This Week In The Business: Reality Sets In

QUOTE | “Now the reality settles in. We have to deliver, we have extra pressure, and the team has too, but it’s a good pressure.” – Sony’s president of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida, talking about how they felt after announcing The Last Guardian at E3. Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… QUOTE |…

PSN is alive once again. A short outage that probably won’t go in the annals of PSN history. You may resume internet gaming.

The Next SWTOR Expansion Looks Like The Same Old Thing

At E3, Bioware announced a new expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic, dubbed Knights of the Fallen Empire. At its start, players will be frozen in carbonite for five years and when they’re thawed out will find that something called the Eternal Empire came out of nowhere to smash both the Republic and Sith…

Finally: Zero Escape Volume 3 Is Officially Official

Zero Escape Volume 3 was announced today at the Aksys Games Panel at Anime Expo in LA. They’re aiming for a summer 2016 release on 3DS and Vita, and Western localizations are being produced simultaneously with the Japanese version. This, by the way, is something I’m excited about. Like, sincerely. No joke! The announcement was…

Shenmue III‘s Placeholder Box Art Is Hilarious

I don’t particularly care about the Shenmue III Kickstarter because I don’t fund other people’s creative endeavors and I can’t bring myself to have feelings about anything happening in 2017 right now. But if I did donate to kickstarters or had meaningful early-stage interest in a Shenmue threequel, the placeholder box are for the newly…

Snacktaku Nibbles On Taco Bell’s Fried Cap’n Crunch Balls

When Taco Bell initially announced its cream-filled Cap’n Crunch Delights, Icompared them to testicles. Now that I have had them in my mouth I must amend that comparison to read “delicious testicles.” Or maybe just toss out the word “testicles” altogether. I’m not a food marketer, I am a snackologist, so it’s not my job…

The PlayStation Network is down. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but it’s a holiday in the US and most online-related PlayStation functions are, well, not functioning. The PSN status page details the mess. It only mentions PS3 and PS4 not working but my Vita also can’t get online.

Some Games Should Have Fewer Features

While reading Nathan Grayson’s assertion that Batman: Arkham Knight should have borrowed Shadow of Mordor’s “nemesis” system to use with the various street toughs Batman fights throughout that game, I had a horrifying vision, one I don’t believe he intended to elicit. I imagined this gameplay system being piled on top of everything already present…

David Cross Says He Wrote Jokes For Destiny That Bungie Didn’t Use

Destiny has been accused of many things, but “having personality” is probably not one of them. It came out of the womb last September totally deadpan and remarkably serious, but apparently it wasn’t always going to be that way. Indeed, noted joke person David Cross told IGN this week that Bungie flew him and fellow…

Arkham Knight, Reviewed in Podcast Form

On the most recent episode of Shall We Play a Game?, my podcast with former NPR producer and correspondent JJ Sutherland, we review Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Knight. We also talk to Salon literary critic Laura Miller about Don’t Starve, her video game obsession. You can listen to it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Android, or the…

Every Video Game Buzzword, In One New Game Announcement

EuroRPG developer Piranha Bytes announced its new game, to be published by Nordic Games, in utterly unremarkable fashion: via press release, with no meaningful details or a trailer or even actual game art. Just the image above, posted on Facebook, and a parade of buzzwords that would make any E3 press conference presenter blush. The…

Batman: Arkham Knight’s first post-release DLC, which will see you play as Batgirl, will drop on July 14 for season pass holders and July 21 if you would rather buy it separately. The announcement via European press release listing a price of £5.79, so it’ll probably be around $7-8 stateside.

Happy Philipendence Day From Guest Editor Phil Owen

No, today is not actually Independence Day (that’s tomorrow), but it is the US federal holiday marking the occasion. So I’m filling in for the folks who get to take the day off. What can you expect from me today? As always, I have some beeves to hash out, this time with Star Wars and…

Latest Steam Hit Is NotGTAV, Which Is Not GTA V

For the past day or so, the top-selling “popular new release title” on Steam has been a simple 74-cent game called NotGTAV, from which all proceeds go to charity. The PC is a strange and wonderful place. Having been out on phones for a little while, the game was released on Steam on July 2,…