Ubisoft is Setting-Up a Year of Fails
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/11/24 at 03:27 PM CT
As the once-great critic of Corporate Gaming, Jim Sterling, used to say, “Oh, Ubisoft!”
That’s really all I can think to say in response to the French member of the Big Three Two Evil Videogame Publishers, as it is seemingly intent on setting itself up for a full year of failure, barely two months into 2024. Back in 2022, in the midst of the hubbub surrounding the flurry of acquisitions, mergers, and buyouts within Industrial Gaming, Ubisoft started off proud of its independence from even bigger corporations, then said it would be interested in reviewing any potential acquisition offers, before becoming seemingly perplexed and defensive when asked why they hadn’t been acquired yet.
Meanwhile, the tech sector, and especially the Games Industry, has faced steep cost-cutting measures, declining revenues from the Live Service model (to which Ubisoft has hitched all of its metaphorical wagons), and the evaporation of the “free money” known as venture capital.
Thus we …
Microsoft Starts Cleaning House in the Merger-Bloated Xbox Division
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/04/24 at 02:19 PM CT
Last year, the epic-scale merger of Microsoft’s Xbox Division and former Big Three member of the Triumvirate of Evil Publishers, Activision, finally went through, after years of legal challenges (mostly from Sony). The MeltedJoystick Crew wasn’t 100% sure of what to think of this merger, as it could have gone one of two ways: Either the Xbox Division would become even worse as it assimilated the toxic corporate culture of Activision (and subsidiaries Blizzard and King), or Microsoft’s non-gaming, straight-laced, no-nonsense corporate culture would hold firm and they’d force some much-needed baseline standards upon some of the worst-of-the-worst actors in Industrial Gaming.
Last year’s news that Bobby Kotick was getting the boot was a positive sign of things to come. However, the other shoe has really dropped as of late January, 2024, not even an entire month into the first year of the merger. It turns out that Microsoft has made the decision to absolutely gut Activision, …
Backlog: The Embiggening – February, 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/26/24 at 03:36 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! The shortest month of the year is upon us again, but with an extra day for terrible Games Industry releases thanks to Leap Year. Let’s see what afflictions will befall us in the next 29 days.
There’s not a lot of shovelware coming in February, so I think we can make do with just the one shovel. There are 2 Licensed Swill games coming: “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” and “Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash.” On top of that, there are two super-casual trash titles coming in the form of “PlateUp!” and “30 Sports Games in 1.” No Annualized Rehashes, though, as those typically aren’t ready for deposit until Autumn, at the earliest.
Some of that shovelware was also rehashed not-so-new releases, colloquially known as “ports,” but known to me as the Bane of All Existence. Sadly, more than HALF of all the releases in February (even including shovelware) are not, in fact, new games meant to surprise and …
6 Games to Watch for in 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/21/24 at 02:58 PM CT
Welcome back to MeltedJoystick’s not-so-annual feature in which we take a look ahead at the entire upcoming year and determine if there’s anything on the release schedule at all to get excited about. Why is this feature so inconsistent? Well, there are many years in which the MJ Crew has difficulty coming up with 5 Game of the Year awardees, let alone any titles to get excited about before the fact. However, 2024 has a few that could be real winners. Let’s get into it!
6. Dragon’s Dogma 2
The original “Dragon’s Dogma” was… okay. With its large open world, unique Pawn system for asymmetrical co-op, giant monsters, and plethora of playable (and swappable) classes, the ‘Dragon’s Dogma’ IP earned a following amongst fans of Dark Fantasy Action games who just can’t tolerate the quantities of bullshit found in From Software games. I didn’t love “Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen” when I played it back on the PS3, but I also didn’t hate it enough that I’m …
Backlog: The Embiggening – January, 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/14/24 at 02:52 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! We’ve officially survived another year of Games Industrial-sized Fails, disasters, and debacles. With a New Year, we have yet another new opportunity to change our ways and STOP encouraging the Big Publishers to be such trash. Let’s take a look at what the Corpos are going to try shoving down our throats as 2024 rolls in.
We’re off to a… tolerable start with regard to shovelware quantities. We’ve only got three, they’re all the same type (Licensed Swill), and one of them was supposed to come out last year, but got delayed. We’ve got the Switch port of last month’s “Walking Dead: Destinies,” the delayed console versions of a game based on an ancient Mecha anime called ‘UFO Robot Grendizer,’ and lastly we’ve got a new game based on the European ‘Tintin’ comic strip… which I can’t believe is still relevant to anyone anywhere in any world.
