A New DOOM Eternal Trailer Is Headed Our Way Tomorrow
Update: Tue 14th Jan, 2020 17:40 Bethesda has released the trailer above featuring the Doom Slayer cutting his way through various grisly demons and denizens of Hell (quite literally – you’ve been warned!). If you’re hoping for news on the upcoming Switch version of DOOM Eternal, you won’t find any here – indeed, the Switch logo has been scrubbed from this one altogether. The official PR email notes that the Switch version and Google Stadia version are “releasing at a later date”.
Original Story: Bethesda has revealed that a brand new trailer for the upcoming DOOM Eternal is set to be released tomorrow, and we imagine a fair few of you will be pretty excited to see what it reveals.
You can check out the announcement for yourself below; Bethesda hasn’t given away any details about the video’s content, but has confirmed that it’ll be pushed live at 12:30pm ET on 14th January (so that’s 9:30am PT / 5:30pm GMT / 6:30pm CET).
We haven’t heard a great deal about the game since the delay which was announced back in October, so it’ll be good to see something new. Ideally, we’d love to hear about a finalised Switch release date but we’ll keep our hopes in check for now.
The game is due to launch on other platforms on 20th March and “after” that date on Switch.
17-BIT Boss Would Love To See Nintendo “Own” The Virtual Reality Space
Virtual Reality might not have taken off in quite the way that its biggest advocates would have you believe, but there’s no denying that the market is slowly but surely growing as the technology matures. Sony’s PSVR platform has sold 5 million units to date, while Oculus – backed by the not-inconsiderable financial might of Facebook – has impressed many players with its Quest headset.
VR may not be quite ready for the mainstream yet, but there’s definitely a feeling that it’s going to happen eventually – and 17-BIT boss Jake Kazdal says he would love to see Nintendo – which is apparently being cautious with the tech, according to Miyamoto – be at the vanguard. The company has already dipped a toe with Labo VR, a low-cost headset which offers very basic functionality, yet showcases some surprisingly creative mini-games.
17-BIT – which has titles like Skulls of the Shogun and Galak-Z to its name – is currently working on a VR title for an undisclosed system, but Kazdal admits that Labo VR isn’t in the running. However, he adds that it is his desire to see Nintendo enter the VR space seriously and build on the good work done with the 3DS’ glasses-free 3D display.
My gaming time is literally split in half – I love the first-party Nintendo stuff and all the great indie games I play all the time, and when I have time to jump into something really juicy I break out my Oculus Quest and Rift, and my PSVR. I would love more than anything for Nintendo to properly enter this space and just own it; their experiments so far are fantastic, and I really miss the extra dimension available in 3D. In fact, I’m playing Super Mario 3D Land again right now on 3DS. It just is so much more satisfying than playing on a flat 2D screen.
He also champions VR with a fair amount of passion, stating:
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about VR, people somehow think you need a dedicated room in your house, and I thought so too at first, but it turns out I do most of my VR sitting down on a stool or on my couch, fully engaged in the world but safely settled in the real world not knocking things off the shelves or banging around. With the perfect camera control (humans, it turns out, are very good at using their necks and eyes as cameras) you can focus 100% on playing the game, and being inside the game world as opposed to peering into it through a little 2D window, is just a different world. The experiences are just exponentially more than you can experience on a flat-screen TV.
Could Nintendo really enter the world of VR and “own” it, as Kazdal says? It seems unlikely now, but look at consoles like the Wii, DS, Game Boy and Switch; these were not cutting-edge consoles at the time of their release, but they have risen to the top of their respective markets (well, in the case of Switch, it’s sort of created its own market).
Could Nintendo leverage maturing VR tech to produce a game-changing headset which wins over the masses, just like the Wii championed motion controls and the DS popularised touch interfaces? Who knows – but it will be interesting to see it at least try.
Fire Emblem Heroes Is Adding Tokyo Mirage Sessions Characters
Fire Emblem Heroes is getting some new characters direct from an upcoming Fire Emblem spin off. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is releasing for Switch on January 17, and four characters from it are joining the mobile game for a Paralogue story called "A Star Is Born."
