Sony Reveals PlayStation Classic Mini-Console, Comes With 20 PlayStation Games
Sony has announced the PlayStation Classic, a mini-console akin to the NES Classic or SNES Classic from Nintendo, which contains twenty PlayStation games built-in.
While Sony has not given a full list of all the games available yet, their website announcing the product lists Final Fantasy VII, Jumping Flash, Ridge Racer Type 4, Tekken 3, and Wild Arms as games included. Those games are also included in the reveal trailer, which you can find below.
The device has HDMI output and two controllers for local multiplayer titles. The miniature PlayStation will retail for $99 in the U.S. and is intended to release on December 3, twenty-four years to the day of the PlayStation's Japanese launch.
As part of Tokyo Game Show, Bandai Namco has released a new story trailer for One Piece: World Seeker. The newest game to borrow the license is unique in that One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda penned the story about Luffy ending up on Jewel Island near the Navy's prison colony.
It turns out to be a little more involved than Luffy showing up and making a bad day for the Navy, as two new Oda-designed characters are also taking part. As Luffy tends to do when he lands on an island, he meets a woman who has a problem and gets embroiled in helping her. In this case, she is the leader of the anti-Navy resistance, Jeanne. She must team up with Luffy to take down Isaac, the metal-handed warden of the prison system that is currently taking over her island.
One Piece: World Seeker was recently delayed to 2019 to polish the game up and will be releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Bandai Namco has revealed that Raphael, Soulcalibur's resident fencer who went from protagonist to antagonist over the course of the series, is back. Thanks to the magic of time travel and also, like, regular magic, Raphael can turn back the clock on becoming a vampire and instead just be a weird guy in a carnival of way weirder guys.
Raphael was leaked a few weeks ago through unofficial footage of a build that showed both him and Cervantes, both of whom have now been announced. If Bandai Namco were waiting to announce Cassandra, which clearly they must be, then now is a good time when we're all caught off-guard.
Soulcalibur VI is releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 19.
A new Nintendo Switch update, timed to release alongside the paid online subscription plan, has been released and is available for download now. The update adds Nintendo Online features like cloud saving, which is not available for every game, and perhaps an ill-timed addition of six new Toad icons.
The far bigger and decidedly surprisingly addition, however, is that digital games can now be shared among different consoles. Perhaps as a consequence of Nintendo now preventing Nintendo Network IDs from being unlinked to system profiles, you can now designate a Switch as a "Primary" system. On non-primary systems with the Nintendo profile signed in, digital content can be accessed whether or not that console was the purchasing console or not.
To put it another way, it seems to be very close to how Sony designates primary and non-primary PS4 consoles for accounts.
Nintendo explains the differences here, which also outlines key restrictions. From the page:
While using a non-primary console, you must have an active Internet connection to play downloadable content. If you lose your Internet connection while playing downloadable content on a non-primary console, your game will pause after a certain amount of time; however, once you connect online again, you will be able to resume from the point you left off. While using a non-primary console, downloadable content can only be started by the user that purchased the content. When using downloadable software on a non-primary console, your game will pause if your Nintendo Account is used to access downloadable software on any other Nintendo Switch console.This is, again, functionally fairly similar to the PlayStation 4 where the account that bought the software must be used to play it. Without an internet connection or if the account signs in elsewhere to play a digital game, it won't work. The only major difference between the Switch's version and the PS4 is that Nintendo doesn't indicate what the amount of time is for the game to pause, while on the PS4 it is fifteen minutes. The Switch being portable may also add a wrinkle to that.
Still, it's an extremely interesting thing they decided to sneak into this firmware update, regardless of whether or not there are restrictions.
The August data for U.S. video games are in from the National Purchase Diary, which tracks retail and some online sales depending on the publisher. August is traditionally known as the month where Madden releases and acts as a harbinger to a deluge of other games that didn't see fit to release in the early Summer months and this year is no exception.
