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Remember this, my friends, the post-mortem of a brand that used to think and try being ahead of its competitors despite multiple stumbles. But what really led to this, is every worst possible outcome due to bad faith practices from a giant corporation.

I was a kid at the time, when Xbox was released to the world. I could barely own a console of my own, but Halo: Combat Evolved was a household name reaching towards the stars. It cemented Xbox’s identity, but a lot of underrated titles did keep it afloat, kind of like the Gamecube did. That’s where they were excelling, they tried everything, including working with SEGA. Their problem was their competitor; Sony.

This one company had somewhat of a monopoly, and were good at convincing the majority of the Japanese developers to prioritize exclusivity. It makes sense, this was a competition making sure no one took over. They owned the 6th gen console, with the PlayStation 2 outselling both Gamecube and Xbox combined.

But they won with the Xbox 360, before stumbling hard midpoint. What led to this? Corporate sabotage, too much pressure from their competitors including Nintendo, alienation from their audiences? If you’re a true fan of the Xbox brand, you pretty much know where this is going, and maybe take the tissues to help, this won’t be a clean statement to make. If anything, the shortfall and complete decline happened all mostly because of Microsoft and their hands-off but hands-on approach.

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Having Control For The Wrong Reasons

Before their first console, Microsoft was just a software company, and they weren’t in Sony’s radar. They were entering the hardware market, and had a pretty good start, but somewhere in the cubicle, a few PC enthusiasts wanted to make a console based around their DirectX API. The result was the Xbox as you’ve known.

Over the years, they’ve convinced people that their console was more powerful than the PS2, but it lacks one key thing; the video games. They were nowhere near Sony’s market share, so they had an amazing headstart with the Xbox 360. PlayStation 3 struggled, and with that leg up, they soured. But even they struggled somehow with Japan’s market, which was slowly embracing before the latter was in store shelves. Again, where were the games? There was another issue, and that had to do with Microsoft’s expectations of what made a game great.

This company pioneered the online service industry, yes it’s subscription service, which paid off, while Sony was providing one for free. They later changed their minds for the PS4. They proved a way that attaining more consumption from their console owners was a key aspect to profiting, and thus affected their ecosystem. This had a detrimental effect on their relationships with major game developers, especially the Japanese developers. You have to be aware that, majority of Japanese gamers play games that provide lengthy single-player campaigns around that time. They want to squeeze hours and hours of fun, and Microsoft wanted to implement online components in them. Plus, it didn’t help to stave off JP gamer’s typical stereotypes.

The list of games they’ve cancelled is many, to say the least. This wasn’t usually the case in the 7th gen, before their focus on the Kinect accessory alienated the majority of their fanbase. It was the showcase of the Xbox One that kind of spelt their doom. This one had way too many games that couldn’t come out, and everytime a third party game did, it was visually toned down due to hardware limitations. We’re all aware of the constant online, and excessive DRM policies to stop sharing games under Don Mattrick’s management, they retracted and let Phil Spencer be in charge.

Tidbit: Microsoft has this ability to insert their own corporate influences into other companies by being poached before wrecking said company and buying them off (I.E: Nokia). They kind of did this with Bungie, but this was after Bungie acquisition.

Spencer’s management was a positive shift in trajectory for a company that’s corporate interest was too hands-on to manage expectations. Forcing a brand to be everybody’s entertainment system when that clearly wasn’t going to work, but Microsoft never learns. His approach led to trying the developers just make their games, and figure it out on their own, he introduced Xbox Game Pass which was a Netflix type subscription featuring so many games, including day-one exclusives. This was a resounding success, but this didn’t improve much of anything. Xbox One barely sold half of what the PlayStation 4 managed to do, which outsold the PS2 in lifetime.

The Series console were their redemption path, again, all they had to do was focus on making the games. The Xbox Series X is certainly more powerful than the PlayStation 5. Again, where are the games? Have you noticed how even their popular franchises like Gears of War, Halo, Forza, have struggled the past few years? Overpromising ambitious new IPs, and yet the majority of them are cinematic and concept showcases? Nothing much about the final product? Again, the list of cancelled games should tell you their story.

I mentioned how Microsoft’s hands-on and hands-off approaches work. Because their corporate aspect likes to meddle in-between developers vision, this problem was getting worse in other areas too, and that was in quality control. You can’t just hand a lot of money to certain devs and expect them to deliver, especially after COVID-19 happened. I know sleazy develop culture exists, but the oversight this company made, cost them dearly. Compared to their worth back in the early era, Microsoft is in the top 5 of Fortune 500, they have too much money, especially now in this A.I. bubble.

Now we’ve reached the point where after spending too much money (over 70bn USD), over the Activision-Blizzard merger, was where the tipping point reached, and it shifted how they view the industry works. Developers have complained that Game Pass is killing sales, especially for indie titles, and the last Call of Duty, Black Ops 6 undersold and lost 300m because it was day one access, the tectonic shift was felt. Here we are now, another list of major cancellations, delays, nothing promising about their game IPs, losing money, and massive lay-offs. The one service holding them so far, Game Pass, was hit with a massive price hike. The day-one games is only now accessible to those who can pay 30 USD a month. The news was hit with massive cancellations of their subscription, crashed their website, a final nail in this dying ecosystem, paved with bad decisions, and absolute hubris.

Big Changes Are Coming

There is another factor as to why Xbox seems to be dying, it’s because of the full shift from console exclusivity to being a multi-platform publisher. They’ve already released some of their titles on the PlayStation 5, Forza Horizon 5 is their best-selling so far, Gears of War might soon get a trilogy release. Could this also mean the death of the console hardware, with the Series X being the last before they surrender like SEGA did? I doubt it, there’s way too much going on with the system to abandon it.

We also have to ascertain whether it’s the Activision Blizzard part of the management that’s largely influencing them now or it’s Sarah Bond, who, frankly speaking, doesn’t seem to be in spirit with the Xbox brand, especially looking at her prior employment. Nothing about it strikes as being conscious for like-minded gamers. She is also rumored to be Spencer’s replacement, directly answering to Satya Nadella. Spencer, for all the right he did, is now leaving his legacy on such a dreadful state.

Separating both game ownership from subscription services without the one cannibalizing the other. This could also be due to Sony’s PlayStation Plus having higher numbers in all three tiers, supposedly showing more success. The good old Xbox is long gone, the company is in full recovery mode for their shareholders. It’s funny, because Xbox was a small part of their bottom-line, so much has changed since.

Nothing, I believe, will change their corporate culture, which is responsible for so many projects not panning out well in the end, resulting in cancellations. Microsoft needs to fully separate their agendas while allowing creativity to thrive, but also maintain a stern quality control by not taking too many chances with their own.

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I want to preface something by saying that Unreal Engine has an amazing legacy. People still don’t remember just how a single game development engine from 1995 went through multiple changes and evolutions.

It was first a software based 3D rendering software before transitioning to hardware based, and the majority of the games in the 2000s shaped the industry themselves from Bioshock, Ghost Recon, Deus Ex: Invincible War, and so on. But Unreal Engine 3 is where the biggest impact was made. Even in older generation consoles, and PC gaming at the time, the visuals were nothing to scoff at.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a technical marvel, compared to its 2nd iteration, the number of games ballooned. From its lighting tech, early global illumination, high texture detailing to being the first engine to adopt multithreading workloads of the CPU. I grew up playing games based around them, and it was understandable that a company like Epic Games would continue changing the software game with its 4th and 5th iteration. The problem however gets worse, instead of praise, people are venting out frustrations. Streamline and conquer, the Unreal Engine 5 is kind of ruining games now, what are we to do?

