PlayStation
- God of War has officially gone gold! What does that mean, you might wonder. Well going gold is a really big deal—the last of two huge milestones really. The first is getting ‘greenlit’ which basically means your project is officially a go. Going gold means that you’ve wrapped development duties on the game and all that’s left is manufacturing and shipping (of course work on patches and potential DLC is still worked on). Congrats to Sony Santa Monica on what looks to be a refreshing reboot on Kratos and the God of War series!
Nintendo
- Nintendo is bringing its live tournaments back to E3 in June, with this year’s events focusing on Splatoon 2 and the newly announced Super Smash Bros. game for Switch. The tournaments will take place June 11 and the 12.
- Japanese peripheral maker Hori is creating a left-hand Joy-Con with an old-school D-pad, it has been revealed by Famitsu. With that said, the controller is not without it’s tradeoffs. Hori’s controller is designed to be used in portable mode only, meaning it lacks the following:
* a sync button (can’t be used wirelessly)
* SL and SR buttons
* HD Rumble
* Accelerometer
* Gyroscope
So basically, this thing is useless in my opinion. It has far too many ‘gotchas’ to get my money. -
Abstraction Games is the developer behind the ARK Survival Evolved port for Switch. According to them, getting the game running on Switch wasn’t that difficult from a performance perspective. They claim that Switch isn’t that far behind the base PS4 and Xbox One. The biggest issue the studio is facing is figuring out how to get it to run on a 16GB card as the price Nintendo charges for a 32GB card is too high. They said the following:
“Switch is not as powerful as a PS4 or Xbox One. Everyone knows that. Having said that, the difference isn’t as big as the general perception would have you believe. In some locations you need to downsize a bit on the distance you’re able to view, but not as much as you’d think compared with Xbox One and PS4. Obviously, in terms of Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, that’s a different story. But compared with the base platforms, Switch is not that bad.”
Regarding the game card size, developer Ralph Egas said:
”However, thankfully, there are a lot of opportunities for reduction without changing anything anyone will notice. Another thing we can do is do a cartridge version and then do staggered downloads to make the game complete. That’s probably the hardest part. Finding all the new technicalities and quirks that you get with a new platform.” - Minecraft: New 3DS Edition has received a new update for New 3DS which adds local multiplayer.
Industry News
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A new Monster Hunter World update is now live on all formats and in all regions, adding new features and content to the game as well as balance changes. The biggest addition from the update is Deviljho, which players will be able to fight in The Food Chain Dominator special assignment. All weapons have also received some balance changes.
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Zelda Breath of the Wild won Game of The Year at GDC. You can find all the award winners below:
– Best Audio The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo)
– Best Debut Studio MDHR (Cuphead)
– Best Design The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo)
– Best Mobile Game Gorogoa (Jason Roberts/Buried Signal)
– Innovation Award Gorogoa (Jason Roberts/Buried Signal)
– Best Narrative What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow)
– Best Technology Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games)
– Best Visual Art Cuphead (Studio MDHR)
– Best VR/AR Game SUPERHOT VR (The SUPERHOT Team)
– Audience Award NieR:Automata (PlatinumGames)
– Game of the Year The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo)
– Ambassador Award Rami Ismail
– Lifetime Achievement Award Tim Schafer -
Also during GDC, Infinite Fall’s Night in the Woods took home the $30K Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game at the 20th annual Independent Games Festival Awards. It also received top honors for Excellence in Narrative. The show’s other winners can be found below:
Excellence in Visual Art ($3,000)
Chuchel (Amanita Design)
Excellence in Audio ($3,000)
Uurnog Uurnlimited (Nifflas Games)
Excellence in Design ($3,000)
Baba Is You (Hempuli)
Excellence in Narrative ($3,000)
Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall)
Nuovo Award ($3,000)
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (Bennett Foddy)
Best Student Game ($3,000)
Baba Is You (Hempuli)
Audience Award ($3,000)
Celeste (Celeste Team)
ID@Xbox Gaming for Everyone Award
SpecialEffect
alt.ctrl.GDC Award ($3,000)
Puppet Pandemonium
Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($30,000)
Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall) -
New details have surfaced regarding Cyberpunk 2077, the upcoming project from The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red. During the company’s latest financial presentation, president Adam Kiciński dropped a few comments on what we can expect from the game:
* there will be some form of character creation
* you’ll choose a character class, allowing you to specialize in certain skills and abilities
* the campaign will feature a huge story, with that currently being the studio’s primary focus.
* multiplayer is still something that the developer is looking into and even a battle royale mode could happen with Kiciński saying that everything up for consideration -
There was some exciting news recently that the original Tomb Raider trilogy would be getting a facelift on Steam, with studio realtechVR announcing that they were remastering the ’90s classics for PC, complete with VR functionality and a new engine. Unfortunately, it appears that these plans have been squashed, as publisher Square Enix never even gave the go-ahead for such an idea. Square Enix had the following to say:
”While we always welcome passion and excitement for the Tomb Raider franchise, the remasters in question were initiated and advertised without seeking approval. As such, they were never officially sanctioned.”
- Konami announced the remaster of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner will release in September. The company also released a trailer showcasing the enhancements the remake brings compared to its original PS2 release.