Madden NFL 19 topped the list this year in software sold, making it the best launch month for a Madden game since Madden NFL 13 in 2012. While both debuts were huge, as a general rule, Madden tends to be the top game every August consistently except for the two years where NPD calendar's included it in September.
Madden, it turns out, is actually the only new listing of the top five this year. Monster Hunter World clawed its way back to the second spot thanks to the PC release, further solidifying Capcom's monstrous success with the game. Rainbow Six Siege jumped up six spots from the previous month, thanks partly due to aggressive free-play campaigns by Ubisoft and multiple eSports tournaments centered around the game.
Rounding out the top five are Grand Theft Auto V, the indomitable Rockstar game that has taken on the title of the most profitable piece of media of all time, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. This month will be the last month Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is tracked with online play being free, so it will be interesting to see if that affects the game's sales at all or if the addition of voice chat actually bolsters its sales.
Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Strikers is the next new game on the list. The Naruto-themed fighter did moderately well and proves how consistent anime games, at least of certain licenses, tend to be for Bandai Namco Entertainment. You can check out the top 20 below:
| Madden NFL 19 | 1 | |
| Monster Hunter: World | 2 | |
| Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege | 3 | |
| Grand Theft Auto V | 4 | |
| Mario Kart 8* | 5 | |
| Naruto To Boruto: Shinobi Striker | 6 | |
| God of War | 7 | |
| Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 | 8 | |
| The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* | 9 | |
| Super Mario Odyssey* | 10 | |
| Minecraft* | 11 | |
| Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy | 12 | |
| Far Cry 5 | 13 | |
| Monster Hunter: Generations Ultimate | 14 | |
| Call of Duty: WWII | 15 | |
| Mario Tennis Aces* | 16 | |
| Overwatch | 17 | |
| LEGO The Incredibles | 18 | |
| We Happy Few* | 19 | |
| The Crew 2 | 20 |
(*Not tracked digitally, only retail.)
It appears that Octopath Traveler, after performing above expectations in July, did not appear at all on this month's list. It ranked at sixth place of top selling Switch games, indicating a fairly steep drop for the exclusive RPG.
Perhaps most incredible is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game hit Xbox One backwards compatibility on August 28, which drove sales of the title to just behind God of War.
In terms of hardware, the Switch once again sold the most units of the month and still claims the strongest selling individual SKU, but the PlayStation 4 retains ownership of the year-to-date sales title. With Pokemon and Smash Bros. later this year, the Switch has a good chance of overcoming it, but the late-year surge of Red Dead Redemption II, Call of Duty, and Spider-Man makes it likely that PlayStation 4 sales won't slouch.
Speaking of Spider-Man, next month's NPD sales will include the webbed superhero's newest game, as well as Dragon Quest XI, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and the Switch version of Dragon Ball FighterZ, so it should be an interesting one to watch.
All month long we've been rolling out exclusive features covering Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. We've asked the game's developers hundreds of questions, and now it's your turn. Please leave a comment below for Treyarch's design director David Vonderhaar about Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and especially Blackout and we'll ask it on the next special edition episode of The Game Informer Show podcast.
So ask your question for Treyarch below and subscribe to The GI Show podcast to get ready for the answer!
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In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, players could easily spend 100 hours fighting monsters, completing sidequests, and collecting items. While that lengthy RPG was worthwhile (especially after post-release enhancements), repetitive and mundane quests made many of those hours feel like bloat. As a comparatively short expansion, Torna: The Golden Country had the opportunity to trim the fat and present a more focused experienced. It doesn’t. Instead, The Golden Country doubles down on the busywork, making more of it mandatory while providing fewer rewards for your effort.
The Golden Country details events that occurred 500 years before Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and that story is the biggest draw. You learn about characters and conflicts that were only briefly explored before, like Jin’s relationship with his driver Lora, and the confrontation between Mythra and Malos. The gravity of the tale depends on the player’s knowledge of these characters and how the world eventually changes in response to their deeds (this is not a good place for newcomers to join), and I enjoyed seeing the narrative threads that connect the two time periods. If you are a fan of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, these moments alone make The Golden Country worth playing, as long as you’re willing to pay the price.