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Elephants in the polygonal rendering room

For its timeline from inception till today, Unreal Engine has always been a C++ programming based engine. Nowadays, you can easily use it like you’ve used map editors in other games, but it is very multi-layered. Every facet of its features need some level of program editing, debugging, and testing to check the final product and when you have an engine that is pushing for ambitious concepts, it can be a little bloated at times.

What do I mean by this? So many triple A developers want to use these features, such as Nanite and Lumen. But again, these are high concept features, that’ll require the end product users to own highly expensive PC hardware to get them running, and even then, there are times they won’t be enough.

The excuse to alleviate these problems involve the use of upscaling software that uses A.I. to cut some visual clarity for extra frames with small, incremental differences, and frame generation tech latency and screen rendering issues notwithstanding. But that’s not the only reason, people are now abandoning their own proprietary engine in using something like Unreal Engine instead. So what seems to be the issue? Why are people are caught in sharing their grievances with it?

I played a game called Cronos: New Dawn, and the trailers for it maybe did a little disservice than usual. Instead of giving the players more to see from teasers and reveal trailers, at least some attempt of alluring players by creating interest in the game’s world, you get segments of more prominent aspects of the game engine.

This is actually the case with a lot of games these days, because UE5 can create photo-realistic visuals with some of the best lighting seen in the industry. Easy to market by glazing its visual fidelity. So, the end result? Stuttering, performance issues, horrible optimizations, unreliable shader compilation, crashes, and the list goes on. When I was playing Cronos, it was infuriatingly jarring and broke my immersion with long and sudden traversal stutters, and the same with Bloober’s prior game, Silent Hill 2.

This is becoming the case for a lot of games right now, save a few because they’ve actually put extra development time and manpower to get them running well. Of course, I can also reference that Capcom with their RE engine has fumbled terribly with Monster Hunter: Wilds, but I’ll digress. There are also cases regarding the main aforementioned features where documentation to fully optimize for their uses are somewhat missing. Leaving one to guess that Epic Games provides special treatment to certain developers if they’re willing to add incentive.

There’s no point contesting it, as it as gained so much market share all throughout, and is pretty much the default choice everybody jumps to outside of Godot, Unity, CryEngine, and so on. The business in selling game engines was never seen very lucrative, but having this kind of control shows you that creative experimentation is somehow being deterred as almost every game just looks super similar to each other.

You don’t simply use a game engine to make pleasing aesthetics, certain games need to be co-developed on other aspects like sound, enemy A.I., certain dynamic systems that affect the gameplay, and they’re being so dumb down due to strenuous development process. Stalker 2 released last year didn’t fare well thanks to basic A.I. design that is seen as a downgrade. This is taking advantage by removing the proprietary made by in-house talent, which suits their overall goal instead of just being “easy to work with”. And that’s just the whole other list of issues, with the performance, technical problems being right on the tip of this iceberg.

How to fix this?

This is an industry-wide problem, everybody’s too complacent on releasing broken games now and getting away with it. But for now, the majority of them are from this engine, and piling up more is making gamers lose more faith in their purchased product and when you make games that don’t run well, who’s going to bother upgrading their computers to begin with?

Hardware sales have slowly been plummeting, and that can be the result of so many factors, but it’s a pretty big issue when you can’t run your games after purchasing expensive hardware that is already priced gouged above the MSRP. Not even your fancy FPS generating features can save these cumbersome issues, including the ones happening due to Microsoft’s flimsy implementation of their Windows updates.

Any of these could be a result of just the gaming industry facing a crisis, where after the bubble started to pop since last year with failed releases, it’s leaving companies to just cut jobs left and right, especially the lead designers and those optimizing the technical aspects to make sure end products runs fine. I refuse to budge from my stance, I haven’t purchased that many games the past year and outside of indies, this will not change unless these developers get their bearings together. That includes Epic Games, add more documentation about your features, you’re content to fight giants like Apple, but not update your store and make a better engine? You think Gearbox Software should be alone to blame for Borderlands 4 horrible release state?

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It’s been 16 years since I’ve last played Origins. Before that, I’ve played a couple of their old games, going way to Neverwinter and Baldur’s Gate to KOTOR. Everything BioWare, I was playing it, to me Dragon Age: Origins was leaps and bounds beyond.

There was an interview done by MrMattyPlays with Mark Darrah, the executive and project director for all the Dragon Age titles, his talk about Veilguard draws so much ire, especially from a close fan like me who has accepted that beaten horse of a once great studio is dead. Maybe should’ve been years ago, after Dragon Age: Inquisition. Something really was off about that game, despite the success and how many enjoyed it, at its core, the world building, story and open world map was lacking.

Years after dumpster fires like ME: Andromeda and Anthem, after Veilguard, it hit me, as to why they never made a sequel to anything they’ve worked on, outside of Baldur’s Gate before the acquisition. They were a creative tour de force, made the best games with amazing success. Each project was something of their own making, before the collective whole worked on it, made it better. There were a lot of love.

Then their founders leave, and older developers follow them in droves, each dealing with a giant brick wall that is EA. A husk that is being run by current egos, and at some point, not a dissimilar story to what happened to Bungie. But it’s more like the big reason why all of it came crashing down is corporate meddling.

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BioWare didn't want Dragon Age to be a franchise, and I'll tell you how that became the case. The sequel; Dragon Age II, came out 2 years after DA:O. It wasn’t as well received, and was the token “leftover DLC turned to game” result. But funny enough, the story beats, themes, and gameplay were, to some degree, actually better than Inquisition. Ask the fans, they know very well.

This was sort of at the turning point, they released Mass Effect 2 a year ago, that was the blockbuster success that their parent company wanted. Mass Effect 3 and then later DA:I is where some of the cautionary tales have started to sprout. BioWare’s sister division in Austin, was busy with Star Wars: Old Republic, the popular MMO that actually somewhat was giving what they wanted, as well as stability

Anthem then came around, this was a personal new passion project that BioWare tried hard to pitch for years, before getting anything working in the last 2–3 years till 2019. Casey Hudson left in 2014, only to come back at the last minute to salvage the project. No one knew what they wanted it to be, it was a hodgepodge of creative ideas all dissolved into this brand-new idea, it was becoming more ambitious, they knew this one would stand out in the test of time. That was the case, and I would know since I played it, but it was a short-lived success. BioWare had another subdivision, Montreal, which worked on Mass Effect: Andromeda before having an entire structural change and disconnect from their big sister to being EA Motive. Edmonton kind of screwed up, so most of it was relegated to their Austin division instead. Darrah opened up a lot about Anthem’s development history in this separate video.

Video game studios go through tumultuous development processes, this happens to everyone, but when your parent company refuses to acknowledge being the contributing factor to the creative control, and final product of their own works, with poor communications, and forcing standards, end result is a studio that doesn’t know what they should be doing. When their autonomy, and ideals are constantly put on the line. Anthem was a big mess, it lacked a proper identity, roadmap and delivery, it only had the cool idea, and addictive gameplay loop to keep going for so long. Hudson’s role was kept more elusive, and favoritism from the corporate heads.

Every single game they’ve made as an independent were adaptations and original games of their own making. It was clear from the start that they thrived on their own works, not so much on making sequels because they weren’t really into that. Plus, following trends and thinking that was the big shift in success, no offense Darrah. This now leads us to the biggest elephant in the room, the absolute grotesque insult to what the BioWare magic is supposed to be about; Veilguard.

For the record, I’m glad this one came out. I didn’t have much hope in playing another Dragon Age game because I was too closed out from all the development parties hamfisting their projects out. Anthem was the last straw, and I stood corrected when this game came out the way that it did.

