Posts By Mat Growcott

Stadia is dead. Google will refund the cost of hardware, games and DLC, and by January 18th the service will be completely wound down. I know what you’re thinking: wasn’t it already closed down? And that is the tragedy of Stadia. Because it wasn’t a bad idea. Like OnLive wasn’t a bad idea, or PlayStation Now. But they held such a strange position in the industry that they would never be able to find success. Why play something via the…

There’s been a lot of talk about how Microsoft’s Activision purchase will impact on consoles, mobile devices and the cloud. But there hasn’t been much information about the effect on eSports. Maybe that’s because it’s presumed eSports will just keep ticking on regardless. After all, the same games are still going to be played in the same way. For the most part, they’ll even be played in the same places – Call of Duty ...

Just look at this picture of Portal. Just… look at it. Finally – an official way of bringing these games into the modern era, and it’s shocking how well it works. And even more exciting, this will be part of a free tool which modders will be able to use to make other previously unmoddable games look just as good. I’m skeptical of just how well that will work – the proof is in the pudding – but for now…

Nine months ago Microsoft announced it was purchasing Activision. Here we are, in September, and things seem hardly any closer. There’s plenty of drama, and not much else it seems. So just what’s happening with this acquisition, and are we any closer to understanding what it means? There’s no doubt about it that plenty of work will be going on behind the scenes, and we’re getting the occasional snippet of that work too. But now the ...

It’s age-old, and muttered in concerned tones whenever the topic gets brought up: Xbox just doesn’t do well in Japan. This week, Microsoft proved that chestnut wrong. There was an inevitability about this topic, thanks partly to Sony’s massive success in the PS3 era and the Xbox One’s lack of success in the east last generation. Now that is changing. Thanks to hard work behind the scenes and the addition of the Series S, Xbox is on its ...

In the last 24 hours, SEGA has announced three new Yakuza games. And anybody who has ever played a Yakuza game will tell you that this is fantastic news – and that it deserves to be more. The franchise, now seemingly switching to its original title of Like a Dragon in the west, has been a very long-running franchise, but until remakes starting coming out and the franchise hit Game Pass I’m not sure it was hitting the audience it…

With a bevy of Assassin’s Creed announcements last night, it looks like the future might be bright for Assassin’s Creed. The hit franchise, which first appeared in the PS3/Xbox 360 era, has long been a staple for AAA gamers since the original following Altair. An update to the formula with Assassin’s Creed Origins meant it stayed relevant after fatigue for the franchise had begun to set in. But five years of giant RPGs has started to have ...

The Activision purchase by Microsoft is one of the biggest tech purchases of all time. So naturally what people are getting really bent out of shape about is Call of Duty. It’s been a perennial big seller for generations, despite the fact that nobody in the gaming sphere admits to actually buying it. And it’s popular with good reason: it just works. It’s smooth, it’s fun, the online usually works without any issues. No problems at ...

How do you so incredibly screw up your flagship game? That’s a question everybody in the upper echelons of Xbox should be asking about Halo – and not for the first time. With the news that Halo Infinite will now nto be getting a split-screen co-op mode, we realise that the bottom of the barrel is apparently even deeper than we thought. Xbox has a lot going for it. It’s the superior console, with superior services and, yes, it is…

PlayStation 2 games will be getting achievements over the coming months, with some of the top games already prepped for release. Games such as Metal Gear Solid 3, The Simpsons Hit and Run and Silent Hill 3 will be ready for when achievements launch on the planned date of October 1 – and there are dozens of other sets in the works too. This is all thanks to gaming fans over at RetroAchievements, and to the people behind the PCSX2…