• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    Google burned several billion dollars doing this properly, and still, nobody cared. Mainframes are almost never the right approach. Whatever hardware you connect from is usually capable of whatever you’re connecting for.

    If we had to revert to PS3 levels of memory and storage, modern rendering and computing would remain obscenely powerful. Even new games on low-powered hardware would be-- wait, that’s not theoretical, just look at the Switch. The first one ran Wolfenstein II on the DOOM (2016) engine, with fantastic texture detail thanks to cell-phone compression. Not even joking. The second one still makes Resident Evil: Requiem look really fucking good.

    Developers go where customers are. Anything that’s only possible on niche hardware… will probably form a niche market. So even if the bubble fucks us hard enough that we’re all stuck using battery power, that’s still a better option than a subscription for remote streaming. If everyone in 2036 is somehow stuck with the specs of a 2026 cell phone, I guess we’ll have to put up with games that are only as profitable as Genshin Impact and Balatro.