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PaperclipPerfector  14hr ago (text post)   659 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 26, 2026

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I’ve become a (possibly very bad) scalper.

Console prices are shooting up. Microsoft just increased the Series X/S’s price by like $150 across the board. Sony increased the PlayStation’s price by a similar amount recently.

There’s chatter that retailers are struggling to get stock for the anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI boom, which is going to sell a ton of consoles to people who never upgraded from last gen because they had no need to (I looked this up, and the *first current-gen-only Call of Duty is this year; the first current gen only EAFC game is also this year).

I had an Xbox for a while, but it broke, and I had a PS5 but it was lost / possibly stolen in an apartment move. GTA6 isn’t on PC, so I need one of them. So I went to a physical store about an hour ago with a minor (like 10%) discount on the window price for PS5s and I thought, on a whim, that I’d buy out the 4 other units and keep them all in a box until November, then sell them.

I will report back with my win or loss.

GTA6 isn’t on PC

Console players are getting the beta version, and the PC version, a year later, will be the real release.

With some luck, by the time the PC version comes out, generative AI tools will be such that hobbyist modders can mod in the type of content from the older games that's almost sure to be missing in this one, including actual AAA-level cutscenes with voice acting.

I can’t help but watch the conventional wisdom on GTA6 and shake my head.

  • GTA6 will sell more than any other game in history
  • Rockstar can charge whatever they want and people will pay it
  • There is the huge crowd of casuals who only play GTA and they’re all going to buy it
  • We won’t have enough PS5s to meet the demand
  • There are millions of people ready to spend $700 to play gta
  • The most hyped game off all time.

This reminds me of the 2016 “Hilary will win” crowd. People just repeating conventional wisdom and confusing that for analysis

In your case, it’s probably not a bad move given your points on COD and FC.

But as far as GTA goes, I fully expect it to not meet expectations for impact on gaming or sales. 13 years since its last release is more than enough for it to be out of the general zeitgeist. All of the original creators are long gone. Rockstar announced they’ve excised the juvenile and frat house humor. And it was in peak development during the years where developer trends were at their worst - and we are now fully seeing the ramifications of those trends.

I just don’t think it’s culturally relevant to anyone under 20 years old. I played my first Grand Theft Auto as a PC CD-ROM demo from PC Gamer (I think). I played the hell out of that game with WinAmp in the background and Sublime MP3s playing music. GTA3 was every bit of the revelation people say. And there was continuity for nearly 20 years between Grand Theft Auto and GTAV. 6 will just not hit that same way. For a lot of reasons.

Just my opinion though. I can’t wait to see what happens.

Aside from the preorders point, I'm pretty sure that GTA5 is still constantly showing up in top sales charts even today, more than a decade since the original release.

It doesn't even need to be good - and it won't be, given Rockstar haven't made anything good since San Andreas - because all the kids play GTA online, and they just need a good sandbox, more up to date sandbox to play in.

Are all the kids playing GTA online? Maybe. I don’t have info either way. I hear about kids playing fortnight all the time. I can’t say I hear kids talking GTA.

My impression of GTA online is that it’s a bunch of old millennials playing RP, the urban community, and third worlders.

People are talking like GTA is going to do historic numbers. Fortnight numbers. I just don’t see it. From what I hear a million concurrent would be way below expectations. I think it could do a million and be on par with other big games this year. I don’t think it’s doing 50 million sales week 1. Certainly not with the urban community and third world as your workhorse to get some alpha over a normal big launch.

In regards to current gaming trends I can safely say that all of my predictions are wrong recently.

I thought RE9 is most mediocre game in the series and even worse than RE8, yet even after two months since release everyone keeps telling me that it's masterpiece 10/10. Mediocre location that very heavily borrows from RE2 two-wings police station but smaller and almost no back-tracking, with puzzles that can be solved in the same room, and dumbed-down crafting mechanic that gives mountain of resources is apparently enough to "wow" the players so they can say "this is the best RE evaaaah!!!".

Pragmata is even worse, since that game has no adequate enemies, just victims waiting in line for you to complete this weird mini-game that feels completely unnecessary.

Which just gives me an idea that current gaming market is just vibes and marketing. GTA6 will break records.

Recently I was speaking to a friend about this and his interpretation of current games can be summarized as such:

Because contrary to what most people say, the common player does not want good combat. They want the illusion of good combat. Snapy moves, fast pace, easy controls, flashy, and short. They want easy wins but with the game pretending it wasn't easy. Dopamine without investment of time.

That's why we went from "slow but tactical" combat to "everyone is a DPS" combat to "just do your rotation" combat to "you only have 4 buttons, they all invoke a cutscene" combat.

Anon, it’s already crossed 4 billion gross revenue from pre-orders alone.

I read this earlier and said, “hmm. Maybe I’m wrong”.

