Video game media watch

[Potato]

Seen a gaming media article that made you think, "There's something fishy going on here." 

Seen something so profoundly stupid that you just can't help but say, "What a fucking retard!" 

Post it here. 

---

Leaderboard for fuckwit games journalists mentioned in this thread: 

1. Dalton Cooper 1
   
2. Rik Henderson 1
   
3. Jez Corden 1
   
4. Ed Nightingale 1
   
5. Dominic Tarason 1
   
6. Scott McRae 1
   
7. Luke Plunkett 1
   
8. Eric van Allen 1
   
9. Anthony McGlynn 1
   
   

---

I'll start with this one, which is very clearly a Microsoft press release. If the "journalist" had any self respect, he'd punch himself in the dick live on stream so he could count himself as having achieved at least something of even minimal entertainment value in his pathetic life.

It really has it all:
✅ Reads like a press release
✅ Absurdly hyperbolic language
✅ Idiotic pop culture references
✅ SEO guff
✅ A hypothesis at odds with the reality of the market

https://gamerant.com/best-xbox-game-pass-games-2025-play-now/

Xbox Game Pass is Having Its Avengers: Endgame Portal Moment

By Dalton Cooper

The Xbox Game Pass subscription service is currently on a wild hot streak with a seemingly never-ending supply of big new game additions. While the first few months of 2025 saw their fair share of high-profile, critically-acclaimed new Xbox Game Pass games, things really started picking up in April. April 2025 may very well go down as one of the absolute-best months in the history of Xbox Game Pass, with GOTY contender Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 added as a day one release alongside the brilliant first-person puzzle game Blue Prince and the surprise debut of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered.

Xbox Game Pass kept the momentum going strong in May 2025 with the addition of the highly-anticipated day one release Doom: The Dark Ages, and June 2025 has really picked things up with fresh game additions like The Alters. The rest of the year is looking bright for Xbox Game Pass as well, with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers both coming in July, Gears of War: Reloaded on deck for August, and a trio of day one games in October in the form of Ninja Gaiden 4, Keeper, and The Outer Worlds 2. And assuming it's not delayed yet again, it seems fans can expect to play Hollow Knight: Silksong through their Game Pass subscription before the year is out as well.

Exciting new games keep getting announced as day one Xbox Game Pass titles. It's like the service is having its Avengers: Endgame portal moment, where fan-favorite characters showed up on the scene in one of the most memorable moments in MCU history. But many would agree that is where the MCU peaked. Avengers: Endgame's portal moment was the culmination of over a decade's worth of MCU films and is often hailed as one of the franchise's most memorable moments ever, but after that, things went downhill. The MCU is not nearly as popular as it was pre-Endgame, as evident by the poor box office returns for movies like The Marvels and Thunderbolts.

It could be that Xbox Game Pass will suffer a somewhat similar fate. While there should be no shortage of day one Xbox Game Pass games coming to the service in the months and years ahead, it's entirely possible that 2025 will mark the peak of the service's output. The roll Xbox Game Pass has been on this year has been nothing short of astonishing, and it's hard to imagine a scenario where it can be matched. That doesn't mean that there won't be hit games added to Xbox Game Pass in the coming years. Just like the MCU still has its occasional hits with movies like Deadpool & Wolverine, Xbox Game Pass will still be home to massive day one releases. But they may just not come at the same ridiculous pace that they have in 2025.

We know that Xbox Game Pass is coming out swinging in 2026, but time will tell if next year will have the same impact as this year. It will be hard to top 2025, but 2026 promises to bring the long-awaited new Fable game, the Gears of War: E-Day prequel, a new Forza game, and most likely a new Halo, believed to be a remake of Combat Evolved. It's possible that this is the peak of Xbox Game Pass, but it could also be that the service's best years are ahead of it.

Fuck gaming "journalists".

[simiansmarts]

Bold choice to write this article in amidst of Xbox going through unprecedented job cutting and studio closures partially as a result of game pass devaluing expensive software releases.

Turns out, people actually LIKE paying for their games instead of a subscription service like movies/television

[who is ted danson?]

I only purchase physical media

[Potato]

https://www.t3.com/tech/tablets/redmagic-astra-gaming-tablet-switch-2-beater

"Legitimate" tech site compares US$550 Chinese Android emulation machine with latest console from Nintendo. 

How the fuck did gaming media lose all credibility again?

[Nintex]

I love how Xbro's like Jizz Corden are having a temper tantrum

But this really is the fucking problem. No game is a dream come true. There is no big impactful Xbox game. It doesn't exist. It would never make it out of development.

