This Week's Winners and Losers in Gaming

Hi.

This new segment will take a look back at what’s happened in the business of vidjagames and allow me to, from my position which comes with exactly no power, subjectively judge how everyone came out.

If you know anything about the industry, you can expect there will be a lot of people in the losers column.

Playstation Plus users 

This month’s selection includes Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (the expansion to the already pretty awesome Dragon’s Dogma), Ibb & Obb (a fun, simple, co-op sidescroller which I highly recommend for couples), Binary Domain (a mediocre third-person shooter which is horrible for $60 and just fine at $0), Soul Sacrifice (a great PS Vita action adventure game), Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD (a remaster of what was considered a strong entry in the Oddworld series), and two Playstation 4 games: the awesome-looking Resogun and the very intriguing puzzle/platformer Contrast.

Ubisoft

Their “Uplay passport” system and online passes have always been annoying, and this week they announced that they are dropping the systems completely. In an industry which could be heading more in the “online pass” direction than ever before, this was a refreshing bit of news.

Respawn Entertainment

Putting their foot down on Titanfall’s exclusivity is a real feather in Microsoft’s cap, and gives their fans a solid boost of confidence in what looks to be a landmark game. (It’ll also finally get everyone off their back about the issue.)

Ryse

They debuted a new trailer this week, and if we can take a moment to divorce ourselves from what are perfectly legitimate concerns with the game that Joseph described at E3 as “fucking lazy,” it’s nice to get a really good next-gen game trailer every now and then.

Nintendo

Make Wayne Brady your spokesman, because his Wii U commercials are cheesy but not cringingly so and self-aware in a funny and charming way. He’s no Kevin Butler, but he’s not half bad.

Digital Foundry

With all this talk of resolutions and the obsession with side-by-side comparisons of new releases, their page views must have been through the roof this week and the new consoles aren’t even out yet.

Ubisoft

With the announcement of South Park: The Stick of Truth being delayed to next March, it would appear the company has decided to push the holiday season as a whole back four months. You… you can’t do that, guys.

Sony

Their recently-released FAQ states that the Playstation 4 won’t play audio CDs, which kind of sucks, and a day-one patch will be required in order to play DVD or Blu-ray movies.

Microsoft

Oh boy. 720p is not true HD, and that’s the resolution a handful of their releases seem to be facing despite the same games (such as Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty: Ghosts) releasing in 1080p on the Playstation 4. Facing this objectively negative situation, Aaron Greenberg of Microsoft took to twitter to state that “you will see every game in 1080p as your output,” because apparently upscaling 720 to 1080p looks just as good as proper 1080p. That’s, uh, not how that works. To top it all off, their Games With Gold releases- A World of Keflings and Iron Brigade- are pathetic in comparison to the Playstation Plus releases coming out this month, only further signifying the game of catch-up they’ve been playing for most of this year.

Nintendo

Their earnings report did not have good news. Wii U sales are still floundering despite some recent strong releases and Satoru Iwata is not happy.

Respawn Entertainment

Titanfall looks awesome and everyone should be able to play it, dammit.

Arkham Origins users

The game was buggy upon its release, and a recent patch only made the situation significantly worse with a game-breaking bug hitting users late in the game. That doesn’t really help at all, guys.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

That new traier, huh? Ouch. I don’t know what they thought they were going for with that protagonist, but I can’t remember another video game character I have immediately wanted to not spend eight to ten hours with. The trailer is impressive only for the amount of misogyny and jackassery it manages to squeeze into two minutes and three seconds, and the 3-to-1 ratio of dislikes to likes indicates that this is the opinion of the majority. Is it too late to take this one back to the drawing board?

The Heavenly Sword movie

The visuals aren’t bad, but something does feel kind of cheap and B-movie about their use of in-game graphics. It’s also unforgivable that Andy Serkis is not attached to the project, as he was inarguably the best part about the game.

And finally, in the non-video game world:

The Boston Red Sox

Boston needed this win and deserved this win, and it was the result of an amazing season and a Series well-fought. Congrats, guys.

My sleep schedule

I live right next to Fenway Park. I did not sleep this week.