This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: The Straight Dope On The Current State of Gamindustri
- In a Final Act of Excellence, The FTC Goes After Loot Boxes! (Specifically, Genshin Impact)
- Time For The Quarterly-ish Xbox Thing! (A Rapidly Written Xbox Developer Direct Recap)
- Ninja Gaiden 4 Announced (Natalie Rambles About the History of Team Ninja)
- Ninja Gaiden II Black Shadow Dropped This Week (It’s Not As Good As It Sounds…)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
The Straight Dope On The Current State of Gamindustri
Anybody who has read enough Rundowns will know that I have a strong love for data and numerical analysis as it relates to the video game industry. However, finding good data can be expensive in terms of time and money, as I do not have any professional subscriptions. However, at the tail-end of last week, I was directed to a PowerPoint by Matthew Ball, a game industry analyst, and it is one of the most insightful bits of analysis I have seen since… ever.
If you are half as nerdy about the games industry as me, I highly encourage you to check out this presentation. And make sure you read it in full, as it has some super interesting data that will, probably, change how you view some parts of the industry.
…But once you are done with that, there are more than a few factoids that I want to stew over and gush about. Starting with the first bombshell. While the past two years have been home to a wide number of highly successful titles, and 2024 saw higher consumer spending than 2023, in terms of real dollars, the games industry shrank by 13% since 2021. A trend that is not repeated across books, music, digital video, or GDP. People are spending less on video games as a specific form of entertainment, and the percentage of the US population who plays games is down from 73% in 2019 to 71% in 2024. Meaning this is not just a post-pandemic decline as people pursue other hobbies. People who were playing games before the pandemic just stopped playing games.
This decline has been mirrored in a decline in venture capital investment in the games industry. (Venture Capital is the lifeblood for private companies in the games industry without a publishing deal. It is basically required to start up a non-bedroom studio without government funding, wealthy founders, or publisher support.) Meaning it is harder for smaller companies to get a foot in the door, and the lack of new VC money has led several companies to shut down. Which is a problem, because of all the layoffs. It would be one thing if all the people laid off from the games industry the past three years could just start up new studios. But without VC money wafting about, and gaming lagging behind the S&P 500, it’s hard for investors to look at gaming as a growth sector worth putting money into.
It can be misleading to start a S&P 500 graph in 2021, but whatever.
This all begs the question of… what’s going on and why, which is what the rest of the report is about. But it boils down to this: The 2010s was a decade of turbulent growth for the industry that spiked during the pandemic, and now that the pandemic has wound down, the games industry is a complex kerfuffle.
The first strata to examine is the mobile market and… it’s a mess.
- The smartphone market exploded over the past decade, introducing a massive new avenue to gaming via accessible technology. But now that 4.4 billion adults have smartphones, growth has slowed down significantly.
- TikTok has dramatically increased in use since 2019, but has not affected people’s use of platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, which have remained stable or grown. This correlates a decline in time and money spent on gaming with a rise in TikTok. (Not causation, don’t get it twisted).
- Mobile game downloads in the US have been declining and are significantly below their 2019 figures, reporting less than a billion downloads per quarter.
- Mobile gaming is undergoing a drastic discoverability problem, with the US market routinely being dominated by the top 3 or 20 games in each genre. These top games eat up 55% to 99% of all revenue in their genre.
- Mobile gaming has a strong bias toward existing and established titles over new iterations, even if they belong to the same series or IP, making it hard for new titles to succeed or usurp established giants.
- Despite the mobile industry being in this wild state, Google and Apple are seeing over $20 billion in commissions each year. Which is believed to net a higher profit than the entire (non-China) mobile industry.
However, the most damning figure in the mobile section is actually centered around the number of games on the iOS app store. Over the years, the storefront has seen a massive decline in available games as titles are being constantly delisted. Since 2017, more games have been delisted each year than new games have been listed, bringing the total available games down from a peak of ~600,000 to less than 200,000. Which is so bad for gaming preservation that… I don’t know what to say. Admittedly, most of these games were just crap, shovelware, or barely even games, but this is still a loss of nearly a million mobile games. And… what the fuck? I didn’t even know a million commercial games existed!
Next is the console industry. It has been stated over the years that the console industry has stagnated, and this data… pretty much agrees with that, but it is skewed slightly due to one platform. The Nintendo Switch. Ball is treating it as a gen 8 console, lumping it in with the PS4 and Xbox One, rather than a traditional dedicated handheld. Per Ball’s analysis, the dedicated handheld section of the market disappeared, and this is an area where I have to voice some disagreement with his methodology.
I believe that home consoles and dedicated handhelds should be lumped together for analyzing the contemporary market, due to their convergence/abandonment by their manufacturers. Ball indirectly admits this, saying that the loss of the handheld revenues offset the growth in consoles. Which, to me, means they should be viewed as a single stagnant part of the industry, called something like ‘dedicated traditional gaming devices.’
A key reason for this is because it warps the regional console sales in Japan and other markets. If you include the Switch, they appear to be growing. When in actuality, Japan’s home console industry has declined significantly in the past generation and other markets have stagnated in terms of dollars not adjusted for inflation. And Nintendo is an odd factor, as much of their success only goes to benefit them.
While the Switch has strong hardware sales, it has a far lower same software attachment rate compared to PlayStation and Xbox players, and over half of these sales are for Nintendo published titles. Furthermore, while people are buying Switches in droves, propping up this console, both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X have failed to maintain the momentum of the PS4 and Xbox One. Compared to their predecessors, the new consoles have fallen short by approximately 7 million units 49 months after launch. The PS5 is only 2 million behind, but the Xbox Series is underperforming by 5 million units. Which, frankly, is not surprising, because who would buy an Xbox when your phone is also an Xbox?
