The year 2022 certainly had its high points – but even worse low points.
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It wasn’t all bad in gaming year 2022, of course. We enjoyed indie gems like Stray and Cult of the Lamb, cycled through a surprisingly solid strategy game line-up from Dune: Spice Wars to Anno 1800’s fourth season, and then that was it there’s also Elden Ring.
Nevertheless, the year 2022 leaves a stale aftertaste because it reminded us too often what the gaming industry (with the emphasis on »industry«) is still suffering from. Micha discusses this in the annual review podcast with Dimi and Peter.
And by that we don’t mean the postponements of games like Forspoken, Hogwarts Legacy, Diablo 4 or Starfield. On the contrary, they are (hopefully!) spared what afflicted too many games this year: the curse of incompleteness.
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Modern Warfare 2 in particular angered people not only on the Internet, but also in the editorial office. For Dimi, the shooter sequel is not only one of the biggest disappointments of the year – Modern Warfare 2 also illustrates a general problem with its buggy release.
And then there was also the discussion about Diablo Immortal and its monetization, which shook confidence in Blizzard (keyword “We don’t sell gear, but gems aren’t gear”).
Speaking of money: The consolidation of the games industry progressed further in 2022, never before have such billions been pumped into takeovers. The largest of these – the deal between Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard – is anything but certain at the time of our podcast recording, because the US antitrust authority FTC is still objecting.
The takeover battle shows one thing above all: the big market participants are positioning their cannons for the platform wars. At the same time, new competitors are getting involved, such as Amazon or Netflix. We have already discussed what strange flowers this produces in our podcast about the platform wars:
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How the platform wars spoil the fun of the game
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