New game + March 18-24
Playstation Direct Or Inside Playstation ?
An interesting piece of news that dropped very late in the week and very late in the console cycle was news that Playstation would be starting a new show called “State of Play”. Announced on the Playstation Blog, the first episode in an episodic format would be Monday March 25. We don’t have long to wait to find out just what type of show it will be as a whole but they did say that the first episode will focus on new titles that are coming to the PS4 and PSVR. There is very little information at this point to try to figure out what kind of show this will become. However, the blog did mention that it would include plenty of new information including new trailers, new gameplay footage and new announcements. It will be very interesting to see if this series becomes more like Inside Xbox and their talk show type style or the Nintendo Direct way of just pre recording the whole presentation. I hope it resembles something closer to Nintendo Direct as I enjoy the fast paced nature of the Directs with little filler.
Nindies
On Wednesday, Nintendo streamed a direct like presentation featuring about half an hour of their upcoming Nindies. As predicted in our Instagram post, Cuphead will be making its way to the Switch in mid April. This is great news for gamers. There are few reasons this is great with the first being that cuphead would be a perfect fit for the Switch. It is unknown if the Nintendo version will feature the long awaited expansion. Not every Xbox game would work on the Switch but it would be ideal for many including the Ori series and it would even be great if they could find a way to revitalize Halo Wars. The second is that this is hopefully the start of the Xbox library or part library on Nintendo. It was rumoured that game pass in some shape or another would be making its way to Nintendo. This was in line with what Microsoft has previously stated that they want their games everywhere you can get them. From consoles, pc’s and smartphones Microsoft has said that they want xbox games all over these two billion devices.
Google Gaming
Google also wants those two billion gamers because easily the biggest gaming news that made mainstream waves was Google announcing their plans for a gaming streaming service called Stadia. The basics of this service is that you don’t need any hardware. If your device can run chrome, then it can run some of the best games the industry has to offer. You never need a console, you will never need to patch and you will never need to install. Everything is done on the server side of the equation. The second major feature is that due to the fact its all running off Google servers you can stop a game wherever you are and pick up playing anywhere else. The controller patent that had been leaked turned out to be true as the unveiled a WiFi controller. The idea being that you will have less lag if there controller is communicating directly with their servers as opposed to going to your device and then to the servers. They are trying to think of everything they can to combat the one major enemy pure streaming has and that would be lag and responsiveness. In terms of resolution they are launching with 4k/60 and 8k/120 should be not far off. They also went out of their way to show what the specs of each server you would be connecting to and it works out to 10.7 Teraflops which is more than PS4 Pro and Xbox One X combined.
The keynote showed off some impressive features but left out some key information such as the pricing and delivery model. Will it be free and you just buy the games with the hope that google will monetize other ways or will it be more in the vain of what Netflix does with subscriptions. The concrete data that they did provide at the event was that for 1080p you need 20mb/s internet and for 4k you need 25mb/s but the recommended a speed of 30 would be best. They also announced that it would be coming out in 2019.
This was beta tested by google last year as we talked about on last weeks podcast. The other Google topic we touched on last week was Jade Raymond being hired. It was officially unveiled that Jade Raymond would be leading the new first party studio, called Stadia Games and Entertainment. She will also be overseeing how Google can help other developers work with Stadia. They have promised more information coming in the summer.