This has all led to a decline in real spending on consoles, and supports the narrative that consoles have peaked, plateaued, or stagnated. However, there is a bright spot in terms of PC gaming, which has continued to amass larger market share in comparison to consoles and leads the 4.4% annual growth in the non-mobile market. As for why, it’s the same list of advantages that PC game-likers regularly like to cite. More games, easier to play and communicate with others, lower entry point, console exclusives coming to PC, a rise in handheld PCs, and also it being the preferred platform for Roblox.
Though, I would like to add that it is FAR easier to justify buying a computer versus buying a game console, especially for children and students. PC gaming is generally just cheaper in terms of practical spending in various parts of the world. PCs, like phones, are pretty cheap throughout the world. Consoles aren’t. And PC gaming platforms have more generous regional pricing. Well, depending on the publisher.
On that note, looking at Steam, there is another clear reason why PC gaming is growing. There has been a massive influx of Chinese users on the platform, because China is BIG!
Seriously, SO MUCH of the explosive growth gaming has seen since 2010 has been due to the Chinese games market coming into its own, and now the Chinese end of the games industry— Chinese players and Chinese games— amounts to about half of the industry. Which sounds crazy… but then remember that China is 1.4 billion people. North America is 385 million. Europe is 745 million. Japan is 123 million. South Korea is 51 million. Add them all up, and China is still bigger. And all that talk about China cracking down on kids gaming is just their propaganda bullshit that most Chinese people are privy to, but dumb-dumb Anglophones choose to believe it seriously. Just like that social credit score malarky that I believed for a few years.
China has represented a truly massive amount of the spending in the games industry. 15% of 2024 customer spending was non-Chinese spending on Chinese games, 27% was Chinese spending on Chinese games, and 5% was Chinese spending on “imported games.” Thereby only leaving 53% to non-Chinese spending on non-Chinese games.
And it really should not be surprising that so much of Chinese spending is going to Chinese games, as… that’s how a country with a healthy domestic industry works. The biggest films in modern China are all Chinese… or Nigerian. Just like how the biggest films in America are all American, and the biggest American games are all American… or Japanese.
Going back to the broader console/PC world, Ball then highlights how the price of packaged games. Meanwhile, industries like movies, streaming, and live music have all maintained value or risen in value faster than inflation. Though, I would like to highlight two problems with his methodology.
Firstly, in analyzing the real prices of packaged games, Ball makes a few assumptions that make the data look… wrong. For the 1980s and 1990s, Ball is simply under-reporting the standard value of games. Back then, there was not a standard price. NES to N64 games frequently cost $50 to $70, and I have no idea where he is getting the $40 and $45 figure he is using 1978 to 1988. Pricing did not become standardized until the shift to the PS2 generation, when nearly every non-budget, not-accessory-containing game cost $50. …Most PS1 games cost $50, but there was still a good amount of variability from what I have seen. (Actually, he cites Wikipedia as a source for this slide, which is just… lol.)
Secondly, while standard games only cost $70, the DLC, season pass, and other guff can frequently boost the effective complete price to $80 to $100. This is an observable fact, and if this were the case, then his argument that packaged games are at their all-time low in terms of real prices would be incorrect. Now, I am not calling him out for misrepresenting things. This is a choice that views the $70 as a standard, and many new releases still only cost $60 these days. So if one were to average things, account for those who only buy the standard version of $70 games with DLC, then $70 is… permissible.
As for why gaming has been unable to maintain inflation adjusted prices, there are a few reasons Ball provides. Game players are price sensitive, they will pirate or buy used if games are too expensive, there is a lot of FTP competition, players do not look at DLC prices with as much scorn. The realest is probably how 33%-50% of AAA game players wait until games are on sale before buying them. And the most iffy is the claim that other mediums lack variable pricing.
Except… they do. If you go to any bookstore, longer books will cost more than shorter books. Just bopping around Barnes and Noble, I saw popular release eBooks that ran from $12 to $15. That is variability. Albums range in price due to the length and content of the album, and how many vinyls it comes with. Even if you buy digital music, like a freak, albums cost $5 to $15, if not more. TV shows vary based mostly on the number of episodes, discs, and licensing fees. And movies… yeah, new releases tend to be about the same, but there is some variability there.
This all leads into the next point. The games industry is too cluttered, too expensive, and adults are spending less time playing games. With Ball providing the fact that the hours spent playing games by adults on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox have declined by 32% since their peak in Q1 2021. Games are only getting bigger in terms of file size, credits, budgets, and quantity of games coming out on platforms. Namely Steam, which saw over 18,000 new releases this past year. All while the packaged games industry from the US remains dominated by a few standbys. Call of Duty, NBA 2K, Battlefield, EA Sports games, GTA V, and Pokémon. …Though, I would like to add that these are only packaged retail games, and at this point, I think it’s safe to say that every game launching these days sells more digitally compared to physically.
…Which is actually good, I’d imagine. That should lead to more net software sales in terms of quantity, and the margins on digital goods are a lot better than on physical goods. You don’t need to worry about having a warehouse of unsold copies of Glover (1998) or Splatterhouse (2010).
This leads to what can be seen as an overarching theme throughout the latter portions of this presentation, and previously illustrated in the mobile market. The games industry is being dominated by a handful of recurring ‘super games’ while smaller games get lost in the shuffle.
With Steam, the overwhelming majority of titles released since 2017— the year Steam Direct launched and the floodgates opened— have made less than $5,000 in sales. A cluster of 2,000 to 3,000 games a year make $5,000 to $100,000 in their debut, while less than 1,000 have raked in over $100,000.
