The Witcher 3 team is being adorable about Horizon Zero Dawn, and Sony is well cute about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild [UPDATE]
Everyone in video games loves everyone else in video games this week. Updated with added cuteness!
The video game industry is hugely competitive, and when your products carry a $60 price tag you can't reasonably expect consumers to pick up everything available.
Back in the day marketing thrived on drumming up conflict between brands (remember the old Call of Duty vs Battlefield nonsense? Let alone the Sega vs Nintendo console wars), but in this modern era we're all a bit more mellow about it, apparently.
For example, viddy this tweet from PlayStation UK regarding The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which releases today, right on top of Horizon Zero Dawn.
You might expect Sony to be a bit sniffy about the limelight-stealing Link since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild reviews were even better than Horizon Zero Dawn reviews, but instead it's all class.
Aww, bless their hearts. Meanwhile, CD Projekt RED released this entirely adorable image celebrating the positive reception of Horizon Zero Dawn, which owes a lot to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
This is a really cute way to acknowledge the enormous influence The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has had and will continue to have on the games industry - just as Skyrim before it. While armchair generals might scream "copycats", insiders know almost every game is made up of the same building blocks, and CD Projekt RED seems flattered and pleased for their peers rather than put out by it. Meanwhile, we all win: three awesome games exist.
Update: Oh my gosh cats: it got cuter. Here's Horizon Zero dawn developer Guerrilla Games responding to CD Projekt RED with another bit of The Witcher 3 crossover art:
It's great to see brands celebrating each other like this, isn't it? Sure, at the end of the day it's all marketing, designed to extract money from you, but when it's all positive and congratulatory like this it makes me feel less resentful about forking said cash over.