PlayStation
- December’s PlayStation Plus games have been revealed
- Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition (PS4)
- Syberia Collection (PS3)
- Xblaze Lost: Memories, (PS3)
- Forma.8, (PS Vita, Cross Buy with PS4)
- Wanted Corp (PS Vita)
- Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends (PS4)
- Until Dawn: Rush of Blood (PSVR)
- Monster Hunter: World is rapidly approaching its release, and you can get a taste of the hunt from December 9 to December 12 if you’re a PlayStation Plus member.
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PlayStation Plus members can grab the Smite PlayStation Plus Pack for free! The bundle includes 31 Skins, 20 Gods and Voice Packs, plus the Khepri Announcer Pack. The bundle is available from December 12 to January 9.
Nintendo
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Shovel Knight is a hard game…..wouldn’t it be great if you could show the world your perfect series of death defying jumps? Well good news! Video recording is making its way to the Switch version in an upcoming update!
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Playtonic Games announced Yooka-Laylee is finally releasing on Nintendo Switch December 14 and includes all the content already out.
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Stardew Valley has been updated to version 1.2.36 on Switch which includes much appreciated improvements like significantly faster save times, a fix for the left speaker audio crackling, and many other bug fixes. This update also enables video recording support!
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Nintendo updated Arms to version 4.10 which includes Springtron as a playable character. Originally, Springtron was brought in as a boss in part of another update from October but now, however, he’s actually playable. Springtron is the highlight of the latest update, but Nintendo also included badges, made balance adjustments, and more.
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Ever since people saw that Blizzard was non-committal about bringing Overwatch to Switch, online shooter fans have been begging Hi-Rez to consider Paladins for release on the console. Now, data miners have discovered some references to an engine config files for Switch version in the latest Open Beta 62 version of the game. While this isn’t confirmation the game is making it’s way to Nintendo’s later console, it at least verifies they’r tinkering around with the idea.
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Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has amassed 15M downloads in first week on both iOS and Android, half that of Super Mario Run.
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If you haven’t played Overcooked yet on Switch (you most definitely should) then you may not know the titles suffered performance issues at launch. Will tells me that the recent patch which focused on framerate seemed to help, however, there was still an eight-way movement bug that prevented players from properly controlling their cook. That issue, along with aces others, has been addressed in the update that was released this week.
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Rumored for days and now confirmed, Super Mario Cereal becomes part of this nutritious breakfast in December. Every box is an Amiibo, unlocking gold coins and hearts in Super Mario Odyssey. In stores in North America as soon as December 11, Kellogg’s Super Mario Cereal is a mixed berry cereal with Mario-themed marshmallows.
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The wait for the original Super Meat Boy on Switch is almost over. In a newsletter sent to fans, Team Meat states that a December launch is currently planned while also containing a curious tease. The dev writes that the Switch version will have something “special” and that it should be “a pretty enticing reason for Switch owners to get the game again if they already own it on other systems.” Maybe this is some form of a discount?
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According to IDC research director Lewis Ward, the Switch is “almost single-handedly driving the hardware market with its Switch bundle sales.” Not only that, he told GamesIndustry that “Nintendo is back with a vengeance” and that the company has shown an insane turnaround after Wii U’s failure. “Nintendo shipped less than 400,000 Wii U bundles last year in North America. This year alone, Switch will ship over 5.2 million in the region. That’s an insane turnaround.”
Industry News
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EA took a $10 hit per share following the Battlefront 2 micro transactions debacle, which amounts to about $3B in market capitalization. Even still, EA’s total market cap is $33B, and $7.6B of that was added in the last year.
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Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode received a massive patch that added smoke grenades, leaderboards, 4k support, and more for the Xbox One X
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You don’t have to look far to find mobile games that knock off successful established titles and properties, sometimes making a lot of money doing it. Nowhere is this more precelsnt than China. So much so, in fact, that Bluehole and Tencent have plans for a mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in China. This announcement follows last week’s news that an official, government-approved Chinese release of PUBG is in the works for PC with assistance from Tencent. To pull that off, tweaks will be made to fall in line with the country’s “socialist core values, Chinese traditional culture, and moral rules.”
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In the wake of widespread anger over the state of Destiny 2, Bungie cancelled their livestream, which was meant to be the last of three streams promoting the game’s upcoming expansion, Curse of Osiris. Instead, Bungie addressed the overall state of the game. Some of the highlights are:
- account-wide armor ornaments
- better vendor rewards;
- more worthwhile incentives for Prestige activities and Strikes, Adventures, and Lost Sectors
- private matches and Ranked play in the Crucible
- more uses for Tokens and Legendary Shards.
The controversial scaling XP system that recently made headlines is still being addressed. “Expect to see a lot of conversation from our team on this front, as XP rewards are updated and brought back in-line with player expectations.”
Looking ahead, Bungie says they “plan to continue this dialog as openly and frequently as possible” and it’ll be “an ongoing process.”
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Destiny 2 now has hands-free voice command features thanks to Amazon Alexa. A new “skill” for Alexa lets players issue voice commands to their Ghost to ask the little guy about Destiny lore, send messages to friends and equip items.
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Gazillion games was originally slated to run Marvel Heroes through the end of the year. However, Disney decided to severe ties and shut the game down on top of laying off all staff just before Thanksgiving. To make matters worse, Disney informed them they would be losing all benefits, medical care, and that the company would be paying PTO. Players have also been affected, as it’s up to them to seek refunds which are currently being honored by Microsoft but not Sony.
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Ashly Burch will reprise her role as Chloe Price in Life Is Strange: Before the Storm’s bonus episode, Farewell. Hannah Telle – who played Max Caulfield in the original series – will also return, marking a comeback of sorts. Rhianna DeVries adopted the role of Chloe for the main three episodes of the Before the Storm prequel story, and will continue to be involved with the franchise moving forwards. While publisher Square Enix is keeping quiet, it seems to us that the Farewell episode will take place before the events of Before the Storm, and will tell the tale of Max moving away. Unfortunately, you’ll need to have bought the Deluxe Edition of the title to get it – a move which caused some controversy earlier in the year.
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Sonic Forces may not be great, but Sonic’s PR team has been killing it the past couple years. Team Sonic fully embraced the long running Sanic meme in Forces by making it available as an in game wearable shirt for free.
