Nintendo To Provide ‘Switch On The Go’ Pop-Up Lounges At Select US Airports
Nintendo has revealed a new initiative which will see ‘Nintendo Switch On The Go’ pop-up airport lounges appearing across the US over the next few weeks.
Beginning later this week on 13th February, busy travellers will have the chance to get stuck into some of the console’s best games as they wait for their flights. A press release detailing the announcement says that attendees will “encounter fun surprises” at the airports with opportunities to go hands-on with both Switch and Switch Lite.
Here’s where you’ll find the Nintendo Switch On The Go experience, all located beyond passenger screening:
Airport
Location
Date
Dulles International Airport
Washington, D.C.
Concourse B near west entrance/exit, next to Gate B62
Feb. 17 –
March 29
Seattle – Tacoma International Airport
Seattle, WA
Concourse C, next to Gate C10
Feb. 17 –
March 29
O’Hare International Airport
Chicago, IL
Terminal 1, Concourse B, between Gates B12 and B14
Feb. 17 –
March 29
Dallas Love Field Airport
Dallas, TX
West Terminal, near Gates 14 and 16
Feb. 13 –
March 26
In a nice touch, those who take part in the experience will have the chance to order Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite systems and will receive a free carrying case with their order. Just for stopping by, visitors will also receive a free Nintendo Switch branded luggage handle wrap and a $10 coupon from Target to use on any Nintendo purchase of $75 or more (available while supplies last). Lucky for some, huh?
Just so happen to be planning a holiday? Perhaps you should speed things up and get to one of these airports for some free game time – you can always pretend you never saw this article and that it’s all a coincidence!
Surprising absolutely no one, Activision Blizzard has confirmed that a new Call of Duty game is set for release in 2020; however, curiously, the company has not yet confirmed which team is developing the title. For eight years, Activision Blizzard has maintained a strict pattern when it's come to Call of Duty's development cycle. So when, on the February 2019 Activision quarterly call, the publisher remained coy about which of its developers is working on the Call of Duty game scheduled for 2020, it led to speculation that something unexpected may be afoot this time around.
To delve into what could be in the works for 2020's Call of Duty, we're going to have to look back at several years of Call of Duty history and examine how Activision has traditionally handled reveals for the franchise.
Activision has managed to get a new Call of Duty game out the door every year since 2005's Call of Duty 2 (though you could argue that, technically, a new game has come out every year from the very beginning if you count 2004's Call of Duty: Finest Hour, the console version of the original 2003 PC game). There are four Activision studios currently associated with Call of Duty development--Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Raven Software, and Sledgehammer Games. The first two have been mainstays, while the latter two initially served as support studios. For Sledgehammer, that changed in the last decade, as Activision made the developer the main studio behind Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Call of Duty: WWII.
Initially, Activision went back and forth between Infinity Ward and Treyarch, having the two complete Call of Duty games in two years while Sledgehammer and Raven supported the two where needed. From 2012 through 2019, however, Activision adopted and maintained a new pattern with Call of Duty: Treyarch releases a Call of Duty game, then Infinity Ward, then Sledgehammer, and then the three repeat in that order. This gives each studio a buffer of about three years between each game they make, which probably makes it easier for Activision to maintain its annual Call of Duty release schedule.
In 2012, Treyarch released Black Ops II, and went on to make 2015's Black Ops III and 2018's Black Ops 4. In 2013, Infinity Ward released Ghosts, and then followed with 2016's Infinite Warfare and 2019's Modern Warfare. Sledgehammer released Advanced Warfare in 2014 and then WWII in 2017--the developer should be scheduled to release its third Call of Duty game in 2020, assuming the trend continues, and followed by Treyarch releasing its next game in 2021.
Or at least, that should be the plan, but Activision hasn't confirmed whether that's the case. According to Kotaku, Activision was already handling the release of 2020's Call of Duty a little differently, partnering up Sledgehammer with Raven to tackle the project together, similarly to how Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer partnered on Modern Warfare 3. A slight change, but nothing that would disrupt Activision's pattern.
