Weekly Retro 4.16 – 4.20

PlayStation

• For reasons unknown, a lot of Sony’s upcoming AAA titles aren’t available for preorder on Amazon. These include big releases like God of War, Detroit: Become Human, and Spider-Man.

• Sony Santa Monica announced one of the pieces of content coming to God of War will be photo mode. Not only that, but it looks to be just as fantastic and robust as what Guerrilla offered in Horizon Zero Dawn.

Nintendo

• Unity, an engine in which many games are created with, now has engine support for video capture on Switch.

• Dark Souls Remastered and the Solaire of Astora amiibo have both been pushed back for Switch from May 25 until Summer 2018.

• Microsoft and Mojang have confirmed that, once the Minecraft’s Bedrock update has gone live, players will be able to earn achievements tied to Xbox Live by playing the Nintendo Switch version of the game. 

• Nintendo has upset Animal Crossing Pocket Camp fans with the addition of loot boxes as Premium Fortune Cookies which offer a chance of even better items for a higher price. The problem is, these premium Fortune Cookies don’t just unlock the item, but provide stamps you’ll need to use to eventually purchase it.

Xbox

• The Xbox team is hard at work bringing new features to the Xbox One family of consoles prior to E3. Today they shared some of the new features gamers can expect to see in the coming weeks which include:
  – 120Hz refresh rate support for 1080p and 1440p resolutions
  – The ability to create collections of apps and games into folders called Groups that appear across My games & apps, Home, and Guide. These can be custom named and sorted
  – The ability to trim video clips directly in the Guide
  – Parental Controls is getting a “Details” page where parents can easily find and manage all family settings on Xbox One. Parents will easily be able to tell which family and content settings are set up and configured. Important setting that are turned off or require attention will be flagged as well.
  – The Xbox Accessories app is getting streamlined with easier navigation
  – Some of the button commands throughout the dashboard are being re-worked as well. For example, you can now use the View button on Home to edit the order of blocks or reorder items within Groups.  Pressing the “View” button on the main tab of the Guide will also now display additional capture options.

• Former Crystal Dynamics head of studio Darrell Gallagher is joining Microsoft Studios’ executive leadership team. Prior to his new position, Gallagher spent two years with Activision as senior vice president and a decade with Crystal Dynamics, heading up the studio’s 2013 “Tomb Raider” reboot.

• Sea of Thieves developer, Rare, announced details for their upcoming roadmap for game content. The studio is planning about five content updates (of varying content size) before the calendar year. You can read the details in our Tuesday’s Daily Byte .

• Halo The Master Chief Collection is getting a big update soon with much needed improvements to matchmaking as well as LAN support. Those with a Xbox One X and a 4k HDR TV can enjoy 4K and HDR support, something I would have assumed Microsoft and 343 would have had ready for the X’s launch.

Industry News

• Speaking in this week’s issue of Famitsu, Sega Sammy boss Haruki Satomi revealed that the Yakuza team have already begun work on an all-new IP that will hit “all major platforms”.

• The SNK brand is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and to mark this milestone and thank it’s fans, the Osaka-based game company is working on a “new game machine” that will feature a compilation of popular Neo-Geo games ala the NES Classic.

• A new Castlevania game is coming out for iOS called Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls.

• Re-Logic announced the sequel to Terraria has been cancelled, citing development was significantly further behind than expected and that it was interfering with other future projects.

• Sega announced Sega Ages (a Sega games compilation) will bring over 15 classic Sega titles to the Nintendo eSho. Sega also announced a micro-console based on the Mega Drive, which will come preloaded with classic Genesis games. The system is currently going by the name of MegaDrive Mini, although this is expected to change. And last, but not lease, Sega also announced Shenmue I and II are coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC later this year for $29.99.

• The iOS release of Fortnite has grossed over $25M in revenue in it’s first 30 days of release.

• An unexpected and sizable update dropped prematurely for Sonic Mania on PS4 before swiftly being pulled by Sega. Some players had the game auto-update, however, and here are some of the update’s highlights.

  • all stage transitions now have their own cutscenes
    • the game’s bosses have been reworked
    • you can toggle the time limit off (thank GOD)
    • unlock able abilities like insta-shield can now be used with regular game saves

Word on the Street

• Rumor has it Switch’s Pokémon title has been in localization since February under the codename “Project Beluga” and is targeting a 2018 release date.

• According to sources with knowledge of the project, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 won’t include a traditional single-player story mode which would make Black Ops 4 the first mainline Call of Duty to ship without a standard campaign.