Games Inbox: What to expect from The Games Awards 2024?

The Monday letters site doesn’t think there will ever be a good video game movie, as a reader accuses Black Ops 6 of being games to win.

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The last jump
The Reader’s Feature over the weekend was right about the strange lack of new releases this month, but that just seems to be par for the course this year, with all the weirdness going on. The only thing to really look forward to for the rest of the year seems to be The Games Awards in December.

But I can’t figure out if this will be another disappointment or something that can really have a lot of notices. I’ve heard people talk about Resident Evil 9 and the new Tomb Raider, but as far as I know this has never been confirmed, so it just sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Some people are even talking about Nintendo Switch 2, but I don’t see that happening. And yet there has to be some kind of big reveal at the end, as there always is. I’m going to guess Resident Evil 9 just because Capcom used it to reveal Monster Hunter Wilds. But it seems almost too obvious now.

Whatever happens, I hope the final mic reveal is something really interesting and not just the company that paid the most for advertising space.
Goosebumps

GC: So far, there have been no official clues as to what any of the reveals will be.

Just for streaming
I find it kind of funny that the biggest cinematic success for video games is still Sonic The Hedgehog. People talk about the quality going up, but it seems people are really thinking about The Last Of Us and Fallout, which aren’t movies. Borderlands is a movie and it was terrible.

I’ve never seen a Sonic movie, so I won’t comment on its quality. But I’d guess it hasn’t exactly been at any Oscars.

I’m not sure there will ever be a good quality video game movie now. Because any great idea that comes up that seems like a perfect fit for live-action will be turned into a TV show due to both Fallout and The Last Of Us and the fact that the games are really long in form of history and donation. It doesn’t fit easily into two hours.

Already Tomb Raider looks set to be turned into a show, not a new movie, and I imagine everything else will be the same. So only things with no story in the first place, like Sonic, end up as movies.
Constance

Evergreen sales
When it came out, I don’t think anyone would have predicted that the Switch would still be selling as well as it currently is, even with the big boost the OLED model must have given it.

The biggest achievement though has to be Mario Kart 8. Nintendo has started doing TV commercials for the Switch again (unlike Microsoft and Sony who haven’t figured out that commercials help sell things) and what games they choose to sell the console? Mario Kart and Animal Crossing.

The game is now 10 years old, but it’s still the reason anyone would buy a Switch!

It also makes predictions about Switch 2 launch games interesting. A lot of people have said Mario Kart 9, but how often do you get the next game in a series when months before its predecessor is still getting TV commercials?
Hours

GC: Funnily enough, we have a feature on this coming up very soon.

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Call to action
Can’t help but agree with Reader Feature about Microsoft’s latest marketing campaign. It’s just embarrassing. I don’t think any normal person will understand what that means, and even if they do, what are they going to do about it? Suddenly sign up for Game Pass and start playing on their smart TV? As the feature says, the ads don’t even seem to mention Game Pass, and you’ll need a controller anyway.

To be honest, I find it hard to care about Xbox anymore. They basically don’t exist for me, as a PlayStation 5 owner. If they have a decent game it’s coming to my console anyway and besides that what do they have to offer? Nothing.

I really don’t think Microsoft has anything to counter this point. All they care about is new customers and market growth, but I think you have to accept that if you were interested in playing video games, beyond just FIFA and Call Of Duty, you would have already done so. Nothing Xbox is trying to do at the moment will make any difference.
Colin

Miss the boat
I think the failure to do any kind of story game or mode with Overwatch will always be the biggest mistake. I don’t think there is a return to its declining popularity now, it’s just too late, but I don’t understand why it never happened earlier. It’s not a technical problem, they already played, they just needed to figure out a story and some scenarios.

If the core team didn’t have time to do it, then it’s the kind of thing that could easily be handed off to another developer. Actually, this sort of thing happens all the time with shooters, so I don’t understand why Blizzard didn’t do it. Maybe it could happen now, with all their Microsoft money, but somehow I still don’t get the impression they’re going to bother.
Ishi

Complex strategy
I can see people putting two and two together on news of Blizzard making an open world shooter and assuming it’s Starcraft. I hope it’s something like what I thought Command & Conquer: Renegade would be, where you’d play it like a shooter but also be able to build structures and vehicles like a regular RTS game.

It seemed to me that this was a common idea around the time RTS started to fade and people were looking for something new. The only game I know that did something similar was Battle Zone, which was great, but it’s very old now.

I guess companies thought people would find it too complicated and the game itself would probably be too expensive to make. Shame as I’ve always thought it would be cool and the obvious way to try and bring back Command & Conquer if EA ever had the urge.
Grackle

The buck stops here
I agree that the quality of the GTA Trilogy remasters is ultimately Rockstar’s fault. If this developer they scrubbed from the intro wasn’t up to the task, then Rockstar should have realized that and replaced them, not just released the game as it was anyway, knowing it would sell anyway.

I found the remasters to be very disappointing overall. I’d much rather they did them one at a time and put in a lot more effort, maybe even make them full remakes, but they just seemed like a random, quickly botched cash-in. The games are decades old, what was the sudden rush for?
Mikey

GC: It was GTA 3’s 20th anniversary the year they were released, but we know what you mean.

Need to win
Great review of Black Ops 6 and I agree it’s the best call of duty campaign we’ve had since Infinite Warfare. I’m glad you said that as I love the Infinite Warfare campaign.

However, I have to say that I feel very uneasy about this year’s Call Of Duty.

I’ve heard reports that they sell a sound booster that works very well with Warzone.

For me, it’s definitely a game to win. And on top of this they’ve brought back the (to me) dreaded gobblegums from Black Ops 3. I absolutely loathed gobblegums when they destroyed public lobbies. I would try to play a game of Zombies only to find someone jumped a perkoholic and shopped for free, thus opening the entire map in round 1. It killed the balance. I stayed away from public lobbies all year because of it.

Now they return with a vengeance. From season 1 you can directly buy gobblegums. And not just any. You can buy every ultra gobbleum in the game, as well as legendary gums for 1,100 COD Points. Now I’ve looked through the rewards you get from prestige. You get a gobblegum pack at some point every prestige. But only once you get a single ultra gobble leg. Just once. But you can buy them all in cash. This is game to win. It doesn’t matter that Zombies is PvE as it would directly affect me when playing with others.

I was hoping that Activision and gaming had moved past this, but apparently not.

They have also reduced how many COD points you earn from the battle pass. It used to be 1,300, now it’s only 1,100. Just enough to buy the next one. 200 might not seem like a lot, but over the life cycle of a game it’s about 1,000-1,200 COD Points. Yet they never said they would change this.

These changes feel very sinister in nature and I just wonder if Microsoft has encouraged this?
No matter what. It is not good for gamers.
Matt

GC: The audio material isn’t great, but it’s not much different from high-end gaming headphones that promise similar benefits. We’ve been saying for years that Zombies needs a complete rethink.

Inbox works too
I have codes to track games on PC that you can give to readers. The codes can be redeemed on GOG: Dishonored Definitive Edition, Scorn, Coromon and Duck Paradox.
Big Angry Dad82

GC: That is very good of you. We pass them on to whoever wants them in exchange for a useful inbox letter.

Just FYI, but Lego is releasing a new Horizon set. It’s a relatively small one with a Shell-Walker, Sawtooth, Aloy and Varl. It doesn’t appear to be on Lego’s website, but I saw what looks like official pictures online.
Doland

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The fine print
New inbox updates appear every weekday morning with special hot topic inboxes on weekends. Reader letters are used on a merit basis and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600 word reading feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page which, if used, will appear in the next available weekend slot.

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