Julius

Cool, thanks. I probably should've figured as much.

Just seen a line floating around that I just had to share...

Haha no worries, as soon as I started reading your response I knew I should have been a bit more clear and can definitely see why you might have thought I was talking about the prequels and while I generally though the lightsaber duels in the sequels were lacking by comparison, I don't disagree with some of your points, and I think it made sense to go back to the heft and reality of some of the original trilogy duel moments with the sequels like they did. My favourite lightsaber duel moment in the sequels might be when Rey is backed against a corner, like an animal that's been hunted, but then becomes the hunter: the way that she's almost circling Kylo and toying with him once she gains confidence and feels like she's gaining the upper hand might be one of my favourite Daisy Ridley acting moments in the sequel trilogy. I think for me it's not so much that the story is based on the lightsaber duels, but that it's just so informative about the relationship between the characters duelling without having to say much if anything. Luke's overconfidence in TESB against Vader after being warned by Yoda that he's being an idiot and that it's a trap is both informed by the story up to that point and is clear in how he duels; counter to that, in ROTJ Luke acts like he has everything under control through much of the film (the plan to rescue Han at the start of the film and then the plan to bring his father back to the light) and yet in the end is easily toyed with and manipulated into flying off the handle, beating down his father to the point of submission, and giving into the darkness that's inherently (and unfortunately) human -- his only true moment of maturity in the entire duel is arguably the decision to throw away the lightsaber at the end. You're right though, they both have things that they do that the others don't, I just think for me for a lightsaber duel to be more meaningful that there has to be a bit more thought behind it from a storytelling perspective than "well, I guess they duel now?". I don't have much of a problem with Obi-Wan vs Anakin on Mustafar being as long as it is because there's something at stake and it makes sense why the fight is so long and so grueling at times, but personally in terms of storytelling I think the best in the films post-OT is that duel on Naboo, there's just so much more going on from a narrative perspective - the title of the music used literally stating that the fate of the galaxy and this young boy, believe to be the Chosen One, is what is at stake! - that I thought was lacking a bit in the sequels. I guess the way I'd put it is that I think they lack the subtlety and depth of some of the other duels in that way: the sequels are very overt in what they are trying to say pretty much all of the time, and that carries over to their duels. I don't think there's a problem with that, and I don't think that's the case all of the time (again: Rey going from hunted to hunter), and I don't think there's a problem with like that at all, I just personally love when a scene or a duel has more going on than meets the eye. Total aside: I remember when Star Wars Oxygen covered Revenge of the Sith, and David Collins was talking about how some pompous art connoisseur or whatever basically said Revenge of the Sith's final duel is one of the greatest pieces of modern art ever made. And I mean, if you think about it, while I wouldn't go that far with it, she has a point: everything from the combination of miniatures, to CG, to the long and choreographed duel, to the fact that these two brothers are practically fighting in hell...I can totally see why a pompous art connoisseur might feel that way. Re: Rey having a flat character arc, all of your points are ones I've recognised and thought about, I think my stumbling block with her personally is that while her arc tries to be one of identity, that's a lot of where her challenges lie. Thinking about it I guess she is a cool inverse of Luke (stuck in her past where he was always stuck in the future, very powerful whereas Luke needs to learn a whole lot), but it feels flat to me in that while she does make progress with her identity, she doesn't really make too many wrong decisions regarding her identity (at times, like in TLJ, it seems like she's about to...and then doesn't). It has admittedly been a while since I've seen the sequels though, so once I rewatch them - and especially given the gap - I'm sure I'll have a better idea of where I stand. And to be clear I am a big fan of her issue with identity, I just think it needed to be challenged more and for her to make wrong decisions around it more to push it further -- for me, at least. It's not that he doesn't go anywhere, but flat arc or not, I think Rey's arc at best is pretty simple and overt, which I think gives a greater space for more complex work with Kylo in doing something we haven't really seen before. He's my favourite part of the sequels by a long shot - because, unfortunately, he's the character I identify most with in the entire saga; same goes for Zuko in The Last Airbender - I just think they needed to do anything with him but have him be the redeemed martyr like Vader, as I think it just retreads over some threads we've already seen before in the Saga about redemption, where something new and more important could be told to the audience: that there are repercussions for your actions, even if in the end you do make the right choice (for me, this would