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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 4m

Western triple-A is dying. Now what? A free one: newsletter.hitpoints.co/400-graveyar...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Ugh. newsletter.hitpoints.co/398-deckchai...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

With apols for blowing the ol’ trumpet, this is kinda what happens when you spend all the money on focus testing and none of it on consultants. People hate this stuff! You could, and should, have been told this before launch!

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

had enough, wrote some stuff newsletter.hitpoints.co/385-fallout/

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I do write about stuff that isn't Xbox. I think. Sometimes. Here's one on new chief of strategy Matthew Ball, whose early strategic moves seem to be, erm, well. Dunno. (also you can still get 55% off a paid sub to celebrate Hit Points' fifth birthday) newsletter.hitpoints.co/382-ball-poi...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

wrote this like five days ago and somehow things are already much much worse newsletter.hitpoints.co/380-bro-talk/

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

New one about record shopping in the 90s, how intentional discovery used to be, how algorithms have taken that away from us and why we should probably start putting in the work again. (It's about games eventually, promise) Accidentally made it free. Oops! Go: newsletter.hitpoints.co/374-blue-note/

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

A year ago to the day… newsletter.hitpoints.co/306-feel-the...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

You’re sick of DLSS 5 takes aren’t you. Seen too many of them. Well, sorry. Here’s another one newsletter.hitpoints.co/367-from-hell/

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Slay The Spire 2 lands in a few hours so we can probably consider this my final score. Sleep well, my darling. (and I'm afraid the answer is still 'Maybe Later')

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

On Phil Spencer newsletter.hitpoints.co/362-dank-spe...

Throughout it all, even when things went bad, Spencer clearly understood games as a medium, a profession, and a business. Having an Actual Game Guy at the top of a big gaming company is far rarer than it should be, and while there was a lot of facade to Spencer — particularly towards the end, when he used faux-candour and his gaming credentials to try to mask the godawful shitfest he had spawned — I imagine this is the aspect of him we will come to miss the most. Heartening though it is to at last see a woman in the big chair in this most historically blokey of industries, I do not see much in Asha Sharma’s track record to suggest things are about to get better. (And that’s before we get into all the birthrater stuff.)

So, yeah. Phil was a good bloke, and he did some good stuff. I believe his heart was in the right place right up until the end — but unfortunately for him, and the rest of us, Microsoft these days is no place for hearts. Let’s have a quick look at the three big moments where, to my mind, it all went wrong for Phil Spencer.

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

On Bluepoint newsletter.hitpoints.co/361-pointless/

With new blockbusters taking longer and costing more than ever to make, and nostalgia never a more powerful currency, shuttering a proven specialist in remakes and remasters is frankly insane. Casting out a team of such deep technical expertise and, more crucially, such broad institutional knowledge — Bluepoint doesn’t just know its own tools and technology, but also those of the studios whose games it has modernised, from Sony Santa Monica to Naughty Dog, Team Ico to FromSoftware — is simply inexplicable. Pretending there’s nothing for Bluepoint to work on, when the market for remakes has never been bigger and the long-rumoured, widely coveted Bloodborne remake has reached Shenmue 3 levels of mythicism, is unbelievable. Everything about this decision, from top to bottom and viewed from any and every angle, is ridiculous, baffling, an affront.

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

I am extremely jealous of @mackeza.bsky.social’s incredible book. Furious about it honestly. You should read it. And this! newsletter.hitpoints.co/359-turn-the...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

Top story! My god. Might as well lead with ‘Revealed: Winner of FA Cup two years ago’

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

Ubisoft is very, very bad at this: newsletter.hitpoints.co/354-les-inco...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Oh hey I write free ones every Friday now, tell your friends newsletter.hitpoints.co/352-dark-nig...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

I often kick an idea around for ages but never write them because I doubt it'll resonate with people. I must stop doing that because this — on how test match cricket is secretly the perfect Roguelike — got more love this year than anything else I wrote: newsletter.hitpoints.co/345-from-the...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

On the folly of pretending games are a single, $200bn industry: newsletter.hitpoints.co/298-carve-it...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Trying, and mostly failing, to make sense of the 770-odd games shown at not-E3 2025: newsletter.hitpoints.co/320-sensory-...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Reaction to Microsoft's latest bit of shit-the-bed horror, when it shuttered more studios and cancelled more games back in July: newsletter.hitpoints.co/324-going-da...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

A brief selection of things I wrote and liked this year, all now paywall-free. There'll be much more free stuff coming in 2026, but if you subscribe RIGHT NOW you get 50% off your first three months. First, a tribute to the late, great Tomonobu Itagaki newsletter.hitpoints.co/341-itagaki-...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

A thousand thanks to the consulting client earlier this year who insisted their game needed 64GB of RAM. (It really didn't.) Had no idea prices had gone this insane. Fuckin AI!

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

I wrote about that yesterday too! newsletter.hitpoints.co/339-objection/

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

A rare sojourn outside the paywall to explain why it's okay not to care about the EA buyout. Go! It's free!

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Very good comment that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

A 2TB Series X is now $50 more expensive than a 2TB PS5 *Pro*. Microsoft is actively trying to not sell consoles

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Wrote about the idiot newsletter.hitpoints.co/336-boss-bat...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Will someone please find iNiS and show them this

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Going for Completionist++ is almost certainly the stupidest decision I've ever made. But I have done it.

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Oh hey I did this! On why we all slow down to rubberneck at public game-industry drama

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Basically punched the air at every bullet point on this list until I got to this bit, at which point I screamed ‘YES’ repeatedly. Graham is the best

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

A free one on how these clowns can get absolutely fucked newsletter.hitpoints.co/324-going-da...

When Tango and Arkane Austin got whacked last year, I called it cultural vandalism. This is too, of course, but I have a simpler description for it. This is loser shit. Phil Spencer has spent ten years and, at a conservative estimate, eighty billion dollars taking Xbox from last place to last place, and now the game is up he is systematically dismantling the largest and most powerful videogame business the world has ever seen like he’s on some anti-Brewster’s Millions shit, torching the legacies of endless cherished studios and game series while trying to convince us all that everything is going to plan. He is fucking useless and it is all absolutely pathetic, though that doesn't make it any easier to witness. A quarter of a century ago, Microsoft entered the videogame industry with an eye on global domination. Today it is merely a stain on it.

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

I will obviously write a newsletter about all this in a day or two, but equally I could just copy/paste what I wrote the last time and be done with it. Pricks newsletter.hitpoints.co/261-dishonou...

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Hit Points by Nathan Brown @hitpoints.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

There were 770 games at not-E3 this year. Is this good? Was it fun? Trying to make some sense of it all in here newsletter.hitpoints.co/320-sensory-...

Keighley’s schtick these days is to clumsily retrofit some sort of kumbaya-ish narrative onto the paid-for parade of games he is about to show off. Last year, it was all about the indies, baby. This year it was discovery, peppered with a bizarre, factually suspect and, given the recent discourse around Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, thoroughly ill-advised fixation on developer team sizes. As Hit Points has pointed out several years in a row now, it is not Geoff’s fault that he has slimmer pickings at his summer showcases than he does at The Game Awards in December. There is so much more competition at this time of year. But I do wish he would stop trying to pretend that the vast majority of the games he shows off are there for any other reason than that they were available and their cheques have cleared. This year’s show portrayed a game industry dominated by anime gacha games, Soulslikes and extraction nonsense, and while there’s a degree of truth to that it’s not exactly something to crow about. Does the man have no taste, or does he simply not care? Judging by his choice of footwear, it’s probably a bit of both.

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