The arrogance in its demeanor to assume because it got an entire personality makeover that it redeems and earns its success. This could have been a whole different game, instead of banking on the established IP’s older success. Needless to say, it didn’t sell well, and it wasn’t because of the progressive ideologies, it was how the agenda was front faced and didn’t earn the merit due to all kinds of problems. Lackluster character development, lore changes, unappealing designs, terrible dialogue, story decisions, and somewhat meager gameplay. You have EA’s marketing to thank for the deception, but I wasn’t eating the cake.

But the reason I was elated about this game, because it told me all I needed to know about their upcoming Mass Effect game. You can’t have too many second chances, and this studio was like a zombie fitted with an auto-defibrillator and guiding hand to talk and walk like we would want it to. To end this, I find it weird that Darrah says EA doesn’t like remastering, they did that with the Command & Conquer games. I wouldn’t mind for Dragon Age: Origins, just don’t change anything unless you have to.

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Imagine having a job that controls a big hedge fund. You’re good at your job, you’ve worked absolutely to the teeth for it. You’ve gone far as to move your family three times to the rich suburbs of New York. What came out of it?

Cheating, divorce, midlife crisis, and finally your boss not liking the fact you got too good at your job, decides to fire you just so he could use the clause you violated to take your capital saved up. Teetering towards absolute bankruptcy, he does what he can to monetarily keep up with many of his expenditure. While the very fabric of his socio-economic status, and dead marriage, spits back at him.

Jon Hamm does the one understandable thing; he steals. Commits a number of burglaries, and grand larcenies, in scale no criminal could match up to. He had some help, but it’s clear that working for the underworld doesn’t have the kind of benefits and mutual relationship as the same he built in his safe, cushy job.

Think of every Hallmark show taking place in some upper middle class suburban town, and you have the showrunner of Banshee juxtaposing the gritty, cynical aspects of it. Deconstructing the facets of rich class, seeing them as highly flawed, and painting this picture that maybe it’s ok to pity them. But that’s no longer possible in this era of absolute unrest. The 99% just fed up with everything. It’s shown that the rich even deals with money problems all the time, so trying to stay afloat is such a challenge. No one’s happy, least of all our hedge manager.

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I’ve seen rat race movies more depressing than this, but I think it knows. The show never clearly tells you to take anyone’s side, which helps to digest the issues, plight, and clearly the high stakes at play for the protagonist himself. When he turns to the dark side, started enjoying this new life of robbing people, I almost giggled.

Rooting for him a bit, because he was understanding fully what was wrong with the system. His close friend in business even suggested he lawyer up against his ex-boss. Despite knowing the odds would be against him.

The same job that cost him his marriage, his relationship with his family, wife and kids, and despite all that, his strong characteristics are the sole thing that is keeping everybody checked out. As if they act like they don’t need him, but passively convey a dependency towards him. One man having to juggle so much expense, it’s clearly not healthy for anyone. The wife works as a therapist, as if that doesn’t cover anything close to their living expenses and kids school tuition. The whole strongman ideal is such a fragile thing in this modern dystopian capitalist hellhole.

While I have some colorful arguments against his wife, who not only cheated, but with his close friend and client, an NBA all-star. Acts like someone who has a victim complex, and clearly hasn’t figured out to deal with her afflictions. It gets easier to look at when the rest of the neighbors looks as almost as bad, if not worse, as they also cheat on their spouses or buy off SAT papers for their kids.

Jon Hamm bring his inner monologue to us audience, his character is straight out of a book, narrating every detail, helping us understand a lot of intricacies, showcasing why he’s so good in what he does, especially when it comes to the details. That he’s also a quick learner, only for him to turn a recently divorced mother who’s basically new money into his booty, before she does something to get him in far bigger trouble. I won’t spoil it here, but it’s peak anti-capitalism.

Brilliant satire, I wish more shows were like this. The whole world is collapsing, the recent news of the New York office shooting is one stark reminder.

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Ah yes, before he made Superman, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Suicide Squad. This guy was writing for Scooby-Doo or for Zack Snyder. In fact, he was pretty much a big comic nerd and film buff that understood what the audiences wanted but also into uncomfortable territories.

It’s more obvious if you’ve seen his filmography, pretty much few people talks about them regardless of their RT and Metacritic ratings. Yet, he got better at placing himself in the film industry right after his directorial debut with Slither. A body-horror comedy film starring Nathan Fillion. Honestly, after watching that in the late 2000s, I’m pretty sure he was the right choice for DC.

Let’s not talk about his brief controversies, we’ve all looked past that now. Twitter was a hellhole for a lot of people. Audiences back then wouldn’t have liked that version of someone who tapped seamlessly into the splatterpunk genre 20 years after, then makes an anti-hero film. All this before he gets GOTG to helm.

His screenwriting prowess is what got him so far, eventually directing a film has Hollywood caught up with him after the hit Marvel film, and with the respect he’s garnered, he’s no stranger to this newfound success.

Which is why, in all considerations taken, he should focus a lot more on TV series for the DC film universe. You’ve seen Peacemaker, not many of you have watched Creature Commando, and if you’re getting super invested into DCU, I advise you’d catch up quick because the character writing trumps over the silly comedy routine, lackluster animation budget, and those cheesy one-liners you’d kind of grin at.

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He’s not perfect, but nothing is, and I think Marvel has spoiled us into thinking that because of how grounded superheroes are and the world they’re based in, they should be made with quintessential character traits, outlandish lifestyles, Joss Whedon quick quip dialogues, and world ending situations where the characters die, then resurrect, comeback from a multiverse or survive through convenient plot armor moments. Marvel has easily gotten stale in less than a decade of its connected universe run.

Am I saying this to prop up DC? Why would I need to do that? Look at all the brilliant writers, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Frank Miller, and so on. Some of these guys looked at the odd characters that stood out aside Batman, Superman, and such the front page leads of DC Comics, and made them flourish.

Already proving that his ability to delineate the underdogs further as their story goes is a given track record that it works better for TV shows, and I believe he’s taking his focus on that with the following coming out slated for this year and next; Clayface, Lanterns, season 2 of Peacemaker. This would be a bold and smarter move to invest heavily into streaming shows, while also being in familiar grounds since WB decided to actively release animated films and series based on their DC IPs. A small bit of complaint would be the special effects.

If that isn’t consistently good, otherwise we all got ourselves a problem. Marvel had been slipping up on that for the past couple of years since Endgame. I’d love to be in this new era for DC to thrive. Marvel had their spotlight for too many years. Filled with dreadfully lackluster releases, sucking the joy out of anything. It could also help us move on from anything Snyder made since MoS.

I’ve sorry if you’re reading this as a Snyder fan, but you need to move on, and let the rest of us actually enjoy stuff. We had enough of bad CG mustache, Martha, and god, why didn’t he just save daddy Kent? Nobody could see past the storm!

They found a showrunner for Booster Gold, Starfire is getting her own animated series, as well as Blue Beetle and Green Lantern corp. And many more to come. They’re giving us two live action, one animated films, two TV and animated series each year. We might get a Justice League if all goes well in a few years after.

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I left off talking about how Microsoft has laid off or shifted development teams of several studios with little to no notice. While shifting focus on A.I., downsizing and using those A.I. tools as replacement. As well as making safe bets on established IPs by creating spin-offs and sequels.

Now we’ll be talking about the state of Game Pass, how it is effecting other developers’ ability to sell their games, and the cannibalization of Xbox first party titles. The push for a studio like Obsidian to continuously push out titles, and being too much on the comfort zone without trying anything new. Microsoft has over two decades of game development history, and all the issues they have has somehow always boiled down to corporate culture issues, and financial choices.

The topics given:

• Critical statements about Game Pass from ex-developers.

