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ooofaitooo · 3 years ago

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Why Activision Remastering Spyro Was The Right Thing To Do (SpyroReignited Trilogy)

Back in the day, it’s hard not to forget the memories of playing Spyro on the original

it was fun, adventurous, and overall an amazing game to play around with, From the amazing storyline, good graphics for its time, and collectibles you can also find along your adventure in completing the game whether that was The Original, Ripto’s Rage or Year of the Dragon it was an extremely fun series to play around with and definitely one of my personal favorites for sure it’s a game that released their debut version in 1998.

These are my top 5 reasons why I personally think they did the right thing in giving this game a remaster.

1: Blast From The Past (With New technology )

We all like a blast from the past with new technology especially when it’s from an amazing well-made game such as this, It’s just so fascinating to see such an old classic and any other old classics get redeemed into new technology and a modern setting, Not every old game should stay in the past and it’s not something myself can ever agree with, Now we can bring an old classic back to the light which clearly brings me to my second point.

2: New Technology Means Updated Consoles

As everyone knows when time goes on old technology just gets forgotten whether that’s an old phone, computer or even console they just get FORGOTTEN and we no longer care about them, This only means that older games such as Spyro are just left un-played and forgotten since the platforms they are available on no longer barely exists or they might not work on newer T.V technology (which can be true for many older consoles such as the PS and PS2 that used tube TV technology and is in no way designed for flat-screen TVs) so remastering is really an amazing way that they’ve brought an amazing game even to today’s standards back to the light for a little longer.

3: More Gaming Titles Equals More Sales

Another great reason I personally think that bringing back older games to the light is a good idea is, It gives the gaming platforms (consoles) more titles to choose from and remastering games that have existed in the past to existing again is an amazing way to do this!

Whether it’s Crash Bandicoot, Spyro or the older Grand Theft Auto series I think making these titles relevant again will not only bring the consumer back memories and more reason to buy that particular console but it will increase sales since people are dying to get their hands on that game, Some may have been trying for many years.

4: Memories Sake

I don’t know and cannot speak for everyone else but since this is my personal perspective I’m going to mention this, Memories are vital to most of us whether it’s music, sounds, A old movie, or even A old video game they all can trigger memories in our brain and fire those neurons everything it’s connected to.

Especially when it comes to a game like Spyro that has an amazing storyline and is so addictive you be able to get a lot of playtime in (hopefully in your free time of course) As I was saying any game that has the potential to bring back memories is definitely one worth re-lighting and keeping in the forefront.

5: Don’t Kill The Fun

We may not fully [I]Realise [/I]this but when an old game dies so does the fun with it, It’s really sad seeing an old game that has so much potential but due to how technology needs to stay updated it just fades away to never return and sometimes even never be thought of again, This game with it’s 3 old versions has always shown time and time again how they know how to structure things and keep the storyline interesting and alive, A dragon that can talk and go on crazy adventures what more could you ask for?

Bringing this back really just made things so much fun known a true classic finally got a remaster!

My ending point is, Not every game should just die off because of its age,

That old song from the 70s that was on tape you like, Should we just stop it being available?

Hell No! everyone has converted it onto digital modern platforms so they can be played again and again such as iTunes or Spotify the same should always go for older video games that left a spot in this world.

– Fait

#Gaming #PSN #Xbox #Console #PC #Tech #Racing

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veeranger · 3 years ago

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not defending the new call of duty here cuz i genuinely dont care and i hope it flops at launch but people getting insanely up in arms about the guns not being completely perfectly 110% accurate to the real life firearms used in world war 2 are first of all maybe a little too obsessed with guns for their own good but more importantly are forgetting that call of duty is a video game and not a fucking textbook so things like fun and game balance are going to trump perfect realistic accuracy in depictions of firearms that literally the vast majority of people playing this game have never even seen in real life.

also when i see people screaming and shitting their pants over inaccurate gun models and shit all i can think about is that the more they scream about it the more activision is going to make their poor fucking developers spend 60 hours a week modeling the most pixel perfectly accurate shit that again 99% of players wont actually notice or care about until theyre told they need to be mad about it by a youtuber who makes 6 figures a year ranting about video games and how much more unreasonably harder youre making the jobs of developers who already have to shit out a full game every 12 months. id rather those developers get to go home and see their families and not be chained to their desks instead of them making the most historically accurate shitty arcade war simulator ever made thats exactly the same as the last 15 shitty arcade war simulators.