Moving onto my favorite category of old stuff being peddled …
New Year’s Backlog Ablutions 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/07/24 at 02:37 PM CT
The results of the last year’s New Year’s Backlog Ablutions are in! Amazingly, for the second year in a row, all four of the competitors managed to complete their chosen backlogged titles and submit reviews.
Once again, however, Chris and I were done before the Dog Days of Summer were upon us, while Nick and Matt managed to cross the finish line in mid-December. The good news, at least, is that no one was feverishly writing a review while watching the Ball drop in Times Square.
Because there were no losers in 2023, no Penalty Games will change hands. However, because there were no losers for two years in a row, we’ve decided to up the ante again and return to three games for the 2024 challenge.
To summarize: We all have one year to play three specific backlogged games that we’ve chosen for ourselves in advance. We must be ‘done’ with these games – as in, not planning to play them anymore, as neither finishing a game that turns out to be terrible nor getting …
Year in Review: 2023
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/29/23 at 04:45 PM CT
We’ve completed another circuit around the Sun, and survived to tell the tale. 2023 was a real shit-show when it comes to world events, cultural milestones, and even something as trivial and silly as videogames. Here’s a rundown of MeltedJoystick’s favorite flops and unexpected successes from the year World War III started.
Top 5 Fails
5. Epic Games is Hemorrhaging Money
Would-be Steam competitor, Epic Games, is doing so great they had to cut 16% of their workforce to stay in the Black for the end of 2023. Between their frivolous spending on timed exclusivity deals, their frivolous spending on lawsuits around monetization and walled-garden app ecosystems, and their continuous giveaways of… really BAD games in an attempt to lure in a larger customer base, it’s shocking – yes SHOCKING – that the company isn’t doing better. I mean, where is all that “Fortnite” and Unreal Engine money going?
4. Cooperative Campaigns Sacrificed on the Altar of PvP
In …
MeltedJoystick Games of the Year 2023
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/24/23 at 02:26 PM CT
2023 was yet another dismal year, adding its own turd-pearl to the string that began in 2020. We’ve seen global instability become even more unstable, while closer to home in the media, we witnessed the fall of Games Journalism and numerous legacy media platforms and IP sacrificed in the culture wars.
Honestly, we’re lucky that ANY good games managed to come out of the current Games Industry in 2023, but we were ultimately saved from despair by the long-time-coming release of the Chosen One, who was destined to take the top slot from the moment Larian announced they were working on it. Filling out the rest of the list, though, was a significant challenge, with many high-profile releases falling flat, failing to deliver on promises, or just not having enough *oomph* behind them to make lightning strike twice.
Without further ado, MeltedJoystick proudly presents our selection of the 5 most Jimmy-Rustling releases of 2023:
1. Baldur’s Gate 3 (PC)
Yeah, we knew this one …
Hasbro, the Parent Company of Wizards of the Coast, Is Woke, Broke, and Gutting the Games Division
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/17/23 at 02:38 PM CT
2023 has been quite possibly the worst year for Wizards of the Coast since the company’s founding in 1990. While Wizards began life as an independent tabletop games publisher whose new-fangled concept of Collectible Card Games ate TSR’s lunch and hastened the latter company’s downfall (and eventual acquisition), everything changed when Wizards lost its independence and was purchased by toy-and-game giant, Hasbro, in 1999. While the influx of massive corporate revenue streams and marketing apparati allowed Wizards to flourish initially, things haven’t been so rosy since the Grate Awokening.
It’s actually somewhat astounding how good a run Wizards of the Coast had under the Hasbro banner, between 1999 and 2019. Yes, there were missteps along the way, but none so disastrous as the 2023 debacle that was set in motion by diversity pledges made in the fateful Plague Year of 2020.
We’ve seen a year-long death spiral from Wizards of the Coast, first with their attempted …
Bungie (and ‘Destiny’) are in Deep Doo-Doo
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/10/23 at 02:17 PM CT
It’s always kind of bittersweet to see something we once loved start turning into doo-doo. As a former Squaresoft fan, I know the feeling well. But more recent generations of Gamers are getting to experience some of that despair with the ongoing downfall of former-Microsoft-studio-turned-third-party-turned-Sony-studio, Bungie.
We will probably never know the full story of why Microsoft allowed the former ‘Halo’ studio to buy its independence after 7 years of servitude in 2007. However, we did get to witness Activision-Blizzard (now officially part of Microsoft) take the blame for ‘ruining’ Bungie and saddling their shiny new ‘Destiny’ IP with a variety of unsavory monetization features.
We also witnessed Bungie fans singing the praises of the studio gaining full independence from the Corporate Games Industry to become a small-time Indie studio, since surely that would remedy all of the ills plaguing their game(s). Right? Wrong! And don’t call me …
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