• Current games struggling with development and might also be facing cancellation in the future

• Analysis of Xbox’s management, their history, and what could be done to alleviate

Shortcuts

Xbox Game Pass was first announced in Feb 28 and launched on June 1, 2017, to high praise. It was lauded as a service that allowed people access to games without draining their wallet, and their first attempt at a Netflix type subscription service. It worked, while not getting high numbers, it slowly climbed to active 35 million users. But there were questions asked about its viability, because the thing Xbox was doing was releasing their first party titles day-one on the service. It affected launch sales, and instead of sales units, were replaced with active players.

Microsoft had enough money to pay off even third-party developers, making great deals with them to release their titles on day-one, too. Most of these games don’t always stay in the libraries, at some certain point, they go away. PC and Xbox Game Pass have different libraries too, with more volume on the console side. That make sense if they still want their systems to sell.

For the past 8 years, Microsoft had established close relations with Japanese publishers SEGA, and few other indie developers who have claimed a lot of success thanks to their service. But statistics has only proven this to be the case for bestsellers. Games that have success and enough players to warrant purchasing them.

Applied to both online and single-player games. The niche titles are sort of in a questionable position, it’s not that they don’t make their money from Game Pass, it all depends on the kind of deal Microsoft would make with them. Raphael Colantonio, ex-game director of Arkane Austin, has made multiple claims, calling it an unsustainable model of business. This idea that most of the games promoted will be low quality, rife with performance issues, and developers quickly pushing out unfinished products. Speaking of unfinished products, it would seem a rather facetious to make the claim now that all the first party games do sell well. People continue to discuss online just how much their games have sold or contributed to Game Pass, making money along with it. Games like Gears 5, Forza Motorsport, The Minecraft spin-offs, Doom: The Dark Ages, various first-party titles were reporting high player counts, no news outlet has pressed on to see any of these games were very lucrative with concrete data.

Technical problems include that some of the games sold in the Xbox store have a number of issues compared to the Steam release, take Death Stranding for example, failed save files where people lost their progress. Others being that some games have inferior builds where Steam gets their first, and they get theirs later on.

Microsoft does show a lot of support for various developers, both indie and being published by game companies. Specifically, from their ID@Xbox, and Developer Acceleration programs. While the company likes to boast about their profit margins from their gaming division, one could ask just what the cost factor Game Pass came into making that happen. Nonetheless, the model is still making headlines for how successful it has gotten. This even though prices have been raised, after Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the success has gone up drastically. This month alone, the list of releases are very enticing.

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Culture shift

Somewhere in 2021, it was reported that Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, made a choice between downsizing the gaming division and pursuing to expend it through big acquisitions. Namely, companies like Activision Blizzard King, Nadella told Phil Spencer he also wants Game Pass membership to reach around 100 million by 2030.

Five years in, and Game Pass only managed to get to 35 million. It doesn’t seem its growth rate is keeping up to expectations. It’s starting to show that they bit on more than they could chew, and seeing that ABK manages to pull 8 billion dollar annual revenue, he has made the choice to cut costs and focus on an 80 billion dollar AI restructure. Hence, explaining the massive layoffs.

What this led to, is a number of game developers dealing with low morale. Take Halo Studios for example, they’ve lost morale, not because of the layoffs but before the July job loss, Xbox didn’t seem happy with the new Halo game, and it made them nervous. One thing to note that after Bonnie Ross of 343 Industries left, Pierre Hintze took over, and Halo: Infinite was getting better content, leading to player increase. But the damage was done, the game wasn’t retaining big numbers, and so a studio rebrand and new project went forward. They also started relying on studio contracts instead. Now there’s talk of jumping ship, the focus on A.I. has also effected their work. With Microsoft implementing the tools to work on game development as well. Before this, the studio had layoffs in 2023 as well.

Another issue is the Contraband game, Xbox’s official YouTube channel has privatized the game trailer. This sparks discussion about its development state. Phil Spencer did visit the studio, but nothing has been heard yet. Avalanche Studios had introduced the IP from a July showcase in 2021. Though, this could also be a case of song license problem, which the trailer used.

Majority of games developed by various studios under Xbox Game Studios umbrella, has little update given, and was expected to be heard of from this year’s showcase. One could wonder if Gamescom this August could change that.

A little while ago, Outer Worlds 2 sequel was anticipating to be released at the cost of 80 USD price. They’ve rescinded that since, and decided to change it back to 70 after backlash, which does show Xbox still reacts to feedback from their base. This also leads to another aspect discuss of, which is Obsidian Entertainment. They are the publisher’s biggest success story. With countless game releases post-acquisition, their studio has grown massively since. Problem is, this year didn’t start well with Avowed, with very mixed reception no thanks to cut content, and a lot of design issues.

Even more so, leaks reveal of Bethesda plans to release multiple Fallout titles, one in particular being the sequel to Fallout: New Vegas. Obsidian Entertainment was promised some form of freedom once Outer Wilds 2 and Grounded 2 ships out. Will this change anything once the rumors are cleared out? PlayStation Plus to combat against Game Pass released subscription tiers with access to various game libraries and streaming for PS3 titles. PlayStation Plus members account to over 45 million. That is 33% higher than Game Pass, including Core.

Changes are needed

I want to preface something about Phil Spencer, and that is he did get Xbox back in track after the disastrous Xbox One launch. There was no way to salvage that against PlayStation 4 within the 8th gen run of that console. In fact, a lot of his ideas were great, and he has kept close touch with a lot of the playerbase, maintaining a greater sense of respect for a company that still hasn’t figured out how to work with developers without communication issues.

That being said, his legacy is now tarnished, and I still can’t believe after eleven years in the company, he is still floating around. It’s also hinted that president Sarah Bond will be his successor soon. As he takes his position of CEO for Microsoft’s gaming division. While that might be true, the issue still persist is the gap they now have with us and them. Matt Booty including.

Microsoft has had a large problem with their corporate culture. This goes way back during Bungie days, when the producers from Microsoft entered their developer’s circle. In fact, post Bungie split after Halo Reach, the relation between the people making games and managerial were creating a lot of rifts. Thus leading to their current state after the abysmal release of Destiny. The company wanted to expand further into Japan’s market, which they’ve failed with the OG console, and once the window was open for the Xbox 360, they’ve proved once again that they overcomplicate things, and led developers to leave their projects. After Hi-Fi Rush, I doubt anything’s worth salvaging afterward.

Whereas, Sony and Nintendo works a lot closer, and deliver truly on the quality end of things. Both of them had a large asking price for their games, however. But Xbox delivers free cloud service across all platforms, even going as far as being super prosumer by providing QoL services to go with. Window dressing for what is historically pointed out as having little to no exclusives. After the Xbox Series release, this would have fixed the issue, considering the older system was weaker than the PS4. But this more likely seems to be the edge only because of the amount of acquisitions they’ve made, far superseding Sony.

Phil should have worked out different plans to release better games, to fill up their libraries and pretty much show PlayStation after struggling to release more games due to development time and budget having increased significantly. Instead, they’re waving the white flag and are putting their known games out on the other platform. Funny thing, Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 sold even more than Death Stranding 2. All the talk about a handheld, and we only get a collab system with ASUS. Xbox is now dealing with the slow stench of death, and the responsible ones in charge to blame.

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Don’t get me wrong, I love playing a Soulslike or Soulsborne game, though my enthusiasm has waned a little due to saturation. Overstuffed with one release after another, and some looking like rehashes of ones you’re familiar with.

The industry has a weird way of rewarding certain type of games while overlooking those that deserve the acclaim and better reception. Look, we can’t have Monster Hunter be the only genre staple, I couldn't care less if they’re paying attention to how badly optimized their game was released and only begun taking measures fixing it. We could have had a Death Stranding BT hunting game (Kojima if you’re reading this) or that Wild Hearts that’s re-releasing for the Switch 2.

Just now, we got this Chinese release called Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. This is a cognate of another game called Wu Long: Fallen Dynasty. And irony at its best, they both have serious performance problems. The former basically ruining people’s GPUs after New World getting that publicity first.

