PlayStation maker Sony has established a $100 million global relief fund to help those around the world affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
Coronavirus (COVID-19) concerns could throw a wrench in its plans, but Microsoft is hoping to launch Xbox Series X in all regions at the same time.
Speaking to IGN during an episode of Podcast Unlocked, head of Xbox Phil Spencer said his team hasn't worked out a "plan B" if the pandemic forces Microsoft to stagger the system's launch. However, he understands why launching consoles in different regions at different times no longer works in the age of social media.
"I will say, having lived through the Xbox One launch, I know that significant delays in region launches hurt us," Spencer said. "It hurts us with the sentiment of the fans and every time I go to Japan I remind that we were, what was it, nine months late in launching there with Xbox One?"
Continue Reading at GameSpotMicrosoft has announced that its game streaming tech, Project xCloud, will be part of its plans going forward with the Xbox Series X. In a new interview, Xbox head Phil Spencer says that putting the tech to work on consoles just makes sense for discoverability, based on the data it's seen both with xCloud testing and its Game Pass service.
"The xCloud scenario on a console makes a ton of sense," Spencer told IGN Unlocked. "One of the things we're seeing in xCloud today, in the preview, is we watch people sample games. We see that in Game Pass already, even on console. We call it the 'hummingbird effect.' People are just willing to try more games, but obviously you have download times. So on xCloud you definitely get people who are sampling a lot more games, and I think that's healthy for our industry. I want more different kinds of games played, more creators found, more new favorite games."
He also noted that in the tech preview for xCloud, players can go from watching a trailer to streaming a game almost seamlessly--a feature idea also touted by Google when it detailed its Stadia service. Spencer said that's also a boon to discoverability.
Continue Reading at GameSpot
Remember the zero-gravity sections from the unfairly maligned Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare? Boundary is a new upcoming first-person shooter that takes those bits and runs with them.
Boundary, due out on PlayStation 4 and PC at some point in 2020, is about zero-gravity shootouts with high-tech weaponry in outer space. The soldiers in the game are armed astronauts called Astroperators, or AOs. You have full freedom of movement and, as you'd expect from a game set in space, you are unrestricted from gravity. As a result, you can use floating debris as cover and propel forward with the help of your grapple hook.
In the trailer below, we see the solar farm map, with giant reflectors as well as a glimpse at the tactical shield and re-forged AK rifle. Expect multiple Astroperators classes, 5v5, 3v3 and 2v2 competitive multiplayer.
UPDATE 21/5/20: Microsoft has now dated Sea of Thieves' Steam release for 3rd June. As previously announced, below, it'll include full crossplay with both Windows 10 and Xbox One editions of the game.
UPDATE 2/4/20: Sea of Thieves will get a Steam release, which will include full crossplay with the game's existing Windows 10 and Xbox One versions.
You can wishlist it today, Microsoft said, with a launch date to be announced "soon".
Microsoft remains confident its Xbox Series X console will be ready for launch at the end of this year, but is keeping a close eye on its software side - its games and system services - many of which are now being developed remotely.
Supply chains for the hardware itself are starting to pick up as factories in China re-open, but as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, Microsoft's teams working on the console's firmware and launch game line-up are having to get used to working from home.
In a wide-ranging interview with IGN, Xbox boss Phil Spencer (speaking from his own home office) said these teams are being "stretched" as they work remotely - that their safety came first, and that he wouldn't hold back the console if launch line-up star Halo: Infinite slipped.
Update: A handful of new games have been added to the lineup in the Switch Spring Sale, including Breath of the Wild, Donkey Kong Country and Kirby Star Allies. Discounts are, as you may have assumed, somewhat underwhelming on some games (Breath of the Wild still £42!). That said, you can still find a few new good deals on the eShop.
Original Story: After teasing us with a tweet earlier this week, the Spring Sale has launched on the Nintendo Switch eShop with discounts on over 300 games including Diablo 3 Eternal Collection, The Witcher 3 and Octopath Traveller.
There are some great offers available but, as we've come to expect from Nintendo sales, you won't find any massive reductions on the most-wanted first-party games - at least right now.
The Call of Duty series is known for its Easter eggs - but this is perhaps the best one yet.
THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD.
This week, Activision released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered (as a month-long PlayStation 4 timed-exclusive, criminally), and its developers have taken the opportunity to slip in a super cool Easter egg that fixes a nine-year-old continuity error.
Yesterday an uninvited guest visited my Animal Crossing: New Horizons island - and I, like many others, found him a little creepy.
This is Zipper T. Bunny, the rabbit who appears before the annual Bunny Day event to task you with collecting limitless amounts of eggs for a reward. Or is he? As the name may suggest, Zipper has a zip on his back, and despite his protestations of being a real rabbit something is definitely amiss.
