The Tuesday letters page is shocked at how expensive amiibo have got, as one reader laments the recent job losses amongst Battlefield 6 developers.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Yearly celebration
So MAR10 Day is here again but this time it feels like Nintendo is building up to something in terms of an annoucement. There was that Mario Kart World rumour but if that happens I don’t see how it’s going to be announced because not even Nintendo shadow drops a Direct. Unless Nintendo is also going to start announcing things through tweets, but let’s hope not.

I have to say, I can’t wait until the Super Mario Galaxy Movie is out because I feel too much attention is being taken up by that and we won’t get any real movement on a new game until that’s over. I couldn’t care less about a Mario film but I’m really impatient to know about the next 3D game. But I think it’s pretty obvious they’re waiting for the movie to come out first.

Even so, I do have some hope we’ll get at least a tease of the next 3D Mario today. They’ve already announced their sale and the new games on Nintendo Switch Online, so it would be disappointing if we didn’t get at least a little bit of news.
Onibee

Premium products
I completely believe that Project Helix is going to be around a grand, but I also believe that Xbox are crazy to dot it. Except, it does seem to be the way things are going. If less people are buying and playing consoles then the obvious way to make up the money, for a publisher, is to make a more expensive item, which will make the same amount of money even if less people overall buy it. It’s why Ferrari don’t bother to make a family hatchback, because it’s chicken feed in comparison.

I don’t think it’s going to work for Xbox, because who’s going to want to buy Xbox after all this, but it definitely seems to be the way that Valve are going with the Steam Machine. Sony are basically there already, given how expensive the PS5 Pro is.

There’s no way I’m paying that much for a console, but it does make me wonder what kind of games are going to playing on it. Are they just going to be the same ones as normal with better performance? Because I can’t imagine anyone making an exclusive game for a format with only a few million customers.
Hammeriron

Worst job in the world
It’s been said before, but I honestly don’t know why anyone would want to be a games developer. I imagine the pay’s okay (except for all the unpaid overtime) but there’s literally no certainty of keeping your job, no matter how well whatever you’ve made does. And even if you do keep your job you’re only months away from being replaced with AI. And then, if by some miracle, you’re still kept around you get to worry about death threats from rabid fans.

I don’t see any positives at all. If you’re intelligent enough to be able to make games there’s a hundred other jobs using similar skills that would be far less hassle. I remember when it used to be seem a dream job to me but now it seems more like a nightmare. Commiserations to everyone working on Battlefield 6 that got laid off by EA.
Royston

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A new problem
I can tell you now, if dynamic pricing becomes a thing with video games I’m out. It’s retro and indie games for me and nothing else. Every day publishers seem to come up with new reason not to buy their stuff and it’s doing my head in.

Make a good game and I’ll pay for it. I’ll probably even pay £60+ if it’s really good and I don’t feel that you’re messing me around. But it’s never that simple. Everything’s got to be more expensive than it pretends or have small print that makes it worse.

I know there’s no going back but I really miss the PlayStation 4 era. All this stuff was starting then but it hadn’t got bad yet, while the games were top notch. This whole generation has been nothing but downhill in every way.
Stoney

No story
Some interesting info on Marathon’s player counts on the Xbox, with is at number 32 over the last week with the server slam at 37th. Also note that Helldivers 2 is still number 16 on this list.

There’s no supporting narrative, but the PlayStation side of things shows Marathon as 38th with the Server Slam at 26th. Helldivers took 18th place over the week.
NatorDom

GC: We’re not sure what to draw from this other than both games are doing quite well on both formats?

Ignorance is bliss
There’s been a lot of talk about what Xbox is doing in terms of hardware but I think a bigger question is what’s going to happen to the games under this new boss. Any decent business person should be able to make fairly sensible decisions about a console but game development is a whole different kettle of fish.

It’s different for every game, it involves lots of factors she won’t have a clue about if you’re not a gamer, and in management terms Microsoft has been terrible at it since forever. On the hand that could actually be good news because maybe someone more objective, that isn’t particularly interested in games, can offer a better perspective on things.

We all know Phil Spencer didn’t work out so he kind of makes a good argument that the people in charge shouldn’t be gamers, because they have a warped perspective.

But how is this new ‘AI guru’ going to make decisions on what to do with the next Halo or if Gears Of War needs a reboot? The problem I see is that Microsoft already tends to overestimate how good, and how popular, its games are and now we’re going to have people whispering into the ear of this acknowledged non-gamer that everything they do is fantastic.

There’s so much that can go wrong, but I guess we’ll just have to see. But if there is a turn around we’ll know from now on that the secret of running a good games business is to know nothing about games (at an exec level at least).
Gorf

Half price
Happy Mario Day to GameCentral, all readers, and Underboxers! I see the Pragmata amiibo is in stock to pre-order on the UK Nintendo Store, it is £24.99 – which is a lot for one small amiibo.

