Does a place like this exist already? I know that Official Xbox Magazine was a thing for a while, and I subscribed to it for a while, but when I look it up online, it shows as being under Games Radar, which has never struck me as being the best source, and it’s also a multiplatform site.
I bring this up because played some Dungeon Punks last night, and ya know what? It was pretty fun! Honestly though, the only reason why I’d even heard of the game was because Larry Hyrb tweeted about it coming out.
I had never heard of it before then and had no idea what it was. But the art style (from one screen shot) piqued my curiosity a little. I was bored and thought “eh, whatever, I never check out the games he tweets about, but just for funsies, I’ll take a look at this one.”
So I looked around and didn’t see much in the way of info. I had to look it up on youtube and watch a review from some random guy, as IGN has nothing on it beyond a paragraph and the (wrong) release date. “Whoa, it’s like Golden Axe?” Now the game had my attention.
I mean sure, it’s a little XBL game, so the IGNs, Polygons, Giant Bombs and Games Radars of the world maybe didn’t give it a ton of attention, or maybe they did and I simply missed it in the sea of news stories, reviews, and previews on those sites about XB, PS, Nintendo, mobile, movies, TV, tech etc.
But that’s kind of my point. If you want gamers playing games on your system, they shouldn’t have to rely on a tweet from Larry Hyrb to find out a game exists (if they even follow him), actively research what it is, whether they’d be interested, and whether it might be good or not from some rando youtybe video review, etc. Most people won’t make that much of an effort.
If MS wants to promote the games that are on their system, why not create a website, a one stop shop for all games coming to the Xbox, where previewers and reviewers can look at EVERY SINGLE GAME coming to the system, rather than relying on other game journo sites to throw them a bone?
Why not give us a place where we can find anything and everything Xbox; all games, big and small, with more info on them than we ever thought we would need, and then let that site tweet out “Dungeon Punks just landed and if you miss the days of Golden Axe, we’ve got a good one here for you. Screens, previews and reviews right here.” Maybe link to metacritic as well. Plus maybe they’d have a lot of exclusive system and game news first because it would come directly through MS to them?
I know, people will automatically assume that MS controls review scores, but the only thing that changes that is time and journalistic integrity. At least this way, MS can funnel people to a source that will have information on every game as well as keep them in a general news loop on all games coming to the system and not force them to rely on other sites, twitter, their own active research etc to get their info.
TL:DR
Am I the only one that would enjoy an Xbox run news/reviews site for Xbox fans and would find it incredibly useful as a hub for EVERY game coming to the system, as opposed to seeing Larry Hyrb tweet “Cannon Brawl is now available on Xbox One.” and I have no freaking clue what the game is and then having to research it because the big sites barely cover games like this?