Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/30/17 at 04:29 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! May is continuing the downpour of Spring releases that started last month. Shall we see if the garden has started to blossom?
Shovelware weeds are starting to poke their noses out of the dirt. There’s plenty of variety too! There’s two licenses superhero pieces of shovelware, “Injustice 2” for DC fans and Telltale’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” serial Adventure for Marvel fans. For those who aren’t into licensed shovelware based on fiction IPs, there’s a new annual release in the “Official Motocross Game.” Lastly, there are two new releases in that shovelware archetype that is just so casual that it’s inconceivable they can make any money: “Cooking Mama: Sweet Shop” for 3DS and “Baila Latino” (which means ‘Latin dance’ en español) for PS4.
Once again, there are plenty of ports and remasters. “Lock’s Quest,” which was supposed to come to PS4 and XBONE last month, is leading the way, along …
Japanese Games: Big on Steam… But Not in Japan
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/23/17 at 04:09 PM CT
At the beginning of the year, I took a look at what Japanese gamers are playing, since they obviously aren’t getting all of the Western releases that we are in North America. Ironically, Japanese publishers have started pushing multi-platform releases more and more onto PC via Steam. This trend of Japanese publishers releasing games on PC is a fairly new phenomenon, despite a handful of abortive efforts dating all the way back to the 5th Generation, where certain ‘Final Fantasy’ titles received PC versions.
Clearly releasing “Final Fantasy 7” on Windows didn’t do a lot for Squaresoft back in the day, as they quickly chilled on the concept, only revitalizing the practice within the last few years, offering ported PC versions of most of their old games as well as multi-platform releases for a number of new ones, such as “NieR Automata.”
Square Enix is not the only Japanese publisher increasingly releasing multi-platform games and including PC as one of those …
Pointing the Finger: Mobile Gaming is the Cause of the Industry’s Ills
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/16/17 at 03:03 PM CT
Since February, 2017, the themes of my column here on MeltedJoystick have been perhaps a bit more doom-and-gloom than usual. I have had a very difficult time coming up with anything in games industry news and opinion that I can think positively about. Whether it’s gamers hating on each other to the point of Civil War, predatory The-House-Always-Wins tactics becoming increasingly common in the non-gambling space of videogames, Steam getting overwhelmed by garbage titles, Nintendo following the herd and adopting maligned concepts such as Season Passes and subscriptions, or Free2Play games obsessively advertising each other with no visible source of incoming revenue.
Colin Moriarty, one of the four kindred spirits who runs the Kinda Funny Games YouTube channel has an explanation:
Every single one of these negative threads in contemporary Games Industry leads back to the same tangled knot. If we tug on these threads, will the knot unravel? Or will it simply tighten to the …
Circular Advertising
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/08/17 at 04:18 PM CT
Last weekend during our regular Sunday brunch, my mother, who has gotten a lot of enjoyment out of my Xbox Live account and Microsoft’s casual games on Windows 10, asked me, “Do your tablet games show you a lot more ads lately?” Being the fan of “Microsoft Mahjong” and “Microsoft Solitaire Collection” that she is, Mom has been playing the daily challenges with the same dedication as a typical hardcore MMO player. Commonly, these casual Microsoft games stream a video advertisement between daily challenges (or between attempts, since these typically take more than one try).
My reply was that the so-called “tablet” games (really, she meant “mobile,” but isn’t tech savvy at all at age 68) I play don’t typically show me ads unless I ask them to. However, I did play (and somehow manage to FINISH!) “Bad Piggies,” which was an ad-supported “free” game that would randomly show me videos between stages, and also show me videos when I would choose to watch …
Backlog: The Embiggening – April, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/02/17 at 04:43 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! April has a lot of releases slated, especially compared to recent months of unwarranted drought. But don’t be FOOLED, as the upcoming titles for the idiots’ month aren’t looking to be particularly stellar. Maybe there will at least be something to care about…
Only one piece of shovelware this month… and it’s also a port! So let’s just move on to that bloated section of the article.
There are going to be a ton of ports and remasters release in April, mostly of stuff that didn’t really deserve a second chance in the first place: “LEGO City: Undercover” is the most shovel-ready port, but there are plenty more. “Air Conflicts: Secret Wars” and “The Silver Case” are both coming to PS4. “Valhalla Hills,” “Bulletstorm,” “Lock’s Quest,” and Indie darling “Stardew Valley” are coming to the 8th Gen PC-likes. The ‘Outlast’ series of Survival Horror zombie schlock is getting a compilation …
View Archive