#Apple Post

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repentantsky · 4 years ago

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5 Companies That Have Too Much Hype Around Them

Look, we all love our favorite games with a passion, and to an extent that’s fine, but when that passion becomes obsession and that obsession becomes forgetting our own moral compass for the sake of entertainment, it does feel like it’s gone too far. It’s one thing to love what a company releases, it’s completely another to ignore every problem they’ve ever had. Not all of the companies on this list have done horribly un-ethical things, but they’ve at least been anti-consumer, and the fact that people don’t question that enough has led to them sometimes, making horrible mistakes. I am RepentantSky, I love making lists that trash on things that are popular, and these are 5 companies, that have too much hype around them.

5. Nintendo

Already I can hear people getting angry, and in a way I get it. Nintendo is for many people the place where they either begin to play games, or the place they go to keep on playing them when everything else let’s them down, and of course, they put an end to the flipping video game crash of 1983, and no one else will ever be able to claim that from them. That’s all wonderful, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical of them. I’ve talked about a number of things they’ve done wrong before, so let me quickly run down the list of some of their anti-consumer practices. They, charge too much for remasters and ports, they don’t drop prices in games, they used to charge for fixing Joy-Cons and now completely deny it’s a problem for legal reasons, despite everyone pretty much having experienced drift, they haven’t been good at getting stock for their items in at least 20 years, and oh yeah, they sell all the content for a remake for $115 on the 3DS, the system and the fans that helped them get by while the Wii U was massively underperforming, all while handing owners of the, at the time, unproven Switch, free content. Nintendo has a tendency to still think like a toy company, and they even used that idea to present the Nintendo Entertainment System as a toy instead of a console when they first game to the West with it, but they aren’t a toy company, their a gaming company that also sells toys, just like everyone else. I get they’ve done amazing things, I own over 150 physical handheld games from them, and a ton of digital games besides, but when they start charging twice what they are worth for SD cards, while releasing games that absolutely won’t fit on the limited space of the Switch, and they simply don’t care when costumers complain, it’s time to at least question their motives.

4. Bethesda

Boy I used to really rip on this company back when I posted lists on Facebook, but I haven’t done it in a while, so let’s do it again. Bethesda has absolutely spent at least the last 10 years lying to people, Todd Howard, has become famous for it, but I think I might have been the only person who wasn’t shocked when Fallout 76 was the disaster that it was. There were so many things wrong with that game, that I don’t even have time to go over every little thing, but lying, you know the thing that will get another company on this list very soon, was a big thing they did with the game. They promised at one point that they weren’t ever going to charge for items in the game that gave in-game benefits, and they did, allowing ammo and other items to be bought with real money for a time, they promised new, specialized servers if you paid for a yearly service that was way too expensive, and that wasn’t true because people found proof of things missing from what would have been a freshly made, private server, and there’s no excuse for that, games in early access do that correctly, and they aren’t, at least supposedly, even finished yet. I wish I could say that’s all they’ve done, but they also bullied an indie developer over their game Prey, a game they may have bullied the original developer for so they could get cheaper, but we’ll never know because they refused to comment on that when asked, they also refused to update their outdated game engine for years, which caused something they spent over a decade fixing, games releasing with glitches, some of them game breaking. Yet somehow, they have such a fan base that those who love their games will claim the glitches are just part of the charm. That kind of fierce loyalty led to Fallout 76, and even though we make jokes about it even now, the horse DLC from way back in the day, was an indication of everything they’ve done, including trying to charge for mods made for free, meant to be consumed for free, twice. Bethesda is a bad company and they do not care.