Let me guess, timing dodges well, split second parrying time, farming for better weapons, brutal difficulty, predicting enemy attack patterns, and then add a number of unique things to spice it up, provide variety. Not even Prof. Utoniam would be this derivative, they’re not even bothered to try out.

A little while ago, I played First Berserker and while I thought it was fun; everything about it was too familiar. I just played Stellar Blade before it. Heck, I’ll go as far to say, Lies of P has pushed the benchmark for Korean releases. First Berserker was the one game I felt it came too late for the fanfare. Among other reasons.

Most of these games also uses the Unreal Engine 5, which shows people pushing to the ambitions don’t put the time to test and provide QA needed before release. Have you tried playing a Soulslike with bad performance? My 7800 XT can’t run Wukong that well, and now I tell people “no, I did not play the monkey stick beating game in Journey to the West story scenario”.

I don’t think FromSoftware wants to hold the crown or keep it under their fingertips, especially considering how much they’ve shifted the foundations and introduced newer concepts to keep it going strong. They are the progenitors of its existence, but only because they know what they’re doing. Not chasing trends, and I’m kind of fed up because it’s all too familiar right now. Triple A developers making action games embed these designs, but with slightly more variation. People are too comfortable with what’s been set, and that needs to change badly.

Maybe, maybe, it’s me. I can’t even get around to finishing Elden Ring or the DLC I just bought. Everybody is implementing these similar designs, the broad familiarity is making things feel stale for a number of reasons. Enough’s enough.

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Writer’s Note

If you’re considering checking Wild Hearts, do look at my article before looking into it to convince you why it needs a revival. I think it’s going to be worth it.

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Anyone here who has watched the latest South Park episode? Ever notice one particular thing that is so familiar, gave me a real whiplash of trauma flashbacks to CRT TV footages of bombings in Iraq, and majority muslim sentiments hating on the US. Boy, how time flies, and yet we’re back in full circle now.

Good thing I live in South Asia, but what access I got to watch Paramount+, gave me the best thing I’ve ever watched. History is being made here where the showrunners are forcing their company, after being paid over a billion dollars, to make 5 more seasons, to have another swing at the courts with the egomaniacal current sitting president, Donald Trump. This after a settlement with CBS was taken.

The episode starts off usual with Cartman playing his favorite radio show to make fun off, only to hear static, the abject atrocious blob that is Cartman goes through a melancholic existential crisis because the very thing he loved making fun of for being too progressive and inclusive, his grifter raison d'etre has ceased to exist.

Then comes Jesus, converting PC Principal back to a newborn Christian at school, and the rest of the town feeling morose, and sick of seeing Trump on TV. Goes to Garrison’s house, only to find him watching TV. Then they pop the question.

Who is that guy on the Oval Office? Queue the middle eastern song, the veneer of arrogance and self-conceitedness portrayed by his gaudy, self-portrayals in the hallways, and we finally see the return of Satan in his bedroom, and another unwelcomed guest, Trump’s tiny peepee. Hell, the voice dub sounds the same. The recurring joke that he’s acting like a middle eastern dictator, he replaced Saddam.

Of course, this was a daring jab against Trump, one that Matt Stone and Trey Parker had no problem going forward with considering their history. The show also has made me wonder about its current relevancy, it’s no longer the early 2000s. Monoculture is kind of dead nowadays, and people are super up-to-date.

But a billion dollar deal, to make 5 seasons, what were they expecting from this? Well, maybe it’s this, the absolute turning point where the TV show tries its best to speak to its audience by freely doing what they know best; making fun of celebrities, and getting away with it. Also being prescient of culture shifts, like Kanye West.

Cartman’s ‘WOKE IS DEAD’ T-shirt is symbolic of the rethread of older times, where hard leaning Christians control the wellbeing and demise of the majority of women’s reproductive rights. Donald Trump’s constant failure to run his office and the Epstein debacle, the situation in the Middle East with Israel fighting with everyone. People in States protesting on large. 2000s America is alive and well. It’s also tiring, exhausting dealing with the oppressive state of the world and asking for a big change.

If we’re going to be stuck dealing with the fat orange tan man, might as well continue to make fun of him for the next 4 years. Also, I’m too old to be thinking about Creed, Avril Lavigne, and Sum 41 now. Even moved on from Foo Fighters, and my favorite band, Nine Inch Nails are too busy with movie scores.

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Somewhere in 1984, a phenomenon happened. Giving birth to a new genre that would not only capture, but poignantly capture, the bleaks landscape of our world if corporations left society to fend for themselves. A book called Neuromancer.

Others would say the genre sort of predates that with Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. But the proper blueprint to it was William Gibson’s lauded work, which didn’t pick up on the mainstream until the 90s. Then something else happened, a spiritual successor named Snow Crash released in 1992.

Now, I did read Neuromancer, but pretty much all the ideas seem like smorgasbord influences of proto-punk with programming, and gun culture. The stakes were high, serious life and death situations, sometimes tapping into the philosophical end of things before eventually ending things with open-minded discussions. Snow Crash I’ve heard is more meta with humor as a way to deconstruct the genre itself.

Fast-forward a couple of years, that became the era of The Matrix to whatever was in the mid 2000s and 2010s. Harkening back to the proto-stage of Cyberpunk literature, reaching its post-modern stage to sort of what we’re seeing in the modern era.

As for me, I had a real hyper fixation on anything of that sorts. Call it a fascination from when I was 14, and watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex from broadcast TV. Following with anything from online streaming. Armitage III, Psycho-Pass, and so on. It was like smart writers used it as a leeway to provide edgy aesthetics while doing social commentary on a number of things.

Like the social credit systems created by a collective of intellects, identity problems, how cybernetics separates flesh and soul, their holistic being through the machine, most of Japanese works did little to criticize corporate exploits and unchecked capitalism, and somewhat kind of embraces it in a way.

Western works on the other hand, and I’m talking about various works of art, that does attack establishments, like Total Recall, Bladerunner, Johnny Mnemonic, and finally being more at its ubiquitous state; video games.

It all started with Deus Ex, a somewhat lukewarm release that became a cult-classic much later on, before seminally evolving to a more serious game that uses strong aesthetics. While pushing many subtextual elements about the bleak, dilapidated state of the world, most of the problems societal and regarding humanity as a whole.

The last two games, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, cajoles the mainstream audience into the horrifying aspects of digital surveillance, information wars, and the advent of prosthetics, scrutinizing through the moral gray areas.

Would have been nice if a certain Japanese publisher didn’t meddle around, cut off the content plan for the last game, and left the series at development hell. Now let’s finally talk about Cyberpunk 2077. You want to talk about actual mainstream success? Let’s talk about the one that is a poster everywhere.

And it’s not the fault of the game, it does all the things its prior contemporaries have done, but somehow falls sort of short on delivering. Instead, becoming a thing to strongly fetish over. Though, that is also a by-product of the post-modern world where capitalism managed to seep every essence of humanity, and strong identity by making people work hard for popularity, high income, status quo, access, and to some degree, a form of godhood by controlling the bureaucracy governing its masses.

I guess we all need to go back to the basics at times, understand what made them standout so much. Our ability to critically access media, and rely on good narratives, are slowly fading due to constant reliance on short-form contents and dopamine feeds.

One day, I’m hoping to uncover more of this stuff once I’ve gotten over my health issues. I want to explore so many uncovered areas by the mainstream media. Cyberpunk genre is used as a canvas to make meta-commentary on so many social ills that plague us in the modern landscape. Maybe having the simpler life is where it should be, instead of being super dozed by the simulacrum.

