MeltedJoystick.com Gaming Blog

It’s Time to Split Xbox from Microsoft

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 15:09:45 -0500

My all-time favorite President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, earned a reputation as a Trust Buster, regulating the Wild West of Big Business into a more manageable and publicly responsible form. It seems that today’s Federal Trade Commission has finally opened its eyes and gotten back to turn of the (20th) Cen...

“Unprofitable” Gamepass Undergoes Corrective Surgery, Becomes Even More Useless

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 16:21:11 -0500

I still remember when you could buy a brand-new, just-launched console for $200. Now simply “owning” a console costs $240… annually. Microsoft, the company that first successfully foisted subscriptions upon console gamers after the failures of Nintendo’s Satellaview and The Sega...

GOG Sells-Out to “Big Gaming” Company

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 23:57:20 -0500

We at MeltedJoystick have been less-than-impressed by GOG – formerly GoodOldGames – and its failure to deliver any meaningful action to follow up its talk. GOG has been making news in Gaming circles since it first launched in 2008 with its novel approach of being a 100% DRM-free marketplace. Subsequently,...

Backlog: The Embiggening – July, 2024

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 15:36:55 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! As July rolls in, most of the MJ Crew is on vacation… except for me, because I never take vacations, since my life is just one long Summer Break as it is. We’re smack in the middle of the Summer Games Drought, and while there might appear to be a lot of games for me to sift through and condemn for your delight, dear reader, that appear...

What Motivates Your Gaming? Find Out with Help from Quantic Foundry

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 15:09:52 -0500

I remember back in primary school when the administration was desperate to figure out what made students tick. Instead of allowing students to “self-identify” and filter ourselves into recent interview, Rod Fergusson, the General Manager of the ‘Diablo’ series, let slip the STUNNING and UNPREDICTABLE fact that videogame players – even those who ostensibly ‘loved’ “Diablo 2” back on the halcyon days of the early ‘00s – Matt, asked me what I thought of Windows Recall, I said I’d never heard of it. When he described it as an AI-powered search function that obsessively screencaps and ...

Review Round-Up: Spring 2024

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 15:07:21 -0500

Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time: Nelson’s Reviews: My Spring quarter started off fairly strong with 4 reviews of big games. But then I got engrossed in the gamified activities of “Get Rid of All My Late Parents’ ...

Backlog: The Embiggening – June, 2024

Sun, 26 May 2024 15:25:28 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! As June approaches, it’s time for us to prepare, once again, for the annual Summer Games Drought. Of course, an industry that still primarily caters to young people (or the young at heart) has always reduced new releases to a trickle when said target audience has the most free time and said target audience’s parents are most feverishly on the...

RetroArch (and Other Stand-Alone Emulators) Gain Further Legitimacy Thanks to… Apple?!

Sun, 19 May 2024 15:04:25 -0500

In a shocking move that I never believed would happen, Apple – the creator of Walled Garden App Ecosystems whose own walls are some of the highest, widest, and thickest in the industry – has officially decided that emulation is acceptable inside the walls.