The past week was mostly good news in the world of gaming. Not only do we have some awesome end-of-the-year sales on multiple storefronts, but we also got several exciting announcements about upcoming games and updates to existing games. Oh, then there’s the huge acquisition of Leyou Technologies by Chinese company Tencent and of course, how can anyone forget the KFC gaming console with some insane specs that also heat your meat.
Steam’s winter sale is live, and it has some huge discounts
Grab something for yourself or as a gift
It’s winter, it’s cold and there’s no better way to spend these days than indoors playing some games. Luckily, Steam has us covered with their winter sale and huge discounts for some awesome games. Despite how you feel about some of them games, the discounts are rather substantial. Some notable games being on sale are Marvel’s Avengers at 50% discount, Rage 2 at a 70% discount, Metro Exodus at 60%, Dark Souls 3 at 75%, and there’s plenty more. What’s great is that most of the Steam’s top sellers are being sold at discounts ranging from 20% to 60% so now’s your chance to get some of the most popular games out there at a fraction of the price. It’s important to note that other digital storefronts are also having their winter sales to compete with Steam so be sure to check them as well to get the absolute best deal you can.
Silent Hill creator is making a new horror-action adventure
Horror action adventure from the maker of Silent Hill? Yes, please.
Keiichiro Toyama is the creator of Silent Hill and Gravity Rush, so when he says he’s making a new horror-action adventure, that’s something to take note of. He shared some details about the game in a recent interview with IGN Japan saying that the new game will appeal to the fans of his previous work. He also clarified that the game won’t be a hardcore horror but a more approachable experience with battles and story elements. Supposedly, even though a fairly large team is working on the project, the game isn’t expected to release until 2023., and it will do so on multiple platforms with PC being the primary focus. So strap in, because we are in for a long wait that is likely to ultimately pay off, given Toyama’s track record up until now. We’ll let you know as soon as we have more details.
Tencent acquires Warframe developer and several other studios
Perhaps they can make Warframe into less of a grindfest
Tencent is already one giant Chinese corporation, and it has just become even bigger. Just last week, the company acquired Leyou Technologies in a $1.5 billion deal meaning they get a majority stake in multiple studios and the accompanying gaming franchises under their banner as well. The most prominent company now under Tencent is the Canadian Digital Extremes, the developer behind Warframe. Other notable developers included in the deal are Splash Damage, Certain Affinity and Athlon games who’ve worked on Gears Tactics, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered and the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO respectively. There’s some worry about how the deal will affect these studios and their games, with the Warframe community being the loudest among them.
Digital Extremes went ahead to calm their fan base, saying that they’ll remain in full creative control of Warframe and don’t expect any changes to how the studio operates. The statement is likely to hold true as Tencent usually steers clear of creative decisions in their studios, mostly allowing them to innovate and thrive on their own. Hopefully, they’ll inject some additional funds where necessary in order to make the games under their banner even better further down the line.
Despite the refunds, Cyberpunk 2077 sold over 13 million copies
Cyberpunk’s success isn’t strange, considering the pre-release hype
Cyberpunk 2077 went on sale on December 10th and has since then sold over 13 million copies – even when you factor in the refunds! The hype obviously paid off since this makes the games incredibly successful despite the bad launch and removal from the PlayStation store. Not only that, but the game broke numerous records like the one for most concurrent players over on Steam which is an immense achievement for a non-live service game. The sales numbers are sure to grow even further once CDPR fixes some of the most prominent bugs and performance issues since many players opted to wait for that instead of purchasing the game early on. We were very critical in our review of Cyberpunk 2077 and hope that CDPR will at least fix the technical issues soon, before the game’s bugs get an even bigger meme status down the road.
Netflix released a script page from Witcher’s 2nd Season
We are in for a bloody start to a new season
The first seasons of the Witcher series over on Netflix was great, albeit somewhat confusing due to the confusing timeline and shifting perspectives. After a couple of pandemic related setbacks, the show’s second season is set to be released sometime during 2021., and Netflix is kicking into 3rd gear when it comes to promotion. Just the other day, they released a script page from the upcoming season, and it seems to start of fairly strong. Geralt is a monster hunter first and foremost, and it seems he’ll immediately jump in to fight a mysterious creature that’s terrorizing and killing some villagers who are traveling with their wagon through the wilderness. The script page features some rather dark narration from Geralt, seemingly setting a gritty tone for his comeback. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more information on the highly anticipated release date.
KFC launches a high-end gaming console that can also keep your chicken warm
Calm down, it’s only for promotional purposes.
Wow. Just wow. We knew 2020 was a crazy year but this just almost takes the cake. If you aren’t in the know, back in June KFC released a trailer for the KFConsole which was quickly dismissed as an out of season April fools joke. Turns out they’ll have the last laugh and the console was real. To make it, KFC partnered up with Cooler Master and essentially created a mini-PC like console capable of running games at 4K and 240 FPS. If that wasn’t insane enough, the console has a small compartment where you can place your already cooked chicken to be kept warm by the heat radiating from the console’s components. Yes, you read that right, this console has a built-in meat heating compartment. Of course, this product isn’t going into mass production and only serves to, quite successfully, promote the KFC brand. Nice job!
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Producer details post-launch plans
Valhalla is not only going to become bigger, but also prettier
The launch of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla earlier this year was highly successful. Naturally, Ubisoft will want to capitalize on the good sales result and deliver a worthwhile DLC content that will peak players’ interests. We’ve already known for some time that the two major DLC’s will take Eivor to Ireland and France, but now we got some more details from the producer of the game – Julien Laferrière. According to an interview with Game Informer, the main priority for the game, aside from the major DLC’s is to capitalize on the next-gen features of the game, meaning the team will roll out various graphical and performance improvements through updates. He didn’t clarify what sort of improvements we can expect but hopefully they don’t further ruin the somewhat poor optimization of the game. Cyberpunk 2077 has in a sense reminded us that we should always wish for better performance over prettier visuals in order to fully enjoy our gaming experience. Hopefully, Ubisoft learned something from that as well.