Fire Emblem Heroes is gaining Eleonora and her Mirage Longbow, Kiria with her Mirage Rod, Mamori and her Mirage Axe, and Tsubasa and her Mirage Feather. All four characters are joining the game on January 19 at 11pm PT (January 20 at 7am UTC.) This means that players will have some time to meet them in the Switch game (which was originally released for the Wii U) before fighting with them in Heroes.
All four characters are able to summon spirits based on Fire Emblem characters in the original RPG--it plays more like Shin Megami Tensei than a classic Fire Emblem game.
Fire Emblem Heroes is one of many mobile titles Nintendo now has, including Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and Mario Kart Tour. The company has previously said that it is wary of how these games treat microtransactions.
Tired of collecting bee nests and having bees get angry at you? How about when creating that one map and needing patrols to spawn so you can ambush the player when they least expect it? It’s that time again where we’re starting off our journey towards the next major update. Annoyed that you keep falling down ladders with your elytra or having your potion effects removed by a beacon?
Yeah, I thought so. Mojang is listening and they’ve heard you as they’ve released the first pre-release of the year for Java Edition!. We’re still a good ways out from the Nether Update, but while we’re waiting let’s take a look at what the first pre-release for Java Edition has to offer.
Bees no longer anger when a nearby nest/hive is destroyed using a silk touch tool
Added doPatrolSpawning and doTraderSpawning game rules that control spawning of patrols and wandering traders, respectively
Added gui_light option in block models to allow controlling light when rendering model as item in GUI
Controls light when rendering block model inside slot. If set to side, model will be rendered like block. If set to front, model is shaded like flat item
Fixed bugs
MC-862 – Spawn protection doesn’t work for item frames, paintings and armor stands
MC-1541 – Beacon effect removes potion effect of the same type
MC-51053 – Furnace minecarts lose power after navigating corners
MC-150575 – Concrete powder does not turn into concrete when letting it fall beside water
MC-153987 – Falling down ladders while wearing elytra
MC-165695 – Hoppers harvesting honeycomb from bee hives and bee nests only pick up one honeycomb
MC-167201 – Invisible glowing entities do not respect their team color
MC-167219 – Reloading a resource pack enough times will cause intense lag
MC-167220 – Items on marker armor stands no longer glow
MC-167235 – Distance from where you can enter a bed is off center
MC-167344 – com.mojang.blaze3d.platform.ClipboardManager leaks direct buffers
MC-167416 – Distance from where a monster will stop you from sleeping is off center
MC-167444 – iron_golem_crackiness_* textures show up on invisible iron golems that are damaged
MC-167709 – Bees that ride a boat, minecart or other entities when entering their hive or nest can’t leave the hive or nest ever again
MC-168091 – Concrete powder doesn’t convert into concrete when dropped into deep water
MC-168230 – End crystal beam is dark / desaturated
MC-168467 – Bees do not remember how many crops they’ve pollinated
MC-169157 – Breaking a hive with obstructed front makes bees vanish
That’s a lot of fixes! I can’t wait to dive right in and test the changes for myself. Don’t forget, if you’re planning on using a pre-existing world to back it up! Don’t want all your hard work to disappear right? After you’ve done that and if you find any bugs, be sure to report them on Mojang’s Issue Tracker or if you have a suggestion or a change you’d like to see, head on over to Mojang’s Feedback website!
Video Game Deep Cuts: Punk Nomad Disco Elysium Switch
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner, No More Robots advisor), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.
The latest highlights include a great piece on a unique Ubisoft ‘fixer’, the unlikely story behind Disco Elysium’s success, the underappreciated Switch games of last year, and a whooole bunch more great articles besides. And also a new piece from my Game Discoverability Now! newsletter – sign up, if you haven’t. And as always, thanks for reading!
Analyzing the top Steam tags(Simon Carless / Game Discoverability Now! – ARTICLE) “As Danny notes, the top tag on the separate ‘all-time tags’ list is, uhh, Batman. And you probably won’t be using that theme unless you have a license from DC or are feeling VERY optimistic about how copyright works in 2020. But here’s some things I took away from the list.”
Kids’ Video Game Obsession Isn’t Really About Video Games. It’s About Unmet Psychological Needs(Andrew Kinch & Nir Eyal / Nir & Far – ARTICLE) “Some kids suffer from gaming disorders, but such dependencies are often coupled with pre-existing conditions including problems with impulse control. This, of course, does not abdicate companies from their moral responsibility to help problem gamers. It’s time they implement policies to identify and help those with disorders.”
