Gamer's Outpost Press (Archived)

The specialty retailer is rolling the dice in a game of chance as the landscape shifts in its industry.

by Rich Duprey via The Motley Fool

The rationale behind GameStop (NYSE:GME) existing as a business, let alone as an investment, is over. With gaming transitioning to a digital download format, the need for an expansive specialty retailer selling hard copies of gaming titles is quickly fading. While an innovative company might be able to figure out a way to evolve into a business that grows with the times, GameStop has instead chosen a path that ensures it will only exist as a much smaller, wholly irrelevant entity.

Downloads taking it down
New game software revenue tumbled more than 10% in the fiscal fourth quarter ending Jan. 30, accelerating a decline that saw sales fall 6% across all of 2015. And the outlook isn’t much better, with total sales expected to drop as much as 7% in the first quarter, though GameStop says they will eventually even out as the year progresses. Heck, they could also end up 3% higher, too!

Of course, it thought 2015’s total sales could be as much as 4% higher, and we see how that worked out, but the reason for GameStop’s optimism is what should have investors worried.

GameStop finds itself at a juncture much like the one that faced Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) several years ago: It’s once-thriving DVD movie rental business was increasingly transitioning to a digital streaming model, so it could either evolve with it, or find itself in a position like Blockbuster. Netflix chose evolution, making the jump not only to providing streaming movies, but also creating its own content.

GameStop seems more like Redbox parent Outerwall (NASDAQ:OUTR), which remains doggedly wedded to the DVD rental model, even as it makes a late, second foray into streaming video.

Dialing up failure
The game retailer’s strategy for coming to grips with the changing landscape of the industry is…selling AT&T mobile phones. What?!

GameStop’s Technology Brands division, which, in addition to its Spring Mobile division (the AT&T wireless retailer it bought in 2013) also runs 76 Simply Mac stores selling Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) laptops, tablets, and smartphones, saw revenues rise 26% last year. It plans on building upon that success.

Last year, as it was slashing the total number of retail video game stores by closing a net of 156 locations, it vastly expanded the footprint of its Technology Brands division by adding 552 stores. Sure, it still has almost 6,100 video game stores, compared to a little more than 1,000 mobile phone and Mac stores (and three dozen collectibles outlets), but it will be the Technology Brands outlets that see the lion’s share of future growth, with as many as 550 new stores planed to open this year.

Still, that muscular growth brought division revenues to just $653 million, or 7% of the specialty retailer’s $9.4 billion in total sales. It’s worrisome that management sees that as being its growth driver for the future, and that it thinks it can supplant the bulk of its gaming revenue.

Mobile phone sales are the dying gasp of an ailing, failing businesses. Circuit City and RadioShack turned from being specialty electronics retailers into cell phone sellers because it looks like easy money. The problem is, consumers can buy a cell phone anywhere, so it gives GameStop absolutely no competitive edge.

Hey Mac, can you spare a dime?
And don’t expect anything out of the Simply Mac business, either. Consumers have a choice of shopping at an actual Apple store, or at the many Mac boutique shops that litter the landscape. Even office supplies retailer Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS) once believed selling more Mac products would help its business. It didn’t, and now it’s fighting the government for its survival.

The Apple store experience isn’t easy to replicate: The salespeople are generally more knowledgeable about the products, the latest products are broadly available, and the environment is aesthetically pleasing. More likely than not, if someone’s going to go to a bricks-and-mortar location to buy a Mac, it will be an Apple store.

Still, GameStop thinks this is its future. Investors should realize that by making a big bet on a game already saturated with too many players, it’s game over for GameStop.

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by Eddie Makuch via GameSpot

The voice of Snake in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was performed by 24 actor Kiefer Sutherland, not series veteran David Hayter. Now, Hayter has spoken up about why he was not involved with the project and explained that he has no intention to ever work with series creator Hideo Kojima again.

Regarding why he wasn’t involved with The Phantom Pain, Hayter told Game Informer that he bumped into a producer for the game at a recording studio and was told Konami was going in a different direction. “That was basically it,” Hayter said. He then spoke with Metal Gear English casting director Kris Zimmerman, who reportedly told him, “‘We’re going forward, but it looks like they are going to try and replace you.’ They tried to do that before, and it never worked. They tried to get voice matches, and it never happened.”

Hayter further explained that the writing had been on the wall. There was apparently some amount of friction brewing between Hayter and Kojima, with the game designer hoping to find a different actor to perform the lead role, though it’s unclear why.

“I had to re-audition for Metal Gear 3 to play Naked Snake,” Hayter said. “They made me re-audition to play Old Snake, and the whole time, they were trying to find somebody else to do it. I heard that Kojima asked one of the producers on Metal Gear 3 to ask Kurt Russell if he would take over for that game. He didn’t want to do it.”

Hayter goes on to say that he cherishes the time he spent working on the Metal Gear Solid series, though he wishes his professional involvement with the series could have ended better.

“I don’t have any ill will toward Kiefer Sutherland or anything like that,” he said. “The whole thing could have been handled better and a little more respectfully, but I’m not going to cry about it.”

Finally, he says he hasn’t played The Phantom Pain (“that’ll be 60 hours of humiliation”) and that a future partnership with Kojima is unlikely to happen. “I’ve got no particular love for Kojima. I don’t feel any need to go back and work with him again.”

In 2013, before the launch of The Phantom Pain, Hayter said Konami never asked him to work on the game and never told him why he was passed over.

“If it were my choice, I would do this role forever,” Hayter said at the time about Snake. “To hear anyone else’s voice coming from Snake’s battered throat, makes me a little ill, to be honest.”

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by Gabe Gurwin via Digital Trends

Spanish developer MercurySteam has been remarkably quiet over the past few years. The developer responsible for the excellent Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and its less excellent sequels has not announced any future projects since it concluded the series in early 2014. However, we now know that one familiar face, former Konami producer Dave Cox, will be returning to assist the developer.

“When I was approached by MercurySteam to get involved in their new project, I jumped at the chance,” says Cox in the announcement. “It’s been my great fortune and pleasure to work with this talented studio over many years.”

In addition to his work producing the Lords of Shadow series, Cox is also credited as a writer on both Lords of Shadow and Lords of Shadow 2. He briefly worked at developer fish in a bottle, but his LinkedIn indicates that he left the company to work with MercurySteam full-time.

But just what is MercurySteam working on? There are some hints that it could be a new Contra game. Cox expressed interest in tackling the run-and-gun series back in 2012, even going so far as to say that MercurySteam had “an original idea” in mind. The developer’s website has, for some time, been a cryptic landing page depicting travelers in a rusty spaceship, and a countdown timer currently stands at about 27 days. We’ll presumably find out more when it hits zero.

Since the release of Lords of Shadow 2 back in 2014, MercurySteam has mostly made headlines for in-house turmoil. An anonymous former developer blamed director Enric Alvarez for the game’s quality, saying his development philosophy was “completely overlooking programmers, designers, and artists.” Alvarez told me back in February of 2014 that these were “lies and insults from an enraged ex-worker.”

What are you hoping MercurySteam tackles next? With Konami’s recent move away from traditional AAA development, perhaps we shouldn’t hold out for a Contra reboot, but then again “spiritual successors” are certainly all the rage these days!

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by Apolon via iDigital Times

The Star Fox Zero release date is on April 21, and right now, Nintendo has all of its attention focused on the release of Twilight Princess HD on March 4. That’s great for Legend of Zelda… but not so much for Star Fox Zero. In fact, Star Fox Zero isn’t getting quite the attention that it should be getting. Nintendo needs to ramp up the marketing for Star Fox, ASAP. Because the game looks great, and Nintendo just needs to get the word out there.

Star Fox Zero is going to be the first Star Fox game in a very long time—the first since Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS a gasp-inducing ten years ago. Star Fox Assault, the last console Star Fox, dates all the way back to 2005. It’s truly a series that’s been on the backburner, but Nintendo has revived it at last. And that’s a pretty serious gamble on their part.