The $100,000 figure has remained stagnant since 2017. All while median players only play four or five games, and the traffic on Steam remains dominated by older games. With Counter Strike in particular holding at least 12% of all cumulative playtime. Not because the game is just that good, but because it’s a play-to-earn gambling game. Meanwhile, 4% of all playtime in 2023 was spent on new games, though that did change in 2024, when 15% of playtime was spent on new games.
If that sounds bad, this next slide is even worse, showing that in 2023, 20% of all new game sales were dominated by a single title. 61% were dominated by the top ten, 85% by the top 50, and the rest went to the scraps. …However, at least the majority of game sales have been going to new games since 2022, so at least people are buying new games, even if they don’t play them. And I am absolutely one of those people.
However, the slide that just floors me, and just blows my damn mind out of the water is this one depicting the breakdown of PC, PlayStation, and Xbox game time. 2023 was dominated by always-on live service games at 60% of total playtime. 15% to annual updates to established franchises. 16% to 2019, 2020, and 2021 games, likely heavily weighted by live services like Apex and Genshin. A measly 2.5% to 2022 games. And only 6.5% to 2023 games. …Nearly half of which went to four games, leaving the overwhelming majority of 2023 games to fight over 3.4% of all playtime.
…What. The. Fuck? So that analyst IGN hired for that Concord article saying that 84% of total revenue came from live services wasn’t huffing the bag? This not a healthy entertainment industry. Movies, TV series, music, books— none of them work like this and have a distribution so out of wack like this. Just how can anybody possibly hope to make money unless they’re running one or some of these massive games?
Well, the short answer is that they don’t. Sequels to established winners from the past generation cost more to develop, and are targeting an audience who, most likely, did not finish the prior game. And anybody launching a live service in this environment will need to contend with live services that people have already gotten sucked into, that became their black holes.
Ball summarizes this situation in the following sentence:
“The exhaustion of decade-plus growth drivers that grew players, playtime, and spend… coincided with evolving user behaviors, changing monetization models, and growing “lock-in” effects… that exacerbated long-running competitive and budgetary escalations… while growth concentrated in foreign markets that shifted to local productions (and then took share abroad)… and occurred alongside acute macroeconomic financial events and epidemics… were worsened by microeconomic platform policy shifts… as well as the emergence of new and hyper-viral substitutes… and foreign-based competition… alongside too many would-be new growth drivers that have yet to deliver growth.”
…That is not a sentence, Mister Ball! That’s 89 words! The only fool I’ve seen dish out sentences that long was Clavietika! (I don’t know what happened to her, she might be dead by now.)
In short, we are seeing a paradigm shift in the growth of the industry. The past 15 years have been a turbulent and unprecedented rise for gaming as a whole, but market growth slowed and existing players became invested in fewer games due to new retention and monetization features. Certain hyper-casual users left for other avenues and China grew large enough to develop its own games industry. This lack of growth, combined with costly commercial bombs over the past few years, has made game publishers afraid of what the future of gaming will be. Thus resulting in bigger, flashier games, attempts to bring games onto new platforms, and massive layoffs to minimize staff. All while the bottom of the industry gradually opens wide as super games aim to consume as much time and money as possible.
At this point, the games industry is fighting over the same players, hours, and dollars, and that after three years of decline, there’s cause for concern that gaming will enter a vicious cycle. So, how can gaming continue to grow?
This leads into the latter half of the presentation, where Ball goes over potential growth factors for the industry.
While the US, Europe, and Japan have all stagnated, there are growth markets in Southeast Asia, MENA, and other parts of Asia. Though, the post-2020 figures shown look pretty stagnant to me, leading me to think that gaming has expanded about as far as it can until the world gets some of its warlust out of its system.
Roblox is cited as a growth engine, though I consider that X-rated Pedophile Hellscape to be its own nasty little thing. It is kind of its own island in the games industry, as it sees so much engagement from people and has more active users than any other gaming platform. However, Ball does some analysis to show that Roblox is making far less revenue per engagement hour than any other major platform. Which is a problem, as the platform has seen excessive R&D costs over the past few years, mostly directed toward turning Roblox into something capable of making AAA games. A feature most developers and users are uninterested in. However, despite being its own bubble, the platform has the same problem of 70% of all experiences being dominated by the top 200, in a game with over 30 million experiences.
Platforms like Discord are very effective at sharing games with friends via streaming and if people see their friends playing a game on Discord, there’s a decent chance they’ll buy it. 1.4 million people start playing a new game each month because they saw someone play it on Discord. Also, unlike the general PC audience, Discord users on PC spend more of their time playing games outside of the top ten. Which makes sense, as why would you be on a gaming centered social network unless you wanted to play more than the biggest, most popular games.
Ball puts a fair bit of weight on the Switch 2’s ability to effectively undo the ‘mistakes’ of the first Switch, as the system lacked many of the biggest games in recent memory. EA Sports, Call of Duty, GTA, Roblox, etc. While the Switch 1 could play some of the biggest games, those were often heavily watered down versions of these games. The Switch 2, however, will facilitate easier porting. Which… is kind of ignoring the fact that many big games did not come to Switch because the publishers did not want to. GTA V is an Xbox 360 game and could have easily been ported over to Switch. They just chose not too.
Activision could have also chosen to re-release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered for Switch, if porting a new game was too hard. But they chose not to. And if I was Nina Tendo herself, I would not want Roblox on Switch. Because then people could watch porn on Switch 2! Furthermore, there is no reason that the Switch 2 won’t have similar user attach rates to the Switch 1, where users buy fewer games, and mostly Nintendo games..
