As per usual in the aftermath of E3, everything slows down to a crawl in the news world, especially now that we are around summer holidays but that’s quite alright as we get a little more time to focus more on the smaller stories that we might not have given such a deep dive. When the show needs to be long it will be long and when it needs to be shorter then it will be shorter. This week on the show we have a little taste of everything from new game studios forming, game updates and even a little legal legislation thrown in for good measure. 

Glen Schofield Forms New Studio at PUBG Corp

This story came as a bit of a surprise mainly because I didn’t expect anything to happen quite so soon. Although recently in a sit down with game Informer he did say he was taking a lot of meetings.  Glen Schofield, has just announced that he will be working for the PUBG corporation. This was announced on the social media pages for PubG and his own personal account. He will be forming his own AAA studio called striking distance and it will be based out of San Ramon, California.  

“The only thing i can say is that I’m not working on a sequel to PUBG but an original narrative in the pubg universe”

This move makes sense as he is a AAA developer who loves to play battle royals himself as he mentioned playing PIBG and Apex during a recent interview 

He was the co founder of sledgehammer games who are famous for making modern warfare 3, advanced warfare and Cod ww2.  Before that he was the Vice President of visceral games at EA where he co created the critically acclaimed dead space series.  He was a major part of the development of one and to a slightly lesser degree 2. On a quick side bar there is an amazing documentary by ars technica on YouTube about the making of dead space that you should go and watch if you liked that game at all. 

On a sit down with Ben Hanson from game informer glen talked about many topics including if he had a blank check what his next game would be and he said sci-fi. I have to imagine that with his porrlfolio of games he would have had many offers on the table.  My assumption is that he would have taken the offer that gave him the most freedom to create the kind of game he wanted.  Why is the world of PUBG post apocalyptic and empty? What if his idea for a single player game in the Pubg universe revolves around an alien invasion that we tried to fend off with nukes etc or WW3 but it was earth vs aliens.  He even mentioned creating a mass effect type game. 

One thing for certain is that he would need to develop a brand new engine for this game as the current PUBG engine has many issues. I have spent hundreds of hours in that game and it’s a great time but it is the farthest thing from smooth. 

This is a very smart move from PUBG corp who has taken their initial boon of success for PUBG and turned it into PUBG corp and has recently taken the games creator Brendan Greene off it to work on another project.  They are investing into making PUBG a diverse universe with multiple games that can help the company grow. 

As for when we might actually see something from striking distance that could be a good time from now.  If you look at how it took 3 years to ship a new call of duty in the aaa space and that was built using existing engine and tools with a a team already in place. I think realistically we are looking at around 3-4 years before we see anything from his studio.  It will take time to find the right talent to be part of the studio, to develop engine if they aren’t going to use something like unreal, develop assets, storylines etc. clearly there is a lot to do before we see what’s next in the pubg universe but I am excited to see where this goes 

Apex season 2 

You could view this story from multiple angles including how important this game and season is for EA based on their last earnings report. We are of course talking about Apex Legneds and the new season. With season 2 of Apex dropping next Tuesday this week we got a pretty decent taste of what we can expect from a few trailers that were released from Xbox and respawn. 

First, let’s take a look at what we already know. Apex Legends is still a very young game at just slightly over 4.5 months old this game still has a lot to learn and many ways to grow. The game hit 50 million downloads after the first few weeks but since that milestone we haven’t heard from respawn since regarding the milestones.  I think it’s safe to assume that the next milestone they announce would either be 75 million or 100 million. The game surprise launched to much fanfare but as gamers attention spans are shorter nowadays more than ever a lot of people got quite bored with the game and the lackluster season 1 battle pass didn’t help.  The battle pass didn’t have a lot of incentive for playing. The character skins were uninspired, the gun skins seemed bland and the updates were few an far between. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game and play it often with well over 100 hours and hundreds of wins but it needed a lot of simple changes.  