3. Activision/Blizzard

You know one of the worst things Nintendo does that I didn’t really mention directly in the first entry, is limit the amount of time a product is available, instead of just letting it be there for consumption as long as it’s selling (that was what the toy company reference was about if it wasn’t clear). However, Activision/Blizzard are the Kings of doing this, as they not only limited things while they were in control of Destiny 2 to the point where you pretty much had to use real money to get everything, and never mind everything else they did to it, because we’d be here all day going through it all, but they also don’t support games as a service titles long enough for dedicated fans. Crash Team Racing Nitro fueled, is a prime example of this. People weren’t done with that game, and when fans thought for even a split second that an update was going to come to fix an issue, their hype (mine to) was so explosive, it was almost like we were getting a new game, but then nothing happened, because they didn’t care. A lot of companies that do yearly release titles as a service have this problem and nothing exemplified that more for Activision, than Skylanders, a series originally made off the back of Spyro, who didn’t even wait for a year to release new games, as technically between October 21st and November 20th of the year the first game came out, they released three of them, and I’m not even kidding. Two of them, were mobile games! You might have thought I was going to go after Call of Duty, for this, but that horse has been beaten to ground, somehow, more than Skylanders was. They also, for whatever reason, released each expansion on different generations console generations, at different months throughout Fall, like somehow the season of Fall, they needed a release every month, if not two, and so off they went. I didn’t even get into Blizzard, but all I need to say is “Blitzchung” and all the memories will likely come flooding back. There’s also the fact that in two separate years, after gaining massive profits, they dropped hundreds of employees, and hired more than they’d let go, but I guess that doesn’t really matter to some of you, because when they did it this year, with so little warning, most employees found out via the news articles about it, but we all made such a little stink this time around, it didn’t create any media buzz, so I guess that doesn’t matter, you’d all rather play flipping World of Warcraft, like better MMO’s don’t exist.

2. CD Projekt Red

I know this one comes off a little more fresh in the mind, and they technically only lied about one game, but man, what a series of lies it was. Also, let’s be honest, one major game, does not a great developer always make. CDPR’s previous two Witcher games did exactly what the author of the books thought they would, and that was almost nothing in terms of making a serious impact, and the reason is, they are kind of bad. They aren’t the worst games out there, but there is a good reason why The Witcher 1 and 2 haven’t been ported and/or remastered, despite how important they are to the story of Witcher 3, and that’s because they both suck. Cyperpunk 2077, was in a lot of ways, them just going back to being the developer they were before, the BIG ONE happened. They lied about nearly everything in regards to the game, including how the main platforms where consumers were going to buy it, were actually running well. I made those references to Witcher 1 and 2 for a reason, although if I’m being honest, they actually look better than Cyberpunk did on day 0, and that’s completely unacceptable. The budget for CDPR was basically nothing for Witcher 1 and 2 combined to what Cyberpunk got, but they were so focused on the PC versions because PC ran the game better, somehow (like maybe because they didn’t try with consoles) and they missed glitches that were so bad, the game felt like it was still in beta, if not alpha upon release. The fact that they’ve only released eleven games in twenty-three years, and only two of them didn’t have The Witcher on them, should have told us all we need to know, and yet the game, even after returns, which was another massive screw-job that led to Cyberpunk being removed from the PlayStation store, still sold Sixteen million units, all because of hype, and because apparently, some people don’t care if they’re lied to. Do you want to know what the other game they released is besides a Witcher title? It was flipping Saints Row 2, a fun game, but also one that’s too goofy for it’s own good, and yet suddenly makes Cyberpunk’s release, make sense, because it was all a massive joke, and a parody of good, well running, open world games. CDPR needs to seriously do something, anything different, and never release a game in this poor of a state ever again.