But, according to that same Kotaku report, things have not been on track for Sledgehammer and Raven, so Treyarch is now the studio in charge of 2020's Call of Duty. Sledgehammer and Raven were reportedly working on a Call of Duty set during the events of the Cold War but tensions between the two teams (combined with both Sledgehammer co-founders leaving the studio and several additional devs following suit) resulted in delays. Both Sledgehammer and Raven are reportedly reassigned as support studios for Treyarch, which is rumored to be working on Black Ops 5, and the game is now coming in 2020--a whole year early.
Activision hasn't confirmed any of this, but recent announcements have at least lent greater credence to the idea that 2020's Call of Duty will, in some capacity, break from the tradition the publisher has maintained these past eight years.
So perhaps that's where Treyarch comes in. Treyarch decided to forgo a traditional single-player campaign in 2018's Black Ops 4 and instead included a battle royale mode called Blackout (which turned out to be popular). So perhaps Activision is tapping Treyarch to develop a new Call of Duty game that is focused around battle royale--one that can be bought as a standalone game but is still connected to Modern Warfare in some capacity.
Of course, because Activision hasn't confirmed any of this, all of what we say here could end up being false conjecture. Activision may have just held out on announcing which developer is working on 2020's Call of Duty because it just doesn't want to say which one it is yet. Which is a boring explanation but still entirely possible.
If, however, the disruption to Activision's Call of Duty schedule is true, it raises questions about the future of the franchise. Prior to 2012, Activision just went back and forth between Treyarch and Infinity Ward--would the publisher return to only two studios headlining new Call of Duty games? Could it maintain its annual release schedule if that were the case? Should it even try to maintain that schedule when both Modern Warfare and (the immensely successful) Call of Duty Mobile are great examples of how individual Call of Duty games can continue to excel via regular post-launch support and content updates?
Regardless of what happens, something at least seems to be up with 2020's Call of Duty, because Activision is being oddly coy about who's actually responsible for the game. Or maybe we're just thinking too hard about all this.
The comes a time in every project where you have to switch from a developmental Work In Progress branch to the main branch and that time just occurred for the Godot game engine. The WIP Vulkan (and C++14) port is now the official branch on the Godot Github.
The Vulkan port is not ready yet, but we need to get it merged into the master branch as a lot of further development planned for Godot 4.0 depends on it.
We plan to rework a lot of Godot’s internals (core) to allow fixing long-standing design issues and improving performance (including GDScript performance improvements). Moreover, our long-awaited port to C++14 will also happen now that the vulkan branch is merged into master, and many other codebase-wide changes were waiting for this: code style changes, Display/OS split, renaming of 3D nodes to unify our conventions, etc.
The scope of the planned changes means that it would be impossible to do these changes in the master branch while keeping the vulkan branch separate, just as it would not be possible to do all those changes in the vulkan branch itself before merging into master: any rebase/merge would become extremely difficult due to the sheer amount of lines of code that will change.
Up until now, we’ve been very cautious with regard to what changes we allow in the vulkan branch, as well as what new PRs we merge in master, to ensure that the vulkan branch can always be rebased on top of master for a later merge. I’ve been rebasing it periodically over the past 8 months, and even though we’ve been very conservative in the scope of the changes, in later months a full rebase could easily take me a full day of work.
So we need everything in the main branch to stop limiting ourselves.
Moving the development branch from 3.2 to 4.0 has some side effects, specifically outstanding Pull Requests. Unfortunately the simplest option seems to be the best in this case, to close those requests and hopefully “port” them to the new master branch.
While closing PRs may seem a bit abrupt, we ask all contributors to understand that this is done to help us cope with the sheer amount of proposals in parallel to having to refactor a lot of the engine’s codebase. This closing does not mean that we reject the PRs, nor that we do not seem them as worthy contributions. But by asking the authors to re-assess their own proposals and make them compatible with Godot 4.0, we will save a lot of precious development time and get ourselves some breathing air in the current overcrowded PRs.
