• A record 18,000 games were published on Steam in 2024 - around fifty per day.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Of course most of these are small indie titles, but given that most of the tentpole AAA titles in 2024 were catastrophic failures - cough Concord cough - that's not only entirely understandable but a good thing.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile in Europe new game sales dropped by 29% year-on-year.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Star Wars Outlaws, one of Ubisoft's biggest failures of 2024, was the 14th best selling title in 2024 out of games released in 2024.  But when you include sales of older games, it drops to number 45.

• Here's some of the best indie titles released in 2024.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The best major titles of 2024 are Black Myth Wukong.  Astro Bot is reportedly also fun, though short.
  
  
  
• Apple is not planning to let Google be broken up by the government without a fight.  (WSJ)  (archive site)
  
  Apple has filed to intervene in the penalty phase of the Google antitrust case, now that the judge has ruled that Google has violated antitrust law.
  
  The reason is that Google pays Apple about $20 billion per year to be the default search engine in the Safari browser.
  
  Which is a good reason.
  
  
  
• Lenovo's P14s workstation laptop is 60% off right now.  (Notebook Check)
  
  This is not a cheap model so even at 60% off it's still $1700, but for that you get an Intel 155H CPU, a 14.5" 3072x1920 display, 96GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD, and RTX 500 dedicated graphics.  Which aren't anything special but are better than the integrated graphics in the CPU.
  
  I checked the Australian store and we only get a 20% discount, leaving the price for the same configuration at A$4760, just a touch expensive.
  
  
  
• How to survive as a software developer in the era of AI.  (Backchannel)
  
  Step One: Build a moat and feed anyone who tries to tell you it is the "Era of AI" to the alligators.  Or crocodiles/caimans/gharials depending on your location.
  
  Such people are not only not to be trusted, but should be actively distrusted.  When the Era of AI comes, Skynet will notify you.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thursday, December 26 2024 11:31 PM (3NtfN)

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