Weekly Retro: 3/11 – 3/15

PlayStation

• Sony’s exclusive zombie romp, Days Gone, has gone gold and is set for release on April 26.

• The Messenger is set to release on PS4 March 19

• File this under “LOL No GD Way”, but according to Market Watch, Sony is in “advanced board level discussions to acquire Take Two in a mostly cash deal”. Frankly, we don’t believe it. Sure, Sony has a lot of money and PS4 has been an astronomical success for the firm, but with arguably the biggest selling franchise under its belt with GTA, we don’t see how PlayStation could afford Take Two.

Nintendo

• Two regular NES games and two SP games were added to the Nintendo Switch Online app
  * Kid Icarus
  * StarTropics
  * Kirby’s Adventure SP
  * Zelda II SP

• If you’re still playing Super Mario Run on an older Android device, you may want to upgrade. The title is getting an update to version 3.0.14 which drops support for anything under Android 4.4 KitKat.

• Fortnite has been updated to version 8.10 and it brings a significant matchmaking change for Switch users—it only pairs them with mobile players instead of PS4 and Xbox One like it did before. Epic says it’s reasoning is that it expects “an on-average better per-game experience” which may be true. It’s worth noting that players can still see and squad up with their friends across all platforms including PS4 and Xbox, as the change strictly affects matchmaking.

Xbox

• Microsoft was teasing big news regarding Halo and now we know what it is: The Master Chief Collection is coming to PC and the collection will be updated to include Halo: Reach as well. Rather than make every game in the collection available all at once on PC, Microsoft said the collection will roll out one game at a time, starting with Halo: Reach and going in chronological order from there. Microsoft is pitching this incremental approach as a way to make the games available sooner rather than waiting until the entire collection is ready. The games will run at 60fps and support 4K. On Xbox One, Halo: Reach multiplayer will be available as a free add-on for everyone who already owns the collection, while the single-player campaign will cost extra. Halo: Reach doesn’t yet have a release date on either PC or console.

• There were other announcements during Inside Xbox as well:
  * Minecraft will be joining Games Pass in April. An update is also being worked on that will add raids and other challenges to the game.
  * Spacial Sound is coming to Xbox One which is said to add more immersion to game audio
  * A new Phantom White Xbox controller is available based on the newest gamepad iteration, meaning it will work with PC thanks to Bluetooth support
  * State of Decay 2 will receive an update March 26 that will add higher difficulty levels
  * Project xCloud, Microsoft’s in-development cloud-based Xbox games stream solution, was demoed and was said to work flawlessly. The tech is designed to stream Xbox titles to your smartphone or tablet over a good network connection.
  * DayZ is leaving Xbox Preview Marcy 27 with development said to continue in the months after release.
  * Halo Infinite was confirmed to be shown off at E3 2019
  * What was once Microsoft Plaza will now be renamed to Xbox Plaza.

• After being in beta for quite some time, Xbox has release an app for Xbox One called Wireless Display that lets users stream games from PC to their Xbox One console. In my use the app has performed rather well thanks to a selection of built-in latency modes, including one specifically for gaming. The app also allows users to switch between gamepad mode or mouse mode (to close apps and whatnot). You won’t be able to stream protected content like that from Netflix or Hulu.

• In a surprise move, Microsoft has released Direct X 12 for Windows 7. The catch is it’s only for select titles starting with World of Warcraft.

• After Wednesday’s demonstration of Project xCloud, Microsoft released a new SDK for iOS and Android developers to enable Xbox Live features in their games.

• Microsoft announced its partnering with Gameye, a company that focuses on delivering enhanced multiplayer infrastructure for multiplayer games. Through the partnership, Gameye’s container-based system will join Microsoft Azure to give Microsoft Studios developers access to the APIs necessary to enable low-latency multiplayer and competitive play across their games.

Industry News

• The original Left 4 Dead team, Turtle Rock, announced a spiritual successor to their squad-based zombie franchise with a new game titled Back 4 Blood. Back 4 Blood will feature a campaign and player-versus-player combat, and will not be a battle royale game, Turtle Rock said. The game is bound for PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One, and does not have an announced release date.

• Square Enix announced a new Octopath Traveler project is in the works—not for console—but for iOS and Android devices. We don’t have many details, but we do know that the title will be another single player game and is said to be a prequel with proper stories for all eight characters. Movement is said to be more “on rails” with swipe gestures used for movement. The title is slated for a 2019 release.

• Niantic, the mobile developer best known for for Pokémon GO, revealed their next major release. As rumors suggested, it’s based on the popular wizarding franchise, Harry Potter. The new mobile title is called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and tasks players with finding traces of magic and items called “foudnables” at locations similar to Poké Stops. Players will have the chance to experience AR versions of actual Harry Potter locations like Ollivander’s Wand Shop as well. The game will also launch with multiplayer Wizarding Challenges that allow friends to group up and take on Death Eaters, Dementors, and other magical villains. It’s like trainer battles, in a sense, although friends will work together, not against each other.

• Netflix announced they’re making a new anime series based on Dragons Dogma. That’s all the info we have at the moment, but it’ll be interesting to see how this and Netflix’s Witcher series are received.

• Uniqlo has partnered with Nintendo a few times to release lines based on some of it’s IP. Now, the company is making a t-shirt range based on Street Fighter and Capcom has brought back in-game ads to Street Fighter V to tell you about it.

• Jade Raymond has joined Google as what appears to be the Vice President of the company’s gaming initiate, which we’ll hear more about officially at GDC March 19. Jade is no stranger to the gaming industry, having produced the first two Assassin’s Creed games before opening a studio for Ubisoft in Toronto and then joining EA to found EA Motive best known for their work on the campaign of Battlefront II.

• According to the Australian Ratings Board, a new Multiplatform Castlevania Anniversary Collection may be on the way. Since nothing has obviously been officially announced, that’s all the information we have at the moment.

• The team behind Hyper Light Drifter announced their second game titled Solar Ash Kingdom which looks to be a spiritual successor of sorts done in a 2.5D style.

• The man who pioneered the battle royale sensation is moving on from the game that bears his name. Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene is leaving PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds to work on a new division within PUBG Corp to lead PUBG Special Projects. He’ll still be a consulting creative director for PUBG however and said the following to Eurogamer about joining the new division

  The past five years of my life have been all bout battle royale. We are tasked with exploring, experimenting, and creating new technologies, tools, pipelines, and gameplay; but for me, it is more than that. Together with a team of game developers and researchers, we will explore new possibilities of interaction and connection within the game space.”