How Planet Zoo narrowed 2 million animals down to 76(Nate Crowley / RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE) “Let’s get this out there first, because it’s important: Bauwens’ favourite animal is the tapir, which I respect (I respect the opinion, that is. But I also respect the tapir itself. Only the Malayan version though, as it looks like a nice pig crossed with a battenberg cake.”
Episodic Games Were the Future, and the Future Was Dead on Arrival(Imran Khan / VICE – ARTICLE) “This might be why the idea of the episodic games, splitting a video game’s narrative structure into different episodes more akin to television shows than movies, was so exciting when it first became a viable reality. That excitement now feels ancient and naive on the other side of the decade, as we now eulogize the episodic game model well before it fulfilled its potential.”
Ten 2019 Switch Games You Probably Didn’t Play (But Should)(Shaun Musgrave / TouchArcade – ARTICLE) “The truth is that the Nintendo Switch had a lot of cool games released for it this year, and there are plenty of games outside of my top ten that I think are very good. As such, I’ve decided to put together a list of 10 games released in 2019 that many of you probably didn’t play. [SIMON’S NOTE: don’t forget the TouchArcade Patreon!]”
Pauline Jacquey’s World Tour: The Unlikely Journey of Ubisoft’s Punk Nomad Fixer(Samuel Horti / EGM Now – ARTICLE) “She’s known as a fixer at Ubisoft: a “shrink” or “counselor” that can turn around troubled teams. Over the years she’s been parachuted into different studios to listen to their problems and navigate creative impasses. Two years ago, she was the one who needed help.”
How one company orchestrated a talent war between Twitch, Mixer, and YouTube(Mitch Reames / The Verge – ARTICLE) “Back when Freytag founded Loaded in 2016, he never could have predicted his agency would have been at the center of a competition between tech’s largest corporations. “I was certainly going to disrupt the space,” Freytag says. “In the sense that the influencer world is so new and no one knew what was going on. Early on, I knew I was going to disrupt things. What I was going to disrupt, only time would tell.””
From surgery simulators to medical mishaps in space, video game tech is helping doctors at work(Elise Favis / Washington Post – ARTICLE) “The zoo’s request was an unusual one, even by industry standards, but unpredictability is commonplace in the medical world. His experience with Jabari is one of many reasons Barad sought a solution for surgeons and doctors so often faced with unknowns. These moments drove him to dedicate his career to making surgery training more efficient by using video game technology.”
‘Wattam’ Is a Children’s Guide to Eco-Radicalism(Lewis Gordon / VICE – ARTICLE) “More often than not, Wattam centers on communal solutions. Just after the game’s theatrical opening, the mayor becomes upset but his tears are far from useless. I’m able to use them to water the soil. Out of his sadness sprouts a flower and before long, I’m forming a friendship circle involving two more flowers, the mayor, a giant rock, and a disembodied nose.”
The 25 Best Gaming Handhelds, Ranked(Chris Kohler / Kotaku – ARTICLE) “I recently got a Nintendo Switch Lite, and I love it. I wanted to write about the joys of that dying breed of device, the dedicated portable gaming machine. And I thought to myself, how can I write this in a way that would make the largest number of people hate me? And I realized: a ranked list!”
Steam in Graphs in 2019(Sergio Garces / Gamasutra Blogs – ARTICLE) “There was a recent article by Danny Weinbaum where he approximated the revenue generated by almost every game in Steam and then used the data to draw some conclusions. I was inspired by it, so I took a stab at recreating and validating the numbers. I wanted to understand not just what the revenue estimate is, but how accurate of a guess it is: in other words, what would be a reasonable range for that revenue estimate.”
Tales from the New Small Screen: Inside the World of Mobile Game Writers(Jacob Farmer / EGM Now – ARTICLE) “Stirpe wrote for Frozen Adventures, Jam City’s recently released match-3. With Disney’s resilient Frozen IP and the corresponding release of Frozen 2 in theaters, Frozen Adventures is a surefire hit. Still, writing any match-3 game comes with unique challenges, especially when these titles are paired with characters and narrative storylines that advance as you complete each level. Level counts in the hundreds are common, and content updates can occur weekly.”
