As regular readers know, I like to cover the “Games with Gold” game selection every month by sharing the official video from Microsoft alongside my comments on each game, as presented in the video. If I know more about the game or have an opinion on it outside of Games with Gold, I’ll share that as well, but otherwise I just enjoy sharing what expectations I have of a given title, if it interests me, and why or why not it might be a fun game to try out.
UPDATE: They got around to uploading the video…
Normally, Microsoft releases these videos at the end of the month. As these are the official announcements, they are what I go by – I never “jump the gun” with speculation from the rumor scene (regardless of how correct it may have traditionally been) because I just don’t do the rumor mill.
Well, Microsoft never uploaded a video. At all. I’m certain they mentioned the games in one of their other update videos, or on a blog somewhere, but I don’t check those out – I always just wait for that main video as it’s the core of the article series.
This has me a little confused. Did they just not bother to produce one this month, as they are getting ready for E3? Did they just forget? Did this have something to do with the issue last month where they read off a game for the original Xbox console as having online play? Maybe they have decided reading off those old headlines was too risky and resources could be better diverted elsewhere?
It could be any reason, from just not getting around to it to an actual change in how they want to advertise such, but it caught my attention enough to warrant this article. Again, it could be nothing, or it could be a sign of some change, no matter how small, to what’s been a pretty steady and standard way of promoting the service.
Either way, if it’s like this going forward it will change how I do my coverage of those games, at least somewhat, which is a bit annoying – I looked forward to being underwhelmed by the games each month!
Oh, and as one last reminder, I know other people on YouTube have created videos that mimic the style of the official ones, but I must reiterate, those are 3rd parties making videos – it doesn’t matter if their content is correct or not, they aren’t the videos I use as a basis for that series and as such are not something I’m going to share or base my opinions on.
If they don’t throw up a video in a few days I’ll probably cover the games without said video, but damn that’s going to be awkward.
