The Reticule

It’s been a wild week in the games industry, can’t we have a calm one once in a while? We’ve had EA publicly state that Battlefield 2042′s sales were “disappointing” while distancing themselves from NFTs. There was a crazy 24-hour period where Worms developer turned indie publisher Team 17 announced a MetaWorms NFT project, then quickly scrapped it.

Perhaps one of the biggest events this week was Sony taking what I think was a defensive move with the purchase of Destiny developer, Bungie. In the announcement from Sony Interactive Entertainment’s boss Jim Ryan it was confirmed that Bungie would be part of the PlayStation family, while remaining independent and able to continue multi-platform development and self-publishing. For me, this is Sony taking a significant ex-Microsoft asset off the board, preventing Microsfot making any further moves to bolster their portfolio.

Will we see any further moves from Sony and Microsoft to buy-up other companies? Maybe not.

Will we see further developers talk up NFT plans, only to quickly abandon them? More than likely.

Now, on with Our Week in Games.

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This week saw the release of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, with reviews generally praising the revamped mechanics in a series which had become somewhat stagnant, but with many criticisms of the technical attributes. I’ve barely started my journey with Arceus, and while I can’t pretend that it’s breaking any new ground visually, it has a painterly style reminiscent of Breath of the Wild. Performance might be where Arceus will struggle, but for now, playing handheld I don’t have much to critique.

Let us know in the comments what you think of Arceus, meanwhile hit the break to check out what Our Week in Games has all about.

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Microsoft are buying up Activision Blizzard. Just like that, for nearly $70bn Microsoft will own the IP for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Spyro amongst numerous others. It’s a massive industry shaking move, one that will have unforseen ramifications in over the course of the 12-months or so that we’ll be waiting until the acquisition is complete. It’s an event which has already led to $20bn being wiped off value of Sony, but when you’re talking about such sums which have little to no bearing on profit and loss it can all become a bit of a blur.

Needless to say, there are plenty of questions about what this means for console exclusives, the future of Game Pass and whether this was just a route into the mobile market by way of King. What was most striking about this news though was that Microsoft still expect to be the third largest player in the games industry behind Tencent and Sony. Part of me wonders whether this is truly a play at challenging Sony for the console marketplace, or whether there’s a bigger picture at play to further strengthen the wider corporate interests of Microsoft when pitched against Amazon which is making its own moves into the games industry.

Time will tell, but be sure to let us know your thoughts on all this in the comments.

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The Steam Autumn Sale lumbers into life like a predictably re-animated zombie corpse that is clumsily foreshadowed at the start of an 80’s B-movie. Or something.

Gone are the days when my wallet would be denuded by the wares on display- 33% off here, 50% off there, even- some say in hushed whispers… 75% off in some cases. Yet, I find myself resisting and not forking out- despite a number of games from my wishlist being on (rather good) sale. This coupled with Black Friday and the cornucopia of tech-deals available (Elgato have some particularly good deals if you’re that way inclined good reader) means the pre-Xmass assault on our finances has a worryingly co-ordinated feel to it.  But we here at Reticule Towers believe in you, you’ve got this.

Perhaps the sale is part of the reason Steam recorded 27 million concurrent users recently; a record that is slightly mind boggling to think about.

In more gaming-gaming news; Battlefield 2042 has had a…. wobbly start. The predictable (though still painful) server issues aside, players are reporting stability issues with a LOT of rubber-banding, very suspect hit-box registration, and bugs a plenty. My current favourite being the ability to affix a grappling-hook to a cloud of smoke… or even tornadoes.

You spin me right round, baby right round.

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FIFA the governing body of world football, and FIFA the football series from EA have long gone hand-in-hand, with many probably only knowing of it as the game. But it appears the governing body and EA are heading for divorce. FIFA are looking to diversify their licensing agreements, while EA are actively discussing renaming the franchise. The game series itself is coming under increasingly heavy criticism for the continued use of loot boxes in the Ultimate Team mode.

Wesley Yin-Poole on Eurogamer has a fantastic interview with EA Chief Experience Officer Chris Bruzzo. It’s an insightful interview and shows that EA will continue to use loot boxes in Ultimate Team as part of the FIFA franchise, but if the franchise was to change name, I wonder whether EA would change their approach and introduce monetisation more akin to a season pass.

While we ponder the future of one football franchise, its worth thinking about the disastrous launch that eFootball has had. The successor to Pro Evo Soccer, this one has gone down like a lead balloon, even if the live service football theory might be one EA follow themselves. Time will tell!

In the meantime, hit the jump for Our Week in Games. …

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The big news last week was Nintendo surprise dropping a new Nintendo Direct. Those rumours of a Switch Pro still aren’t turning into anything substantial, but Nintendo did reveal that in late October they will be releasing an “expansion” to their Nintendo Online offering. This will bring a range of N64 and Sega Mega Drive titles to the service.

For some serious analysis of this change, take a look at this piece on GI.biz then hit the break for Our Week in Games.

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Well, that was a lot of drama wasn’t it.

CEO of Tripwire Entertainment making public comments on the Texas Supreme-court ruling (preventing women from having autonomy over their own bodies), and then paying the inevitable price when he ‘moved on’ from the role shortly after. One can’t help but wonder, given how often this sort of thing happens, why those who decry games for being “political” are the same people making comments like this. Hopefully the damage to the developers under the Tripwire umbrella wasn’t too severe and we can all just move along now.

In other news the Knights of the Old Republic remake has been announced to much squeeing (it’s a word) on the internet. Interestingly Bioware, the original games developers, appear to not be involved. Watch this space for more on this as and when we get it, but colour us very excited.

Feel free to make the lightsaber swoosh/vroom noise in your head now.

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One hundred and fifty of these wonderful Our Week in Games features. We hope you have enjoyed them over the years!

This week saw a remaster of Quake appear, and we do of course recommend you read these words from Ross about that.

Now, hit the break for more of Our Week in Games.

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