Nintendo President, Tatsumi Kimishima, will be retiring from his position in June.
Kimishima will be replaced by 46-year-old Shuntaro Furukawa according to an article on IGN by Joe Skrebels. “Furukawa is currently a board member for both Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. He will become Nintendo's sixth president in its 128 years of operation,” said Skrebels. “At 46, he's a particularly young appointment, which is apparently a purposeful decision on the part of Kimishima, who wanted a successor that could more easily connect with the company's customers.” According to the article, Furukawa is fluent in English. This will allow Furukawa to take center stage not just as President of the company, but as the public face of Nintendo. In his article, Skrebels compares this to what made former Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, so popular. At the press conference in which this news broke, Furukawa said, “We will develop the company to its fullest.” He is also hoping to continue the company’s traditions of “originality and flexibility.” Furukawa will not be the only person taking a larger role in the company. “Along with Furukawa’s appointment, three younger executives will also replace retiring senior managers. Among the new appointees is Yoshiaki Koizumi, a key architect of the Switch, and Takashi Tezuka, who was tasked with modernizing Super Mario,” said Yuji Nakamura and Yuki Furukawa in their article for Bloomberg. President Kimishima is leaving after three years as Nintendo’s president. Kimishima took the helm after Iwata’s death. Kimishima took charge at the end of the tumultuous life span of the WiiU and the beginning of the phenomenon that is the Nintendo Switch. After the death of Iwata, many were worried about the direction that Nintendo would go in after the sudden loss of such an icon in the industry. Kimishima took over and led the company to great success, both critically and monetarily, over the past three years. “Nintendo just announced its latest financial results, with some incredible Nintendo Switch sales helping drive one of the best years for the company in recent memory. Nintendo increased its forecast to 15 million units by January of this year, and that figure was pretty much bang on the money with 15.5 million sold by the end of the fiscal year,” said Dom Reseigh-Lincoln in an article for Nintendo Life. With a company as large as Nintendo and with the trajectory the company is going in, it is hard to think that this new change in leadership will derail all the progress Kimishima has made while at the head of the company. Furukawa is in a position to raise Nintendo to greater heights in the times to come.
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In a month and a half the biggest gaming conference of the year, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), will take place in Los Angeles. This means it is almost time for gamer Christmas. The time every year where gamers get a look at what the big developers will be releasing in the coming months and years.
The first press conference will be on June 9 at 11 a.m. PT with the EA conference. The most likely guess of what will be shown is EA’s sports series. FIFA and Madden are always show in some form. I have a strong feeling that EA will announce the next season of FIFA’s story mode, The Journey. The past two years, FIFA has had a story mode about a young player becoming a pro and dealing with the life as a young person thrust into such a spotlight. Last year’s FIFA ended the story on a cliff hanger with the main character possibly joining the English National Team, so that is probably where this year’s will pick up. As far as Madden goes, it is possible that we will see a continuation of the story mode in last years. The more certain thing that EA will show is updates to the Madden competitive circuit. EA is producing a few projects so those would not be surprising to see at the conference. Those would include the new Battlefield, expansions for “Star Wars Battlefront 2” and the big new project from Bioware “Anthem”. “Anthem” was shown off a bit last year, and with the recent controversy surrounding Bioware and EA, a good reception of this game is extremely important to both companies. Microsoft is slated to be first on Sunday. Microsoft has been losing the console war against Sony since this console generation started. They are not only down in terms of console sales, but the console is lacking in big name exclusives. Microsoft needs this conference to go well. For that the studio needs some good announcements. The two big franchises that would make to sense to bring back are Halo and Gears of War. It has been a few years since either series saw a new game and would be a big draw for fans. From my perspective, Microsoft should end the rumors surrounding “Fable 4”. Supposedly the game is in development at Playground Games, but nothing has been confirmed by Microsoft. This would not only end the rumors and give fans some solid information, but draw more people back to Xbox with this massive franchise. Microsoft was recently able to bring “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” to the Xbox. The game was a hit on PC, and Microsoft will most likely spend some time talking about updates to the game. CD Project Red has made appearances in the past and is set to attend this year. It would not be surprising to see the Polish studio come to this conference to speak about their upcoming “Cyberpunk 2077”. Sunday night at 6:30 p.m. PT, Bethesda is scheduled to have their conference. To me this conference is the biggest enigma. While these are all predictions, it is hard to think what this studio will show. It is too soon for more Fallout content and “Wolfenstein 2” released recently. It is possible that a new “DOOM” will be shown, but that is entirely based on the last game releasing in 2016 and it would not be surprising to see. Some are speculating DLC for last year’s “Prey”, but the studio needs to show something for the newest Elder Scrolls game that is in development. The most optimistic view would be that Bethesda does what they did with “Fallout 4” and announce that the game will release later that year. At the very least the new Elder Scrolls being at E3 this year is a safe prediction. There is not a lot of mystery surrounding the Ubisoft conference on Monday. The studio has already announced they are working on “The Division 2”, “The Crew 2”, “Beyond Good and Evil 2” and “Skull and Bones” so