@nick.bttr.reviews Who did I miss?

@bibbybhoy.bsky.social Ugh, that sucks.

@nick.bttr.reviews Ideally, that includes the weekly news roundup on a Friday, plus at least one tech or appliance review per week (two when I can manage it!). I also want to write 1-2 deeper features or interviews a week as well, depending on bandwidth.

@nick.bttr.reviews My goal is to offer more insight to paid subscribers on every article as well. For example, my most recent reviews have a paid section that offers direct specs comparisons with similar or competing products, a handful of tips/tricks to get the most out of the product, and one “final thought”.

@nick.bttr.reviews My weekly news roundup, meanwhile, has a list of news articles, but paid subscribers get a deeper dive into three of the week’s biggest stories, with some commentary thrown in.

@nick.bttr.reviews As expected, changing things up kind of worked against me at first. I had a handful of people unsubscribe when they started receiving my reviews as emails. I get it, it was a change from what I originally promised.

@nick.bttr.reviews But I feel like I’m starting to find a good groove with the writing. My biggest problem is self-marketing. I’m terrible at promoting myself. I understand how important it is, but also hate doing it.

@nick.bttr.reviews So if you’re interested in an Aussie take on tech and you’ve made it this far in my little thread, please consider subscribing 🙏

www.bttr.reviews#/portal/

@nick.bttr.reviews Rock Band 4 still rocks around this house. Not as often as I’d like, but it’s the one game everyone here really enjoys playing together.

@edzitron.com And the cynic in me wants to believe that even the name “io” was little more than a ploy to steal attention (and maybe search traffic) from Google’s I/O announcements.

@edzitron.com Great read as always. My 2c is that they don’t know or care if there’s going to be a product anyway. Ive and Altman was little more than a ploy for attention at a time Google I/O was generating a lot of headlines about its full tilt pivot to AI.

Sadly, it worked.

@bibbybhoy.bsky.social lol. Except that it’s actually our beer that Google siphoned from our glass while we weren’t looking.

@bibbybhoy.bsky.social It’s going to be devastating. I don’t think anyone realises just how big an impact it will have on anyone with a content business.

@nick.bttr.reviews And it’s gone. See what you missed: www.bttr.reviews/btr-roundup-…

@vook64.bsky.social “Full disclaimer - I’m not a gamer”. Lol.

@nick.bttr.reviews But sometimes it’s important to look back and reflect. 12 months ago I was pretty sure I was done. Google’s March core algorithm had effectively removed all my work from search results, which was my primary traffic focus.

@nick.bttr.reviews It was July/August that I did the work, but this time last year I was thinking hard about removing my reliance on Google by changing my strategy from an affiliate revenue business to a membership business.

@nick.bttr.reviews Now, things are slowly progressing. I’ve grown from 0 to 184 members in 9 months. I wish it was faster, but I’m also really happy that all that has been organic.

@nick.bttr.reviews I’d really, really love to get to 200 members by the end of May, though. So if you’re reading this and want to support an indie tech publication for Australians, I’d love to welcome you. www.bttr.reviews#/portal/acco…

@nick.bttr.reviews But the retro graphics and gameplay, when compared to the likes of Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey, were just not interesting to their younger minds.

But this school holidays, my daughter started playing FFVII Remake. And watching her connect with the game has been amazing.

@nick.bttr.reviews (I haven’t gotten around to playing remake yet myself. My plan was to wait until I could play through the entire saga, though the past week may have changed my thoughts on that).

@nick.bttr.reviews Even though it has been years since I last played FFVII, my daughter and I are connecting over the characters and the story, even though our experiences have been through quite different games.

@nick.bttr.reviews If Square Enix had never done the remake, I’m confident my daughter would never have played it.

I feel like some of the arguments that we don’t need remakes or remasters fail to account for the new, younger audiences who are going to be able to experience the game for the first time.

@nick.bttr.reviews Is it as good as the original? Who can say. But I know that even though I have my old Xbox 360 set up down the back of the house and a copy of Oblivion to pop into the disc drive, my kids wouldn’t choose to play that game with all the choices we have today.

@nick.bttr.reviews But they might choose to play this newer version. And if that lets me connect with them over something I enjoyed when I was younger, then I’m all for it.