It looks as though season 2 will remedy most of the problems that gamers had with season 1. On Tuesday, there will be a new Legend available, Watson, who has a lot of electricity based skills.  At this moment we don’t know exactly what they are. They also look to be teasing. New legend by the name of crypto as well.  Last time they teased a legend with in game lore was with octanes jump pad around the map a short while before he was available. Currently you can find crypto’s laptop in Kings Canyon.  Hopefully this is a tease that will lead to two new legends this season that would include Watson and crypto as I think two per season seems like the right amount. 

Speaking of Kings Canyon, it looks as though the map has undergone significant changes from a catastrophic event that has happened in game. Lots of areas have been destroyed, some areas have been able to recover and have seen natural growth of tall grasses and some area have completely new areas set up by the emergency crews trying to restore the damage done. There will also be leviathans that will be moving around that look to be able to kill you. As well as dragons seem to be a threat as well as possible friendly. 

In terms of completely new stuff, it looks as though emotes will now be in the game, at least for the skydiving portion.  This will be another area where you can earn or randomly get a reward.  

In my opinion there is a few areas where this game is lacking. One, the game needs ranked mode.  This would help eliminate the chances of being matched up with players that aren’t near your skill level. Two, the game could use an increase in player could to get the total amount of players to either 100 or in the case of trios bring the player count to 99. Three, introduce random game modes for limited times, something along the lines of duos, night mode, or certain weapons only. 

The good news is that for sure one of these problems is going to get fixed with the launch of season 2 and the introduction of ranked play that goes through 6 tiers from bronze league to apex predator. 

There will also be plenty more including new weapons, new hop ups and new attachments and I’m  that respawn is probably keeping a few surprises for us until the season launches next week. 

For a game that is only a few months old, it has changed a lot and continues to evolve.  I love the speed and fluidity that apex brings to the table and I will be jumping In on Tuesday and look forward to seeing what happens in season 2

Console tariffs 

In a rare occurrence Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have all joined together in an effort to halt the imposed tariffs on goods imported from China.  This would include a 25 percent tariff on video game consoles and without a doubt this cost would be passed on to the customer.  Since gaming consoles have been around they haven’t been the key part in profit for a company. Consoles are loss leaders and help pave the way for software sales which is where the majority of money is made. Especially nowadays when there is so much more to generate profit from including first party accessories and subscriptions. PS Plus, Xbox Live, EA Access, Xbox Gamepass, Nintendo Switch Online are just a few of the subscriptions available to gamers that can help drive profits for these manufacturers. 

I spotted this article on polygon and in their article they have a link to the official document. 

I don’t expect this decision to be stopped from happening even if all three of the companies join together for solidarity. The problem is that all of the companies are too deep in logistics to make a change even if they want to.  According to the document over 96 percent of consoles are manufactured in China. 

They start the document by saying they don’t expect to be the only ones harmed by this proposed tariff. It would injure affect customers, developers, retailers and manufacturers.  They claim that it would also put thousands of high value American jobs at risk as well as stunting the video game business and beyond. 

In 2018 the video game industry generated total revenue of 43 billion dollars which was up 20 percent from 2017. This proposed tariff comes at a bad time when we are just on the cusp of a new console generation and sales in 2020 could potentially be through the roof. Overall the video game employs over 220 000 people across the world I n a vast majority of fields with many of those jobs being Americans which could disappear if consoles had to be developed elsewhere to avoid the tariffs. 

Since components for these consoles are sourced from many counties around the world that even the slightest change would cause a massive disruption in the supply chain management that has been established over decades. This would cause a major increase in costs and would without a doubt depress sales of consoles, games and the services associated with gaming that help drive profitability. 

The increase in costs would likely eliminate many gamers who can barely afford to play now as it is a privilege and a luxury to be able to afford a console, let alone additional games and services. 

Through their own research, they found that the increase in 840 million tariffs would actually result in a net loss of 350 million for the US economy each year with the burden placed on the American consumer.   

There will be an increase in cost but the console makers are not concerned for themselves but for the whole eco system of gaming across the US and the world. The increase in tariffs will be passed on to the retailer and then onto the consumer so the actual manufacturers shouldn’t feel much of a change.