Weekend News Update 1/29

The biggest news of all, I’m giving old Professor Farnsworth the week off from delivering the “Good news Everyone…” Why? Find out at the bottom of the news update.

Corporate News

EA announced their quarterly report.. they beat their own projections, thanks to a strong quarter that saw 13 million copies of Star Wars: Battlefront sold. However, investors wanted better news then that, and the stock lost about 8% of its value today.

Also in Electronic Arts news, they’ve joined Nintendo in moving away from the traditional E3 debut, instead choosing a EA-focused event to take place in San Francisco and London, to solely focus on their own products.

Gaming

Two classic Japanese RPG’s are getting new life shortly, as Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced (now available from Nintendo) and Breath of Fire 3 (coming to PSN) were announced. and I for one thank all that’s holy that they didn’t announce this before the Fifteen for February.

PC Gamer has an interesting tidbit from that EA quarterly earnings report… as EA expects a new Battlefield, Titanfall, and of course, Mass Effect Andromeda to be out in the next fiscal year (ending March 31, 2017)

Heroes of the Storm announced two new characters. Both of them hail from the Diablo series, as the Wizard and the Necromancer (named Li-Ming and Xul respectively) will be joining the roster.

Five Nights at Freddy’s World has been pulled, and full refunds are being offered. This is interesting, as despite a large amount of positive reviews, the game’s creator said he agreed that the game wasn’t quite “ready” for prime-time yet, and that not only full refunds were being offered, no matter how long you’ve played, but when the game gets re-released, it will be free.

Street Fighter V will be getting a story mode expansion for free in June. The game is in final beta.

Despite a well-received release, Arcen, creators of bullet-hell shooter Starward Rogue, announced that they will be laying off nearly all the staff due to missing sales goals.

The sequel to Homefront, Homefront: The Revolution will have co-op mode, and all the maps for co-op mode will be free.

Playstation announced the top selling digital downloads of 2015.. as well as the top selling games of December. Some interesting games in that list.

Hardware:

Whoopsie! It looks like Electronic Arts may have spilt the beans about the number of Xbox Ones out there.. They referred to new-generation (PS4 and X1) as a 55 million install base. Considering that Sony has already announced they have 36 million as of January.. well you do the math. I can understand why Xbox One doesn’t want to report those numbers, a 2-1 ratio doesn’t look good, although the Xbox One has well outsold the 360 at this point in their lifecycle.

So, there’s a Pokken Tournament joystick out there, but it has many limitations to it. Pokken Tournament, which is basically Pokémon fighting in a Tekken style, has a third party controller coming out, but you won’t be able to use it for much, as it cannot be the first controller (the Wii U requires a gamepad be controller one), and cannot be used for any other games. So.. um.. yeah.

Personal:

I perused the list of PC Gamer’s “15 overlooked RPG’s that are still worth playing today” and yeah, I agree with just about every selection on that list. Especially Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, Alpha Protocol, and.. well.. check out the list for yourself.

And finally, why no “Good News everyone?” Well, for once, I wanted to channel old Dennis Miller back when he had more hair then Milli OR Vanilli, and say.. “That is the news, and I AM OUTTA HERE!”

(Oh wait, we have the twitch stream in 2 hours. See ya then, I guess)