These days I tend to prefer things coming out of Asia or Eastern Europe, because the people in those places-- Nintendo aside-- haven't been infected with the woke mind virus. With that in mind, plus how much I enjoyed "Metro: Exodus", I've been really looking forward to "Stalker 2". Here is the latest trailer. Notice the absence of butch androgynous pink-hair lesbians with mohawks and body builder arms, and setting-inappropriate random African people.
One interesting thing to note: this game is not "cross-gen", yet it doesn't look any better than the aforementioned "Metro: Exodus", as my screenshots from July of 2019 prove. I know there are caveats with this particular title-- they had to relocate during development due to missiles flying overhead-- but this still seems to confirm my hypothesis that the more-or-less flatlining of game graphics has to do with something other than "cross-gen", such as project budget ceilings. By the time this game comes out, it'll have been at least four years since that time, with zero improvement in visuals.
Kind of explains why I've become largely bored with the medium. When I saw "Metro: Exodus" in 2019 with ray tracing and HDR, I was thinking "up and up!". Instead, things went and remained horizontal.
An update in shipping means that I'll be able to assemble my new "PC of forever" this weekend, versus needing to wait until next week. Of course, I won't have a video card until who-knows-when-- but at least I'll be able to get Windows 11 and all of my software installed, and set up the way I want, by dropping in an ancient spare GTX 1050 Ti I've had in a box for years. This is the least excited I've ever been for a new PC, but I have the cash right now, and my Series X still had good resale value on the used market-- why not pounce now and be done with it.
I read that video card shipments took their biggest drop in 2022 since 2009! This doesn't surprise me at all: the average video card according to the Steam hardware survey is the measly GTX 1650-- for low-range people like that who can already run their MOBAs or whatever, they are set already; mid-range people who want a $500 card have quite literally nothing viable in the market today; and for high-end people, the RTX 4080 is not very good value-for-money, while AMD (down to 10% market share now) is laughably behind the AI and ray tracing fronts.
For the low-range, mid-range, and high-end, there just isn't anything worth buying, especially since the ridiculous internet outrage vocal minority got the 12 gig. RTX 4080 product killed, causing that price window niche to go dark-- in turn causing people like me to have to wait months to get the same product just re-branded (4070 Ti) to appease Digital Foundry and The Twatter mobs. Aggregate it all up, and video cards just ain't selling.
Shifting gears, apparently the mainstream media has coined the term "triple-demic", because the clot-shotted people are so continuously ill with the flu and other diseases that many of them are needing to go to the hospital! Meanwhile my totally non-clot shotted family hasn't had so much as the sniffles. I did everything I could via this blog to warn people to not get the shots, but it seems to have done little good.