Josh Jackson’s Top 10 Gaming News Stories Of 2013!

While all of us at Geekscape are busy compiling our “Best Of” lists of 2013 (check out our favourite games here, and Saint Mort’s favourite albums here), Josh Jackson has gone one step further, listing his top 10 gaming news stories of this past year.

Take a look at everything below, and let us know if you agree!

10. The Great Nintendo Network Crash of 2013

Why not start the list with a hot topic taken from gaming headlines over the past week. After an apparent influx of users logging into the Nintendo Network on Christmas Day, combined with the Japanese release of Pokemon Bank, brand new Wii U and 3DS owners got a taste of what the Nintendo online experience is all about. By that of course, I mean it didn’t work. This caused all those brand new adopters with digital copies bundled with their consoles unable to download their games and led to an indefinite delay of Pokemon Bank that’s still ongoing as of this writing. Since then, at least the Nintendo Network and store are back up, but this is surely a bad sign for a company who has a reputation of being clueless when it comes to online. Speaking of bad press for Nintendo, that leads me to…

9. Nintendoomed

Throughout this year, you couldn’t log on to a video game website without some editorial, analyst prediction or angry blogger declaring that Nintendo is a sinking ship. Poor Wii U sales have led to the conception that the system has “no games” despite having some of the highest reviewed titles of the year. As they say though, perception is everything, and although this doom and gloom scenario tends to ignore the wild success of the 3DS and its software, Nintendo has done little to curb the negative image of their latest home console. It speaks volumes when the Wii U’s reputation of having a poor library helps keep it from selling while the PS4 and Xbox One, two consoles with fewer positively reviewed exclusives than the Wii U had at launch and tied to price tags that are $100 and $200 more expensive, manage to sell more. Regardless, this isn’t the first time Nintendo was declared dead in the water. As the saying goes, “Nintendoomed since 1889.”

8. That Ducktales Trailer!

Be honest. How much did you freak out when the Ducktales: Remastered trailer hit the web? This classic NES title has been beloved for ages, but I can assure you that no one ever expected the game to get the HD treatment. But that’s exactly what happened thanks to Wayforward, Capcom and Disney Interactive. Bringing back the original voice cast with a faithfully recreated version of the nostalgic side scroller put us back in the top hat of Uncle Scrooge, but it all started with that incredible trailer. I had a smile on my face for a week after watching that trailer on repeat while trying to make sure this was still real life. Thankfully, it was very real. And it was awesome!

http://youtu.be/G6d1A2row6I

7. Tomb Raider Fails to Meet Expectations at 3.4 million units sold within its first month.

Remember those old N64 commercials declaring games a “greatest hit” once they sold more than 1 million units over their lifetime? Oh, how times have changed. But even by today’s standards where inflated budgets and big spending are commonplace in the game industry, one quarterly report from Square Enix turned them into the laughing stock of the gaming community. The highly anticipated Tomb Raider reboot somehow missed expectations after selling 3.4 million units in its first month. Let that sink in for a second… 3.4 million units in one month is a failure. How many did they expect to sell? This just goes to show that so-called “AAA” games are caught up in a spending addiction in the hopes that gamers will recoup their losses. When a game is a failure at that many units, the sales aren’t the problem, it’s the budget. But more on that later…

6. Deal With It: The Adam Orth Saga

Early in the year, rumors were swirling about what the next Xbox and Playstation would and would not do. One persistant rumor was that the next Xbox would not function without a constant Internet connection. Adam Orth, a Microsoft employee didn’t see what the big deal was, telling a friend who was upset about these developments to “deal with it” on Twitter. Considering how controversy spreads across the Internet like wildfire, outside parties started to question him on his stance, where he delivered retorts like suggesting that people still buy vacuum cleaners knowing the electricity might go out. But the real story was less with his ridiculous comments, (which he’s admitted to since this incident,) but more with how out of hand the Internet can get. After his resignation, Orth was bombarded with death threats, hate mail and even threats to harm his family, which led him to relocate partially out of fear. No matter how much someone disagrees with someone, I think we can agree that this is disgusting behavior. For better or worse, Orth has become somewhat of a meme for clueless gaming executives, but the price he paid was way heavier than any perceived crime.

5. Capcom is Broke.

On Twitter, Yoshinori Ono stated that Capcom didn’t have the resources for a next gen fighting game, which was puzzling considering how successful Street Fighter IV has been. Roughly a month later, the news broke that Capcom as a company only had $152 million in the bank. With the way gaming budgets are even on current gen consoles, $152 million would be bad for any company, but especially one as big as Capcom. So where did they go wrong? Some people point at the drastic changes in established franchises like Resident Evil and Devil May Cry. Some site the company’s recent DLC controversies, such as selling the ending of Azura’s Wrath seperately or locking off completed content in Street Fighter X Tekken to sell at a later date. Others even blame the gaming giant’s recent shift in focus to mobile games, (which enraged their fanbase when the long absent Breath of Fire series was announced as a free to play mobile game.) Most seem to blame them for flat out ignoring their fans when it comes to releasing more Mega Man content, forcing their most loyal fans to give up on them. The worst part? Capcom’s apparent solution is to increase focus on mobile games and DLC, all while Mighty No. 9 is off raising $4 million from crowdfunding and winning over the Mega Man fanbase by providing something that people are eagerly waiting to throw their cash at. Let’s hope that Capcom can turn things around, but it’s hard to have sympathy for their situation.

