Imagine saying that one of (if not the most, we’ll see how it goes) successful consoles of all time should follow Microsoft’s example when it comes to administering their consoles and exclusives.
Like, wow. I despise Nintendo and everything they stand for, but this is just delusional on so many levels.
Italy is a joke. Our politicians call us lazy, the rich go on TV crying because they can’t find people willing to work for minimal (or below) wage, and then a young person manages to carve themselves a path outside of the ‘norm’, our state immediately shows up and curb stomps them.
I was talking with a colleague of mine the other day. They work two jobs to make a living. The state taxed them so much, they are paying more for the second job that they are gaining, basically working for free. Tax the poor, let the rich off the hook.
It’s a bit of a complicated situation and I wouldn’t go into much detail, but basically, they live in Italy, but one of their job is (work from home) in another country. They are taxed by the other country, then taxed by Italy as well.
After that, Italy fined them on some bullshit grounds and forced them to pay a ridiculous sum of money. Needless to say, they never attempted to skirt or evade taxes or anything. They worked their ass off and the country said “fuck you in particular” because Italy.
I specifically remember them telling me that, despite being half Italian, they wanted to live in Italy because they love the country and have friends and family here, but now they don’t know what to do. It’s heartbreaking seeing how our country treats its citizens, then our politicians going on TV and lamenting the fact that young people choose to go live elsewhere. Italy as a country doesn’t see you as a citizen to protect, it just wants to squeeze you dry and leave you for dead.
John Wick Hex has been sold as a completed product and will remain playable (for people who have already bought it, and people who track down a physical copy) even after the publisher pulls the plug. This is not planned obsolescence, their license for the movie rights has expired.
This is probably going to seem wildly low-effort compared to my usual posts here, but I’ve found a bit of a treasure trove of print media gaming ads from magazines and sites. And they’re amazing. I found it so fun to see what companies used to do to promote their games....
Is that the edgy vibes that you miss, or just generic childhood nostalgia?
Everyone has it, me included. I miss playing Tekken with my brother, and comparing our progress in Sacred, and generally speaking, nerding together. We are both adults and employed, and he’s got two kids as well, now. We barely have time for a brief phone call to check on each other over the weekend :(
In case you missed it, recent reports suggest that Microsoft/Xbox has likely cancelled future Forza Motorsport titles (effectively ending the series), following massive layoffs that affected around half of Turn 10’s staff....
Japanese Drift Master seems interesting. I enjoy open world racing games ever since I fell in love with Test Drive Unlimited back in the days, but I can’t vibe with Forza Horizon because of the constant “Congratulations, you just drove 5 meters in this direction! Take this awesome car for free!” wherever you go. It completely robs me of the enjoyment of progressing through the game.
Wishlisted it, I’ll probably buy it as soon as I have some free time.
I liked Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, but I haven’t played them since PS2 was current. So I was thinking about grabbing them before the steam sale ends, but I’m wondering if I should just go ahead and get the whole “integrum masterpiece” collection....
This is wonderful advice! Thank you, John Xbox! I may be without a job, but I will keep on using your products like the mindless consumer I am, so that your paychecks will keep on growing.
God, this is so out of touch that it stops being funny and becomes genuinely uncanny. Like, are these people even real? Are they robots piloted by Skynet? Am I the only real person on the entire planet?
Keeping with the theme of my recent interview with the developer behind the largest-running Nintendo Switch piracy program, I thought I’d post another piece in a similar vein....
I swear this is not me doomering (I very much support this campaign and even signed it myself half a year ago), but I strongly suspect that at least a good chunk of those are fake. The issue is very hot in “terminally online” circles and those are the kind of people who don’t really think things through before acting.
I hope the number will keep on growing until the “legit” votes make up for the fake ones.
