Backlog: The Embiggening – December, 2023
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/26/23 at 03:08 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! As December rolls in, we’re rapidly approaching the end of another year in Gaming, and the Big Players in Industrial Gaming are desperately tossing out everything they can in a last-ditch effort to turn a profit – or at least mitigate some losses! What do we have to look forward to as last-minute Yuletide self-gifts? Let’s dig into it!
Ugh. “Dig” is the operative word, as there’s plenty of shovelware coming in December, though it’s all in the Licensed Swill category (and some of it overlaps with our other favorite category). We’ve got two ‘Lord of the Rings’ games incoming, one a Survival-Crafting-Sandbox-ClusterEFF called “Return to Moria,” the other a Switch port of one of the worst games of the generation, “Gollum.” There’s a PlayStation 5 port of the most recent ‘Transformers’ game, PlayStation (4 and 5) ports of that one weird cowboy game that just came out on other platforms, a Switch port …
Demented Wool-Goblin, Bobby Kotick, to Leave Activision after Microsoft Acquisition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/19/23 at 01:49 PM CT
Well that didn’t take long! The slow-rolling acquisition of former Big Three/Triumvirate of Evil publisher, Activision-Blizzard-King, by Microsoft, which started a few years ago, has finally gone all the way, but is already bearing positive fruit. Bobby Kotick, one of the most egregiously overpaid and publicly-loathed CEOs in all of gaming will be leaving his position at the beginning of next year, seemingly because he doesn’t want to report to Xbox Division boss, Phil Spencer.
I’ve been wondering and speculating whether Microsoft’s Xbox Division acquiring such a big corporate entity would see Xbox corrupted by the incoming influence or Activision getting its act forcibly cleaned up by its new overlord. Right now it’s looking like the latter. Of course, getting rid of one overweening executive parasite won’t necessarily solve all of Activision’s problems, especially when we know Microsoft hasn’t exactly had a monolith of great leadership, with the Xbox Division …
<I>The Escapist</I> Folds as the Latest Casualty in Games Journalism
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/12/23 at 01:53 PM CT
2023 is looking like the year that corporate-backed Games Journalism died. All year long we’ve been seeing stories about the Gaming divisions of large, corporate media outlets facing layoffs or being completely shuttered in the face of plunging ad revenue and lack of relevance. This past week, a staple of my weekly Games Journalism consumption, The Escapist, fired its Editor in Chief for failing to reach revenue targets. This action backfired in the corporate managers’ faces, however, as the entire writing and production team quit in solidarity with their fearless leader, promising to return in some sort of independent form in the near future.
Why is Games Journalism hitting the skids so hard? And why NOW, of all times? Analysts will point out redundancies in the marketplace. Gamers will point out a stunning lack of ethics, dating all the way back to the GamerGate debacle of 2016. Both are correct, as journalism in all topics has morphed from unbiased, fact-based coverage to …
Capcom: “PC Game Modding is Cheating!”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/05/23 at 02:30 PM CT
Long, long ago in those halcyon days of… two years ago, Capcom, one of the big Japanese developer/publisher Corporate Samurai who lorded over the Console Gaming Golden Age of the 1990s like a benevolent Philosopher King straight out of Plato, committed to making PC its “main platform” regarding game development and releases, driving another cold-iron nail into the heart of the twisted pit fiend console gaming has become since the dire 7th Generation. Alas, it seems that Capcom didn’t realize what, exactly, it was committing to, as the Corporate Samurai who once seemed poised to lead Japan into glorious PC Gaming future recently turned a 180, when it declared that unofficial mods for PC games are tantamount to cheating (right before shaking its tiny, Trump-like corporate fists at the sky and yelling at a cloud).
That’s right, one of the only remaining things that still separate PC Gaming and Console Gaming on any fundamental level has drawn Capcom’s wrath. Of course, …
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