GAMING NEWS PART DEUX

Keeping with MS, they've gone and done it a contract for an Xbox One at the moment it's USA only and says limited availability etc but this plays even more into my prediction years ago od Xbox going service based.

That I would not be shocked the rumoured streaming SKU of Scarlett is a contract from the get-go in someway.

Seems as though Telltale is to shut soon. They're leaving behind a skeleton crew of about 25 staff to wrap up with their current projects, but they've cancelled a lot of projects in the pipeline and laid off a lot of staff.

I think it's been down to trying to expand much too quickly following the success of TWD's first season. They were trying to juggle too many plates. I read that nearly all of their projects lost them money with Batman being the biggest flop in terms of revenue. It was a bit of a slippery slope for them in that by not making money from some of their projects, they couldn't then go on to invest in their engine to make sure it was running well. The later Telltale games were seemingly plagued with technical problems - I distinctly remember multiple crashed playing the last episode of TFTB - and that turned me away from picking up their other titles.

It's a shame as they've put out some cracking stories over the years - TWD's first season, The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands were all brilliantly written and great fun. It's sad to see a studio of this calibre fade away, but it's clear to see why it's happened.

Don't worry THQ will buy them soon

Apparently it's Minecraft that they're finishing off, not TWD's last season...? I'd be pretty pissed off if I'd bought the season pass for that one!

The saga continues as Telltale are getting sued to high heaven for sacking nearly 300 employees with next to no notice.

Also they put out a statement saying some partners are looking at helping them finish Walking Dead, all rather odd.

JayMoyles wrote:

The saga continues as Telltale are getting sued to high heaven for sacking nearly 300 employees with next to no notice.

masofdas wrote:

Also they put out a statement saying some partners are looking at helping them finish Walking Dead, all rather odd.

My heart chuffing bleeds for them.

It sounds like colossal mismanagement of the highest degree. They should absolutely be doing whatever they can in their deathbed to release a complete final season of TWD. People paid for that - they need to honour it.

Hopefully the folks that were sacked land on their feet quickly - maybe Campo Santo can pick up a few?

But should they be any fund's they get to really finish the game when 250 employees have just been sacked with nothing?

Mas is absolutely correct. If Telltale have an obligation to anyone, its to tbe employees who need food and rent and security for their family, not entitled nerds who might be a tenner out of pocket and unsure whether or not a pretend person was bitten by a zombie.

It seems like they're not even doing that though - that's why there's a class action lawsuit going out against the company as there was zero severance pay combined with the zero notice. They're fucking everybody over, both consumers and staff, by the looks of things.

This all started a while back when a former co-founder and CEO sued them in the summer.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/15/17467166/telltale-lawsuit-kevin-bruner

It's been going on longer than that, as borderlands almost didn't get finished, they must have had a injection of cash back then.

Some good gaming news as GLAAD is adding an Outstanding Video Game category alongside categories for films, TV series, musicians, comic books.

I think this just shows how far gaming has come in terms of LGBTQ being represented in some way in the medium. The award does include canon stuff, so if it was done a few years ago then Overwatch would have counted due to the comic book where we learn Tracer has a girlfriend but this award looks at 2018.

Ah - GLAAD. GLADD is specifically doctors and dentists - that confused me for a bit! Well, either way, this is a

Good.

Yep. Sums it up, I think.

Nintendo Russia's head honcho is not a very nice person. Allegedly.

There's footage of him shouting and insulting Nintendo staff during a tournament Nintendo of Russia were running. I don't think there's any need to suggest that he's "allegedly" a dick.

I'm just using the HIGNFY defence, but you're right, he's obviously a twerp.

I've not been following the story closely - have there been any repercussions from Nintendo of Europe as a whole on the Russian branch of things?

An ‘internal investigation’ I think.

I’m not sure how much NoE really cares about this.  Can’t imagine Russia’s a big cog in their machine; can imagine that Russia in general doesn’t have the best workplace practices.  I can’t help but wonder if they’re hoping it will all blow over, especially given that to get away with that level of crap, you have to be fairly good at negotiating upwards.  Maybe I’m just being cynical though.

Sent from Topic'it App (which is bobbins)

Bad people rise to the top in Russia? Who would have thunk!

You've got to imagine bad PR is something Nintendo would like to avoid, but then again, they've brought a lot of that upon themselves in recent years that I can't really say that's true any longer.

They seem to shrug off the environmental negative PR every year, and I'm sure there's other stuff in the same basket.

They're a big company. For all that they're cuddly in some ways, at heart they're a big company. They're going to do big company things unless people strongly tell them not to, and I don't think people will. Yes you get some commenters on NintendoLife saying they're not going to buy another game from Ninty unless they get rid of this twerp, but how long will that last, and across how many people? Not long enough to make them care, I'll warrant.

Their games are great though.

MS are going to be showing at GDC improvements on using Xbox Live within games for better crossplay etc

Numerous platforms talked about including Switch which does include Minecraft at the moment which has Achievements for instance for the Switch verison.

This is all to grow Xbox Live as a platform.

If you remember I said before Xbox One was shown that MS will go Netflix route, with Game Pass they've sort of done that and we have XCloud coming.

How long till we have some sort of Xbox Live app on Switch?