How Game Companies Use Credits To Reward, Or Punish, Developers (Forest Lassman / Kotaku – ARTICLE) “Hundreds of people can toil for years to make a single game, often putting in 80-hour workweeks or more. And unless you’re a creative director or one of the few other people who does interviews at E3 or guests on a podcast, the game’s credits roll is probably going to be the only place that work gets acknowledged.”
Creating the ever-improvising text adventures of AI Dungeon 2(John Harris / Gamasutra – ARTICLE) “Machine generated text as a way to respond to conversational, human-provided text input has been an application of computing since at least Eliza, but AI Dungeon 2 takes it to new extremes. It basically pretends to be one of those old Infocom-style adventure games, but with no limits on what the player can enter. Whatever the input is, it improvises events through prose, to react to them.”
Forget Tiny Living, in The Sims 4 builders have achieved greatness with Grand Designs(Kat Brewster / RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE) “I love Grand Designs. I can’t help it. There is something soothing about watching people with more money than sense trying to build a mansion fit for the Hollywood Hills half underground in North London, forced to come to terms with the limits of their own ambition. Kevin McCloud bears witness to crumbling foundations, wrecked marriages, and the declaration of bankruptcies. Above all else, Grand Designs is a grand display of perseverance. And so, I wondered, “What are the Grandest Designs of The Sims?””
Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers(Sam Dean / LA Times – ARTICLE) “But despite this swell in labor activism, employees at no major video game studios and only a handful of tech offices have formally voted to form or join a union. A new campaign launched Tuesday by one of the nation’s largest labor unions — and spearheaded by one of the leading video game industry activists in Southern California — aims to change that.”
Inside TASBot’s semi-secret, probably legal effort to control the Nintendo Switch(Kyle Orland / Ars Technica – ARTICLE) “In testing on Breath of the Wild, for instance, the team tried recording a simple input macro of Link jumping off a tower. But Cecil said slight, frame-level differences between the Linux recording and the controller polling rate during playback led to butterfly effect-style chaos, such that “loading the same savestate and playing [the input] back would result in us landing in a different spot, sometimes substantially so.” Using digital inputs on a more deterministic game like Super Mario Maker 2 eliminates those problems, Cecil added.”
The Best Mobile Games Of 2019(Jared Nelson / TouchArcade – ARTICLE) “We say this about every year but it continues to be true: 2019 was a hell of a year for great iOS games. There was the usual slate of mobile original titles, but this year seemed to be particularly heavy in terms of high-profile ports of console and PC games too. And let’s not forget that this was the year that subscription gaming came into its own, mostly thanks to Apple leading the charge with Apple Arcade.”
The making of Disco Elysium: How ZA/UM created one of the most original RPGs of the decade(Alex Wiltshire / GamesRadar – ARTICLE) “ZA/UM. As a studio name, it’s awfully bold and affected. A little awkward and intractable, too; it doesn’t look right when not in all-caps. But for co-founder Robert Kurvitz, “It just looks hella cool, that slash there. It looks like the technical name of something that definitely exists and weighs eight tonnes.” And then there’s its Russian meaning, which is ‘from the mind’ or ‘for the mind’. “Just calling something that, it looks cultural. Like it’s not laughable.””
——————
[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
GameStop says its unexpectedly low holiday sales follow an industry-wide trend
GameStop reported $1.83 billion in global sales for the nine week period that made up 2019’s holiday shopping season, a 27.5 percent decrease from the same period last year.
As with other year-over-year sales hits the company has reported as of late, GameStop largely attributes the holiday decrease to a pre-next gen lull it says is being felt across the industry, but this particular holiday slide was still below the company’s expectations.
The holiday season was so far below expectations that GameStop has revised its sales outlook for fiscal 2019 as a whole. Previously, it had predicted comparable store sales to see “a decline in the high-teens”; the updated guidance now expects a decline from 19 percent to 21 percent.
“We expected a challenging sales environment for the holiday season as our customers continue to delay purchases ahead of anticipated console launches in late 2020,” reads a statement from GameStop CEO George Sherman. “However, the accelerated decline in new hardware and software sales coming out of black Friday and throughout the month of December was well below our expectations, reflective of overall industry trend.”
Sherman goes on to note that GameStop saw positive growth surrounding the Nintendo Switch, something he says reinforces the company’s belief that new hardware like the coming Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 wil strengthen sales down the line.
