The idea that restricting silicon exports can meaningfully constrain Chinese activity is so ridiculous, I don't know where to start. It might very very slightly delay some of their projects - it's absolutely not going to stop their progress. There may have been a chance to do that 25 years ago (maybe) - we are WELL passed that... and there's a real question about the wisdom of any of this paranoia. We are governed by idiots.

The entire American economy was already in a slow decline, then we got these 2 parties conspiring to hasten the demise. This is inevitable. American companies simply can't be competitive any more.

"Whoever wins could gain a huge edge in countless industries." - Your head has to be a billion miles up America's ass to think America is going to win any race of this kind with China in the next 100 years. A billion miles.

This always seemed like an inevitability to me.

Came here to say exactly this. They have a pool of talent 4 times the size of the United States, and unlike the United States, they actively teach their people. There's ZERO chance they won't be able to eventually figure out whatever it is these "few lines of code" offer - probably pretty quickly.

... to continue to avoid that platform like the plague.

It's because they want something they can insert between them and everyone else, so they can charge a rent on both sides (to suppliers and to you, the end user). They want to be the information super highway's Uber, for anything and everything you search for or buy online. The browser and the open internet has been a huge pain on that front - though many companies have figured out how to do it. Yanis Varoufakis wrote a book about it called Technofuedalism.

If MS can get out in between of everything you do online, they can lock you in, and then enshitify the experience to profit. That's why.

(You can tell they understand these things, this specific way based on the way Phil Spencer talks about how they "lost the most important generation of gaming" when it comes to XBox - they are definitely telling you exactly how they think about this stuff. You just have to be willing to hear it.)

Maybe Nintendo makes money on hardware sales (hard to say if Sony does the same) - but I can say, I'll never buy Sony hardware when there is so much awesome PC hardware out there now (Steam Deck especially). The problem is, it IS broken. Nintendo used to have 2 concurrent hardware platforms, and moved a lot of physical games at retail. The entire paradigm has changed. Now they have 1 hardware platform, and are increasingly shipping (and incentivizing) download sales. They are also facing unprecedented competition in the PC space from much more powerful handhelds.

Their hardware lock-in strategy is making less and less sense as time goes on - especially as cloud lock-in becomes more and more lucrative. It IS broken. And there is still a hardware play in the PC space - Valve proved that. And most of their peripherals could work on PC - everything is bluetooth and usb now.

Steam, Battle.net, Epic Game Store, all are cloud platforms with their own form of lock-in, and they all take their cut - up to 30%, and realistically, if you want to ship volume on PC, you need to be on one or all of those stores. They are the PC middlemen. But yeah, it's an open platform - that means others can open their own store fronts (cloud platforms) with their own perks and unique features. Basically, that argument doesn't hold up. A seller on PC can still achieve loyalty and other forms of lock-in. I'd be FAR more likely to buy third party software from Nintendo's store (ensuring they get a cut) if it was on PC. I might even buy more Nintendo first party software (and I'm a fan of Mario, Zelda, etc. - really, I buy quite a lot of their software).

Also, Sony has already been releasing their games on PC - they just do it in a baffling way (through third party stores, instead of their own).

2 things: If Nintendo has a store on PC - you could buy all those 20 games on there. They'd still get the same cut. I know you said physical games, but is that really the future? For me - I actively avoid buying third party games on Nintendo at this point, and I haven't bought physical games in a couple of years now on Switch. Early on, yes, I bought some third party games on Switch (and regretted it sometimes, because of performance problems, which yes, contributed to buying less on Nintendo hardware.) I basically don't buy anything other than first party Nintendo software on Nintendo any more, because I know it'll go away in the next generation, like with my Wii U library, unlike the things I buy on Steam, Epic, or whatever else on PC.

The other thing - yes, Nintendo makes some margin on their hardware (rumors are that they won't make as much on Switch 2) - but how much? I don't think that applies to Sony - I, and I imagine many others, don't even want Sony's hardware any more. It's a closed platform, and I don't watch DVDs or blu-rays anymore - which is the only reason I even got a PS3 or PS4 - even arguably the PS2. (Don't get me wrong, I loved to game on the PS2, but it's been a downward trend on PS3 and PS4 - while I still game plenty on PC, and yes, plenty on Switch.) I will not buy a PS5, as frustrating as it is to wait for some of those exclusives to trickle down to PC. If they never arrive on PC, so be it. I got a deep backlog.

I maintain, it makes ZERO sense for Sony to release their games on competitors' PC store fronts. It makes ZERO sense for Nintendo to spend so much suing emulation enthusiasts, rather than spend the same money on a PC storefront. Either of them have such deep first and second party libraries to leverage, they could easily muscle in.

(I'd have edited this in, but no edit button...) - AND with Sony, they already have x86 binaries - they could conceivable build a PS4/PS5 execution engine (a hypervisor or container tech, or whatever), to run PS4 and PS5 games without even any effort from their vendors. I mean heck, they could do the same for PS1/2/3 through emulation as well if they really wanted. It makes no sense to me to just leave that potential money on the table.

Origin (or whatever EA calls it now) was always dead in the water because no one will ever trust them, and the company is hopeless. Sony and Nintendo do not have the same position - they have a backlog of purchases already in their cloud platforms. They could easily leverage that to muscle in to the PC space. I'd buy more third party titles through those platforms if they were not locked in to Sony and Nintendo hardware (I don't even own a PS5, and probably never will, because I don't watch blu-rays any more.)

I'll never understand why the console makers - Nintendo and SONY in particular - don't just release PC store fronts. The demand for their content on that platform has been made crystal clear. They already have a store front cloud infrastructure. Its like their executives just don't understand how PCs work. Nintendo goes around pissing money away by suing everyone, and Sony gives their profit margins to others by listing their games on their store fronts. The PC (which includes Windows, mac, Linux, Steam OS) is an open platform - why voluntarily forfeit that profit? I guess their platform lock-in logic has twisted their minds or something.

Just release the PlayStation Storefront on PC. Just release Nintendo eShop on PC. They'd get to keep their 30%, and could even allow others to list their games, and keep their cloud rent. It's baffling to me that neither Sony nor Nintendo can figure that out. Maybe they think its anathema to what they actually want, which is lock-in? That's mostly an illusion, but also, this is still platform lock-in, it just isn't hardware lock-in. It's actually better lock-in because it's cloud lock-in, which is far more valuable. It's baffling to me. Just give people what they want and make it easy, and they'll pay for it.

Yes.

When I was sharing my Netflix with family, I'd make sure to pay it every month. Now? What's the point. I don't use it all the time. Really, only when a show I want to watch comes out. So why pay for the most expensive streamer all the time when I can't even share it? It's not like I don't have 7 other apps to watch shows and movies on.

I came here to say the same. It's obvious based on even a shallow understanding of how the technology works that it doesn't "understand" anything - it's just predicting tokens based on a previous body of text, in a way that generates something that has the appearance of intelligence. It's true "artificial intelligence" in the old sense. I don't understand why so many highly technical people keep missing that.