PlayStation
- In a surprise exclusive article for Wires, Sony’s Mark Cerny gave us some details on PlayStation 5:
- the new console will be powered by a third-generation AMD Ryzen CPU with eight cores built on the company’s 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture
- it will be paired with a custom GPU, built on AMD’s Radeon Navi family, that supports ray-tracing
- the PS4 successor will also supposedly support 8K graphics and ship with a SSD to accelerate rendering and reduce load times. To illustrate this point, Cerny booted up Spider-Man and showed how fast-travel times could be reduced from 15 to a much shorter 0.8 seconds.
- the system will have immersive 3D audio that will work on standard speakers and headphones
- The new system will have similar architecture to PS4 and will be backwards-compatible with PS4 games with support for the current PlayStation VR headset
- the console will still support physical media and won’t go ‘all digital’
- According to a tweet from Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us Part 2 officially wrapped up mo-cap cinematic shooting….just now….almost halfway through the year. But hey, 2019 right?
Nintendo
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This week Reggie Fils-Aimé worked his last day at Nintendo and on his last day he opened up his own official Twitter account. He spent the day posting wonderful pictures and reminiscing of his career at the house of Mario.
- Smash Bros got a major update to 3.0 which included a ton of balancing adjustments as well as some major changes to the game, like a new stage-builder mode, a video editor, and Smash World—a new platform to share created stages, characters, and media. Nintendo also added the game’s second downloadable character, Joker, the protagonist from Persona 5. Demand for the update and to play the game was so high that it brought down Nintendo Online for a few hours.
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Nintendo dropped a new firmware update for Switch with version 8.0 (apparently we just decided to skip 7) and it brings some notable features:
- Software can be sorted by time last played, total play time, software title, and software publisher
- A View All Available News option is available within News, allowing you to view all news items currently being distributed
- 15 new icons have been added from Splatoon 2 and Yoshi’s Crafted World
- Players ca now transfer save data for individual games between Switch systems
- A Zoom feature can be enabled from within System Settings
- A VR Mode (3D Visuals) restriction is available within Parental Controls
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Hong Kong / Taiwan / South Korea is available for selection in Region
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Nintendo announced and dated a new trio of amiibo from the Super Smash Bros. line: Pichu, Isabelle, and Pokemon Trainer. They’re launching on July 26.
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Warner Bros. Interactive dropped a trailer showing how Mortal Kombat 11 looks on Switch and, in my opinion, it holds up surprisingly well.
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For several years, Nintendo was pursuing a new Quality of Life initiative with the goal of enhancing the way people sleep. Though not confirmed, Nikkei reports that the QOL department is no more and that Nintendo ended up creating a prototype for a sleep monitoring device that was nearly complete. Apparently the project was canceled due to the product not being very “Nintendo-esque”.
Xbox
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The Forza franchise has been exclusive to Microsoft’s platform, that is, until later this. year. The studio behind the racing series announced Forza Street, a free-to-play. mobile entry in the franchise coming to iOS and Android devices later this year. Oh, and it’s available now for Windows 10 devices and you can grab your copy here.
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Earlier this week, Microsoft officially announced the much talked about all-digital version of the Xbox One during the latest episode of Inside Xbox. It will have a rather paltry 1 TB hard drive will be priced at a rather uncompetitive $250, with Microsoft saying it will receive price drops to always keep it cheaper than the standard Xbox One S…..except that you can find the S around $40 cheaper at different online retailers.
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To coincide with the all-digital Xbox, the company also announced Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, a service which combines Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass into a monthly fee of $14.99. As someone has yet to pay full price for a year of Live or Games Pass, this really isn’t a deal if you know where to look, but it’s more about convenience.
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Microsoft confirmed on an official update to the Minecraft website that the live-action Minecraft movie will arrive on March 4, 2022. I’m sure it will be a blockbuster (lol).
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Microsoft unveiled a new six-part documentary called ELeague Gears Summer Series: The Bonds and Betrayals of Brotherhood (what a title!). It’s said to be part tournament, part drama; and will begin airing on TBS June 14 at 11PM ET. The idea is to follow “six of the most well-known players worldwide,” chronicle their stories, and have a big finish at the ELeague Arena in Atlanta for the actual tournament. Microsoft promises to showcase players who have an “intense connection” to Gears, with an “unprecedented look” at their passion.
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Ninja Gaiden II is now a Xbox Backwards Compatible title and Xbox One X updates are coming to five previous back-combat games including three Splinter Cell titles—Double Agent, Conviction, and Blacklist—as well as Fable 2 and 3.
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Showtime’s upcoming Halo series has landed its Master Chief. Actor Pablo Schreiber, whose credits include American Gods, First Man, and Orange Is the New Black, will act in the starring role in Halo, Showtime announced on Wednesday.
Industry News
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Respawn finally took the veil off their much rumored Star Wars game—Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a single player story-driven title coming to Xbox One, PS4, and PC November 15, 2019.
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2018’s Tomb Raider movie raked in $270M worldwide which is apparently enough to warrant a sequel, as Warner Bros has announced. No other details have been revealed except that Alicia Vikander will be back to reprise her role as Lara Croft.
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It’s no secret that Apple is incentivizing developers to join Apple Arcade by spending several million dollars on most of the more than 100 games that have been selected to be available on Apple Arcade game streaming service. We now know that developers will be permitted to release their games on PC and consoles like Switch and PS4 after a few months of exclusivity.
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At 800,000 sales, Superhot VR has officially brought in more revenue than its original non-VR sibling. As someone who owns the game for PSVR, it’s easily one of the best experiences virtual reality has to offer.
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In the aftermath of this week’s awful fire at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, there are reports that the painstakingly detailed modeling from Assassin’s Creed Unity might be used to help rebuild it which Ubisoft’s Caroline Miousse spent two years creating.
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Reddit user SyntaxTheGr8 pooled a survey of over 1,000 people about Anthem and the results are kind of rough:
- 98.4% of people said they’d played ANTHEM for over an hour
- 53% say they’ve quit the game completely
- a further 28% say they’re either quitting soon, or they’re at least considering quitting
- a whopping total of 79% said Anthem’s future is “concerning”, “not looking good at all”, or “horrible”. Ouch.
- Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 has been out for over a month now, and it’s already received one big content update. Massive Entertainment originally planned for the game’s next update, and its first raid, to arrive on April 25, but the developer has now pushed that date back to May—so not significantly further out.
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Konami announced the Castlevania Anniversary Collection will launch on May 16 and will consist of the following titles:
- Castlevania
- Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
- Castlevania II Belmont’s Revenge
- Super Castlevania IV
- Castlevania Bloodlines
- Kid Dracula
- Castlevania the Adventure
- Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
Kid Dracula is particularly notable since this is the first time the title is available outside of Japan.
- Sega announced ten more games that are coming to the Genesis Mini:
- Earthworm Jim
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2
- Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse
- World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck
- Contra: Hard Corps
- Streets of Rage 2
- Thunder Force III
- Super Fantasy Zone
- Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
- Landstalker
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All good things must come to an end, and that includes multiplayer support for the original Burnout Paradise. Emails sent to players and a tweet from Criterion confirm that the game’s servers — which have been in operation since it launched in 2008 on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC — will shut down on August 1st. There’s still offline play, but getting every trophy, even using backwards compatibility, will be impossible unless you make the jump to the Remastered edition that launched last year for newer platforms.