Don Mattrick left Xbox in 2013. It was more than a decade ago. He may have ruined the XOne launch, but Spencer has had all the time and money in the world to rectify his mistakes and, so far, has only worsened them to the point that most doubt that a new Xbox will exist at all. Nintendo was on the brink of disaster after the Wii U, and managed to turn their fates around in half the time and with a fraction of the money. Why couldn’t Spencer?
In all these years, Spencer’s legacy has been of failed deals, shutting down/letting go multiple studios, and moronic attempts at building AAA and GAAS games on the back of seasonal contractors. We should stop blaming Mattrick for things that happened a decade after he left the company.
News of Everwild’s cancellation arrives amid more layoffs at Microsoft; the company is reportedly slashing nearly 9,000 jobs as part of new cuts at Microsoft.
Wow. It was rumored to be a big layoff, but 9,000 is way over any forecast. And this is what? The third so far since Covid? Is there anyone left working for them, at this point? Or is it all seasonal contractors?
EDIT: turns out that they gutted The Initiative (the supposedly AAAA studio that never released anything), cancelled Everwild, cut 50% of Turn10, 10% of King, and cancelled an unknown number of unannounced games, including one MMO title developed by the TES Online devs.
What a bloodbath. But hey, at least Phil is safe.
Considering that it skipped the last showcase despite reportedly releasing next year, I don’t have high hopes for that one.
Wouldn’t be surprised if it was built on the backs of seasonal contractors. Seems like that’s the strategy they have chosen for their other big IPs as well (Forza Motorsport 8 and Halo Infinite).
It’s incredible that the clowns in charge of the gaming division and responsible for dragging it through the mud for all these years get to keep their job and will probably see an increase in their salaries as well, while the people that lost their jobs because of their incompetence will get nothing but a sad press release from Uncle Phil the HR department.
The problem at this point is not so much that they don’t have games - they have released plenty in the past few years and most have been received positively.
The problem is that they released those games too late, and by that point, the ship had already sailed. After a streak of disappointing years with the XOne, they needed strong titles to pair up with XSeries. Instead, they released jack shit for an entire year, and after that the disappointment just grew further with the likes of Halo Infinite, Starfield and the weird vampire game nobody asked for.
By that point, everyone already got themselves a PS5, a Switch, a gaming PC or a handheld device. Xbox needed to show their fans they believed in their mission and were capable of delivering strong titles on their platform, but everyone saw their releases and said “Meh”.
The strong titles eventually came, but by that point they had already decided to port them over to the competition to offset the cost, and everyone saw the writing was on the wall for the platform.
Spencer can go on stage spewing whatever bullshit he wants, but nobody outside of the most diehard Xbox fans believe that the platform has a future - and it’s very hard to convince people to invest on your platform when it’s not certain how many more years it will be supported, and whether your store will remain accessible or shut down a few years down the line.
It saddens me that my country (Italy) has such a low percentage of signatures. Most of us are either ignorant of anything happening outside of our borders, or straight up doomers who don’t believe anything can ever change for the better.
Big congrats to my fellow northern cousins. I was expecting Poland, who has a healthy videogame industry, to gather a good enough number of signatures, but 160% is wild! It’s refreshing seeing so many people joining the petition - It’s not even about videogames: this initiative will have huge repercussions on the lifespan of other, unrelated products and, in general terms, planned obsolescence.
Unfortunately, that’s not my area of expertise. I don’t follow streamers or YouTubers (Italian or international), nor do I have a close enough relationship with any of them that I’d be able to talk to them and convince them to mention this petition to their fans.
The one and only time some friends and I attempted to interact with a few local content creators (to publicize our free fan games we poured hundreds of hours into and NEVER attempted to monetize in any way), we either got ignored, insulted, or received vague answers that went nowhere. It soured me towards Italian content creators and vowed to never interact with them again.
Why, yes, I’m broke, but I doubt Stellar Blade has anything to do with it. It’s mostly because of the shifting economic and political landscape of today.
To be honest that would just be the end of the consoles system as there is a reason Sony is selling the PS5 for so cheap.
They stopped selling them for cheap as soon as they reached market dominance, so good riddance I say.
