#42: 100 Million PS4’s

Top Story

PlayStation 4 passes 100 million consoles sold

Sony announced that they have sold over one hundred million PlayStation 4 consoles in their latest earnings call, with the last 3.2 million sales finally pushing them over the one hundred million mark.

The company also revealed that the digital download share of software sales has passed the 50% mark, meaning digital downloads are now outselling physical disc copies of games.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the PlayStation 4 has been a massive success since it launched in 2014. To put these sales numbers into perspective, Daniel Ahmad – Senior Analyst at Niko Partners – has looked at the console sales data to show just how impressive this is.

Sony sold 19 million PS4s in 2017 and 17.8 million in 2018

The PlayStation 4 is the fastest-selling home console to reach the one hundred million sales mark, beating both the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii. PlayStation 2 took five years and nine months to reach this sales milestone, while the PlayStation 4 took two months less.

If you tuned into E3 this year, you probably noticed that it lacked a bit of its usual punch, and that is was mostly down to Sony’s absence. Sony has made it clear that they are focusing heavily on the PlayStation 5, with the console rumoured to launch at the end of 2020.

We already know the PlayStation 5 will feature an eight-core, third generation Ryzen CPU in addition to a GPU that supports ray-tracing. Sony stated the PlayStation 5 will be backwards compatible with PlayStation 4 titles, alleviating concerns that game libraries could be confined to the older machine.

Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?

Which Fallout game is the first according to the series’ chronology?

• Fallout 1
• Fallout 3
• Fallout New Vegas
• Fallout 76

The answer will be revealed at the end of this issue!

News Bits

Mega Drive Mini delayed in Europe & Middle Eastern regions

SEGA Europe has announced that the Mega Drive Mini launch will be delayed by two weeks in the European and Middle Eastern regions due to logistical challenges. It appears that the Americas and Asia are unaffected by this delay, meaning these areas will be playing the SEGA Genesis Mini on September 19th while the Mega Drive Mini will launch on October 4th. In case you missed the announcements that revealed each of the forty games included on the mini console, you can check them out here.

Disney TSUM TSUM FESTIVAL will be rolling onto the Nintendo Switch in Europe this year

You may have seen the Disney TSUM TSUM toyline, a cute collection of log-shaped versions of beloved Disney characters spanning Mickey Mouse to Sulley from Monsters, Inc.

Well, it has now been confirmed that a European release of Disney TSUM TSUM FESTIVAL will unleash these little rectangular bundles of fun onto the Nintendo Switch on November 8th this year.

Arriving in Europe just a month after the initial Japanese release, hereís hoping that we also receive the pink and purple Joy-Con, Disney-themed Switch – which has only been announced for Japan so far.

Daily Fact

Fallout 76 was not the first attempt to create an online Fallout game

There was a lot of Fallout 76 news at QuakeCon this week – including the introduction of raids, updates to the battle royale experience Nuclear Winter, and more details on the NPC characters that are finally coming to the game. While Fallout 76 is the first persistent online experience in the Fallout series, it’s by no means the first attempt – in fact, several attempts to get Fallout Online off the ground have fallen through in the past.

The famous/infamous one is the attempted Fallout Online by original series publisher Interplay, which started development in 2006 – prior to Bethesda picking up the Fallout IP. The two companies made a deal that Interplay would be allowed to continue, provided funding was gathered and development started within two years. This didn’t happen, and Bethesda sued Interplay to get them to stop – even claiming that they had only allowed them the name “Fallout Online”, and not anything related to the Fallout universe. After a lot of unpleasantness, Fallout Online was cancelled.

Funnily enough, Interplay and Black Isle Studios had originally considered a Fallout MMO years previously, but Interplay wasn’t financially in a position to do it. What a shame…?

Daily News

Hitman 3 is in development

In a recent documentary by Noclip about the fall and rise of the Hitman series, CEO & Co-Owner of IO Interactive Hakan Abrak revealed that Hitman 3 is currently in development.

In addition to this news, Abrak also announced that Hitman 3 will feature over twenty locations, from the locations seen in the first two games, to all-new locations.

“[Hitman 3 is] going to be one game with all the locations starting from Paris in Hitman 1 to the last location in Hitman 3, with twenty plus locations as the ultimate globetrotting experience we want to achieve.”

Stealth master Agent 47 will return once again

The documentary goes into detail about how IO Interactive created Hitman (2016) as a platform designed to be updated and upgraded throughout its lifespan. This is why Hitman 2’s release fit in perfectly alongside the first title, because it was always made with this cohesion in mind.