have been him surviving but getting a melancholic rather than a happy ending and being exiled). Carrie's passing definitely had an impact, though, you're right. Yeah, absolutely, and given the MCU's success and that it was acquired and put under the Disney banner, you'd think they would have known better. That's the thing for me with the sequels that's different to how I see it when compared to the prequels: with the prequels, I see great ideas with poorly executed scenes, whereas with the sequels, I see great scenes well executed but lacking an overarching purpose or idea. Kind of makes it funny that they're either side of the original trilogy, which most in the community would agree is the most consistent and achieves a balance somewhere between the two I actually think The Force Awakens being as rock solid as it was is what didn't help and only set TLJ and TROS up for further backlash, in that it was rushed out and not only were they handsomely rewarded financially despite that, playing it safe got everyone going "Hell yes, Star Wars is BACK". I really enjoy moments of both, but in TLJ's case, I can totally see why some people got whiplash as we went from "Here you go, Star Wars is back!" to the most purposefully subversive film in the Saga. TROS for me just landed flat at the time as I think ROTS did a better job of feeling like a true finale to the series, and it was the sourest of notes for them to wrap the Saga up on from my perspective. I'm really excited to rewatch The Force Awakens, certain scenes of The Last Jedi, and bits and pieces of The Rise of Skywalker. I'm curious to see how my perspective has changed, if it has at all. Actually, might as well post this for posterity now, this is how I'd rank the films having been away from them for so long: No particular order in those lines by the way I'll post an updated one after I've rewatched them, but I'm curious how you would rank them? (TierMaker here) Absolutely, I think the final official trailer for The Force Awakens might be my favourite movie trailer ever. I watched it hundreds of times, I watched it on every device imaginable to see it in different ways...gah, while the second teaser trailer dropped during Celebration that year was definitely magical, nothing will ever get me more than: Poe screams into a fade of Starkiller Base firing it's laser Han Solo and the Princess kicks in, the first bit of Stat Wars music in the trailer, as we get sweeping shots of the Jakku chase "There were stories about what happened..." "It's true..." Cut to the gang with Han in the Falcon ...all of it" T H I S C H R I S T M A S Percussion slamming down with the nostalgia of a thousand suns in the Force theme timed with flashes of the Knights of Ren Just...hnnnnnng, just watching it now still gets me all these years later -- still remember YouTube crashing on me for a split second after it went up! The others are fantastic too, but man, those 20-30 seconds of that trailer get me. Also, shout out to the international trailers for TFA, which were also stupidly excellent. Gah, okay, I'm watching the trailers again before I hop into these films, it's definitely getting me hyped And yeah, for me I thought today's trailer was fine, but it was kind of in line with the other Disney+ trailers so far (bar maybe The Clone Wars S7 for me) where they've all only really been fine. Well, that and the first trailer probably being my favourite outside of the sequels, just for the shots used and the music specifically (I said I'd cry if we got Duel of the Fates or Battle of the Heroes, and we got both!). I don't really know what could get me as hyped as that in terms of new original stuff from Star Wars, though, when it comes to trailers? Maybe when they eventually tackle the Old Republic stuff? Yeah, this is why I'm really curious about where I'll stand on it, and it's the soundtrack I've dug into the least too (I listened to TFA's and TLJ's hundreds of times) so I'm looking forward to really giving it a proper listen. I thought the story was about as basic and macguffin-y as it could be in my only watches so far back when it released, and poorly executed on top of that, and on top of that, again, just felt like it didn't go as far as it could have (in fairness, I think the MCU ending the Infinity Saga as strongly as it did with Endgame that same year definitely made so much of TROS feel lackluster by comparison). And too many lines made me cringe too -- talking about Endgame, "I am all the Jedi" after having "And I...am...Iron Man" just...gah. It's very frustrating! And yet the pacing was absolutely the worst part. I think Rogue One has pretty much the same problem in its first 5-10 minutes, but it then calms down, whereas to quote myself about TROS back after my first watch: Man, reading back through that post, while for now I still agree with a lot of it, I was absolutely brutal. This killed me: Not in the slightest! It's always fun to talk Star Wars with you, and more important than I think "agree to disagree" can sometimes be - not just in Star Wars, but in day-to-day life - I think any opportunity to learn from others with different perspectives is both challenging (in that you have to come to terms that maybe you're wrong about something or trying to understand someone else's opinions) and rewarding (see: last set of brackets ). So long as no-one is getting hurt by those perspectives (in which case shut them down faster than the Death Star eviscerated Alderaan), I think people miss out on a whole lot of the human experience by not seeking those other perspectives out.

Madrid have their own Remontada. The beautiful game. Hilariously all have 14 on their shirts, as if they've already won it -- the absolute disrespect I'd be worried if I were a Liverpool fan. On paper really you should wipe the floor with them, but the momentum is with them and the luck of the competition is clearly on their side, and Madrid is basically the underdog here (weirdly). They won't have the Bernabeu like they've had in all of these second legs, but having seen this side score so late on in the knockouts three second legs in a row this season, that's going to have a potentially huge psychological impact on Liverpool players once the game reaches the 80th, 85th, 90th minute. While I can see the logic, I think it applies to any team but Madrid in the CL knockouts this season, especially in the Bernabeu where their fans are *loud* and they've luckily managed to have all of their second legs in the knockout stage in the UCL at home. They scored after the 70th minute at home in the second leg to PSG and us to turn the tie on its head - the writing was on the wall that something could be coming, and if it came that City would end up overwhelmed, as other teams were before them. Impossible to predict it being as late as it was, mind you! Think it was also really clear a few times tonight that City need a top class striker, there were just too many times where there was no-one in the box when crosses were made, and Grealish had several chances to kill off the tie that a more potent goalscorer should be putting away. Roll on the final this has been my favourite CL in years

Subs are everything. Ancelotti took the bigger risk and Pep is definitely regretting taking off De Bruyne. Nuts. Scary part of all of this is that this is a Madrid who haven't spent a penny in years and could go nuts in the summer.

Champions League nights were always the special ones for me to watch growing up, and when I couldn't watch them, I used to follow the BBC scroll. This is making me feel like a high school kid again. Love it. Absolutely loved the knockout rounds this season, away goals going away has been everything Also can we talk about the irony that Ronaldo and Zidane leaving was supposed to be the end of Madrid...for a while? And now here many of those same players are potentially going to presented with a chance to potentially draw level with Ronaldo on number of CL wins. I'm sure he'll be fuming

Well, here we go. Extra time. Definitely crazy. I actually said to my friend that once they started subbing their core off (Kroos, Modric, Casemiro) that something nuts would probably happen to balance it out, because then they'd be without their veteran trio in extra time; equivalent exchange and all that I'm very curious to see how their midfield manages the game, but it just makes them very unpredictable. Camavinga coming on is what injected life into them against us. Shades of Ferguson's better United sides with this team where they don't play a certain system, they just play the occasion and get the result. If I were a Liverpool fan right now I think I'd much, much rather take City than Madrid in the final, the competition just seems to be going their way like it did when we won it for the first time and overcame stupid odds. EDIT: I can't believe Benzema is about to score this penalty

Holy crap, Madrid and Rodrygo with the plot armour!

Activision and Bobby Kotick don't look to be in the clear just yet (thank the gaming gods): Awesome. Was worried this would let up with the sale.

Woah. Here's 1 hour of footage from Arkane's cancelled Half-Life game courtesy of NoClip: Always love stuff like this!

