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With only being two months into 2018, the year is already on a roll, with many great games releasing, and tons of upcoming games and announcements to be had. Why don't we take a moment to read all that cool news in the latest issue of This Week in Gaming, the first of the year's, in fact!

Industry News

Activision made 4 billion dollars on Microtransactions alone in 2017
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Love them or hate them, microtransactions are huge business, especially for Activision, which saw 4 billion dollars in revenue from them throughout last year. An earnings report from the company notes that this includes DLC sales, loot boxes, and in-app purchases. Activision Blizzard also owns King, known for making Candy Crush Saga, from which half of the revenue came from, a whopping 2 billion dollars in in-app purchases. The other half of the earnings resulted mostly from Call of Duty and Overwatch lootboxes, World of Warcraft items, and Hearthstone card sales, alongside DLC add-on content from their console and PC releases.

Source

Swery (Deadly Premonition director) attempts to relaunch crowdfunding for "The Good Life"​

Last year, the director for D4 and Deadly Premonition, Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro launched a Fig campaign for a new game, titled "The Good Life". The crowdfunding attempt failed at less than a third of the money needed, and nothing was heard about the project after that...until now. Swery plans to relaunch the crowdfunding for the game next month, in hopes of attaining a successful campaign this time. Described by the development team as "Animal Crossing meets Deadly Premonition, plus lots of cats", The Good Life is a murder-mystery RPG that features a village of characters who turn into cats at night. The game's team will also feature the developer of the game Rebublique, the art director for Rez, and the creator of the Panzer Dragoon series. If you're interested, the Fig for the game will relaunch on March 26.

Mass layoffs to Capcom's Dead Rising staff​

It seems that the incredibly negative reaction to Dead Rising 4 has had more of an impact than just low sales, according to Kotaku and their inside sources at Capcom Vancouver, the studio behind the Dead Rising series. About 50 people were fired, which was around 1/5 their team, as well as the remaining team greatly shortening the scope on future Dead Rising projects. Lastly, an unannounced game was cancelled. The game was in very early development, and not even been greenlit by Capcom, though it was set to be a third person adventure game. Two days after the anonymous insider made their claim, Capcom itself made a statement on the matter.

Capcom Vancouver has undergone a restructure which has impacted approximately 30% of the studio, as part of its regular periodic assessment of upcoming projects and overall studio goals. The team is continuing to work hard to support the recent release of Puzzle Fighter for mobile and is dedicated to its flagship Dead Rising series.

General News

Demon's Souls to go offline for good at the end of the month
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After nine years since the release of From Software's Demon's Souls, the servers for the game will be permanently shut down on the last day of February 2018. This is the second time this has been announced, as previous vocal efforts from fans kept the game from going offline last year. This time, however, it seems that FromSoft is ready to move on, and finally will put the servers to rest. Yasuhiro Kitao, the marketing manager for FromSoft took to Twitter to thank all those that enjoyed the game's online features. Demon's Souls will still be entirely playable after the online shutdown, however messages and ghosts from other players will disappear from the campaign, which is considered by fans to be an impactful feature to the series.

Source

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life delayed
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Yakuza 6, which was scheduled to launch on March 20, has now been delayed to April 17, as said by a press release from SEGA. To make up for it, there will be a demo of the game on the PlayStation store starting on February 27.

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life‘s release is being moved back a month to April 17. This was a tough business decision we didn’t make lightly. But—with bad news, we also have some good—this gives us more time to line things up for launch, and on February 27, the demo for Yakuza 6 will be available and will allow players to bring their save into the game on release. This will be the first time everyone will have a chance to play the game (a moment we have long been anticipating!) and we can’t wait to hear what you think about it. We have many new plans to reveal over the coming weeks to give you all more insight into the series, so stay tuned!

Take-Two Interactive "impressed" by the Nintendo Switch, mentions strong sales
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Following a trend of gaming companies that have been happy with how their games have been selling on the Switch, Take-Two Interactive responded that they were impressed by Nintendo's latest piece of hardware, after being asked during a financial conference if the company would continue supporting the Switch, and potentially bring GTAV to the system. Though mentioning that he had a positive outlook on the future and greatly satisfied by the performance of recent titles released by them (LA Noire, NBA 2k18, WWE 2k18), the CEO of Take-Two stated that there was nothing new to announce just yet.

Source

PS+/GWG free games for February
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It's a new month, which means there's some new free games, for those of you who subscribe to PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold. Let's take a look at the games on display for February.

