Top Story
Rod Fergusson to oversee Diablo IV
Gears of War veteran Rod Fergusson has left The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios to join the Diablo IV team at Blizzard Entertainment.
Fergusson has worked on a bunch of games, including Counter-Strike, Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3, Fat Princess, Lost Planet 2, Bioshock Infinite and Gears 5.
Fergusson served as head of The Coalition, who took over development of the Gears of War series after Microsoft purchased the IP from Epic Games.
Xbox’s Matt Booty say they “wish him well as he moves on”
He will now oversee the production of Diablo IV, which was announced with great fanfare late last year at BlizzCon. The team is also working on Diablo Immortal for mobile, famously announced to somewhat tepid response in 2018.
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
What genre were the Wolfenstein games before id made Wolfenstein 3D?
- Stealth-Based Action
- Brawler
- Point and Click Adventure
- First Person Puzzler
The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today’s issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.
News Bits
Pokémon Day is coming, so vote for your favorite pocket monster today
What better way to celebrate Pokémon Day on February 27th than by organizing your fellow fans and making sure your favorite Pokémon wins this poll? The poll includes all the 890 Pokémon introduced since the series’ beginning, and votes are open until February 14th.
Sony VR studio closed before getting a chance to announce its first game
Sony Manchester Studio – which was formed in 2015 to focus on VR and had one unannounced project under development – has been shut down. It’s just the latest in a long line of UK studios Sony has shuttered in the last decade: Studio Liverpool, Guerilla Cambridge, Bigbig Studios and Evolution Studios all received short thrift from Sony.
Daily Fact
Every episode of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space was named after a film
Telltale’s 2007 episodic point-and-click series Sam & Max Beyond Time And Space helped popularize the episodic format that came to define Telltale’s output for the next decade, until the studio’s untimely demise in 2018.
Every episode in the series was named after a movie, and tended to be built around pop culture references:
- Ice Station Santa
- Moai Better Blues
- Night of the Raving Dead
- Chariots of the Dogs
- What’s New Beelzebub?
They are riffs on:
- Ice Station Zebra
- Mo’ Better Blues
- Night of the Living Dead
- Chariots of the Gods
- Whats New, Pussycat?
Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today’s fact.
Daily News
Phil Spencer says Xbox is competing against Amazon and Google now
While it will take a while for the console wars between Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony to fade from the public consciousness, times are changing – and Xbox boss Phil Spencer now considers Amazon and Google to be Microsoft’s real competitors in the videogame space.
Google and Amazon are both building cloud-based game platforms, while neither Nintendo nor Sony seem to be giving the idea much attention. Nvidia is also trying to grab a slice of the cloud pie with their GeForce Now service.
Google Stadia’s launch has been mired with issues, and unhappy subscribers
“…we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward,” said Phil Spencer, referring to Nintendo and Sony. “…traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. I guess they could try to re-create Azure, but we’ve invested tens of billions of dollars in cloud over the years.”
Microsoft’s new ambition is to dominate the cloud gaming market, and Spencer says they are done fighting a format war with Nintendo and Sony.
Microsoft will start thinking big like Amazon and Google, who focus on building the infrastructure and figuring out “how to get gaming to 7 billion people around the world.”
Starving for some ninja action?
Yes, Team Ninja is perfectly aware that you are all hungry for more Ninja Gaiden. In fact, they’re counting on you being positively ravenous.
Team Ninja is getting ready to cook up some spicy ninja action themselves after seeing other ninja games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice do brisk business. According to Nioh 2 director Fumihiko Yasuda, his team is made up of Ninja Gaiden veterans – and they are feeling peckish too.
Some fans wanted Ninja Gaiden more than Nioh 2
“The core members of the team that worked on Ninja Gaiden want to make a new game,” said Yasuda “…we see a lot of good inspirations in those games, so we hope to deliver some good news one day.”
The last Ninja Gaiden game was the spin-off Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z from 2014, but the last entry in the mainline series was Ninja Gaiden 3 from 2012.