1. Ubisoft

I put Ubisoft at number one for a damn good reason, and that reason is, that everyone seems to hate the company, but loves their games, and I don’t know why. They haven’t been the overall worst company on this list, although they are pretty bad, but the major problem they have, and have had for at least a decade is that none of their games have any identity, they are literally all the same game, with different coats of paint. Sure, an occasional gem sneaks through like Assassin’s Creed IV, but all of the rest of their games have the same visual style (although ACII does seem to be the base for which they create their art let’s be honest), the shooting mechanics they have in all the games that have guns, all feel exactly the same, which is something even Call of Duty manages to avoid most years (guess I took a shot at them anyways) and yet somehow, someway, I keep seeing people getting excited for their releases, and it doesn’t make any sense. Sure, they throw a celebrity actor in from time to time, and the artistic style they use does look pretty cool, but everything is always the same with them, every single time, no matter what it is, and they still keep making money. It doesn’t really make sense either, because a lot of developers do make games that are very similar feeling, see the Life is Strange team or much as well all loved them, Telltale Games, but at least those titles told extremely interesting stories, and developed their mechanics at least a little, which is something most companies do just on principal, but not Ubisoft. They throw out a few Tom Clancy games every time they talk about what their releasing, the Trials and AC games are still mostly a yearly experience, and I’ll say it again, their entire list of releases since at least 2013, the year the previous generation kicked off, have pretty much all been the same. It would be nice if they made more games like Child of Light, but despite the fact that their games will likely never be as popular as Call of Duty, they keep churning out same-y shooters hoping that one day, maybe just one day, they’ll create their own CoD, and it’s just not gonna happen. The saddest part of all is that when they announce something different, something fans have wanted for years, we get The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, which was literally delayed because fans said they wouldn’t buy it unless some actual effort was put into making it, why is this company so popular that it can keep doing this, someone please explain it to me.

And that’s my list, can you think of any other companies that are too hyped? Let me know in the notes below, hit me up with a follow if you like my content, and give me a reblog, I’d really appreciate it. Have a wonderful life!

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firehawk12 · 7 years ago

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Call of Duty: WWII — War, War Never Changes

Another cross post from Medium that I forgot to bring over.

“Lest we forget” is a phrase that Canadians are asked to consider once a year, as the country momentarily pauses so that we can remember the sacrifices of Canadians who served in combat. I’m sure that Activision didn’t have Canada (or the UK) in mind when they decided to release Call of Duty: WWII a week before Remembrance Day, but its release is certainly timely and at least forced me to consider how I process the memory of war.

Now, CoD: WWII is very much a game about the American experience in the Second World War, but the game raises several issues that I feel are applicable to anyone who lives in a country involved in that war. Perhaps the biggest issue with the game is the fact that the game itself is fairly routine. Giantbomb’s review of the game noted that the game feels like a retread of Band of Brothers and other seminal modern depictions of WWII, and that’s essentially how I felt about the whole experience.

You play as a soldier haunted by an early childhood experience, looking for a chance to redeem himself in combat. There’s the smart ass whose nickname is “College”, a tough-as-nails sergeant, a compassionate lieutenant that everyone would die for, and the best friend who you are bonded to because the game tells you that you’re close buddies who would watch each other’s backs. Since your character is in the 1st Infantry Division, you essentially play through the events depicted or referred to in the film The Big Red One(1980), starting from D-Day all the way to the Battle of Remagen.

While I’ve written previously about how I’ve been mostly disappointed by the CoD campaigns after Modern Warfare 2 — they’ve stopped innovating entirely and just rely on tired war cliches — I was cautiously optimistic going into this game because of this trailer:

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One of the biggest criticisms of the first batch of WW2 games is that while they dutifully replicated the “ping” of the M1 Garand ejecting the cartridge, these games ignored the fact that the Holocaust was happening while all these famous battles were occurring. Although I may be wrong, I believe that this is the first big budget WW2 game to not only have a Jewish character whose Judaism plays an important part in the game’s story, but also actually references the Holocaust and confronts players about the fact that soldiers weren’t the only ones who were suffering during this time.

Unfortunately all that optimism was flushed down the drain when I finished the game. Yes, the Holocaust is an integral part to the game’s denouement. But it’s so trite and perfunctory that it might as well have not been included in the first place. Even the way the Holocaust is brought up is contrived — for some reason these German soldiers, who are being slaughtered by Americans left, right, and center, take the time to capture your best friend in front of your eyes. The only reason they do so is that your character has a reason to go to the Berga concentration camp at the end of the game to kill the Nazi camp commander and rescue your friend right in the nick of time.

