Industry articles
Sega and Sports Interactive were right to cancel Football Manager 25
If you read this blog regularly, you’ll likely agree that the games industry in 2025 is a Wild West of anti-consumer practices. Developers and publishers seem set on milking as much money from customers as possible, regardless of the damage done to beloved series or the reputations of the companies...
The government won't protect your access to live service games
An attempt to protect gamers against publishers’ abrupt shuttering - or “sunsetting” - of live service games failed this week, after the government stated that there are “no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games”. A petition that had passed the 10,000-signature threshold for parliamentary discussion was...
🏁 Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PlayStation 5 this spring. Another Xbox crown jewel landing on Sony’s console raises some interesting questions about the future of the games industry. If all the studios Microsoft bought are too costly to run on Xbox sales alone and their games must be released more widely, what reason will be left to buy an Xbox to begin with?
GTA VI might get away with a $100 price tag, but your game can't
After a decade-long wait and with development costs reportedly stretching into the billions, it has long been rumoured that Rockstar might try to crank up the price of Grand Theft Auto VI when it launches. The standard price for games has already increased from £50 to £60 in recent years,...
🎮 It’s been a busy month for Sony, who revealed both the PlayStation 5 Pro and a selection of retro grey consoles and accessories for PlayStation’s 30th anniversary. But there’s little to celebrate - the Pro will cost £700, and if you want to play physical games then all consoles in both lineups require a clip-on disc drive that must be registered online. The expense and restrictions killed my interest, and raise questions over the future of console gaming.
Concord's failure should be a wake-up call for the video game industry
What a week it’s been in the video game industry! We’ve witnessed one of the most remarkable failures ever, as Concord - the Firewalk Studios-developed live service game into which Sony had invested so much in the hope it would be the next big thing - was shut down after...
Stellar Blade is a challenging and stylistic gaming nostalgia trip
The Stellar Blade demo is here! There are many adjectives that could be applied to Level Up’s much-discussed PlayStation 5 exclusive - beautiful, unique, gruesome, and challenging, to name a few - but for me, more than anything else, the upcoming action-adventure title is a nostalgia trip to previous eras...
Why is everything a live service?
I caught a streamer I follow playing Marauders recently and the game looks fantastic. For those who don’t know, it’s a sci-fi FPS that has players jumping between ships as space pirates in search of loot. Visually, it struck me as an interesting fusion of No Man’s Sky, Wolfenstein, and...
GTA VI leak: Beyond the videos
We saw one of the biggest leaks in video game history last Sunday as a hacker uploaded a huge number of videos and images from Rockstar’s upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI to the internet, and it’s safe to say online discussion around this unexpected sneak peek has been a complete...
GTA VI: First details leave plenty of room for scepticism
It was last week, nearly nine whole years after the release of Grand Theft Auto V, that an article by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier finally provided some concrete information on its sequel - at least if you believe his ex-Rockstar sources. The piece focused mainly on how progressive Rockstar is apparently...
