Blog Archives
GOG Introduces a Refund Policy for Games You Can’t Run
Slowly but surely, refunds are becoming more common in the games retail business. First, EA announced the refund policy for their digital games on Origin. Now, GOG is getting in on the action with a new policy that allows for refunds of games that won’t work on your PC.
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The PS4 Has Already Outsold the Wii U in the UK
I don’t want to sound like I’m slagging off Nintendo but this news should really worry some people back in Japan. In its first weekend on the market in the UK, the PlayStation 4 is already the top-selling next-gen console having beaten both the Xbox One and Wii U.
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Ashes Cricket 2013 Cancelled After Being Released
We’ve heard of games being cancelled at all stages of their development cycle but this might be the first time I’ve heard of a game being killed by a publisher after its retail release.
Publisher 505 Games has withdrawn the recently released Ashes Cricket 2013 from sale on Steam as a result of numerous bugs and glitches that render the game nearly unplayable.
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Ubisoft Calls Beyond Good & Evil a Mistake
I’ve often lamented the lack of new IPs and new ideas coming out of the games industry’s big studios and news like this doesn’t help matters. In an interview with Games Industry, creative director of the upcoming Child of Light, Patrick Plourde, said that when he was pitching the game to Ubisoft, they told him that making Beyond Good & Evil was a mistake.
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Assassin’s Creed 4 Expected to Sell Less than AC3
If you’re an Ubisoft investor (or just a massive Ubi fan), the bad news just keeps coming. On the same conference call in which Ubisoft announced the delays of both Watch Dogs and The Crew, Ubisoft also announced that they were expecting sales for their flagship game Assassin’s Creed IV to be less than Assassin’s Creed III.
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EA Sports & Origin Boss Andrew Wilson Named EA CEO
There aren’t that many surprises in the games industry any more but EA certainly caught people off guard with their choice of a new CEO. Andrew Wilson, the current Executive Vice President of EA Sports and EA’s Origin digital distribution client and store, has been named Electronic Arts’ new Chief Executive Officer.
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EA Says They’re All-In on Free-to-Play and Out of Offline Experiences
Before a panel at Fan Expo about the state of the gaming industry (my column on my experience is coming soon), someone said that free-to-play was the future of gaming industry for the foreseeable future. I thought about it and disagree. I think Titanfall eschewing the traditional single-player campaign for multiplayer matches bracketed by some story components is going to be more common going forward.
It turns out that EA COO Peter Moore said that we’re both right. In fact, going forward, Moore says that we’ll see more free-to-play elements in the major franchises while offline experiences will be no more.
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EA Launches Refunds for Origin Store Digital Downloads
It’s something we’ve been advocating for over the last few months and it looks like EA is going to be the first ones to make a move to improve game customer rights.
EA has announced that it will begin offering refunds on EA games purchased as digital downloads on Origin.
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GameStop Accused of Reprinting and Raising the Price of Xenoblade Chronicles
The one critically acclaimed Wii game that almost no one you know has been able to get a copy of is Xenoblade Chronicles. That’s because the game had a fairly limited print run and was only available through GameStop and Nintendo stores.
This week, mysteriously, GameStop stores seem to have been innundated with used copies of Xenoblade Chronicles and are selling them for $90 each. The problem is that people are accusing GameStop of shady practices saying that they aren’t actually used copies but reprints being passed off as used to justify selling copies at higher than the original $50 price.
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Nintendo’s Financial Results Show Wii U Worries
Nintendo’s first quarter results had some good news and bad news for the Japanese console manufacturer. On the plus side, they turned a net profit for the three months from April to June and scored their highest gross profit compared to sales in the last five years.
The bad news is that those good financial results were on the back of 3DS hardware and software sales. The 3DS managed almost nine times the console sales and eleven times the game sales of the Wii U as Nintendo’s next-gen offering limped through the quarter with only 160,000 consoles sold.
et geekera 