Stephen Totilo

Their questions...

(My son re-numbered the questions after I printed them; my daughter did some doodling during the interview)

My kids interviewed PlayStation about MLB The Show "How do you guys pick the cover athlete?" "Can you change the color of the ball?" "Do you play baseball?" "Does it take a long time to make the game?”

NEW: A busy day of third grade wrapped up, their fruit-strip snacks eaten, my nine-year-old twins had some questions about MLB The Show 26.

Good thing we'd booked time for them to interview one of the game's developers

A fun new edition of Game File:

www.gamefile.news/p/my-kids-in...

Working on a feel-good edition of Game File right now.

Promotional poster for the panel, featuring the headshots of moderator Perrin Kaplan and panelists Dean Takahashi, Jeff Grubb, Nathan Grayson and Stephen Totilo

If you're attending GDC next week, please consider attending this panel about The Rise of Independent Game Journalism, featuring some so-called experts on the topic

(Monday, 3:10-4:10pm, West Hall - Room 3005)

schedule.gdconf.com/session/the-...

FedEx vows to pass any tariff refunds it gets from the U.S. on to customers FedEx said it will reimburse customers if the Trump administration provides refunds following a Supreme Court ruling that struck down emergency tariffs.

FedEx said: "If refunds are issued to FedEx, we will issue refunds to the shippers and consumers who originally bore those charges,"

TBD if Nintendo would pass on refunds to people who paid jacked-up prices for Switch OLEDs and Joy-Con 2s.

www.cbsnews.com/news/fedex-t...

Added context: Nintendo is not alone. Other companies that have sued over Trump's tariffs recently include FedEx, UPS, Barnes & Noble, Costco, Revlon, Prada, Staples...

In terms of gaming companies, I haven't seen others

Great scoop by @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social

www.reuters.com/business/aut...

It's Mario

I was impressed with the upgrade system that is built around finding mentors to train you... and how even the layout of the screen you use to track mentor progress hints at a twist to that system

Discovery in the game was also very well-executed. Lots of hidden treasure that is fun to find

Thank you for the feedback. I err on the side of putting the paywall low, because I know that some people can't pay. I don't want them to completely miss out. But I realize some people might feel tricked if the paywall shows up late!

You can read via a free trial, though it requires a credit card

Would you have preferred I put the paywall higher and given less away?

Oh, I'm well aware. It's one of Ubisoft's best open-world games ever. But it also probably should have been released 3-6 months later. It wasn't ready.

Another Ubisoft source told me they used to consider the company to be stable, but were rattled by job cuts and “the fact that we’re unable to ship anything right now.”

Ubisoft sources I speak to want to get more of their work out there. Big games, small games... anything...

Will take a moment for my Assassin's Creed-wired brain to stop thinking of Helix as the animus replacement in Assassin's Creed Unity (which, coincidentally, got a 60fps new-gen console update today)

Subscribe to Game File The business and culture of video games, from a reporter with 20 years on the beat. Click to read Game File, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

This is not a piece about simple answers and easy blame. It's about a complex, nuanced problem.

If you're into that kind of coverage about the video game industry, Game File's for you

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And when eventually a great game is made, like Prince of Persia The Lost Crown, its team isn’t rewarded and celebrated but reallocated into other projects in trouble. “Indeed, the globalization of Ubisoft development model shifted its culture to value brands and franchises instead of valuing the teams initially capable of creating them. It also weakened teams autonomy in favor of a distributed model of expertise, which entangles productions in unavoidable dependencies. “Not being able to identify and fix this pattern of spiraling developments is a failure from Ubisoft management. 

Their analysis explains more than the struggle of any single game or studio, but rather the breakdown of a global organization of teams and leaders--the cascading impact of one project's problems onto another and then another

What’s gone wrong at Ubisoft A Ubisoft veteran’s well-informed take about a company that has been struggling to release new games, let alone many great ones. They cite "frustration on all sides."

NEW: What has happened to Ubisoft, a once-prolific publisher that now struggles to release games?

A veteran Ubisoft developer gave me an insider's take

“For years now... Ubisoft has repeatedly failed to create the conditions for an excellent game to be made"

www.gamefile.news/p/ubisoft-wh...

I’ve told my children that they’re not allowed to say “insider gaming”

Sometimes I get email replies to Game File newsletters that are clearly spam.

And sometimes I tell myself they're real.

Like the one I got today that said: "you have remained a constant source of strength and encouragement."

Thank you! (And you're welcome)

It matters when thinking about who is playing games globally and where companies (Chinese ones in particular) find success.

But the idea of this chart is to think about who is left, when you cut those few factors out: all the big publishers in Japan, U.S., Europe, etc.

Those last three are puzzle games that it's taking all of my willpower to avoid playing more of. Gotta wait for the final release!

One key chart showing the game industry's struggle And six new game demos (that you can play) that help me remain hopeful about gaming's future

The recent Steam Next Fest was great. So many wonderful demos for games I hadn't heard of.

In the latest Game File, I highlighted 6 that still have PC demos up:

- Froggy Hates Snow
- Enter the Chronosphere
- Wanderburg
- Deg
- Sokogram
- Clover's Quadrants

www.gamefile.news/p/one-key-ch...

A bleak report about the games industry made the rounds a couple of weeks ago. Then, last week, this dire chart was added to it

What it shows: Game industry revenue growth in 2025, excluding China, Roblox, hardware and console services (Game Pass, etc) was near 0

www.gamefile.news/p/one-key-ch...

Yes. But you'll need to play it for 100 hours and write letters of apology to the developers of those other games.

Riot Games co-founder Brandon Beck has donated two seminal issues of Captain America (issues 1 and 46, published in 1941 and 1945, respectively) to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the museum announced today

The museum credits that 1st issue with challenging isolationist views in the US

For months, @jacksonwryan.com has been looking into why so many video games sites have become full of gambling and casino stories, unusual author images, and, most recently, the use of AI. We've connected these sites to Clickout Media. Here's what we've learned.

From the filings...

From the filing...

Your game is blowing my mind. And fascinating my kids. Well done

You can thank Vice City Subs