Slack Given, Slack Taken
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/31/16 at 03:12 PM CT
Japan is no longer a force in the videogame industry. We simply have to accept this fact. As I covered last year, all of Japan’s biggest, oldest, and most beloved videogame studios are committing ritual suicide one after another, mostly sacrificing themselves upon the altar of mobile gaming. Things have changed little in a year, with Capcom now facing down dismal sales and profits. Why is everything going so wrong in the nation that revived an industry on the brink of collapse in the 1980s? Well, in Capcom’s case – as well as many others – it simply comes down to a lack of productivity. If Japanese companies don’t produce killer games that sell consoles and build their reputations as providers of great entertainment, they will wither and die on the vine as new generations of incoming gamers wonder who these companies are, having never heard of them, while old, jaded gamers fume with resentment about how far these companies have fallen from their best.
The loss of …
The 9th Gen Draws Near! Command?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/24/16 at 02:34 PM CT
With all three of the big hardware manufacturers – Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft – announcing a new set of higher-spec hardware, the majority of gamers and the gaming media have declared that the 8th Generation will be the first to receive a ‘mid-gen’ upgrade. I, however, am not afraid to announce that the majority of gamers and the gaming media (as per usual) are flat-out wrong. The Nintendo NX, PlayStation Neo, and Xbox Scorpio aren’t mid-gen ‘refreshes’ of old hardware; they are the harbingers of the 9th Generation, bringing with them a focus on backward AND forward compatibility.
The primary reason so many people errantly think that these three new consoles are ‘mid-gen’ refreshes is because these people are basing their conception of hardware generations on an unstable foundation. Because Sony spouted-off about the PlayStation 3 being designed for a 10-year lifespan, the assumption is being made that console hardware generations are roughly 10 years long. …
Pokemon G(tF)O
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/17/16 at 02:44 PM CT
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or are one of those extra ‘special’ isolationists who live in Montana specifically because the state has no infrastructure, you’ve no doubt heard about “Pokemon GO,” the mobile team-up between Nintendo’s Pokemon Company and Google’s Niantic. This new mobile game microtransaction engine completely blew-up during its first week of general availability in the United States, rocketing to the top of every metric chart that matters (and even ones that don’t matter) as people have flooded into public places in search of Pokemon to catch and Poke-Stops to refresh their supplies of pokeballs.
“Pokemon GO” has been such a wildly viral success that it has even been picked-up as a topic by both world and local TV news broadcasts, which never normally happens until months after the fact for stories involving electronic entertainment. The question still remains, though, is “Pokemon GO” anything to actually get excited about?
If …
Farewell, Imagisphere: ‘LittleBigPlanet’ on Sony’s Chopping Block
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/10/16 at 01:52 PM CT
It was recently announced that all online services for Sony’s incredible, imaginative, and distinctly not Dudebro franchise, ‘LittleBigPlanet,’ are all going to be shuttered at the end of July 2016… in Japan. Naturally, the rest of the world began to worry that Sony was also going to decapitate poor, little Sackboys everywhere else. Sony responded in typical corporate fashion, stating that only “LittleBigPlanet” for the dead PlayStation Portable and “LittleBigPlanet Karting” (which was a fairly terrible karting game all around) will be getting the axe in the wider world, and that there are currently “no plans” to unplug the rest of the series in the West.
Of course, those of us who are familiar with the way Big Evil Corporations in the games industry talk will realize that “no plans” doesn’t actually mean anything, and fans of the flagship “Play. Create. Share.” franchise should be worried regardless of the nation they call home.
This decision to …
What Do ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘Star Trek’ Have in Common?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/02/16 at 02:08 PM CT
With the impending release of the latest ‘Nu Trek’ movie, “Star Trek: Beyond,” and as the inexorable doom that is “Final Fantasy 15” closes in upon us, I have found myself reminiscing about these two much-beloved franchises. Specifically, I couldn’t help but notice how their best days both seem to be very far in the past. Further consideration reveals a number of bleak similarities regarding the ways that Square Enix and CBS Paramount have mishandled their biggest individual IPs.
Each Kept Getting Better and Better… Until 20 Years Ago
It’s fairly easy to draw this analogy. While “Star Trek: The Original Series” and “Final Fantasy” were both fairly rough around the edges, largely due to being products of their times, it was clear that both IPs clearly had ‘something’ and brought a unique flavor of nerd bait to the table. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Final Fantasy 4” sanded off all the rough edges and put on a new coat of paint, …
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