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The Game Awards 2019 announcement round-up
The Game Awards is over, the winners have been declared, the new games have been announced and the Geoff has Keighleyed. Missed the show? Here’s a handy round-up:
The biggest reveal of the night was probably the name of the next Xbox, which Microsoft has decided to name Xbox Series X.
It both looks and sounds somewhat sinister, like the kind of experiment secret government agencies conduct deep underground and from which something occasionally escapes and wreaks havoc. In any case, all 15 developers under the Microsoft Game Studios umbrella are busy working on games for it.
Game announcement round-up:
- Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 (Ninja Theory) – Announcement Trailer – TBA 2020 (Xbox Series X)
- Final Fantasy VII Remake (Square Enix) – The Game Awards 2019 Trailer – March 3, 2020 (PlayStation 4)
- Godfall (Counterplay Games/Gearbox Publishing) – Reveal Trailer – Holiday 2020 (PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One)
- Ruined King: A League of Legends Story (Airship Syndicate/Riot Forge) – Official Teaser Trailer – TBA (PC, PlayStation 5)
- CONV/RGENCE: A League of Legends Story (Double Stallion Games/Riot Forge) – Official Teaser Trailer – TBA (PC)
- Gears Tactics (Splash Damage) – World Premiere Trailer – April 28, 2020 (PC, Xbox One)
- HUMANKIND (Amplitude Studios) – “Your Story” Gameplay Trailer – TBA 2020 (PC)
- Maneater (Tripwire Interactive) – Eat, Explore, Evolve Trailer – May 22, 2020 (PC, PlayStation 4)
- Warframe: Empyrean (Digital Extremes) – Update Trailer – December 12, 2019 (PC)
- Control Expeditions (Remedy Entertainment) – Launch Trailer – December 12, 2019 (PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One)
- Prologue (Playerunknown Productions) – Teaser Trailer – TBA (PC)
- Wolf Among Us 2 (Telltale Games/AdHoc Studio) – Teaser Trailer – TBA (PC)
- Fast & Furious Crossroads (Slightly Mad Studios/Bandai Namco) – Announcement Trailer – May 2020 (PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One)
- The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr (ZeniMax Online Studios/Bethesda Softworks) – Cinematic Trailer – TBA 2020 (PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One)
- Naraka: Bladepoint (24 Entertainment) – TGA Trailer – Early 2020 (PC)
- New World: Aeternum Awaits (Amazon Games) – Official Trailer – May 2020 (PC)
- Nine to Five (Redhill Games) – Teaser Trailer 2019 – TBA 2020 (PC)
- Magic: Legends (Cryptic Studios) – Cinematic Teaser Trailer – TBA 2020 (PC)
- Weird West (WolfEye Studios/Devolver Digital) – Reveal Trailer – TBA 2020 (PC)
- Apex Legends – Holo-Day Bash Event (Respawn Entertainment/EA) – Event Trailer – December 12, 2019 (PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One)
- Sons of the Forest (Endnight Games) – Reveal Trailer – TBA (PC)
- Dark Alliance – Dungeons & Dragons (Wizards of the Coast) – Official Announcement Trailer – TBA (PC)
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
Which American state is home to Resident Evil’s Raccoon City?
- Colorado
- Pennsylvania
- North Dakota
- Nebraska
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
No Half-Life: Alyx at The Game Awards
For whatever reason, Half-Life 2: Alyx wasn’t shown at The Game Awards after all. All Valve would say is that “the team is hard at work on the game,” which doesn’t really explain anything. In any case, Half-Life: Alyx is the next entry in the Half-Life series, powered by the Source 2 engine and built from the ground up for VR.
Want more Tekken X Street Fighter?
The considerable and on-going success of Tekken 7 has prompted game director Katsuhiro Harada to ask fans whether they’re really interested in more Tekken X Street Fighter: “…TK7 and SFV are selling very well, so there is no opportunity to drop TK x SF on the market,” goes his thinking. His straw poll is still open for another day, and presently has over 52,000 votes.
Daily Fact
How to stand out in a crowded market, Old Man With a Banjo edition
It’s 1991, and you have made a shoot’em-up called Phalanx. It takes place somewhere in space, and you shoot things like spaceships and monsters. Both your target platforms, the Sharp X68000 and the Super Nintendo, is positively flooded with similar games. What do you do?
Easy: You hire some beardy old feller – maybe the guy who dressed up as Santa Claus for another piece of cover art – and tell him to hit that banjo.
At least that’s what Phalanx’s publisher first thought and then did. Whether the idea was to shock and awe potential customers with the audacious cover art or they just sent the wrong image to the printer, it certainly is different. And hey, here we are, nearly thirty years later, still talking about it!
Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today’s fact.
Daily News
Destiny 2 gets festive December 17th
It’s time for Destiny 2’s annual winter event, and so The Dawning returns on December 17th and continues until January 14th. That means festive decorations, quests about delivering gifts and special ingredients to collect – and unique rewards!
Oh, and recipes. Did we mention the recipes? Here they are: Gjallardoodles , Traveler Donut Holes, Vanilla Blades, Fractal Roll, Fried Sha-dough, Ascendant Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, Hackberry Tart, Lavender Ribbon, Eliksni Birdseed, Burnt Edge Transits, Telemetry Tapioca, Strange Cookies, Chocolate Ship Cookies, Gentleman’s Shortbread, Infinite Forest Cake, Alkane Dragée Cookies, Radiolarian Pudding, Javelin Mooncake, Ill-Fortune Cookies , Candy Dead Ghosts and Dark Chocolate Motes. Phew!
Merry Dawning, and a loot-filled solar cycle everyone!
That’s quite a lot of baking for a sci-fi shooter with ghosts and time-travelling, but it’s all for good reason: “For each batch of cookies delivered, you’ll gain progress towards bounties and rewards for some Seasonal cheer,” says Bungie. “Eva has a new SMG for you to bake: the Cold Front. Additionally, if you missed out on the perfect roll for the Machine Gun Avalanche last year, it’s your time to shine.”
Check out Bungie’s latest update for all the details.
Xbox Series X is “two times” that of Xbox One X’s power
The new Xbox now has a name, which is supposed to “reflect the consoles capabilities”: The Xbox Series X.
A name is all well and good, but what’s going on under the hood? “We wanted to have a dramatic upgrade from the Xbox One base console. So when we do the math, we’re over eight times the GPU power of the Xbox One, and two times what an Xbox One X is,” boasts Xbox boss Phil Spencer.
Microsoft’s Xbox Series X will go head-to-head with PlayStation 5
Unsurprisingly, both the CPU and GPU are beefed up in the new Xbox: “…we really wanted to push relative to previous generations, we have four times the compute power on the CPU in Project Scarlett,” he said.
That’s not exactly a precise list of technical specifications, but it’s safe to assume that the next Xbox will be powered by a next-generation AMD APU – the big question is whether it’s the same chipset as the one rumoured to power the PlayStation 5.
What we do know is that Xbox Series X will feature solid state storage: “We’ve invested in NVMe solid-state drives and we’re also giving developers a lot of new capabilities, and on top of that, try to virtually eliminate load times,” said Spencer.
The final specifications still remains under wraps, so all we can do is speculate on whether the Zen 2-powered APU is the Gonzalo APU we’ve heard rumours about for the last year.