Upcoming Mobile Games 2020 – The best new iOS & Android Releases!
By Michael Coffer14 Jan 2020
For mobile games, 2020 is stacked, 2020 is perfect, and we’re here to see you through it. This living text will continually document the biggest and best games for our favorite niches and genres. Scroll down for details, or just scan the list for quick inspiration.
Upcoming Mobile Games 2020
Commandos 2 (Squad Tactics/Strategy)
Company of Heroes (Historical Wargame)
Rebel Cops (Tactical Strategy)
Roll for the Galaxy Digital (Board Game)
Slay the Spire (Card Game/Roguelike)
Teamfight Tactics Mobile (Autobattler)
Legends of Runeterra (CCG)
League of Legends: Wild Rift (MOBA)
Fury of Dracula (Board Game)
Mage Knight (Board Game)
Sagrada (Board Game)
Wings of Glory (Board Game)
Root (Board Game)
Runescape Mobile (MMO)
Diablo Immortal (Action-RPG)
EVE Echoes (MMO/Simulation)
There’s a lot of cool stuff potentially due out this this year, let’s take a look at them in more depth…
Company of Heroes (Real-Time Historical Wargame)
Release: Early 2020
Company of Heroes is an oldie but a goodie, and Feral is slowly documenting their development process with blog updates. Starting with D-Day and going forward, the game covers WWII’s pivotal battles in the European theater. It will be excellent but without early access or excessive chatter, the exact timeframe on this one is difficult to pinpoint. It was supposed to release in December 2019 though, so it can’t be too far off.
Commandos 2 (Squad Tactics/Strategy)
Release: TBA pending console/PC rollout
Commandos 2 is taking its sweet time coming but will be a sore sight when it debuts in 2020. The game’s delays are due to its ambitions, for in addition to refining its control scheme it is also aiming to launch on consoles and PC. It’s a mixture of squad-command and RTS, and manages to merge historical scenarios with detailed characters and specialisations..
Rebel Cops (Tactical Strategy)
Release: “Soon” (as of Nov 2019)
<
The mobile version of the spin-off to This is the Police was announced in November last year – it essentially doubles down on the gritty Police drama’s tactical layer. The player must lead a “ragtag squad of cops in rebellion against their town’s new criminal power.” The game is already out on PC if you want to give it a browse, otherwise look out for it’s iOS and Android release sometime soon.
Fury of Dracula (Board Game)
Release: TBC
This was one of the first announcements of 2020. Fresh of their new found independence, Nomad Games are striding forward with gumption. They’ve acquired the license from Games Workshop to develop a digital version of the fourth edition of Fury of Dracula, which is a classic asymmetrical board game from the late 80’s. We know a mobile port is ‘likely’. but we’re not sure what the timetable will be in terms of platforms and in what order. We’re optimistic at the moment for a 2020 release, but you never know.
Roll for the Galaxy Digital (Board Game)
Release: Beta running, full release TBC 2020
Not much is known about this one other than Temple Gates are working on it. They’ve made some decent board game ports in the past so chances are good this one will be pretty decent as well. They were accepting beta sign-ups at the start of December 2019, so with any luck it won’t be too much longer before we see this one hit our mobile shelves.
Slay the Spire (Card Game/Roguelike)
Release: Early 2020
We were expecting this to drop last year, but in December the developers said the mobile port had to be delayed into 2020 so they could finish up the console version, which would in turn allow the mobile version to be deployed quicker and smoother. We were told “early” 2020 though, so hopefully it won’t be much longer.
Dire Wolf Digital
Riot aren’t the only company with the potential to take 2020 by storm (See below) – Dire Wolf Digital still have a bunch of licenses they’re set to develop. They most recently released Yellow & Yangtzeat the end of 2019, but we’re not sure which order they want to tackle the rest of them in. Just to recap what they’re working on:
Mage Knight (Boardgame, Classic)
Wings of Glory (Boardgame, Historical)
Sagrada (Boardgame, Aesthetic)
Root (Boardgame, Asymmetrical)
A RIOT OF COLOR…with scads of stuff from Riot Games
Teamfight Tactics Mobile (Autobattler)
Release: Mid-March 2020
This is confirmed to be coming to mobile, sooner rather than later this year. It’s a cute if boilerplate take on 2019’s Auto Chess, with hexes instead of a square-grid layout, and a battle roulette draft for equipment builds. More swingy, not less, in an already chaotic genre for something ostensibly ‘Chess’ based.
