Holy game announcements, Batman! (No, they didn't announce a new Batman, though...)
This week brings us games, games, and more games! From a few surprising announcements, to some hotly anticipated release dates finally coming to light, to a few long-rumored titles finally getting that sweet confirmation, we take a look at what new games are going to be helping us ring in the New Year right.
New Spring 2014 release dates galore!
Now that all of the big holiday game releases are finally behind us and in our greedy hands, it’s finally time to look ahead to 2014, and to start placing where all of those most hotly anticipated titles are going to fall in the yearly schedule. Well this week we’ve gotten a better picture of what Spring 2014 is going two look like for us gamers, as a few big developers made some exciting release date announcements.
The first, and arguably the biggest, is Bethesda’s announcement that the long-awaited The Elder Scrolls Online will finally be released for PC and Mac on April 4, 2014, with the PS4 and Xbox One versions following a few weeks later around June 2014. At least that gives me a few more months to actually have a life before I completely hand it over to the kind folks at Bethesda!
Also on the topic of blockbuster Spring games, Konami also officially confirmed this week that the cinematic Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes will be releasing on March 18, 2014. Awesome, awesome news: however, it should also be noted that it will likely still be a few years before we can check out the full centerpiece of Metal Gear Solid V with the sure-to-be epic and industry-defining The Phantom Pain.
And lastly, as well as sadly, Nintendo was also pretty quick to squash the hopeful rumors that Super Smash Bros. U would be making that same Spring 2014 window. Oh well.
Telltale just keep announcing more games
I’m all for a prolific developer and everything, but things in the Telltale camp seem to be getting a little ridiculous now. Not only are they already one episode in on The Wolf Among Us, with the first episode of The Walking Dead – Season Two just a few short days away, but now Telltale has announced over the weekend that they are also working on TWO ADDITIONAL games at the very same time. And of course, in true Telltale fashion, the new games look unbelievably awesome.
The first game had been rumored a few days before its official announcement: an episodic adventure based on the HBO epic Game of Thrones. The other was a little more surprising, considering the nature of the source material: Tales from the Borderlands. It’s also already been confirmed that both of these new titles are expected to blossom into long-running relationships and game experiences with the respective partners like HBO.
But even though both of these new games look unbelievably awesome in their own right, it’s hard not to wonder if Telltale is really going to start wearing themselves thin, or to start oversaturating their own market, a la what happened with the Guitar Hero games. After all, how many point-and-click adventures to you typically play on a week-to-week basis? With four different games all in the same release rotation at the very same time, Telltale really runs the risk of gamers growing sick of them before long.
Big next-gen game rumors finally get some confirmation
Remember a few days ago when we told you that a listing for Tomb Raider on PS4 and Xbox One had popped up on Amazon Italy? Well it turns out that rumor was true, as Square Enix officially confirmed that Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition will be coming to next-gen consoles on January 28, 2014! In addition to the updated graphics, the Definitive Edition of the Lara Croft reboot will come with all of the previously released DLC, as well as an exclusive art book.
Now do you also remember a few days ago when we told you that Fallout 4 was a thing, and that it might actually be announced at Spike TV’s VGX 2013? Well that didn’t exactly happen. But the good news is that some recently uncovered evidence all but confirms the existence of a Fallout 4, and that the game will seemingly be set in Boston, Massachusetts. The aforementioned evidence comes in the form of some leaked casting documents, which include the classic Fallout line: “War, war never changes.”
Since this secret information has finally gotten out there, do you think we’ll see an official Fallout 4 announcement break in the upcoming days?
PS4 and Xbox One continue to break all sorts of records
Big surprise there, am I right? As if we didn’t already know that Sony and Microsoft’s next-generation gaming consoles were the hottest items to hit store shelves in years, recent reports only reinforce that fact by giving us the figures of how well they’ve actually been doing on the sales front. The PlayStation 4 has not only been called by several publications this week “the biggest console launch of the generation,” but some have even gone to call it the most successful console launch of all time. Hell, even the PS4’s video sharing capabilities are getting some noteworthy press, and it’s currently said to be making up a whopping 10% of all current streaming videos of Twitch.
Now that certainly doesn’t mean that Microsoft’s Xbox One has been left out in the dust, as it’s also been reported that the next-gen gaming and entertainment system has already sold over two million units worldwide. And given that both consoles have still been out on the market for less than a month, there’s no question that the next-generation of gaming is officially here, and that gamers have begun to embrace it in numbers that we’ve never even dreamed of before.
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