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The developers turn the Berga concentration camp into a walking simulator sequence, as the player character speaks to you from sometime in the future, telling you about the horrible conditions at the camp and hinting at the atrocities committed by the Nazis while you slowly walk through the camp. It’s a sequence that might have been meaningful nearly 20 years ago in the first Medal of Honor or Call of Duty, but in 2017 it feels like a lazy afterthought. They didn’t even have the courage to create an interactive sequence where you play as the character being forced to serve in Berga, instead relying on what amounts to a cutscene to try to do all the heavy lifting.

It’s frustrating when put in context of an earlier scene where your squad interacts with a group of German civilians. At one point a little girl is separated from the group because she wanted to find her teddy bear, and you volunteer to go find her:

youtube

When you find the girl, it becomes a (simplistic) stealth sequence where you hold the girl while trying to sneak past Nazi guards. It’s reminiscent of the first Bioshock, where you can save the Little Sisters, and while not necessarily the most original moment in the game, it’s one that at least tries to get you invested in the moment by making you play through it. The tragic ending to the level — you save the little girl only to see her sister get killed by a German soldier soon after — rises beyond pure cliche because you had a role in creating that moment. I would argue it’s the only interesting interactive moment in the campaign, and even then, it’s not all that original.

Perhaps the other major point to consider is the issue of representation. I’ve seen articles criticizing the campaign for not featuring multiple points of view like the very first Call of Duty, but I understand why they chose to primarily focus on this single squad from the 1st Army. The Call of Duty games have trended away from the anonymous soldier gimmick since Mason and Black Ops, and WWII is no exception. I think it’s fine that the designers wanted to have a focused campaign to try to create characters that players might care about. Certainly Daniels, the character that the player inhabits for most of the game, is the most talkative Call of Duty protagonist ever and the only one with a concrete backstory that starts from childhood.

And I suppose the game should be given some bonus points for featuring diversity as well. There’s a sequence where the player temporary plays as Rousseau, a French resistance operative who works with the 1st Army to help liberate Paris:

Which, incidentally, is probably one of the only times where the player controls a female character for a significant period of time in any Call of Duty game.

The game also acknowledges the big elephant in the room — that America was a racist, segregationist society when they introduce Howard, an engineer who ends up helping the 1st Army during the battle of Bastogne and near the end of the game.

Of course, conveniently the player character and all his friends are the ones who have no problem accepting help from a Black soldier (the most that happens is a short scene where everyone expresses surprise at seeing a Black soldier, before quickly moving on), but it’s an implicit acknowledgement of the contribution that marginalized Americans made during the Second World War.

My problem with this type of representation is that if they wanted to create a campaign that was memorable, it would have been very easy to build a campaign around a character like Howard or perhaps the 442nd Infantry Regiment (the all Japanese-American unit) and address the complicated feelings that come with choosing to defend a country that despises you and treats you as less than human. Certainly it would have been a more interesting meditation on patriotism, nationalism, and the cost of war than the one we got featuring a cast of characters that fell out of a TV Tropes page.

To bring it back to Remembrance Day, I’m reminded of the beaded poppiesand the desire to remind Canadians of the contributions that Aboriginal Canadians made during WWII.

Yes, it’s co-opting a symbol used for the purpose of remembering the sacrifice of veterans, but it’s re-contextualizing it to point out that there were Canadians of different backgrounds that contributed to the war effort. For me, I like to take the time to think about Chinese-Canadians who volunteered to serve a nation that not only disenfranchised them but also had a law that banned all Chinese from entering the country. A Call of Duty game that hijacks the traditional narrative of the franchise — that war is hell, but that the player is always fighting on the right side — to try to make us think more about the actual realities of war would have been very exciting. Instead, we get a game that takes few chances and barely tries to take the player out of their comfort zone.

Call of Duty: WWII has the best intentions in trying to produce the familiar WWII experience that we’ve seen countless times before. But the story it tries to tell and the interactive moments that it presents are so dated that it all contributes to a dull and uninspired experience. Much was made about Call of Duty returning to its roots, but I think this is perhaps a confirmation that the Call of Duty experience is one that is simply past its prime.