I’m also not sure how much the PS exerience differs from Xbox, but my last console was an XOne (got it for cheap) specifically because I wanted the “no fuss” experience, and it was such a headache that it convinced me to switch to PC instead.
I don’t play MH, so take my words with a grain of salt, but a friend of mine told me that they were hoping for more frequent and robust title updates to keep the game fresh.
According to them, there’s just not enough end game content for the game to remain interesting in the long run, and that’s on top of a gameplay loop far less rewarding/challenging than previous titles.
Congrats on your 20th post! Now onto adding a 0 to that number! :P
What have you been playing?
I’ve recently finished Resident Evil 2 Remake for the first time. I’m a longtime RE fan (the original trilogy being one of the earliest gaming memories that I have), and the remake of the first title is one of my favourite games ever, so I was kind of curious to see how the second one would be.
I’ve never been more torn on a game. The moment-to-moment gameplay is great! The environment is greatly improved from the original, the creatures design is awesome, the horror aspect has been done well, and it mostly doesn’t overstay its welcome. I can see why people enjoyed it so much when it was released.
As a remake, it fails spectacularly. The story makes no sense, the writing is abysmal and made me hate most of the characters. And of course there’s that thin-veiled misogyny that’s become (unfortunately) fairly common in most recent entries of the franchise. It’s a sad day when a game from the 90s can boast being more progressive than its counterpart from 2019…
And Crawford is an incompetent smartass. I honestly don’t know what any TTRPG would have to gain from including him in the team.
If they hope to chase 5e’s success by following in its footsteps - piss poor adventure modules, nonexistent DM support, unbalanced player options, and a game designer that contradicts himself on Twitter every other post while attempting to explain why he isn’t wrong - then good luck to them, I guess.
I very much doubt that 5e became the juggernaut that it’s now because of Crawford. If anything, it’s despite of him - mostly because of the free publicity granted by things like Critical Role and Stranger Things, and DnD being the default option for anyone who develops an interest in roleplaying for the first time.
Ha! I heard of this one, but haven’t been able to try it yet. As a huge fan of old school RE games, it piqued my interest. Thank you for reminding me of it. I shall pick it up as soon as I have some free time.
I’ll also mention another, even lesser known title: Kabus 22. It’s an old Turkish videogame that’s clearly inspired by classic RE titles. Not very good, but I have a soft spot for games that were developed with more love than knowledge on game design. Also the developer is a really nice dude who re-released the game for free as a thank you to the fans who reached out to him, and that’s such a sick move that I can’t help but have a lot of respect for him.
There’s a good retrospective in YT about the game here, if anyone’s curious.
I’m very sorry to hear about your situation! I wish you a quick recovery. Your posts are my favourite part of this community, so thank you very much for taking your time to ramble with us for a bit :)
What was shown of the hotel reminds me of REVII. I’m not sure how it ties to Raccoon, aside from the fact that the protagonist is the daughter of a character from Outbreak, but Raccoon City post-nuke is an interesting setting to explore — and regular zombies seem to be a returning enemy? I’m not sure if they are planning to have flashback sequences during the outbreak, or if the zombies will make an appearance in the present day timeline).
Happy to see a new MC. Ethan was okay-ish but painfully bland, I hope she’ll be more interesting.
Björn Ruther has worked on this as mo-cup supervisor and historical advisor, so I’m kinda curious to see the end product! (Pseudo-)Historical accurate medieval games are hard to come by, surprisingly.
Another week has passed, and so it’s another excuse for me to post a bunch of gaming news I’ve spotted over the last few days! I’m sure most of you know the drill by now:...
Talos Principle 2. I bought it 5 months ago but only recently I’ve been able to actually play it.
The first game was a near 10/10 experience for me, so I came in with very high expectations, and… At the moment, I’m a bit disappointed.
