Gabadabs

If you're buying a game off an online storefront, there will *always* be some level of tracking. That in mind, what you probably want is something like GOG or Itch.io where you just download and play the games. You don't need any launchers, you just download the installer for whichever game you bought and that's yours, no DRM. I think the only way you'll truly be able to have absolutely zero tracking, you'd have to be buying only games on console, bought in person with cash, with the console exclusively offline. In this case, if you're on anything past the PS3 generation, you'll be greeted with a lot of games that will not function without downloading an update. I don't think it's unreasonable for something like Steam to track some data though. I've got no issue with it tracking how long I've played a game, or tracking what kinds of games I buy.

I have a feeling this isn’t going to work out the way Microsoft thinks it’s going to work out.

Cardcaptor Sakura is wonderful, I also recommend Sailor Moon. I’ve seen recommendations for Nichijou and I agree with that one, it’s primarily comedy without a ton as far as plot goes.

I’m not really interested in some aggressive back and forth on a Lemmy thread, so this is the last response I’m going to leave with you. I shared what my experience was at the time, and I don’t especially care if you believe me. I’m not my time trying to put together and research a list of equivalent hardware with time accurate prices to the Xbox One/Ps4 generation to please a random person I haven’t met on Lemmy. If you care that much, you can do the research.

I built a PC that was more expensive and more powerful than consoles at the time, but did plenty of looking into different hardware prices. The important thing is prices at the time. You can feel free to do the digging if you want. Usually you’d end up with just slightly more expensive for the Base hardware, but with no online subscription cost that would make console more expensive long-term.

It really was, I migrated from console to pc around the beginning of the Xbox One/ps4 generation. It was more effort to hunt down parts and build a PC, for sure, but it was very doable to match console performance for the same price. These days though thanks in part to tariffs, and crypto mining, hardware prices are worse than they used to be.

It certainly was the case, for a while, given you were shooting for similar specs to consoles. But times are a little different now.

I’ve personally been using a raspberry pi with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. I just run jellyfin in Firefox and navigate with the mouse - the keyboard rarely ever being necessary. I was able to increase the icon size so it’s acceptable on a tv and bookmark any streaming websites I use. It’s certainly not as clean as using something like an apple tv, but it’s serviceable and I don’t have to fiddle with plugins like when I tried Kodi. Honestly though, apple tv probably fulfills what you’re looking for like others have said.