TGO Daily | November 11, 2020 | Take-Two Takes One
Today was a slow news day, though I was planning on reporting on the announcements about some new wrestling video games. The original show was slated for a 6pm start, and ended up being delayed by 45 minutes (with no announcement…for some reason? That’s pretty rare in the gaming space but goes to show what the wrestling industry is like).
So those announcements weren’t able to make it in time for this newsletter, but will be featured tomorrow, if there’s enough news! Sorry if you don’t care about wrestling, but it’s the only other niche that I’m really into so the convergence is inevitable ;)
Until tomorrow,
Adrian
Take-Two Takes One
Take-Two Interactive will be acquiring racing-game developer Codemasters (Dirt, F1, Grid) in quarter 1 of 2021. This was discussed in a Codemasters investor call recently, and has now been confirmed by each company’s board of directors.
Take-Two will purchase 100% of the company for around $950 million, in a mix of cash and shares. Upper management is expected to remain with the company.
Their statements on the matter have been fairly standard, saying that Take-Two will provide their publishing expertise to a veteran racing-game company in order to crack into that market.
Source: gamesindustry.biz
Destiny 2 Update
In case you haven’t brushed up on your Destiny 2 news in a while, you should know that they’ve recently gone through a major change. Monday night, they celebrated the game’s history with a short live event, which transitioned into the launch of “Beyond Light,” their third and latest expansion. Feel free to read this if you’re interested in the event itself.
If you’ve ever wanted to jump into the game, this is a great opportunity to do so. Beyond Light is considered a reboot of sorts for the game, where a lot of older content is being vaulted, and they have an updated tutorial/new player experience. Full patch notes can be read here — needless to say, there’s a lot.
I’ve sunk a few hours into Destiny 2, and I will say the core gameplay loop is very satisfying. I’ve heard that you can experience the campaign friction-free, but some of the end-game content can get a little grindy.
Warzone Gets Private Lobbies
The Call of Duty battle royale is getting the private lobby treatment — though you won’t be able to use it without a minimum of 50 players. The “Plunder” mode requires 30 players, and the “Mini Battle Royale” mode requires 24.
This feature was likely developed for eSports purposes, considering the minimum player requirement, but I’m sure its welcome nonetheless. I think that any opportunity to introduce more ways to play a game is a positive thing.
Alongside it all is a general update, which fixes a number of bugs, and provides PC players with texture streaming support. This will allow users to stream in textures as they play, which would save dozens of GB in storage space, if that’s important to you.