…The Hero is Defeated timeline in the Legend of Zelda annoys me. I understand the need for a timeline where Ganondorf ran free only to eventually be sealed by the seven sages without the help of Link, but there is an easier way to reach that conclusion. They could follow the rule of time travel that, whenever something foreign enters a new timeline, it causes that timeline to split off and allows for a new timeline to be created. So when Link travels to the future, he could end up splitting the timeline just by arriving there. So in A Link to the Past, the hero could have just never arrived.
So, it’s been announced by Square Enix that Final Fantasy XV has not only been able to break even for the company, after 5 million copies were shipped or downloaded, but such a feat was accomplished on the game’s launch. Now, this should not be surprising, as most games are expected to either turn a profit or break even when they begin being sold, with additional profit and revenue coming from additional content and later sales. 
However, this news came from the same person, the director of XV, Hajime Tabata, who previously claimed that in order for Final Fantasy XV to be a profitable endeavor, it would need to sell a lifetime total of ten million units. He could have been referring to the DLC, updates, anime, film, and extensive marketing that went into this game, but that only raises the question of how much money did Square Enix dump into this project as a whole. I’d say I would like to know, but I want to hold some level of respect for the company.
Going back a few months, regular readers will recall that I was positively pumped at the announcement that the daughter raising simulator, Princess Maker 2 Refine, was being released in English, officially, for the very first time. The updated and localized version of the game apparently did well for its western publisher CFK, as they are bringing over the enhanced version of the first Princess Maker game, Princess Maker Refine, to the west in just a few days from the sound of it. Meaning I have yet another title to put on my list of games to purchase
As part of a footnote in a far larger event, Netflix has announced that they are making a Castlevania television series. The first part of the first season of which is due to release sometime later on in this year. While this does sound like it came out of nowhere, it is not. If anything, this project has been around in some shape or form, with some of the same people working on it, since 2006, and has seen blips of life since then. Considering Netflix’s track record on delivering quality shows and how this project has proven to be resilient enough to survive this long, I am at the very least incredibly curious about what exactly this is.
It’s possible to look at this and see it as Konami trying to reclaim consumer trust, but then they went and announced Bombergirl. Bombergirl is an arcade game spin-off to Bomberman that focuses on anime girls blowing each other’s clothes off in competitive four versus four battle arenas that are supposedly based on traditional Bomberman stages, but look overly complex based on the few screenshots shown. Good job Konami, you brought a franchise back into the limelight and are not making an exploitative ecchi game out of it.
News popped up that E3 2017 will be open to the public for the first time in company history, which is a rather loaded topic that I’ll try to breeze through. One, E3 has always been open to the public in some way. People with loose retail connections, barely active game blogs, or just managed to sneak into the event have been attending it for years and years. Two, it is because of them that E3 is such a noisy, smelly, and overheated event, as there are literally thousands of people wandering around.
Three, this news will not affect major press and media sites because they do things via appointments, which are often in closed rooms away from the show floor. Lastly, while attending E3 has been a dream of sorts for many video game enthusiasts, it is really just another convention, like PAX but with a more corporate feel and less cosplayers.
For the past few months, Humble Bundle has been publishing several games via their Humble Monthly service, which seems like a pretty bad plan to me, even if it did give way to Cat Girl Without Salad. However, they appear to be moving away from that questionable distribution model and instead are focusing on becoming a more traditional publisher of games spanning multiple platforms, genres, styles, and budgets. This new initiative is beginning with seven games, most notably the 3D platformer A Hat In Time. I wish them the best of luck, as there are a lot of great games out there waiting to be made, and less risk averse publishers are needed if they are going to be brought to life.
Oh, but that’s hardly the problem on Steam, where the market has become with oversaturated with low quality titles. It was a negative side effect to Valve opening the floodgates with Greenlight, and now it appears they are finally doing away with that process… or at least replacing the system in a way that does not seem to fully address the problem. This new process, called Steam Direct, hopes to use a price wall to discourage talentless developers from putting their games on Steam. When Valve should really just create a team to test games from unknown developers to ensure a level of compliance. That, and remove the notorious garbage that is currently littering the storefront.
Header image source: Brellom