Hello, and welcome to today’s video games round-up where we settle down at roughly 9PM GMT and link out to the shifts in the industry that we’ve covered, and those that we haven’t.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock all day, you’ve likely already heard more than you ever thought you wanted to know about Nintendo’s Switch. For us Brits the announce emerged at 4AM, completely interrupting the more dedicated of us’ sleep patterns (Not I, I was off in the land of the wanderers).
I’m not gonna drop any major link-outs, or info-dumps, or info-outs, or whatever, however I would like to say that the console does look impressive, however the game line-up seems to be trying to echo the success of the Wii, but without the consoles’ killer appeal – Wii Sports.
Should 2-1-Switch, or Arms, go on to be bundled with the console, then maybe we’ll see it take off, however with the extra controllers (required for multiplayer in Arms) at more than the price of a game it’s hard to see it being the latter.
What the console really needs -in my opinion- is something that’s easy to pick up and play, is multiplayer out of the box, and possibly even ties into mobile phones as extra controllers a la Jackbox. Will that come? We’ve yet to see, but getting Bomberman and 2-1-Switch into bundles in time for Christmas (which they have ample time for this time) could be a solid way to get high on the gifting charts, and create that viral, common-cold like spread that they experienced with the Wii.
Will it win over the ‘hardcore’? They already have a solid fanbase who will buy it for their strong brands, what they need to do as to establish the ‘hardcore,’ more engaged, and high-attach users however, is to secure exclusives on JRPGs from under Sony’s nose, and get talking to (the ever eager to try and innovate for Nintendo) Ubisoft and Bandai Namco about future collaboration.
Anyway,
Video Games News, From B3’s Mouth,
Review – Rise & Shine
Greenlight Highlight – Cold Space
News – 2nd February To See Sovereignty: Crown of Kings Leave Early Access
News – SQUARE ENIX GO GAMES NOW FREE ON AMAZON
News – Punch Club Punching In For 19th January on 3DS Consoles
News – 2D Puzzler “BOOR” Arriving on February 14th
News – Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Confirmed For Nintendo Switch Console
News – Super Mario Odyssey Confirmed For Switch
News – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Launching Alongside Console
News – Nintendo Switch Console Details Confirmed in Presentation
News – Razer’s Stolen Valerie Prototypes Have Turned Up Online For 150000 Yuan
News – Nintendo Switch Gets Easy To Use Parental Controls, Trailer Explains
News – New HITMAN Elusive Target #18 Arrives In Colorado. Trailer Within
And, here’s what we didn’t get the chance to cover, from the source.
- PSA: Pit People is now available on Steam Early Access, and Xbox One Game Preview. (Xbox Blog)
- Spaziogames.it reached out to EA for confirmation that their Milan offices would be staying open; EA confirmed. (Link)
- Fire Emblem Warriors will be featured in a Nintendo Direct specifically for the Fire Emblem brand next week, there’s no guarantee that it’s the only game we’ll see there, rumours (which we, as I regularly say, treat as such) have been saying that there may be another outing for the series in the works. The news comes from Nintendo of America’s Twitter.
- King Art’s The Dwarves received a large patch across all platforms based around decreasing load times, restart times, fixing some potion and portrait issues among others. The patch is already live for PS4, Xbox One & PC.
- Among other titles coming forward and
pledging allegiance toannouncing versions for the switch, notable ones included Steep, Skylanders Imaginators, Puyo Puyo Tennis, Redout, and NBA 2K18. - The Dualshock 4, specifically the one that came with the Slim model, received a special trailer detailing some of the differences… the most notable being that the light bar is lower on the touchpad, so is visible. Trailer is here.
- In yesterday’s round up we discussed the fact that Dirt Rally would be getting a VR add-on, however Sony have since released this trailer for it, if you like to see such things in such forms.
- Over on Bungie’s blog they eluded to the fact that the live team had some more fight left in them; IE there would be at least one more content drop coming for the title. This is notable because most of us here in words-on-screen-land are expecting a 2017 launch for Destiny 2: The Destinier (WIP Title).
- Some large scale negotiations went down regarding Alisport (Alibaba), Changzhou, and the WESG. WWG has the skinny on it.
- Fumiko -which I completely forgot we covered, but heck, it’s there on the blog- detailed (and showcased in trailers) some new features in the game, specifically a shield orb ability and the ability to use bird-shaped entities as projectiles. We also got a quick look at the menu – which might not sound exciting like that, but it’s all in game, meaning you can still rotate the camera to view around you, which is shown off in a boss fight. All this info is over on the dev’s latest IndieDB blog, go check it out.
- Quarantine, which we’ll definitely be covering in future, was announced by Sproing and 505 Games. It’s a turn-based Strategy title that sees you fighting back against deadly diseases in what looks like a very promising smorgasbord of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Pandemic. The trailer is here, and there’s loads of details on the 505 blog.
- RWBY: Grimm Eclipse has been confirmed as launching on the PS4 on January 17th. The game also received a trailer confirming as much, you can catch it here.
- Frozenbyte (Trine, Shadwen) announced Has-Been Heroes, a roguelike…ish, ARPG… RPG! It looks to be more of a twist on Wizardry rather than conventional ARPGs, however features randomised level layouts. The trailer is available here.
- After a long-time on the substitute bench (I played this on the PS1, back when we called it a PlayStation!) Constructor HD is launching on the 28th of February. The updated version is going to launch on Xbox One, PS4 and PC – it’s also said to be launching for the Switch later on in the year.
We run these round-ups from Monday to Saturday, so make sure to check back tomorrow.
If you think we missed something then why not drop it into the comments below? We’ll jump right on getting it fixed.