The main drawback is how pointlessly big everything is. You spend minutes running from puzzle to puzzle, especially if you want to 100% the game, which requires a lot of wandering around to find hidden switches and light rods to solve the Sphynx’s puzzles.
The environment is gorgeous, mind you, but it’s just… too much. Which is funny, because an NPC I talked to yesterday lamented the exact same thing: '“bigger doesn’t equal more beautiful”. I agree, Jeremy.
That being said, it’s still a fun game, and the story is interesting (although a lot more heavy-handed than the first game). There are also a lot of cats! And you can pet some of them! I also found a little fox running around. I couldn’t pet it, but it was cute regardless.
But seriously, this game is soothing for the soul. There’s just something in strolling around taking in the view with a beautiful soundtrack in the background that is just soooo relaxing. I use it as a way to cool my head after a day’s work before going to bed.
Woke did not exist before 2015, so everything created before that year is, in fact, absolutely based. Including all those apolitical masterpieces I grew up with, such as Metal Gear Solid and Bioshock. I wish they still made fun games instead of insisting on shoving leftist commentary down out throats. I really want to enjoy gaming again but developers are woke leftists now :(
Lucky for us, the glorious Nippon country is untouched by woke. No, I don’t know Japan and I’ve never visited it, but i play a lot of VNs, which is basically the same thing.
Half the things those idiots like would be ‘woke’ if they came out today. Any movie/videogame/(I would include books but these chuds don’t read) including a female lead, a non-white person, or a disabled individual is doing virtue signalling and pandering to minorities. But back then, chuds didn’t have the internet to tell them what to hate.
There are tons of things that nobody cared about years ago that wouldn’t fly today. Fairy Oddparents having a male individual become pregnant. LOTR’s Éowyn killing the witch king on her own. Avatar: TLA has a few ‘woke’ episodes as well - for example, one where the male leads learns how to fight from a woman, and another where the female lead needs to convince a male wizard to teach her magic, which was a man-only practice.
If they were released today, you’d find them in thumbnails on YT with “cringe”, “woke” or “DEI” written in CAPS all over the place.
It’s been 5 days since I shared the last of these - where I share a roundup of all the interesting things I have spotted in gaming news. There’s a lot of different topics this week, but as always it remains Steam Deck, Linux, GOG, emulation, Switch and gaming in general!...
Tank controls truly are divisive. I grew up playing the PS1 RE games and, to me, they are just second nature. I recommended a friend of mine to try them out, and he walked away after a few minutes lol
Have you tried Dino Crisis 2? Of all the tank controls games, it’s the one with the most fluid gameplay. The story is completely bonkers, but the gameplay is so satisfying.
By the way, thank you for recommending Crow Country! I had never heard of it and now I’m very interested.
"Bringing your games to other platforms is how you’re going to win" - Circana (www.thegamebusiness.com) angielski
Some interesting analysis from Mat Piscatella about the state of the industry....
Alabaster Dawn (CrossCode sequel) - Demo Release Date Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Very excited for this
YouTuber Faces Possible Jail Time for Reviewing Gaming Handhelds (www.androidauthority.com) angielski
John Wick Hex will be removed from sale on all platforms beginning July 17th, 2025 (steamcommunity.com) angielski
If you want to pick it up, cheapest way is via the humblebundle sale.
Vintage gaming advertising pictures: a gallery angielski
This is probably going to seem wildly low-effort compared to my usual posts here, but I’ve found a bit of a treasure trove of print media gaming ads from magazines and sites. And they’re amazing. I found it so fun to see what companies used to do to promote their games....
Smaller rally/racing games I recommend you try! angielski
In case you missed it, recent reports suggest that Microsoft/Xbox has likely cancelled future Forza Motorsport titles (effectively ending the series), following massive layoffs that affected around half of Turn 10’s staff....
So is Kingdom Hearts 3 _bad_ or just the normal cringe of Kingdom Hearts? angielski
I liked Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, but I haven’t played them since PS2 was current. So I was thinking about grabbing them before the steam sale ends, but I’m wondering if I should just go ahead and get the whole “integrum masterpiece” collection....
Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE (www.videogameseurope.eu) angielski
Xbox Producer Recommends Laid Off Workers Should Use AI To 'Help Reduce The Emotional And Cognitive Load That Comes With Job Loss' (aftermath.site) angielski
Developer interview: my Q&A with a PC game 'repacker' angielski
Keeping with the theme of my recent interview with the developer behind the largest-running Nintendo Switch piracy program, I thought I’d post another piece in a similar vein....
The EU initiative for Stop Killing Games has reached the goal of 1 million signatures!! angielski
The page seems to be not working at the moment but keep on signing eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
HELLDIVERS 2 coming to Xbox (www.youtube.com) angielski
Has Xbox Considered Laying One Person Off Instead Of Thousands (aftermath.site) angielski
Rare's Everwild canceled amid layoffs at Xbox Game Studios (www.polygon.com) angielski
Welcoming PCSX2 2.2.0 and 2.4.0! | PCSX2 (pcsx2.net) angielski
'Xbox Hardware Is Dead,' Says Founding Team Member, 'It Looks Like Xbox Has No Desire — Or Literally Can't — Ship Hardware Anymore' - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #22 angielski
As ever and always, I’m back with a week’s worth of gaming news I’ve spotted and thought I should share with you all!...
Signatures skyrocket for **Stop Killing Games** campaign after big youtubers take up the cause, resulting in 100k signatures in 48 hours. (Details on how to help in text body of post) angielski
(Text below written by @treasure. Hope you don’t mind me yoinking it for here!)...
[Stellar Blade] This game completely broke them (www.youtube.com) angielski
The (undeserved?) shitstorm who have tried to Hide Stellar blade success....
Digimon Story Time Stranger – introducing new Digimon Enhancement Systems (blog.playstation.com) angielski
Sony faces another class-action lawsuit over PlayStation Store prices and monopolistic practices (www.techspot.com) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #21 angielski
As ever and always, I’m back with a week’s worth of gaming news I’ve spotted and thought I should share with you all!...
Monster Hunter Wilds game reviews hit "Overwhelmingly Negative" on Steam — can Capcom turn it around? (www.windowscentral.com) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #20 angielski
As ever and always, I’m back with a week’s worth of gaming news I’ve spotted and thought I should share with you all!...
Top D&D designers join Critical Role after quitting Wizards of the Coast (www.polygon.com) angielski
Resident Evil fans, meet your Victorian cousin angielski
What if Sherlock Holmes met Resident Evil? Well, here you go:...
Steam Deck / Gaming News #19 angielski
Well it’s been a little longer than it typically is for me covering recent gaming news I’ve spotted, and that’s entirely my fault! I am sorry!...
Xbox Game Pass might be getting a price hike (www.windowscentral.com) angielski
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy - Reveal Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Holstin - Official New Demo Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Resident Evil Requiem - Reveal Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Yes, this IS Resident Evil 9. The aesthetic looks cool, but surprisingly serious for a RE game.
Chronicles: Medieval - Announcement Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
PRAGMATA - First Contact Trailer (youtu.be) angielski
I had almost lost all hope for this to be released.
Now this is how you do pride month, take notes AAA devs (lemmy.blahaj.zone) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #18 angielski
Another week has passed, and so it’s another excuse for me to post a bunch of gaming news I’ve spotted over the last few days! I’m sure most of you know the drill by now:...
Aion 2 | Reveal Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
That name takes me back. Hopefully this one isn’t p2w.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger footage – real world, Digital World, battle, and evolution (www.gematsu.com) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #17 angielski
Well, it’s that time again for this last week’s interesting gaming news I’ve spotted!...
"You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #15 angielski
It’s been 5 days since I shared the last of these - where I share a roundup of all the interesting things I have spotted in gaming news. There’s a lot of different topics this week, but as always it remains Steam Deck, Linux, GOG, emulation, Switch and gaming in general!...