I don't want to be the Game Announcement Police here, ACAB, but over the last month there have been two big, new video games revealed that were notable not for what they showed off, but for what they didn't.
First up was Total War: Medieval III, which was announced via a live-action trailer (below) and blog post:
Amazing news! There hasn't been a proper historical Total War release since Three Kingdoms (I'm not counting Pharaoh's mea culpa), and Medieval is a long-time fan favourite, so this should have got people excited. Only problem is that there wasn't any gameplay shown. There weren't any screenshots. There wasn't even much art for the game, aside from a single piece shown at the top of a follow-up blog.
Only days later, Creative Assembly announced a second upcoming Total War game coming out much sooner, this time set in the Warhammer 40K universe, and its debut trailer was packed with gameplay footage, right down to giving us a look at the menus and interface.
I'm not drawing a very long bow here to speculate that the Medieval announcement was made a few days prior in an attempt to head off any uproar over the 40K announcement. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, there's a kind of uneasy divide among some in the community, with Total War's longest-serving fans (going back to 1999's Shogun) preferring the series' historical focus over the wilder, more fictional stuff that has featured in the Warhammer (and now 40K) entries. They look at how much money and effort has been poured into the Creative Assembly collab, then look at the relative neglect shown to the historical games (from ending Three Kingdoms support early to whatever the hell happened with Pharaoh), and get pretty mad.
While getting Medieval III out in front like that probably made diplomatic sense to publishers Sega and developers Creative Assembly, I dunno, I think I'd rather a game be announced on its own merits and with something genuine to show off and talk about, rather than shoot a clip and write a blog just so you make some of your own fans less angry. Medieval III is clearly years away (they didn't even hint at a broad window for it to come out), and you went and announced a whole other game a few days later– you didn't have to Elder Scolls VI-ify your next big game!
ryan_dinsdale
The second game I wanted to talk about is even funnier. Earlier today Netflix announced that Delphi, a company you've likely never heard of (they're relatively new, and their only public credit is as support on IO's upcoming 007 game) will be both developing and publishing a new FIFA game. You might remember that back in 2022 EA Sports (developers of the long-running series) and FIFA (the world governing body for football) split, and ever since EA's series has been called EA Sports FC, or EAFC for short.
Netflix's announcement contains zero images or video of the game. And there's probably a good reason for that: the press release says stuff like "All you need is Netflix and your phone", and "We want to bring football back to its roots with something everyone can play with just the touch of a button", suggesting that whatever Delphi is cooking up, it'll be a lot closer to a casual mobile experience than the blockbuster simulation football fans have long come to expect from series like FIFA (now EAFC) and Pro Evo (now called eFootball).
That obfuscation has paid off handsomely, though, with a ton of mainstream coverage of the announcement hitting today with headlines like:
There's a small mention of what I've just said above at the bottom of that BBC article, but as a mainstream article intended for a mainstream audience, I guarantee Delphi and FIFA will be thrilled at the number of water cooler and group chat conversations this week that will revolve around the talking point "Boys, did you hear FIFA is coming back?"
I should point out that this isn't the first FIFA game to "return" since the body split with EA; there's already a game called FIFA Rivals, which is basically an antique NFT scam with a playerbase best summed up by the fact the game's official site has a Telegram account.