4. Feminist Frequency

With the Adam Orth story, the idea of people threating the man over comments he made about an imaginary console at the time was ridiculous. But how about being attacked for doing nothing but being a woman with an opinion? It seemed like the media got much more vocal about their distaste for how women are portrayed in the medium, and time after time they were met with disdain from a very vocal segment of the gaming community. It ranged from Carolyn Petit, a reviewer at Gamespot who happens to be transgendered, getting threatened and accused of “trying too hard to be a woman,” because she didn’t like how women were portrayed in GTA V, to gamers being accused of being called “white knights” for being offended at mini games where you can rub a squirming woman who’s tied down by the wrists in a touch screen segment from the Vita version of Dragon’s Crown. Leading the charge was Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist blogger who decided to tackle the subject of female tropes in gaming with her “Feminist Frequency” videos. Since then, a quick search for her Kickstarter or YouTube page shows how much bile is thrown her way simply for challenging potentially negative gaming stereotypes, and she’s gone on record saying that she’s received death threats… JUST FOR MAKING YOUTUBE VIDEOS! While I don’t often agree with her stance personally, this reaction is embarassing, but it kept her in the news for most of the year to the point where saying her name on forums is treated like some kind of dirty word. To get this many people talking about her, she has to be doing something right.

3. Mega Man Invades Smash Bros.

The Super Smash Bros. reveal was always expected to be exciting, but we didn’t quite expect what we got. There was a small glimmer of hope that the impossible would happen and Mega Man would be added to the cast, but we all approached that with cautious optomism. But after the official trailer had ended and a “New Challenger” approached, NES gamers had their collective dreams come true the moment the blue bomber’s eyes lit up. Between Mighty No. 9 and Super Smash Bros. building up so much hype for Mega Man, (literally and in spirit,) it’s bizarre that Capcom has yet to capitalize on this obvious demand. Capcom’s loss is Nintendo’s gain for now, because the collective screams of excitement on that day show that Mega Man is still a software seller. Even months later, Mega Man comes to mind more than any other character when talking about Smash Bros. for myself and many others. The worst part is that we have to wait another year to play it.

2. The Xbox One Saga

Oh boy. Where do we start? This event took so many twists that you would think M. Night Shyamalan wrote it. First, the Xbox is revealed, but hardly focuses on games and answers none of the questions gamers had about the hardware. Then various Xbox executives gave conflicting information on what kind of restrictions it would have, but most of which, including from Xbox head Phil Harrison, pointed at what everyone feared: console DRM. No renting or borrowing. Discs would be registered to the console unless you “gifted” it to a friend, which could only be done once and couldn’t be returned. A “family plan” would later surface as a possible solution, but much like the initial reveal, specific details were non existent. Most of this information would be confirmed at E3, which gamers HATED! Cue Sony who would hold their press conference a few hours later, and pretty much turned it into an Xbox witch hunt, undercutting everything from their DRM policies to their price and their ability to rent and borrow games. The backlash would lead to Xbox pulling a 180 and reversing nearly every unpopular feature of the console, essentially turning it into a PS4 with Kinect. This drew the ire of many in the gaming industry, including former Epic head Cliffy B, who would go on a Twitter rant stating that used games were killing the industry and DRM is necessary. As stated earlier, I think there’s something wrong when muilti million selling games are considered failures, and pirating, renting and borrowing has next to nothing to do with it. With that said, whatever side of the debate you were on, it’s undeniable that these events completely dominated the gaming world for most of the year. There’s only one piece of news that’s big enough to top the start of the next console war…

1. The Steam Box

Rumors of a Valve home console had been swirling for a long time. The popularity of their Steam service was growing every day, so we all figured that it was a matter of time before it would attempt to make a mark on the home market. After a long wait, Valve finally revealed their console, which will run digital Steam games from the comfort of your couch. Why is this so big? Because Valve might make this generation of consoles turn on its head. Let’s face it, Xbox has next to no exclusives worth playing since the Kinect came out, and PS3’s exclusives aren’t typically high sellers, forcing both companies to rely on third party support for the majority of their AAA library. This Steam Box could potentially undercut this third party advantage completely, especially since the service is known for its crazy good sales. This would also introduce DRM to the home market, but most people would agree that not being able to share your 6 game bundle that you paid $15 for is much better than being forced to pay $60 for a game you can’t try before you buy. And to top it all off? This could potentially turn Valve into a first party developer, making games like Portal, Left 4 Dead and… *gasp* Half Life 3 excluve to their console. Sony and Microsoft have fired the first shots, but Valve just might be the ones with the final victory. Only time will tell, but this news might be looked at one day as the news that changed the industry forever, which is why this story was the top story of the year.