Legends of Runeterra (CCG)
Release: TBA 2020
Riot’s (incredibly belated) answer to Hearthstone. Just the other year it felt like MOBAs were the mobile hotness, now the shoe is on the other foot and everyone with a franchise is eager to pump out a card battler. The rules quirk here is the phase system which sees players taking turns attacking every other turn. An open beta will be hitting PC later this month if anyone wants to give it a go there, as it’ll be cross-platform with mobile at launch so your progress will carry over.
League of Legends: Wild Rift (MOBA)
Release: TBA 2020
A true mobile variant of Legaue of Legends for our phones, keeping much of the original alive. It’s a twin-stick control scheme with a slimmed-down roster. So not a clone or port, but tweaked to be a close as possible. Footage and early impressions are hard to come by, as this is just now entering beta, but it could be a killer substitute for LoL’s dedicated fans.
The Best of the Rest
EVE Echoes (MMO/Simulation)
Release: Currently in Beta. Full release late 2020
This EVE Online spin-off is well into its beta test. Features are slowly being added but early feedback indicates that the grand, sweeping scope of the classic Eve with a minimum of the necessary trimming to make it work on mobile. Slowly, steadily it’ll grow into the sci-fi second life that its parent game provides. Vast military and economic campaigns coordinated with a great number of other players.
Runescape Mobile (MMO)
Release: TBA 2020, Early Access available now.
As the video trumpeted above, Runescape Mobile is currently in Early Access on Google Play. It’s very much an early-access ride, though, with iOS and a full launch still on the books for later this year. Not to be confused with Oldschool Runescape, this MMO is accessible and crossplatform, looking to innovate as much as capitalize on people’s deep-seated nostalgia for the original’s web experience.
Diablo Immortal (Action-RPG)
Release: TBA 2020
Project is still alive and well as of BlizzCon 2019, but updates are few and far in-between. Quality Action-RPGs are in short supply, so it will inevitably garner interest once it debuts. In the meantime the genre has diversified and evolved, what with Path of Exile 2’s announcement. Based on the level of polish in the trailer, a release this year is probably in the cards but for now Blizzard is playing this one close to the chest, with no additional information or access outside of their announcements.
Release: Early Access available, full release 2020
It’s now out in Early Access in most major territories, although the ‘full’ release won’t be till later 2020. The creative sandbox aspect of this only gets stronger with the augmented reality elements. Will become a worldwide time-sink for the craft-y kind. This is more of an open-ended, rolling early access literally sweeping across the globe piece by piece. 1.0 can’t come fast enough, and if Mojang knows to seize the moment it’ll be here this year.
More upcoming mobile games 2020
This list isn’t extensive – there’s plenty we’ve probably missed out on for forgotten about. We’ll add in new games as they get announced or flagged to your attention, but here are few quick notes to keep in mind. We’ll rotate these games into the lists above as we find out more information:
A new MMO based on Final Fantasy XIV
A Might & Magic based Auto Chess game (with Battle Royale?)
Magic: Manastrike – Magic meets Clash Royale
Knights of Ages – an Arthurian legend based tactical strategy game
War Tortoise 2
Missing in Action – 2019 No-Shows
These games were announced last year but never arrived, and have not released any new information as to when they might be releasing.
Phantom Doctrine (Turn-based Strategy)
Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad (Collectable RPG/Battler Thing)
Game of Thrones: Beyond the Wall (As Above)
Out of the Park GO! (Sports/Management)
Missed anything, agree or disagree with our picks? Write, comment or tweet us, and by championing those hidden gems, everyone will benefit. Expect constant revisions with updated timelines and members as more developments come to light.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-15-2020, 12:44 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Dynamics 365 Commerce: Redefining shopping with a unified solution
The retail industry has been going through tremendous change and transformation over the past decade. Many have speculated that traditional brick and mortar retail is dying, and that customers are moving completely to online platforms for their shopping needs. This is, however, not the case. According to a report by the National Federation of Retail, retail storefronts in the USA have continued to grow at almost 4 percent annually since 2010 along with the steady double-digit growth of online retail. Along with this, nearly all of the top 50 online retailers also have physical stores.
