News Mash-Up - Week # 25

Top News Items

• • Sony will join Nintendo, Activision and Take Two in pulling out of Gamescom this year.
    PlayStation first party games will not feature in the Geoff Keighley Opening Night Live showcase, nor will Sony attend the physical convention.

  • As part of Xfest in a 18 minute Microsoft video called Xbox Game Streaming: Reducing Latency and Optimizing for the Best Mobile Experience, the company revealed that it plans to reduce latency and to bring mouse and keyboard support to some Xbox Cloud Gaming games. Using new process called “Direct Capture” streaming has been reduced by 72ms (milliseconds), reducing latency. Direct Capture is a work in progress technology with the aim of producing 4K resolution on streaming instead of the current 1080p.

  • Twitch will be experimenting with a new UI. The new look will replicate the Netflix model of playing a preview stream (for about a minute) while your pointer hovers over the image of the stream. The benefit is that advertisements do not play when the stream is being autoplayed, so it can save a lot of time by viewers on whether they want to watch the video with little interruption or waiting for an ad to commence.

  • The movie Sonic 2 has surpassed worldwide revenue of $400 million.

  • Developer 343 Industries has announced it is considering adding purchasable “Spartan Points” to Halo: Master Chief Collection in the future. The microtransactions are expected to replace the “Season Points” that currently exist in the game, which allow players to purchase various cosmetics by completing challenges and the like.

  • Fall Guys hit 20 million players in the first 48 hours of the Battle Royale Knockout game going free-to-play on Epic Games PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch consoles last week. Players were left unable to find matches following server issues due to the high demand.
    
    
    

New games

Week commencing Monday 20 June 2022