Oh, Dear. Atari is Trying Out Yet Another Retro Console
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/19/25 at 12:46 AM CT
Remember a couple years ago when Atari (delenda est) – the terrible videogame publisher that directly caused the 1983 console gaming crash – decided that the thing the world really needed was a crappy Android-powered Ouya clone shaped like an Atari 2600 console, preloaded with a library of ROMs for games so bad they aren’t even worth the few megabytes of space the entire collection occupies in an Emulator folder? Yeah, that was fun, and the failure of the Atari VCS soon lead the pathetic, shambling corpse of one of Gaming’s worst villains to dabble in creating their own cryptocurrency casino. That was even more fun.
Of course, you can’t keep a good terrible company down, and it looks like Atari (delenda est) is trying the retro-console thing again, only this time they're puppeting the corpse of one of their biggest opponents from way back then (who went on to do literally nothing): Intellivision. Promoting their new endeavor as finally burying the hatchet from the first …
Gamepass Bears its First Fruits: -$300 Million for ‘CoD’ Revenue
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/12/25 at 03:06 PM CT
Oh dear, it looks like Microsoft’s endeavors to become Gaming’s loss-leader with Gamepass have already started to bear rotten fruits. According to a recent Bloomberg report, the Xbox Division managed to leave $300 million dollars on the table by putting Activision-Blizzard’s latest ‘Call of Duty’ game on Gamepass day-one instead of simply selling more retail and digitally licensed copies.
While I personally find it baffling that ‘CoD’ is still popular enough to drive those kinds of sales numbers and potentially bring in that kind of revenue, what is NOT baffling is the concept that giving away an entire library of $60 $70 games for less than $20 a month is probably not sustainable in the long-run...
...Which explains why Microsoft also faced extreme backlash and mass cancellations by Gamepass users in response to the announcement that Gamepass Ultimate will essentially be the only version of the service worth subscribing to AND that the Ultimate tier will …
Backlog: The Embiggening – October, 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/05/25 at 04:11 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! It looks like we’re getting a late start on the games coming in Spoopy Month, since I was so flabbergasted by last week’s news of EA’s impending doom at the hands of private equity that it interrupted the flow. But now that every retail location is crammed with tacky, plastic skeletons and other Halloween-related junk; while grocery stores are stocked with Pumpkin Spice and Apple Cider... everything, there’s a definite hint of Autumn in the air, even if the weather itself is still insisting that it’s Summer (and it’s not even an Indian Summer, where it gets hot again after a hard freeze, like we’ve always had in the Midwest... It’s just still summer, even though the crops are all done, dried, and (mostly) harvested.
Do the remaining maggots gnawing on the dried-out sinew of the corpse of Industrial Gaming still think it’s Summer – and thus a drought – or have they moved on? Let’s take a look at the variety …
The Big 3 Have Fallen! – EA to Sell-Out to Private Equity and Saudi Prince
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/28/25 at 03:06 PM CT
Industrial Gaming has been in the hands of three major players in the Triumvirate of Evil for longer than most young-adult Gamers have even been alive. Yet, starting with the Microsoft buyout of Activision to feed the floundering Xbox Division, these big players have fallen by the wayside, one-by-one.
Not long ago, Ubisoft was the next to fall, after finding itself in such a dismal state that no legitimate *scoff* players in Big Gaming even wanted to buy them, and ended up splitting the company in half, while giving custody of their most lucrative IPs to Chinese Communist Party apparatus, Tencent.
Now Electronic Arts is circling the drain as well, with the announcement last Friday that they were in talks to be bought-out by two private equity firms and Saudi Prince, Mohammed bin Salman to the tune of $50 billion.
Activision becoming part of Xbox, Ubisoft feeding itself to the Communists, and EA going private: It feels like the end of an era. Of course, with the dismal state …
Nintendo Courts Diversity Hires: It’s Not What You Think
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/21/25 at 01:11 PM CT
It seems like Nintendo is the only Big Gaming company making headlines this year, what with both Microsoft and Sony appearing to lie down and die while the gaming landscape changes around them. Earlier on this past Summer, Shigeru Miyamoto – the father of Mario, Link, and basically every Nintendo IP that actually matters – mentioned in an interview that he was urging Nintendo to bring more diversity to its board of directors.
Naturally, whenever a Gamer sees that hateful word, “diversity,” he will immediately assume that it means the same thing it has come to mean in the West over the course of the last 8 years of insane political activism. However, in Japan, and at Nintendo, at least, it seems that “diversity” actually falls more in-line with what most sane people would consider to be “good” diversity, and not the tainted spawn of Identity Politics.
