PlayStation
-
After helping Sony turn a profit, CEO Kaz Hirai is stepping down in April and will remain at Sony as director and chairman. He helped Sony cut costs in ways like selling its Vaio PC operation, revamping the way it makes and sells TVs, and refocusing its mobile business. All in all, Sony recorded $23.65B in revenue over the quarter, which translates into $2.62B in profit. The firm’s gaming arm was the primary money-spinner, as usual, generating $777M in income which almost as much as Sony made from PlayStation and complementary services through the entire 2015 fiscal year. Well done.
-
PS4 firmware 5.50 is in beta and brings a plethora of new features including system-wide supersampling for PS4 Pro owners, the ability to hide apps, custom wallpaper support, refinements to the quick menu, and more.
Nintendo
-
Legendary event for Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon is now live. Players can visit GameStop (ew) to receive a code for either legendary Palkia or Dialga.
-
The debate over Toad’s mushroom head has finally been put to rest after Nintendo confirmed that toad’s mushroom dome is not a hat, but is actually his head. We’re not sure if this is better or worse than the alternative.
-
Nintendo Labo early play events have been a big successes with early reports of the cardboard add-on being positive!
-
Harvest Moon: Light of Hope arrives on Switch in May
-
According to LinkedIn profile of the game’s lead designer, Bandai Namco may be working on an unannounced Switch-exclusive shooter IP. His profile also tipped gaming sites off to the possibility of Ridge Racer 8 being exclusive to Nintendo’s wonderful slab of gaming tech too.
-
It has now been revealed that Linux is up and running on Switch via a unique exploit which, it is claimed, cannot be patched in a future firmware update.
-
The team behind Floor Kids isn’t done updating the game. In a new tweet published today, some new content was teased. The first thing we can look forward to is Infinity Mode, which appears to be a practice mode of sorts. Video capture will also be supported so that players can record 30-second clips.
-
It’s no secret we at Pixelrater miss Club Nintendo, the program that was available prior to the newly launched My Nintendo. It’s also irritating that Switch has been out for almost a year and the system had zero interaction with Switch, but that is changing in March. Players will be able to use gold points towards Switch eShop purchases. Nintendo also revealed that digital purchases of games and DLC would yield 5% back while physical games net you a shockingly low 1%. Gold points expire after a calendar year.
Xbox
-
Microsoft will be releasing a 1TB Xbox One S PUBG bundle for $299.99 later this month. The bundle also includes 1 month free access to Xbox Game Pass and a 14-day trial to XBL gold.
-
The Surge 2 is confirmed for 2019 release. To expand on the success of the first game with new powerful enemies and a still weird story that reminds of the dark souls legacy. Will had a lot of good things to say about the original in his review .
Industry News
-
I know it’s not necessarily industry news, but Elon musk sent one of the largest rockets ever built into low earth orbit carrying a payload consisting of a Tesla Roadster into space, and it was an outstanding achievement for mankind. Let’s do more like that.
-
Capcom Vancouver laid off somewhere around 50 people in a movement said to reorganize the company. It has been said this will affect development of the next Dead Rising title.
-
During the first show after his return, Twitch Streamer Dr. Disrespect not only broke the record for most concurrent viewers peaking at over 388K, he brought so much traffic to the site that he brought it to its knees for nearly half an hour.
-
PUBG co-banned over 1M players in the last month for cheating.
-
Donnie Yen has confirmed that production of the official live-action Sleeping Dogs film has begun.
-
Overwatch’s Year of the Dog event begins Feb 8th, bringing with it a new map set in Thailand. The event will also tweak the rules for current CTF gameplay and add a four week competitive CTF season. Oh, and there are skins to be had.
-
South Korean Overwatch Pro Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon will be signed to the OWL team Shanghai Dragons, making the Zarya main the league’s first female.
-
An expansion for Kerbal Space Program is coming March 15th for PC and includes a custom mission builder to create your own goals and challenges. The update is titled Make history.
-
The sound designer on the hit video game Subnautica has been let go over some negative comments he publicly made on social media. The game is better now.
-
Into the breach, from the creators of FTL is coming to PC later this month.
-
Rumor has it, by way of a UK based distributor of licensed gifts, that Activision is going all in on Crash Bandicoot with PC and Switch ports planned for this year. The same source also tipped that a new Crash game is coming in 2019 following the success of the N. Sane trilogy.
-
The world record high score in Donkey Kong, arguably the most coveted mark in competitive video gaming, appears to have been broken yet again. On Friday, Robbie Lakeman surpassed his own record, set a little more than a month ago, and is awaiting verification from Twin Galaxies, the ultimate arbiter of such feats. Lakeman’s 1,247,700 score was broadcast in a three-hour, 49-minute livestream on Twitch on Friday. He overtook the 1,230,100 score he established back in December and was verified only yesterday. Both marks stretch the boundaries of what was has been theorized to be perfection in Donkey Kong.
-
Former Donkey Kong world record score holder, Billy Mitchell, has had his score disputed on Twin Galaxies’ leaderboard due to the use of MAME rather than a legitimate arcade cabinet.
-
The Sims 4’s newest update added ten new, darker skin tones, as well as a new curly hair, to a game that had had not previously reflected the range of skin tones that black people and other people of color have. The new skin and hair options are welcome, but they’ve arrived very late in the game’s life-cycle and still have some cosmetic problems.
-
It sounds like Google might be working on a game streaming service. According to a report from The Information, the tech juggernaut has been floating the idea for a streaming service (like PlayStation Now or NVIDIA’s GeForce Now) for around two years. The service is codenamed “Yeti” and Google is apparently even testing hardware for it as well. The Information’s sources say that the service might stream to a Chromecast, and that hiring Phil Harrison last month as VP of hardware—formerly of Microsoft and Sony’s gaming divisions-—could point toward a standalone gaming console.
-
Sasha ‘Scarlett’ Hostyn has made StarCraft II history by being the first woman to win a premier StarCraft II tournament in beating two-time WCS Global Champion Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin 4-1 at last weekend’s Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Season XII tournament in South Korea.
-
Will really loved Bridge Constructor Portal , and now Headup Games the title will release on Switch and Xbox One February 28 for $9.99 followed by March 1 for PS4.
