MeltedJoystick.com Gaming Blog

Sony to Bow-Out of Hardware in Favor of Community

Sat, 06 Sep 2025 23:48:27 -0500

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...

Review Round-Up: Summer 2025

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 14:23:53 -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: 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 re...

Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2025

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 17:49:51 -0500

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 rele...

Ubisoft is Breaking Up

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 16:46:23 -0500

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 int...

No New Square-Enix Games for THREE YEARS!?

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 16:40:57 -0500

Square-Enix, the company that single-handedly boosted both the SNES and Original PlayStation to the heights of gaming godhood, has been in dire straits lately. It seems like all I ever get to write about regarding my two one-time favorite developer/publishers involves them doing something incredibly stupid or reveal, where Microsoft’s representatives spent all of their time talking about how you could have all of your non-gaming content (a.k.a., ‘it’) in one place, with little concern for showing ...

Steam Forced into Inconsistent Adult Content Ban by Purse-String Holders

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 17:02:07 -0500

The world seems to have an Adult Content problem – Primarily that 70% of adults want it, while the other 30% are prudish scolds who want it banned. And, unfortunately, thanks to the Horseshoe Theory of politics, the...

“Stop Killing Games” Movement Shows Europe Still Ahead of U.S. in Consumer Rights

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 15:12:35 -0500

Rights abuses by IP and copyright holders have been a recurring subject on this blog, largely because they are so flagrant and egregious in contemporary Industrial Gaming, and neither the Democrats nor Republicans that control the United States government and write all of the laws seem to want to do anything about it. Considering the last major piece of legislation Americans got was the horrendou...

Square-Enix and the Concept of “Awareness”

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 13:36:14 -0500

It’s no secret that “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” made a bit of a splash with its release earlier this year. It was also one of the games that made my list of titles to get excited about in 2025, primarily by virt...