News Roundup Week 3/27: Destiny 2, Konami Sued, and More

Due to some tech­ni­cal­ly dif­fi­cul­ties we missed a few days of news. To make up for it here is a high­light of the biggest sto­ries of the week.

Monday 3/27

Brain Far­go told Eurogamer that he will be retir­ing from the indus­try after the release of Waste­land 3. He has been in the indus­try since 1981 and most known for his work on the Fall­out series. At the time of writ­ing, there is no news on who will replace Far­go at inExil. 

Both Nin­ten­do and Microsoft have teased their E3 plans. Reg­gie Fils-Aime told Fox news that Nin­ten­do has big plans for E3. While he did­n’t give specifics, he stat­ed they will show a vari­ety of con­tent for “not only Nin­ten­do Switch, but also con­tent com­ing to Nin­ten­do 3DS”. As for Microsoft, Phil Spencer said on twit­ter he want­ed more time on stage to tell a game’s sto­ry. This basi­cal­ly means more time ded­i­cat­ed to soft­ware dur­ing Microsoft­’s presentation. 

Mass Effect: Androm­e­da has been sell­ing less phys­i­cal copies than Mass Effect 3. These sales are like­ly due to the increas­ing amount of dig­i­tal sales, luke-warm reviews and harsh online crit­i­cism. Despite this, Mass Effect: Androm­e­da was the no.1 sell­er in the U.K dur­ing its week of release and remains the third fastest sell­ing game of the year.

Tuesday 3/28

This year’s Call of Duty is rumored to be set dur­ing WW2 again. Pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al was orig­i­nal­ly leaked on YouTube by The­Fam­i­lyVideoGamer. The infor­ma­tion has since been backed by var­i­ous web­sites such as GameSpot and Eurogamer.

Valkyr­ia Rev­o­lu­tion, the suc­ces­sor to Valkyr­ia Chron­i­cles, was announced for June 27, 2017. It will cost $39.99 and launch­es on Playsta­tion 4, PS Vita and Xbox One. A teas­er trail­er was also released on YouTube.

Just Cause devel­op­ers announced they will be port­ing The Hunter: Call of the Wild to Xbox One and PS4. No release date was giv­en how­ev­er the game has been on PC for over a year with most­ly pos­i­tive reviews.

Out­last 2 was banned in Aus­tralia, but that is no longer the case. Devel­op­er Red Bar­rels actu­al­ly sent Alpha footage of the game rather than video of the final build of the game. Out­last 2 will launch as R18+ in Aus­tralia and there will only be one ver­sion of the game worldwide. 

Wednesday 3/29 

Des­tiny 2 was offi­cial­ly announced with a teas­er trail­er fea­tur­ing voice work from Nathan Fil­lion. A full trail­er was released lat­er. PS4 will receive timed exclu­sive con­tent much like the first game. The game was also announced for PC. 

The For Hon­or com­mu­ni­ty orga­nized a “black­out” for the game to bring atten­tion to some of the issues they have with the game. Most of the demands boil down to bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Ubisoft, changes to Steel (in-game cur­ren­cy), and fix­es to match­mak­ing. Ubisoft has respond­ed and has imple­ment­ed some changes already. The com­mu­ni­ty black­out will still take place on April 3rd. 

Tell­tale’s Guardians of the Galaxy was giv­en a trail­er and announced for April 18th.

Bioware released a state­ment on Mass Effect: Androm­e­da after large amounts of crit­i­cism on the game’s ani­ma­tions, writ­ing and bugs. Exact details on what Bioware will do to address feed­back will come April 4th.

Thursday 3/30

Gwent: The Witch­er Card Game tech­ni­cal beta was announced for PS4. The beta began March 31st and will end April 2nd 11PM PT. This beta is to test the serv­er for PS4 and not bal­ance changes. More infor­ma­tion can be found in the offi­cial Q&A.

Ocu­lus Co-founder Palmer Lucky has left Face­book. It is not known whether Lucky left of his own accord or forced out. Face­book release an offi­cial state­ment that said Lucky “helped kick­start the mod­ern VR rev­o­lu­tion” and that they are thank­ful for what did for the company.

Sony announced the WipE­out Omega Col­lec­tion. The game will be priced at $39.99 and launch June 6th. All tracks and ships from WipE­out HD, Fury and 2048 are includ­ed. PS4 will run the game at 1080p 60FPS and PS4 Pro will run the game at 4K 60FPS. A trail­er fea­tur­ing the remas­tered tracks and ships was released.

Friday 3/31

Total War: Warham­mer 2 has received an announce­ment trail­er. Four new playable races: High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizard­men, and one race that has yet to be revealed. In the cam­paign each of the races will have their own goals and ways of achiev­ing those goals. This means that AI can beat you to the final end game objec­tive if you are not care­ful. For more details see the short Q&A post­ed by the devs.

Mad­catz the periph­er­al mak­er has filed for bank­rupt­cy. All direc­tors and offi­cers of Mad­catz have resigned. Mad­catz CEO and Pres­i­dent Karen McGin­nis stat­ed that com­pa­ny had been “active­ly pur­su­ing its strate­gic alter­na­tives”, but “has been unable to find a sat­is­fac­to­ry solu­tion to its cash liq­uid­i­ty prob­lems”. The prob­lem is like­ly a com­bi­na­tion of events, but pub­lish­ing the unsuc­cess­ful Rock Band 4 was a large source of rev­enue loss.

Kon­a­mi is being sued by Diego Maradona for using his like­ness Pro Evo­lu­tion Soc­cer 2017. He made the fol­low­ing state­ment on his Face­book page “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my lawyer Matias Mor­la will ini­ti­ate the cor­re­spond­ing legal actions. I hope this is not anoth­er scam…”.

Saturday 4/1

With it being April fools there is not much real news, but here is at least two real stories. 

The Final Fan­ta­sy relat­ed show Dad­dy of Light is com­ing to Net­flix in the fall. It will fol­low the true sto­ry (as record­ed on a blog) of a father and son who become clos­er by play­ing the MMO Final Fan­ta­sy XIV. 

8‑bit Bay­o­net­ta is actu­al­ly free and playable on Steam. The game plays more like a jump shoot­er than the real Bay­o­net­ta, but con­tains these excit­ing features.

• Jump­ing!
• Dou­ble jumping!
• Shoot­ing!
• Scor­ing!
• Achieve­ments!
• Wicked chip-tune Bay­o­net­ta theme song!

It may also be a teas­er for a PC release of Bay­o­net­ta which pre­vi­ous­ly did not seem like a possibility.