The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as well as more details about Splatoon 2, and EA has handed over (partial) control of the card/strategy game BattleForge to their fans- all this and more on this week’s episode of 1RBC Gaming Weekly.
https://youtu.be/qgu8G50akvY
First, regarding the cancellation of Playstation Now, on August 15, 2017 the subscription-based game streaming service will no longer be available on the Vita, PS3, or a number of other devices that include Blu-ray players and televisions- in a blog post, Sony announced that they’d be focusing exclusively on service PS4 and PC players with Playstation Now. I think it’s safe to bet that the users of other devices were in the minority of players on the service, and Sony decided it wasn’t worth the financial and technical hassle to keep supporting them- nonetheless, it doesn’t instill confidence in their brand, especially when it comes to the Vita, their handheld console that’s been abandoned in all but name. Are you a Playstation Now user, and will you be affected by this impending shutdown? Let us know in the comments below.
This week, the ESA released Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2017 Report, which contains some fascinating information about the economic impact of the video game industry in the United States; it’s well worth a read if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
This week, Nintendo announced DLC for the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild– a first for the series, the DLC is set to be released in the form of a couple content packs. The first pack brings three treasure chests to the Great Plateau, one of which contains a shirt for Link with the Switch logo on it- this content will be available at launch. The rest of the content in that first pack comes out in the summer and will bring a new hard mode, an unspecified feature for the in-game map and a Cave of Trials challenge. The second content pack comes out later in the year and comes with a new dungeon and story- these pieces of DLC are not available for individual purchase and must be bought through a $20.00 expansion pass.
I have mixed feelings on this. One the one hand, I trust that the additional content will be worth $20- but on the other hand? This is a slippery slope- I’d hate to see Nintendo start breaking pieces off of finished games in order to sell them later. That said, it doesn’t appear that this is the case with this DLC.
In other Nintendo Switch news, the Splatoon 2 Global Testfire has been announced for March 24-26, 2017- it’s open to all Nintendo Switch owners and is a sort of stress test/beta for the upcoming squid-ink shooter. Also, in case you missed the news, Splatoon 2 will feature both online and local multiplayer via wired LAN- if you’d like to get together and play with up to ten friends locally, you’ll be able to!
Lastly, the crowdfunding project that caught our eye this week is SmuggleCraft, a racing game involving hovercrafts and procedurally generated tracks- it looks like it already has a lot of polish, and it’s on track to be released on Mac, Windows, Linux and the PS4.
What do you think of this week’s game news? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow @1RuleBeCool on Twitter for all the greatest game news and editorials; follow me for my own views.
Vid.Me Mirror]]>