Lots of toys but no second-hand games (Picture: GamesIndustry.biz)

The Tuesday letters page hopes that Pokémon’s Generation X will be a long time coming, as a reader enjoys Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown.

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You do it to yourself, you do
So there we are, physical media is dead and we killed it. I’m sure you’ll get lots of emails from people complaining about GAME and writing petitions demanding they change their mind about stopping trade-ins but what did anyone expect? The people that should’ve been petitioned (five years ago) are gamers, but that boat has set sailed, sunk, and turned into driftwood.

We’ve made our collective bed and now we must lay in it. We valued not having to get off the couch to change discs over owning the games we buy, over being able to sell them on, of having a reasonable chance of them working at launch, and having proper price wars between retailers.

There is zero benefit to digital game beyond the laziness of not swapping discs and a litany of downsides. But for some reason people have decided that that 30 seconds of inconvenience is worth losing money over and having an inarguably worse product. Welcome to the future, you deserve it!
Focus

Alternative worlds
It’s a shock to hear bout I can’t say I’m surprised GAME has given up on trade-ins. I still do it, but I’m shocked at how few other people do. Basically, none of my friends trade in anymore (or don’t buy physical anymore, which is the same thing) and there’s increasingly less second-hand games at GAME now anyway.

They’ve had no choice really but I’m still waiting to hear what the benefits of digital downloads are. I can get them instantly (by which I mean a 12-hour download) and that’s about it. You don’t own the game anymore, you can’t resell it, you can’t even have much hope that it’ll work properly.

The majority have spoken and there’s nothing we can do about it but as if you wanted further proof that we’re in the dark timeline this is it.
Tanenblum

The end is nigh
I really hope GAME change their mind about not allowing trade-ins anymore. It seems to me they’re just accelerating the end of physical copies, which you’d think would be something they’d want to keep going. It’s their fault for turning themselves into a toy shop.

I’ll admit I all but forgot they even take trade-ins now, and use CeX instead, so maybe if they don’t more to advertise, or make it easier via their website, it might have still continued. I buy all my physical copies now from Amazon or Argos, so I really don’t need GAME any more and that’s the reason they’ve had to stop this.

If they’d made themselves more indispensable, and offered a proper service that you can’t get anywhere else, then maybe they wouldn’t be stuck selling nothing but Funk POPs.
Futterman

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War is spreading
I’ve never owned an Xbox console, but I did get a lend of an Xbox 360 at times and was able to play through the first two Gears Of War games and really loved them.

With these rumours of Microsoft shipping some of their games on other consoles and of the Gears Of War remaster collection, I would love for this collection to come to PlayStation 5 as well.

I think it would make sense as they’re old games and a lot of PlayStation players would have never experienced them. Keeping my fingers crossed for some Inbox magic on this one.
Niall

GC: Even if some games do go multiformat – and it’s still not confirmed – it seems very unlikely that Microsoft would start with a crown jewel like Gears Of War. But who knows, these are strange days.

Generation X
So all the DLC is out now for Pokémon Scarlet/Violet, which will be two years old this Christmas. Does that mean we’re not getting the tenth generation games until the Switch 2? I hope they wait at least that long, so that they can give Game Freak a chance to do something special, that takes advantage of the new tech.

As a fan it might seem odd to hope for less games than more but I hope all we get this year is another remake at most, probably Black and White, and then maybe another Pokémon Legends to experiment with next year. Then maybe they can think about Gen X.

Even if they have time though I’m not sure Game Freak have the technical experience to do a good job. Nintendo really need to help them out and not have us just put up with things as they are.
Skendle

Any moment now
I saw today more evidence that FromSoftware is getting something ready with Elden Ring, with more updates to the PC version on Steam, like you said before. They must be getting ready to announcement something now, right? So why haven’t they done so already if the other leaks said it was out in February?

They wouldn’t shadow drop DLC, would they? That seems kind of pointless and probably not something that’s going to help sales. It doesn’t really matter, I just hope I don’t get my hopes up and then find out it’s not going to be until next year or something.

I am really looking forward to it though. From are definitely my favourite developer working today and I think Elden Ring is their best game. And it sounds like this DLC is really substantial, I’m hoping it’ll be like a mini-sequel in all but name.

Unlike others I have no specific requests, I just want it to be as good as the main game and keep me enthralled for a new dozen more hours.
Trepsils

GC: The leaked controller was clearly real and was meant to be out in February. Perhaps it’ll be announced at the Xbox Direct on Thursday or the rumoured Sony State Of Play next month?

Ring Fighter
I see the Anthony Joshua vs. Ngannou fight (Knockout Chaos) poster is based upon Street Fighter art.

I imagine they had to pay to use the reference. Either way, it’s pretty cool to see a big fight promoted on the back of a video game. Mortal Kombat next, I reckon.
Anon

GC: We’re not sure which one you mean? It’s not turning up on Google.

More: Trending

Imbalance in the Force
Just when I was beginning to think that people were laying it on a bit thick in criticising Xbox we get the news that Microsoft is literally the biggest company in the world. I am very uncomfortable with such a massive company owning so much of gaming and yet gaming being one of the smallest and least successful things they do.

At least with Nintendo games is all they do, so they go all in on it, but with Sony as well… they have other things but gaming has long been its biggest product and they’re basically the PlayStation company. They need gaming to be successful and will do things to keep it healthy on both a general level as well what helps them generally.

With Microsoft though, they only got into gaming to stop Sony getting too big. Their attitude from the start has been destructive rather than creative. I do agree that Sony needs direct competition, which Nintendo isn’t in terms of anything other than raw sales, but I don’t want it to be Microsoft any more than I want it to be Apple or Amazon.

Maybe if Sega hadn’t given up on consoles all those years ago there wouldn’t be this problem but the power balance is very uneven, with the world’s biggest company being the least successful games console, and that’s probably not going to end well for anyone.
Royston

Inbox also-rans
Nice write up on God Of War Ragnarök: Valhalla. I played it at Christmas, thinking I’d just have a quick look and ended up beating the whole. Very satisfying experience that gets you more hyped for a new game than the actual ending.
Discus

Played a bit of Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown over the weekend and enjoy it. It really doesn’t have much to do with the Prince Of Persia though, which is odd.
Sharpey

This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Gadfly, who asks how interested are you in retro gaming and are publishers doing enough to support your favourites?

Do you play a lot of older games, either on their original format or via remasters? What percentage of your gaming time is spent on retro titles and do you enjoy them just as much as newer games? Is it just a matter of nostalgia or are there things that the older games do that you can’t get from modern titles?

When it comes to your favourite games and systems do you think publishers are doing enough to keep them easily available to everyone and what would you like them to do in the future, especially in terms of remasters, remakes, and sequels.

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The small print
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The Monday letters page hopes that Pokémon’s Generation X will be a long time coming, as a reader enjoys Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown.