Julius

Square Enix have announced the Royal Edition of the game, which has an RRP of £39.99. The Royal Edition includes: • An all-new dungeon - Insomnia City Ruins: Expanded Map • New features such as first person mode, new gear, and new bosses. • Armiger Unleashed – after you collect all 13 royal arms, a more action-oriented mode of the Armiger is unlocked • Royal Vessel – the boat from FFXV is now a controllable vehicle. The same body of water (between Cape Caem and Altissia) can now be freely explored. • All season pass content – Episode Gladiolus, Episode Prompto, Multiplayer Expansion: Comrades, and Episode Ignis. • Over a dozen pieces of DLC, including weapons, Regalia car skins, and item sets.

It was a bit odd to find this in General Gaming! It feels like this needs a little bit of updating In June of last year, the game was delayed from December 2017 to an undetermined date in the latter half of 2018. Back in August, Deep Silver (Metro, Saints Row, Shin Megami Tensei) was announced as the project’s publisher, and this teaser trailer was debuted at Gamescom: In late September, WWG reported that they had learned that HD re-releases of Shenmue I & II were due to be announced in 2017, with their sources purportedly being linked to SEGA. The HD re-releases as described by the outlet would be coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, and have been in development since 2016. However, a few days ago [January], WWG reported that the project is still under way at SEGA, and that the HD re-releases were delayed as a result of the delay of Shenmue III to the latter half of 2018. News of this came courtesy of their alleged sources linked with SEGA from before, as well as being reiterated by journalists in Europe when contacted. SEGA were initially planning to announce Shenmue I & II HD at E3 2017, according to one source linked directly to SEGA, but are now apparently waiting for a more opportune time to reveal the HD re-releases when a release date for Shenmue III is pinned down. Some brand new screenshots from Shenmue III were revealed today [January]: Next month, in February, more details and screenshots are expected of the game, as Yu Suzuki will be attending the Monaco Anime Game International Conference on February 24th.

Summary of Tatsumi Kimishima’s most recent interview with Mainichi Shimbun via Nintendo Everything.

Nuts that it’s already available to pre-load, but I absolutely agree with you: I think that’s entirely down to it originally being in development for Wii U. I get the feeling that it was originally going to be a 25th Anniversary game for release last year on Wii U, because, if I’m remembering right, the last Wii U Kirby title was Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush (/Curse), which was released in 2015, I think. Makes sense that they would have delayed it for the Switch, and probably shelved it/decentralised their focus on it to focus on what they already had in development in the meantime?

FINALLY. That’s all there is to say, really...

I’ve also heard some excellent things about the soundtrack; how did you find it, if you can say anything about it?

Yeah, I’m pretty much convinced that there’ll be another Direct, if typical 25-50 minute length, in the next 1 - 6 weeks (i.e. by the start of March). A quick look at the Wikipedia page for Nintendo Directs tells us that Direct Minis are typically followed up by a typical Direct in 1-4 weeks, but focusing mainly on Direct Minis followed up by a Direct which aren’t both exclusive to Japan narrows it down to only three separate occasions where there’s a range of 8-37 days following the Mini before a Direct. I’m fairly confident in this: we have games which we’ve known about for over a year, such as Fire Emblem and Project Octopath Traveller, which remain without a release date, and whilst it’s of course possible that they’re H2 (or worse yet: delayed), I think that such announcements belong in a Direct, and might have been delayed to one accordingly. Honestly, I just hope we hear about Virtual Console sooner rather than later. If they take too long, I’m going to get a bit nervous about how they might be attaching classic games exclusively to the purchase, and use of, the Switch’s online service.

Hey all, hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year! What’s everyone played/been playing? Anyone completed a game in 2018 yet? Any 2018 gaming resolutions? My personal goal is to try to be much more consistent when it comes to gaming this year, and I hope to round off certain playthroughs which I’ve been putting off for a while now (I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy VII and Horizon Zero Dawn) before I dive into anything new.

The lack of Wolfenstein and, perhaps more noticeably, Yoshi and Fire Emblem, took me by surprise a little. A lot of ports and content updates, and I really like the look of Mario Tennis. And it’s good to know that they might be able to dip back into the DS/3DS catalogue going forwards. I don’t mean to start exciting anyone, but I just took a quick look at the Wikipedia page for Nintendo Directs, and there’s something pretty interesting I noticed regarding the Nintendo Direct mini format: they almost always precede a more typically formatted Direct by 2-3 weeks, if not less. Could just be an odd coincidence, mind you, but I thought it was worth sharing.

Laura Kate Dale is claiming that the Direct will be approx. 15 minutes... ...and drop within the next 2-3 hours (i.e. by 15:00 GMT).

Absolutely nuts. I’m loving every single second of this. Everyone’s coming up with their own conspiracies all over the place, ranging from news of a new Fire Emblem game (Chibi-Robo is on fire; hot(=fire) dog; etc.) to Nintendo purposely putting people through a loop. And everyone’s going nuts over Twitter accounts for Assassin’s Creed, Star Citizen and Resident Evil responding to their vague tweets. IGN’s Alanah Pearce is saying that she’s only heard that it would be coming later this week, Laura Kate Dale is near-positive it’s coming this week, and agrees with someone else on Twitter, who is claiming that they were in contact with people who would have knowledge of the matter as recently as last night; they supposedly informed them that the Direct is indeed happening tomorrow. My best bet would be that Nintendo is aware of the anticipation, and if anything, the craze is only benefiting them, as more and more people are hearing about the Direct than might have otherwise. I wonder if they’ll shadow-drop it or only announce it an hour before it airs? EDIT: interesting Twitter theory about the Direct coming out of the blue...

Someone, please, make it stop...

Darkest Dungeon releasing January 18th (next Thursday).

Yeah, I think the fact that GameStop posted and deleted that tweet, coupled with the fact that Nintendo JP’s Direct website currently has a free spot (15 Directs down from the “full” 16; typical indicator that there’s a Direct incoming) definitely seems to point to it being on its way. @Glen-i part of me wants them to round it off by just shadow-dropping the damn thing in the middle of the work day. They've played the trolling card expertly up to this point, this is way too funny I wonder if they’ll do anything for April Fool’s this year... EDIT: on a side note, Red Hook Studios just announced that Darkest Dungeon is releasing next Thursday. I wonder if we could see any other release dates for Nindies announced prior to the Direct? EDIT 2: Nintendo tweets! They definitely know what they’re doing... ...Chibi-Robo for Switch confirmed?!

Typically, yep, or at least based on last year’s announcements. Last year’s Nintendo Direct (April), ARMS Direct (May), Pokémon Direct (June), Splatoon 2 Direct (July) and other Nintendo Direct (think was the indies one? - September) were all announced ~15:00 GMT/BST. The Fire Emblem Direct (January), Animal Crossing Mobile Direct (October) and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Direct (November), however, weren’t announced during that time frame. It’s pretty random. And I agree, I don’t (normally) care too much for the announcement of something, but especially when it’s announcing that comes later that very week or day.

The ARMS Direct and Pokémon Direct were both announced only one day before they were aired, so they’ll just have to wait and see. However, my inside sources and extensive research (I asked my uncle who worked at Nintendo) have exclusively confirmed to me that we will definitely be hearing about the January Direct within the next 22 days.

Sony sold over 5.9 million PS4s over the holidays (down from 6.2 million last year) and 20.2 million units from January 2nd through December 31st (a record for the platform in an annual year). The console now sits at over 73.6 million units sold worldwide. With the games they have coming later this year - heck, even just later this month - and next year too, 100 million seems a formality, so long as they don’t start talking about the PS5 too soon. I have to wonder if they could even pull it off this year, seeing as they have the line-up to potentially back up such a surge, though it admittedly seems unlikely (but not impossible), as the 26.4 million units they would need to sell this year to cross the 100 million unit threshold would be a record for any platform within an annual year. Elsewhere, software sales reached 645 million, with 243.9 million units being sold in 2017 alone. The PS Store recorded its largest ever monthly sales of content in December 2017, and the number of PS Plus subscribers crossed 31.5 million. PS4 console annual sales: Year — annual — holiday — cumulative 2013 — 4.2M — N/A — 4.2M 2014 — 14.3M — 4.2M — 18.5M 2015 — 17.4M — 5.7M — 35.9M 2016 — 17.5M — 6.2M — 53.4M 2017 — 20.2M — 5.9M — 73.6M

So, a tour of the 5.0 update for the Switch has potentially been uploaded to YouTube, and will supposedly launch in February, according to the potential leak. Key features of this purported update are: • Custom themes/theme shop. • Cloud storage. • Game sorting. • Party chat. • Media apps (YouTube, Twitch, etc.). • Virtual Console. • System-level microphone support. • Internet browser. However, there are some discrepancies: • The YouTube logo seen in the video is outdated. • Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a digital purchase, which takes up 6.8 GB of system memory. However, as seen in the storage menu, only 2 GB of system memory, less than 3.2 GB of SD card memory and 0.9 GB of cloud storage is taken up (totalling 6.1 GB). Some have argued that the game might have been archived, but there is no icon to download the game back to the system (note: this could be something which changes with such an update). • Such a massive update which ticks a lot of the fans’ wants across the board would seem a strange move from a company as conservative in decision making as Nintendo (at least when it comes to this sort of thing). I’ll believe it when I see it. There are certainly a lot of things I’d love to see which were in this video (namely Virtual Console), but at the very least, this person seems to have a very good idea of how to map out a convincing Switch UI in the event it turns out to be a fake.

High-res version of some leaked promotional art: Elsewhere, LEGO set leaks for the film have already begun (despite them supposedly not launching until April), and the film will be known as Han Solo: A Star Wars Story in a number of territories (which, in my opinion, is a better title). I’m actually starting to get excited for this...

Well colour me hyped. My body is Reggie.

Whilst John Powell (Bourne, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon) will still serve as the film’s primary composer, he has asked John Williams to compose Han Solo’s theme, which Williams has gracefully accepted. Speaking to Variety recently about his most recent work on The Last Jedi, Williams said that:

Some two hundred or so new threads (which are still being added to as I type this, by the looks of things) over in General Gaming. They've been at it for a few hours now, according to their profile pages. Titles look to be in Korean, and it’s @sebeyusika and @jafuxez who have been adding them.

I could see them releasing that Story Mode that we never got for Smash 4 as part of a Smash 4 Deluxe for Switch. I always disagreed with Sakurai’s reasoning for that getting cut out... I really, really hope that we get Virtual Console sooner rather than later too. Smash 4 Deluxe + Melee is a deal I’d be happy to pay for

Yeah, with regards to getting Pokémon in 2018, I agree with @Hero-of-Time and @Glen-i: as much as I would love to get the game/s next year, I’d much rather wait until 2019 if it means that the game will be objectively great, and not just better in comparison to previous entries. I wouldn’t be surprised if we got our first glimpses at it in 2018 at E3 with a teaser/trailer, though. That announcement at E3 earlier this year could have easily been used in the Pokémon Direct a week or so before which revealed Pokkén Tournament DX, as well as Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, so the announcement being saved for E3 suggests to me that they really want to push this game out there with regards to consumer awareness. Also gives Nintendo time to come up with a budget Switch option and to introduce a price reduction to the base model.