The rise in other handheld devices— that are NOT traditional handhelds— is another potential growth sector, but I find it very telling that the hardware sales for these doodads is not included. Probably because the Steam Deck is not meant to be a profit generator, and most PC manufacturers do not provide unit sales information. Regardless, while this would inarguably boost hardware sales, I have doubts it would improve software sales. These devices are used to play existing libraries of games, so it would likely lead to increased playtime as people can game more leisurely. But not necessarily more sales, unless people are just impulse buying more.
…Also, Ball weirdly undermines this point later on with slide 180, showing that YouTube and Netflix users gravitate toward larger screens. If that is true for video, why would it not also be true for gaming?
Ball then addresses the idea of mobile games leading players to more console and PC type experiences, and he has a very interesting point. While mobile games have generally shied away from replicating the look of most AAA games, many of the biggest mobile games are fully 3D titles reminiscent of console games. And there exists a growing audience who grew up on 3D games on mobile, often running on hand-me-down hardware. For these people, buying a $500 gaming-only console is absurd, but their familiarity with these games and rising power of mobile hardware means there might be a future for more console-like mobile experiences.
…I do not really believe that, and think it would be more likely for these people to get a Switch or game on their laptop. Console games on mobile are something that is tried every few years, but seldom work out as intended, as they tend to be older ports and not the ideal way to play them. Again, Ball monitored that people tend to gravitate toward a bigger screen, and what would you rather use to play a game? A phone, a Steam Deck, a Switch, a laptop, or a gaming PC? There is no right answer, but there is one wrong answer.
Next, and this is something I keep forgetting about, but there is reason to believe that the app store ecosystem of iOS and Android is about to change. Companies are working on new gaming-centric app stores that feature lower fees and introduce players to more games. Which would spread the wealth around and allow developers to avoid the obscene 30% platform fee. Which will at least be a nice buffer, enough to get some games in the green.
New genres are also named as a potential avenue due to the sheer amount of things games can do these days and the power of the cloud and data streaming. But I view this as too hypothetical. Battle royale is really just a variant of a free-for-all deathmatch with a closing wall to force people to fight. It was a spin on an existing concept, mixed with the then rising interest in survival games and scrounge ’em ups. But they succeeded because they were competitive, bite-sized chunks of gameplay with a lot of variability and different possible playstyles. Ball highlights how this PUBG was an Arma mod initially, so why not look at… I dunno, the hottest new Roblox genres for hints?
AI is similarly gestured at as a possible growth avenue, and it is. It can reduce time spent on certain tasks, but core game-likers really do not like it, and will be iffy about its usage for the next few years at the least. Hell, some are even souring on DLSS, because Nvidia started calling it AI, when it was machine learning just a few years ago.
Advertising is an interesting growth sector, as gaming really does not facilitate much in terms of in-game ads compared to most other mediums. Sure, some games had in-game billboard ads or product placements, maybe a branded event, but when most think of ads in games, they think of those mobile games with ads. I’ve never seen one in action, but I am told they exist. However, that is not really the most effective way to advertise to people, and most of these ads are for other mobile games. Ball does not have a great solution to this… but I suggest making watching commercials part of one’s dailies and playing ads while in multiplayer lobbies. …Wait, that could be a real money maker!
Imagine being in a COD lobby and there’s a fast food ad in the background in order to make the guys all hangry! God, putting ads in the menus is such a devious yet brilliant idea that I’m surprised they haven’t done it before! Microsoft should force players to watch a 30 second Coca Cola commercial and do a captcha to help train OpenAI every hour they are playing a game and whenever they start a game!
Lastly, Grand Theft Auto VI is presented as something that will have an immense impact on the games industry, despite only launching for the lagging PS5 and Xbox Series. And some bone-headed analysts think that Take-Two should charge $80 to $100 for the game. Which would give publishers another excuse to raise game prices! …Even though one could argue that the prior price hike actually hurt packaged game sales. Because while inflation says one thing, the wages people are making says something else.
All in all, I think this was all a fascinating series of insights, and I want to thank Matthew Ball for the immense work that went into this. While I disagree with him on some things, and feel he was making a few shortcuts, this is The Lacey Lady’s work. I will be referencing this information throughout the rest of the year as I continue to do my bootleg analysis for y’all every Sunday. And on that note, let’s get into the news this week!
In a Final Act of Excellence, The FTC Goes After Loot Boxes!
(Specifically, Genshin Impact)
The FTC had a good run the past four years, being led by people who actually wanted to do their job. Which was a huge upgrade compared to the past few decades of leaders, who viewed this office as a quick and easy way to amass personal power. All so they could quit and get a cushy job working for a big company while becoming a… We need a word for someone with 10+ million dollars. Because being a millionaire nowadays just means you have a big-ass retirement account. We could call them… decamillionaires.
For the next four years, the FTC is now going to be little more than a pawn for corporations. A shell with the word justice written on it, led by people who believe that democracy is immoral and the order of Caucasoid kings is the only true justice. But right before the new regime took over, the FTC squirted out some loot box ruling for Genshin Impact.
In short, the DOJ filed a complaint with the FTC regarding Genshin’s monetization systems, and the FTC has reached a settlement. Developer Cognosphere will pay a minor $20 million fine and will be prohibited from doing the following:
“Allowing children under 16 to purchase loot boxes in their video games without a parent’s affirmative express consent.” I’m not sure why 16 is the limit, rather than 18, but this is an excellent precedent that should have been set years ago. Not sure how this will be enforced though.
“Selling loot boxes using virtual currency without providing an option for consumers to purchase them directly with real money.” Which, again, is something that has allowed companies to thrive by obscuring the value of their products since… the mid-2000s.