Of the 17 hours it took me to finish The Golden Country, only about half of that time was spent participating in the new narrative. For the rest of it, you can expect to complete a series of boring fetch and collection quests thanks to the new community system. When you complete a sidequest, the quest-giver (and sometimes other characters) join your community, which is a visual representation of all of the people you’ve helped. They don’t impart any bonuses or benefits, but the more people you aid, the higher your community level rises. This seems like a neat idea at first, but the problem is that your community level only has one main purpose: preventing you from progressing in the main story. At a couple points, you aren’t allowed to take on the next central quest until you hit a community threshold. For example, you can’t fight the final boss until level four, which involves sinking hours into tedious chores that aren’t interesting, well-written, or connected to the narrative in any meaningful way. This structure kills the pacing and pointlessly inflates the amount of time The Golden Country requires.
Though it has trouble balancing quality and quantity, the game isn’t a constant slog. You get in a lot of battles along the way, and the combat system has been revamped and improved for this entry. It’s still a real-time affair that has you auto-attacking and activating skills, but an increased focused on character-switching makes the action feel more fluid. This means less waiting for cooldowns and more direct control, and it makes encounters more entertaining and engaging. However, one problem that still remains is variety; enemies rarely require any variation in your tactics, so regardless of your opponent, battles usually follow the pattern of lining up combos and stacking elemental orbs.
Despite the legacy issues, developer Monolith Soft has also learned some lessons in the last year. One of the biggest aggravations from the base game, shuffling party members to complete field skill challenges, is no longer a factor in The Golden Country. All available characters are always at your side, and they don’t have redundant skills (only one character has superstrength, for instance). I appreciated knowing my success or failure immediately without wading through menus to see if I can squeeze out one more point of fortitude somewhere. I’m also glad to see features that were added later to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 included here, like new game+ and an auto-battle option.
Cool story moments and combat improvements offset some of The Golden Country’s frustrations, but not enough to entirely redeem the experience. It is missing some of the best parts of the base game (like the thrill of collecting unique allies and completing quests tailored to them), but retains many stumbling blocks that impeded the fun before. However, the way the story fills in gaps and provides insight into the characters makes The Golden Country a satisfying addition for fans who have already built up a tolerance for the sometimes-baffling quirks of Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Late last night, Tri-Ace announced that their PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 RPG Resonance of Fate will be getting a 4K/HD Edition for PlayStation 4 and PC.
The sci-fi fantasy RPG was first released in 2010 and caught a lot of attention with its flashy and strategic combat. The game was originally published by Sega, but the company confirmed to us that they licensed the title to Tri-Ace for the HD remaster.
The 4K part of the title refers to the PC and PlayStation 4 Pro enhancements, while the base model will run the game at 1080p. All versions will run at 60 frames per second.
Resonance of Fate 4K/HD Edition will release worldwide on October 18 for $35.
If you've wanted to play Ghost Recon Wildlands and just haven't had the time or inclination to pick it up, or are worried you might not stick with it long enough to justify the price, then Ubisoft is offering a free weekend to help solve those problems.
Play Ghost Recon Wildlands FREE this weekend and get access to a ton of Year 2 content. Keep your progress and get the game for up to 60% off!
— Ghost Recon (@GhostRecon) September 18, 2018The free weekend begins on September 20th at 12:00 a.m. PDT and ends for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on September 24th at 10:00 a.m. PDT. PC ends a day earlier on September 23 at 1:00 p.m. PDT. Players will have access to the entire game, including the single-player open world and all the multiplayer during those times.
The well-loved and critically-acclaimed 2005 Nickelodeon cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender is getting a live-action reimagining on Netflix, the streaming company announced today.