Closed PRs will have the salvageable label, which we use to denote PRs with code that could be salvaged to make a new, updated (and possibly improved) PR, either by the original author or by a new contributor. So we will not lose code in the process, since everything will still be accessible from the closed PRs and easily identifiable thanks to the salvageable label.
If you use a major release version downloaded from Godot’s download page or from Steam, this change doesn’t actually effect you. If you want to check out the new Vulkan master branch but don’t want to build the code yourself, you can get a nightly build here.
Learn more about this change and it’s ramifications in the video below.
Now you’ve done it – Activision has discovered mobile is a thing
By Joe Robinson11 Feb 2020
To be fair, Activision has known about mobile for a while. They’ve dabbled with it on-and-off like most publishers who aren’t mobile-focused have and they’re not against simply acquiring companies that specialise in this space. For example, they bought King back in 2016.
As far as their own ‘first-party’ stable of franchises are concerned, Owen previously reviewed a Call of Duty spin-off called Strike Team. But we imagine neither this nor Call of Duty: Heroes really inspired Activision to get out of bed. Neither are currently available to purchase or play anymore, as it happens.
But it seems the recent release of Call of Duty: Mobile has really caused the videogame giant to cast its Eye of Sauron on Mobile-land. In a recent earnings call, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick reported that the Call of Duty player base grew from 40 Million to 100 Million through 2019, and he attributes a large part of the growth to the new mobile game.
In terms of revenue, mobile is now the largest platform with it accounting for 34% of the company’s total revenue for the past year up to December 31st, 2019. This is up from 2018’s 29%. Console and PC only account for (roughly) 30% and 26% respectively during 2019.
We’re not sure specifically how much revenue COD Mobile has totted up so far. Much of that 2019 figure is probably going to be from King. Sensor Tower reported last year that COD Mobile netted $17.7 million and 90 Million downloads in its first week and Activision also confirmed this week that the game had surpassed 150 million downloads world-wide. Current estimates for January 2020 put the game’s revenue for the month at $13 million, so I think it’s fair to say things are going well.
Off the back of this, Activision seem to be more confident on past commitments to evaluate their mainline franchises. All of Activision’s top-line franchises will probably be getting mobile ports of one form or another, with Blizzard’s Diablo: Immortal currently next on the list.
What Activision-owned franchise do you want to see given the ‘Mobile’ treatment?
We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!
Xbox, Nike, and EA Sports Team Up on Custom Xbox One Inspired by Special Edition Air Max 90s Xbox, EA Sports, and Nike are celebrating Sunday’s showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers with a limited-edition custom Xbox One X console, inspired by the special edition Nike x Madden NFL 20 Air Max 90 dropped this evening on the red carpet of EA Sports Bowl…
Monster Energy Supercross 3 – Special Edition Available Now on Xbox While planning the development ofSupercross 3, we listened to the feedback of our community and we added several features that fans of the series have been asking for. First things first, let’s talk about the gameplay. In a sport like Supercross, the bikes spend a lot of time in the air. Thus, after…
How the ID@Xbox Community Influenced HyperDot’s Xbox Achievement Design HyperDot is a minimalist action arcade game with one rule: dodge everything. There’s a thread of “easy to learn, difficult to master” throughout the game, and solo developer Charles McGregor wanted the game’s achievements to strike a similar balance. So, how do you design a list of achievements…
Apex Legends Season 4 – Assimilation Coming February 4 to Xbox One Confront or embody true evil with the new legend Revenant, try out a deadly new sniper rifle, and avoid destruction as Hammond Robotics’ Planet Harvester wreaks havoc in Apex Legends Season 4 – Assimilation. Summon your courage and prepare to drop in on Xbox One! Revenant was once human…
PUBG: New Karakin Map, Motor Glider, and Survivor Pass: Shakedown Drop Today with Season 6 Now that the holiday lull has come to an end, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) on Xbox One is dropping into 2020 with a bang! Starting today, we’re kicking off Season 6 with Update 6.1 which welcomes a brand spankin’ new map to the battlegrounds: Karakin. Karakin is our most innovative…
Journey to the Savage Planet Available Now on Xbox One As the end of another frigid January approaches, so too does the triumphant release of Journey to the Savage Planet! Starting today, you can join Kindred Aerospace’s Pioneer Program, agreeing to be strapped to a poorly made rocket and hurtled thousands of lightyears into undiscovered space…
