Newshit 25th March

Another week, another batch of gaming news delivered steaming hot to your eyeballs. This week’s news is brought to you by the letter “G”.

Stadia Arcadia

As expected, Google stormed the news this week by officially entering the gaming sector. Dubbed “Stadia” the new service will offer games streamed to your PC, phone, or TV – with the PC experience getting “enhanced” with their new, super-generic controller.

No big announcement about the games available through the service except for the upcoming Doom sequel called Doom Eternal. However, Google did provide some brief specs – you’ll need a 25MB/s connection to play, although they seem confident this will allow 4K gaming at 60fps (with 8K graphics and 120fps possible at a later date).

There were a couple of nifty features shown, such as the “State Share” function, which lets you watch a streamer’s gameplay and then pick up from the same point to try and beat their time/score yourself using the Stadia. You can also share your gameplay quickly and simply using the dedicated share button, get groups of viewers to play with you using the “Crowd Play” function, as well as using the dedicated Google Assistant button to… er…  I dunno… maybe look up cheat codes while you play?

There are quite a few holes in the details provided though, such as the recommended speed, which is higher than many gamers have at the moment (time to start shopping for a more expensive internet contract). The power of the hardware has also been questioned. While the computing power is greater than the XBox One and PS4 combined, these are both compact home devices – you would expect that Google could produce something with stupid amounts of power – and no word on what will happen when the PS5 and XBox Two specs are confirmed.

XBox Ones And A Half

While not a next-generation model, there has been information released about a new disc-free XBox One model – called the XBox One S – which is hitting the shelves this summer. It’s likely to be much cheaper but most importantly does not have a Blu-ray drive built-in.

The new model is pegged to come out on 7th May, which should time nicely for some of the XBox’s big summer releases (assuming it has any) and will then time nicely for a massive price cut at the end of the year.

It’s another part of the continuing trend away from physical media and into a digital-only and subscription-based gaming landscape. Similar to music, films and TV services, the way we consume games is changing (and surely for the worse). When you want to sit down in later life to play some classics from your earlier years, you can’t just dig out a console and games from storage. You’ll have to sign up for a subscription service and hope they have the games you want…. plus it’ll all be owned by Disney by then anyway.

In separate console iteration news, there’s more information coming out about new Switch models being released this year, with strong rumours that there will be a cheaper, stripped-down version alongside a beefier, “pro” model.

Switch Up The Indie Line Up

Nintendo outlined their indie games offering for the next few months, showing that Switch isn’t just for those heavy-hitting first party titles (which I’m sure we’ll get at some point).

Making the jump to another console is Cuphead, the retro art style platformer that will make you smile and scream in equal measure. Cadence of Hyrule is a surprise Zelda rhythm-action game mashup which looks remarkably good, due to release later in the spring.

There’s also a bunch of other titles which will presumably be interesting to someone somewhere. Take a look at the full list – available in the description of their “Nindies Showcase” video.

New Shit

Now to highlight some of the titles you can spunk all your hard-earned cash on this week. No links direct to the content this week, mainly because you all know how Google works, right?

(There might be some affiliate amazon links. Buy some stuff and feed my gaming habit – Robin)

The Wins

Now we take a quick look at some other gaming titbits that we didn’t have time to rant about over several paragraphs.

• Tom Nook revealed as a tax service official as well as a mafioso loan shark
• Sony says that Playstation is just as cool and accessible as Nintendo and Microsoft
• Apple also wants a slice of the gaming subscription pie – apparently it will be bigger and sleeker than other services, but will cost 500% more
• Pirate action game Sea of Thieves is adding more features to the game, including a “scurvy meter” and phishing for credit card details
• Destiny 2 has finally sorted out how the game’s upgrade system should work after 2 full games, half a dozen expansion and a bazillion patches
• New version of the Oculus Rift releases for poverty-striken underlings who only have a few hundred pounds spare for VR kit
• Microsoft wants to allow gamers to play XBox games on their Android phones, after the 3 people with Windows phones said they weren’t that bothered
• Apex Legends announces new characters and shit to keep players distracted from the continual game crashes

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Matt Tiernan

Founder at Eclectic App Development

Makes, plays and reviews games. Posts crap on the internet and reviews things for Coaching for Geeks.

My site is http://eclecticapp.xyz

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