Sarah Bond will be talking about CoPilot Excel on Xbox GamePass at the next not-E3. Bolting the 32x to the MegaDrive because Corporate wants AI.

  

[Potato]

Absolute banger from Eurogamer this one. 

Nintendo president says children should engage with its characters elsewhere if they can't afford a Switch 2

"We believe the pricing of Nintendo Switch 2 is appropriate for the gaming experience it offers, and what is most important is to provide entertaining experiences that demonstrate the value to consumers." 

"To achieve this goal, we have incorporated various features into Nintendo Switch 2."

"It is true that Nintendo Switch 2 has a higher price point than our past gaming systems. We are creating various opportunities outside of our gaming systems for young children to engage with Nintendo characters and game worlds, with one of the ultimate goals being that they will eventually play on our gaming systems. We are closely monitoring to what degree the price of the system might become a barrier."

"We are still developing new titles for Nintendo Switch, and a vast library of software is already available, so we believe there will be opportunities for consumers to experience Nintendo Switch titles for the first time on Nintendo Switch 2."

I remember Eurogamer being quite decent back in is early days. Clearly they've taken the Kotaku pills and asked for a second dose. Just tabloid gutter trash. The editorialised headline isn't even close to what was said and completely misrepresents his response in order to get a cheap clickbait headline.

[Alpacx]

[benji]

[Potato]

A big dose of   from Scott McRae at Games Radar. 

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/donkey-kong/i-called-it-nintendo-confirms-donkey-kong-bananza-was-actually-the-inspiration-for-the-super-mario-bros-movie-redesign-all-along/

I called it, Nintendo confirms Donkey Kong Bananza was actually the inspiration for the Super Mario Bros. Movie redesign all along

[Alpacx]

Spiralling over 8 people getting laid off 

[Potato]

Probably wasn't a great idea to only focus your outlet on catering to 25% of the video game audience then Luke...you dickhead.

[benji]

Spiralling over 8 people getting laid off 

Sounds like an opportunity for those who know better then.

[Potato]

Luke drank the leftist Kool aid a long time ago. Was a reasonable writer at one stage.

[benji]

I mean, it's basically what Giant Bomb did, Jeff sold it for unrelated reasons which were directly related to Ryan dying suddenly. All these whiners are saying they can't do what Giant Bomb did in a worse environment. Hell, what Polygon did with slightly more favorable sponsors.

The truth is that long established people aren't going to take risks, that's normal in every industry, Jeff "lucked" into the situation or he probably wouldn't have either. But their stupidity leads them to arguing it's some kind of systemic problem when it's the natural lifecycle of every enterprise. They could literally quit and create a startup at any moment, but they hate risk.

The funniest thing is that the industry they cover is one of the most incessant at people leaving someplace that's been bought to fire up a new studio that gets bought and everybody leaves to start up a new studio onto infinity. Yet the journalists never do this. Aren't they the talent of their industry? You're saying you couldn't scrounge up Schreier and Klepek and Mercante and some more losers like that and put something together just on those names that will float along for at least a year or two? You could, absolutely. But aside from prying Schreier away from his employer the real problem is the others don't want to do it, they want the institutional personal safety of the system they decry.

edit: Klepek was publicly crying about the injustice of making six fucking figures for whatever it was he did at Waypoint. And that's with a wife that makes bank and a rich family and even a cheapo house in the Chicago suburbs.

[Alpacx]

To Klepeck and Plunkett's credit they are trying their worker co-op thing after getting laid off from Vice and Kotaku.

Of course they're doing it by chasing after a shrinking part of the market. "Video games wrapped in leftwing American politics" isn't going to be popular to the hundreds of millions of gamers outside America, never mind Americans.

 Aren't they the talent of their industry? You're saying you couldn't scrounge up Schreier and Klepek and Mercante and some more losers like that and put something together just on those names that will float along for at least a year or two? You could, absolutely. But aside from prying Schreier away from his employer the real problem is the others don't want to do it, they want the institutional personal safety of the system they decry.

It's not just the safety of the institutions they want, they want the institutional reputation and clout.

I'm the past 20 years you see a lot of that in the media, NGO, postsecondary education, and public-sector unions. Building up a "trans rights!"/"Kill the (((Zionists)))", "The West is Evil" advocacy group or nonprofit is unlikely to be viable (without Iran/Qatar $$$) and hard work so they take take over something existing with good institutional reputation and twist it to their own ends.

So instead they co-opt the ACLU into a trans rights institution, employees of the Canadian Union for Public Employees spend their time on anti-zionist shit, Universities do Decolonization (without giving up their land or endowments to natives) and the UN hates Israel (okay. that one always has been).