New Games with Gold for February 2020 In February on Xbox One, race across a legendary mountain course in TT Isle of Man and then dive deep into the depths of Lovecraftian horror in Call of Cthulhu. On Xbox 360, and Xbox One via Backward Compatibility, enjoy a fresh spin on a beloved franchise in Fable Heroes then play an all-time classic…
Next Week on Xbox: New Games for February 4 to 7 Welcome to Next Week on Xbox, where we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox One! Every week the team at Xbox aims to deliver quality gaming content for you to enjoy on your favorite gaming console. To find out what’s coming soon to Xbox One, read on below and click on each of the game…
Stone, the Aussie LGBT Stoner Noir, is Out Now on Xbox One Hey Xbox Wire, nice to meet you all. I’m Greg Louden from Convict Games and I’m here to talk about our debut, Stone. It’s an Aussie LGBT stoner noir interactive story that follows our koala private investigator Stone who wakes to find his lover has been kidnapped. You need to find out what happened…
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 02-12-2020, 08:33 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Video: How the Nyamakop team broke into game dev from Africa
In this 2019 GDC session, Nyamakop’s Ben Myres and Cukia Kimani delve into the unique challenges and opportunities of making games in an African country and explore the notion of “breaking into” the independent games space.
The pair offered rare perspective on what it’s like to enter the game industry from South Africa, and the risks and rewards that come from starting your own indie studio instead of trying to build experience at a bigger company.
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 02-12-2020, 08:33 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Sony’s 2019 acquisition of Insomniac Games priced at $229 million
Newsbrief: Sony paid 24.895 billion yen, or $229 million, to bring Marvel’s Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games into Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Worldwide Studios group.
The deal was first revealed back in August 2019, but the actual buying price wasn’t disclosed at the time. An SEC filing detailing Sony’s Q3 results published today meanwhile shared that $229 million price tag, alongside the deal’s close date of November 15.
The arrangement followed decades of collaboration between the two companies, and a handful of notable exclusive for Sony’s PlayStation brand like Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ratchet & Clank, and Spyro the Dragon. At the time, SIE’s then-chairman Shawn Layden noted in a press release that the acquisition “reiterates our commitment to developing world class gaming experiences that can only be found on the PlayStation platform.”
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 02-12-2020, 08:33 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Square Enix's Outriders Coming To PS5, Xbox Series X; Watch The Reveal Trailer
Square Enix has put out a reveal trailer for Outriders, an upcoming sci-fi looter shooter coming holiday 2020. Developed by People Can Fly, a Polish game studio noted for their work on fast, frantic shooters like Bulletstorm and Painkiller, the game follows a ragtag group of "Outriders" that wield big guns and strange powers in a bid to save humanity.
"It's incredibly exciting to finally reveal what we have been working on for the last four years," said Bartek Kmita, Game Director at People Can Fly. "Outriders is our first game since leaving Epic Games, and has grown from an idea of the game we always wanted to make, to the most ambitious project People Can Fly has ever undertaken."
Outriders is one of the first games to be confirmed for the next-gen consoles of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Though both still lack a definite release date, though Outriders' stated window of "holiday 2020" indicates that it might be a launch title. However, we don't know for sure if the next-gen versions of Outriders will be released during that window.
We'll know a lot more about Outriders after its gameplay reveal livestream on Thursday at 12 PM Pacific Time. Judging by this trailer, the game shows a lot of influence from popular shooter franchises of today and yesteryear, especially Gears of War and Destiny. People Can Fly hasn't released a solo commercial title since 2013's Gears of War: Judgment, but they did co-develop the lesser-known Save the World portion of Fortnite with Epic Games. There are a lot of games like this on the market today, but they have quite a pedigree with shooters, so this is one project that might be worth following.
The 134th GalaQuiz will be LIVE soon, win up to $25 in GalaCredit!
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