#call of duty: wwii #video games #review #wwii #videogames

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preciousmetals0 · 5 years ago

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Jobs Data Vapor Lock; Shopify Shocks; Gamers Game Amok

Jobs Data Vapor Lock; Shopify Shocks; Gamers Game Amok:

The Market Gods Are Crazy

Any Great Stuff readers home-schooling kids right now? It’s quite the experience, let me tell you.

New math? Pshaw … I’ve done things with fractions and limits in the past week that would turn you white.

Yes, Mr. Great Stuff, we get it. Math is hard. But what about the market? Also, aren’t you an analyst?

Hold your horses, we’ll get to the market. And yes, I am an analyst, which is why I handled the fractions and limits … and not someone else who lives in this house who shall not be named.

Anyway, I had an “Aha!” moment when reviewing science with my 14-year-old daughter on Monday. We were discussing solar flares. There was a picture of a flare that said 100 Earths could fit inside that flare. My daughter’s eyes glazed over. “Cool?” she muttered.

After talking about it for a bit, it became clear that the sheer size of the flare gave her vapor lock. 100 Earths? One Earth is hard enough to deal with, but 100? How big is that really?

In the end, she had no real way to process it other than to say “cool” and move on.

That is how I envision Wall Street right now: Vapor locked.

Automatic Data Processing Inc. just reported that 20.2 million jobs were lost in April.

That’s 20.2 million Americans out of work. That’s nearly the entire population of Florida. It’s New York State. It’s the entire population of Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nevada and New Mexico combined. All of them, unemployed.

Economically, we’re in a “How many Earths?” situation right now. Investors, traders and economists alike have never seen anything like this before. It’s beyond everyone’s scope of reasoning.

Sure, they can predict. They can speculate. They can go on Bloomberg or MarketWatch and discuss their mathematical models about how this will all play out. But in the end, nobody really knows.

Part of the problem is that we have the same “How many Earths?” situation on the stimulus side of the equation. The U.S. government has doled out trillions to save the economy, while the Fed promised “unlimited stimulus.”

Trillions, unlimited stimulus and 20.2 million unemployed … these are all unprecedented figures. And they’re all sloshing around at once. It’s no wonder a vapor locked Wall Street initially rallied on bad news once again.

It doesn’t know what else to do.

The Takeaway:

Let’s put this another way.

Has a situation ever gotten so out of hand that you couldn’t help but laugh?

Not that the market is laughing, per se, at the enormity of the economic disaster unfolding right now. The recent market rally was hope that things will be much better when the pandemic clears and “What else can we do, really?”

If that sounds crazy, it is. I think Jimmy Buffet put it best when he sang: “If we weren’t all crazy, we would go insane.”

And that’s the real rub here. We’re never going to survive, unless we get a little crazy. (Thank you, Seal.)

Here’s where things get interesting for opportunistic investors. A heavy degree of volatility has accompanied the market’s rally off the March “bottom.” (I’m not willing to officially call it a bottom yet.)

Volatility is the market’s way of dealing with the unknown. And with Wall Street vapor locked, there’s more than a little unknown floating around right now.

Now, for buy-and-hold investors, volatility is a real pain in the butt.

But for options traders, this market is a smorgasbord of opportunity!

Remember: It’s possible to know that the market gods are crazy but still make money amid the insanity.

That’s where Banyan Hill’s own Paul Mampilly comes in. Paul has a “rebound” method to spot opportunities when markets are irrational to the gills.

So, why not let Paul Mampilly and his team do the heavy lifting and find opportunities for you?

Click here to learn more!

Good: It’s a Small World After All

Reading The Walt Disney Co.’s (NYSE: DIS) quarterly report today was like being stuck on the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World. It’s the happiest nightmare you will ever experience, trust me. It’s been 10 years and I still have flashbacks…

Earnings plunged 63% to $0.60 per share, missing Wall Street’s expectations. Meanwhile, revenue jumped 20.6% to a stronger-than-expected $18 billion. Sales were bolstered by Disney’s strong media performance on the quarter, including 54.4 million Disney+ subscribers. That’s up by 4.5 million in less than a month!

