News Update: 2/11

Rock Band co-creators take a major blow, announce restructuring, World of Warcraft free to movie goers? The Division Open Beta goes live next weekend, a Bioware writer lands a new job with a familiar title.. and so much more! Hit the Continue Reading Button for more!

Geez. Between all the new games released and all the news happening, there’s so much to write about, so let’s get to it now while the cold medicine is still working!

The Soundtracks for XCOM and XCOM 2 will be released on Vinyl . Yes, there are some people out there who still prefer records for their sound quality.

Speaking about Blizzard, 2K games announced that players had killed about 53 million aliens in the game so far. I did my part on easy, although the veteran level is kicking my butt.

Final Fantasy IX now hits IOS and Android phones. Hopefully they avoid the issues with porting past games to Apple and Android.

While $50 Billion in revenues this year sounds like a lot, by 2020 mobile apps and games will be a $100 Billion Market, according to a new report. Also interesting from this study is that they expect the Android store to pass the iTunes Store for revenue by 2017.

Sega and Sony announce a Sonic The Hedgehog movie, currently scheduled for 2018. This will apparently be a cross over between live action and animated bits, kind of like the SpongeBob movie was. You know, if I was cruel, I’d post that Simpsons “Stop! Stop! He’s already dead” meme.. but not today.

David Gaider, formerly of BioWare, has accepted a role as the Creative Director of Beamdog Software. This move sees him return to his roots, as the next game from Beamdog is Baldur’s Gate II Enhanced Edition: Siege of Dragonspear (his first game for BioWare was the original Baldur’s Gate II)

One of the options Blizzard is ruminating about to get everyone to see the Warcraft movie in June is to give everyone free World of Warcraft stuff. The rumored offer includes the base game, all the expansions (Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, and Warlords of Draenor) and a free month of game play. I hope they have at least a small reward for those of us who already subscribe as well, but we still have four months to wait.

Oh, and before I forget, Happy Birthday Blizzard! They turn 25 today. We’ve come a long way from Bloodthorn and the Lost Vikings, haven’t we?

In not so good news, hardware creator Mad Catz has apparently announced plans to cut one third of its staff by April of next year. This is due to Rock Band 4 being a flop and not allowing the same level of hardware as the original music instrument game wars. They also lost several key personnel in advance of the news.

Tom Clancy’s The Division will hit open beta on the 18th. They’ve added some anti-cheat checks, as well as increasing the enemies in the PvP Dark Zone, and added a warning signal for players who’ve shot other players but not enough damage to go rogue. We’ll be streaming that next weekend.

Star Citizen is splitting into two games. One is the Squadron 42 single player game, and the other is the multiplayer game in beta testing. If you buy one, you can get the other for $15 (base price is $45), and those who kickstarted or backed the game before now will still be getting both games.

We’re getting more info about possibilities for the Titanfall sequel. The game will have a single player campaign and possibly an animated television series, and according to a toy company announcement (they are making the toys for the game), the game will launch in winter 2016.