This Week In Gaming #10 (7th July – 13th July) | Weekly News Summary

Suppose you have scoured the web for amazing rumors and leaks regarding gaming but wondered how to catch up with all of them under a single video/article. In that matter, you have stumbled in the right place. This 8-minute short youtube video will act as the weekly stuffing you crave to keep up with the latest ventures in the gaming industry. This Week In Gaming is eXputer’s notion to concentrate weekly gaming news into an easy-to-read. edifying, and a satisfying youtube video. The ninth episode of This Week In Gaming is officially available on eXputer’s YouTube channel.

The first half of July was nothing short of memorable news and exhilarating moments in the gaming sphere. News ranged from the saddening announcement of Rockstar shifting away its resources from Red Dead Online completely to Grand Theft Auto VI to good events like Xbox Series X|S surpassing a quarter-million sales in Japan, and much more. Recline into the couch with a bag full of snacks and dive right into a short Youtube video filled with relaxing-lofi and informative news pieces. On the other hand, this summary version of the video will serve as an ideal delicacy for bibliophiles’ eyes.

Starting with intriguing news, Sonic Origins is barely surviving on Steam with concurrent players dropping down to barely a hundred numerals. The failure has been caused by a buggy launch full of problems and bad optimizations. According to the Steam tracker website, SteamDB, the all-time high player count was measly 2,668 numerals. Players and developer, Simon Thomley have raised concerns regarding the failure.

The presumed dead game, Beyond Good and Evil 2 will start external playtesting this month and has been in development all this time. Beyond Good and Evil 2 had been in “development hell” for 7 years, which means the game is near 9 years of development.

The talk surrounding the game had vanished due to no updates on its development. It is not confirmed how far the game is in development or when it will release. Ubisoft is slated to partake in a new showcase event this September, but it’s not clear if the showcase event will include Beyond Good and Evil 2.

The mesmerizing platforming and adventure title, Oddworld: Soulstorm seems to be slating towards a Nintendo Switch release. Recently a new listing was found for the game on a pre-order listing of Dutch retailer Nedgame. The site also elaborates that the platform for the release is the Nintendo Switch. The site also mentions that the game will come out on 31-12-2022. 

There are two distinct listings available—one for the regular edition for €49,99 and one for the collectors’ edition for €149,99. It could be a mistake or a typo as there are not many PS exclusives for Nintendo. However, things might be changing as the game was ported over to PC successfully on 21 Jun 2022.

Cross-Core Customizations might be heading to Halo Infinite as rumors suggest. Leaked images reveal potential customizations, as well as unreleased armor coatings. In the past, Players even discovered that AI bots will sometimes spawn in Halo Infinite with cross-core armors, a phenomenon that has been reported since the title came out.

Hunt: Showdown developers, social media manager Bence Hamos, and publishing manager Hans discussed in a Youtube video why monetization in games is necessary for sustainability. The clarification also cleared the fog regarding recent changes made in Hunt: Showdown, like changes to Bloodborn prices, in-game pop-up messages, etc. The changes were made to ensure the game keeps receiving new updates and the economy stays balanced.

Hans clarified, “For any game, you can only sell a finite number of copies so before it would become an unstable revenue source we had to move away from this reliance, and make sure we got a better revenue stream from our DLC and bloodbond items.” Moreover, he elaborated, “it’s a steady source of revenue that supports us in our ability to release free content updates and give the game, keep the game going.” 

The industry insider, Syluxhunter debunked rumors of a 2D Donkey Kong game in development while replying to a tweet. He iterated regarding the year-old tweet with false info, “Instead of pretending to be an insider, maybe you should try writing fan fiction because that’s basically all this thread is.” However, Sylux has not denied that the Donkey Kong game is in development.

Sylux further elaborated to clear the fog, “I am not denying that there will be a Donkey Kong game. There are reliable people who claimed there was one coming before this clown. Marko’s information is very clearly made up, however.” Perhaps the game could be in 3D like how other franchises, such as Mario and Sonic have ascended from 2D to 3D.

PUBG’s major patch 18.2 has brought a new map, weapon, vehicle, next-gen optimizations, and much more. The update also brings new graphical options alongside a slew of other changes to ensure modernity. The new map, Deston is the same size as Erangel and Miramar (8×8 km). It also incorporates a wide array of biomes and areas of interest, like flooded downtown, muddy swamps, and skylines, to name a few.

The update will also incorporate a new feature called Ascender, which will aid players to climb long skylines and recreating Mission Impossible moments. Furthermore, the latest patch also brings a “Workshop” which lets you create your own skins with “never-seen-before” materials. There is also a choice to switch between two types of anti-aliasing: FXAA (fast approximate anti-aliasing) or TAA (temporal anti-aliasing).

In the most unfortunate news of this episode of This Week In Gaming, Rockstar Games has shifted its resources from Red Dead Online to utilize them in Grand Theft Auto VI. This decision means that no major updates will come out for Red Dead Online which has caused an outrage in the community.

Rockstar Games also cited they would persist to support GTA Online through major updates in the future, primarily after the title was so popular on the next-gen consoles. Rockstar Games iterated, “Over the past few years, we have been steadily moving more development resources towards the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series — understanding more than ever the need to exceed players.”

An Ex-Bethesda developer, Nate Purkeypile iterated that Unreal Engine 5 makes indie development easy. He cited in a series of tweets, “A lot of people ask me why I left to be a solo indie dev after 14 years at Bethesda working on games like Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield. There’s a lot of reasons why, so I figured I’d do a little thread on it.“

Nate also discussed the role of modern game engines and how easy it is to create open worlds nowadays. He elaborated, “Tools have improved dramatically over the years. 10 years ago, there’s no way I would have thought it was a good idea to make an open-world game by myself. Now there are things like Unreal 5, Houdini, VR sculpting, Megascans, and lots of other tools.”

Nate left Bethesda to work on his own game dubbed, “The Axis Unseen” which is a solo project from the indie developer, brewed in Unreal Engine 5. The game features an intriguing premise in which you have to kill monsters from old fables over a metal soundtrack.

Slating towards hardware news in this session of This Week In Gaming, Xbox Series X|S surprisingly overtook PlayStation sales in Japan. Sony is based in Japan so knowing that the Xbox has been outsold in their own home country was more of a psychological hit than an economic one. The rise of Xbox sales is a pleasant surprise as the initial Xbox One hardly sold over 100,000 units in its whole lifetime.

The lifetime total of Xbox Series X|S stands now at 260,504 units in total. The next-gen Xbox consoles will outsell their predecessors in approx nine years if the current trend continues. The falling behind of PlayStation sales can be contributed to hardware shortages that hit Sony the hardest.