Actually, Black Friday is an all-American concept, a squeeze day, in short. But... like so much else from the US, it has spread even though we don't have any squeeze days there and then, and unfortunately it seems that Swedes – just like with Halloween – have a hard time understanding which day applies. This has resulted in a severely watered down concept where I have not found anything worth buying for the past two years.

Instead of just being that one day of crazy sales, it's now usually a whole week. Least. And then sometimes the following week. And now I see stores that are gearing up to start the week before what is nowadays usually called Black Week. But... Of course, stores can't have a crazy sale for at least two weeks, it would be too expensive and the result is therefore the semi-skimmed milk scented concept we have today.

As a result, I haven't even bothered to care that several stores are already bunching up for Black Friday, which is definitely not just a Friday anymore, and I think the retailers are killing what could be a good draw for them. We're stumbling close to having made Black Friday a Black Month, so let's just take the plunge after that and go for Black Fall, right?

I'm happy to be wrong though and hope for real bargains towards the end of the month, but unfortunately I think that Black Friday in Sweden has become a term that is used without it meaning anything anymore. Just as Halloween is a single day and not two weeks of candy-giving, Black Friday should once again be a day of unprecedented promotions – nothing more, nothing less. Now I don't give a damn.

Black Friday is something in the US that leads to minor riots where people chase the best prices and last year there was even a horror on the theme.

Then it crossed the finish line in the end, and I'm absolutely thrilled. The Penguin has entertained something completely green-devilish from the first moment and then just kind of accelerated. Colin Farrell has played a great game so I sat a little in awe at every episode, and Cristin Milioti's actually quite tragic character has just grown all the time, and nicely balanced between being understanding and murderous madman. 

I dare say that I've probably never eaten so well when it comes to this type of series as in 2024 after Shogun, Fallout and The Penguin (not seen the new season of Arcane, but everyone seems to love it). I really hope that Farrell gets to continue his journey as Penguin in TV series form as a kind of putty between The Batman movies, where the wait for part two in late 2026 right now feels like minor torture.

Well, around the corner awaits Squid Game, The Last of Us: Season 2 and Peacemaker: Season 2 as well as the continuation of Gen V (which was actually better than The Boys' fourth season) - so I'll probably survive. 

I'm already hungry for more. Much more. What did you think yourself?

I saw that my dear, and normally sensible, colleague Johan Vahlström blogged a little crazy during the weekend and was horrified about early Christmas. Here I agree with him when the Christmas magazine sellers show up in August and I, standing in shorts in front of the grill, are encouraged to buy Christmas magazines from children who are desperately trying to I get a Switch device as a bonus. In this situation, there is very little attraction about the increasingly earlier Christmas.

But... at the end of October it starts to feel quite OK. I don't regret that I can buy Nyåker's gingerbread cookies in stores, that there are boxes of Zeunerts everywhere and having a cup of mulled wine after an ice-cold walk in November feels like a matter of course. And by the first of Advent I actually want to have the tree up already (forget the nonsense that it has to be up the day before Christmas Eve, let it shine long before that), preferably two (one outdoors).

Christmas is for me the absolute coziest thing we have in the world and I associate it with relaxation and being able to lie on the couch and play video games with icy storms around the corner, crack some nuts, watch some cheesy Christmas movie, Take long walks in the dark and a lot of good food. Christmas can start sneakily at the end of October for me. 

We need more Christmas, not less.

Now it is clear that MultiVersus is also a smash flop for Warner, which with game after game has underperformed in recent years. This time, the costs are estimated to be in the region of one billion wasted kronor that can now only be written off, and they now say that the worst is behind them. Something I believe in when I see it.

Just like when I wrote the blog post Warner's game director seems to be unlucky when he thinks , I think they will have exactly the same problem in the future. What Warner has landed on is that they will invest in four strong brands in the future, one of which is Hogwarts Legacy and one is DC. But during the year, they have had the flop Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – and the brands didn't help at all.

The problem is that they insist on their live service concept, which they also said earlier this year that they will invest more heavily in. It's the kind of game that people aren't interested in enough and that gamers reject, and to top it all off, they're not good enough.

Now Warner is going to make several Batman games, and we can be sure that at least some of them will be live service and that the executives have been careful to turn Gotham into a shopping mall for microtransactions. But almost worse is that I fear for Hogwarts Legacy 2 that will be connected to the upcoming TV series in some way. It's not just me who thinks it sounds like ongoing content with continuous seasons that must be unlocked, is it?

And no one seriously believes that Warner can keep itself from trying to throw some multiplayer into the mix as well?

I'm whiny and pessimistic here, and even repeating myself from previous blogs. I know. But it's rare that I see such huge flops with so little understanding of what went wrong as from Warner – which, to top it all off, sits on brands I love. There have been many rumors that Warner would like to sell their gaming division, and it's almost so I'm starting to feel that it would probably be best for all of us.

Can't they just realize that their games that are actually complete experiences and can be played offline often become smash hits? I conclude once again as GamesIndustry.biz editor Christopher Dring ironically wrote on X this spring:

"Our single player game in 2022 and our single player game in 2023 did huge business. Our live service projects over the last few years did not. So we've decided.... More live service projects."

Almost willing to bet that the next Batman and Hogwarts Legacy 2 will be live service, after which they flop instead of becoming incomparable successes.

Nintendo has now confirmed that its successor to the Switch will be backwards compatible and also support the Switch online. Can we learn anything from that? Well, I actually think so.

One is that the service is called Switch Online, unless Nintendo intends to rename the entire service every time they release a new console (would be strange for them as well), the chances are pretty decent that Switch 2 will be called something like Switch 2. The last time Nintendo attempted a similar name change was between Wii and Wii U, which was unclear and mostly seemed to confuse people.

Adding a number after it has worked great for Sony, and even though I actually like that Nintendo has changed the name of all its consoles (how sad would it be if Super Nintendo had been called NES 2 and Gamecube NES 4?), I think it might be the right way to go in this case. However, I can imagine that they instead choose something like Super Switch, which I would also be happy with – but at least the name Switch will live on.

The other thing we can probably take with us is that the next console will also have cartridges, otherwise it won't be very backwards compatible to a format where around every second game sold is physical. Of course, we don't know if the cartridges will look exactly the same, and it's possible that some adapter solution will be required, but most things still indicate that we'll be able to continue to buy games on cartridges.

Nintendo will have shown off their device by March 31, and I don't rule out that they will do so at The Game Awards. Nintendo likes to go its own way, but such a large audience is hard to just wave away, after all. However, this is just speculation on my part, of course, because it could also negatively affect Switch sales, which in that case speaks for an announcement after Christmas.

These will continue to work until Switch 2. And games on cassette will probably continue.