In fairness, I thought it was lacking in comparison to the original trilogy, not the prequels, but probably should have made that more clear in my post it's not really just the choreography of those duels that I have a problem with, but a whole host of things, the main one being that if you take the lightsaber duels in the OT in a vacuum, there's still a story being told -- you see the development of Vader and Luke across the films in their duels. In the sequels? You don't really get that, but it's not helped by the lack of lightsabers clashing in TLJ and Rey's arc kind of being flat, which you can gather from her duels with Ben in TFA and TROS. Also, to be clear, it's fine that her arc is flat, but the reason you would want to do that is to then do more complex things with Kylo's arc, which they didn't really do Re: the prequels, I've always been fine with them being overly choreographed, but I've always had an explanation for that in my head in the same way I did for the issue people have with midichlorians (which is that the entire point of the things is to show the scientific extrapolation of faith and to boil a concept like the Force down into has repercussions on said faith). My thought process has always been that this is the Jedi Order at the peak of its powers, and that duels in those times - especially the duel with Maul on Naboo in TPM - are basically a chess match and a ritualistic dance rolled in one; the duel on Naboo is, basically, the most highly produced opera. They're predicting and reacting to each other's movements while incorporating their learned and preferred forms of lightsaber combat. Can totally appreciate that's not for everyone, though, but it was entrancing as one of the kids who grew up on the prequels Yeah, I think that's totally fair. I definitely got caught up in the hype of the sequels and dove in fully into forums and discussed almost every possibility with anyone I could find willing to listen, but the lack of a cohesive vision for the sequels as a whole meant that - and I do firmly believe this - there is a much stronger sequel story out there on forums, and in videos, etc. Doesn't help at all that they had the wrong talent at times telling the story (Chris Terrio...really?), and above all else and maybe most importantly, they were also rushed out thanks to Iger, which I'll never forgive. I think a sequel trilogy under Lucasfilm as it is now, which is much more willing to pool ideas together and have a back-and-forth with creatives, would be much stronger. In George's absence it absolutely blows my mind that Filoni wasn't part of those initial discussions of what should be done with regards to the story of the sequel trilogy after they threw away George's treatments. My ultimate issue with the sequels is that, for me, they are often too derivative (structurally, narratively, and, at times, musically too) of the original trilogy - again, I've said this before, but it feels like they were Star Wars films inspired by Star Wars films, more than they were inspired by the things that inspired Star Wars (which is something Mando nails) - and lack the same purposeful storytelling of the original trilogy and, yes, at times, even the prequel trilogy (which loops back around to lack of planning and so on). I think in the long run, they lack the timelessness of the original trilogy and the ideas - but not the execution - of the prequel trilogy. This is all a very long way of me saying, that in the case of the sequels, given where I was in my life (a teenager) and my strong affinity for Star Wars and storytelling, I think it's only natural that I kind of thought about the possibilities a lot - for the first time in my life, I had everyone and their mother talking about Star Wars, and I had the time to talk about it with them! Being older and a bit more mature now I'm looking forward to going back to those films and really coming to terms with my thoughts on them, because as much as I think they're a mess, I think there are also some absolutely masterful moments. Plus, I've never felt the hype for anything like I have The Force Awakens, and I am not kidding when I say that I would wake up in the middle of the night to catch trailers as they dropped during Monday Night Football, would walk to college with my phone in my hand watching the trailer or listening to its music, and so on. That film delivered and I think was a solid opener to a trilogy, and I think it's the strongest of the three. TFA will always hold a very special place in my heart, as will TLJ, but to a lesser extent. TROS...not so much. I've talked before about what I hoped a Kenobi show would be (introspective and almost entirely on his head and on Tatooine), but being older and more mature, once we got the concept art I made peace with the fact that they went in a pretty drastically different direction, and yeah, other than watching the trailer a bunch and guessing what things or shots mean, I'm kind of past predicting it all, and I'm ready to just take it all on as it is. I think for me, though, it's very difficult to completely shed expectations, even on a first watch. I'm obsessed with storytelling and how stories are told - be it film, TV, games, books, or heck even music - and while I prefer to figure things out like my thoughts and break things down further on repeat watches, sometimes I can't turn off the analytical part of my mind which is picking up on a lot of cues hinting at things, the editing, the framing, etc. That's not to say that I'm doing this all the time (my mind turns off when I'm in a cinema most of the time, and no offence to the MCU, but I don't think about it too hard when I'm watching those films). Case in point though: I watched an anime film the other day called Paprika - which is wild and absolutely amazing, would highly recommend - and while the story, writing, and characters were all great, most of the time my jaw was on the floor just admiring the editing and framing of the film. That's just how I am sometimes other times I'm going "well damn this writing is gooooooood", or in the case of watching Christopher Nolan films at home, "WHO THE HELL SOUND MIXED THIS CRAP?!" Looks like an astromech head met a V-Wing and a Buzzdroid in an alley, I dig it! Kind of reminds me of R4 a little bit. Would love something at some point to make fun of Obi-Wan completely forgetting about his trusty prequel companion

Yves:

I think I read somewhere that it might be because Deep Silver was involved with the publishing of the other games? Do wish it was standard for more publishers to slash prices when digital stores go down, but I guess with the renewed interest it also makes business sense to keep them where they are

Speaking of which... Hnnnnnng, new poster too: Think the first trailer was better (music, more intriguing shots) but that's usually the way don't think I'm ready for this! Think my general rule of thumb with Star Wars and managing my expectations with the franchise moving forward is going to be going into things hoping for an 8/10, as that's where I would put Rogue One, Revenge of the Sith in my heart - in my critical mind it's swimming in 7's - and probably The Force Awakens? If this show is generally good to great (writing, set pieces, editing, set design, sound design, etc.), delivers on Star Wars music goodness, and has a good to great lightsaber duel (which I don't think we really got in the sequels, though there were cool moments involving lightsabers, the choreography just wasn't there), I'll be over the moon. I rewatched Revenge of the Sith when the first trailer for this came out and I think this month I might rewatch all of the films as it's been the longest period in my life now since being introduced to Star Wars where I've gone the longest between viewings for each film. I'm definitely in the mood for it now.

We're eating good today we've also got the Behind the Mac: Skywalker Sound vid: And another trailer for Obi-Wan at some point today (might be airing first on Kimmel so maybe it'll be early morning?): Loads of Obi-Wan merch seems to be popping up too...