I thought there might be an amiibo of the soldier too but there isn’t.
Andrew J.

GC: That’s madness. The game itself is only £50.

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People change
To Scooter and changing tastes in games, my niece, well great niece, at 11 plays all the usual: Minecraft, Fortnight, Roblox, Rocket League… but I suppose that’s for socialising purposes too, but she’s more than willing to try other games.

Couple of years ago I got an arcade emulator, two hardy joysticks and six buttons a piece, you can jostle each other and slap the sticks around, just like you’re in a real arcade, circa ’94! And she loves that, her and her sister discovered the many joys of all the varying versions of Street Fighter 2 at Christmas. The younger one found Chun-Li instantly, girly and cute, and quickly discovered her button mashing 100 foot kick, which she used constantly to defeat her big sister!

So she’s now Chunners forever more, the older one now methodically tries each character until she comes across Eddy Honda and his own 100 hand slap! That’s the end of Chun-Li and all hell breaks loose. There’s screaming, name calling and a strop or two… ah, memories, of the days controllers used to hit the walls, controllers I hadn’t had to buy!

Also, with Game Share on Xbox, she’s had Street Fighter 6, Hogwarts Legacy, and WWE 2K24. She was keen on Star Wars Outlaws but don’t think she tried that yet and her mam said she couldn’t play the Resident Evil 2 and 4 remakes, ‘cos they were too scary. What kids play now is probably 50-50 gaming and socialising, which we/I could only do face to face back in the day.
big boy bent

Inbox also-rans
Interested to see what else Shinji Mikami can come up with at his company, but I’ll be honest, he hasn’t really done anything great since he left Capcom/PlatinumGames. If he’s still got one great game left in though, I’d love to see it.
Fester

I didn’t realise Slay The Spire is nearly 10 years old. Crazy how time flies. But I guess that explains why there’s been so many clones over the years, they’ve had plenty of time.
Lokishat

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

MORE: Games Inbox: Will Project Helix be a successful comeback for Xbox?

MORE: Games Inbox: Is Pokémon Pokopia really worth getting?

MORE: Games Inbox: Will Resident Evil Requiem get a Mercenaries mode?

The Friday letters page has some choice words to say about Sony’s handling of the PS5 generation, as one reader thinks Mario Kart Arcade is a bad game.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Wasted generation
Just seen the news that Sony is shutting down Bluepoint Games and I’m appalled. That team put out nothing but top quality games and were specialists in remakes, which we’ve had more and more of recently, so you would’ve thought they’d be extra valuable to Sony right now.

Instead, we just see continued short-sighted, bone-headed decision making from Sony, who have been awful this whole generation. The PlayStation 5 has been a disaster and I’m not confident that Sony has any kind of plan to avoid permeant decline, all the while shutting down more and more developers. I definitely would be polishing up my CV if I worked at Bungie or Bend Studio.

The obsession with live service games, which clearly hasn’t ended at all, has been such a disaster. Not just in terms of failed games (remember, Concord cost $400 million!) but a whole wasted generation, where developers have had no time to make anything else, and are now being shut down before they have the chance anyway.

I detest Sony for how they’re handling all this, and I say that as someone that’s owned an original PlayStation console and everything else since. They shut down one of their best developers just so they could look good to their investors for five minutes and it’s obvious they’ll happily sacrifice more for the same reason.
Cranston

Pity the poor exec
Thank goodness that Hermen Hulst, Head of Worldwide Studios at PlayStation from 2019-2024, is here to protect the company from ‘changing player behaviours’ and ‘rising development costs’ by shuttering one of their most renowned studios.

Absolutely nothing else he could’ve done since 2019, to give players the type of games they expect from PlayStation. Nope, we all wanted 12 live service games, from studios who specialise in single-player games, so it’s our fault for changing our minds…

PlayStation has been on the slide since they consolidated and moved their headquarters to the USA. They’ve lost almost all of the riskiness and playfulness that made them successful in the first place. Hope the Bluepoint employees bounce back quickly.
Magnumstache

Never-ending Kratos
I was really hoping that Santa Monica Studio would be working on a new IP or sci-fi game but it really doesn’t sound like that’s what’s going on. I loved the last two God Of War games but the story’s over and I have very little confidence that there’s a good plan for what happens next.

Cory Barlog said he didn’t make the Norse games a trilogy because he didn’t want to work on the same story for 15 years but here we are and it’s looking very much like he’s just going straight back to God Of War.

