Mamoulian War

Strange decision in the wake of super expensive hardware period. Seems like Sony did not get hint from their Japan experiment, that PS5 started to sell much better only after they lowered the price to affordable level 🤷‍♂️

Netflix removed their bid for WB. It looks like only Paramount is now in play. Would this be better for the future of WB gaming studio, or not?

Looks like at least one Grand Wizard did not figured it out 🤷‍♂️

Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, which are waging proxy war against each other in Yemen and Sudan just announced, that they are joinining together military operations of Israel and USA against Iran.

He pretty much predicted this day very accurately a week ago, all based on weather patterns and Lunar phase in the context of history of similar strikes.

Yeah, I find it logical, unfortunatelly it is very skewed in Euro countries, as some, like Slovakia, Bulgaria or Croatia, still have to pay same prices as in Germany or Netherlands. Despite income being 2-3x lower based on profession.

Not sure where to link it, so hopefully this is the right place for it, but the guy which got everything right about Maduro has another prediction.

French publisher Nacon files for insolvency (they own devs like Spiders [Greedfall]) https://www.vgchartz.com/article/467121/nacon-files-for-insolvency-as-it-assesses-all-possible-solutions/

From 25.98 to 100.76 EUR depending on the region of sale. https://steamdb.info/bundle/59764/

I have completely missed it yesterday, but classic FFVII has been released on GOG https://www.gog.com/en/news/final_fantasy_vii_is_now_out_with_a_limitedtime_discount_alongside_classic_final_fantasy_deals

Goal 2/2026 achieved. February 20, 22:00 – I have decided to follow with one more easygoing game, so I have picked up and finished shortly after Hero of the Kingdom III from GOG. After enjoying the first two games, this one felt a little bit more overwhelming. The main reason was very grindy nature of some quests in the second part of the game, which slowed down the tempo of the game, and made me to do a lot of busywork, before I was able to proceed to the last town, where the game became more easygoing again, but still more grindy, than first two acts. This also artificially prolonged the length of the game, with all achievements unlocked, to almost 11 hours, which is pretty OK, but because of that, the story felt shortest of the three games. There were also a few improvements, like the possibility to shop on the world map, which made the grind at least a little bit more bearable.

Goal nr.1 /2026 achieved I have the first game of 2026 behind me, Celestian Tales: Realms Beyond from GOG. I have been postponing playthrough of this RPG for a few years, because it was meant as a part of trilogy, but unfortunately, the Indonesian studio behind it was acquired by another company, and because the game underperformed the expectations of the new owner, the last game was cancelled :( . Because of that, the game has few small cliffhangers at the end. On the other hand, it offers few plot twists in connection to the first game, but the main premise is still the same. Your party of companions are here not to save the world, but you are helping them to get through their life struggles, and help them making their decisions.

And exactly because of what you said about the risks in this industry, expecting every single game to have 30% margin is IMHO damaging, as there are only few games which could boast with such a margin in last 6 years. According to Bloomberg, the average profit margin in the video game industry is 17-22%. Over the past six years, Xbox has hit 10-20%. To put that 30% target into more context, Sony's PlayStation division achieved a 16% profit margin in Q1 FY25. Link to mentioned Bloomberg article behind paywall, if anyone owns access to them: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-23/microsoft-pushes-xbox-studios-to-hit-higher-profit-margins

Yeah you are absolutely correct about that IMHO insane profit margin. I doubt, that in MS anyone, except iD and Bethesda can meet this target (even Blizzard cannot do it anymore). I am kind of disappointed, that they bought so many smaller AA studios, and then they decides to come up with such crazy profit margin target for them. This might pretty much kill all the smaller size projects in these studios for the foreseeable future.

Maybe I am just not perceptive enough, but what are the new "improvements" for the 2026 version of the game? Only thing, which I have noticed was some online "features" which could turn the game after three decades into Online Only mode 🤷‍♂️

Alone in the Dark original trilogy as a Giveaway on GOG. https://www.gog.com/en/news/alone_in_the_dark_trilogy_giveaway_as_a_celebration_of_what_we_achieved_together

Pretty much a bombshell dropped on GOG. Four Final Fantasy games have been released few minutes ago. III, IV, VIII and IX https://www.gog.com/en/promo/final_fantasy

I have started after 7 years or so the 2nd part of the incomplete trilogy of Celestian Tales. Simple and easy going RPG, which unfortunately not sold enough to satisfy the new owner of the studio, so with high probability, the third part will never be released, which is a shame, as it is one of the rare Indonesian games. Anyway for now, the game is fine, with lot of dialogues, which are sometimes funny Only had one more challenging fight for now, but I started it on Normal Difficulty. For now the only thing which bothers me, is that the devs removed the Story Log, which was part of the first game, so I have to be sure to play it without bigger breaks, to not forget the plot 💽

Oh Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Season 2 released yesterday, with QoL and balance changes implemented as well. From first impressions it seems, that from top4 cast (Hokutomaru, Hotaru, Kain, Marco) was Kain nerfsmacked the most, but it still seems that Hokutomaru will still be in Top Tier. Some people are saying, the he will be the strongest character in S2, but most of the S1 lower tier character did not get fully tested yet. My main Terry was slightly buffed, but I am mostly curious, how SNK treated Tizoc, who was the undisputed worst S1 character.

Check your emails and spam folders. As of today, the biggest discount of Imperator: Rome and DLC pack by Paradox is valid for next 18 hours. Of course, if your are into that kind of games. The complete game with all DLCs cost me 12 EUR.

There are rumours, that AMD will go back to AM4 chipsets to “counter” the current environment in PC market. So there might be not everything lost for you, yet.

Haha, seems like it 😄 I have actually not played anything since last week or two. But now I have prepared some basic recap of first Celestian Tales game, so I can finally play after 7 years or so the second part of the series 🙂

Oh yeah, the trailer is terribly. Thankfully I learned not to judge the content of the games, by content of trailers 😄 Still one of the most awful trailers in FGC, if not in gaming in general 😄 Anyway one of the mysterious characters is most likely Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star, which should print money for SNK. The other one? Looking at SNK's current track record, it will be Magnus Carlsen 😄

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Season 2 releasing next week. With new new character released every month 🤯

I have finished today late in the night the hardest MKvsDCU Kombo Challenge, Shang Tsung. As before, I have used the feature of my controller to program actions. The paradox of this challenge is, that 8 out of 10 challenges, are not that hard, but challenge nr.7 and 9 are crazy hard as ****, even when not counting the occasional game latency. It took me 3 hours to program the 8 easier challenges, and another 3 hours to program these two crazy one. For now 4 out of 22 challenges are completed. 😮‍💨