NEWS | Week beginning May 9th | Project Spark, Overwatch & Modern Warfare

Another week, another news round-up! Let's go!

Project Spark

First up, Microsoft have discontinued the kind-of-popular DIY game creation kit Project Spark. It cannot be downloaded anymore and all services for the game shut down in December. It has also been removed from the Xbox Marketplace and Windows Store.

Support for Project Spark will shut down on the 8th December 2016, meaning no-one will be able to upload their creations to the platform after this date. 

It's never good to see a game/platform shut down, especially as this usually means that the people who worked on the game will lose their jobs! But fear not, all the people who worked on Project
Spark will keep their jobs at Microsoft Studios, and will simply be transferred to other projects within the studio!

Did you ever play Project
Spark?

Community Manager Thomas Gratz spoke on the matter in a blog post late last week:

"This was an extremely difficult decision for our team that we do not take lightly. When Project Spark transitioned away from active development last fall, many of our team members moved to other projects within Microsoft Studios. While this means there have been no layoffs at Microsoft, it also means it's simply no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping Project Spark up and running with meaningful updates and bug fixes, so we have come to this hard decision."

"We can't thank our creators and players enough, It's been an incredible journey to share with you all!"

Since Project Spark launched back in March 2014, the game has received a whopping 46 content packs and 16 updates since it's launch. Those who bought the game will receive credit to their Microsoft account that was used to purchase the game.

R.I.P Project Spark!

Overwatch

Next up, latest Blizzard title Overwatch had an incredible 9.7 MILLION unique players play the Open Beta last weekend! These 9.7 million player helped total around 4.9 BILLION minutes, or 81 million hours of gameplay, with around 37 million matches being played over the weekend!

The world needed heroes, and an incredible 9.7 MILLION of you answered the call. Here's to our next adventure! pic.twitter.com/YIusT0rCUa

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) May 12, 2016

That is an incredible number of players! I was one of those 9.7 million and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience! The fact that there was so many different classes and characters to choose from meant that it was very difficult to become bored playing. Even if you were on a bad streak of games, you could simply try playing another character and see if that works for you. It provided hours of entertainment!

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said:

"We're thrilled that such an incredible number of players from around the globe got a chance to check out Overwatch during the Open Beta, our mission was to make sure as many console and PC gamers as possible could experience the full game ahead of its launch—the response was overwhelming, and we hope that everyone had a blast." 

We certainly did Mike! Hopefully all the feedback collected from everyone will mean the game will play as smooth as it did in the open beta when it fully releases on 24th May!

Happy hunting!

Modern Warfare

Finally, it looks like we will be getting a Modern Warfare Trilogy sometime in the next week or two! Great news! Well not so much. The trilogy is only being made available to previous-gen users. Boo!

According to a BestBuy listing that emerged last week, The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Trilogy will hit PS3 and Xbox 360 on Tuesday next week in the US (17th May), with the Trilogy including all three of the Modern Warfare games that have been released.

The rumoured cover art for the
Trilogy.

The listing for the Trilogy indicates that only one of the two DLC packages that were released for Modern Warfare 2, the Stimulus Package, will be included in the bundle, which will cost $29.99 (around £20). The Stimulus Package contained the maps; Bailout, Salvage & Storm, with Crash & Overgrown being reintroduced from the first Modern Warfare.

To me this all seems a bit pointless. The likelihood is that most previous-gen users already own the three Modern Warfare games, and probably already have the DLC for all of the games (I know I do!) This might be a ploy by Infinity Ward to get people back on the Call of Duty hype train, ready for Infinite Warfare? Maybe we could be seeing this Triolgy being released on current-gen soon? Who knows?

Aaaand that's it for this week! What did you think of this weeks video game news round-up? Will you Project Spark? Did you get a chance to play Overwatch? Will you be buying the Modern Warfare Trilogy?

Let me know in the comments down below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Connor :)

NEWS | Week beginning May 2nd | Battlefield 1, Infinite Warfare & Fallout 4

Good evening everyone! How are you all doing today? Are you ready for another video game news round-up? Let's get right into it!

Battlefield 1

To start it off, it looks like the next Battlefield game will be 'Battlefield 1', and it will be set during World War One!

