Mario Maker Direct

This week we were treated to a surprise Nintendo Direct. It was supposed to be a 15 minute event focusing solely on Super Mario Maker 2. Having a direct this close to E3 and being 15 minutes long, there was a possibility for a surprise announcement but true to their word it was 100% Super Mario Maker 2. The direct was very in depth featuring all the small new aspect of the game and their were a lot.

The presentation ended with the pricing for the game which there are two new ways to get your hands on the game digitally with some savings. The first was a bundle with Nintendo Switch Online, for 69.99 you get the game and a year subscription of NSO which is a savings of about ten dollars, even if you are already subbed it will just get added on to your existing account. The other way is by using what is called Game Vouchers. For 99 dollars you can get two top tier Nintendo games from the Eshop including upcoming preorders such as MUA3, Fire Emblem, and of course Super Mario Maker 2. You can also select almost any of the existing first party titles including Yoshi, Smash, Zelda, Mario Party, New Super Mario Bros, Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 and much more. This is a really fan forward idea to pass along some of the savings when releasing games digital. It’s also a great way to encourage people to purchase some older AAA titles that they may have missed as Nintendo titles rarely go on sale. To use the vouchers, you must have a NSO account. The extra benefit is you dont have to use the vouchers right away you have one year from the date of purchase and Nintendo says the list of eligible software will grow with time, potentially meaning that all of the big games for 2019 will be included in the program. Games like Link’s Awakening, Luigis Mansion 3, Animal Crossing and Pokemon. The only downside of the event is that they didnt announce a North American stylus to be included in the pre order like they have in Europe. As for what was new that we didn’t already know about such as the slopes and the 3D world we learned about a few more tools that could be used. Things such as scrolling, including speed and direction. A night mode which changes the mechanics of the game depending on the world you are playing such as the snow levels getting more slippery, the dessert levels getting strong winds, and the sky levels having very low gravity. The game is also going to take some cues from the DS version and will feature a campaign of sorts. It will feature a story where you will have to play through 100 levels to rebuild the castle and it sounds like these levels will show you all of the features in the game. It sounds like this mode will be a campaign/tutorial hybrid. The other big piece of news that I took away from the presentation was that the game will feature co-op. It will feature co-op building, where you and a friend can build levels together at the same time. On the play side of things there will be two different multiplayer modes a cooperative and a versus, but both of these modes aren’t available in local at the moment. We might get an update before release or a local co-op patch like Captain Toad recently got. One final note is that it showed the creator tiles and it looks like there is empty space where there will be future upcoming DLC featuring new tile sets. Its exciting for a game that is little over a month away.

Ubisoft

This week Ubisoft reported their fourth quarter and fiscal year earnings. It contained both good news and bad news for the company as well as gamers. The bad news right off the jump was that they missed their projections and caused the stock to slip about 15% the next day after reporting. The other bad news for gamers was that they pirate game Skull and Bones has been delayed until after this fiscal year which means that we won’t see it until next April at the earliest as their fiscal year goes until March 31, 2020. Based on what we have seen of that game from preview events and press conferences was that it just didn’t seem ready or have much of a purpose. Hopefully the delay can help give the game some well needed Ubisoft polish and give it some more purpose and depth. The bright side is that we will still have plenty to play from Ubisoft as they announced that they have 4 AAA titles coming this fiscal year including the just announced Ghost Recon:Breakpoint. This means that we have three other AAA titles that are coming between now and the end of March 2020. It’s safe to assume that we will most likely hear about most if not all of these titles at the Ubisoft conference at E3. I would say it would be safe to assume that one of these games is the often rumored Watch Dogs 3 that will take place in London. I would also say that another one would be a sequel to the Mario + Rabbids game. This leaves speculation for the fourth game which could include the teased and denied Splinter Cell which is what fans have wanted since 2013. Another option for Ubisoft would be to bring back Prince of Persia, its last release was in 2008, as now might be the perfect year based on the fact that Ubisoft has said Assassins Creed would be taking a year off again. Rayman would also make sense but I dont know that Ubisoft would consider that franchise AAA when stacked up against games like the Assassins Creed, Far Cry and the Tom Clancy line. Hopefully it’s not just another entry in the Just Dance series. In terms of raw numbers that came from the earnings it was nice to see that R6 has earned over 1 billion euros lifetime. Overall total net bookings were over 2 billion for the year with 57% of that coming from the back catalog, which states that they are not a developer who is dependent on one hit a year and hoping that it succeeds. Their games might be a little open world same-y but they do have a working formula that they have down to a science. Digital revenue made up 69 percent of the total net booking when considering digital games as well as additional content, just additional content alone made up 32 percent of the total net booking. Looking at it another way, gamers purchased almost 700 million dollars of cosmetics and gun skins, but clearly they are doing it the right way mostly because you dont hear people complain too often about the cost of cosmetics and add ons in Ubisoft titles. Their strategy for the future includes being on the forefront of the cloud gaming movement, which isn’t a surpise as they are usually front of the line to support new technology. You can check out the deep dive we took on Ubisoft explaining their fondness to support everything new. They also noted other strategies moving forward including new gaming genres, creating new IP’s and new experiences. They are targeting an even bigger year for FY2020 with almost 2.2 billion in sales however they are only projecting 270 million for Q1 which runs from April 1 until June 30 which means that the fall and winter will be where they are most likely going to be putting all their marbles. Its seems like I saw this too often but we dont have long to find out as E3 is less than a month away.