The kicker for many investors, however, was Disney’s dividend suspension. The company plans to save $1.6 billion by axing its semiannual dividend, alongside plans to cut capital spending by $900 million for fiscal 2020.

As a sign of hope, however, Disney said it will reopen Disney World Shanghai on May 11. The company lost $1 billion due to the Shanghai, China, closure alone. Combine Shanghai’s reopening with the amazing Disney+ subscriber growth, and investors have little to complain about following this morning’s report.

So, while the pandemic created a whole new world for Disney, investors need to let it go and realize that DIS stock remains a real beauty here in this beast of a market.

Better: Blizzard of Oz

Streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix have received quite a bit of attention as solid investments in this lockdown market. But don’t forget that there’s another crucial form of at-home entertainment: video games!

Activision Blizzard Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) bluntly reminded everyone of that today with its first-quarter earnings report. Earnings came in at $0.76 per share, doubling the consensus estimate. Revenue dipped to $1.79 billion, while bookings rose to $1.52 billion. Both figures trounced Wall Street’s expectations.

What’s more, Activision actually provided full-year guidance — something only a handful of companies have done amid the COVID-19 lockdowns. Projecting delivery of “a robust slate of content over the remainder of the year,” Activision expects earnings of $2.22 per share on $6.8 billion in revenue.

It’s almost like the video game market was perfectly designed for this exact moment. I mean, what other industry centers solely on customers who never leave the house?

Also, I wonder how much of those $1,200 stimulus checks went to video games…

Best: Another Great Stuff Win!

With Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) delaying or limiting nonessential orders amid the lockdown, many brick-and-mortar stores turned to alternative means of reaching consumers.

That shift played right into Shopify Inc.’s (NYSE: SHOP) waiting arms … and into Great Stuff readers’ portfolios!

This morning, Shopify reported a 210% surge in earnings and a 47% spike in revenue. In fact, the company recorded a profit of $0.19 per share, versus Wall Street’s expectations for a loss of $0.18 per share. Even gross merchandise volume (a key sales metric for the online-sales enabler) beat expectations, rising to $17.4 billion.

What’s more, in a bid to directly take on Amazon, Shopify said it plans to spend $1 billion in the next year to build out its distribution network to store and ship products for its customers.

SHOP shares rallied more than 4.5% on the news, which is music to Great Stuff readers’ portfolios.

Why? Because Great Stuff recommended buying SHOP back in our September 4 edition. Since then, SHOP has surged more than 89%!

If you hold Shopify, keep doing so. There are more gains to be had from here.

Congratulations on your win! This is truly Great Stuff!

In last week’s Great Stuff Poll, we asked for your take on the U.S. economy’s reopening. Too soon? Too late? Too dazed by the passage of time to care?

By the majority, Great Stuff readers are on the “It’s not opening soon enough!” side of things. Just over 54% of you must’ve been eagerly awaiting by the front door, ready to pounce on that brave reopened world.

This week, well, we’re still talking about the “Great Reopening.” (These things take time, don’t you know?)

When it comes to U.S. states deciding whether or not to ease quarantine tensions, it didn’t take long at all for the public health emergency to turn into a political flip storm. Ah, bipartisan outrage — it’s what we do best!

Today, Great Stuff wants to hear from you — no matter if you’re a never-voter, an armchair campaigner or even one of those “dark basement” freaks glued 24/7 to conspiracy channels. (The Lizard People aren’t hiding the COVID-19 vaccine from us in Area 51, stop that. Unless, that’s what they want us to think…)

So, do you approve of how the government is reopening the economy? Or are we watching the greatest botched job since the Falcons blew a 28-3 lead in the Super Bowl?

I don’t care which side of the political Thunderdome you’re speaking from here … nor whatever label you plan to throw at me in our inbox. So, click on the envelope below to answer our poll!

If you’ve got more to say, by all means, speak! We implore you. Feel free to reach out to the Great Stuff team (that’s me!) by sending an email to [email protected]. You have one day left to make it into this week’s edition of Reader Feedback.

That’s all for today, but remember that you can always catch up on the latest Great Stuff on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

Until next time, be Great!

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

0 notes

goldira01 · 5 years ago

Link