It's something I've noticed them doing a lot more over the last 12 months or so, I imagine a conscious choice they made when they brought Rebekah Valentine back over from gamesindustry.biz last year. Her and Kat Bailey have been doing a solid job with some of their investigative pieces, and I'm glad that it takes a little power away from Schreier (said it before, but while I love that he sheds the light on so many issues in the industry with his investigative journalism, the trade-off is that he loves to leak things which I don't think he should be - being at IGN, Rebekah and Kat can't really do that). Absolutely. Everyone loves to point out that Nintendo is basically the Disney of video games, and look just how many skeletons Disney has in their closet. I think one of the reasons that we hear so little about Nintendo's issues compared to other corners of the industry is simply because the power in their organisation is centralised in Japan, which we have no real eyes on in the west, and is a country which has a very different set of employee values to the west to begin with. Heck, they're probably a weird company by Japanese standards, what with them being headquartered in Kyoto rather than Tokyo. It's incredibly disheartening for anyone with a passion for games, especially because, for me at least, it creates a weird guilt when picking up a game sometimes; it feels more like I'm picking my poison and which company with terrible values to support. We've talked about this before, but the onus shouldn't be on the consumer to vote with their wallet, a lot of these issues simply shouldn't exist to begin with. Video games is the one of the largest industries in entertainment (I think behind only TV, maybe gambling too?), it's had - and is having - tremendous growth, and yet some of these massive companies are squeezing every drop of blood, sweat and tears from their employees, despite the fact that there's currently a talent vacuum in the industry at the top level. There simply aren't enough people coming into the industry for them to grow exponentially, and their solution is that they drive their workers to the edge? I know we've all heard the stories of the old guard being replaced by the new in games before (because they'll do more, and for less!), and it's a very stressful industry to be in to begin with, but maybe don't be stupid with how you treat employees when their other job offers are going to be software engineering at Big Tech for a lot more dough. Honestly, at this point I'm not sure what it will take. Unions would be a step in the right direction, but it seems it would be very difficult to implement, and it feels like we're past the point where a union is the most effective solution. So yeah, torch it

Villarreal looked exhausted from the off in this second half, not surprised Liverpool have pegged them back with how sluggish they've been since coming out of the tunnel. We'll see what happens in the remaining 20'+, but it's not looking great - shame as well, because they did such a good job of sticking it to Liverpool in the first half. Hopefully whoever Liverpool face in the final (if nothing crazy happens) is taking notes. One of those games where Liverpool's match fitness and experience from regularly going deep into this competition now and pulling out late results has played perfectly in their favour with Villarreal's relative inexperience and fitness at this stage. Reminds me a lot of how steeply Atlético fell off in the 13/14 final against Real as the match went on. EDIT: embarrassing for Villarreal now, I do feel for them. But that's football. What the hell happened in that changing room at half-time? It's like they've had their wings clipped.

Now under development at the hands of Ubisoft Montreal: Yeah, this could be a while.

Spring update with difficulty options is out now: I'll probably be checking it out at some point over the summer and trying the original difficulty, but I'm glad the option is there for those that want more options. Still think it should be assessed and catered for on a case-by-case basis, mind you.

A few more Atlus and NIS America games are now on sale on the eShop until May 8th:

Where exactly are you sourcing these numbers from? We don't have hard numbers on the Xbox One, only estimates, and I'm not denying that the PS3 + 360 sold more than PS4 + One, what I'm saying is that the One flopped, meaning what you see is not a trend, but a result which was bound to happen given that Xbox and Microsoft did the console no favours; again, down to poor messaging, a lacking library of games (especially on the first party side of things, and especially at launch), etc. A flop like that is not necessarily the sign of a trend, and would be accounted for when trying to determine if there is a trend. Last time Sony reported PS3 sales was March 31st 2017 at 87.4 million units sold. Shipments to Japanese retails ceased by May of that same year, and that was the last market where the PS3 was being shipped. Last time Xbox reported 360 sales was June 9th 2014 when they were at 84+ million units sold. Statista seems keen to say that they're at 85.8 million units sold. That's PS3 + 360 at 173.2 million units sold lifetime in reports from start to finish, and that's using Statista's number to potentially go over the official number on the 360. PS4 was at 116.9 million units sold as of December 31st 2021. The estimated sales of the Xbox One as of Q2 2020 by Ampere was 51 million units, which I'm not really comfortable using, but considering that we haven't had official sales figures of the Xbox One since October 2015, it's probably the best we have to go off. Combined that's roughly 167.9 million units, within range of your 165 - 170 million units that you stated - but it's just over 5 million away from the combined sales of the PS3 and Xbox 360, not 15 - 20 million. And that's with one of the consoles flopping so hard they stopped reporting sales and haven't done so since. PS3 lifetime software sales were 999.4 million units as of March 31st 2019. Xbox 360 software sales can only be estimated at best, because Microsoft love to be difficult. VGSales try to estimate software sales at some 630 million units...but their logic is all over the place, such as using an attach rate stated as being 8.9 by Microsoft in 2010 and then applying it to 2013's numbers to calculate software sales in the US. They then use an NPD attach rate for Europe. Again, it's a mess, I don't want to use it as evidence of anything, because concrete it is not. I'd want to suggest we just use the same number for PS3 as we do Xbox - they're so close in hardware sales, after all, and both had opposite journeys during the course of that generation - but yeah, it's not a perfect way to make a point. For the PS4 - I hate to use them as a source, but ResetEra used to be great for quarterly and annual financial breakdowns - it is the console with the most software sales to date, at 1.622 billion units, more than the 1.537 billion units of the PS2, and that's with some 50 million fewer consoles sold. And that was reported in April 2021, it's likely grown more since then. Again, it's impossible to find anything for the Xbox One as they report software revenue. VGSales tries to estimate that it's 204.36 million units, but again I doubt it, and besides, the console was a flop so they pulled the plug when it came to massive effort first party titles and you've also got to take the existence and prevalence of Game Pass towards the end of the generation - after it launched around halfway through - into account. It was never going to be a fair comparison. But there's nothing here which makes me say for a fact that PS3 + 360 sales are significantly greater than that of the PS4 + One sales, as you say is the case -- we just don't have that written as hard fact. Even if we're generous and say the 360 software sales were equal to the PS3's (and, to be clear, that's only really generous compared to the estimate VGSales tries to enforce), to put their combined total to around 2 billion units of software sold, the PS4 alone gets you over 80% of the way to that total. Honestly, all it really shows is that Microsoft don't like to share sales numbers (which is frustrating for me as someone who loves to see them), and just reinforces how much of a flop the Xbox One was, emphasised by the success of the PS4. That there isn't a substantial drop-off despite one console in that generation really dropping off, when they were virtually at parity just a generation prior, is a testament to how well the PS4 did in getting PlayStation back on the right track by their own metrics. Now, if you really want to talk about drop-offs, how about we talk about Wii + DS vs Wii U + 3DS? I mean, while I don't think you're massively off the pace by pointing out how big some of these other corners of gaming are, making sweeping generalisations is rough when we haven't really had a chance to see how this younger demographic engage with and impact the wider gaming industry. The next 5-10 years are going to be really interesting to follow, I think. The only reason I say this is because, anecdotally, I've seen and heard a massive shift from my younger brother over the last few years. He's 15 now, and he and his friends have grown up on mobile games, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Among Us - you name that mainstream thing that has all of us here going "huh, that's what the kids are playing these days?!", and they've probably played it - but in recent years have been looking for more and more things which are deeper than these ahem "more approachable" games. That's not to say that they've necessarily stopped playing those other games, but it's given them a foundational interest in games where if they do play something deeper, they kind of end up craving more. Again, totally anecdotal, but my younger brother borrows more and more games from me every time he pops around, talks more and more about indie and AAA games than he ever has before, and seems to be slowly moving from these more approachable games to more focused and deeper experiences in gaming, as are his friends. I'm not saying that's a huge sign of anything changing on a wide scale, but I think it's something worth considering when we talk about this new generation as if they are just going to stick with these "more approachable" games for life. Worth pointing out, too, that some of those friends of his are girls. Things aren't as rigid as I feel they once were, and you see it in a lot of things these days, such as the globalisation of anime. You have no idea how weird it was for me to get on a bus a few years ago and hear these high school kids dressed like they were about to harass people so casually and openly - and annoyingly loudly - talking about a slice-of-life anime. Also, final thing regarding what you said that's worth bearing in mind when it comes to YouTube and Twitch with this new generation: for a lot of them, YouTube is to them what TV was to me growing up, and Twitch is to them what YouTube was to me growing up. I don't think it's impacting their actual time spent playing (other than cases where a kid might not be able to afford a game?) and I actually think it's time being taken away from elsewhere (TV). Gee there's no explanation at all for...oh wait...hold up... These next-gen consoles are still out of stock more often than they are in stock. You know just as well as I do just how massive an impact COVID and the parts shortage has had not just on gaming, but on every consumer electronics industry, so I don't see why you're even trying to compare the two. I'll always go back to this, as I think it's the best example: in summer 2020, Sony forecast having 15 million units sold by the end of March 2021. Then in September, this was reduced to 11 million units sold by the end of March 2021. And then again down to 6.5 million units by the end of March 2021 in early 2021. These being forecasts, they were always meant to undercut the actual sales figures, and the actual sales landed at 7.8 million units sold in that period. It still outsold the PS4 despite there being nearly half as many PS5 units shipped as initially intended, and remains virtually impossible for many to just casually get their hands on. But sure, let's act as if a worldwide pandemic and parts shortage has had no impact To clarify, what I meant, and what I think we both agree on is: Xbox are there, Sony have positioned themselves to be there, but they aren't at the same stage as Xbox yet. It's why there's a lot of "we're not doing that...yet" when it comes to their plans for the new PS+ and talks about first party games landing Day 1. They're going to pull that trigger hard, but they need to lay the foundation first, and like you say, getting games on PC is a great way to do that. To be clear, though, that is a smart business decision regardless of hardware sales: there are simply far more PCs out there than there are consoles, why wouldn't you start bringing your games which have broken sales records with a smaller install base to a much larger install base? Let's not forget that, unlike Nintendo, PlayStation is part of a larger company which has depended on them increasingly over the last decade.