Maybe the genre could evolve, heck, it’s so malleable for anyone, even going as far as being complacently a subgenre for other Sci-Fi works. But frankly speaking, I wish it did more. If you want me to be specific, look at the rise of defense companies like Palantir, and Anduril Industries. The template was already set.

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So I’ve been playing Death Stranding 2 almost non-stop. And let me tell you, it’s a very MENIAL game. So was the first title, but here, it’s almost as if things feel a bit too breezy, and just couch comfort for my experience.

DS1 was a challenging game with so much peril thrown at you. The strenuous task of going from geological positions and their establishments, one another for delivering packages. You deal with otherworldly beings that are trapped in this void between the real world and the afterlife. Called The Beach.

If the terrain ahead is tricky, you just build stuff around it like bridges, charging stations, umbrella roofs against Timefall, as well as new toys to play with like Beach Jumpers, Chiral Bridges to walk over cliffs, Jump Ramps, Hovercoffin, multiple new weapons, and so on. It’s an ad nauseam of things added. Did you know you can parry attacks? I bet you didn’t know you can do the last one in the first game.

The OG and sequel on their own are tremendous packages. But where the first game was about humanity’s need to reconnect, the second one is about picking up after itself, and dusting off. Just something about the lackluster last arc, and revelations seems to have thrown me off here, wasn’t Kojima known to be crazier than that?

There’s a recurring motif that ties to the previous game. Something about the past not having moved on, and feeling like more answers are still there. I have played through hours and hours of the game to get to those cutscenes and story parts.

And it feels really stretched out. I’m thankful for the PCCs in the mid-act that ‘bridges’ unexplorable areas. Heck, there’s also the part where you can go full commando like Big Boss in MGSV through band encampments and ridiculous assortments of weapons and gadgets. The BTs are neutered and no longer scary.

This game has a literal anime-inspired ship that swims in Tar, and teleports everything, including my truck, to any facility. Like, convenience is a bigger part of this journey, but it has its own challenges and perils here and there. The sandbox feels more accessible for almost anyone now, and learning curve is not the issue either.

I like the characters, Tarman, Rainy, Tomorrow, Sam meets all different walks of life from one isolated continent, the FedEx Australia experience, and the way they help you by giving you gifts of new things to try out, and their upgrades even. Somewhere I start becoming more lost in that aspect where you play the game more for the labor, rather than pushing through it to get to the incredible story parts.

It’s as if Kojima figured out what makes a game fun again, he took a very strange concept, fixed its edges, and even streamlined it too.

It’s shinier, moldable, and overall fun to play around with. This is a triple A game, way more scaled up and ambitious. While I do wish the story really went somewhere exciting, maybe just accepting that it’s tying loose ends up is an acceptable token to the greater whole of the package itself. Will there even be a Death Stranding 3?

All I can say is, this feels like the other last part of Sam’s journey that was probably supposed to end in small content form, which early rumors did indicate it was planned as a DLC, but I guess they changed their mind. I’m still playing the game, also thanks to its robust social system, making me help out more than usual.

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I’m seeing so many outlets in Substack defending Xbox’s situation, making the alternative case for argument’s sake. But we all know just how badly they’ve screwed up. I’ve been giving them the benefit of the doubt for many years, no more.

My first article will deal with the first two key topics around the publisher’s current situation:

• Studios impressing Xbox management after their pre-alpha builds were played, but being let go later on.

• Their reprioritizations on established IPs, and Microsoft’s A.I. research.

Part 2 will deal with the following:

• Critical statements about Game Pass from ex-developers.

• Current games struggling with development and might also be facing cancellation in the future

• Analysis of Xbox’s management, their history, and what could be done to alleviate

False expectations

Somewhere at Zenimax Online in March, the studio that created Elder Scrolls Online had a new game that received quite the buzzword in-house. Xbox leadership like Phil Spencer played the demo, and liked it so much, Matt Booty had to take the controller. This was a new passion project created by industry veteran, Matt Firor.

Everything that was established so far: the lore, art work, concepts, and gameplay loop, identified as a Sci-Fi noir, with the expectations that it could come out somewhere in 2028. In July, the employees who worked on the game had their Slack accounts removed from access. Mass panic ensued within and development of Blackbird ceased. Due to having unionized, some will still be Zenimax employee but stuck with work they aren’t interested in. Matt Firor left his job afterward.

What’s even more grave, Romero Games was receiving funding for their next title, which Xbox pulled from after a day they meet up. The game is now open to bid for any other publisher, but doubts are cast about its future now.

Microsoft had laid off 9000 people just this month alone. Studios that were affected are The Initiative, Halo Studios, Turn-10, Rare, King, multiple studios that worked on Call of Duty, as well as aforementioned Zenimax. A year ago, Hi-Fi Rush developer, Tango Softworks faced layoffs, the studio was almost shut down before being purchased off by Krafton. 2 years ago, Microsoft highly praised the game’s success.

Different priorities

Just recently, Microsoft put out a hiring Ad for their graphics department, using a terrible cartoon image created with A.I. As if they weren’t hiding the fact that they’re relying a lot of their work on generation software.

Ex-developers at King who were laid off cited the reason being that they were becoming replaced my A.I. tools that they’ve very much helped train. While morale drains across the company’s entire portfolio of studios, they are instead laying people off to please shareholders and increase their stock prices.

Before this, Muse was introduced. A solution to Microsoft’s cloud gaming, which is touted as a replacement to hardware based rendering. Despite others arguing that it works as a tool to provide quick assistance. The end result of this coming out is 144p, blurry and non-cohesive footage. What we’re seeing is it taking concepts from already established titles before and mixing them up.

In the last Xbox Showcase, the company revealed they’re working with ASUS on a handheld system which highly features Xbox Game Pass. Though people knew this was coming, what they’ve considered the whole time was Xbox working on their own handheld system. Seems to be put into the backburner instead. Which brings another question, is Microsoft actually bringing a new Xbox in the next-generation, or are they giving up entirely? Calling it defeat, like SEGA did?

It makes sense, their stock has been going up whenever they get involved with anything A.I. related. Their net worth has come close to 4 trillion dollars, something Nvidia already crossed. They’re putting most of their eggs in that basket. But where does that leave morale? Which has gone down to the lowest it’s ever been.

Right after the Zenimax staff shuffling, there are now rumors about multiple Fallout projects being in the work, with the sequel to Fallout 4 being finally confirmed. Would this explain why Blackbird got cancelled?

Sources for research:

• Xbox Executives Were Blown Away by an Upcoming Game. Then They Canceled It.

• Microsoft cancels Perfect Dark reboot, shuts down studio

• Romero Games reportedly met with Microsoft just a day before the publisher pulled funding for the studio, and there was 'no mention' of the decision that put over 100 people out of work

• All The Xbox Games Canceled And Studios Closed In Microsoft's Latest Mass Layoffs

• Xbox graphics department lead puts out cringe-worthy hiring post... with AI graphics

• King Staff Laid Off By Microsoft Set To Be Replaced By AI Tools They Helped Train, Report Suggests

• Muse: Before You Tweet

• Rumor: Xbox's Own Handheld is 'Essentially Canceled'

• Microsoft shares $500M in AI savings internally days after cutting 9,000 jobs

• Multiple Fallout Projects Reportedly in the Works, Including the One ‘Everyone Wants’

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So, you might have noticed that my profile picture is a little peculiar. Unless, of course, you’ve gathered the hint that this is from a particular, unique game released by an eccentric game developer named Hideo Kojima.

The time I’ve spent on Death Stranding 2 has been quite the joyride. This is an improved sequel in almost every aspect. I also have the feeling that I might actually buy this in the future, just being lent a copy for now so that I can share some screenshots of this weird pose I’m obsessed with the Tri-Cruiser. Enjoy!