I know the next game is meant to be a spin-off but how different is it going to be really? Unless it’s a flight sim or something it’s just going to be more of the same and that’s a shame.
Coolsbane

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Experimental reasoning
It does make me laugh that Todd Howard has now publicly admitted that people find Starfield boring, but I’m sure he doesn’t really understand why. How someone of his supposed experience could have put out such a dull, badly made game I don’t know. He’s just lucky the Fallout TV show was a hit, as otherwise I think he would’ve fond himself out the door.

No one would love The Elder Scrolls 6 to be great more than me, but Bethesda is too high on its own supply nowadays and I really have much less confidence in them than I used to. He tries to paint Starfield as some big, risky experiment but all they do was take all the best bits out of Skyrim and replace it with nothing.

I’m not really sure what he’s on about with Fallout 76 either. It’s just a bog standard MMO cobbled together with left over bits from Fallout 4. It’s those two games that made me start to think less of Bethesda, not because they were risky ventures but because they were lazy cash grabs.
Shortround

Kart it off
I always wondered why Nintendo bothered with the Mario Kart arcade games. They weren’t very good, because they let Bandai Namco make them, and it hardly seems like Mario Kart is a series they have to get people interested in or promote. It’s not exactly an unknown brand, is it?

Putting Pac-Man in was extra weird too, as even though he’s a cartoon character he still looks out of place. Anyway, I still gave it a go. But paying £1 to play one race of the worst Mario Kart ever isn’t something I’d want to do again.
Biter

Bad business
The gaming world can truly change on a dime. Bluepoint Games has been shut down by Sony. After giving us fans a brilliant remake of Demon’s Souls and Shadow Of The Colossus, Sony has closed down the studio. One of their most revered, to say the least. It’s out of nowhere and quite a baffling decision. From what I understand, the studio was to create a video game based on an original IP and not another remake. So why Sony have chosen to erase that prospective idea is beyond my understanding.

Then again, we hadn’t heard any news, updates or any information from them in a long time, so perhaps it was inevitable. I suppose the silence was a reckoning or rather an ill omen in the shadows. I really would have liked to see what Bluepoint were making or what was cooking behind the scenes. To see the creativity floating around, but it either happens with a new studio that is formed, or it remains a what if?

It worked for Sandfall Games. After they broke away from Ubisoft, we were presented with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the rest is history. So maybe the developers still have a semblance of a future. What that will be is unclear at this moment, so who knows what is next?

On another note, it’s a week from tomorrow that Resident Evil Requiem releases. A funny anecdote is that I pre-ordered it for £47.99, on Amazon. I take another look and it’s suddenly £59.95. Talk about a lucky move. It looks absolutely fantastic and since Leon Kennedy is my favourite male gaming character, I hope it reviews well.
Shahzaib Sadiq

Two for two
I want to recommend Pure Pool Pro on PlayStation 5. It’s a really fun game with excellent physics. It looks great and has an enjoyable career mode and trophies.

It’s only the second game I’ve bought for the PlayStation 5 after Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots. Keep up the good work.
EricBIG777 (PSN ID)

GC: Thank you.

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Actually final
RE: Ochreblue. I find it hard to imagine, after the Final Fantasy 7 remakes have been completed, that another remake of a fan favourite would be made anytime soon, at least on the scale of Final Fantasy 7’s budget.

I think that so much money has backed these three massive games that it would seem nonsensical to risk another big venture so soon, due to what the actual returns were from a financial point of view. I can imagine that it would have needed a lot more sales to accommodate a reason to make, let’s say the sixth or ninth Final Fantasy games in the series, even if they definitely do deserve one.

Possibly a remastered version of Chrono Trigger would be interesting, with a fresh lick of paint and a new up-to-date remake of the original soundtrack would be a great winner for me and other fans. No need to go and rebuild everything like the FFVII Remake, but way simpler using artwork that is skilfully applied to the cute looking world whilst keeping the atmosphere peak.

But we definitely have to get into our minds that the Final Fantasy 7 remakes could be the ultimate Final Fantasies, encapsulating everything from the original and introducing so much more.

This asks the question of how powerful do the next generation of consoles really need to be and have graphical qualities reached their zenith yet? GTA 6 will probably be that zenith but it’ll be pretty obvious that GTA 6 will be earning a hefty profit when the sale figures start coming in.

But definitely it will be an exception compared to other big releases, who will be relatively successful but with way less titles being sold. Let’s see what happens over this year and the next.
Alucard

Inbox also-rans
Sony shut down Bluepoint Games? Make it make sense! Surely they should be remaking Bloodborne?
Zombiekicker

One positive thing about all these console delays is that parents could be saved the £400 to £1,000 yearly scramble to get a new toy for their spoiled kids.
Bobwallett

GC: Who is spending £1,000 on new consoles every year?

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

MORE: Games Inbox: Could memory shortages destroy the console industry?

MORE: Games Inbox: Will Resident Evil Requiem be worth getting?

MORE: Games Inbox: When will the PS6 be out?