[Potato]

Look at this fuckwit. 

"The Dark Souls of..." was always a stupid reference and it's so already out of date that this is just embarrassing. 

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda/now-that-the-wind-waker-is-on-switch-2-im-begging-nintendo-to-revive-the-dark-souls-of-zelda-games/

[Potato]

[chronovore]

If they're a small team, they're probably also working on fixes until the bell, and trying to get review-ready copies out in advance of having it on sale is a fucking seventh-level-of-hell proposition.

[Potato]

Click bait at is finest by some clown at *checks notes* MyNintendoNews...

https://mynintendonews.com/2025/08/31/us-mario-kart-8-deluxe-is-currently-outselling-mario-kart-world/

US: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is currently outselling Mario Kart World
Mario Kart World is an excellent video game though it is currently being outsold by the 2017 title Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch. The information was shared in the recent US video game sales from sales tracker Circana. Mario Kart World slipped from 1st to 6th in the Nintendo Switch software charts. while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe rose from 7th to 4th. Of course, it is worth noting that the original Nintendo Switch has a massive user base compared to Nintendo Switch 2. 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

It should also be noted that digital sales weren’t factored into the equation

[Eric Cartman]

polygonmariokart8piechart.jpeg

[Potato]

Former Kotaku editor-in-chief Patricia Hernandez repeating the fallacy that Mario Kart 8 is outselling Mario Kart World, but this time without acknowledging that the data doesn't include digital sales nor pack in software. Illustrates that she wrote the article based on a tweet without doing any further research...or even giving the data a cursory glance. 

Remind me why she got fired again?

https://www.polygon.com/nintendo-switch-2-sales-numbers-mario-kart-world-8/

[Potato]

Interesting read. 

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/marketing/dear-game-developers-please-remember-what-on-the-record-actually-means

In all honesty, it feels awkward to even have to publish an op-ed like this, but it is my sincere hope that doing so will help those developers who court the press understand how to navigate a tricky slalom. Protect yourself from yourself by preparing—and understand that once a journalist has hit record, you aren't just speaking to them, but to the world.

[Nintex]

Well he won't get any more invites. He's doing actual journalism instead of corporate dickriding and asking for autographs.

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

https://www.eurogamer.net/revisiting-dragon-age-the-veilguard-one-year-on-how-have-our-thoughts-changed-on-biowares-opinion-splitting-rpg

For a year, on and off, I've been thinking about Dragon Age: The Veilguard. More specifically, I've been thinking about my Dragon Age: The Veilguard review - the five-star review I wrote for Eurogamer. It plagues me. Because to be blunt, I'm not happy with how it sits. I don't think The Veilguard is a five-star game and definitely don't think it's BioWare's best game. To have suggested such a thing has haunted me for 12 months, particularly as new information about Veilguard's troubled development has arisen and we've learned how a Mass Effect team commandeered the project in order to rescue it, overriding the Dragon Age team at its core.

lol. lmao even.

[Alpacx]

https://www.eurogamer.net/revisiting-dragon-age-the-veilguard-one-year-on-how-have-our-thoughts-changed-on-biowares-opinion-splitting-rpg

For a year, on and off, I've been thinking about Dragon Age: The Veilguard. More specifically, I've been thinking about my Dragon Age: The Veilguard review - the five-star review I wrote for Eurogamer. It plagues me. Because to be blunt, I'm not happy with how it sits. I don't think The Veilguard is a five-star game and definitely don't think it's BioWare's best game. To have suggested such a thing has haunted me for 12 months, particularly as new information about Veilguard's troubled development has arisen and we've learned how a Mass Effect team commandeered the project in order to rescue it, overriding the Dragon Age team at its core.

lol. lmao even.

Somebody needs to do some penance pushups.

[TylenolJones]

[DavidCroquet]

I thought this was interesting, so I looked to see what Era is saying. Naturally, they are passionately defending Eurogamer's inconsistency...reviews are subjective, blah blah whatever. 


BUT

Silent Panda copy/pasted (and sadly, did not source) a long justification from the EIC of Eurogamer, and I thought you guys might think it is funny.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/call-of-duty-black-ops-7-review-thread.1353472/page-3#post-147713230

ChrisTapsellEG:

Hello! I know there's a lot of discussion around the Arc Raiders review and AI here, so just wanted to pop in and clarify a few important points here which should hopefully help.

With Rick's Arc Raiders review, it's important to note that he did not criticise or "mark down" the game for containing generative AI, or AI as a whole; he actually discussed one form of AI in the game relatively positively. For example, as he said here of the AI used in the game's animations: "It's an interesting technology, and the effects it produces during matches are undeniably convincing."