“Misrepresenting loot box odds, prices and features.” Though, I’m not sure if this is a prevalent issue, as this is an industry standard feature, at least in gacha games. I don’t think this is a law in Japan, but the Andira Incident in GranBlue Fantasy made this a hot button issue, and every big gacha game I know about discloses the odds in great detail. As they should. I like government regulation, but self-regulation can be good enough.
“Required to disclose loot box odds and exchange rates for multi-tiered virtual currency.” Again, yes. I am sick of needing to do napkin math to understand the value of currencies depending on when you buy them, and there should be a transparent pricing law or expectation for games to follow.
“Required to delete any personal information previously collected from children under 13 unless they obtain parental consent to retain such data.” Standard stuff, as corporations should not be allowed to sell and profit off of vulnerable children, or rather legal kids.
Now, this is just a settlement. These are not laws and likely will not become laws under the current dark age of US politics, but Cognosphere/Hoyoverse/MiHoYo has agreed to this settlement, issuing the following statement:
“While we believe many of the FTC’s allegations are inaccurate, we agreed to this settlement because we value the trust of our community and share a commitment to transparency for our players. Under the agreement, we will introduce new age-gate and parental consent protections for children and young teens and increase our in-game disclosures around virtual currency and rewards for players in the U.S. in the coming months.”
In short, they think this is ‘inaccurate’ but they will still heed this settlement, because they are a Chinese company and don’t want to piss on a hornet’s nest. While this is far from perfect… this is progress. This is something that could be cited and used in court to support making these requirements for EVERY game that features loot box mechanics. Including some of the biggest games in the console industry, like sports games.
…How long will it be before the US sports industry is mostly gambling? Because between the gaming in video games and through government permitted betting sites, the entire industry is starting to just look like gambling to me.
Time For The Quarterly-ish Xbox Thing!
(A Rapidly Written Xbox Developer Direct Recap)
For context, I am only just starting the writing process on the latest Xbox Developer Direct at 2:00 in the morning on Saturday. That is 30 hours before the Rundown needs to be published, and 30 hours after I like to finalize things, so apologies if this reads like I’m running from the cops while getting this together. I was so busy with self-inflicted 14-hours-a-day crunch that I could not even watch the livestream when it happened.
So let me breeze past the big three pre-announced titles before rambling about the surprise reveal for 2,500 words.
First up, Doom: The Dark Ages was shown off again, building on the more fantastical angle the series pivoted toward with 2020’s Doom Eternal, being both a prequel and a medieval journey to Hell. A journey that promises to be slightly more akin to the original Doom titles, with heavier standoffs rather than fast acrobatic feats, emphasized by the new shield-saw weapon. A mechanic that enables parries, stuns, and a secondary projectile, which I think could either make or break the game depending on how tightly it’s designed. I say that because the modern Doom games have a slight problem where they routinely ask the player to do something via colored prompts. Namely enemy executions. Which sounds fine, but it adds a layer of repetition to combat that imposes a single correct way to play.
This is a faux pas in action games, where the player should be able to control the action as they see fit, without being beholden to reactions. While Dark Ages takes strides to make the intended action clear, with bright colors and exaggerated animations, there is a very real QTE like effect to the footage shown. Hell, it even feels the need to show up when in the giant mech suit and… come on! Mech suits are supposed to be a playground for the player to mess around. Don’t give them QTEs!
Though, that’s just my impression, and I hope I’m proven wrong when the game launches for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam on May 15, 2025.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 got another trailer that continues to strike me as a game that should not be real, but is. The title is, at its core, one of the most JRPG-ass games to come from a non-Japanese developer. You’ve got a cast of plucky youths trying to save the world, except these people are youths by virtue of being less than 33-years-old. Extravagant and gorgeous locales to see and explore. A flashy as hell turn-based battle system along with Lost Odyssey-esque button prompts to make the impact feel a bit more real. And weird critters to meet and form connections with. Such as this weird puffy fellow with a mask for a face who serves as a transportation vehicle that zips through the seas at an extreme speed and flutters their arms to zoom through the sky.
Combined with the realistic Unreal Engine visual, it looks like a game that should not exist, and that’s what I think is so cool about it. It has a western AAA visual style, some flashy and gorgeous world design, while still feeling like a game by diehard JRPG fans who wanted to expand the genre beyond anime. Also, it’s somehow being made by only 30 people, which… I do not actually believe, but if so, that eggs the face of every studio that insists they need a dev team 10 times as big.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is still a terrible name for a product, but it will be released on PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam on April 24, 2025.
South of Midnight was also given its last major showcase, though it had many of the same issues I found with its prior trailer in June 2024. The game has this terrible habit of switching between a reduced frame rate meant to emulate the look of stop motion and regular old 60 frames per second. It’s jarring when it switches, and cutscenes seem to switch frame rates depending on the camera angle, so it switches a LOT! Even if there is some broader artistic reason for this change, it looks like the sort of thing designed to give people headaches after an hour.
Similarly, the trailer revealed the game to be a Forspoken (2023) style isekai, following a young Black woman as she is sent into a fantasy world. Except this time it’s a young Black woman in the deep south and a magic hurricane, and it’s not generic dark fantasy. It’s mystical Southern folklore fantasy! However, due to its emphasis on story, I still barely understand how this game plays or what it is trying to do mechanically. Is this a linear story-driven affair? Is there a world to actively explore? Are there dungeons? What are these vague corrupted wads of humanoid goop the protagonist is fighting and why do they look so blasé? If the protagonist’s ability is weaving, why is the game so combat focused? Even the developer interview does not really acknowledge these questions, and I could not find a gameplay preview showing 30 minutes of uncut footage or anything. Though, that could be YouTube search being trash nowadays.
