Posts By Mat Growcott

How much would you spend to be able to smell the things you can see on your screen? If your answer was a sensible “absolutely nothing”, you’re about $150 off. That’s exactly what GameScent is offering. And no, we don’t know why. In the history of gaming, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a single tweet, forum post or opinion piece saying “Ya know what? It would be pretty cool to be able to smell this game”. There ...

It’s shocking to think that within a day or so we’ll be playing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. But I’ve checked the calendar a good few times, and it’s definitely true. Yesterday, when the original Final Fantasy VII: Remake came out, it was divisive for only covering the adventure up until the end of Midgar. Now we’ll be able to see what comes next. Only it wasn’t yesterday. It was four years ago. Which is pretty short by game ...

Exclusivity is changing. When I was a kid, I desperately wanted a PlayStation to play Tomb Raider. I drew pictures, I read magazines. I had a Sega Saturn, and could’ve played it perfectly well there. But six-year-old me didn’t know that, and nothing I saw convinced me otherwise. I had a PlayStation that Christmas. A bit after that we went into a little game shop in Birmingham – up near where Currys and Pizza Hut is now, if memory serves.…

Four Xbox will come to PlayStation, Game Pass will continue getting day one releases and the next Xbox will be the “biggest generational leap yet”. Those were all announcements at the Xbox business update podcast, and it was fair and well-explained. And while they stopped short of saying which four Xbox games would be jumping ship – pun intended – they also refused to rule out future releases. This is testing the waters. It’s ...

Four Xbox games will be coming to PlayStation and Switch, it has been announced. The games, which haven’t been officially named, will be announced in the not too distant future. Although the names haven’t been named, Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirmed that it will not be Starfield or Indiana Jones. It came during an official podcast, labelled a “business update” and promising to explore the future of Xbox. Thousands of people watched the ...

As odd as it might seem, we’ll learn about the future of Xbox through a podcast on Thursday evening. That’s how these things are done now. Gone are the days of corporate press releases and obviously carefully edited talking head videos, replaced with a less obviously stage managed video roundtable. And this isn’t a bad thing. It means we’re going to get the words directly from the horse’s mouth. And those words had better be near ...

The evidence is mounting. Switch 2 is coming this year, and could be announced as soon as next month. I’ve been pretty vocal about the need for an upgrade. As someone who has a good 4KTV and little interest in a handheld, visuals have been a barrier for a long, long time. Controversies over issues – especially Pokemon-shaped issues – have done little to make me more interested. My Switch became a Smash machine and, frankly, it’s ...

It’s been fascinating to watch the fallout from the Xbox third party rumours this week. But what’s been more fascinating is Microsoft’s complete lack of response to them. The gaming community has hit fever pitch. If I wrote an article about how the next Xbox was going to charge you per hour of gaming time, it’d get picked up and shared by people desperate for any bit of negative news. It would be treated as fact. For context, this is…

One of the biggest innovations of the last twenty years helped revitalize the fading gambling industry: the smart phone. And while things have come a long way in the years since, it’s not always easy to play on a mobile phone compared to a PC. Some things apply wherever you want to play, while others are more handheld or tablet specific. But whether you’re looking to play on a phone or tablet, or a PC, some of these tips should…

Xbox look set to release all of their games onto PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, and in the very near future. And despite a large amount of theorising, that’s about all we know. But that is bad enough. This is very much a breaking news story, and I held off writing anything in the hopes that Microsoft were sensible enough to put out an official statement overnight. But it hasn’t happened. A variety of leakers and insiders have confirmed ...