reminder: while there's overlap, Sega's regional branches each have their own purview & there's a ton of stuff you're just not going to see announced by Sega EU
reminder #2: there's a Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 update due that same day, so that may very well be all they're teasing
their stream announcement didn't even strike me as worth mentioning but I see a lot of sites, including a couple JP ones, writing it up as if they're teasing something major and I just don't see it
re: Puyotet 2, their update roadmap is five items deep & they've already stated, implied or leaked things like:
the co-op boss fight mode from Chronicle
a certain character
PS4/5 crossplay
"accessibility features" which presumably means colorblind settings, spectator mode, etc
given the state of the game, their post-release roadmap comes across as all the stuff they didn't have time to include at launch, and I'm not expecting any massive new additions that'll win over the ppl who think its too similar to the last game, but otoh...
...the game clearly didn't hit & even if they address the technical & online issues, attempt further balance patches, etc, that's not going to bring ppl in/back, they gotta try harder
or just give up, cut their losses & do better for the Puyo 30th game, who knows
oh and I forgot Puyotet 2's still not out on PC so yeah, expect news on that
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on how Namiki, a renowned composer, came to direct GG Aleste 3: when M2 president Horii approached him about handling the music, the project itself has no leader, no direction & no other personnel aside from programmer "Fawlabo"; at that time, Namiki was already working as a...
…sound director on another project that was similarly disorganised & was floundering, so when he sensed that this project might be similarly derailed by a lack of organisation, he volunteered to be the director in order to see it through to the end, for himself & the other staff
this might not be news to DQ fans but it's new to me—apparently Akira Toriyama's overbearing former editor Kazuhiko Torishima told some completely untrue story to Yuji Horii about how Toriyama was hooked on Portopia in order to initiate their collaboration dot.asahi.com/dot/2021010600…
it's not from this interview, but here's another Torishima/Toriyama tidbit for Dragon Ball fans: the android/Cell saga's constant changing protags were due to Torishima (who wasn't even editor by then!) being like "really, that's what you're going with?" after every new reveal
...so if it weren't for Torishima's brow-beating, that whole saga may have begun and ended, somehow, with Gero and that weird clown robot
I deleted my earlier warning about the Business Journal Sakura Revolution article bc I figured nobody outside of my feed was going to see anyway, but I see people talking about it, so PSA: that site's renowned for posting misleading tabloid garbage, don't take it as gospel
they've already had to edit their article a few times, and the site they've been citing for sales figures has come out and said their numbers are extrapolated from app store rankings, are not necessarily accurate & shouldn't be passed around as hard data
what's more, it seems their article is primarily based around a video essay by some JP youtube dude, and he's been taking heat for all the slop they packed in around his words as if it had anything to do with him
like, think about just how many different rules Puyo has messed with, let alone all the clones and ripoffs and fan games and whatever else, and the only alternatives that ppl have ever seriously entertained are Fever (which took a minute to catch on) & PPT Swap (if that counts)
coming up with new stuff is hard & it can be hard to gauge just how much demand there is for something original to begin with
the other more pragmatic issue is that, aside from Tetris, Puyo's the only game in this genre that can still maintain traditional full-price games, but…
Nintendo's in the works to buy Next Level Games, the Canadian studio behind Luigi's Mansion 2 & 3, Mario Strikers, Punch-Out!! Wii, etc—if all goes well, Nintendo will attain complete ownership by March 2021 post.tokyoipo.com/tdnet/20210105…🇯🇵
basically, it seems like one of the owners wanted to sell his stake in the company and so Nintendo decided to buy the company outright so as to secure their working relationship, facilitate more direct personnel/resource exchange, etc
Next Level Games has gone on record about how they tried being a multi-line studio that simultaneously handled Nintendo & non-Nintendo games and how they ultimately didn't enjoy it, but I hope they can try that approach again because I want more games from the both of them
come to think of it, someone recently asked about this and I forgot to answer, and bc I'm in a reflective mood I figure I'll answer here: I ended up not going ahead with the idea of a formalised STG news resource, for three reasons (>)
one, doing it the way I think it ought to be done would mean covering euroshmups (which, like them or not, do occasionally and quietly find success, aspects of which are worth analysing) and so many other games/events that I just don't have the necessary time to keep up on
two, it's thankless work, and seeing the tiresome horseshit that gets thrown at shmups twitter dude, various youtubers, etc by jaded old dudes for having the temerity to ask for attribution or share their content with ppl with their intended audience makes me not want to bother