News:: Peter Glagowski's personal picks for GOTY 2017

2017 may be over, but it won’t be forgotten. While 2016 had a collection of some decent enough titles, everyone brought out their A game this year. While I’m still not quite sure whether these games are as important as years past, in the here and now, 2017 was a total blast.

So for once in a long time, I’m actually able to make a top 10 list! Hooray! The one caveat I have to mention is that I’ll only be including games that originally released in 2017. That sadly means Yakuza 0 won’t be on my list, despite it receiving the highest score from me on Destructoid for the year. It first released in 2015 in Japan, so it gets disqualified for my list. With that being said, definitely play the game because it is amazing.

To me, these ten games represent the best that you can get for your money. If you walk away disappointed, hopefully you’ll learn something about yourself or your interests from checking these titles out. I know more than a few of these games got me to reevaluate what I hold dear about my favorite hobby.

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News:: Platinum Games to self-publish two 'healthy' sized games

Platinum Games are planning to self-publish two undisclosed titles in the future. These games, though relatively large in budget, won't quite reach the AAA levels of some of the studio's more famous titles, such as Bayonetta or NieR: Automata.

Speaking with GameInformer, Platinum's head of development Atsushi Inaba has spoken of the balance the studio is trying to find between Indie-level productions and big-budget, big publisher titles. "We can’t put together a AAA, $10 million-plus game, because we just don’t have that sort of cash as an independent developer," said Inaba. "However, we don’t plan to go the indies route with just a few people on a team making a game, so it’ll be somewhere in the middle, looking at probably about 20 people on the staff making the game, so that’ll still be a healthy (size)".

Inaba also spoke of the studio having an open door policy on game ideas. As such, there are around 70 game concepts submitted by team members, which have been diluted down to the ones Platinum could explore within their own budgetary limitations.

It will be interesting to see what comes from Platinum in this venture. If successful, it could perhaps lead to an increase in smaller-scale titles from developers, hopefully reducing the consistent complaining from publishers that multi-million dollar games didn't make multi-million dollar profits.

Platinum Games' Atsushi Inaba on future projects [GameInformer]

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News:: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds sets another concurrent player milestone

Whether you like it or not, PUBG is a massive hit. The game is such a big hit, in fact, that it just passed three million concurrent players on Steam! While it has been the most played game on the service for a couple of months now, this upward trend of people playing is only widening the gap between the competition. How can anyone catch up?

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News:: Mike Sounders's indecisive six best games of 2017

2017 was a great year for video games wasn't it? Yes we've all heard it said dozens of times already, but it's true nevertheless. This has easily been the hardest year in my life where I couldn't decide my absolute favorite game of the year. So as a result, after weeding out at least a dozen other games, I am left with six of them. Six games that I had the greatest time of my life with this year, and am struggling to say 'I'd give this my personal GOTY award' over the other five.

So as a result, I'm just going to list all six of them. I love all of them equally, and they all deserve equal spotlight. If you don't see a game you liked mentioned, it's due to me not getting around to it, such as Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age or Gravity Rush 2, or barely got cut, such as Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia, or I did not enjoy it, like Breath of the Wild.

So without further delay, here are my six favorite games of 2017.

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News:: Xbox party chat arrives on iOS in beta

You no longer need an Android phone if you want to join in Xbox party chats when you're away from your console -- Microsoft has introduced party chat to the beta Xbox app for iOS. If you've been accepted into the program (you have to sign up first), you can keep up with your teammates' voice conversations from your iPhone or iPad while you're racing home to join them in a multiplayer match.

Via: OnMSFT, Windows Central

Source: Xbox App Beta signup

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News:: The Great Retro Quiz Reboot: Games of 2017

Happy holidays, everyone! With the new year coming soon, it's time for a look back at the past 12 months in video games. And what a year it's been! Game of the year contenders released pretty much every month in 2017, and Nintendo's Switch might have had the best launch year I've ever seen. In short, it's been a great time to be a gamer, and I hope everyone found a game or three to enjoy over the holidays.

Just like last year, we're going to take a look back at the most memorable games of 2017. It's been a while since we've done one of these, but I hope everyone remembers how to play. Our grand prize this time is $20 worth of Steam credit, and big thanks to Niero for providing it. This is a worldwide contest, so everyone is eligible!

I'm going to switch up how you provide your answers this time, to make it a little less easy to look at another player's paper. Instead of posting your answers in the comments, please post your Twitter handle below and tweet your answers to @Retroidpodcast with the hashtag #GRQ. If I can't match up a Twitter answer with a comment below, that person will be disqualified and I'll move on to the person with the next most correct answers.

We'll run the contest until 11:59 PM Pacific time on January 3, so the winner should juuuust be able to take advantage of the winter sale. Results will be posted the day after the contest ends, but I'll try and get the code to the winner as soon as possible after I tabulate the results. In the event of a tie, the winner will be the first tweet with the most correct answers. There may be some light spoilers for this year's games, so if you obsess about that sort of thing, maybe don't read the answers or comments below. Official rules for winning the Steam credit are below the quiz. With that out of the way, let's get started!

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News:: The Morning After: Weekend Edition

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Welcome to the last weekend of 2017. Before we dive into a new year we're checking out all of Friday's plus some highlights from earlier this week. See you in 2018!

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News:: LAPD arrest 25-year-old suspect in Wichita 'swatting' case

Thursday night Wichita police killed Andrew Finch after responding to a call claiming a man at his address had shot someone and was holding others hostage. That call was a hoax, commonly referred to as "swatting," and in this case, it's apparently linked to a Call of Duty match, where one player passed a fake address to another before someone called the police to it. Now NBC News reports that police in Los Angeles have arrested 25-year-old Tyler Barriss, who is believed to have made the call inciting the incident.

Barriss may be the "SWAutistic" who tweeted about making the call and later participated in a phone interview with the DramaAlert show on YouTube. An LAPD spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that Barriss is in custody, no bail has been set, and that they are working with Wichita police on the case. The LA Times reported in 2015 that he had been arrested for calling in a bomb threat to a TV studio, and in the YouTube video, SWAutistic claims to be responsible for bomb threats that interrupted an MLG Call of Duty event in Dallas earlier this month.

Source: NBC News

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