PlayStation Plus:
RIME (PS4)
Knack (PS4)
Spelunker HD (PS3)
Mugen souls Z (PS3)
Exiles End (PSV)
Grand Kingdom (PSV/PS4)
Starblood Arena (PSVR)

Xbox Gold:
Shadow Warrior (XBO) [Feb 1-15]
Split/Second (360) [Feb 1-15]
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India (XBO) [Feb 16-28]
Crazy Taxi (360) [Feb 16-28]

Evo 2018 games lineup

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The game tournament, Evo, is the who's who of the fighting game genre, boasting high level play from pros competing in both classic and new fighting games. The Championship tourney is set to take place in Las Vegas this August, and will feature such games as Tekken 7, Smash Bros. Wii U, Street Fighter V Arcade, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, Injustice 2, Melee, Guilty Fear Xrd Rev 2, and Dragon Ball FighterZ. Most notably, is the lack of Marvel Vs Capcom: Infinite from the lineup, which appears to be drawing ire from many fans.

Source

PlayStation Now gets Disgaea 5, Yakuza 4, and more added to service
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With every month, come more games added to the library of the PlayStation Now streaming service. This month, we've got new games such as DiRT Rally, Grand Kingdom, Yakuza 4 and 5, Disgaea 5, and Guilty Gear Xrd Sign. January saw the release of Gravity Rush Remastered, Knack, and Until Dawn added to the list. PS Now costs a monthly fee to subscribe to, but it lets you stream a wide variety of games to your PlayStation 4, or, more importantly for some people, your PC.

Source

Paradox to announce two new games soon
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Paradox Development, the company that makes games such as Crusader Kings, Stellaris, and Europa Unversalis, will be taking to Sweden's PDXCON in order to announce two new games. It was rumored that one of the titles they planned to unveil would be Victoria 3, though the developers themselves said that wasn't the case. PDXCON will take place on May 19-20, in Stockholm, Sweden.

Fire Emblem Warriors gets its 2nd DLC pack
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Coinciding with Valentines Day, Nintendo will be bringing the latest DLC set for Fire Emblem Warriors. This pack will cost $8.99, and includes a bride and groom costume for Marth and Caeda, and a flower-girl outfit for Tiki. Lyn will be getting her Swordmaster promoted unit costume as well. Players will also get access to three new characters, Navarre, Minerva, and Linde, all characters from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.

Sonic the Hedgehog: Battle Racers zooms its way onto Kickstarter.
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With absolutely no fanfare or major announcement from SEGA, a new Sonic board game made its way onto Kickstarter last week. Titled Sonic the Hedgehog: Battle Racers, the game will see players picking from Sonic, Tails, Eggman, Knuckles, and Amy, as they race across the board, trying to collect the most ring tokens. The Kickstarter for the project shows multiple different "reference" cards, along with "profile" cards. If the board game reaches its $50,000 goal, it'll be funded (at the time of writing, it's currently at 41k). Stretch goals include adding Blaze the Cat to the game when it reaches $70k, using plastic rings instead of tokens at $80k, and adding Shadow, if it reaches $110k. There's also a multitude of different "optional buys", such as...rocks. These $10 plastic rocks are placed on the game board instead of using rock tokens. A Metal Sonic and Infinite expansion are also choices, which cost $20 each, and come with new boards and figureines. And for all those Big the Cat fans, worry not, as for a mere $10, you can indeed purchase a Big the Cat minifigure to use in the game. Board game and card game maker "Shinobi7" is behind the Kickstarter, who's past works include a My Little Pony storytelling game, and a Tokyo Ghoul card game.

Source

Emulation/Hacking News/Fan Projects

CEMU 1.11.4 publicly available
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The latest version of the Wii U emulator, CEMU, is now available to everyone, with the new update 1.11.4, a minor one, which adds some better compatibility for certain titles and some new fixes. You can see the full changelog in the source below.

GX2: Added -nolegacy command line parameter to disable all Intel GPU workarounds
GX2: Updated bilinear and bicubic filter to avoid issues on Intel GPUs
GX2: Fixed rare infinite loop caused by drawcalls that referenced the same texture data more than once with incompatible formats
GX2: Added support for 2D_ARRAY textures in GetTextureResInfo shader instruction
GX2: Fixed _GX2AllocFromDefaultHeap incorrectly using MEMAllocFromDefaultHeap instead of MEMAllocFromDefaultHeapEx

Changelog

Progress report: RPCS3
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CEMU isn't the only emulator making progress by leaps and bounds, as RPCS3, the PlayStation 3 emulator, is moving along nicely as well. The developers of the emulator have written up a lovely new progress report for January, detailing what changes and improvements have been made lately. A large advancement was in being able to get games like Nier, Ni No Kuni, and God of War HD to not crash at certain points anymore. The OpenGL backend has also been updated, allowing for some performance enhancements. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow can run at 1440p through the emulator, and almost hit a solid 30fps. If you're interested, the full detailed report is below.

