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Somewhat informed tinfoil hat time:

In the short term? Nintendo likely have drastically decreased the supply to the US (and Canada since allegedly that was routed through the US in the past?) and are counting on tariffs not changing TOO much over the next 40 something days. Same with being able to route shipments from different countries. So they’ll take a hit but it won’t be more than they already baked in to the MSRP.

Whereas for peripherals they did NOT already stock up on that in the US and all of those are going to be getting hit by tariffs at varying levels.

THat said? Going forward? My money is on Nintendo taking a page out of nVidia and AMD’s book. The MSRP of the Switch 2 will remain 450 USD or whatever it is. But Nintendo will conveniently not direct sell those and it will be up to Best Buy and the like to jack up prices to cover it on their end. But hey, Amazon are the bad guys, not Nintendo.

Sensationalism/puritanical stupidity will always color this as “depressed and lonely” in the same sense that anyone who masturbates is a freak who can’t get a real partner (and those crowds are ALWAYS implying a cishet partner…).

“Sex robots” are more or less a middle ground between a masturbatory aide and a prostitute. People who use them aren’t looking for (simplifying) a girlfriend anymore than someone who has casual sex is looking for one. They may be looking for a way to blow off some steam. Sex releases a LOT of really nice chemicals into our brains and, if you do it right, is almost meditative when it comes to clearing thoughts.

Some are looking for a way to “get practice” for a “real girlfriend” because media makes them think they need to make their partner orgasm with just a single look. When the reality is… if you even give half a shit about how your partner feels you are well above the vast majority of people out there. And, if you actually ask for feedback and follow it, it is gonna be god damned niagara falls down there. The good Canadian side.

And, with the rise in long term long distance relationships as well as the acknowledgement of asexual folk, it can be a way for one or more partners to get what they need out of a relationship without burdening the person(s) they love.

I dunno. I generally hate most coverage of these topics because it invariably involves folk showing their crusty poorly wiped asses. Sex positivity! But only if you have sex the way the good book says you should (… with your daughter and against her will?). Same with when sex work comes up. It INSTANTLY becomes the assumption that anyone who has ever considered sex work is involved in human trafficking and blah blah blah. And some of that does happen (it is almost like legalization means victims have somewhere to go for help…). But it ignores the idea that someone might just realize they can trade their body for money in the same way that athletes and “the trades” do.

People clean sleeves (fleshlights) on the regular. And an adult sized (please, dear Eothas, let it be adult sized…) android is not something you can hide in a sock drawer. So a cleaning station is very reasonable.

So what bigotry did they add with this update?

Friendly reminder: A “DRM-Free” game is only as preserved as the hard drive space you dedicate to it. If GoG goes down tomorrow then you are looking for torrents, same as everyone else.

That said: GoG has been doing this basically since year one (I want to say they lost and regained Interplay’s library like five times?). On the one hand, I love that I get that “hey, buy it now or never. Here is a discount code” warning. On the other hand… this feels like I would be calling it out as manipulative FOMO bullshit were it any other company.

Although… it is a pretty safe bet that MS aren’t interested in going back to GoG until the next time their online ecosystem collapses. So probably a “reasonable” bit of FOMO for those who love the SP campaigns of these games.