South of Midnight will be released for Xbox Series and PC on April 8, 2025. After which, it will be torn to shreds by Nazis, Nazi wannabes, and Nazis acting as outrage merchants. Pretty much exclusively because the game had the audacity to dare to have a Black woman serve as the protagonist. I could end this out by mocking these people, but I need to get this Rundown done sooner than later so…
Ninja Gaiden 4 Announced
(Natalie Rambles About the History of Team Ninja)
I briefly went over the history of the series last month when Koei Tecmo and Game Kitchen announced Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, but this warrants a fuller retrospect. Ahem. Well before the days of Koei Tecmo, before Tecmo Koei, there were just Tecmo and Koei. The former specialized in sports and action titles, while the latter was more proficient in the simulation and strategy games genre. Honestly, it’s a wonder that they ever merged.
In the mid-90s, Tecmo, like every developer worth their salt, took their bold leap into 3D, and chose to pursue the lucrative yet cutthroat fighting game genre. This took the form of 1996’s Dead or Alive, a fairly standard fighter for its era, very much following the same grooves as Tekken and Virtua Fighter, but with excessive jiggle physics. It did well, eventually got compromised console ports, and established DOA as a fighting game series to look out for. Though, back then, there were like 30 burgeoning series vying for dominance.
This was naturally followed with a series of sequels, starting with DOA 2 for Dreamcast and PS2. A major leap forward for the series, making the most of new technology and offering a far more refined experience with more personality. It, once again, did well, and saw the development team take on their own identity as Team Ninja. Which I always thought meant it was a team within Tecmo, but… no, it’s just its own subsidiary.
This naturally left the door open for the series to continue with a third installment for arcades and PS2… but we did not get that, and the series became Xbox exclusive for the next decade. DOA 3 (2001), DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball (2003), DOA Extreme (2004), and DOA 4 (2005), and DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2 (2006). All were Japanese developed Xbox exclusive games, and that… just seems really weird in retrospect.
Why did this happen? Well, part of this was because Microsoft was throwing around cash like crazy during the original Xbox era, and were willing to take whatever they could get as an exclusive. Seriously, there are so many oddball and buck wild Xbox exclusives out there that nobody ever gave a shit about, but I think they’re neato! And part of that was because of the auteur running the ship at Team Ninja, the notorious and nefarious Tomonobu Itagaki.
(Side note, but I just realized that notorious and nefarious had so many similarities. The Notorious and Nefarious Natalie Neumann has a great ring to it, and the name Noto Nefa has some potential…)
Much could be said about Itagaki and his many eccentricities. His unabashed bashing of other developers and games, namely Tekken. The fact that he looks like he is melting, and has looked that way for 20 years. The fact that he was/is a perverted creep. Pretty much every game he touched on in his tenure at Team Ninja has some sort of perv factor to it. There are plenty of old allegations of sexual harassment wafting around the man. But, at the end of the day, he led the production on a number of good-ass video games. The most celebrated of which are not the fighting game the studio was founded to make, but the Ninja Gaiden titles they produced.
Ninja Gaiden was a Tecmo series that was home to one forgettable arcade game, three hard-as-balls NES games, and a few handheld games that nobody cares about. The NES games got a remake for Super Nintendo in 1995, but it was put on the backburner before being fully reimagined with Ninja Gaiden (2004). A fast-paced, blood-filled, and hard-as-butts character action game, one that I consider to be very important in the genre’s development.
Character action games, in their most distilled form, were revolutionized by Devil May Cry (2001), but it took DMC a while to get its groove on with Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening (2005). There is a legion of hack and slash games from this era that just didn’t quite get what the industry stumbled onto with this emerging genre. …And I don’t think anyone really understood what the genre would or could be until Ninja Gaiden (2004). This is where a lot of the early 3D jank was cleared up, and things were more balanced around battles, exploration, and performing sick-as-hell feats. Ones where you look like a badass if you do them well, and a bitch-ass if you screw up.
Ninja Gaiden (2004) was dope, and it got a dope-as-heck upgrade with 2005’s Ninja Gaiden Black, commonly cited as one of the best character action games of all time. In part because there are only like 50 of them, but also because it was an upgrade that refined and improved things across the board, and was just a good game. …Well, good if you were willing to get good by dying a bunch.
With this reboot an established success, the series continued with Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (2006) for the Nintendo DS. The only Ninja Gaiden reboot game that I have played, and it’s a vertical touch-based action game with pre-rendered backgrounds and tiny but impressively fluid 3D models. It was a bit too much of its time to warrant much revisiting, with some not-so-great DS gimmicks, but it delivered something unique, bold, and doomed to be forgotten due to its choice of platform.
Then there was Ninja Gaiden II (2008), another banger character action game that I remember being highly praised back in its day, but not nearly as discussed as Ninja Gaiden Black. And I kind of get why. The game is generally very drab and dull with a lot of its presentation, featuring a deluge of gray environments in a way that just looks jarring. I remember there being discussions of technical issues with the game that, due to its era, were far more expensive to fix. And just skimming through some footage… yeah, it seems like a lesser follow-up. Still, those who played it and accepted its flaws found a great, if not excellent, action game.
At this point, Team Ninja had a great foundation for the series, knew how to make a damn good action game, and carried forward on Ninja Gaiden 3 (2012). …A game that completely disregarded the character action essence of the prior titles. The alternate weapons were gone, leaving only the standard katana. The game’s bite and challenge was gone. It featured a lot more modern AAA trends in a way that just felt off-putting to long-time fans, and anybody revisiting it nowadays. And while Ninja Gaiden was always hyperbolic, silly, and featured crap like demon mutants with chainsaw arms, the vibe was just off. Seriously, skimming through a playthrough of it is just confusing near the end.
