Recap 1.8.16

This week was quite a bit of miscellaneous gaming news and Nintendo news.


PlayStation

  • Sony announced the addition of more than 40 PS3 games to its PlayStation Now service, bringing the total number of available PS3 games to 300, 100 of which are PS3 exclusives. You can grab a one year subscription for $99, which sounds like a solid buy to me.

Xbox

  • Microsoft revealed all of their holiday titles sold over a million. An excerpt from their press release reads ”every title in our exclusive 2015 holiday games line-up — Halo 5: Guardians, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Forza Motorsport 6 and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition — sold over 1 million units.”. So apparently we’re big titles since August (Gears) until the end of 2015 are considered part of the “holiday lineup”. Either way that means the excellent Rise of the Tomb Raider sold at least a million units. I really hope people pick it up when it releases on PS4 in 2016 because it’s really really good.

  • Xbox One exclusive Scalebound by PlatinumGames has been pushed back to 2017 for further refinements

  • Microsoft announced two new Xbox One bundles: the Xbox One “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege” Bundle and the Xbox One 500 GB Name Your Game Bundle. The Tom Clancy bundle is currently available and the Name Your Game Bundle will be available at retailers some time in late January.
     


Nintendo

  • The Nintendo World Store in New York will be closing from January 19 through February 19 for what is said to be a massive remodel. The store will also be renamed Nintendo NY and will contain new 3DS and Wii U demo units. A giant bronze coin installed at the store’s entrance will read “Where everyone comes to play.” The store’s official Twitter account has been migrated to @NintendoNYC and the website is now www.nintendonyc.com. I expect we will see multiple Nintendo stores pop up globally—or at least one on the West coast.

  • Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima told Japanese publication Sankei West in an interview that the Nintendo NX will be a new experience that is different from Wii U and 3DS and that the console is in steady development.

  • Financial services company Nomura Securities is predicting a June reveal of the Nintendo NX (likely at E3) with a release of November or December 2016

  • Nintendo asked fans via Miiverse what they’re favorite games are and the results are in. Here are the winners.
    Wii U: Super Mario Maker, Splatoon, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Yoshi’s Wooly World, Mario Tennis Ultra Smash
    3DS: The Legend of Zelda: Majora\’s Mask 3D, The Legend of Zelda™: Tri Force Heroes, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer


Misc Gaming

  • Shemue III obliterated it’s Kickstarter campaign a few months ago and, like most campaigns do lately, offered a second round of funding available to “slacker-backers” promising the same rewards. Nothing new there, except for what has happened recently. The studio sent out a survey to it’s Kickstarter backers asking if the rewards should be exclusive to them or be made available to the slacker-backers as well. The results came in and the majority of Kickstarter backers saw no problem with rewards going to the late backers. The problem is the developers, Ys Net, decided to instead go with the minority and not offer the rewards to the slacker-backers like originally promised. That’s pretty shitty if you ask me. We reached out for comment and will update if we hear back.

  • After years in development and selling dev kits for a reasonable price, Oculus started taking official preorders for the final retail version. Previous comments from Oculus’s founder Palmer Luckey suggested a final retail price around $350, so naturally people thought the official price would be around $400 to $450. Well this week the company embodied the term “sticker shock” when they revealed the final price will be $599—you read that right—five hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Yeah……we’ll see how that goes.

  • According to Jason Schreiner from Kotaku the next game in the Assassin’s Creed series will be set in Egypt. Perhaps more surprising is that it’s rumored to be coming in 2017 as Ubisoft supposedly wants to wind down from the annual release schedule, likely due to the botched launch of Assassin’s Creed Unity a couple years ago.

  • EA and PopCap Games announced Plants vs Zombies 2 Garden Warfare will have a multiplayer beta for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One starting January 14 and ending January 18. The title is set to release February 25, 2016.

  • Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics announced that the excellent Rise of the Tomb Raider will be coming to PC on January 28, 2016 and will be available as a digital download via Steam, the Windows Store, Amazon, the Square Enix e-store and other major retailers both in-store and online. Standard edition pricing is $59.99 and the Digital Deluxe edition is $89.99 and includes a Season Pass to nearly all current and future DLC.

Antonio Worrall
Antonio Worrallhttps://antonioworrall.com
I'm a Senior IT Support Engineer, every day tech geek, gaming enthusiast, world traveler, and foodie living with my wife and cat in the NY/NJ area.

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