Blog Archives
Where in the World is Hideo Kojima?
Long before Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released and received reviews that put it on the shortest of shortlists for Game of the Year, rumours were abound about Hideo Kojima’s status with Konami. Reports said he was taken off the project. His name was taken off the cover of MGSV. However, the official stance is that everything was normal. In the two months since the game’s release,
Last week, the story got new life with a New Yorker article that said Kojima left the company near the beginning of October, even having a goodbye party on his last Friday at Konami. For their part, Konami disagrees.
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Hitman to Launch with Half of Levels at Half-Price
Just when you thought that triple-A couldn’t quite figure out how to do early access properly, Square Enix seems to have hit on a model that is tolerable. Continuing their rather interesting news week last week, Square Enix unveiled the launch plans for next year’s Hitman. Half of the game’s content will be available at launch with the remaining half rolling out over the course of the next three months.
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Square Enix Cancels Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Pre-Order Scheme
About a month ago, Square Enix and Eidos Montreal announced one of the most ridiculous pre-order programs for the upcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The scheme, called “Augment Your Pre-Order,” had five tiers of pre-order content that had options for gamers to choose from but each was locked until an unspecified number of pre-orders was achieved. The highest of those tiers was an early launch date for people who pre-ordered the game.
In the month since the launch, Square Enix was raked through the press and gamers mocked SquEnix. It seems that as a result of overwhelming public pressure, Square Enix and Eidos Montreal have cancelled the Augment Your Pre-Order program.
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Video Game Voice Actors Could Go on Strike
The video game industry could be getting a massive behind the scenes shake up. Video game voice actors are voting in potential strike action as negotiations between their union, the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and video game publishers continue negotiations over several issues, including compensation and residuals.
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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Comes with a Ridiculous Pre-Order Scheme
Sometimes, it really pays to read beyond the headline. For example, if you were sent a press release that says “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Launch Date Revealed,” you would think that the press release was mostly about the game’s launch date and a little bit about what is available for pre-order.
That what I thought it was until I got to the subheading of “Player Choice Prevails with Augment Your Pre-Order Campaign; Collector’s Edition Unveiled.” At first glance, player choice and pre-order bonuses seems like it’s a long-awaited change to the typical pre-order plan. Then you see how Square Enix has put it together and you can’t but help but hit your head off your desk.
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Report: Valve Made $730 Million in Revenue in 2014
One of the advantages of being a private company is that you are not required to publicly file your annual financial statements. That won’t stop people from trying to figure out the financial health of your company.
A market data firm called SuperData has prepared a report on the revenues of Valve and Steam. Their calculations indicate that Valve made $730 million in revenue in 2014.
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China Ends Ban on Game Consoles
The last major market is now open for business to video game console manufacturers. After opening up console sales for those units made in a specified “free-trade zone” in Shanghai, the Chinese government has opened up the country further to home games consoles. Now, consoles manufactured anywhere in China will be allowed to be sold in the country.
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Is Ubisoft Overcharging Canadian Steam Users?
During Steam’s Monster Summer Sale, I noticed something during the Tom Clancy franchise sale. The price of the upcoming Rainbow Six: Siege is $80 CAD. The US dollar price is $60. If you were to pay for the game in USD and have your credit card company convert it to CAD, a Canadian customer would spend $73. That’s an inexplicable loss of $7 as a sort of living in Canada tax (when no sales tax is charged by Steam in Canada) from a company whose biggest development studio is in Canada and receives subsidies from various levels of Canadian government.
It’s not just the Canadians who are losing out for not living in America. According to the Steam All Region Price Checker extension, British customers are being charged the equivalent of $80 USD and others in the EU will be paying the equivalent of $68 USD.
So why are certain countries paying more than other and who is at fault for the price discrepancies?
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From Failure to Record-Breaker: Tomb Raider Racks Up Franchise Record 8.5 Million Copies Sold
I want you to flashback to March 2013. I know it seems like forever ago. I didn’t have any grey hair then so it’s longer for me.
In an investor call at the end of the month, Square Enix effectively called the Tomb Raider reboot that had been out for all of three weeks a failure. They said that they had expected the game to ship between five and six million copies and only it moved 3.4 million. Square Enix made it sound like the Tomb Raider franchise was dead on re-arrival.
Over the following 24 months, Tomb Raider and the current-gen (PS4 and XB1) Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition sold another 5.1 million copies to bring the total units sold to a franchise record of 8.5 million copies sold. They’re touting the success of the Tomb Raider reboot in the run up to this fall’s release of The Rise of the Tomb Raider (a timed exclusive on Xbox One and Xbox 360).
So what happened for Square Enix to change their tune?
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The Bad, The Ugly and The Worst: A Look at Evolve’s DLC and Pre-Order Plans
I don’t know how many times that people have to be told not to pre-order games for it to sink in but I’m not sure that it will matter. For all the convincing pitches that game companies themselves make with games that are broken on launch or otherwise in need of a lot of work to be considered of triple-A quality, publishers are coming up with ever more convincing pitches to get you to pre-order games or upgrade to more expensive editions of the game and it all comes down to money.
It used to be that pre-order perks were limited to things like skins or weapons or other little bonuses that didn’t really make that big of an impact on the overall game. Those traditional pre-order bonuses should not be confused with the setup that Turtle Rock Studios and 2K Games have come up with their latest hoped triple-A money printer Evolve.
In order to move pre-order copies of Evolve and to sell the various deluxe editions of Evolve, Turtle Rock and 2K have come up with one of the most complicated and ridiculous DLC schemes in recent memory. People have actually come up with charts in order to keep track of what is included with which version via pre-order, purchase, season pass and a la carte. Evolve might be one of the better games this year but its DLC will make it one of the most controversial at the same time.
et geekera 