Source

Vita3K: the experimental Vita emulator
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There's a new adventurous emulation project currently sitting on github, right now; a PlayStation Vita emulator! Named "Vita3K", this is an experimental PS Vita emulator for Windows and Mac, which is very early in development. Though you cannot boot any commercial games right now, the emulator actually manages to boot vitaQuake, a homebrew port of Quake to the Vita. It certainly is an interesting project to follow, and if you'd like to check it out for yourself, as always, it's linked in the source below.

Source

Skyblivion gets new "Cyrodil" trailer


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The ever ambitious project to re-create The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion using Skyrim's engine continues on in its progress. This new trailer showcases the current status of the game, with its new weather and lighting, and custom-made textures. Though there's no solid timeframe for a release of Skyblivion, the lead developer of it says they hope to reach some sort of release by the end of this year.

Game Announcements

Pillars of Eternity II gets console versions, including the Switch
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Obsidian's next game will be releasing on more than just PC. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire will be making its way to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch by holiday season of this year. Red Cerberus, a Brazilian porting studio, will be in charge of the console versions. The Windows/Mac/Linux version of the game is slated for this April.

Ex-Rare devs to make a new beat-em-up game
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MakinGames, a small studio comprised of former Rareware developers have partnered with publisher Team 17 to announce Raging Justice, a 2.5D brawler, which takes inspiration from games such as Streets of Rage and Double Dragon. This beat-em-up will release digitally for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC later this year.

Source

Rumor Mill

RUMOR: Microsoft wants to buy Electronic Arts
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With how few exclusives Microsoft has releasing this year, compared to Nintendo and PlayStation, it only makes sense that the Xbox division of Microsoft would be looking to bolster their games lineup for the Xbox One. While Phil Spencer continues to assure fans that more exclusives will be announced in the coming months, there's still unsatisfied rumblings amongst the gaming community. That's where this rumor steps in. Polygon, of course, has a anon insider, who is "reliable", stating that Microsoft is wanting to buy some gaming companies outright. This includes ones like Valve, PUBG Corp., and EA. This wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft has done such a thing, as those might remember when Rare, Mojang, Bungie, and Lionhead were bought out. Only time will tell if this one is real or not.

"Source"

RUMOR: Red Dead Redemption 2 multiplayer "leaks"
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Trusted Reviews, a media news site, received some supposed press leaks for Red Dead Redemption 2. These documents have been unreported on until now, because they found no substantial proof that validated the leaks. That is, until recently. When Rockstar announced their delay of RDR2, they also uploaded some screenshots of the game. These new pictures apparently validated their information, leading to them publishing all the related rumor documents. Trusted Reviews' most interesting claim, is that there will be new online modes, such as Battle Royale, Revive and Survive, and Money Grab. Battle Royale had no information, but Revive and Survive is purportedly about fighting in teams of two, against others, while Money Grab will have teams fighting to get bags of money and bring them to a specific area on the map. As for the single player campaign, they claim that trains will be the method of travelling across the world and that the game will have crafting modes. We won't know if any of these claims are true or false until Rockstar gives us more info, or until the game actually releases.

"Source"

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Trailers

Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn


Bloodstained - crafting update


Valkyria Chronicles 4 character trailer (JP)


Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory story trailer


The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 character trailer






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Release Calendar

Feb. 13
Owlboy (PS4, XBO, NS)
Crossing Souls (PC, PS4)
South Park: The Stick of Truth (PS4, XBO)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance (PC, PS4, XBO)
Dynasty Warriors 9 (PC, PS4, XBO)
Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology (3DS)
Feb. 14
Trails of Cold Steel 2 (PC)
Feb. 15
Secret of Mana remake (PC, PS4, PSV)
Feb. 16
Bayonetta 1+2 (NS)
Fe (PC, PS4, XBO, NS)
Feb. 20
Metal Gear: Survive (PC, PS4, XBO)
Feb. 22
Stellaris: Apocalypse DLC (PC)
Pac-man Championship Edition 2 Plus (NS)
Them's Fightin' Herds (PC)
Feb. 23
Payday 2 (NS)
Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (PC, PS4, XBO)
Feb. 27
Puyo Puyo Tetris (PC)
deBlob 2 (PS4, XBO)
Mar. 6
Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition (PC)
Scribblenauts: Shodown
Mar. 13
Devil May Cry HD Collection (PC, PS4, XBO)
The Raven Remastered (PC, PS4, XBO)

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[leon315]

What a juicy week! Honesty I wished M$ could buy Valve instead EA, cauz that's the only way to make HALF LIFE 3 POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Valve just give us HALF LIFE 3 already

 

[Mikemk]

What a juicy week! Honesty I wished M$ could buy Valve instead EA, cauz that's the only way to make HALF LIFE 3 POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Valve just give us HALF LIFE 3 already

I honestly disagree. HL is (honestly) fairly mediocre by modern standards, the only reason people want a new one is nostalgia. Whereas EA has good franchises they've killed, which Microsoft could bring back. SimCity, Spore...

