah, I’m of the opinion the Saturn was the real problem. It was not a bad step forward compared to the Megadrive, but compared to the PS1 it was nowhere near as good.

Dreamcast was a great console. It was really ahead of it’s time with a bunch of things, the VMUs, the internet connectivity, the range of peripherals and keyboard/mouse integration. It was the first console I ever got relatively near release and never regretted it.

This is a really odd way of putting it seeing as the Dreamcast came out before the PS2 and was discontinued before the other 2 even came out.

It’s true it does cost to keep things running. But like you say there are ways around this to push server costs onto players, or simply allow offline play with online features disabled.

I think if there were legislation in place then design decisions would adapt. If it were costly to just shut a game down abruptly, there would be player hosted options in place from the start and ideally less spurious “always online” requirements woven into the fabric of every game.

Only the US is allowed to ruin elections.

This feels borderline criminal. Yeah it’s 11 years old, but if someone told you that an early access game stays in early access a decade, that means you need to buy it again on release, would you?