Then I got curious because I had not seen this news that pre order revenue was released. I looked into it. It looks like a bunch of people repeating information they heard in a big game of telephone. The original source is some dude posting info he found in an investment bank (piper sandler) research note that said something to the effect of “46 million pre sale units sold or $3bn rev would not be surprising.”

I’m not familiar with piper sander, but in not a banker (though I do work somewhat related to m&a). But I think it’s uncontroversial to say that these sort of research notes are mere an analysts informed speculation. And they’re usually motivated by something other than “reporting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.

I remain skeptical.

FWIW, Kalshi is showing about 20% chance that Take Two announces more than 5 million preorders before July 4. There's the factor of the odds that Rockstar announces this before July 4 that's multiplied by the odds that they get that many preorders, so it's hard to figure out what the odds of the actual preorder count being that are. But I'd personally bet against it being 50 million as of today.

Rockstar announced they’ve excised the juvenile and frat house humor.

Red Dead 2 excised this first (the first game still had a lot of it, as did Bully and to some extent even Max Payne 3) and it was much better for it.

I definitely wouldn't say the first RDR had a lot of juvenile humor, or even any that I can think of. Unlike GTA, RDR was never meant to be satire.

In your memory no, but I played it again a few months ago on the Switch and it did, most of the missions are actually classic GTA humor/goofiness, even if the ‘plot’ isn’t and there are moments of greater depth - although the same was true for GTAIV which people remember as a ‘serious story’ even though probably at least half was classic GTA.

Still, I think it’s true that 5 aged worse than any of them, and even at its release was very dumb. Vice City still has a lot of great jokes, gags, clever innuendo, and 4 is a great time capsule to 2006-2009 era New York City. I don’t remember the plot to 5 at all, it’s just a bunch of barely related dumb shit that involves a few heists and some funny moments. I remember the torture scene caused some controversy. I remember the choice at the end, I remember the guy from the 4 DLC getting killed.

I also played it a few months ago, so my memory is as fresh as yours is. I completely disagree that the game was full of GTA style goofiness.

To me, Armadillo is very goofy and Mexico has plenty of goofiness. Even Blackwater does although it’s toned down considerably. The last third of the game is played broadly straight. Stuff like the medicine man fraudster and a lot of the interactions with the factions in Mexico are pure GTA and played for laughs.

I'll give you West Dickens as a comic relief character (though in fairness RDR2 has those as well), but I can't for the life of me see how you would say anything else in Armadillo or Mexico is played for laughs. None of that stuff struck me as trying to be funny.

Yeah but RDR2 wants to be taken seriously as literature. I wouldn't expect that from GTA6 and if it's what they're doing it's a bad move.

That is also why RDR2 is a huge step down from the first. Rockstar lost sight of the fact that they are making a game, not a movie, and that games need to be fun to play. RDR2 had its moments but overall it was a real let down and I had to force myself to finish it.

I expect that gamers will say it's overrated and be firmly overridden by the actual masses of players. Rockstar doesn't seem to have lost a step, have an absurd amount of money to work with and aren't afraid to take their time.

The normies who play few games except Madden and CoD are going to go wild.

Look into the amount of money GTA online has made, it's absurd and that's for an experience that doesn't seem interesting at all.

Do you really want to deal with second hand buyers just to make a small amount of money?

I sold a bunch of clothing on Vinted and eBay last year because I didn’t like the idea of some awful thrift store employee reselling it, and it went pretty well. One person was unhappy with their item, but to be fair to them I had probably not described its condition as well as I could have. Put it in a box (which I don’t need to even do this time, since I can reuse the boxes they’re shipping them to me in from the store), take it to the post office a three minute walk from my house, send it.

I think it’ll be fun is my thinking, I guess. Plus, if I’m right and scalpers go crazy with limited demand (and the crazy woke but also well informed users of Resetera seem to think there’s a big supply crunch) and these shoot up like GPUs and memory (which is really all they are) then I think the margin on each one could be big, and I might make $1000 for an hour’s work, and also feel good about my foresight, which is a far bigger prize.

If not, I can probably still sell them at close to cost.

One person was unhappy with their item, but to be fair to them I had probably not described its condition as well as I could have.

How did you handle the complaint?

Refunded it and they sent it back, was very civilized.

Fair enough. Low risk entry.

I didn't think of the possibility of just shipping them off, which I guess you can do at acceptable cost even though they're big boxes. That would make things less uncomfortable than meeting the cretins. Last time I tried that, I was handed obsolete bills (outdated by decades).

Yes I’d never do the Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace thing, too many petty thieves and hustlers out there, and a few people much worse than that.

Is London such a shithole that you run the risk of being robbed during a craigslist meet?

Probably not, but it still seems like a lot of effort.

I say the following in good humor: it’s probably a genetic impulse.

It’s the first time I’ve done it!

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