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We are going to talk about Superman, who isn’t? The new man of steel replaced the gritty monotone colors with ridiculous contrast, and more shine to make it so saccharine. And you’ll love it, why? Because this is what Superman is supposed to be.

I think James Gunn mostly nailed it, the earnest, down to earth, and humane comic book hero doesn’t let anything budge his principles and strong beliefs. Even if something that’s close to him by chance might have made his mind. I can’t discuss that part, but somewhere in the future, I might.

All the negative attention it kept getting from the snyderbots and alt-rights only overshadow it’s actually problems. Like the inconsistency in lore, the humor overtaking important aspects of the film, and underwhelming CGI.

BUT…make no mistake, there was still plenty to love about this movie. The side characters have depth, and amazing moments. Lex Luthor, being the egomaniacal genius that he is, encapsulates his presence. The obvious political allegory relating to the military occupation by a force backed by higher power, which is impeded upon by Superman’s absolute sense of good and justice.

Krypto, Mr. Terrific, and Guy Gardner steals the show at times. Oh, also Jimmy Olsen. We got our perfect Jimmy Olsen. Lois Lane’s character is done right, but I want to see more between him and Clark Kent. His foster parents being the source and proof of his good boy intentions was the best choice.

I know skeptics expect more, not this film playing safe to properly establish the other characters and their own adaptations. For me, this hit all the boxes. This is a Superman we needed. Especially being somewhat based on Morrison’s All-Star run.

Jam packed with set pieces, good cinematic moments, and obvious contrast to Snyder’s edgier and bleak tone. The lore choices Gunn has made might make people question things, but he’s done a way better job than DCU, and Warner Bros could have delivered. Him being in charge of DC film universe was the right call.

Now we have a setup for what’s really to come, especially after the news that Peacemaker season 2 is coming out a month after. It’s a good time to eat for a DC fan. Unless you’re still stuck in the Snyderverse void.

Though, I have some small nitpicks and that’s around Metamorpho and Hawkgirl, just some issues around how they’re introduced. There’s also the Cinematography. But I digress, it’s a bit over a 7/10 for me. There’s room for improvement.

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It’s understandable that if a TV show you’re so well familiar with, feels drastically different from how you remembered it before. Due to multiple factors like different showrunners, people writing the screenplay and directing. Circumstances leading it to change aspects of it relating to theme, storytelling, and filmography.

In Rick and Morty’s case, it’s the departure of Justin Roiland that has people really incensed despite accusations drawn against him, plus the truth being he wasn’t really involved with the show much outside of voice dubbing.

Honestly speaking, him leaving was the best thing. The show started picking up from season 7, now it’s season 8 and all the better reason it has for existing is being Adult Swim’s smash hit sitcom. Much like the Simpsons is. At least it is enjoyable, and not downright dreary with edge lord panache. Hell, even the jokes here are better.

The latest episode of season 8 had James Gunn and Zack Snyder doing a voice-over of themselves, taking jabs at comic book movies, nerd culture, Hollywood, and the self-deprecating jokes around the upcoming Superman film. This had moments where it peaked in comedy, I was laughing so hard. Which I haven’t done in a long time for a show that’s about edging while being depressed all the time.

Showrunners, yes, including Roiland, stretched this so far as it managed to keep its sole existence because of the memes and satirical social commentary. Slowly and surely also making fun of the by-large incel fanbase and in your face being meta about everything, while reeling in more audience elsewhere.

Even if the show lost its viewership, it’s not because of this controversy. No, it’s been on the decline since season 6. People got old, no one wants to cause controversy, and drama over it no more. Remember that Szechuan sauce incident? Move on like everybody else has, I saw the early review bombings. I know you’re there.

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In what seems to be real good news in the harsher world of proliferating growth of A.I., sometimes fighting fire with fire works, and that’s for using A.I. to spot A.I. based content. Now, it’s stopping crawlers from copying our contents.

Think yourself of having a respectful business by your website, then you see high traffic, and you’re thinking that maybe your business is experiencing uptick. It’s not, this is coming from the web crawlers that find content in order to beef up their training module, then unleash hell through recurring plagiarism.

Cloudflare now creates permission requests anytime one enters a site. Any company that operates in security have tried to fix the qualms of companies rampaging through data that isn’t theirs.

Sure, some people believe it’s too little too late, but the unchecked behaviors and high in numbers have left people with little options to do something about them. I don’t run a fancy website, but I’ve heard a million different stories from my friends over how their businesses were terribly effected.

This company already has a VPN service that is totally free, even with a paid premium tier, overall does better than anything I’ve used. I hope Cloudflare lives on longer, probably outlasting us in the near future. Godspeed and god bless you.

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Quick disclaimer. This is happening because Trump finally finalized his tariff with Asian countries. Somehow this has affected Nintendo’s final pricing for the US market, and the sad feeling is that, it’s going to cost probably over 500 USD. This isn’t just about the base model, it’ll probably go for the game cartridges and accessories too.

Yet, I feel the need to tell you why you shouldn’t buy the Nintendo Switch 2 in the first place. Everything about it is wrong, the double pay for online services, and exuberantly high game prices. They don’t depreciate, either.

Oh believe me, I would love to play the upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza. I grew up playing the likes of Red Faction Guerrilla, and Mercenaries. Destructive environment is so much fun. Unfortunately, this, and the recently released Mario Kart World, falls under that 80 dollar price tag. The sheer arrogance, especially for a system weaker than the PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Not to mention you can’t own half the games when you buy them physically because games preservation is a thing that’s dying. Another movement we need to lean towards. Subpar accessories like the camera.

Also, the handheld market will easily destroy this system once the new RDNA 4 based systems are out. There’s a whole market offering Windows based handheld. There’s even this, like some DS Frankenstein. Hell, the Steam Deck is a solid option. Nintendo waited 8 years, only surely to be wrecked afterward.

Unfortunately, there’s also a fat chance that Switch 2 will persevere. It already sold over 5 million units, people have crazy money to spend. Seriously, it’s so petite regarding raw performance. No amount of AI upscaling will fix that in the long run.

What’s crazier? It’s priced at less than 350 USD in Japan. This one is only language locked to Japanese. Though, let’s just say I have a feeling some people will be able to bypass that. I look forward to the jailbreak scene rising up, and we’ll see emulators probably coming back. What a time to be alive.

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Let me tell you guys a story, there was a time when Battlefield Bad Company 2 came out, some people couldn’t afford the game. This was back in like 2012 for me. Personally, this and Battlefield 4 were the peak games of the franchise.

But what Tunngle did, was first introduced P2P for all players with privatized servers. Most of them were in Russia, Europe or Asia. That is, until EA DDoS attacked the crap out of it, destroying any chance of it coming back. My brother even took my computer in order for me to focus on my studies. Fast-forward today, games like The Crew when its servers are shutdown, it became useless to anyone with a licensed copy.

Another game I love to talk about is Vampires: The Masquerades - Bloodlines. When this first came out, it was buggy as hell. Not to mention, it was also pretty janky as hell. But this was leaps and bounds ahead of what came out at the time.

If it wasn’t for the modding community, people would’ve a hard time revisiting it. Thankfully, not only were there fixes, but tweaks and added extra content to elevate its status as a cult classic. Base game is already dirt cheap in Steam.

Nowadays, if most games that are online are straight up abandoned, the publisher will straight up shut it down. If you own a copy of the game, you’ll start and get to the main menu before starting, there’s no point since dead servers meaning you cannot use its online components. Wouldn’t it just make sense if they left it to our devices?

A little over a year ago, a YouTuber by the name of Accursed Farms created an initiative called “Stop Killing Games”. Where he’d urged the courts in various countries and unions like the EU to make laws that would let players do exactly that. This was a reaction from The Crew’s cancellation, and I’d say go for it.