"I know what you're thinking," Zipper tells you under his breath, after reciting some horrible lines in rhyme. "No. This is NOT a costume. And don't you go snoopin', got it?"
Gwent now has a 100-level battle pass players in need of a goal can work on grinding through. Unlike just any battle pass though, CD Projekt Red says it wants Gwent’s to tell a story each season.
Micorsoft’s multiplayer pirate life simulator, Sea of Thieves, looks like it’s finally heading to Valve’s platform after getting its own store page complete with the words “coming soon.”
Going Under’s intern dukes it out with demons in the dun— er, basement of her tech startup. | Image: Aggro Crab Games
Coming to consoles and PC this fall
Reddit user u/bunbaoluu has seemingly recreated the Finer Things Club scene from the US version of The Office in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The Reddit post is accurately titled, “There is no paper, no plastic, and no work talk allowed. (it’s very exclusive),” as you can see below in the post itself:
The Finer Things Club was first mentioned in the episode Branch Wars of The Office and is an exclusive club where members talk about books and art in a civilized way. The club only appeared in one episode (and a deleted scene of another episode) but it made a lasting impression on viewers.
Today Microsoft and Rare announced that the popular open world online action game Sea of Thieves is coming to Steam.
At the moment, there is no specific release date besides a generic “coming soon.” That being said, the launch date should also be revealed “soon” (hopefully without the TM).
The listing page on Steam is already open. On top of that, we also learn that the Steam version will support cross-play both with Xbox One and with the version of the game on the Windows Store.
If you’re unfamiliar with Sea of Thieves, you can read an official description below directly from the Steam page.
About the Game
Sea of Thieves offers the essential pirate experience, from sailing and fighting to exploring and looting – everything you need to live the pirate life and become a legend in your own right. With no set roles, you have complete freedom to approach the world, and other players, however you choose.
Whether you’re voyaging as a group or sailing solo, you’re bound to encounter other crews in this shared world adventure – but will they be friends or foes, and how will you respond?
A Vast Open World
Explore a vast open world filled with unspoiled islands, sunken ships and mysterious artefacts. Take on quests to hunt for lost treasure, seek out cursed Skeleton Captains or gather valuable cargo for the Trading Companies. Go hunting and fishing or choose from hundreds of optional goals and side-quests.
Unforgettable stories
Today developer 5Lives Studios and publisher Deep Silver announced a brand new game titled Windbound: Brave the Storm.
The game is an open-world survival RPG for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. It will be released on August 28.
You can check out a trailer below.
If you’re one of the players that has had trouble staying alive with Moze, even with the help of her Iron Bear, then this Borderlands 3 hotfix is perfect for you. It’s bringing multiple buffs for Moze alongside two new events.
The hotfix will be live on all platforms today by 12:00 PM PST. It’s only been about a week since the game’s most recent update, which was applied on the same day as the launch of the Guns, Love and Tentacles DLC.
With the level cap increased and the new DLC underway, the Moze adjustments couldn’t come at a better time. According to the game’s website, here’s what’s changing:
This Borderlands 3 hotfix will also start the Slot Machine Mania and Trials Take-All events. Slot Machine Mania will allow for an increased chance of obtaining legendary loot from slot machines, while Trials Take-All boosts rewards from Proving Ground Trials.
Both of the new events will last until 9:00 AM PT on April 9, so be sure to take full advantage of them while you can.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been a bit of a smash-hit since its release on March 20. Twitter feeds have been filled with players showing off their newly-developed deserted islands, their enormous mansions, and the insane hauls of Bells they’ve earned from playing the Stalk Market (turnip selling for those out of the know). All seemed right in the world where an entrepreneurial raccoon keeps you in constant, debilitating debt. Then along came New Horizons’ Bunny Day.
Bunny Day is New Horizons’ Easter Event. It’s nothing new to this entry in the series, with previous titles offering up their own special way to celebrate Easter Sunday. In New Horizons’ Bunny Day, however, things have changed.
The premise is simple, Zipper the Bunny has arrived in your town and so have six different types of eggs. Some can be dug up, others fished out of water, some shaken out of trees, shot out of the air with your slingshot, and buried up with your shovel. In other words, just about any activity or ‘chore’ you’d do in New Horizons now has the chance of dropping an egg.
These different types of eggs can then be used as crafting materials to make special Egg-themed furniture, the recipes for which are distributed in batches periodically throughout the Bunny Day events’ 12-day duration. Zipper himself may give you some, others are obtained via message bottles on the beach, and your villagers will hand you some, too.
Today Square Enix revealed the release date of update 5.25 for its popular MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, on top of new screenshots and a video.
We learn that the update will hit the live servers on April 7, and it will bring a relevant returning feature, a new grindable weapon questline.
As you can see below, Gerolt is back, as well as Mikoto from the Return to Ivalice raids. It’s worth mentioning that you’ll need to have completed the Return to Ivalice questline to be able to access the new quests, titled Save the Queen: Blades of Gunnhildr.