Rather than encouraging Nintendo to create mandatory quotas for hiring Blacks, women, and Lesbians, Miyamoto has …
Nintendo Completes Transformation into Evil Corporation with Bullsh!t Patent
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/14/25 at 03:38 PM CT
Oh dear, it seems that the little toy company that saved gaming from itself after the Crash of 1983 has finally come full-circle and completed its transformation into just another Evil Corporate Person out to take advantage of every situation and exploit every legal loophole in order to entrench and enrich itself.
We’ve grown used to the constant noise from Nintendo’s legal team attempting to squash legal emulation and issuing Cease and Desist letters to long-time fans who just want to create Indie homages to the Nintendo games that proved to be such big influences on them, and on gaming as a whole. Nintendo’s transformation into a draconian, totalitarian control freak has been on full display in other ways, as well, with them putting the kibosh on allowing Nintendo console owners to backup their own save and game data locally after modders exploited that capability to run homebrew code on the Wii almost 20 years ago.
Sadly, Nintendo’s efforts to exert control over …
Sony to Bow-Out of Hardware in Favor of Community
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/06/25 at 11:48 PM CT
During its Summer financial briefing, Sony’s Senior Vice President announced that the company will be gradually changing the PlayStation division’s entire business model. “We are moving away from a hardware-centric business model more to a platform business that expands the community and increases engagement,” he said.
Based on this statement from one of the top men at Sony Corporate, it seems like PlayStation’s days may be numbered, at least when it comes to being a physical box connected to a TV. Following in Microsoft’s footsteps with the Xbox Division, Sony began to dabble in releasing its (very expensive to make) first-party titles on platforms besides PlayStation consoles in 2021, when it began publishing games on Steam. Now, the one-time Console Warrior even seems interested in pushing its software onto competing consoles, as this Summer it also posted a job listing for a “Multiplatform and Account Management Senior Director,” who would be responsible for …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/31/25 at 02:23 PM CT
Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time:
Nelson’s Reviews:
Matt and I decided to dump “Iron Harvest” after the first couple stages in the third campaigns absolutely sucked, so I went ahead and reviewed it so you, dear readers, can learn WHY it sucked. Aside from that, my Summer gaming was actually pretty good, with three other games earning a 4/5 Star rating or higher. Unfortunately, I got wrapped up in house-cleaning and redecorating my office, and kind of dropped-off for the... ENTIRETY of August. Maybe my motivation to start a new game will return in the Fall (or not).
Ghost of Tsushima – 4.5/5
Hatchwell – 4/5
Iron Harvest – 2/5
Pokemon Legends: Arceus – 4/5
Chris’ Review:
Chris finally completed his first Backlog Ablution title... then went ahead and completed the SECOND one as a ‘palate cleanser’ before starting the third one, which is also a gigantic Sandbox …
Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/24/25 at 05:49 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Fall will be upon us before we know it, and with it will come the Autumnal rush by the Games Industry to push out as much pre-holiday slop as they can in order to flood the market and hope desperately that something in their grapeshot barrage of trash actually connects with the hearts and minds of the Gamer audience. Judging by September’s release slate, the Industry has their cannons fully loaded… let’s see if any of it is worth the powder to blow it up!
After going through ALL the releases and tossing out the plethora of ports that aren’t worth the keystrokes to mention, we’ve STILL got a TON of Shovelware titles coming in September, with every major category represented. In fact, the Shovelware is so prolific, it EQUALS the number of new game releases in the same time span (Just imagine how bad it would be if I didn’t cull out all the gratuitous portage beforehand!).
In the Licensed Swill category, we’ve got an …
Ubisoft is Breaking Up
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/17/25 at 04:46 PM CT
After the last few years of rampant buyouts, mergers, and corporate acquisitions, it seems that Ubisoft – surprisingly – is the one Evil Publisher to buck the trend. The French mega-corporation announced this Summer that they would be splitting into two companies, with the new, currently-unnamed subsidiary – receiving an infusion of cash from none other than Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Arm, Tencent. The new subsidiary will be taking with it the IP ownership rights for some of Ubisoft’s biggest modern franchises: Specifically, ‘Assassin’s Creed,’ ‘Far Cry,’ and ‘Tom Clancy.’
It seems that Ubisoft’s hand may have been forced, after years of failed Live Service flops like “Skull & Bones” and Woke flops like “Assassin’s Creed Shadows,” the French megapublisher was on the brink, and strolling the metaphorical Corporate Red Light District wearing its birthday suit. Unfortunately for them, neither Microsoft’s Xbox Division – that paragon of …
View Archive
