Gaming News #178 – Xbox Series S Sales, Ubisoft Games On Steam, Half-Life on Steam Deck

Fresh news on the delay of the physical edition of GTA: Definitive Edition, the possibility of Ubisoft games coming back to Steam, next Half-Life game maybe coming exclusively to the Steam Deck and much more.

Gaming News #178

Black Friday might be behind us and the end of the year might be fast approaching, but that doesn’t make the finishing line any less eventful. The past week brought a healthy mix of news both in terms of games and the gaming industry in general with some exciting rumors regarding the next Half-life game, Ubisoft possibly coming back to Steam in full-force, GOG going back to selling olden games, and much more.

Xbox Series S wins Black Friday sales

Xbox Series S wins Black Friday sales

The cheapest became even cheaper and gamers loved it

Many gamers aren’t that interested in the still relatively expensive 4K gaming and this is more than evident by the fact that Microsoft’s cheaper next-generation offering – Xbox Series S was the best-selling console on Black Friday 2021. According to data company Adobe Digital Economy Index, who’ve analyzed over 1 trillion clicks to retail sites, the £250 box outsold was the best-selling console on Black Friday, outselling the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and the Nintendo Switch

Gamers are looking for a cheap deal during Black Friday, and nothing beats an already relatively cheap next-gen console that was sometimes sold at $250/£220 during Black Friday sales. The best thing about Xbox Series S is well integrated with the Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft recently had a super-cheap, $1 for three months worth of subscription deal. This means that you could enjoy three months of the newest next-gen games for literally nothing when compared to doing the same on the more powerful consoles or the PC. It’s easy to see why many went for the Series S. For more information, check out our original news coverage.

Starfield is going to have two open-world wow moments

Starfield is going to have two open-world wow moments

Get ready to explore an entire star-system

Most Bethesda games have that “wow” moment where the game lets go of your hand and thrusts you into its massive open world. There’s always that closed tutorial segment after which escape some predicament, open a door and look upon the huge open world that you’ll be free to explore for the remainder of the game. Well, according to Todd Howard, Bethesda’s upcoming game Starfield is going to feature two such moments. While he didn’t go into further detail, we know we’ll be exploring multiple planets in Starfield so we reckon one’s going to be planetside, and another somewhere in space. 

While we still didn’t see any gameplay, Bethesda did release a developer diary titled “The Endless Pursuit” in which you can check out some concept art of different environments, characters, objects, and more. It’s unlikely that this will satisfy the most impatient, but hey, at least they are giving us something to chew on and analyze until they feel confident to show more. Starfield is one of the most anticipated games of 2022. so it’s probably for the better that they take their time. You can check the first episode of the developer diary here.

Ubisoft’s games could be coming back to Steam

Ubisoft's games could be coming back to Steam

Achievements, everyone gets one!

Some three years ago, Ubisoft made the decision to release games only on their own Ubisoft Connect platform as well as on the Epic Games Store. Well, some eagle-eyed gamers noticed some Ubisoft Connect-related information on Steam which lead many to the conclusion that Ubisoft games could be coming back to the platform. Seeing as PC gamers are still more inclined to spend money on Steam than EGS due to store features, achievements, and mod support, Ubisoft might be somewhat regretting their decision.

It’s likely that they’ll be following EA’s example since their return to Steam significantly boosted sales of even some older titles. Plus, there’s the fact that Ubisoft’s CEO publicly expressed interest in Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck and the tiny detail that Steam broke the active player record 4 times during 2021. While there hasn’t been an official statement on whether Ubisoft games are coming back to Steam, we reckon we won’t have to wait for too long to find out. 

GOG is going back to selling older titles

GOG is going back to selling older titles

GOG store doing business in accordance to their acronym

CD Projekt Reds digital storefront is not looking so hot right now. The past three months have been bad for GOG with significantly lower sales when compared to the same time period of 2020. The company is thus making some changes to their sales strategy and the first one is going to be a bigger focus on what made GOG so popular in the first place – selling older, DRM-free games. The acronym does stand for Good Old Games after all. 

In the past couple of years, the GOG storefront has seen an increase in modern games while the catalog of older games shrunk significantly. Luckily, going forward this will not be the case and CD Projekt Red will continue adapting old games to modern systems in line with their DRM-free policy to return some of their lost goodwill that way. 

Physical versions of GTA: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition have been delayed

Physical versions of GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition have been delayed

Probably buying time to fix some more game-breaking bugs

If you were hoping to get your hands on a boxed copy of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, you will have to wait a little longer. The decision to delay was probably made, at least in part, due to the bad technical state and bad reception of the game upon its release. PS4 and Xbox One copies will release on the 17th of December. The Nintendo Switch version will follow in early 2022.

Since launch, numerous updates have been added for the three games to remove bugs and improve performance. The most recent update included improvements to textures issues, most notably lighting and rain. For several days, the game’s PC version was temporarily offline as Rockstar scrambled to remove private files. Hopefully, they don’t slow down with the updates that will make the physical copies as problem-free as possible when they release. For more information, check out our original news coverage.

The next Half-Life game could be coming to Steam Deck

The next Half-Life game could be coming to Steam Deck

If good, Half-Life could be a system seller game

The release of Half-Life 3 is along with the release Star Citizen among the longest-running memes in gaming so we’ve become somewhat numb to any mention of them. However, once in a blue moon, there comes a fairly reliable source with seemingly legit information and we honestly hope that this is one such case. YouTuber Tyler McVicker has recently given us some exciting information about what Valve is currently up to. Chief among them was that they are moving away from VR when it comes to Half-Life and is looking toward the upcoming Steam-Deck. 

Seeing as it’s a portable platform, McVicker states that the next game in the franchise isn’t going to be the exclusively first-person romp we are used to. It could instead be a cooperative experience that will blend FPS and RTS elements for something totally unique and suited for the portable platform. While mixing FPS and RTS elements isn’t exactly new, Valve always brings their A-game where Half-Life is concerned so if McVicker is right, we don’t doubt it’s going to be one hell of a ride. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

×