TGO Daily | Monday September 6, 2021 | PlayStation U-Turn
In the news: Sony has a quick change of heart regarding Horizon Zero Dawn, Sonic Colors remake is infected with the Sonic curse, and the creator of PUBG is working on a new title with a huge world.
TGO Daily | Monday September 6, 2021
✏️ From the Author
I return from an awesome board game night (Thursday night) and a really good weekend! We got to play some Rainbow Pirates and Fantasy Fluxx - they were really fun! Will maybe have another board game tonight, but I won’t know for sure until the evening.
I hope you had a restful and fun weekend! Let’s dive into some news.
Until next time,
Brandon
📰In The News
Sony Reverses Decision on Horizon Forbidden West Upgrade
Adrian discussed in the headliner for Friday’s Newsletter about Sony not allowing players to upgrade to the PS5 version of the game unless they specifically bought the Digital Deluxe Edition. As expected, there was quite the bit of fan backlash, as Sony had originally said the upgrade would be for all versions of the PS4 game.
Sony has come out this weekend and said that they will be reverting back to their original promise and let those who have the PS4 edition have the option to get the free upgrade to the PS5 version. It’s noteworthy to remember that players with a PS4 disc will need to have a PS5 with a disc drive to be able to play. Sony also said they would be offering a $10 digital upgrade option from PS4 to PS5 - which can be applied to the next God of War and Gran Turismo 7, and any other exclusive cross-gen PS4 & PS5 title published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Head of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Jim Ryan, didn’t offer much in the way of explanation why they originally turned away from their promise:
“Last year we made a commitment to deliver free upgrades for our cross-gen launch titles, which included Horizon Forbidden West. While the pandemic's profound impact pushed Forbidden West out of the launch window we initially envisioned, we will stand by our offer: Players who purchase Horizon Forbidden West on PlayStation 4 will be able to upgrade to the PlayStation 5 version for free.”
Brandon’s Thoughts: This whole situation stood out to me like something EA would do. Make a decision you know will be controversial to see if you can get away with it, if so, great you get more money, if not, then you can talk about how you listen to your fans and revert the change. Sure, it may alienate a few people, but generally you’ll either walk away making more money or not suffer any consequences. Why else renege on a promise you already made?
Sonic Colors: Ultimate Bogged Down with Bugs & Glitches
Players are flooding onto social media to lament yet another glitchy Sonic game. Sonic Colors: Ultimate is a remaster of the 2010 Wii original, Sonic Colors. Blind Squirrel Games, responsible for the port of the Mass Effect trilogy, were brought in to assist with the remake.
While glitches are happening across all platforms, the Switch has taken most of the heat with players complaining about poor performance, slow loading times, and, of course, bugs.
If the numerous glitches weren’t bad enough, it seems Blind Squirrel Games also forgot to include crediting Godot Engine for use of their free open source program. They did Tweet out an acknowledgement of the issue however:
Brandon’s Thoughts: It seems that these Sonic titles never go through QA. I remember Sonic Boom having a very rough launch as well. Coming off of the very successful Mass Effect trilogy remake, I wonder if Blind Squirrel Games put their B-team on this or if Sega made things more difficult. All speculation, of course, but it does make one wonder what happened to create rough launches like this.
PUBG Creator Moves into New Open World Project
Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, creator of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, has made a big step in moving away from his publisher, Krafton, and is investing all his time in his latest project - Prologue. Under his new studio, PlayerUnknown Productions, Greene is developing it as more of tech demo than an actual game.
Greene envisions a game where an entire planet is open for exploration. He sums up what he wants best when he said, “…I loved the idea of making a space where a helicopter has real meaning. It’s not just that it cuts the trip across the map down to a few minutes. It cuts it down from a few days.” This dream world of his is currently being called Project Artemis. Unfortunately for Greene, that dream is one tremendous in scale and extremely difficult in execution. Hence, the reason for Prologue.
As a precursor world to Artemis, Prologue is expected to be a 64km by 64km map that is a single player experience. The game will function as a place for Greene to test his tech and receive player feedback while he iterates AI-learning in order to create his dream of a fully realized, and fleshed out, planet. Prologue is to be procedurally generated so as to create different experiences each time you log into the game.
“We’re using Prologue as a testbed for the game elements of the world. We can test out an electrical system. We can put in a better animation system. All these things will be spec’d out first in Prologue, made to work, and then when we come to Artemis we at least have the logic figured out and we can start programming it into the engine.”
Artemis is an incredibly ambitious project, and we likely won’t hear much on its front for years as Greene and his team continue to work and flesh it out. Greene made a name for himself by crafting a genre-changing battle royale game, and he clearly hopes to recreate that magic on a whole other scale with these projects. If you’re as fascinated by this project as I am, I highly recommend you check out his full interview with VentureBeat.
💡 Read More
Stardew Valley creator doesn't know if there will be another update, focused on next game. ConcernedApe said little about the new title, except that it’s not a farming game, but is similar in some ways to Stardew.
Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles headed to Nintendo Switch Online.
👋 Say Hello!
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Thanks for the read <3