Even though e-commerce growth continues to outpace physical stores, the value of growth is still much higher in physical retail outlets. E-commerce in a majority of cases is also not a standalone channel but used in conjunction with traditional and emerging channels to service customer needs like buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) or Click and Collect. Location is still a major part of customer shopping habits, but with this we have also seen that customer expectations around shopping have changed. Gone are the days of store agents being the exclusive experts in product knowledge. Customers now have more access to product information, price visibility, and availability than ever before. With this comes the need for retail to look at customer engagement across all channels and ensure their business is enabled to deliver on these new heightened expectations. In the next few years, e-commerce will no longer be a major differentiator for retailers, but rather enabling unified retail commerce is required to succeed in the world of ever more demanding customer expectations.
But this is easier said than done. Many retail businesses are struggling with disparate commerce systems that create more of a disconnect with customers than opportunities to engage. Even though unified commerce is not a new concept, many retailers have found it difficult to understand where to start.
It is with this in mind that Microsoft announced Dynamics 365 Commerce, an evolution of Dynamics 365 Retail, that will become broadly available on February 3, 2020. This release adds e-commerce to our solution and is built from a proven content management system used by Microsoft online storefronts for years. Dynamics 365 Commerce is, however, not limited to e-commerce, but sets out to simplify the process of unifying customer shopping experiences through an end-to-end commerce platform that brings together e-commerce, in-store, back office, and call center along with enabling easier integration to emerging channels through an API driven headless commerce engine.
Microsoft and Forbes also recently undertook a joint executive and consumer research program that highlighted the changing expectation of consumers and how retail business can better cater to these evolving needs. Let’s explore how Dynamics 365 Commerce is helping retailers address these prevailing needs in their businesses.
Delivering exceptional and personalized customer experiences
Customer experience is not only one of the top growth drivers in retail but according to the recent Microsoft and Forbes study, is also considered to be the top strategic priority amongst retail executives, for 33 percent of retail executives. The challenge is defining what comprises exceptional customer experience for each individual business, as customer expectations vary by retail micro-vertical, product category, and the customers themselves. It’s up to retailers to best identify how the experience aligns to their brand promise. Once customer experience is defined, retailers need to be able to deliver on this promise by having technology that enables next generation customer engagement and doesn’t limit their ability to innovate and create differentiating experiences for customers.
According to the Microsoft and Forbes study, offering personalized shopping is becoming more and more prominent with over 49 percent of consumers aged between 18 to 24 saying they are more likely to purchase from retailers that offer personalized shopping experiences. The goal of personalization is to create a bond between the retailer and the customer by providing products and/or services based on previous engagements across all retail channels. This elevates the engagement beyond a simple transaction to an experience more akin to an interaction with a trusted partner or friend.
There is a major dependency on technology to achieve this next level of personalization. Retailers require connected and real time insights into customers and operations. Dynamics 365 Commerce natively brings together all aspects of customer interaction across e-commerce, call center, and in store as well as easy integration to emerging channels to help retailers gain a comprehensive view of customers. Couple this with out-of-the-box integration into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and retailers can not only offer AI driven recommendations based on customer purchase history, favorites, and trends, but also provide in store agents with tools to see a 360 degree view of the customer and enable rich engagement throughout the sales journey.
Ste. Michelle Wine Estates is the largest premium wine distributor in the United States. They’re renowned for making some of the best wines in the world and pride themselves in delivering amazing wine tasting experiences at wineries for their 14 distinct brands. Ste. Michelle recently went live with Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver an end-to-end retail solution for their business. Being able to track customer engagement across modernized e-commerce sites to their wine clubs and call centers mean that Ste. Michelle can offer more personalized customer recommendations and experiences in their tasting rooms.
“We found our answer in Dynamics 365 Commerce. We now have a centralized repository where our data works together to provide a seamless experience for our guests along with better insight into our operations.” – Francis Perrin, Chief Marketing Officer, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates
The importance of enabling omnichannel and streamlining operations
The days of customer engagement on a single channel are long in the past. Customers expect to be able to shop wherever, whenever and through whichever channel they choose. Retailers also recognize the importance of omnichannel with 47 percent of executives from the Microsoft and Forbes survey ranking this as one of their top three priorities.
