Gamers Week Podcast

Send us Fan Mail If Nintendo continues its current pattern, the Gamecube will be the next console added to the Nintendo Switch Online service. As one of Nintendo's more underloved consoles, there's a wealth of excellent games waiting to be discovered by a whole new audience. We discuss the titles likely to make the service's launch lineup (if and when it arrives), plus some sleepers...

Send us Fan Mail Sega has officially confirmed that it is planning to acquire Rovio Entertainment, a deal that will see the video game company pay $776 million for the Angry Birds developer. Sega says that acquiring Rovio will allow it to strengthen its own mobile game portfolio, and at the same time, it'll be able to use its video game console expertise to help Rovio expand beyond mobile dev...

Send us Fan Mail In the past week or so, a few reports have emerged about Sony having a new handheld device in the pipeline. The commercial case for Sony re-entering that market is tough to make, however, Sony will never fully accept ceding the handheld space to Nintendo, especially in the company's native Japan. We debate the pros and cons of Sony's possible return to the handheld lands...

Send us Fan Mail Since the first trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we've known that the game is basically going to be more Breath of the Wild. In fact, when it comes to selling audiences "more of the same," nobody does it better than Nintendo. But is that really a bad thing? We're joined by Kenny Thomas of the Leetist Podcast to debate the merits of iterati...

Send us Fan Mail You know her for her roles in NBA JAM, the Aerosmith game Revolution X, and of course, the sacred role of the toughest woman in video games, Mortal Kombat's Sonya Blade. Yes, this week, we're joined by Kerri Ann Hoskins to talk about her history with video games, her behind-the-scenes stories of Mortal Kombat, and what she REALLY thinks about those crazy obsessive fans....

Send us Fan Mail At GDC this week, Ubisoft sparked debate by showing off its new Ghostwriter tool, an AI designed to aid its writers in creating dialogue for in-game NPCs. The company says the tool was designed to mitigate "pain points" for its writing staff, but some industry writers fear it's just the first small step to having AI programs take over more and more of game developme...

Send us Fan Mail It’s one thing to require multiplayer games to be online at all times so that people can play with each other, but it’s another thing entirely to lock single-player console games behind that same obligation. It’s a practice that creates hurdles for game preservation, as well as unnecessarily gatekeeping those with slower internet speeds. We look at this increasingly common trend a...

Send us Fan Mail It’s recently been discovered that leaving the Wii U unattended for too long can brick the console. Apparently, none of Nintendo’s suggestions for fixing the issue have worked, nor does the company seem to care that much about finding a solution. It's a huge blow for video game preservation and collecting, as well as an ominous sign for the future. Will Nintendo soon be a com...

Send us Fan Mail While the world's financial heavyweights rush to invest in the burgeoning video game industry, gaming journalism may be on its last legs. Many high-profile outlets have either downsized significantly or closed up shop for good. Those that remain have largely replaced gaming news coverage with listicles and playthrough guides. In an online world funded by SEO optimization and...

Send us Fan Mail This week, Microsoft met with European Union regulators in a closed-door hearing in Brussels to defend its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. The UK’s CMA previously suggested that the deal may be approved if Microsoft were to divest the Call of Duty division of ABK, but on Tuesday, Microsoft Corp. made it clear that there will be no deal unless it comes with the...

Send us Fan Mail Microsoft has admitted that putting games on its Xbox Game Pass subscription service leads to a marked decline in base sales. This may seem like a headline written by Captain Obvious, but it's a 180 for Microsoft, which previously maintained that being included in Game Pass resulted in higher sales for games. So does Game Pass actually hurt AAA games? We discuss the pros and...

Send us Fan Mail A brand-new Nintendo Direct has arrived, giving us a look at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Metroid Prime Remastered, Pikmin 4, and so much more. We're joined by SanityCrypto of It's Virtually A Podcast to talk about all the highlights from the show. We'll also be discussing how the UK's CMA is suggesting that Microsoft sell off Call of Duty in orde...