E3 Tracker 2019
As we get closer and closer to E3 2019, the landscape continues to change. Its been known for a while that Sony would be skipping the conference this year and indefinitely. Back in November Sony announced that they would not be having any conference this year for the first time since the show started in 1995. They stated that they wanted to find other innovate ways to show the products to the fans. This could be true but it could just also be a calculated decision based on the ROI. It very costly to take part in these shows to have a booth, let alone large activations and conferences like Sony does, combine this with the fact that they don’t have many releases on the calendar and the lifespan of the PS4 is dwindling. With Sony out of the way it was wondered how the show would evolve. The next large publisher to make an announcement about E3 was EA. Electronic Arts has announced that they will also not be holding a press conference this year. They have said that this year rather than talking on stage they will be giving the fans what they asked for and thats more games. They will be holding EA Play from June 7-9 at the Hollywood Palladium, which is miles from E3. It sounds like they will be taking a more Nintendo Direct approach to the event which have garnered plenty of praise over the years. This week Bethesda also announced they would be taking part in E3 with a press conference similar to how they have operated the last few years. Its assuming the Doom will be their large fall game and we will get a large dose of information regarding that at E3. One of the other few games we know in progress at Bethesda is the Wolfenstein spinoff. We haven’t heard much from that game since it was announced at the press conference last year. It will also be very interesting to see if they talk about Fallout 76 after the multitude of errors that happened with the launch of that game last year. As for the update on Xbox, I expect them to go big. there was a leaked email that came from head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, after the Google Stadia reveal. According to Thurrott, who caught wind of the alleged internal email, from head of Xbox Phil Spencer, none of the announcement Google made came as a surprise to Microsoft. “Their announcement is validation of the path that we embarked on two years ago” Phil went on to say a few more positive things about the google event but then ended the email by saying “Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big”. All of this sounds inline with the position Xbox have been putting themselves in by making bold, future building moves including the Netflix type service GamePass and the recently announced All Digital Xbox without the optical drive. Microsoft has been eating crow this generation with the loss of the console race to Sony but this has forced them to make moves that will push Xbox forward net generation and beyond. It will be very interesting to see what Xbox has to say at E3 this year. We are currently at the precipice of a massive industry change.
It will also be very interesting if Google decides to have anything to do with the conference this year. They did mention that they will be revealing more information later this summer. At this time it is unsure if they are big enough to do their own thing or if being around the buzz of E3 would benefit them.
Bloodborne with Ninjas
Late this week, the latest entry from our friends at FROMSOFTWARE released Sekiro:Shadows Die Twice. It comes as little surpise that the reviews for this game have been extremely positive. The reviews on Metacritc are fitting in right alongside the other FROMSOFTWARE titles with a score currently floating around 90. Based on previews, this game tends to be an evolution of the soulsborne formula. Whereas Bloodborne gave the player more movement and abilities, Sekiro takes it another step forward. Based on most things that I have read the game clocks in at around 50 hours. As a side note on size the game is quite small only clocking in at 12 GB on the PS4 Pro. We are excited to get our hands on the game and give you our review impressions. I am curios to see if this is the modern FROMSOFTWARE game that finally hooks me in. I have had an appreciation for the souls series and BloodBorne but they have always gated me out. The closest before this was BloodBorne because I enjoyed the setting more and the speed of the game was faster.
Apex First Step
Early this week Respawn finally announced that they would be launching the battle pass for Apex Legends on Tuesday. The rumours were correct in that the cost for the battle pass was 950 coins or about 10 dollars. Over all the battle pass plays it pretty safe following in the footsteps pretty closely of what Fortnite has done with theirs. With the new season of Apex launching it came with a new character called Octane. The purchase of Octane is separate from the rest of the battle pass. You can purchase the new legends either with real cash converted to apex coins or legend credits that you earn in game. Respawn said at launch that there would be new characters, plural, in each season. It would be safe to assume that sometime in the next 90 days at least one more character will be available. The bright side about this battle pass is that levelling up you will be able to earn enough tokens to purchase the season 2 battle pass without spending any money. As for the simplicity of the pass, it doesn’t really offer a whole lot of challenges and incentive to play. The general consensus from fans on message boards is that the pass and rewards are fairly basic. It does encourage you to use all the legends with a rotating xp bonus based on the legend you use. The gold standard for shooter seasons in my opinion would be Rainbow Six Siege with daily and weekly incentives to boost your xp. They also have a ranking system which is nice and hopefully Respawn will implement one sooner than later. RS6 also does seasons quite well by adding new maps and two new characters usually with new guns and gadgets. All of this is just nitpicking a free game that is a lot of fun and has only been out for a little over a month.