Over the past few years, Sony has been able to maintain a consistent level of expectations for fans to set for themselves, with E3 and PSX being the two standouts to look forward to for the biggest announcements and updates, and smaller news pieces being shuffled in throughout the year. After a couple of noteworthy E3s, Sony’s middling press conference at this year’s event left a lot of fans underwhelmed and anxious for more. In a moment of seeming panic, Sony set forth a chain of events that pushed forward a few of their key PSX announcements, including the reveal of Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima, up to the Paris Games Week press conference, an event that, in the past, had rarely been used for major reveals such as those. Teased as the “second half of E3” , the Paris Games Week presser, while distinctly more filled with new trailers, also ended up being fairly standard and middling, leaving fans to wonder what Sony had left up their sleeves for PSX.
Crossing over $1,000,000 in total prize pool is an impressive accomplishment, but the amount of games is worth noting as well. In 2016 ten games eclipsed the $1 M total, six did it in 2013, and the first broke onto the scene in 2005 ( Counter-Strik
Kublai finally decided that he had enough of Korean mediation, so he ordered a new envoy to go to Japan directly at the end of 1269. He reached the coast of Japan in 1272, but once more he was sent home empty-handed. One last mission led by the same Mongol ambassador reached Japanese territory in 1273, but access to Kyoto was once more denied. Every attempt by the Mongol Emperor to receive any kind of response from either side of the Japanese government had failed. It was time for
The low marketing budgets that Japanese games suffer from tend to extend into lack of coverage from the media. Small Japanese publishers and their tiny western partners don’t really have the money to wine and dine armies of western journalists at massive preview events, and often have to resort to almost literally begging for articles. If you look at an average large gaming website, you’ll see that their coverage of most Japanese games is spotty at best, and non-existent at wo
The future is transcending into something more digital. All around we can see its effects bleeding over into our sporting events, which will soon probably have their own major league followed by their own version of a “super bowl.” It wouldn’t be the least surprising at all if we were to see a college version of the sport to pop-up on the collegic side of the league in the near future. High schools may never see the sport enter into their halls and toss down banners over the gym walls as they hang proud next to other more traditional physical sports, but many colleges would want to invest and jump in on the quickly rising sport before they miss the lucrative money train.
David Cage’s latest tale seems to be nearing completion, as President of SIEA Shawn Layden hinted at in an interview back after E3. Having also received multiple gameplay demos, Detroit: Become Human is one of three titles likely to receive a release date during Friday night’s press conference, along with perhaps one more trailer to tease the three protagonists’ journeys in this near-future game.
That said, as exciting as the increased amount of money in eSports is, it would be naive to claim that the overall competitive video game environment is healthy for most players. It’s absolutely getting better, but it’s not there yet. For example, the average earnings per player are less than $7,000 a year, and the median earnings per player are $440
At last week’s opening presser, despite the low expectations Sony had set for fans, the publisher still managed to fall below them, with only a handful of new demos and teasers to satiate an increasingly ravenous group of players after the past few disappointing months. Even seemingly obvious reveals , such as a God of War or Detroit: Become Human release date, or any footage whatsoever for Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, or The Last of Us: Part II, were inexplicably left out, as fans were forced to sit through over two hours of developer interviews and several trailers that were debuted earlier this year, including the night before at the more hypeworthy Game Awards. While this series of events would be more excusable if Sony’s 2018 lineup was relatively empty, their inability to capitalize on their packed lineup for 2018, one that arguably stands head and shoulders above the other big two in gaming at this point in time, is jaw-dropping, with no release dates for any of their seven big first-party titles slated for next year, despite several supposedly expected to arrive sometime in the next six months .
