William Mabin from ITF Gaming writes: In every art form there are conventions created by past master pieces that act as a rigid framework for how artists create a work of art. In the case of arts and crafts, people willingly follow the rules of the past in order to create a pretty picture, or sometimes an awesome one, if we’re talking your favourite CD cover design. In fine arts people knowingly attempt to challenge the traditional way of doing things for better or worse.
Video games have, in our lifetimes, exploded into the mainstream. No longer are they considered something to hide away in your closet lest your soccer-playing friends deem you to be a nerd. The entire industry is swamped in money and there is plenty of available artistic talent on the market. Like other forms of art, video games tell stories and, in some cases, are encoded with messages and symbols about today’s society.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
This gaming generation has been the worst for creativity. Everybody ignorantly bought into " Realistic " graphics instead of quality gameplay and creativity and look what happened.
We don't want generic dark graphics games anymore.
Give us beautiful Art Styles. Give us different musical styles. Give us more freedom and options to just run around and do whatever we want.
Developers took away creative freedom from the player, but they never replaced it by taking care of the creativity part themselves.....they just eliminated it from the equation.
and why?
Money....and ego....and ignorance.....& arrogance.
For all the shit Nintendo catches about their hardware being under-powered, online infrastructure, etc., they've always managed to deliver fun, unique gaming experiences through their flagship IPs, and that looks to continue with the Wii U.
I also have a feeling that Sony and Microsoft are going to take a similar approach with their upcoming consoles as well, and that the "power gap" won't be all that large this go-around.
Graphics will be better; higher resolutions, better frame rates, better animation (my personal favorite - see Watch_Dogs), but the leap won't be as big as we've become accustomed to over the past couple of decades whenever new hardware is released.
Hopefully, we will see games trend more toward the creative side of the spectrum this next generation.