Only reason I came here, every Thursday morning for some decades (ok perhaps 1.5). Scan the new games list, have a look at forum threads for any interesting non-free ones, maybe buy one or two. Noticed the absence last week, went looking for some sort of announcement or comment, couldn’t see one. No article subsequently appeared. Same this week at 07:24 uk time, late by historic TA standards. Given this never appeared last week, I am assuming this feature has been canned. Oh well! Good luck with it all! Assume difficult times and waning interest.
Yeah it’s a shame. I used to love that feature also. I now use AppRaven. Select menu/new apps and they show what’s come out Nervous if TA disappears. The Patreon seems super low. Not as many users as the hey day. Hope all is okay
I came here to ask the same thing. "Out Now" every thursday is the main - if not only - reason I keep the TA tab permanently.
Jared Nelson writes "Out Now" and "TouchArcade Game of the Week" articles and he isn't writing new articles from August 31. Maybe he is on vacation.
When there is no new influx of members actively participating in the forum discussions it goes like this. It's the same people year in and year out arguing about the same old things. It gets tiring in the long run and it doesn't attract any new blood. Nobody wants to come to a forum that isn't lively and has a breadth of opinions and discussions where only ten people respond with the same old opinions. I don't know what to do to counter this, but I'm pretty sure the thread starter is right that the forum might not have much time left. I hope I'm wrong.
I guess what I’m also aware of is that the likes of us aren’t very profitable (do emoji even work here? That’s going to come out blank, isn’t it?) I have other thoughts about other things but tbf that’s not why I started this thread. The nature of iOS / mobile gaming has changed, and monetising that is obviously hard. Most main page reviews are clearly very heavily gunning for SEO rankings by endlessly repeating the game title which in my view is a double-edged sword - presumably brings in the links but makes them much less readable / engaging. The first survivability crisis I recall was when Apple stopped paying commission for games bought through TA links - and things have become tougher since then. Anyway. Things change. All of us are older. I will be slightly sad if out now has disappeared, though tbf I wonder if I was even using it any more - why pick up iOS if there’s a steam deck to hand? Why read TA on steam games when the literal raison d’etre is to provide a bucketload of reviews and endless insights on each and every steam game known to humankind? Tough choices. Tough context.
I visit every day as there's generally always a little something to pique my interest. Mikhail's reviews are nicely in depth and enjoyable (although I'm still not that bothered about frame rates, personally, which most people seem to really focus on!) but Shaun's absence is definitely going to detract from my pleasure in coming here. And the weekly run-down is an obvious reason for most of us to check TA. I would like to guess that holidays are the reason for the recent absence of them, but obviously I don't really know. As has been noted by many, times are tough now. I just hope the guys can keep things rolling. Although I fear that may not be the case in the medium term - or even the short term. I'm hardly the most active member of the forum in fairness, but I think I'd feel as sad about TA going as I did when UK Resistance stopped. And I was truly gutted about that.
I noticed that the last SwitchArcade Review Roundup ended with an image reading, “So long and thanks for all the fish,” and have been looking for an answer since. I don’t know if Shaun is leaving or if the whole site is shutting down. I suspect the latter. (eta) AppSliced closed recently as well. I don’t recall if the two sites were connected or not
@Collin I don't think Appsliced and Toucharcade have anything to do with each other, they are two sites with two different purposes. I have followed both for many years and never got the feeling that they were in any way connected. Appsliced closed its doors due to poor profitability according to the founder himself. It is possible to find his own explanation somewhere on the net (Reddit?). In connection with his closing, a deal was made with the founder of AppRaven who runs a similar service, so if you go to AppSliced today, you will be redirected to his site.
Had a feeling things were winding down when the usual articles weren't popping up on the usual days. Can't say I blame Shaun. It really was a hell of a run and he poured all he had into keeping us in the know. Hope someone steps into his shoes but it won't surprise me if that doesn't happen. *Chef's kiss* to the "So long and thanks for all the fish" outro!
For those interested, Shaun is still on the TA discord channel. Today he announced that he'll post a weekly Nintendo Switch Round-Up on his blog site, Post Game Content. He had this to say: It’s going to be weekly, it’s mainly going to be focused on new and notable releases, and I’m definitely not going to be doing the lists of sales. I might call out some specific ones here and there when I consider them juicy enough, though.
Sorry for the lack of response, been waiting for the go ahead to say something about this. But as you probably are aware by now TA is shutting down: https://toucharcade.com/2024/09/16/toucharcade-is-shutting-down/
Sad day man! Been here since the beginning, not always active, but was always comforting to come back to TA. I’ll never forget those early days when games came out at like midnight. People were losing their minds over Zen Bound, we were all refreshing the forum just waiting for someone to say it’s out. It’s funny how we were starving for games at the time, now there’s more crap than you can shake a stick at. It’s been a long strange trip my friends, cheers to you all!
