New Game Plus (October 7-13)
PS5
This week, in a story that surprised no one, Sony announced what they will be calling the successor to the PS4. They are sticking with the formula and calling it the PS5 and although it’s nothing glamorous, people understand their naming conventions and it doesn’t confuse the casual market.
Sony must really like Wired magazine or Wired magazine must have some type of relationship with Sony we dont know because this story was released on the PlayStation blog in the form of a more meat and potatoes press release but then we also were treated to another interview, on Wired, with architect Mark Cerny about some more details. This is the first that we have heard about the next gen console since April when Wired ran their first interview with him. We also got the release window which is due out holiday 2020, which is what I and many others have been speculating. I didn’t expect it to be released later than Project Scarlett, which is the next Xbox due out holiday of 2020 but I thought there was maybe around a five percent chance that it would be released before. There has been precedence of this working well when releasing new consoles including the Xbox 360.
As for the article on PlayStation blog, the main thing Jim Ryan, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, wants to push for the next generation of consoles is immersion. He believes that the next step of immersion involves major changes to the controller. The first major change is that Sony is doing away with the rumble technology and introducing haptic feedback. The idea is that since haptic feedback has a greater range it will be able to immerse into the game much more. According to Jim Ryan “ With haptics, you truly feel a broader range of feedback, so crashing into a wall in a race car feels much different than making a tackle on the football field. You can even get a sense for a variety of textures when running through fields of grass or plodding through mud”
The other major change being made to the controller is adaptive triggers. These are adjustable from a developer standpoint and allows them to program a different level of resistance on the triggers. The best example he gave was imagine a developer changing the resistance for pulling back on a bow string as the tension would slowly increase the farther back you pull it. The hopes according to Jim Ryan “ In combination with the haptics, this can produce a powerful experience that better simulates various actions. Game creators have started to receive early versions of the new controller, and we can’t wait to see where their imagination goes with these new features at their disposal”
This is the best part because right now the technology is so new to developers but you can just imagine the possibilities. I also hope that they either introduce a Pro controller as it sounds like they are giving the controller plenty of attention. The other smart addition is that the controller will now use a USB C for charging which will make life easier. Although Xbox has done a lot of innovative things this generation, one of my favorite would easily be the Xbox Elite Controller. It’s sturdiness combines with a multitude of customizable options make it a great addition to your gaming setup if you are a hardcore gamer and have the ability to purchase one. My hope is that if they do make on they release it early in the lifecycle as they are fairly expensive and it’s easier to justify it at the start of a generation.
Moving on to the wired article and this is where Mark Cerny got his chance to talk a little deeper on the specs since his last article in the spring. There was still a lot of ray tracing talk and SSD talk and how the games will load up almost instantly. Most of the information was either talked about in spring or elaborated on from the PlayStation Blog but there was new infosmtion regarding thr UI. Although it wasn’t discussed how it would look, it sounds light years away from the PS4 UI which could be described as utilitarian. The new UI will allow you to install whatever parts of the game you want. If you are finished with the campaign then you can uninstall and free up space on your hard drive. I use a PS4 Pro currently and I am constantly uninstalling games to free up space for new ones and I’m sure I am not the only one so this sounds like a welcome addition
That pretty much sums up the two articles in regards to new information that we have on the next generation of PlayStation. I would expect to hear something around February or March regarding both of the next gen systems and then a solid marketing push for about six months
Doom Eternal Delayed
On a smaller note Doom Eternal, which was supposed to be released this November has been pushed back until March 20, 2020. Bethesda announced on social media that they are delaying the game to add more speed and polish to the level that they expect. They also announced a new invasion mode that will allow you to enter other players games, which I’m sure will be optional. As a way to soften the blow they did announce that the recently announced Doom 64 will be free to players that pre order Doom Eternal. This is probably a smart move as the announcement of Doom 64 at Nintendo Direct was received luke warm at best.
This news came as a surprise considering how hard Bethesda went at E3 regarding Doom as well as the fact that they renamed QuakeCon to DoomCon. Being pushed back all the way to March 20, 2020 is a date that also doesn’t instill confidence. Since Bethesda/Zenimax is not a publicly traded company there is no way for us to know about their fiscal dates. However, if they are like most tech companies, they have a lot of investors and they have projections that they need to meet. Assuming that their fiscal year 2019 ends March 31, 2020 this date is about as far as they can push it before there is negative consequences from investors. The first couple weeks games sales make up a large chunk so Bethesda is making sure to please investors before the end of the fiscal year.
