Gaming News

Top games being released this month: Borderlands 3, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Gears 5 & Monster Hunter World: Iceborne.

Shovel Knight, a game that soared into popularity shortly after its release, has been one of the best platforming games of the past decade. The game has been out for quite some time, and with its huge success, it’s a wonder that it took so long for a sequel to come out; Shovel Knight: King of Cards, isn’t exactly a sequel, instead being an add-on for the main game. However, this add-on is pretty much the size of an entire game on its own, so it may as well be a sequel.

Ubisoft’s executive, Chris Early, who is also the VP for partnerships and revenue at the company, has made some statements about how Ubisoft feels in regards to Steam, and why Ubisoft doesn’t let its games be sold on Steam any longer. According to Early, Steam’s business model is unworkable, or at least it soon will be as game distribution continues to evolve.

With digital games becoming more and more popular due to their convenience, brick and mortar retailers have been looking for ways to bolster sales of physical game copies. Quite frankly, there is answer seems to be a good one; why not just sell new games for cheaper than you can get them online? Both Amazon and Walmart have taken up this practice, selling physical copies of many new releases for $49.94 instead of the classic $60.

In the exact same vein as Xbox Live Gold subscribers, those who subscribe to PlayStation Plus receive free games every month. It’s generally a mixed bag as to what kind of games you get, but they’re usually announced just a few days in advance of the month itself, and we can rest easy this time, knowing that some pretty great games will be free for PlayStation Plus members this September.

Walmart has made it pretty clear that they have a new strategy in mind for increasing sales of physical game copies. That strategy turns out to be selling games at a $10 discount, even on the first day of their release. This isn’t just for games that aren’t being anticipated either; the popular Fire Emblem: Three Houses received this treatment, being sold at approximately $50 instead of $60 if you bought a physical copy of it at Walmart. Now, the highly anticipated Nintendo Switch exclusive, Astral Chain, is getting the same discount even though it just launched.

Kerbal Space Program; a game that looks like it would be all fun and games, but is actually pretty mathematically intensive, and generally leads to horrific contraptions that nevertheless manage to sail the cosmos. We’re finally getting a sequel to this wonderful game, though we have to wait until 2020. All of this was revealed during the opening night livestream from Gamescom 2019, in which Star Theory developers revealed the sequel to their amazingly popular spacecraft building and flying simulator, Kerbal Space Program.

Final Fantasy 14 was a bit weird, in the sense that it was one of the few times the franchise branched off from single-player RPG into an MMO. It was also pretty confusing since it came right after a single player RPG entry and was succeeded by one as well, but it didn’t have any kind of moniker to denote that it was an MMO: it was just, ‘Final Fantasy 14.’

Digital games are already pretty close to being the absolute future of video games. There aren’t many people out there that still buy physical copies, and the ones who are out there are vastly outnumbered by people who buy digital copies. It’s no surprise of course; digital copies of games are just more convenient, and can be played as soon as they are downloaded. So, if you’re looking to expand your digital library for either the Xbox One or Nintendo Switch, Target has some discounts going on that are perfect for you. Their current weekly deal includes 20% off of digital downloads, add-ons, in-game currencies, and season passes. You will receive an email for these downloads after purchasing them, though Target has admitted that Amazon is price-matching some of the deals.

Huge cuts made within GameStop Corporation have affected approximately 14% of the associate base at the company’s headquarters, as well as many of its subsidiaries, such as Game Informer. GameStop Corporation is the parent company of both video game retail chain GameStop and video game magazine Game Informer. Recently, they laid off over 120 of their employees, which constitutes the aforementioned 14% of their associate base at both their headquarters and some of their other offices.

Currently, the RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 Founders Editions are on sale at $120 off, bringing the 2080 down to a price of $680, and the 2070 down to an affordable $480. These sales are part of a Nvidia game bundle promotion, so when you take advantage of either of these great discounts, you also get a copy of the video games Control and Wolfenstein: Young Blood.

On Wednesday, NetherRealm Studios revealed a new trailer introducing some interesting characters to its most recent popular fighting game, Mortal Kombat 11, which is currently the best-selling game of 2019. One of the most well-known characters being added in is the Terminator T-800, made popular by Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator film series.

Sony has just recently added the longtime game developer Insomniac Games to their roster. Well-known for series such as Ratchet & Clank, the original Spyro the Dragon trilogy, and the far more recent Marvel’s Spider-Man, the studio revealed on Monday that they have been acquired in their entirety by Sony, making it the 14th studio to join Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, alongside other popular developers such as Little Big Planet’s Media Molecule and Horizon Zero Dawn’s Guerilla Games.

There were a great many announcements included with the live stream of Gamescom 2019’s opening night. Most of them lead to a lot of...

In Australia, adults can purchase Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 Reservoir Dogs with no trouble whatsoever. However, they can’t purchase the 2006 video game of Reservoir Dogs, which follows the plot of the movie exactly. According to the Australian Classification Board, the video game is banned "because of high impact violence and torture," while the movie itself is not banned for the same reason. This is only one example of the major issues Australia has when classifying and banning video games.

Imagine joining the Army, going through boot camp, and being certified to use real world weapons, but your job in the military is actually to play video games. It sounds like fantasy, but is closer to the truth than one would think. Christopher Jones enlisted in the Army back in 2003; at the time, he purchased many game consoles to use in his off time. However, sixteen years later, he no longer plays games for recreation, but as his actual job in the military.

The lead producer of BioWare’s Anthem, Ben Irving, has recently announced that he is leaving the game developing company. According to a Twitter post by Ben Irving, he is leaving because he has accepted a position at another company, though he firmly believes that Anthem still has a bright future under new, but currently unannounced direction.

Tim Longo, who was previously the creative director of Halo 5: Guardians and until recently, the creative director of Halo Infinite, has left 343 industries. He was part of the leadership shakeup 343 had a few weeks ago, in which he was moved from his position as creative director to a different one. Following this change in positions, Longo voluntarily left 343 Industries.

At a Federal Trade Commission public panel regarding micro transactions in video games, the Entertainment Software Association that the three largest console platform holders, those being Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo, have voluntarily agreed to a policy change regarding loot boxes. While ESA’s Michael Warnecke broadly defended the concept of loot boxes, he also stated that any new games or game updates from now on would need to disclose the rarity of the various drops included in their loot boxes.

Many of us have often wondered if some toy or game from our childhood could be worth a lot of money today. And honestly, a lot of our old stuff could be worth something, if only we hadn’t done the pesky thing and actually opened and used them. Fact of the matter is, no matter how collectible an item is, it is worth far less if it’s been used or even opened. But hey, don’t give up hope: you could always find an unopened Kid Icarus game cartridge from 1988 and sell it online for $9,000. That’s exactly what happened for Reno Resident Scott Amos.