People didn’t care….at first. Till one particular figure named Pirate Software got some drama stirred up regarding it. One thing came to another, everybody started talking about it and as of now, signature reached past 1 million in less than a week.

This is what we needed, an industry revolution. I know it’s a few steps too small, considering the pushback we’ll be getting. But our voices are being heard, finally. If you’re afraid that you’re losing money because of this, then maybe your company needs to reevaluate some things, and that the industry is plagued by your problems.

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Remember Palmer Luckey? The weird guy who promoted his VR headset and worked with Facebook before he donated to a pro-Trump group and got fired. Wait, let me rephrash that. Remember Peter Thiel?

Ah, this conversation is not going to be super relaxing. Especially when the future seemingly looks bleak with everybody kissing Trump’s foot. I’m looking at you, Zuck. Palmer Luckey and some guy from Palantir created Anduril Industries.

A company that works with the military, providing high surveillance equipment, networking software, robotics, all of it running in automaton. Think of it as that Black Mirror episode where all the robot dogs almost drove mankind to extinction. Times five with all the other stuff. This guy is gearing us up for a “better future”.

The company has received so many investors, already passing evaluation worth 10 billion dollars. Thanks to fundraising from our poster figure for political meddling, Peter Thiel. Right now, both are releasing their own new digital bank called Erebor. I can hear the LOTR fans facepalming from this. Now, I know I talk about video games, but I’ve gone through enough of media to know the signs.

Lot of doomsday vibes, and it’s not looking too good when two of the worst people you could imagine working for the bigger Cabal of anarcho-warlord-capitalists. This has convinced me not to buy any of the Meta headsets.

I’ll take my chances with other brands. Which I’m sure are trying every new possible way to enhance the VR experience, instead of commercializing it because of Facebook and lack of data privacy to this. Man, these billionaires are a real headache to deal with at times. This is why DeGoogling and Microsoft BDS movements picked up.

You think siding with Elon will help? Nah, who am I kidding? Even if the Cabal ditched the guy, there’s no way we’re letting him flock to our good sides. No amount of goodwill can change that. He’s done for.

Increase in ICE raids, harsher processing for immigrants, mass surveillance, with funding from other services being siphoned to this neo-fascist agenda. I think it’s time we change who we are. Retrace back, shedding off their hold on us. The more we continue, the longer we’ll suffer. These companies don’t deserve our money.

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I love games that’s never afraid to hit the hardest points regarding human conflict, and emotional dramas. Especially the ones from East Europe lately, damn Kingdom Come Deliverance II really hitting it hard lately.

Which sets up for a game called The Alters real nicely afterward, from the same Polish studio that brought us Frostpunk. Soon as it was booted up, I was presented with two great things: amazing visuals, and the fact that my PC wasn’t struggling to run it. I had this maxed out with my 7800 XT at 1440p.

Picture this, you’re sent on a mining mission to some unknown planet to retrieve a rare material called Rapidium. But, on landing on the planet, your crew somehow dies, all except you. You’re stuck on the ship alone, having to do everything from maintenance, chores, exploring, mining, etc.

You have no other options but to take the suggestion during a magnetic storm from the radio about testing something called The Womb. Creating a sheep out of a DNA seed, the next step was creating Jan Dolsky’s clone with a QC.

Here, ensues a lot of personal struggles, yours and your duplicates. Big difference is their life paths and stories are adjusted entirely different from yours, thus shaping them to be an entirely other person with specific roles. First one would be the Technician. He’s abrasive, temperamental, and judges everything I do. After some breakthrough, we agree to work along together.

From here on out, is where you figure out who you really are. These Alters are Jan, representing everything from his flaws, potentials, and alternative futures. Cosmically penetrating through the consciousness of his mind.

Speaking of the Cosmic, there are all kinds of weird discoveries you’ll make as well. While mining resources, organics, and more importantly, Rapidium. Every choice you make shapes where the game’s story goes, each junction by design creating a path for another to make. It’s both heavy on the survival, adventuring, and storytelling aspects.

I made the mistake of not building enough Rapidium Arcs to transport all of it out. Which kind of led to a crisis on Earth. But hey, at least my brothers made it out, we sang together, we went through near life and death, helped each other out in our time of need, and eventually getting to leave a planet that has a scorching hot sun.

Check out the game, it’s on sale in Steam off 10%, bundled with Expedition 33.

I’ve gotten around to watching the highly anticipated (well, for the few zombie fans vaguely interested) sequel. Got to say, it doesn’t pull its punches, and often times aim for the left field so hard, it kind of fumbles.

There’s issue with the characterizations, tonal inconsistencies, plot structure, and dear god that cliffhanger ending that ties it all. I’m not writing this film off, however, because if there’s any takeaway from watching Danny Boyle’s filmography in the past years, it’s that his style catches on real quick. And I mean that in a good way.

28 Years Later takes place pretty much back in the UK, well in the Scotland Highlands to be exact. The lush, green forests, open wide fields, and small little kids watching Teletubbies before the eventual chaos and horror ensues and then snap back to the modern age. Where the world has moved on, and Paris wasn’t invaded. I was quite shocked from the vignettes of Weeks Later that the ending got retconned.

But all of this is beside the point, because what I really wanted to talk about was what Danny Boyle and Alex Garland tried to express in this quasi look at men vs nature. This movie isn’t an easy watch, a lot of fast cuts with killshots and dripping bloody, unsettling images, lots of anxiety inducing scenes, and wait, did I just watch a dude get his entire head pulled out of his spine?

I was watching so many new things introduced, like bloaters that crawl, infected which eats animals to stay alive, and so on. Then it hit me, I remember reading somewhere about Garland basing the first film on Resident Evil 1.

Seems to me that he wanted to expand his world that he created with Boyle, and while I get the creative freedom to do it. The results to me seem somehow really mixed, because people wanted another 28 Days Later. Personally, they took a chance with something different from what’s usually established. Because it is their film, after all. The risks have taken, while leaving so much of it open to interpretations.

Creating fascinating ideas while not really putting a label on those, and yeah, they’ve also confirmed it’s a zombie film as these are now called zombies by the outsiders. Including navy scouts from the EU, maintaining the quarantine. What I expected was something to terrify, I never expected to laugh, and find light at the end of things.

The main characters are both father and son duo, who had to separate because, the plot needs agency, and a kid leaving the safe island with his mom to help deal with her illness is a pretty good one to work with.

Child goes through a tremendous character development, heck he even makes a Swedish friend out of the crashed navy soldiers, who informs him and us the audience that the British didn’t get to have smartphones and all that. Before one of the big infected rips his head off, literally.

It’s a new world, the logic and rules are now different. And it’s no longer trying to be an enigma or something nebulous to ogle at because it has transcended, grown as a would-be franchise with so many stories to tell. After that ridiculous flamboyant ending I got, sure as hell better make the sequel work, guys. Net positives; coming of age film, stylistic shots, great tension, and absolutely great premise for the first half.

Drawbacks? Everything afterward, it feels as if disjointed and just flying off the handle a little too much. I have so many questions, and very few answered. I think in spirit, this was a 28 Days Later film. People be remiss at times about it.

Since they need to assume it’s a lot about societal decay, how without order in the face of the unrelenting force of nature makes life too cruel, and that man needed to get past his early conformity, and embrace the beast within to survive. Truth be told, it was always about how British society sucks when things left unchecked, and that the exceptionalism isn’t necessary for Britain to survive. Well, not always, says the pragmatic South Asian whose ancestors were under British rule once.

But I will say this, I do want these guys to experiment more. Maybe do a better job this time, and I hope Bone Temple delivers. However, it feels criminal to mimic the work of John Murphy. Now that I think about it, I missed his scores so much. He was more than perfect to score the sequel, and yet, nowhere to be heard.