What happened? Itagaki left shortly before Ninja Gaiden II launched, and took with him a bunch of developers to make a new character action game. With such reduced staff, and more pressure from management, Team Ninja tried to expand the game and make it more palatable to a wide audience. In the process, they made a game that appealed to nobody!
Team Ninja later tried to improve the game a few months later with Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge, an expanded and upgraded version of the prior game that launched for Wii U. …And the game was still just okay. It all painted a dire picture for the series that only grew less favorable when kusoge-master-crafters at Spark Unlimited tried their hand at a spin-off with Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z (2014). It was an often misguided game that failed to be a good action game, failed to be funny, and was bogged down by an excess of jank from a developer who was far more comfortable making shooters. Does it have some merit? Yes. But it is forgotten for a reason.
This left Ninja Gaiden, and Team Ninja, in a rough spot for a few years, but while the developer was determining the next course of action, Itagaki struck back! With funding from Microsoft, and a new company by the name of Valhalla Game Studios, he got to work on the next great Xbox 360 action game in the form of Devil’s Third! …Except things fell out with Microsoft as Don Matrick decided to destroy the system’s brand as the game console for Gamers™ and did immense damage to many first party studios. This left THQ to pick up publishing duties, intending on releasing the game for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. …But then THQ went bankrupt and this title became homeless. Same when Valhalla partnered up with a Korean company named Doobic, who also went out of business.
With the title already years behind schedule, Valhalla eventually got a Hail Mary from Nintendo. They picked up and helped finish the title, revising it as a mature action game for Wii U. …And the game was pretty middling, all things considered. The high octane action and polish of the Ninja Gaiden titles just was not present here. The story was too prominent and pretty lame. And it never really found a great balance between gunplay and swordplay. Weirdly enough, the online mode was probably the best part of the game, being home to far more opportunities for fast and frantic gameplay. Too bad all online functionality, including a PC port of the online mode, were shut down less than two years after launch.
Devil’s Third could have become something if the developers had the chance to iterate on a sequel. When jumping through so many publishers, and an engine switch mid-project, it is hard to muster through it with a good game, and the fact that it came out is impressive in and of itself. Sadly, the funding for that never came, and Valhalla was eventually bought up by Tencent who merged the studio, or what remained of it, into Soleil Ltd. The developer behind the middling Valkyrie Profile action spin-off, Valkyrie Elysium (2023). The decent Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time (2020). And the truly bizarre and kinda busted modern cult classic Wanted: Dead (2023). Currently, they are doing… okay, I guess, while Tomonobu Itagaki has gone on to develop a new studio, just called Itagaki Games. They have not announced or shown anything, nor do they even have a website, but they are supposedly working on something with somebody’s money.
What has Team Ninja gotten up to in the following years? Well, they largely failed to keep Dead or Alive relevant and now that series is on ice, due in part to terrible monetization decisions and competition in the market. They became a developer for hire, working on Zelda Musou: The Warriors of Hyrule (2014) and Final Fantasy The Gaiden Origins: Stranger’s Paradise (2022). But their big breakout hits were Nioh (2017) and its 2020 sequel. A pair of soulslike action games that really resonated with some people and helped bolster the developer, and all of Koei Tecmo.
They later tried to build upon this with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (2023), which failed to make much of an impact or capture the same balance. I don’t know how they screwed up Romance of the Three Kingdoms X Souls, but they did, when that sounds like something that should sell at least 7 million units. Not be forgotten within a month.
Then last year, they produced Rise of the Ronin, an open world samurai action game that was published and funded by Sony. I did not see many people discussing it even when people were gushing about 2024 games, and it did not get rave reviews from the critics. However, that could be due to social media decaying and the fact that I am not seeking out many discussions on non-Nintendo games. However, apparently, Rise of the Ronin was Koei Tecmo’s most successful title to date, so great for them!
At this point, Team Ninja has never lost track of their action game roots, or love of ninjas, but Ninja Gaiden was largely left without a home after they lost so many of the core staff behind those games. It would take a lot for them to embark on a new classic character action game that captures the legacy of the series, and that would also require a shitload of money. Plus, the past trilogy of games were stuck on old-ass consoles. Well, except on Xbox. If you want the definitive versions of the Ninja Gaiden reboot trilogy, you need an Xbox One or Series S.
As such, it was little surprise that they decided to saga the series with the Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection (2021), which was alright, but not really an ideal remaster. In part because it used the PS3 versions of Ninja Gaiden (2004) and Ninja Gaiden 2 (2008) as a base. And in part because it was just not the most optimized or balanced, as Koei Tecmo has never been great at ports. It’s part of the reason why many of their games never really broke out on PC. Bad PC ports.
At the time, I gauged this as just an attempt for Team Ninja to put something out while COVID delayed game production around the world. But it seems that this was actually a mere preview for a grand return to the series, with Ninja Gaiden 4. Developed by Team Ninja and PlatinumGames and published by Microsoft, because they really need more Japanese games under their brand.
The game itself is positioned as both a sequel and a soft reboot of the series. It eschews the rather blasé environments of the prior trilogy in favor of a cyberpunk Tokyo that is locked in perpetual rain. Thus giving the game a deliberately dark look, while still warranting flashes of color, flair, and style. All in addition to a cluttered cityscape with excessive architecture that allows for unique traversal and set pieces, from wall running to rail grinding, to sliding down dilapidating structures. …While also featuring some ninja forests and the like, because it just ain’t Ninja Gaiden without them.