This could possibly mean that Doom Eternal is in a worse state that we know, especially considering that the Nintendo Switch version won’t be shipping on the same date as well as some modes won’t be available at launch. Clearly they have enough issues on their hands that they aren’t able to solve those two problems by the new date. The new release date combined with those factors don’t look good from the outside. Doom seemed like lightning in a bottle when it was released but would the same game with the same mechanics be enough 4 years later ? There is a good possibility that the game could have serious bugs or it just isn’t fun as opposed to the answer we got from Bethesda which was that it just needed more polish to live up to their standards. This could also be reading too much into nothing so we will have to wait until March to see.
Doom received a well needed shot in the arm in 2016 after a great reboot that took what made that series work in the first place with its gameplay, tone and freshened it up ignoring popular gaming trends. This helped re establish Doom as top tier franchise again and it would be shame if all of that goodwill got forgotten with a buggy mess.
Call of Duty Mobile Smashing Records
As I talked about last week, Call of Duty Mobile was off to a screaming success with over 30 million downloads in just a few short days. Although it didn’t seem to slow down after that initial surge of downloads, it continued marching on to the tune of over 100 million downloads in the first week.
I saw this article on Venture Beat by Mike Minotti who had some data from sensor tower that put it into perspective. Call of Duty mobile is the most downloaded mobile game in a single week, which even beat out Mario Kart Tour, which according to the article had amassed 90 million in that same time frame. Mario is a kid friendly franchise that has been popular since the eighties. CODs numbers look great especially when compared to fortnite which had 22.5 million which only launched on iOS at release and pubg with 28 million which received a staggered release across regions. Call of duty’s launch seems doubly impressive as the game has yet to launch in China which is a huge mobile gaming market.
According to the article iOS made up almost 56 percent of all the downloads, which is a pretty even split for both platforms. iOS also accounted for around 53 percent of total spending which added up to around 18 million in its first week. The us only accounted for around 17 percent of the total downloads or around 17 million but did account for over 43 percent of the total spending. This is something Activision knew beforehand as the game still hasn’t launched in China. Back in 2017 King announced that they would be developing a call of duty mobile game but somewhere along the way it changed and was developed by Tencent Company Timi studios, who are based in China. Which as we learned this week are very important to the bottom line of Activision Blizzard.
Blizzard Hong Kong
It wasn’t all good news for Activision Blizzard this week as they have been dealing with the fallout of Blitzchung. If you aren’t aware of the situation, there are great articles everywhere, but looking at the article from Luke Plunkett at Kotaku, he explains just how everything unfolded. For a quick recap we have a pro hearthstone player who has just won a tournament and is being interviewed. During the interview, Blitzchung expresses his support for Hong Kong regarding the Chinese protests along with a Gas mask to symbolize his ties to the events. Activision Blizzard, being a company that is tied to China in many ways including investors and player base, laid down severe punishment swiftly.
According to Blizzard, they support free speech but not when it breaks the tournament rules. The rule in which they are referring to is section 6.1 “Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms”
Based on this and their ties with the Chinese including 5% of the company being owned by Tencent, Blizzard suspended Blitzchung for a full year and also revoked his $10 000 prize. As well they cut their ties with the two commentators who were interviewing Blitzchung but clearly did not want any part of it. The company released a statement explaining their position. “While we stand by one’s right to express individual thoughts and opinions, players and other participants that elect to participate in our esports competitions must abide by the official competition rules”
Over the course of the week, there has been plenty of backlash from the public and media regarding the ruling. There was even a smaller walkout at Blizzard which featured approximately 20 people in support.
Blizzard may have realized that it has stepped in it on this one and on Friday, Blizzard released a statement after being quiet all week. They released the statement “The specific views expressed by Blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision. We have these rules to keep the focus on the game and on the tournament to the benefit of a global audience, and that was the only consideration in the actions we took. If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same”
They also announced that they felt since he didn’t break any rules during play that we would be given his prize money back and that his suspension would be reduced to six months instead of one year. This comes at a bad time as Blizzcon is just around the corner and the wonder is what implications, if any, this will have on the event. The hope is that it doesn’t draw attention away from what the hardworking developers have been doing. Blizzcon already had a lot of attention, especially for Diablo which made a bit of blunder last year by teasing an announcement which only turned out to be Diablo Immortal, the mobile game. Expectations are high for them to announce the next instalment in the Diablo series. Blizzcon starts November 1st, which is just a few short weeks away but my assumption is that like most things in the entertainment industry the general public has a short memory which is unfortunate.