Thursday, September 24, 2020

Year 4: September Update


Another slow month around here as far as new blog posts. I did do a small LEGO build on camera at the end of August which mostly went well. My plan that may or may not happen is to try and do a G.I. Joe week in early October in relation to the new video game. I'm also trying to take a mini-vacation of sorts within these busy months. It's been 2.5 years since I took more than one day off in a row from work and that was mostly for an important family obligation aside from the quick stop at Funspot. Next week I will be taking two whole days off! I'll be making a lengthy drive to do some hiking so it's not extra time to spend on the blog or videos.

Quite a bit has happened in the gaming world since August. We now know the Xbox Series X releases on November 10th alongside a lesser model named the Xbox Series S. I'm not so sure a Series S is necessary as it cannot even run Xbox One games with the enhancements they receive when played on Xbox One X. It will likely confuse consumers too but it does cost quite a bit less with the Series X retailing for $499.99 and the Series S at $299.99. Sony countered with a release date of November 12th and a price of $499.99 for the PlayStation 5 (PS5) while the digital version (no disc drive) is priced at $399.99. The new PS5 DualSense controller is $69.99 with Xbox controllers staying at $59.99. 

As expected, more next generation games are listing for $69.99, though I am surprised at the types of games hitting this price point. The PS5 launch titles Demon's Souls and Demolition AllStars are both $69.99. When I first wrote about likely game price increases I thought it would be for the big open-world style games, not remasters, arena combat, and sports titles (NBA 2K21). The games getting those prices feel as if they should be $59.99 or less. There is an ultimate edition of Spider-Man: Miles Morales that includes a remaster of the original Spider-Man game for $69.99 as well but the standard edition is only $49.99. Fortunately, the Miles Morales game will release on PlayStation 4 too. That's the only first-party launch title I'm interested in and I believe all the third-party titles I'd like to play are available for the current generation so thus far I'm not feeling the excitement for new console launches. 

On Monday huge news broke from Microsoft when it announced that it had reached a deal to acquire ZeniMax. If you're not someone who follows the game industry closely maybe you aren't familiar with ZeniMax and are thinking who cares. ZeniMax happens to be the parent company of Bethesda, id Software, and a number of other skilled developers that work on popular franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, and Wolfenstein. Microsoft is going to have a very strong library of role-playing and first-person shooters that does make the Xbox brand more appealing. It's possible not every single game from this deal will remain exclusive to Xbox (and PC) but one has to expect they will all launch first on Xbox and likely with bonus content.

I finally saw the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. It's not great but it is watchable despite a fair amount of weak humor. I'd expect it is more appealing to younger audiences than the adults who grew up with the Genesis games. That's about all I have for this month, or at least all that I can remember. Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan

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