The former, users with language set to Japanese.
Poopfeast420
So, apparently this headline is just totally misleading.
Browser games were huge in Japan, but that market collapsed (and probably all moved to Mobile), but the "hardcore" PC gaming we'd typically think of, has grown massively.
On Steam, Japanese language has grown from 0.85% in July 2015, to 2.56% in July 2025.
IDK how Nintendo released this game with a straight face
They charge 10€ for Welcome Tour and tried to spin it as a good value. They don't care what the peasants think.
Bought Titan Quest 2 in Early Access and played through the current content (Prologue + Act 1) with two characters.
While the game is fun, the current masteries (classes) are kinda boring (except Storm). For some reason, only the Storm mastery gets different basic abilities (low cost, spammable attacks), and everyone else is stuck with the dinky basic weapon attack. I also wasn't too hot on the active abilities for the Rogue and Warfare mastery, so I basically just ran around with two passives and the default attack otherwise (which you can upgrade) on my Bowman. My first character, a Frost caster (Storm+Earth mastery) was a lot more fun, with better abilities.
I wouldn't recommend at its current non-sale price, but it's a good foundation, as long as the devs can keep updating the game with more stuff.
As I said, the video is about general types of SSDs, not specific games. It's also mixed between first load after launch, reload of a save and sometimes fast travel, no real methodology.
When the game uses DirectStorage, a PCIe SSD will be a lot faster than SATA or HDDs. Games like Last of Us Part 2, Spider-Man 2 or Ratchet & Clank were shown. Indiana Jones doesn't use DirectStorage, but still shows this kind of behavior.
Without DirectStorage, it mostly doesn't matter, as long as it's an SSD, although PCIe drives were almost always faster. If you reload a save, a lot of time, it often also doesn't matter if you use an HDD, although you might still get the glitches and pop-ins from slow asset streaming.
Here's a list of Steam games, that use DirectStorage. It's not a lot right now, so you definitely don't need to switch right this second, especially if you already have a SATA SSD, and you're not playing the latest AAA games constantly. It is something to keep in mind, when you're upgrading though.
The video even shows it makes a difference, although it only touches on that part, with no in-depth analysis. Some modern games don't work properly on HDDs and you get tons of glitches and pop-in.
In older games it probably won't affect much more than load times though.
Watch the video instead of talking nonsense.
This is not about specific SSDs, but a general comparison between SSD types (and some basic HDDs). It shows that some modern games actually take advantage of the increased speed, but once you're using PCIe SSDs, it basically doesn't matter if it's 3.0 or 5.0, so just get the cheapest drive you find.
I played on default Nightmare and then some custom turbo mode (150% game speed with lower damage taken and dealt, and a bit more).
As the OP said, after a few levels you can get upgrades that destroys shielded enemies quickly and for some reason the game starts spawning mostly superheated ones anyway, so you can just instantly blow those groups up.
variety of enemies that require different weapons
I had a totally different experience. In my first playthrough I just switched weapons, when I felt like it (and for level challenges), because there's just no reason otherwise. And the second playthrough was with only the SSG in the first half and Impaler in the second, and they just shredded everything.
With stuff like this, it's always possible that's just the slowest hardware the devs have on hand to test with. The Doom and Quake re-releases are the same, I think all of these use the Kex Engine.
I got an email from Bandcamp about the soundtrack from Andrew Hulshult and had to check if these games finally got a remaster/re-release/sourceport.
Pumped for this, and I don't have to pay anything extra for the update, since I owned the old games on Steam already.
Not playing yet, but I'm preparing for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I'm not gonna make my own builds, since I have basically no idea about PF or which of the thousands of feats, spells, whatever are good. There's not a lot of info about this out there, or it's outdated, so I'm compiling stuff in a spreadsheet, so I have easy access to everything.