Narratively, it is poised as a, somehow, direct sequel, but it takes the Devil May Cry 4 (2008) approach with its protagonist. Featuring good old Ryu Hayabusa along with a new ninja belonging to a different clan called Yakumo. A move meant to facilitate more play styles, appeal to modern action game sensibilities, and present a younger protagonist of a different flavor. Overall it looks promising, featuring a lot of intense action that I would expect from a game with the Platinum logo, but I am not well versed enough in Ninja Gaiden to know if it feels like Ninja Gaiden. You’d need to wait for the real fans to play the game for that.
However, I did immediately get slightly concerned about the game’s development when I read an interview with one of the directors, Yuji Nakao. A former member of Tamsoft who served as the director of MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune vs Zombies (2016), Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online (2017), and SG/ZH: School Girl/Zombie Hunter (2017). They are merely one director, with Team Ninja having Masakazu Hirayama, the director of Wo Long, also handling these duties. However, I have cause for concern when someone’s rap sheet has games like that. Not wholly bad games… but bad action games.
Still, there is reason to hope that the game does shape up well, and we won’t need to wait too long, as Ninja Gaiden 4 is set to release later in 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam.
…And even if it is underwhelming, at least we got a stealth drop on a remaster of Ninja Gaiden II Black.
Ninja Gaiden II Black Shadow Dropped This Week
(It’s Not As Good As It Sounds…)
Yeah, this was a genuine surprise. A full Unreal Engine 5 remake of Ninja Gaiden II (2008), and a massive visual upgrade for the original game. I am a bit surprised they jumped straight to the second one, rather than doing a UE5 remake of Ninja Gaiden Black (2005), but this is still a great treat for the many fans of the original. …Or so I would assume. Despite being positioned as Ninja Gaiden II but with extra characters and a few tweaks, people who have dug into the remake have determined that the game is actually based on Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 (2009).
Right, I skipped over this, but Team Ninja, as part of a deal with Sony, did these pseudo remasters and alternate versions of Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden II for PS3… and later Vita. Dubbed Ninja Gaiden Sigma (2007) and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, these were enhanced yet generally seen as inferior versions. They made a lot of cuts, changes, and small additions that many fans are highly opinionated against. Adding new enemies, changing the difficulty balance, removing cutscenes, just a lot of weird stuff.
Unfortunately, Team Ninja lost the source code for the original versions, and every time they came back to these games, they updated the Sigma versions. It’s like… like how Sega ported the GameCube version of Sonic Adventure to Xbox 360 and PC, rather than the Dreamcast version. …They really should do a re-whatever of the original and bolt the new stuff onto that.
Now, missing source code like this is a big issue that plagues a lot of games that warrant a more thorough remaster. …However, Team Ninja could definitely make Ninja Gaiden II Black play closer to the Xbox 360 original if they so chose to. My proof of this is a pair of mods that I just learned of a few weeks ago. Ninja Gaiden Sigma Black and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Black. Both of which I heard good things about. …Also, you straight up do not need the source code to remaster older games, ya goofballs! Decompilation is a thing, you can extract and hack things out, and Bluepoint used to rip the game from a disc as part of their remasters/remakes.
As such, this is not the most definitive of the definitive of releases… but it’s a prettier version of Ninja Gaiden II for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC for the mildly excessive price of $50. And that’s cool!
Progress Report 2025-01-26
Legally, I do not condone political violence. But when the richest man in the world is doing back-to-back Nazi salutes, seeing the rich die would make it easier for me to sleep at night. People just need to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. They will not be exonerated or celebrated, they will not live to see the future they want to create, but they will have a ripple effect throughout history. And to achieve this, you don’t need to be important. You can easily change history while being a loser! I look at people like Lee Harvey Oswald and Tetsuya Yamagami and see them as talentless schmucks with guns who were in the right place at the right time.
I cannot convince anyone to do anything more than think, but I hope desperate times lead more people to buy a gun and take radical action separate from any organization. Especially when billionaires tend to attend events with terrible security and plastic guns are so much more accessible than they were in the past. Because in order to have a movement really work, you need both non-violent groups and people willing to get violent to make the non-violent groups seem a lot more reasonable. It’s just basic-ass high school history, dood. History did not start in 1988!
…And in case the government is reading this, don’t worry. I can barely use a knife and I’ve never held a gun in my life. I’m just going to stay in my house, at my computer, typing away and posting stuff on my blog. You can go back to sucking the toes of insurrectionists and Neo-Nazi militias.
2025-01-19: Was busy with work in the morning, Cassie in the afternoon, and a haircut following that. But I managed to write 4,200 words about the best damn industry analysis I have ever had the privilege to read. Ball be ballin’, yo! (I used to hate that term in high school, now I think it’s antiquated and cute.)
2025-01-20: My boss told me to take it easy after I worked a bunch… so I worked on crypto stuff for another 5 hours after I was supposed to be done with work. Wrote the 650 word FTC piece and 2,500 words wrapping up TSF Showcase 2025-01.
2025-01-21: Edited TSF Showcase 2025-01, grabbed 85 images from the comic, and manually added each one while setting the resolution in WordPress. This shit takes forever, but it’s way better than video editing!
2025-01-22: JACK FUCKS SHIT! More News at 11! Was busy working from like 10 to 1:30, taking 2 hours for exercise and breaks and shit. Zero progress!
2025-01-23: Zero progress again! Not even editing and no time for the Xbox bullshit! Was too busy working from 10 to 2:30 in the morning.
2025-01-24: Zero progress again again, because I was working from 10 to 1:45 in the morning. Fucking fuck this shit!
2025-01-25: Okay, wrote 4,000 words, edited the Rundown, and got shit ret-2-go. Only took me 1.25 hours at night and 5+ hours during the afternoon… Then I went back to more worky work!
Fox zzzzz
Love the Cassie~!