Wordherder

And Rovio's cutting 130 jobs: Rovio did well for a while, but there's some that easily trumped them: Of course two of them did that by milking microtransactions like mad, something Rovio never did (until recently).

Well, this is a little depressing. Earlier this year, longtime Castlevania guy Koji Igarashi left Konami to make his "dream game." Long story short, publishers didn't bite, and now he's making (drum roll) mobile games. http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/19/tgs-2014-castlevania-symphony-of-the-nights-koji-igarashi-puts-independent-dream-game-on-hold Granted, the article says the deal will "eventually" let him make the game, and it could be the guy's a pain to work with. That said, it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence toward the current direction of AAA game development that the man who made a huge string of great games can't get anyone to fund his next work.

...see, I had thought Microsoft had improved under Nadella (and it really is, as Windows 9 reportedly sucks much less) but the company has this bizarre blind spot when it comes to Kinect. They're extremely enthusiastic about the technology behind Kinect -- and it really is awesome in the abstract -- but they've done precious little to do things new and useful with it. Is Kinect 2.0 THAT expensive to manufacture, or are they just being greedy?

Interesting news about Gamefly giving up digital, considering the future is supposed to be digital. Well, an eventual future. Though part of the problem may be that the non-PC platforms more or less have digital under monopoly by the manufacturers, and while Steam isn't a true monopoly, it may as well be.

The shareholders might be right to be nervous in this case, since Candy Crush Saga is dropping faster than anticipated, and so far they haven't been able to come up with a new breakout game.

Aside from diving into GAF madness, nope. Damn NPD.

Well, the architecture between the 360 and the PS3 was completely different (especially with the PS3's Cell wackiness), but that didn't really stop many people from porting between the two anyway.

The crazy thing is, this kind of thing used to happen all the time. Back in the Cube/PS2/Xbox era we'd see more third-party games show up for just one system, like Knights of the Old Republic or Resident Evil 4 (at least initially). Some were bought of course, but some just decided it was easier to just make it on one platform. But that practice more or less vanished over the last generation. Wasn't there some mention that the guys behind GTA and Assassin's Creed tried to get Sony to pony up for exclucivity, and Sony said no? At any rate, nearly everyone made their games for as many systems as possible. I suspect part of the reason behind that was to help maximize their returns as development costs went up. At any rate, the old practice is back (at least for this game), and it's interesting how we've completely lost our tolerance for it in that time.

The next Tomb Raider is an Xbox One exclusive. Looks like moneyhatting's back with a vengeance.

Kind of amazed Crytek has held on for so long given all the bad rumors that have been swirling around for months. Though apparently they have enough manpower to port over Crytek to PC. (Though that likely wouldn't take too much effort given the similar architecture, right?)

Via Twitter I once asked him polite, specific questions on his stance on the NPD (he feels it's pointless) and he responded to me in a laughing, condescending way as if I were an abusive troll. It's just his personality, I think -- he doesn't take disagreement well, no matter how non-confrontational it's presented. As far as news places go, Joystiq and IGN are decent news feeds for the basics. Kotaku's actually improved greatly over the last year or so -- while there's still pointless fluff they also do some great and informative feature and investigative pieces from time to time.

Looks like Sony's grand experiement is over: http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/08/06/sony-to-end-playstation-mobile-support-on-android Huh. I know that Sony truly whiffed the service's first incarination (Playstation Suite) with little support. Did the same thing happen with Playstation Mobile?

Oh, sure. For much of its life it stuck with basic online purchases. It wasn't until later that the added Plus, more ads and other things to beef up its revenue, which was a good move from a biz standpoint. I guess I wanted to point out that online infrastructure for a game platform is more constly to maintain than most people would guess, and that might be one of the motivations for Sony to charge so much for Now. Or maybe it's just miscalculation. Or greed. Whichever. (This is Cloudeagle, by the way.)

Digital infrastructure can be surprisingly expensive -- it wasn't until 2013 that PSN started turning a profit, if I'm remembering right. Plus there's also the feeling (among the suits, anyway) that this is a completely new type of service, and there's really no sweet spot for price yet. It's true that this is a new type of service in the video game world, though that's not going to keep people from comparing it to Redbox.

Howdy ho, everyone!