*Disclaimer – You may find the following content to be bullshit.
Disappointed? Yes. Surprised? No. That was my train of thought upon discovering that Capcom was blatantly plagiarising indie gem ‘Splosion Man. Released in 2009 exclusively for XBLA, the development company Twisted Pixel took their game to Capcom initially, but it was rejected. The similarities between the original title and Capcom’s iOS game (cleverly titled maXplosion) are startling and you’d be hard-pressed to truly believe that this was all spooky coincidence. Now, of course, the App store is ridden with copycat games- but the fact that this title was such a small one makes the whole situation feel a lot more…below the belt. Also the irony is not lost on me that, in 1993, Capcom sued Japanese company Data East for copyright infringement after claiming their fighting games were just too
similar to Street Fighter II.
Obviously the crying shame is that Twisted Pixel is a small company that just doesn’t have the resources to challenge a company as big as Capcom. Co-founder and CEO Michael Wilford highlighted this in a series of recent Tweets; “Just sucks because we're too small to do anything about it, and I bet Capcom's counting on that” he said.
But what does all this mean? I don’t want to be sensationalist and claim it’s one giant symbol for the way in which big corporations are running the gaming industry. Certainly with the astronomic success of indie games in 2009/2010; this year, Limbo and Minecraft are the obvious staggering examples. It seems silly, for want of a better word, to claim that small companies are being pushed out by large publishers. However, for a moment direct your gaze to May 23 of this year- the date of the show trial. The above speculation may prove prophetic, or not, depending on the outcome of that trial; as big, scary Activision (lead, of course, by the 8th horseman Bobby Kotic) take on poor, defenceless Infinity Ward.
A scene from Capcom's iOS title, MaXplosion.
A similar scene from the popular XBLA title, 'Splosion Man.
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.
I think you "scene" links weren't working.
As far as my thoughts on this? I think there are some stark similarities that a court should decide upon as being an infringement on the indie title or not. But, I also think this has been happening ever since indie games started to make the money that they do on handheld devices.
Look at Angry Birds, and obvious rip off of Castle Crashers, the flash game from years ago. And then, after Angry Birds, an exact copy of the gameplay came out with Trucks and Skulls. And this is just the copying done by indie game developers. Once big companies get into it, they'll pretty much take over each genre that they can, especially if it's something very simple.
Same thing with Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja, Robot Unicorn, Cartoon Wars, and more.
The good thing about all of this is seeing the people who developed the original flash games getting their games onto the platform without too many people copying them. Bloons TD, Shift, Fragger, Spider, Fieldrunners, and more.
Yeah, i definitely agree. The apple store is covered with copycat games, purely because it's relatively cheap to make and sell and the market for mobile gaming is growing at such a fast rate.