Considering Hitman 2 allowed players who owned the first game to essentially add every mission to the sequel, it doesn’t surprise us that the developer would be looking to do the same thing with their third game.

Hitman (2016) successfully managed to release timely episodic content to keep players entertained throughout the year. Judging by this documentary, it appears the developers are considering going back to the episodic format for the third game in the reimagined series.

This decision appears to have created a rift in the Hitman fanbase, as half of the players appear to want all the content at once, while the other half are happy for the game to go back to being episodic since Hitman is designed to be replayed again and again.

“Lighting, not resolution, will be the next big technical advancement” says Quantic Dream CEO

David Cage, Quantic Dream’s CEO, recently commented on what he thinks will be the next major technical advance in gaming in an interview with GameSpot. Looking towards the future, Cage doesn’t think that higher resolutions, such as 8K, will necessarily take the spotlight as the main focus for upcoming titles.

“I think that lighting is going to be a key thing. There is this new technology called ‘ray tracing’ that we talk a lot about these days. I think this is going to be interesting because it will allow to improve reflections, lighting, shadows. And I think that’s a big deal. For years, I mean, the amount of polygons you could display was key, then it became the shaders and then textures, and now I think it’s all about the lighting, and the more subtle and nuanced the lighting will be, the better the image will be.”

Ray tracing is the future

Nvidia is pushing ray-tracing hard following the release of their RTX series of GPUs – specially designed for ray-tracing – last year and the recent ‘Super’ iterations of the cards.

Sony and Microsoft’s next-gen consoles will also feature real-time ray-tracing, paving the way for more realistic lighting, reflections and shadows. The technology has already been showcased in PC titles such as Battlefield V, Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Weekly Giveaway

Lost Orbit: Terminal Velocity

We’ve got a fresh giveaway for you this week! Lost Orbit: Terminal Velocity is a game about trying to return home through the vastness of space – armed only with your wits and whatever equipment you can scavenge or improvise – and we’ve got a Steam code to give away every day this week to one lucky winner on our active reader list!

“LOST ORBIT centers around the exploration of space. Players take control of a lone astronaut who sets off on a dangerous journey to rejoin his civilization, armed with only an improvised set of equipment and a relentless spirit.

Without the help of his ship, Harrison will need to use the gravitational forces of planets to navigate and propel himself through space.

Set in a world rich with comedy and tragedy, LOST ORBIT is a game filled with risk, loneliness, wonder, and death.”

News Bits

The Good Life delayed until Spring 2020

The Good Life, a “debt repayment daily life RPG” created by White Owls, Inc. is now scheduled to release in Spring 2020. The Kickstarted title was originally expected to launch in Q4 2019, and the developers recently posted an update making their backers aware of the delay: “After a long deliberation, we have decided to change the schedule and extend the development period in order to deliver The Good Life to all our backers in the best condition possible. It’s a very important, heavy decision, but we made it believing that it’s the happiest decision for all the people who are going to eventually play it. Therefore, we humbly ask that you wait a little bit longer for The Good Life to reach your hands. . .”

Comparison videos have also been published to show the team’s progress so far and can be viewed in their 50th update post on Kickstarter.

“Super Lucky” Nintendo Switch Release This November

Playful Studios, the developers behind Super Lucky’s Tale, has revealed that New Super Lucky’s Tale will be launching on the Nintendo Switch both digitally and in physical form on November 8th. New Super Lucky’s Tale looks to improve on Super Lucky’s Tale by adding in “expansive hubs, story-based adventure levels, 2D side-scrolling challenges, rewarding mini-games, mind-bending puzzles and thrilling boss battles.”

You may remember the game from its announcement at E3 earlier this year, where it surprised Nintendo fans around the world since Super Lucky’s Tale used to be a Microsoft exclusive.

Quiz Answer - Did You Get It Right?

Which Fallout game is the first according to the series’ chronology?

Answer: Fallout 76!

Despite being the most recent game in the series, Fallout 76 is actually the first game in the Fallout timeline! While all the games are set in the future, the Great War that turns the world into an apocalyptic nightmare begins around 2077, and Fallout 76 begins in 2102. It chronicles the first-ever Vault opening in America, and the attempts to re-colonise the country.

The next game after that on the Fallout timeline is Fallout, which begins 60 years after Fallout 76 – in 2161. Up until the release of Fallout 76, the games were generally released in chronological order – Fallout 2, 3, New Vegas, and finally 4. Fallout 4 is the final game in the timeline so far, and it’s set in 2287 – almost two hundred years after Fallout 76!

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