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#25: Denial of service
It seems faintly ludicrous that the runaway market leader should be this inhospitable to so many developers.
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#24: Consolidation prizes
Big company gets bigger and is worth more money, and the already rich grow somehow richer still.
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#23: Chloe battles the robot dinosaurs
When you hear a familiar voice in a game, it jars you — particularly when it’s one you associate with a disco-dancing unicorn.
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#22: The final lap of the race to zero
“I’ll wait for a sale” was a common refrain throughout the 2010s. Now we're going a step further: “I’ll wait til it’s free.”
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#21: The new normal
One of the few advantages of not-E3 is that this year I am not sat here the week after the show, back at my desk and miserable, willing the jetlag away and, in particular, struggling through the traditional post-show headcold. Lockdowns have changed the way we think about big crowds,
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#20: Plumbing trouble
Before we get into today’s edition of Hit Points, some brief housekeeping. With not-E3 done and dusted, I’m going to experiment with the format a bit, and drop down to three editions per week for a spell. There are a few reasons for this: we’re probably looking
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#19: And if you *are* paying for the product... you're still the product
To Facebook, the web’s premier destination for ham-faced uncles and old school bullies who need somewhere to sell broken garden furniture and do racism. When Facebook bought Oculus in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg positioned VR as the social arena of the future, saying: “Mobile is the platform of today, and
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#18: Heroes and villains
Well, last night was a bit better, wasn’t it. Nice to wrap things up on a positive note with a lovely showing from Nintendo. I’m a little short of time today because the youngest woke up with a slight fever so is home for the day, and needs
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#17: Expecting to fly
Why are you all complaining? Nothing happened yesterday! Those days are the best. You can wander away from the convention center for a bit, maybe see what one of the most glamorous cities on the planet has to offer beyond the fading carpets of the show floor. Go up to
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#16: Show and tell
A mood: It’s not exactly an E3 for the ages, this, is it. If there’s a bright side, it’s that this year the viewer experience more accurately matches what it’s like for press working the show floor. Traditionally, those watching at home only really see the
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#15: Not-E3 2021, day one (Day zero? day -1? Look, whatever yesterday was)
One of the purposes of this newsletter is to try and cut through the noise, whatever that noise may be; today it’s the sheer volume of games announced in short order yesterday evening, when most people were busy with work or family. So, here’s a few notes on
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#14: The evidence of your eyes and ears
We are hours away from the start of not-E3, and I’m still quietly furious that it is not actual E3, and I am not currently trying to drink away the jetlag in a nice Los Angeles hotel. When we reminisce, we naturally tend to focus on the good stuff,