It will be released on the 21st October, two weeks before it's potential competitor, Infinite Warfare, however, if you pre-order the Early Enlister Edition you will be able to play on the 18th, and if you have an EA Access account, you'll be able to play it 5 days early on the 16th!

Now this looks super
cool!

So far, we'll be able to play in the Arabian Desert, Western Front and the Italian Alps, but I'm sure the list of places we'll be able to visit will increase as it gets closer to the release date.

Now much like Battlefield 4, there will be pre-created classes that you will have the opportunity to edit and customise yourself. There will be 4 Infantry classes, which are 'Assault, Medic, Scout & Support' as well as two vehicle classes for tank driver and fighter pilots.

Now from what I've gathered from the trailer, it looks like we will be going all over the place, fighting in all types scenarios and locations, much like the previous instalments of the game. Also, very much like the other games, there will definitely be 64 player multiplayer, which is very much Battlefield-esque!

And for weapons, they are also relevant to the time era they're going for. From rifles to flamethrowers to swords! It will be interesting to see what else they add to the game and what else they announce closer to the release date!


Here's the trailer if you haven't already seen it:

Infinite Warfare

Next up, it appears that Call of Duty fans are somewhat upset about the setting of the next CoD, Infinite Warfare.

The reveal trailer for Infinite Warfare dropped on Monday, revealing some teasers about the game, for example, the setting of the next instalment in the series. It will be in space, and by the looks of it, there will be space battles, robots and all other things futuristic.

Apparently the CoD fanbase aren't happy about this, and they have taken to mass downvoting the teaser trailer on YouTube to express their anger. Currently the trailer has just under 10.5 million views with over 620,000 dislikes, compared to a mere 217,000 likes. Yeah, so it's easy to see people aren't happy. Not only that, but fan favourite 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare' or 'CoD 4' will be made available as a pre-order bonus, only if you pre-order the Legacy or Legacy Pro Edition of the game, which is about £20-£40 more expensive than the standard edition of the game. 

The same as always, or something different?

Call of Duty trailers do usually get a high amount of views, especially if they are reveal trailers to the next game, but the fact that the trailer for Infinite Warfare got over 400,000 more dislikes than likes
shows the masses are not happy! 

Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg has addressed the basklash by saying it was nothing new. His full response:

"We know there are people in our community who are nostalgic for the boots on the ground-style gameplay, and that's why we made Modern Warfare Remastered. But we also have millions of people in our community who want to have new innovative experiences in the game each year and Infinite Warfare is going to deliver that.

"The good news is this year we found a way to deliver both in one package while keeping our community together. While of course we see the passionate opinions online, we also look at other measurements and the fact is that while it's very early pre-orders are off to a very strong start. Views of the reveal trailer that you referred to are up. And in fact, the number of likes per view on the Infinite Warfare trailer are the highest we've ever seen.

"We've seen this in the franchise before. The reveal trailer for Black Ops 2, which took the franchise into the future for the first time, had the most dislikes of any reveal trailer we had ever made at that time. And that of course went on to become our most successful game, ever.

"Right now, the franchise has never been stronger. We have more people playing Black Ops 3, a game that takes place in the future, with boost jumps and fictitious weapons and all the rest, than any game in our history. What we know for sure is that if we always just did what worked in the past and never took any creative risks, we wouldn't have a franchise. The day to worry is the day we stop trying new things."

To be honest, I think Call of Duty have fully milked all of this future stuff, and I definitely think it's time for a change. If Call of Duty does do well this year, it will probably because if the CoD 4 remaster. I know it's still early days yet, but I think Battlefield 1 will win the shooter awards this year!

Here's the trailer if you haven't already seen it:

Fallout 4

Finally, those of us who are console gamers are finally able to get our hands on Fallout 4's Survival Mode.

After PC users have had access to the Survival Mode update for over a month, console users were finally given access to the update on Friday. 

Survival Mode changes the game and how you play it in a number of difficult, grueling and challenging ways. For example, fast travel is disabled, you can only save when you sleep, all weapon damages are increased significantly, there are diseases, ammo and stimpacks have weights, etc. 

PC players also have access to the Creation Kit and Mods at the moment, which are currently in beta. Now that's what I want to get my hands on!

Will you be unravelling the secrets
of  Far Harbor?!

The patch also adds a range of other things, which mainly include patches and bug fixes.

