There was a very brief buzz around the release of Horizon II: Forbidden West, just before Elden Ring drowned out the entire discourse. We want to give Horizon its well deserved time in the spotlight, as we discuss its qualities and, most importantly, its commentary on climate change, and insights on what it means to be an outsider.
In our side quests, we discuss the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the video game industry, review the Uncharted movie, and collaboratively complain about a lack of gameplay footage in recent video game showcases.
Shownotes
00:02:25 Horizon II: Forbidden West
00:53:22 Further video game companies withdraw from the Russian market
01:02:03 Nintendo delays Advance Wars reboot citing ‘recent world events’ (Ash Parrish)
01:05:52 Uncharted Movie
01:14:49 Sony’s State of Play
About game companies withdrawing from the Russian market:
I would not give game companies too much credit for seamingly making the moral decision to withdraw from the Russian market. Even long before the war in Ukraine margins for game sales in Russia weren’t very high. Even for AAA-titles prices usually started at around the western level but used to drop to 50% or 25% of that fairly quickly just because the average Russian income is a lot lower than in the west. I even abused this a few times and bought games on GOG via a VPN… but then Paypal asked me to reset my password because they thought my account was hacked due to suspicious payments made from a Russian IP adress. ^^°
Anyway with the Rubel being at an all time low it might simply not be feasable for game companies to sell in Russia anymore and I think that is a more important reason for the withdrawal from the Russian market.
Thank you for this insight. It could also conceivably be both – the Russian market‘s lacking attraction for global corporations and the social pressure of taking a stance. Even if we assume that companies generally act only to maximize profit, they might fear a negative impact on sales if they were the one publisher that continues to do business in Russia at the moment.