Game News 2.0

Saw a good discussion yesterday regarding the fact that the DICE Awards are an awards show where the devs get a proper chance to speak, more awards, less glitz and glamour, but the actual viewership for it is very low.

Keighley put so much behind his awards show to make it THE Game Awards show (equivalent to the Oscars), but most people watch it for the trailers and reveals rather than the awards. And so Keighley gives more time to Kojima, celebrity appearances/presenters, game reveals/trailers and ads because that's ultimately what drives the viewer numbers and revenue up.

There are proper awards shows, but people don't watch them. Keighley isn't going to give up having his award show though and just let it be a Winter Games Fest. He wants to have the main awards show.

A24 look to be teaming up with Kojima to release a Death Stranding film. Peak cinema.

The fact they specifically note that they would have had to essentially become a full-time live service studio if they kept going with Factions means (potential job losses aside) this is somewhat good news. Maybe they can still introduce elements of it into TLOU3 like the original Factions without it being a full-blown multiplayer game.

Either way they've clearly shown their strength as a studio is in dramatic narrative story-based single player games. No need to sacrifice that at the altar of "live services".

MS kind of have to have some live service elements in a lot of their 1st party games due to them being day one free on Game Pass, but even then MS 1st party games have generally been ones which are more accommodating to that as they've often been more online/multiplayer focused rather than the single-player story games Sony focuses on.

Sony do seem to be trying to incorporate live service models into some of their games with their acquisition of Bungie, but clearly TLOU Factions was going to end up as a dud. Rumours from the Insomniac hack that they were going to be working on a SpiderVerse-type game where you could create your own Spider-Hero and there'd be some online play.

Sony can definitely be a weird one. They'll charge €10 for a console-gen upgrade/remaster if you already own the original, yet they just gave away the God of War Ragnarok Valhalla DLC for free when I would have gladly paid €10 for it, hell I'd have paid €20 if there was a little bit more substance to it and I'd still consider it a bargain.

I shan't be letting my excitement get to me. EA in 2024 so a while away from console release yet. I wonder if it's a continuation of Below Zero or OG. Or something new! I am excite. No! I am not. Not yet. Damnit!

Insomniac's hackers released all that info they had. Seems they're just a Marvel sweatshop now.

I don't mind getting stuck into Spidey every 3 or 4 years but I won't be following the rest of the stuff. That Marvel shìte is just endless.

Ah it depends. Wolverine by Sept 2025, then the next 2 untitled entries buy 2028 an 2033 respectively. Gives plenty of time for them to work on whatever the games are. Most are probably using the Spidey template, so a lot of ground work done already to a degree. Plus I have faith in Insomniac. It'll all depend on what the other 2 IPs are, and with the success of their single player games and the hopeful slow death of live service games, I think we can expect 2 more solid single player games after Wolverine.

But that's my sum knowledge of the leak. I won't be looking at anything Wolverine related and 19 months is a lot of time to change things if needed.

For me the best game Insomniac ever made is Sunset Overdrive. Brilliant game with a superb soundtrack.