Oh, don't forget that the final planned piece of DLC, Far Harbor, is set to be released on the 19th May, so look forward to that! Apparently it's the biggest DLC to ever be released by Bethesda! Exciting times!

Soo that's it for this week. What did you think of this week's video game news round-up? Do you like the fact that Battlefield is going back to the past? Do you dislike the fact that Call of Duty will remain in the future? Are you looking forward to playing Survival Mode in Fallout? Let me know in the comments down below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Connor :)

NEWS | Week beginning April 25th | PSN vs Nintendo, Call of Duty & Lionhead Studios

Hello all, how are you doing today? I hope you're all ready for some video game related news!

PSN vs Nintendo

First up, it looks like Playstation's Online service is doing better than the whole of Nintendo. Period.

Twitter user @ZhugeEX pointed this out in a Tweet earlier in the week:

Sony's PlayStation Network sales hit 529,000m yen which means that PSN generated more revenue than the whole of Nintendo (504,000m yen).

— ZhugeEX (@ZhugeEX) April 28, 2016

So. according to ZhugeEX, Playstation made a total of 529.1 billion yen's worth of sales (That's around £3.3 billion), where as in the same financial year, Nintendo as a whole made a total of 504.4

Looks like Nintendo needs
to up their game!

billion yen (which is around £3.2 billion).

Now in terms of profit or income (take your pick!) Nintendo made roughly 38.2 billion yen (which is around £207 million) and Playstation made 88.7 billion yen (roughly £538 million).

These numbers are definitely not surprising, at least for me anyway. Playstation's income is fuelled by a whole number of things, including games, consoles and Playstation Network, which has around 40 million users!
Nintendo on the other hand is a different story. Their most recent console, the Wii U, has in total sold around 12.8 million units, and compared to PSN, well, Nintendo doesn't have an online subscription service like Playstation, therefore, it's no surprise Nintendo is being left behind in terms of yearly income.

Does this mean that Nintendo as a company is dying, or will their new console, codenamed 'NX', boost their sales astronomically? Only time will tell!

Call of Duty

Next up, it looks like we could be seeing previous-gen Call of Duty game Modern Warafare on our next/current-gen consoles real soon!

So, let's start from the beginning. On Wednesday, the official Infinity Ward Twitter account tweeted a very dubious tweet reading:

Stay frosty.

— Infinity Ward (@InfinityWard) April 27, 2016

OMGGGG

Now this tweet wasn't in reply to another tweet or related to anything happening currently for Infinity Ward, so as us gamers like to do, we all board the hype train and get to guessing what the tweet could mean. It wasn't long before people started putting two and two together. 'Stay Frosty' is Infinity Ward's catchphrase, so, it could point to anything Call of Duty related.

Now this is where it starts to get interesting. Twitter user ‎@ngusvanderslott tweeted something along the lines of he'd be very happy to see a remaster of a Call of Duty great, way back in December. The official Call of Duty Twitter account then replied, on Wednesday, with another big tease...

@ngusvanderslott 💩👖

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) April 27, 2016

This guy is probably going to have to change his trousers! Too top it all off, a leaked image from CharlieIntel.com shows the possible box art for the next Call of Duty game, 'Infinite Warfare' along with a message reading that Modern Warfare will be included.

You'll probably have to pre-order a special edition to get Modern Warfare remastered, but it's definitely cool to see that probably one of the best Call of Duty games ever is getting a remastering!

Lionhead Studios

Finally, we say a sad farewell to Lionhead Studios, who closed their doors for the final time late last Friday.

Last month, Microsoft had announced the cancellation of Fable Legends, the next game to feature in the series, along with an annoucnment that they were discussing plans to close the UK based studio, which Peter Molyneux, Fez developer, founded in 1996.

Thanks for everything....

Now as the consultation period has ended and no buyers were found to buy the studio has officially closed their doors for the last time.

Eurogamer was sent a statement from Microsoft:

"We can confirm that after much consideration over the six week consultation period with Lionhead employees, we have reached the decision to close Lionhead Studios. We have nothing but heart-felt thanks for the team at Lionhead for their significant contributions to Xbox and the games industry."

I wish all those affected the best.

And that's it for this week. What did you think of this week's news round-up? Will Nintendo ever recover and get back on top? Are you looking forward to the next Call of Duty? Will you miss Lionhead Studios?

Let me know in the comments down below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Connor :)