MeltedJoystick.com Gaming Blog

Bye-Bye Polygon: The Latest Victim of the “New” Media Collapse

Sun, 04 May 2025 17:26:19 -0500

News broke this past week that the second-worst site for gaming news, reviews, and information, Polygon, had been sold by parent company Vox Media, and faces a 20% staff layoff and potential shutter...

Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2025

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 17:14:48 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! We got quite a few April Showers (and hailstorms, and tornadoes…), but will they bring May Flowers? They always do… but that doesn’t mean the Games Industry will benefit any! Let’s see what the Corporate Suits at the big publishing houses and platform holders have deigned to spurt forth as the last hurrah before the inevitable Summer Game...

10 Animes that Might Help Reignite the Old Spark

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:04:00 -0500

Everyone on the MJ Crew (except Nick) used to be avid fans of anime – the Japanese flavor of animation that initially started out as a rip-off of Disney before moving in its own decidedly-bizarre and unmistakably-Japanese direction – but we’ve really fallen out of the habit as of late. I was pondering why this was, and it es...

ESA’s Mask Slips, Revealing that the Dire Condition of Games Preservation is Intentional

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 13:03:11 -0500

Did you know that 87% of videogames released before 2010 are no longer commercially available? The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) knows, and it turns out they LIKE it that way! In a 16 minute expose, tech YouTuber, Bellular News, goes int...

All is Not Well as GOG Floats Subscriptions in New Survey

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 19:51:09 -0500

Oh dear! Last we heard of Steam’s most competent competitor, GOG (formerly known as Good Old Games, but changed the name when they started to add BAD old games and newer Indie games to their catalog), the Polish company was getting into bed with Jeff Bezos via an unwholesome and unwelcome alliance with Amazon. Amazon�...

Backlog: The Embiggening – April, 2025

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:54:37 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! April is here, and, naturally, the Fools are out in full force. It won’t be long now until the little darlings who make up the bulk of gaming’s target demographic are out of school for the Summer and the big players in Industrial Gaming decide to turn off the tap again. Let’s see if Mid-Spring has anything for us to get excited about. Is...

Legitimize Mobile Gaming? Microsoft Doesn’t Think So!

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 14:07:05 -0500

The last time I took a look at the state of mobile gaming, it was in those halcyon days of 2019, before the COVID pandemic made the entire world a duller, gloomier place to live. Back then, Apple and Google were trying to tame the monster they unleashed upon the world with a muzzle shaped like perpetual subscriptions. Unsur...

Former Exec: Microsoft Should Quit Gaming

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 17:28:01 -0500

Well, well, looks like it’s time to add another voice to the ever-growing choir of people who think Xbox should just go away. Enter one Bobby Kotick, who looks like a cross between some sort of sheep and a Wizarding World goblin, the former CEO of Activision-Blizzard(-King) before Chris, is another year older and another year more madness-inducing. Last year, I opened Chris up to the wonderful world of Name, Image, Li...

Review Round-Up: Winter 2024

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 13:28:15 -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: Once again, the entire MJ Crew was pretty much in the doldrums and didn’t do a whole lot of gaming over the gloomy Winter months. But at least I did get started on...