Instead, the criticism made in that review, to re-state it again here for those who haven't read it, is this: that some of the AI, namely the generative voice AI, used in that game was something that directly, negatively impacted his experience of playing the game, and ran in direct contrast to the themes the game sought to explore. As Rick said: "yes, using AI voices does compromise Arc Raiders, not just ethically, but artistically too."

This is the point it's important to note. We're not "calling out" games for having any AI at all. We have no blanket policy on this, and opinions on this do not need to be "consistent" across all reviews on Eurogamer, from all individual writers, in the same way they don't need to be consistent about what they think of games having too many grappling hooks these days or which Elder Scrolls game they think was the best.

The approach at Eurogamer for the past 26+ years it's been around is that reviews are written by individuals, not the outlet hivemind - we celebrate the variety and diversity of thought that brings rather than seeking to squash it. Instead, when it comes to consistency, what we always aim to ensure is consistency across our reviews in the quality of arguments put forward, their internal consistency (i.e. whether they make sense in the context of that review, whether the point is well argued and convincing, whether it's made with specificity and evidence, etc.), the depth of thought, and crucially, whether the reviewer feels supported and free from external pressures in expressing their personal response to and analysis of a game when it's well justified in the text. What should ideally identify something as a Eurogamer review is that it's clear the writer has thought hard about the game they're writing about, not that it expresses the exact same opinion as every other Eurogamer review before and after it.

In the case of Blops here then, Jeremy didn't particularly notice or take exception to the generative AI used here. (Despite people pointing to certain (undoubtedly ugly) assets as examples, it's actually also not confirmed, at the time of writing, what actually is gen-AI anyway. Just that Activision uses a disclaimer on Steam to note that it uses it somewhere in-game. It probably is those assets if you're taking an educated guess, but it's not confirmed and shouldn't reported as such. We've requested comment from Activision and are yet to have a response.)

Likewise, if Jeremy did feel these - or anything else at all - had a significant, noteworthy impact on his experience of the game, if it undermined or helped what the game was doing, he'd be welcome to discuss that too. That goes for positive or negative impacts.

With AI in particular being both an emerging technology and a nuanced one, and also one with major ethical questions and even more major investments (and therefore, billions of pounds of vested interests), any instance is going to be both emotionally charged and complex. It's my belief that must [sic] take each case as it comes  and treat it as a complex topic where we can help explain, inform and absolutely also criticise, where necessary. I hope this has been clear from the huge amount of in-depth reporting we've done on the topic already, and we hope we can continue on that way.

Ultimately though, to come back to reviews, great criticism comes from great insight, which itself comes from individual writers considering all possible aspects of a game, including its context, in how it combines as a whole - and then in trusting their gut with what they feel is important to discuss in each case.

With the comments here, obviously feel free to talk about AI stuff, but please keep them on-topic and respectful - discussion is welcome (and necessary!) with topics like this, but anything which crosses the line into abuse or similar is not. You can see our code of conduct for more if in doubt, but I know the vast majority of our regulars are angels and would never need to, of course

Big thank you for reading as ever and bearing with this long comment! I hope that helps clear up our approach as best as possible.

Actually the Arc Raiders score wasn't a ding against AI after all! It was because the AI was bad. So bad, in fact, that it merited a 4/10 score--a score usually reserved in the modern rating scale for literally broken, unfinished, and unplayable games. If the AI had been great or awesome, the score certainly would've been a 11/10, of course!

To be clear, though we don't have an editorial mandate about AI, we defintely don't like AI. See look, I'm calling it ugly right here in this comment, so I am on the Right Side of History. The problem with COD, though, is that we don't know what--if anything--even IS AI! There's simply no way to tell. Activision hasn't pointed it out, as the Arc Raiders team did, so we are honor-bound to assume the best of them and rate the game as if the AI wasn't used at all. Note to developers: obfuscation of AI usage will get you a higher score.

Anyway, our main thing is the diversity of opinions. If one of our writers wants to ding a game for having too many black people in a historically inaccurate context, well, that's permitted, as long as it can be rationally supported in the body of the review. Why haven't you seen any reviews like that at Eurogamer? Well uh...

Anyway, thanks for reading my long comment. Subjectivity is subjective and anything we write or do is blameless, as long as the reviewer assures me, the Editor-in-Chief, that they "thought hard" about some stuff.

Don't be mean or we will ban you. 

[TylenolJones]

[benji]

Kind of problematic to not only question the reviewers lived experience but then dox them.