“Do video game publishers know something that we don’t?” This question has been buzzing around my head ever since I learned about Square-Enix’s plan to retroactively make the upcoming Hitman game into an episodic “experience.” At first I thought it was just another money-grubbing move by a major publisher, but then I watched January 28th’s episode of Jim Sterling’s “The Jimquisition“. In Sterling states that, according his sources, Square Enix and some other major publishers entered this current generation with no faith in the console market. They were convinced that games released on consoles were all going to perform poorly, and that microtransactions, DLC, and the PC market in general were going to be the future. Now regardless of how you may personally feel about Mr. Sterling or the news he reports, certain publishers’ actions in the recent past begin to make sense if this does indeed prove to be true. After all, why go through all that trouble and bad press if you didn’t think you had something to gain? Still, one has to wonder where they got the idea that consoles were a bad market in the first place. Continue reading What Are They Afraid Of? →