Potential spoiler floating around after an interview with one of the Italian dub voice actors for the first Breath of the Wild:

I'm not sure how much truth there is in that, because I don't think anyone's got the overall numbers to back a statement like this up. I actually think gaming is continuing to become more mainstream in areas where it wasn't before (i.e. we're getting more older and more female gamers), but that's anecdotal, and I have nothing too concrete to back it up. Also isn't it a contradiction to say that they've failed to bring in new audiences, but then talk about how the demographic outside of males aged 10-25 is growing? Couldn't it also just be a case of said demographic sliding into the next demographic range (i.e. 25 -39 males)? PlayStation did better with the PS4 than they did with the PS3 and Vita combined, though, and have also broken consoles sales records despite the components shortage with the PS5? And I also feel like just looking at the numbers of console sales doesn't cut it here, context is informative as to what's going on with console sales, because we've seen a lot of stupid decisions made over the last few generations. PS3 picked up ground towards the end of the generation, but it flopped early on and didn't find it's footing due to poor messaging on their side, launching at too high a price, Japanese companies having difficulties adjusting to HD productions, etc. The 360 lost ground towards the end of the generation and the PS3 even hopped over it in sales. The Wii dropped off a cliff because there were no big first party games as the end of its life drew closer. The Vita flopped hard; the Wii U flopped hard; this wasn't due to them following a trend, they were just extremely poorly communicated to their audiences and arguably didn't have compelling libraries at launch, and so the Vita found itself depending on the Japanese portable audience whereas Nintendo shrunk back into their shell as they lost most of their third party partnerships that they'd secured on the Wii. The 3DS was a moderate success in a period where it basically had no right to be, but there just wasn't space for the dedicated portable. The Xbox One had messaging and PR so bad that they had to drop the bundled Kinect within a year of launch and straight up stopped reporting hardware unit sales halfway through the generation, because they were being outperformed almost 2:1 by PlayStation and were being utterly embarrassed. To this day they themselves still don't report on hardware unit sales, though these days it can be argued that console sales aren't their focus anyways, what with their attention turning to Game Pass. I'd argue what your noticing is one third of the platform holders in Xbox not reporting anything and falling off a cliff last generation. That's not really a trend as such, they just did really poorly with the Xbox One, and are still recovering. PS4 killed it last generation. The PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are killing it now. PSVR was a moderate success for what it was trying to accomplish, and I'm sure we'll see growth with the PSVR2. The Switch is absolutely killing it. I feel like most here - and basically anyone who follows gaming news and follows game releases - have been noticing this. AA is pretty much dead at the highest level of publishing in a way where it was not last generation. We've seen studios shutter across the board who weren't contributing to AAA development and were seen as being surplus to success (Japan Studio in particular comes to mind on the PlayStation side of things, and Nintendo let AlphaDream die a cold and miserable death). Everyone and their mother has been rambling on about the lack of true next-gen exclusives. And again, Xbox doesn't really help here, because now they report the number of players for a game (i.e. 20 million people have played Halo Infinite! - awesome, but how what's the split?) rather than actual sales. I feel like we're only really looking closely at first parties here, though, which seems a bit dishonest on the whole. I'd argue the industry just experienced it's busiest quarter in terms of releases to date, ranging from indie all the way up to AAA, and a lot of smaller titles continue to cross that 1 million units sold threshold, which would have been crazy not too long ago. The big companies are veering - and arguably have always veered - towards AAA and pumping all their money there, but the entire industry they are not. Again, for the moment, I feel like this mainly only describes Xbox. Halo, Gears of War, and Forza are their only true AAA tentpoles, so I think scooping up IP in acquisitions for Game Pass production and pumping millions into those and reboots of their existing legacy catalogue makes sense. Will it work out for them? It has been, but not off the back of any of their acquisitions just yet, as we still need to see how curation is handled. PlayStation are positioning themselves there as any company would do after seeing Xbox lay the groundwork - and have huge success - with Game Pass. PlayStation have had PlayStation Now, but they never pushed it like Xbox have Game Pass, and now Game Pass has done them kind of a huge favour in making game streaming and having a "Netflix of games" become mainstream. And Nintendo, as always, are being Nintendo about this. I have many concerns about subscription models for games and game libraries, but they don't revolve around the death of AAA in that it's going away, despite there likely needing to be changes, and so you're right in that I think the traditional AAA game - high budget games some 15-30 hours in length - could quickly go away as and when PlayStation decide to flip the switch. I think we're probably going to see more games with AAA budgets (makes sense, you need a lot of tentpoles in a service to keep people subscribed), but the experiences are just going to be much shorter than we'd typically expect. To make a service/subscription model work in the long run you need two things in terms of your exclusives compared to other competing services: high quality output at a high volume. We'll have to wait and see, but I'm hesitant to say I'm excited to see how this all shakes out