All that exists alongside the announcement is a single piece of concept art showing a silhouetted Aang petting his air bison Appa in an icy field. It is likely that the project is extremely nascent and the deal was only recently signed, so a product probably won't arrive for a few years.
The cartoon series spawned a movie directed by Sixth Sense director M. Night Shamylan in 2010, which was financially successful but infamously critically panned. Shamylan tried to tone down the series' humor for the movie but ultimately was unsuccessful in his goal.
Transcendence is out today! Remember that one? It's that weird-looking horror VR game that Ubisoft revealed at E3 a couple of years ago. You know, the one that Elijah Wood directed? Hanson, Leo, and I checked it out today, and you can see what it's like. Warning: It's spooky!
Hanson didn't play in VR, so you don't need to worry about getting nauseated from wild camera motions. Also, you don't need to worry about us whizzing through puzzles before you get a chance to figure them out for yourself. Trust us: It was on purpose. You're welcome?
Transference is out today on PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One.
Square Enix revealed last week that The Last Remnant, a 360 and PC RPG released toward the beginning of the previous generation as one of the first major Japanese games on Unreal Engine 3, would be getting an HD remaster on PlayStation 4. As part of the remaster, the game was getting rebuilt from the ground up for Unreal Engine 4, which has not always worked out for remastered games. To illustrate the difference for this, though, Square Enix provided a comparison video of the original Xbox 360 release and the new PlayStation 4 one.
The remaster has higher resolution textures, a more modern lighting model, and framerate improvements. While the original game on Xbox 360 ran poorly, the PC version ran quite a bit better, and had been considered the definitive version of the game. Unfortunately, Square Enix delisted the game on PC shortly before announcing the remaster, but has provided no information on whether the remastered version will replace the delisted one. We have reached out to Square Enix on the subject multiple times but received no response.
The Last Remnant Remastered releases on PlayStation 4 worldwide on December 6.
A few weeks ago, Witcher developers CDProjekt Red announced that they were separating Gwent's single-player campaign out from the card game's client as a standalone release titled Thronebreaker. Since details were so scarce, not many expected that the excision would be quite so prompt, with CDPR confirming an October 24 release date for PC and a console release on December 4.
Thronebreaker was developed to be the single-player campaign for Gwent, itself spun-off from the side activity in the Witcher III: The Wild Hunt. According to CDPR, the campaign got too big to simply be a side thing for Gwent and is being released with "The Witcher Tales" as a subtitle. It is unclear if this means a new brand categorization that allows for further spin-offs within the Witcher universe.
Gwent itself is coming out of beta on October 23 on PC, one day ahead of Thronebreaker, and the same day as Thronebreaker on consoles.
When asked on Twitter if Thronebreaker would feature a cameo from Geralt, CDPR merely posted a gif of the white-haired warrior and left it at that.
Ongoing games must constantly rediscover themselves to remain relevant. Destiny 2: Forsaken is a robust adventure characterized by darker themes, character-driven storytelling, and a set of thoughtfully imagined missions, enemies, and locations. But it’s also a reinvention of the franchise’s core systems and goals. Catering chiefly to dedicated players, Forsaken’s lengthy grind, complex upgrade systems, and focus on the endgame loop doesn’t invite easy engagement from newcomers. Accessibility may have taken a hit, but the resulting depth provides replayability and richness, and makes the franchise stronger than it has been in years. The expansion draws on many of the previous iterations’ best traits and melds them into a day-to-day experience that is hard to walk away from.
Forsaken takes a hard turn from the quippy characters of Destiny 2’s base game, opting instead for a story about grief and the way it drives us into questionable action. The lead Guardian launches into a quest to mete out vengeance for the fallen Cayde-6, whose murder is a figurative death knell to Destiny’s more frivolous narrative tendencies. The campaign dovetails into lead side character Petra’s grief-fueled opening of a Pandora’s Box, and the evils subsequently unleashed. In both overall tone and character interactions, this is the most sophisticated narrative the series has presented.
