Backlog: The Embiggening – July, 2026
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/28/26 at 03:50 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! This July, the U.S.A. will turn 250 years old! That’s quite the accomplishment! But based on how the Games Industry is doing, it might not have very many more birthdays ahead of it before it crashes and burns again. It has been over 40 years since the last crash. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and it did give us a lot of timeless classics that we can enjoy forever... so long as we’re willing to ignore copyright laws. Let’s see if there’s anything coming in the middle of the Summer Games Drought that’s worthy of fireworks!
Ugh... there’s more shovelware than anything else coming in July. And it’s in EVERY category. In the Licensed Swill category, we’ve got “Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next!” “Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!” (What’s with the exclamation marks on the titles? Do publishers think that will make the shovelware less crappy?) “PAW Patrol: Dino World” (combining the two things little …
Competition and Collusion
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/21/26 at 02:58 PM CT
Lately, all of the rumors and speculation about the impending demise of Xbox has lead to an uptick in so-called “concern trolling,” wherein Gamers ruminate over the impact on Gaming by the exit of one of the three console gaming platform holders. Commonly, this concern trolling is couched in the tenants of Free Market Capitalism, with worries that fewer competitors in the Gaming space will allow the remaining competitors to engage in anti-competitive practices.
To this particular flavor of concern trolling – especially when it involves the Microsoft Games division now officially known as XBOX (in all caps) – I have nothing but scoffs and disdain to offer. Do we really think that Xbox is good for the Free Market of Gaming? Is the notoriously monopolistic and anti-competitive Microsoft contributing positively to Industrial Gaming? Do we really think that Sony, without it’s alleged “greatest competitor,” will suddenly begin a descent into anti-customer practices? Well, …
Gaming for Geezers? Average Age of Gamers Keeps Rising
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/14/26 at 02:52 PM CT
The ESA, an incredibly trustworthy organization with the best interests of Entertainment Software at heart, performs annual studies about all things gaming-related. One of their major ones is a demographic breakdown of people who play games, and for the last several years, the average age of Gamers has kept creeping up. In 2025, it was 35 years, while in the brand new 2026 release of the study, it has gone up to 37. That’s just shy of a Mid-Life Crisis!
But is this data what it appears to be on its surface, or is this, as Mark Twain famously said, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”?
Some media outlets are trying to spin the results of this study to say that young people don’t play games, but instead are happily engaged in their brain-rot meme culture – and if they DO play games, it’s only one of the handful of Super Games that have captured their attention since they were toddlers. Other outlets are trying to spin the data to “prove” that tons of females are …
What’s a “Super Game”?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/07/26 at 02:32 PM CT
Earlier this week, news broke about what Sega has been up to for the past few years of... nothing. It seems that the one-time second-place platform-holder has been working on a concept for a so-called “Super Game” for the last several years, to the neglect of literally everything else in their portfolio. It also seems that, during that time, Sega has fallen out of love with the concept entirely.
So, what exactly is a “Super Game”? Well, that’s a little hard to nail down. Five years ago, when nobody was paying attention, apparently, Sega decided to start development on a new Games as a Service (i.e., Live Service) project that they dubbed a “Super Game.” There does not seem to be a codified definition anywhere to be found for “Super Game.” Sega’s Shuji Utsumi defines a “Super Game” as a “game that stands head-and-shoulders above normal games,” making it sound more like the kind of “AAAA” idiocy Ubisoft tried to pull-off in 2024. However, based on …
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