Many retailers still struggle with enabling an omnichannel experience due to complexities of internal technology and disconnected or disparate systems. Dynamics 365 Commerce makes this much simpler as it was built in the cloud to deliver a native omnichannel solution for retailers.
Columbia Sportswear Company has a portfolio of brands for active lives and is a leader in the global active lifestyle apparel, footwear, accessories, and equipment industry. They chose Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver enhanced experiences for their retail customers.
A connected commerce solution is not just important in how customers engage and shop in retail, but also how a unified solution can enable better engagement from firstline workers and ensure optimal operational efficiencies across your supply chain. Dynamics 365 Commerce allows retailers to streamline their operations with infused intelligence that permeates throughout their business. Store staff can gain better insights into stock availability, cross application support for task management between Commerce and Microsoft Teams, along with commerce analytics that allows managers to track performance and insights to help them make better decisions.
An established and well-loved brand, Dr. Martens has grown over many years to become a global lifestyle footwear brand with sales to 63 countries across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia. Like many established businesses, they had a plethora of old IT systems and processes that have served them well, but could not support their ambitious growth plans. Dr Martens looked to Dynamics 365 Commerce to bring a range of isolated solutions together and deliver a single source of truth for their business to operate from.
Dynamics 365 Commerce at NRF 2020
This week saw another great showing of Microsoft retail solutions at NRF 2020. Along with a great range of 1st party and partner innovations, we showcased the advancements and innovations present in Dynamics 365 Commerce. This included the announcement of our official release date on February 3, 2020 and the native integration of intelligent solutions from Microsoft including Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, and Microsoft Power Platform.
If you would like to learn more about our offering for Dynamics 365 Commerce, please visit our official web page or contact us for a demonstration or more information.
Streets Of Rage 4 Will Get A Physical Release Thanks To Limited Run Games
Your prayers have been answered, folks: Streets of Rage 4 will indeed be receiving a physical release, and it’s all thanks to Limited Run Games.
The company, which is now well known amongst the Switch community as a publisher of physical indie releases, has announced the news in a tweet. More details are expected to be shared in the future, but you can check out the announcement for yourself below.
Destiny 2 Has A New Secret Quest: "Explore The Corridors Of Time" Guide
Destiny 2 has a long history of sneaking secret quests into the game when players least expect them. There's a bit of a lull in the Season of Dawn starting today, which marks the end of the four-week holiday event, The Dawning. But while it seemed like Guardians would get a week off before more content starts hitting the game, that's apparently not the case--a new quest has appeared, complete with some involved puzzles that the community is working to solve.
The quest returns you to the Corridors of Time, that weird interdimensional gateway used by the Vex and which is linked to Osiris's Sundial on Mercury. We last ventured through the Corridors of Time to find and save Saint-14 earlier in the season. Now that that's accomplished, Osiris wants you to head back into the Corridors and explore them to figure out what their deal is. The trouble is, the Corridors are a maze and the path through them isn't yet clear.
To start the quest, head to Osiris on Mercury and talk to him. Claim the "Exploring the Corridors of Time" quest from him, then activate the Sundial to transport yourself back to the strange realm. After that, it's a matter of figuring out the path; the Corridors are a series of doorways that link to big rooms full of Vex, and each of the doorways is marked with a sign. Community members on Destiny's r/raidsecrets subreddit are currently working to determine which paths are required to navigate the Corridors and avoid getting lost.
The codes denoting your pathway through the Corridors of Time appear on the obelisks. Read them starting with the top-right corner and going clockwise, with the final symbol being the one in the middle.
As of this writing, six of the pathways have been cracked (and we've verified that they work), with the Corridors dishing out lore drops as you complete each one. The codes for each pathway are appearing periodically on the Sundial obelisks scattered around the solar system. They seem to be time-locked, with a new code appearing periodically, leading to a different lore entry Triumph each time. The paths lead you to a place called the Timelost Vault, and activating an object there (marked, ominously, with "???") reveals a bunch of symbols on the floor below that seem like they'll factor in later in the quest.
Once you reach the Vault and activate it, you can keep walking forward to get teleported back to the beginning of the Corridors. Approach the blank sign to the left of the first door to reset the Corridors so you can start the next pathway.