Several excellent story missions evoke a classic Western, and play out on the wonderfully chaotic Tangled Shore destination. As I hunted down the members of a malicious criminal cadre, the level design helps each boss feel distinct, like the Mad Bomber’s scattered explosives, or the deceptive loot drops of the Trickster. These battles also showcase the aggressive new Scorn enemy group. From the swinging lanterns of the Ravagers to the totem-powered Chieftains, every one of the new baddies is fun to fight and challenging to juggle when arriving in mixed packs. The sneering Uldren is a great antagonist to wrap it all around; he’s a character we love to hate, even as his ultimate motivations are sympathetic.
The Dreaming City opens up after the campaign as Destiny’s first dedicated endgame zone. The pastoral mountains and dreamy mists of the Awoken’s hidden sanctuary make for some excellent exploration fodder. Dozens of hidden chests, secret bosses, magical portals, and plentiful collectibles are a joy to discover with friends. The new Blind Well wave-based arena is frantic and fun, but the absence of matchmaking is limiting.
This new endgame locale also hides an innovation that plays to Destiny’s strength as a living game. The completion of the incredibly difficult Last Wish raid triggered new activities across the area, including a fantastic strike, lore-focused patrols, new Gambit map, and a story mission, with more to come in future weeks. This sense of an evolving gameplay landscape should be the template for the series moving forward, letting players feel like they are in on a dynamic journey that is changing before their eyes and in response to their actions.
The introduction of Gambit is a welcome mingling of cooperative and competitive play. This new core mode challenges players to battle increasingly powerful waves of enemies, bank resources, and occasionally engage in tense asymmetrical showdowns with a single overpowered enemy player. Gambit is thrilling and accessible thanks to a smart interface that presents info you need, accompanied by helpful dialogue voiceovers that guide the action. The current matchmaking algorithm leads to an unfortunate number of blowouts, but I’m surprised at how frequently losing teams can turn things around and earn a big comeback. It all leads to some pulse-pounding round conclusions.
Forsaken also ushers in a total rework of several core systems. The new weapon slots are a triumph, offering flexibility and empowerment in equal measures, and bringing fun weapons like shotguns and fusion rifles back into regular usage. Character power and weapon damage have been rebalanced, leading to a faster and more lethal Crucible, but one that is less friendly to novices. Power progression is slow but mostly fair, with a ton of clearly marked activities each day that can lead to character improvement. Random rolls on weapons and armor means greater investment in your rewards as you chase the perfect loadout. New bounties and quests are a blast to layer on top of one another, but it’s frustrating to have to run back and forth between so many vendors.
Equipment infusion is currently too expensive, and the weapon mods are too hard to acquire. Likewise, new exotics are vanishingly rare to drop, and the current path to new super unlocks (after your first) obscure that desirable content behind high-level activities. All of this combines to limit the ability to experiment with playstyles or gear setups, and hides much of the best equipment and variety so deep into the grind that many players may never encounter those experiences, which is a shame. I’m all for making rewards meaningful again, but the current model has swung too far to the extreme.
Cementing its strength as a hobby game, Forsaken introduces an excellent scheme for tracking in-game Triumphs and Collections that act as a trophy wall to your gathered treasures. The Triumphs supply dozens of tasks to chase across every aspect of the game, and I’m particularly delighted by the collectible lore tabs and the fascinating stories they tell. Equipment collections solve part of the problem of bloated inventory management, but I’m bummed that most of the new Year 2 items can’t be retrieved in some form because of their random rolls.
As a dedicated Destiny player, I’m gratified by the breadth of opportunities for adventure to be found in Forsaken, but I’m also aware that less dedicated players are going to miss out on a lot of the most compelling weapons, modes, secrets, and missions on offer. Even so, this release has the potential to draw lapsed players back into the fold. Forsaken is deep, mysterious, and vast, three words that echo what players most want from this growing universe.
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