Hearing Embracer pick up companies big and small, left and right across the industry in a warm embrace in podcasts the last few years has been very disturbing, but I don't think this is too much of a surprise (heck I think they even warned everyone that they were buying more studios just a few months ago). Square Enix have always had stupidly high standards when it comes to sales expectations, and time and time again they were grossly overestimating the sales potential of series under their western flag, like Tomb Raider, Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy, which were frequently pointed to as disappointments in their earnings reports. Worth mentioning that IP like Just Cause, Life is Strange and Outriders remain under Square Enix. Also, the follow-up tweet by Wario64 is also cause for concern about where this money is going to end up being invested by Square Enix: Also, if we want to talk about game development being unsustainable: Embracer had 6400+ employees and 216 games in development (149 of those being unannounced titles!) back in February of this year. Their CEO has talked before about how making do many games reduces the risk, so yeah, make of that what you will. With how much money is being thrown around in these acquisitions these days, I'd never say never, but it would still take a fair bit to pick them up -- it's not like Embracer have bought even half of Square Enix with the acquisitions they've made. Personally, I hope PlayStation don't pick them up. Square Enix already has great deals going on where they're selling exclusivity/timed exclusivity on AAA projects to PlayStation which would perform far better on PlayStation than Xbox anyways, and once those deals are up, they then cheekily put deals together with Xbox to have these games on Game Pass for a time. Definitely more likely that they go to PlayStation than Xbox, though. Not that a move to Xbox is impossible, but it's just so rare that Japanese companies are picked up in international acquisitions anyways, and there are additional hurdles to jump through. We'll see, but yeah, I don't like the direction this is all taking, but I guess at least this acquisition wasn't by s platform holder

Yeah Beastars is great @Glen-i, glad to hear you liked it! Personally I preferred the first season to the second season, as I think it handled it's mystery a bit better, but I still enjoyed it. And yeah, the S1 OP is an awesome piece of art unto itself, shame they didn't stick with that style for S2's! You're in luck, as it was announced back in July of last year: And then they said it was the final season... ...which seems to have caused some concern for manga readers, as apparently what's left in the manga after S2 is basically half of the story - could be a longer season or potentially a Part 1 and Part 2 scenario? Who knows This Twitter thread from Paru Itagaki (the creator of Beastars) adds a bit to the confusion too: I haven't following Netflix's show cancellations too closely, but I don't recall seeing any anime shows they're licensing being on the chopping block (which makes sense, the entire industry has been growing almost exponentially the last few years), not to mention that Netflix need to hold onto what little they have in the industry since Sony purchasing Crunchyroll has basically killed competition in the western market. But yeah, @Jonnas is right in saying that Netflix only license the show, as it's made by Studio Orange. While the anime industry has been booming, it's still extremely archaic in structure (as we'd all probably expect after seeing how Nintendo handle themselves, Japan just does things...differently): while Studio Orange create the show, they have no true ownership of it, as Netflix license the show from the production company who commissioned it, which in the case of Beastars is a pretty long list of what almost reads like a committee, and which includes Bandai and Toho.