Below you can read how Square Enix describes it:
For years, Bozja─homeland of the Hrothgar─has remained at the mercy of Garlean rulers. But the Empire has fallen into disarray, and the people of Doma and Ala Mhigo have risen up to challenge their authority. The Bozjans, while heartened at this news, yet lack the means to join the rebellion. To that end, they seek a standard under which their people may gather. A weapon of legend…
Incidentally, the story of the questline has been written by the original director of Final Fantasy XII, Yasumi Matsuno, pitching us against the IVth Imperial Legion led by Legatos Noah van Gabranth.
It all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?
We’re also getting Skysteel Tools if your interest lays more into the crafting side of the game. Those will also be upgradable over multiple patches like the weapon mentioned above.
In case you weren’t tipped off by the fact that there are currently eggs absolutely everywhere, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is in the midst of its first seasonal event in the form of Bunny Day.
With plenty of opportunities to craft garish furniture flanked by an ever-present rabbit fiend who watches your every move, it’s just the kind of whimsical fun the series is famous for.
There are, of course, several holidays to look forward to as the days tick by, but as we are an entitled group that is never fully satisfied, we expect, nay, demand as many holidays as humanly (or animally) possible. If Nintendo is scratching their heads as they try to come up with some suitable candidates, we’re more than happy to help them out with these marvelous suggestions.
Oh wait, hold still, Nintendo! That itchiness might actually be a flea…
We don't have Persona 5 Switch, but we can have Persona 5 outfits in a Switch game.
The post Bring the Phantom Thieves to Animal Crossing: New Horizons With These Outfits appeared first on Siliconera.
Another free Voez update has arrived. This time, it adds a Shovel Knight song to the rhythm game's library.
The post Dig This Free Voez Shovel Knight Song appeared first on Siliconera.
The FDG and Game Atelier DuckTales Quackshot April Fools' prank was actually based on materials from a failed game pitch.
The post FDG’s April Fools’ DuckTales Quackshot Prank Was Based on a Failed Game Pitch appeared first on Siliconera.
Japan's phones featured many games lost to time, and G-Mode is now bringing the G-Mode Archives to the Switch eShop in April.
The post G-Mode to Release Japanese Cellphone Archives on Nintendo Switch appeared first on Siliconera.
Not much to do for the next ten weeks? You might fancy a go on Starborne, a multiplayer real-time strategy game with thousands of players in each weeks-long match. After five years of alpha testing, today it launched into open beta and wants you to come have a poke. Our Sin had a go on a Starborne alpha last year and called it “a calmer kind of multiplayer space skulduggery.” Yes, a gentler form of gathering resources, building bases, forming alliances, and zapping the heck out of thousands of spacerivals.
Enough floating about in the clouds, Inkle are ready to get their knees muddy and hands bloody. After wrapping up dreamy translate ’em up Heaven’s Vault, the story-driven studio today announced Pendragon – a sprawling strategic narrative adventure about traipsing across Dark Ages Britain to rally the (now table-less) Knights of the Round Table in a quest for vengeance.
Show me someone who says I’m not a fan of our excellent VidBud team, and I’ll show you a liar. Recently, VidBud Matthew got an in-depth demo of Gears Tactics, a turn-based tactical entry into the Gears Of War series, and my admiration only grew.
Set 10 years before the events of the very first Gears Of War game, you’d be forgiven for thinking this’d have more in common with the alien-sniping fun of XCOM than the big, boot-stompin’ FPS action of the Gears games. But in his excellent video, Matthew explains why Tactics will win hearts among both long term XCOM fans and die-hard Fenix stans alike.
This is the last entry in my diary of playing The Longing, a “sad tamagotchi” game that can take over a year to play. As it turns out, however, it only took me a few months. The first entry in the diary series is here, and you can read all of it here. It has been… emotional.
You join us as Burnsy, which is what we’ve named the Shade creature we are caretaking, is trying to explore the very upper areas of the cave. My ultimate goal is for them to escape, leaving the caves and their slumbering master, the King, far behind. I think that it is, secretly, what Burnsy wants to do, even though it conflicts with their feeling of duty. But they are such a poetic soul, and they dream so much of the surface. I want them to achieve their dream.
Turning the edgy murder enthusiasts of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds into daffy LARPers clad in homemade armour of tinfoil, buckets, and bathrobes sounds like an April Fools’ joke, and it was – but the devs did still make it. The Fantasy Battle Royale event mode launched yesterday and is around for another six days, so I called up the laaads last night. It’s really quite fun! The class-based LARPing is fun to play, charging about with swords and magic spells, and the whole thing is tonally fun in a very welcome way.
Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo
Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon
Image: Disney/Epic Games
Image: Bones
Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon