In The News
Bethesda News
Apparently, we’re getting a new game from Bethesda sometime in the next 3-ish months that no one knew about. Bethesda’s VP of marketing and PR Pete Hines revealed that vague news to Tek Syndicate at PAX West, but didn’t say much more.
In the same interview, Hines also addressed controversy surrounding Bethesda’s Creation Club. Here’s a portion of the interview, transcribed by PC Gamer’s Joe Donnelly: “The risk is removed for them because they’re getting paid and treated like a real external developer, working alongside us. They wanna go do mods in their free time? Well they still can, because this is a job and that’s mods and the two just aren’t the same.”
Brendan Greene intends to keep the price of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds at $30, he told GamesIndustry.biz’s Matthew Handrahan. “We don’t have a plan to increase at the moment. That could change, but from my understanding, and from what we’ve talked about internally, we want to keep the same price … Exactly… We’re happy. $30 is a good price for what you’re getting, and this is a game that could last for five or ten years. You’re buying into something bigger than just a year-long game.”
PUBG beat out League of Legends to be Twitch’s most watched game of the month in August. LoL reportedly held the top spot every month since GitHyp started recording the numbers in 2015.
YouTube is sexing up its livestreaming service to further entice streamers away from Twitch and other platforms. “YouTube Live is getting the ability to live stream in real time with very little latency, the ability to live stream directly from your iPhone screen, and easier chat moderation,” VentureBeat’s Emil Protalinski reports.
“Animal Farm” is becoming a video game. “The [indie] game, which is still early on in development, will adapt the story of Manor Farm’s thinly veiled descent into communism as a hybrid of two genres,” Polygon’s Allegra Frank reports. “’It’s particularly important for the readers and players to be able to identify with both oppressors and the oppressed,’ team member Imre Jele (RuneScape) told us about the transition from novel to game.”
Killer Instinct is getting cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows 10. Rukari “rukizzel” Austin, a Killer Instinct community manager, said as much on the game’s forums, Eurogamer’s Vic Hood reports. “‘Yes, this is your confirmation that Killer Instinct players on Xbox One or Windows 10 will be able to play cross-network with players on Steam … There is one small caveat, though …’”
Xbox One now has a “light mode” available for testers. “Dark mode is what you’ve seen before and features a grey background. Light mode swaps that out for a white background that is much brighter,” GameSpot’s Eddie Makuch reports.
CD Projekt Red is worth roughly $2.3 billion — that’s double its market valuation from last year. It “published its earnings for the first half of its 2017 fiscal year,” Gamasutra’s Alex Wawro writes, and most of the value “appears tied to CDPR’s flagship Witcher game franchise and its Gog.com game platform.”
Ebay UK just launched something called The Entertainment Shop. “The firm describes the shop as a ‘curated on-site destination’ for new, catalogue and pre-owned video games, as well as music, books and film,” GamesIndustry.biz’s Christopher Dring reports.