those will most likely be at the conference in some form. There may possibly be news on “Ghost Recon: Wildlands” if the studio is going to continue to support the game. My only real questions are surrounding the future of the Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell franchise. The last Assassin’s Creed game did well so the franchise will most likely continue. The question is will it continue to be an annualized franchise or take some time between games. The lead of Splinter Cell, Sam Fisher, recently made an appearance in the most recent Ghost Recon, but the future of the franchise is murky. There have been whispers that a new Splinter Cell is in the works, but this would be the time for solid details. The final conference is always the Sony conference. They have been going over the top with their presentations recently and this year should be no different. This conference should mostly be updates and current projects. Hopefully they will give release dates for “The Last of Us Part 2” and “Days Gone”. “Spider-Man” from Insomniac should be a safe bet with its release date set for September. They may spend some time showing off PlayLink a little more, because it has not seen much press, and give firm details on the upcoming game from From Software that was teased at PSX last year. One thing that I am curious of is what Naughty Dog is doing beyond the Last of Us. I have heard rumors that they are working on an unannounced project and I am hoping that it will end up being a new Jak game, but if this rumor is true E3 would be the time to announce it. Despite some questions remaining, my overall prediction for E3 2018 is that it will be more of the same form last year. I do not see a lot of new projects being announced, instead focusing on updates about current games. This may not be the most exciting but important all the same. Details on the upcoming “Spider-Man” game from Insomniac Games have been coming to fans by way of GameInformer for the past week and throughout the month of April.
Last Wednesday it was revealed that the PS4 exclusive, which was previously regarded with a summer release date, would be releasing on Sept. 4. GameInformer also announced that throughout the month of April they would be releasing a month of features on the game after getting an in-depth look at “Spider-Man” from Insomniac. “Arguably, Insomniac’s biggest franchise is the Ratchet and Clank series, which found huge success in integrating a variety of gadgets and weapons. The studio has proven its ability to create interesting gadgets many times over, and Peter Parker is an inventor who loves to create gadgets,” said Kyle Hilliard in an article on GameInformer. The article goes into depth on three of the gadgets players will have access to during the game. The tripwire tool can be used in both stealth and combat scenarios. Its stealth uses are pretty straightforward. It can be placed as a trap for unwitting enemies to trip and be stuck to a wall. In open combat it has a similar function. When facing two enemies the tripwire can be attached to one, then a web will extend to the other and it ends with both enemies being knocked into each other and webbed to the ground. The web bomb is fairly self-explanatory. It is an area-of-effect tool that will incapacitate a group of enemies. The player can then attack or swing them around at their leisure until the webs break. The final tool that the article described was the Spider-Drone. The drone is, well a drone that will fire off web bullets at enemies. “Sony confirmed that the Spider-Drone will be included as a pre-order bonus for the game,” said Hilliard. There are still gadgets that are unknown and that players will need to craft. It has not been made clear how crafting will work in “Spider-Man”. The use of the word “crafting” implies that there will materials in the world to collect then craft into items. Player will not just be crafting gadgets, but alternate costumes as well. The suit that Spider-Man is wearing in the promotional material is crafted during the campaign and there are plenty more to be crafted during the player’s time in New York. Hilliard said that he saw 24 distinct silhouettes representing a different costume, but the developers told him that there are even more than that. Costumes are not just for aesthetics, but they also give the player different bonuses during gameplay. Hilliard also got a look at the various kinds of missions that will take place outside of the main story. There apears to be quest chains involving various Spider-Man characters like Wilson Fisk, Taskmaster, Harry Osborn and Black Cat were all mention in the article along with random crime missions. “We stopped a store robbery, interrupted a car chase, and Intihar says Spider-Man also busts up drug deals in alleys and encounters situations where Mr. Negative’s Inner Demons gang is caught up in a shoot-out with the NYPD,” said Hilliard. The big challenge with these kinds of missions is preventing them from constantly being the same thing and becoming stale, but it seems Insomniac anticipated this challenge. “These general crimes will also change, shift, and combine as you make your way through the game. We saw this in action when the second robbery we stopped evolved into a car chase when some of the bad guys got away,” said Hilliard. A big part of any Spider-Man experience is swinging on webs in New York. It looks like Insomniac has put in a lot of work to make movement a key feature of this game. Creative Director Bryan Intihar has gone into detail on web-swinging with Gameinformer and the exact mechanics sound rather complicated at first viewing. It needs to be simple enough that players can move around with relative easy, but not sacrifice speed and freedom. It looks like speed is not going to be a problem. The entire point of swinging in the game is to keep momentum and continue moving. No more slamming into walls and coming to a dead stop. One sentence from Intihar sums up the experience that Insomniac is hoping players get out of this game: “You’re going to feel like Spider-Man more than you ever have before.” For a few years fans have been awaiting solid details of CD Project Red’s “Cyberpunk 2077” a video game based on the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game. Sadly for CD Project Red, they may get beaten to the punch by a small dev team, The Bearded Ladies. Instead of a game based on Cyberpunk, Bearded Ladies is basing their game on a Swedish tabletop game “Mutant”.
“Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden” is being developed by a team comprised of industry veterans who have worked on titles such as “Hitman” and “Payday”. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, where humans and animals have begun to mutate, players control a team of mutants to explore the Zone, a wasteland where salvage and dangers reside. The only safe haven for mutants is the Ark. “Mutant revolves around a safe haven called the Ark, a sort of shantytown safe haven for mutant humans and animals built on top of a bridge,” said Wes Fenlon in his article on PC Gamer. The Ark is not just a narrative tool, it also serves a gameplay purpose. In the preview build that has been shown recently, there are at least three facilities that players have access to at the Ark: a bar to receive quests, a bench to craft items and customize weapons and a shop to purchase items. The bar also serves one other purpose besides being a place to receive quests. The proprietor of the establishment deals in black market artifacts, or working relics of the old time. Players can trade in artifacts for “team bonuses”. Team bonuses are upgrades that affect the entire team, such as extra equipment slots, according to a developer of the game walking Eurogamer’s Chris Bratt through the preview build. There is one other building in the Ark. It is the Elder’s Room, but at this time seems to only serve a narrative purpose. “He’s a mysterious character. The first mysterious thing is that everyone who lives in the Ark is a mutant or mutated in some way except for him. He’s 100 percent human,” said the developer. “He’s also quite old and he seems to know a little bit more about the Zone than he should. Players will need to build a party of characters to explore the Zone. At this time it is not clear whether players can create a custom player character through which the player experiences the narrative, or if the party is comprised entirely of pre-built characters. The preview build did show three characters Selma, Dux and Bormin. Each character that can be used in the party has their own quest chain and story arc for players to experience. From a gameplay perspective, "Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden" does not level or upgrade characters in the typical fashion. In the vast majority of RPGs characters are locked into a class and as they gain experience and level up, they can access certain skills within that class. “Mutant” is taking, as the developers describe it, a “golf bag approach”. Before combat players can choose one mutation from three groups — a major, a minor and a passive — to equip at a time. Once combat starts players are locked into their choices, but outside combat players can switch mutations freely to adapt to upcoming situations, similar to how a golfer has multiple clubs in their bag and can use the one that fits the situation best. When exploring the Zone, the game is similar to games like “Divinity: Original Sin” and “Wasteland”. Players explore in real time and before combat can set up their party’s positioning before engaging. Each enemy has a detection range and as long as characters remain outside that range they will remain undetected. There is also stealth combat in the game. In the preview, Dux is equipped with a crossbow and Selma a silenced pistol. If players can take down an enemy before they can warn their friends players remain in stealth. Players can also split their three man party and control individuals for more precise control. In combat the game is obviously inspired by the XCOM franchise. The grid-based movement, the mechanics such as high ground bonuses and flanking and the two action turn system are all definitely inspired by XCOM. While not wholly original this style seems to work for the game. The developer compares setting up engagements then executing the plan to planning in a tabletop game. The party can set up the perfect plan only to have the second dice roll go the wrong way and then have to ad lib the rest, a situation anyone who has played a tabletop knows all too well. “Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden” is set to launch sometime this year. The graphics in the preview are not completed, but the Unreal Engine 4 does give the game a certain visual style that just works. With around 30 minutes of released gameplay, we have probably just scratched the surface of what this game has to offer. |
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