MicroSony

It seems as though the Google Stadia reveal spooked a few companies including Microsoft and Sony. These are two companies who have been competing and not being friendly with each other since the release of the first Xbox in 2001. We are talking almost two decades and nothing has caused these two companies to put their efforts together until now. This week Microsoft and Sony announced they plan to explore a strategic partnership. As the press releases reads, this is about as close as you can get to opposing someone yet still working together. The future of cloud gaming shown off by Google a few months back clearly showed Sony and Microsoft just how behind they are if Google has the tech they are showing off and we aren’t far from seeing it in full action with E3 just weeks away now. These two behemoths plans to collab in the cloud gaming market with the Microsoft Azure technology and using Sonys cutting edge image sensors. They aren’t fully calling this a partnership just yet, no, instead they called it a memorandum of understanding. According to the press release “the two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions” This might seem like the smartest thing to do at this point for both companies and the next generation of home consoles is hurdling towards us and should land by the end of 2020. They didn’t say much else in the press release other than to reword everything multiple times. I wonder if this is the start of a deeper relationship and that eventually we will just have one machine that plays both Xbox and PlayStation games but as of right now its more of a catch up to make sure they are competing with Google and possibly, by combining forces, surpassing them altogether in the cloud gaming market. If there is one thing that my history in business has taught me, its that its not always the best product that succeeds, instead it can sometimes be who wants it more. In this case Microsoft and Sony both have a history of sticking to things even when they aren’t a success. The PS3 comes to mind for Sony and the Xbox One for Microsoft. Both companies could have reset the generation and pulled the plug quickly but they both stuck with it, continued to innovate and learned from the experience, making them stronger the next time around. Google, on the other hand, has a history of giving up if a product isn’t working as desired. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years with the emergence of cloud gaming as well as the next generation of home consoles.

Call of Duty

Apparently Call of Duty development is getting its first shake up since it started going with the three studio rotation back in 2012. According to Jason Schrier of Kotatku, the 2020 version of Call of Duty wasn’t coming together as hoped and as a result Sledgehammer Games as well as Raven Software have been pulled off. This means that Treyarch, who just finished Black Ops 4 last fall will be fast forwarded to a two year cycle instead of three. The Sledgehammer game was apparently focused around the Cold War. The rumor is that the new Treyarch title will be another entry in the Black Ops series, Black Ops 5. Treyarch had apparently already started work on the titles single player campaign, which comes as an even bigger surprise as they released the last game without a story. The single player campaign could have been abandoned because they were also the first Call of Duty studio to make a Battle Royale mode. The rumor is that this next gen title will be cross generation and be released in the fall of 2020, which based off the information the sources gave the PS5 and NextBox will be out by next fall. One thing that interests me is whether or not this game has been produced using a new engine or if they are still updating the old engine they have been using. According to the article both games from Treyarch and Sledgehammer were to be featured around the Cold War which means that the assets from the cancelled project can be repurposed to the Treyarch game which should help them push this game out on the two year cycle as the article states “Raven and Sledgehammer will serve as support studios for the game, transforming the work they’ve done” This does raise some other questions that if they are know serving as a support studio who will be developing the 2021 version? Will Sledgehammer and Raven be doing support on Treyarch and also developing the 2021 or will Infinity Ward be developing on a two year cycle as well. A two year development cycle for a AAA title in todays climate of overtime and crunch seems like an impossibility. The main reason the sources say the project wasn’t coming together as hoped was “tension between Sledgehammer and Raven”. It seems like it might be a case of ego getting in the way for both studios as this would have been Ravens best chance as being the main developer as opposed to how they normally support and Sledgehammer is a shell of what it used to be. Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey of Dead Space Fame and founders of the studio both have recently exited along with a substantial amount of employees who followed. This would leave Sledgehammer looking for an identity and wanting to do things their way to make a new name for themselves. This is all just speculation on my part but based on the information I know and how human behaviour works when it comes to pride and ego. I am still very interested to see what Infinity Ward plans to do this fall as all signs are pointing to a return to Modern Warfare as even in the article its labeled an “open secret”. Based on Activision last earnings call we should most likely be hearing about the game either at or before E3. I would assume that the announcement would be before so that you are able to control the message and not get swallowed up in the rest of the reveals at E3. Its possible that might be shown on the Microsoft stage if the PlayStation contract has ended. It timed exclusive to Sony for the past 3 games which is a cycle which would make sense. In any case we dont have long to find out as E3 is just mere weeks away at this point.

Death Stranding

If there is one thing we know about Hideo Kojima is that he can be cryptic in every possible way. This week he has been posting to social media more than the average Kojima tweet which could feature food, nature and movies. All of these tweets could be leading up to some kind of reveal at E3. The only issue here is that the game is a PlayStation exclusive and Sony isn’t attending the show. One of the tweets he recently posted involved him in front of two monitors, one with death stranding and the other one with video editing software. The other thing of importance in the picture was the God of War figures, Kratos and Atreus, who were famously revealed at E3. Maybe I am reading to much into it and maybe Kojima is just a really big fan of God of War but it could have been any figures including ones from Horizon since he is making the game using the Decima Engine from Guerrilla Games whose last game was Horizon: Zero Dawn. Kojima is a man of purpose, if there is something in the picture then he is trying to tell the audience something. On another instagram post he shows the title of the game as well as a close of up of a pop filter and a studio microphone. The assumption here is that the project is now onto the voice recording phase. This is a smaller story but all these posts on social media seem to indicate that we are going to be getting another reveal of the game sooner than later. Once again we most likely won’t have to wait too long as E3 is just a few weeks away.