Here’s the thing with Star Fox Zero: On the surface, from what we’ve seen so far, it looks a lot like Star Fox 64. And that’s because it’s supposed to: The game deliberately emulates the strongest game in the series. It’s got a similar structure, similar gameplay, even a similar look. But so far, it seems like only us real die-hards are excited about it.

What’s going on? Basically, Nintendo just needs to ramp up the amount of attention it’s paying to Star Fox Zero. After all, Star Fox 64 still has some of the best starship-based fighting of any game ever, and Star Fox Zero promises to finally bring us those experiences again, but modernized. Sure, the graphics aren’t the prettiest. That’s not really the point.

Somehow, a bad narrative has set in about Star Fox Zero. And maybe that’s because Nintendo has been busy promoting other things—Super Mario Maker, Fire Emblem, Twilight Princess HD. But now it’s almost Star Fox’s time, and that narrative is going to change as Nintendo goes wide with its marketing. The company is going to remind us just why we should get excited about the return of Star Fox… the reasons we wanted Nintendo to revive the series for so long in the first place. It can be done, and it will be done when we see the game again.

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by Bob Fekete via iDigitalTimes

by Todd Haselton via TechnoBuffalo

Whether you realize it or not yet, virtual reality is going to play a huge part of the future of gaming, entertainment, enterprise, education and more. It would be silly for any company to sit on the sidelines, which is why Google, Facebook, HTC, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft and others are all working diligently to deliver virtual and augmented reality experiences. Apple has been oddly quiet, but a new report from the Financial Times says it has a “secret research unit” with “hundreds of staff” dedicated to the project.

So while it may seem like Apple hasn’t done much of anything, it actually has, we just don’t know about it. Financial Times said that Apple has “prototypes of headsets that could one day rival Facebook’s Oculus Rift or Microsoft’s Hololens,” and discusses Apple’s interest in both virtual reality (similar to the Oculus Rift) and augmented reality (HoloLens). Apple hired some of the staff working on those projects through recent acquisitions of FlyBy, PrimeSense, Faceshift and Metaio, the news outlet said, and they come in addition to high-profile hires like Doug Bowman, which the Financial Times also revealed earlier this month.

Apple has plenty of patents detailing research on the virtual reality front, including one that appears to offer a Gear VR-like experience for the iPhone. Those patents have always suggested that Apple had some sort of plans on the backburner, and Wall Street analysts have also added to the speculation, with one recently declaring that Apple will get publicly aggressive with VR as soon as this year.

The Financial Times said it doesn’t have any information on when Apple will push out its virtual reality headset or what sort of technology it will support – VR or AR or both, somehow – and warned that “Apple might again decide not to release a headset.” That could be dangerous if Apple wants to take part in what will almost certainly be a massive industry.

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By Ron Duwell via TechnoBuffalo

Days after some digging by Unseen64 revealed the cancelled PSP game Saints Row: Undercover, developer Volition has decided to spread the love with a free ISO of the prototype, making it available for all to play.

Volition believes that the prototype should be preserved and archived, and it has released it through three file sharing websites. You can download it for free at:

• MediaFire
• MEGA
• WeTransfer

The ISO is fully playable on any PSP emulator, but no word on if it can run on a modded handheld. Download it while it’s out there, and be sure to thank Volition.

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by Bob Chipman via ScreenRant

After being counted out by many game analysts following the underwhelming performance of the GameCube, Nintendo made a major comeback in the early 2000s with the unprecedented success of the groundbreaking Wii. But sales of the console’s follow-up, the Wii U, have proved disappointing – despite the presence of popular, critically-praised titles like Bayonetta 2 and Super Mario Maker – leading many to speculate that Nintendo would have to launch a new console earlier than expected or face a continued slide against competition from Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PS4.

While Nintendo has openly acknowledged plans for new hardware currently codenamed “NX,” specific details of what this would mean have been hard to come by from the notoriously secretive Japanese electronics giant. Now, new rumors are beginning to surface that details of the NX have begun to leak online; offering a tantalizing glimpse at the possible future of the console gaming stalwart, and suggesting that an official reveal could be approaching soon.