Send us Fan Mail Even though the developers have made sincere attempts to distance Hogwarts Legacy from J.K. Rowling (the controversial Harry Potter creator who is now infamous for loudly espousing transphobic views), the author still stands to profit from the title's sale. So should gamers boycott? We attempt to consider all sides of the issue as we delve into this messy topic that has much...

Send us Fan Mail Microsoft has ambitions to transform the Xbox into the world’s first “carbon-aware console,” and the announcement of an update that will include an optional energy-saving mode seemed to be a step toward that end. However, the internet gotta internet, and a vocal minority is now claiming it’s all part of a ploy to make Microsoft go “woke.” We debate whether there's any merit t...

Send us Fan Mail Google Stadia, the tech giant's ill-fated venture into the video game industry, is taking its final breaths after little more than three years.  But will the passing of Stadia signal the end of cloud gaming? We discuss what the future of game streaming might look like and whether or not there may yet be a place in this world for Stadia. We'll also be talking about the Mi...

Send us Fan Mail With dozens of games delayed to 2023, a greater emphasis on new-gen hardware, and at least one major exclusive from each platform holder, 2023 easily boasts the most exciting release lineup that gamers have seen in years. We're looking over the biggest titles set to launch this year and discussing which games we are (and are not) looking forward to the most. We'll also b...

Send us Fan Mail Gamers Week Podcast is officially one year old!! This means it's time once again to gaze into our proverbial crystal balls to see what the world of video games might bring in 2023. We'll hear what a few analysts have to say about the coming year and then make some predictions of our own. We'll also be discussing how video game QA testers have formed Microsoft's...

Send us Fan Mail While some might say that 2022 was a slow year as far as new releases were concerned, that doesn't mean there weren't still some absolutely stellar titles making their debut. With Sony's God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West, Nintendo's Splatoon 3 and Pokemon Arceus, and killer third-party releases like Elden Ring and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, th...

Send us Fan Mail According to the FTC, Epic will pay $275 million for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and another $245 million for design relying on dark patterns "to dupe millions of players into making unintentional purchases." Is this just a case of parents not paying enough attention to what their children are doing online? Or does Epic bear some r...

Send us Fan Mail The Game Awards aired last week, and thanks to the Wednesday curse, we’re just now able to do our wrap-up of the live stream. So for our main topic, we’re going to review our predictions and find out which one of us got the most picks correct. Then we’ll be recapping the biggest game announcements from the show, including Hades 2, Crime Boss: Rockay City, Death Stranding 2, and mo...

Send us Fan Mail So much has changed in the video game industry in the last 30 or so years that sometimes it feels like modern games are nearly unrecognizable when compared to their retro counterparts. We're joined by Christopher Cross, a long-time game dev who has worked in the video game industry since 1996 (Diablo, Medal of Honor, and Marvel Avengers are just a few of the titles on his res...

Send us Fan Mail The feud between Sony and Microsoft surrounding the Xbox maker’s attempted acquisition of Activision Blizzard has continued to heat up, so for our main topic this week, we’re looking at a roundup of Sony vs Microsoft headlines. This includes Sony's claim that Microsoft is trying to turn it into Nintendo, Sony's assertion that Xbox Game Pass has reached 29 million subscri...

Send us Fan Mail The nominees for the Game Awards 2022 have been revealed, but the response from much of the gaming world has been... *shrug*. Why do the Game Awards garner such apathy from gamers (if not outright hatred)? And having acknowledged that the awards are largely nonsense, which games are we rooting for? We'll also be discussing the mayhem caused by Twitter Blue users impersonating...

Send us Fan Mail Sales numbers always generate big headlines in the video game industry. But while some titles come and go, others remain heavy hitters, sitting atop the sales record books and accumulating numbers that most games can only dream of. We take a look at these top 10 video game juggernauts and wonder... is this not only a list of the best-selling games of all time but the flat-out best...

Send us Fan Mail Xbox boss Phil Spencer gave several interviews this week, and his quotes have fueled much of the world’s recent gaming news. This week, we're diving into a roundup of Xbox headlines, including Spencer's claim that Xbox loses as much as $200 on every console it sells, Xbox 's changing tone on Game Pass in light of the service failing to hit target numbers, and Spence...