Before going any further, it s been an incredible year for video games and gaming publishers. We ve seen publishers have a great 2020, including Devolver Digital (Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Serious Sam 4, Disc Room, Carrion), Activision (Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Tony Hawk s Pro Skater 1+2, Crash Bandicoot 4: It s About Time), and Electronic Arts (Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, Star Wars Squadrons, NHL 21, Rocket Arena). This year s Best Publisher award ultimately came down to a two-horse race between Xbox Game Studios and PlayStation Studios. While Xbox had a great year with games like Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Tell Me Why, and Gears Tactics, it was PlayStation that stood out above the pack with some of its best games ever made.
Xbox’s 2020 Was Less About This Year and More About the Next Decade
Of the three major first-parties, Xbox is the one that feels like it’s changed the most when you compare it at the beginning of 2020 to the end. Xbox Series X was finally fully revealed and released, alongside its more economical partner in the Series S. Game Pass and xCloud are attempting to redefine the entire way we interact with our games. The most anticipated Xbox game of 2020 became the most anticipated Xbox game of 2021. The gap between Xbox and Sony’s first-party games was as wide as ever, but it’s clear that that’s going to change soon thanks to Microsoft’s unprecedented studio acquisitions. In fact, Xbox’s 2020 was less about what was contained in the year itself and more of a mission statement for the entire decade to come.
It was the best of times, it was the strategy of times
Hello, I’m Joe and I’m your friendly neighbourhood strategy editor. One of the great things about being in charge of an entire genre’s worth of content is that I get to reflect on the year in videogames through a very specific lens. Who cares about Cyberpunk or Hades – have you heard about what happened in strategy gaming this year?
It’s a genre that’s getting more mainstream as time passes, though it still has to struggle against perceptions of being niche, against passionate legacy communities who can’t agree on what they want, and against various trends that arise within the industry which either aren’t compatible with the genre, or distract developers as they try to capture some of the lucrative magic seen elsewhere.
Japan takes its pop culture seriously, so you shouldn’t be surprised to see an airport named after a popular manga character, and that airport is coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Tottori Airport, also known as Tottori Sand Dunes Conan Airport, owes its name to Tottori’s well-known and beautiful sand dunes and the equally-popular Detective Conan manga and anime.
The association with the pint-sized and beloved junior detective comes from the fact that his creator, mangaka Gosho Aoyama, was born in Tottori.
The airport itself is full of Detective Conan imagery and branding, and it even hosts a dedicated store with plenty of merchandise.
We reviewed this laptop when it came out last year and decided it was a great option for gamers on a budget. We gave it 3.5 stars out of 5 and said Anyone who wants to get into gaming while keeping costs down can probably look away from the downsides and focus mainly on the price tag and the acceptable performance it will buy you.
It s also our Best Value pick in our roundup of the best gaming laptops because the discrete graphics card gives it great 1080p gaming without breaking the bank.
The specifications for this laptop include a 10th Gen Intel Core i5-10300H processor, 8GB DDR4 RAM that s upgradeable to 32GB, and a 256GB SSD hard drive that can also be upgraded. It comes with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics card to do some high-powered gaming. It also has a 15.6-inch display with 1080p resolution and LED backlighting. It is built with Acer s ComfyView tech that helps reduce reflections, so you can game anywhere.