Well, would you look at that? It's consolidation time again in the games industry! Who knew 15 minutes could pass so fast?Jokes aside, this is a big one: Sony is looking to acquire Kadokawa Corporation, which is best known as the owner of From Software, the industry titan behind generation-defining hits like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring.This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss why this particular buyout could be a game-changing deal, from expanding Sony's media empire even furth...

This week, Zak and Aaron take some time to discuss Grand Theft Auto VI, but not in the "WHEN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL IT FINALLY RELEASE" way to which you may be accustomed on the internet. Instead, they dig into the industry-wide perception that Rockstar's newest will be some sort of savior for the whole business of games.Between driving the adoption of current-gen hardware and giving the industry at large a billion-plus dollar shot in the arm, the hopes for GTA VI are sky-high. But how did ...

This week, Zak and Aaron take some time to discuss the newly renamed Halo Studios (so long, 343! We're sure Xbox didn't rename you because of all that bad press you've accumulated!) and chat about some of the big changes coming down the pipe for future titles. The most notable of these is the sunsetting of the Slipspace engine in favor of the shiny and ever-so-popular Unreal Engine 5, which will power all new Halo installments for the foreseeable future. But will this fresh direction be ...

Brace yourselves for a shocking revelation: Ubisoft is in serious trouble again. Or still... or, maybe, both.This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the newest plan to wrest control of the storied French studio/publisher away from the Guillemot family — this time at the hands of activist-investor group AJ Investments — and what that all-too-possible future may look like. They also discuss Ubisoft's many failures, a few of its more telling strategy shifts, and just how we got here in the ...

This week, Zak and Aaron sit down with notable Austinite John Henderson, who has shipped numerous games and made a name for himself in the local development community for hosting Game Dev Beer Night and supporting aspiring professionals as they try to make sense of their careers.John was kind enough to share his insights on a wide range of topics from advice on finding fulfillment in your job to maintaining motivation to the state of the industry at large. A few technical difficulties during ...

Alas, poor Concord, we hardly knew thee.That's right, Sony's next big foray into the wild world of live service shooters, is no more. And the real kicker? It barely lasted two weeks. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the unprecedented failure of Concord. In addition to enumerating some of the factors that led to the AAA game's unceremonious sunsetting (namely questionable character design and a general lack of innovation in a decade-old genre), our intrepid hosts also speculate on ...

When you look at a game like Monopoly Go!, your first thought is probably not that its marketing budget was nearly twice the annual GDP of the Marshall Islands. That's right, Hasbro and Scopley spent a borderline-obscene $500 million to get their new mobile title in front of as many eyes as possible... and it seems to have worked. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to talk about the cost of marketing games both huge and humble, and why the mobile sector tends to see such enormous price ta...

Xbox Game Pass has been called the best deal in gaming, and for a while that was hard to dispute. But the times are changing, and with it comes a new era for Microsoft's subscription service - one that costs considerably more than it used to.This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the Xbox Game Pass price hike, and why it's far more significant than it may seem at face value. Between the impact of Call of Duty, flagging growth numbers, freefalling console sales, and the full weight of th...

Every few years, notoriously sadistic game studio From Software releases a new title, and with it comes a heated debate about game difficulty. Well, that time has come again with the launch of Shadow of the Erdtree, the one and only (massive) expansion for auteur director Hidetaka Miyazaki's magnum opus, Elden Ring.So, with some people conflating the DLC's brutal skill requirements with a legitimate accessibility issue, Zak and Aaron sat down to discuss game difficulty, easy modes, artistic i...

Among the bombastic trailers showcased in the Xbox showcase at Not E3™ — er, I mean Summer Game Fest™ — was one particular reveal that some fans have been waiting for for the better part of a decade: Dragon Age: The Veilguard. And boy oh boy, was it ever a bewildering first look. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss their impressions of the newest iteration of Dragon Age 4, and why it seems to feel so little like the beloved games that came before it. They also discuss what's lost whe...