Williams Pinball from Zen released on iOS. Tables look great but I’m still trying to figure out the monetization and game currencies. It’s a free app and I was able to unlock one table for free. I played Medieval Madness and it was great. But it’s got some wacky features and modes that I’m still trying to figure out. There are table parts, zen coins, tickets. The zen coins seems to be the main currency you buy with cash. It looks like it costs 250 zen coins to unlock a table but they sell coins in batches of 25, 150, 350, etc. I’m getting more and more pissed off as I write this. I just want to buy some fucking tables and play some pinball.
2 Likes
Just reading that makes me angry. One thing I could count on from Zen Pinball was that it wasn’t going to play any of the silly IAP games; I could buy a table if I wanted, or not. That’s it.
Meanwhile, the game has stagnated and been left behind by the Zen games in other platforms. Where is the support for new devices? Where are the features like tournaments that are in Pinball FX3 in consoles? They fail to deliver on those and then release a new app with some cockamamie currencies? Sigh.
3 Likes
Well, shoot. Scratch up another victory for the suits in Apple’s app store Search Ad business, another competitor for advertising money bites the dust, more folks dependent on Apple’s app store search function, the customer loses out to profit yet again. 
1 Like
Was this game a topic here before? I saw I review on PT about it, but the reviews on the App Store seem mostly positive. I’ll give a go I think.
1 Like
I thought it was okay. Does enough different from Slay the Spire to not just be a Red Riding Hood reskin.
1 Like
And after Fire Emblem and Langrisser my next favourite SRPG (hint: it has demon penguins in it) gets the GACHA treatment on mobile
1 Like
Ooooooooooooh. Well now. That looks eminently promising.
can’t find it in the Playstation Store. not out yet?
They are saying March now. But they’ve pushed it back twice, so no guarantees! Next league is supposed to start early March though.
Knights of the Card Table released on iOS late last night; it’s been out on Steam (EDIT: and in open beta on Android) for a while. Billed as a “card-based dungeon crawler” and definitely looks like PT fare. I’m struggling to find a comparison because I haven’t played much (and I’m running on very little sleep), but I really like what I’ve seen.
1 Like
OblivAeon trailer is out.
Assembly is out on Android. Saw this on some BGG “best solo or coop” list earlier this year.
(edit, linked to game’s site instead as it has Android and iOS links)
Edit: I moved this post to The Internet Almanac thread, felt it was a better fit there. 
Was posting a response to the mobile Disgaea disappointment by @Private_Prinny, but moved it to The Internet Almanac thread instead so as not to rain on the parade over here.
And then we have this…Activision Blizzard Cuts Nearly 800 Jobs Despite ‘Best’ Financial Year ever…
So nearly everywhere its all about maximum monetization milking™…I wonder when it will be that Nintendo feels the need to give into m.m.m greed as well…the days of Nintendo’s CEO takes 50-percent pay cut following poor earnings are seemingly over.
Just once I want to see another huge AAA CEO do the same…just once!
2 Likes
Poor guy, I don’t know how I would survive for 5 months on a paltry ~$175,000.
I just don’t see Bobby Kotick taking a pay cut, but then investors love him. I’ve never been a Bobby Kotick fan (well, okay, I did enjoy his performance in “Moneyball”), he’s the one with the infamous quote joking about raising Guitar Hero peripheral controller prices if he could.
Having said that, in fairness to Bobby Kotick, Blizzard had been mismanaged for years before he took charge, IMHO. Vivendi were a bunch of suits in Paris who lived the high life in charge of a vast empire, to include being convicted of embezzlement, spending the World of Warcraft subscriber dollars freely in pursuit of lavish lifestyles while flirting with bankruptcy, as Blizz printed money with WoW.
WoW subscribers built the fancy Blizzard headquarters, funded the Battle.net 2.0 development, paid for the best & brightest devs to move from the WoW team to the “Titan” project (which was eventually killed, but perhaps influenced Overwatch), as well as funding other Blizzard projects.
I’m disappointed to see Blizzard employees lose their jobs, especially in light of the financial performance of the company.
I suspect that this may be, in connection to the earlier December scaling back of their Heroes of the Storm MOBA, to include cancelling HotS e-sports, more an indictment of earlier management decisions to spend WoW subscriber dollars on about anything that caught their eye.
I suspect that going forward projects will have to survive long term on their own merits/income, and less on a slush fund of WoW subscriber dollars. One concern, for me, is then how are they going to monetize Diablo IV? I’m not confident that the old way of selling a box and then providing an online service in support for the rest of eternity is a sound financial plan, and has a chance of gaining approval in this fiscal climate at Blizzard (supporting Diablo II for over a decade and a half deserves kudos, IMHO).
I wonder if WoW subscribers will get to “keep” more of their money for WoW development? Will WoW subscribers finally see personalized housing, that was teased before launch, before the PvP and anti-housing cabal took over and so much money was diverted to other endeavors?