Nintendo’s policy of not responding to rumors or unofficial leaks remains largely in place, but the new rumors fall largely in line with previous hints that had already widely circulated. No official confirmation (or denial) has been offered, but the early buzz on the NX has suggested that it will be a “hybrid” device built to allow a console and handheld device to interact directly (and even share the same games) – with a goal of ultimately supplanting both the Wii U and 3DS product-lines and merging Nintendo’s previously-segregated home and mobile gaming branches.

New rumors reported by Extreme Tech and Nintendo Life suggests 900p and 60fps resolution, a new online service with TV and streaming capabilities, exclusive new titles based on Nintendo’s long-enduring classic franchises, and a surprisingly low $200 US price tag. That $200 price tag could make more sense if an additional rumor turns out to be true – specifically that the NX will be released and sold in two pieces, with a handheld system hitting store shelves in November 2016, while the console “partner device” would land later in 2017. Those new (albeit unverified) details align with rumors that the portable device (which may or may not feature touchscreen-based controls) would double as a controller for the console.

Most eyebrow-raising by far, however, is talk that the handheld may also be capable of interacting with Sony’s PlayStation 4 – though exactly how that would work, or for that matter why longtime rivals like Nintendo and Sony would enter into such an arrangement, is entirely unclear. It’s possible, given that other rumors have suggested the NX might also interface with smartphones as part of Nintendo’s new mobile push, that the device could interface with any wireless-enabled device on some level, but given Nintendo’s infamous unease with non-proprietary hardware, even those reporting the initial rumors have cast doubt on that particular feature. Back in the 90s, Nintendo and Sony had considered an alliance to create a CD-Rom add-on for the Super Nintendo, but the deal went south with Sony opting to rework their designs into what became the original Playstation.

With the Xbox One and Playstation 4 already prominently positioned in the market, an attractive price point could give Nintendo much needed edge to make up lost ground – particularly if the device can match or exceed its competition in graphics and processing power. However, Nintendo’s biggest challenge is expected to be winning back third party developers, who have been uneasy about bringing best-selling multiplatform series like Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles. While legendary first-party franchises like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon continue to sell well along with popular new properties like Yo-Kai Watch, non-Nintendo developers have tended to look askance at consoles built around underpowered hardware and unfamiliar control schemes like the Wii and Wii U. Thus far, controller rumors have centered on the possibility of a button-free touchscreen, which if true can’t be making third parties any less wary on that front.

Nintendo has thus far had no comment on any NX rumors, and is not expected to reveal anything about the console until at least this year’s E3.

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by Joe Pring via We Got This Covered

It’s a new year, and with it Microsoft have brought several new games to the Xbox One‘s backwards compatibility service. Are they the titles you’ve been waiting to see since the service began last year? Not likely, as there’s some really obscure stuff on the list this time around.

Besides The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings and Counter-Strike: GO, you’re not likely to recognize many of the other games present for January’s update. But hey, there must be a large enough audience for the likes of Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad – they are, after all, voted for (in part) by Xbox owners.

You can check out the full list below.

• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

• Sam & Max Save the World

• Aegis Wing

• Counter-Strike: GO

• Age of Booty

• Space Giraffe

• Soulcalibur

• Skullgirls

• Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad

• Small Arms

Interestingly, Microsoft announced in the same post that, going forward, updates to the backwards compatible library will be handled slightly differently. Instead of being released in batches – like today – Microsoft’s Xbox Engineering team will begin releasing titles as they become available instead of grouping several up into one large batch.

Based on your feedback, the Xbox Engineering team will start to pilot a new way to launch Xbox One Backward Compatibility titles. Starting today, we’ll release titles as they become available, rather than a set monthly launch date. What this means for you is that you won’t have to wait to find out the latest titles; we’ll release whatever is available, when they’re available, once each title has received the engineering and publisher stamp of approval.

Despite the continued updates to the service, there’s undoubtedly that one obscure game you’re still waiting to be added to the Xbox One. Let us know what it is in the comments below!

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