And really, isn't no more EA a good thing?

 

[PrincessLillie]

Scribblenauts: Shodown

Uh, typo.

 

[leon315]

I honestly disagree. HL is (honestly) fairly mediocre by modern standards, the only reason people want a new one is nostalgia. Whereas EA has good franchises they've killed, which Microsoft could bring back. SimCity, Spore...

And really, isn't no more EA a good thing?

There are countless talented people who are good at scripts writers, game directors and game devs out there on this earth, M$ the only one which has limitless resource and technology to make Half life 3 GREAT AGAIN!

"good franchises like Simcity, spore" which EA killed... honestly when did those mediocre titles become ''good'' titles? and how many copies they have been sold compared to HL1+2??

 

[Mikemk]

There are countless talented people who are good at scripts writers, game directors and game devs out there on this earth, M$ the only one which has limitless resource and technology to make Half life 3 GREAT AGAIN!

Limitless resources is the reason HL3 was never made.

"good franchises like Simcity, spore" which EA killed... honestly when did those mediocre titles become ''good'' titles? and how many copies they have been sold compared to HL1+2??

Spore especially is one of the best games ever made, even if it's buggy. And it's not very buggy.

 

[matpower]

What a juicy week! Honesty I wished M$ could buy Valve instead EA, cauz that's the only way to make HALF LIFE 3 POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Valve just give us HALF LIFE 3 already

There are countless talented people who are good at scripts writers, game directors and game devs out there on this earth, M$ the only one which has limitless resource and technology to make Half life 3 GREAT AGAIN!

"good franchises like Simcity, spore" which EA killed... honestly when did those mediocre titles become ''good'' titles? and how many copies they have been sold compared to HL1+2??

Are you insane? Who the hell would want MS to finally push their walled garden vision on PC gaming? Valve has the de facto monopoly (sadly) on PC gaming, but at least they support three different OSes and can't block competition, while MS has been slowly pushing UWP and their MS Store for gaming (For the third time IIRC), only a crazy mind would want that, at least Gaben is smart enough to have alternatives at hand to keep MS on bay.

As for HL3, I doubt MS would do it either, mostly because I doubt they could pull a good enough game to live up to the hype (that's impossible), a story like the leaked "fanfic" is arguably the best approach, story-wise. Gameplay-wise, it will probably use some experimental technology as a workaround to that.

 

[Taleweaver]

I'm baffled at the first post. So not only is candy crush still alive and kicking, but it manages to rake in 2 billion dollars in DLC payments in one year???

What a juicy week! Honesty I wished M$ could buy Valve instead EA, cauz that's the only way to make HALF LIFE 3 POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Valve just give us HALF LIFE 3 already

I can think of things I would more strongly disagree with, but not much. Valve is one of the most powerful companies pushing toward linux on gaming (if not the most powerful one). Getting purchased by microsoft would undermine all of that.

...and all for a game concept that's so stupidly highly hyped that it'll never live up to expectations to begin with. And that is assuming microsoft would ensue HL3 to begin with (hint: any company wanting that could attempt to purchase valve's publishing rights to it. It'd be majorly expensive, but only a fraction of the cost of buying valve as a whole).

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

I dunno much of how evo works but they seem to have a good reason for limiting the games to only 8 of them, the fact that a game unreleased yet (Blazblue cross tag battle) got chosen over Marvel vs Capcom infinite, and that Super smash bros melee been there god knows how long, last year they had several groups had to struggle to get the preferred game into the last slot and Ultimate Marvel vs capcom 3 wins. What exactly goes on behind those decisions. It looks like is just a big popularity contest.

 

[leon315]

seems everybody 's contrary about M$ to buy VALVE, this is just a business, and i mentioned one of possibility that could happens, after all everything has a PRICE, even FOX.... have u guys already forgotten?

 

[matpower]

seems everybody 's contrary about M$ to buy VALVE, this is just a business, and i mentioned one of possibility that could happens, after all everything has a prize, even FOX.... have u guys already forgotten?

A prize? lol. I doubt Gaben would give up on his monopoly easily, considering he has been avoiding that like crazy and he worked with MS before.

 

[Spectral Blizzard]

Microsoft must back down.
OR I'LL BRING ONE HELL OF A SHITSTORM TOWARDS THE-

 

[DarthDub]

Mass layoffs at Capcom sounds familiar..

 

[Ethevion]

DB FighterZ at EVO should be exciting. Hopefully I'll be able to watch a few fights!