Recap 4.28.17

PlayStation

  • Back in my day Sony was the go to electronics company for all your electronic needs, especially with the Walkman brand of tape and CD players. That mantle has long since been taken over by Apple, but fortunately for Sony their PlayStation brand has seen roaring success this generation with PS4. So much so, that the company is set to announce see it’s highest profits since 1998!

Xbox

  • In a recent interview series director Frank O’Connor stated that Halo 6 will star more Master Chief and most likely not anyone else in playable form. The decision was made after strong feedback from fans who didn’t care much for splitting their time between the Chief and the game’s other main character, Locke.

  • Forza Horizon 3 is receiving a Hot Wheels themed expansion May 9 that will feature six themed islands off the coast of Australia, all connected with Hot Wheels track, that you’ll be able to cruise in iconic Hot Wheels rides like Twin Mill, Rip Rod, and the Bone Shaker.


Nintendo

  • We now have official sales numbers from Nintendo regarding Switch and Zelda and they’re better than expected with 600k Switches sold in Japan, 1.2M sold in the Americas, and 940k sold in other regions like Europe, Australia, and beyond. This brings total Switch numbers to 2.74M from March 3 to March 31. Zelda, on the other hand, managed to pull in 2.76M copies worldwide with total software sales reaching 5.46M globally.

  • It appears Universal Japan is winding up for construction of Nintendo’s new attraction, as there are reports of huge white construction walls up in the parking lot with a sign reading “A new universe is on the horizon”.

  • Publisher Viz Media announced that the official Splatoon manga series will be coming to the West at the end of this year with an English translation. The series was released in Japan back in 2015 with 10 issues in the first series and 7 in the second.

  • Nintendo hardware and game designer Genyo Takeda is retiring after working with the company since 1971. During his time at Nintendo he helped create the GameBoy, invented the N64’s joystick, created a way of saving data to the NES game carts, and directed classic titles like Punch-Out!!, Pilotwings 64, and Dr. Mario 64.

  • Nintendo announced the new 2DS XL releasing July 28 for $149.99. As expected, the system gets an upgrade to the faster internals of the poorly named “new 3DS ” series and plays the whole 3DS family games in 2D only. We have a writeup, including the reveal trailer, here.


Industry News

  • Danger Zone is the next game from studio Three Fields Entertainment whose co-founders helped create the Burnout series. Guys, the Burnout series is one of my favorite things in life. Specifically Burnout 3 and Burnout Revenge. Anyway, the game will launch on PC and PS4 in May for $12.99 and is being dubbed a spiritual successor to Burnout’s crash mode. Danger Zone will take place in a testing facility and has players tasked with getting the highest score possible by causing massive beautiful multi-car pile ups.

  • Phoenix Point is a new “turn-based tactics and world-based strategy game” from the creator of the original X-COM, Julian Gollop. The project is seeking $500,000 in funding on Fig and is looking to release near the end of 2018. You can read a statement from Gollop below.

    “We are creating Phoenix Point by taking influences from the famed X-COM franchise. We are updating our favorite gameplay features from X-COM titles such as UFO: Enemy Unknown and X-COM Apocalypse that I designed, and mixing them with some of the amazing ideas Firaxis Games executed brilliantly in their franchise reboots, to create an entirely new game whose essence lies in the XCOM genre.”

  • Modiphius Entertainment, a multi-format tabletop publisher, announced Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. The teaser mentioned the game will feature larger, 32 mm miniatures and include player-versus-player, co-operative and solo missions.

  • Indie developer Jonathan Blow, best known for Braid and The Witness, showed a brief glimpse of this next project recently. According to Blow, “It’s a nice little grid-based game. I’ve got a guy who can run around and push blocks and stuff.” He also stated he has planned out around 25 hours of single-player gameplay.

  • Capcom announced September 19 as the release date for Marvel vs Capcom Infinite for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The 2v2 title also adds new characters to the roster. On Capcom’s side, there’s Street Fighter’s Chun-Li, Resident Evil’s Chris Redfield, and Strider’s, well, Strider. Then on the Marvel side there’s Thor, Hawkeye, Hulk, and one of my personal favorites Rocket Raccoon.

  • Both the PS4 and PC versions of Street Fighter 5 contain an Islamic prayer in Arabic that plays during the Temple Hideout level. This is a big cultural no-no with similar occurrances happening in the first run of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the Fire Temple as well as in a song that borrowed verses from the Qu-ran in LittleBigPlanet.

  • Adam Mudd, creator of the DDoS tool Titantium Stresser, is facing two years in prison after making $500k from selling his tool to carry out more than 1.7M attacks on sites and services like PSN, Xbox Live, Minecraft, TeamSpeak, and more. According to reports the tool attacked RuneScape over 25k times alone, costing the developer over $8M in an attempt to defend it. Mudd, 16 at the time, is now 20 and will get to spend the first couple years of his twenties hoping he doesn’t drop the soap.


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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