I wanted to take a moment to announce that I am going to write a blog post right now. The blog post just started. I thought you should know.
Silly, right?
But don't worry, I haven't completely lost it. Rather, I'm just practicing to be a videogame journalist. What, you hadn't noticed? Bioware Austin just announced they're working on an unannounced game. There's a rumor that Nintendo's R&D team is engaged in research and development. Naughty Dog is going to announce the release date for The Last of Us DLC...really soon! Oh, and I just saw a news story about a Twitter post from Kojima about a picture of his new Metal Gear game been played via Remote Play on the Vita. And didn't you hear? Respawn Entertainment said that Titanfall is going to be tricky to market. Who knew?
I am about to put a phrase in quotations. It will be the alternate title to this blog post:
"Slow news day, huh?"
There are plenty of things in the gaming industry for us to gripe about and get excited about. We love this hobby. That's why we're at our keyboards, scouring N4G for any juicy piece of videogame news we can find. We love our videogame news. Yet, it seems that the news is getting more and more annoying as every day passes. Here we are, with two feet firmly planted in "Next Gen" and all that videogame journalists can muster up is an announcement of an announcement.
I mean, c'mon guys and gals. You complain when gamers call you lazy. You complain when we say you're nothing but PR mouthpieces, but when a news-day is full of nothing but - literally - lines you've parroted from an email from EA or Activision, you're not helping your case.
Why not talk about the new Kickstarter game from Yasumi Matsuno. Y'know, that one guy who helped create Vagrant Story, FF Tactics, and FF XII. Y'know, THAT guy? (btw, his upcoming game is called Unsung Story). Why not write an examination/editorial about how big of a value small, $15 downloadable indie titles will have in the upcoming generation. Goodness! I hate to say it, but I'll even take some out-of-context sales analysis for the Xbox One and PS4 (yes, please, tell me how one month of sales determines who will win the gen. Go on).
What bums me out is that - in this modern videogame industry - we have grown so accustomed to PR blather, and so have our journalists. It seems like the only critical, opinionated, honest news we get is from "personalities" like Angry Joe or Jim Sterling (Jimquisition). Is it really so hard, Mr. Journalist, to let me know in your review that such-and-such game is full of glitches? I mean, Mr. Journalist, you found the time to talk about how a female character in an upcoming game has too large of a pair of breasts. You found time to tell us that EA just announced that Bioware is close to announcing that they are developing a game that isn't yet ready to be announced...but they'll announce the date when they're ready to announce that this Friday, exclusive on IGN/Gametrailers/Whatever.com, so stay tuned! We have a lot of talented journalists out there, but it all gets trampled beneath the endless churning wheels of the PR machine.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I am about to start my closing paragraph.
Less fluff, journalists, and more content. We rely on you to cover the industry and keep us informed of vibrant, interesting, exciting new ideas. The videogame world is a wide, wild place, and if you can't seem to find any big news stories *ahem* maybe you should start covering platforms that you've neglected in the past *ahem*handhelds&PC*ahem*.
That's not too much to ask, is it?
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
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
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.
LoL.. I love this blog post, sadly hoping that journalist start posting more content is like thinking you can stop music from being downloaded for free by just putting up a Pay service. -and saying, "uh please go to where you can pay for the album instead of downloading it for free"
Truth is, it's just not going to happen, those who download for free are not going to just start paying, but those who do like to pay will probably enjoy the pay site...
The point is, it's a different world, the days of really good reads, filled with content are just not here anymore, today's world just jumps to the point - or rushes though to the end, and instead of really good reads, you get really exaggerated titles because that's all people are reading.. the title.
example- same story two different titles (news story -GT6 has an update)
title 1. GT6 comes out with an update to fix minor issues.
(gets 50 hits)
title 2. Does GT6's new update completely break the game?
(gets 10,000 hits)
Substance is a thing of the past, too many journalist just rushing to the finish line..
This new world is not ready to do the heavy lifting, where before the iPad and iPhone, heavy lifting was considered the true substance of something, where now it's looked at as
-why so much work?
...LoL
Wait, are you seriously calling people who write about video games journalists?
I am disappoint, dedicated.
So 54 blogs later and now you want to talk about how bad game journalism has gotten. Fair enough but your actions here do not really help your cause. Just yesterday you commented on how development from Microsoft is at an all-time low based on what exactly. So why don't you do everyone a real service and lead by example and stop being so biased because you have a beef with Microsoft.
If you want journalists to abide by your model of how they go about their jobs why not echo those sentiments here, or has this forum truly taken the place of never wanting to take itself serious?
Awesome Blog, Ded, simply superb. I love how your satirical beginning is like so many journos pieces these days. The fact is, the "video game" journos are barely capable of doing anything worthwhile. Sure, Joystiq isn't too bad and sure, Game Informer is well done, but the quality is too far and few between.
I have lamented this twice here on N4G, in my own blog posts. And it is a sorry state. One of our latest group of journos was called out (Twinfinite) for being so poorly written with horrific grammar and usage of language. Their response was ludicrous in that the journos repeated that what they were doing was correct.
They appear to be a high school journalism class. But, unfortunately they don't employ a copy editor or an English teacher to proof their work. How hard is that?
Sounds like I am starting my own blog post here.
Anyway, brilliant post!
Man oh man I love it! Reminds me of those hypocrites over at IGN. "Please be respectful guys, no flaming." Sorry IGN you created the environment by constantly posting "Vs" articles and other flame bait nonsense. Now you're surprised the comments section is the equivalent of Roadhouse? We need the Swayze to round house kick a few of these "journalists" articles like this are a start!