TGO Daily | October 20, 2021 | Everything Xbox!
✏️ From the Author
In an effort to stop myself from endlessly playing Super Auto Pets, I have scheduled myself a few games to play this week.
First, my friend Katosepe is guiding me to play some gaming classics, since I haven’t actually played most of anything that came out before 2008. As such, I’ll be starting Super Metroid this week. I love Metroidvanias, so it’s only fitting a find out where the term comes from!
I’ve also recently installed Remedy’s Control and Bethesda’s Fallout 4. I’m familiar with both titles but never really got a chance to sink my teeth into them, so I’m looking forward to giving them a fair shake.
Also, I have to make sure I play Horizon Zero Dawn before I don’t have access to a PS4 anymore :/
Until tomorrow,
— Adrian
📰 In The News
1. Everything Microsoft & Xbox
Today the press was blasted with a bunch of minor news stories from Xbox. So here they are, all nicely packaged together into one segment!
→ Xbox isn’t done with acquisitions. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Phil Spencer said that they haven’t finished expanding Xbox Game Studios. Though he said they aren’t in any rush:
“There's no quota. There's no kind of timeline where I have to go acquire studios by a certain time, but if we find a studio where we have a good fit, we share what we're trying to go do and what they're trying to go do, and if we feel we can both get better together, absolutely.”
Transcription: gamesindustry.biz
→ Xbox isn’t interested in VR. In that same interview, Spencer reiterated that Xbox wasn’t interested in making a virtual reality headset. He said that he would rather solve “immersion” in gaming through software rather than hardware, but that he loves what other companies are doing in the space.
→ There are new games heading to the Game Pass. Feel free to check out the full list in the image above — my standouts include Age of Empires IV releasing on day one, Outriders finally getting to PC, and Alan Wake’s American Nightmare just in time for the remaster that just came out.
→ Game Pass missed its performance targets. Reporting on their fiscal year, Microsoft revealed that they missed their performance targets for Game Pass subscriber acquisition. While the service still grew by 37%, they were hoping to get 48%. I can’t image that will be a big deal, with plenty of major hits still around the corner. The last time they reported the number of subscribers was last January, with 18 million.
→ Xbox Anniversary Celebration announced for November 15th. It’s a digital broadcast that won’t contain any new game announcements, but “will be a special look back at 20 years of Xbox.”
→ Microsoft Flight Simulator gets “Game of the Year” Edition. It will be a free update to PC and consoles on November 18th. Includes an updated weather system, new missions, new planes / airports, and some polishing of cities. It releases alongside the game’s first major expansion “Reno Air Races,” which adds competitive multiplayer racing.
2. Two games sell well!
Every now and then we get stories about good video games performing well in the market, and I like to celebrate those!
First, Capcom has announced that Monster Hunter World has passed 20 million units sold worldwide. This is a huge milestone for them, for a game that already performed extremely well (it became their best selling game ever within a month of its release).
They also announced that recently released Monster Hunter Rise sold 7.5 million units on the Nintendo Switch, preceding its Steam release in January. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it jump up to their #2 best selling game of all time after the PC launch (a spot currently belonging to Resident Evil 7 at 10 million units).
The other big game is Sea of Thieves, which has passed 25 million registered players. The playerbase was bolstered by the new seasonal model, and the collaboration with “Pirates of the Caribbean”. To celebrate, they are offering a login bonus of 25,000 gold to anyone who players before October 26.
🔦 Article Spotlight
“Far Cry 6 is a failed chance to put Spanish front and center” by Diego Arguello.
A fantastic read about how the game presents Spanish-speaking characters, with a number of other examples of games attempting to do the same. Here’s the intro paragraph:
“Latin America isn’t a common destination in video games. In the few instances where digital landscapes have taken place in the region, results have been mixed. Characters often fall into the trope of saying random Spanish words during conversations to remind us of their nationality. Local socio-political issues are rarely handled with the proper nuance, while cultural portrayals can be hit or miss. Far Cry 6, the latest installment in the open-world series by Ubisoft, doesn’t do much to evade these problems. But interestingly enough, it’s the first AAA game set in Latin America that gets close to putting Spanish front and center.”
📅 Events & Releases!
October 19 (TODAY!): Inscryption
October 21: Resident Evil 4 VR
October 22: The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
October 26: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, NASCAR 21: Ignition
October 28: Age of Empires IV, Riders Republic, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars
October 29: Mario Party Superstars
🔥 Thank You!
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