WoW: Dragonflight Is Officially Coming November 28

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will officially launch on November 28, Blizzard has announced. It will return players to Azeroth and introduce a new playable race, the new Evoker class, customizable dragon mounts, and more.

The game’s ninth expansion will see players come home to help confront a new threat and rebuild the game’s titular Dragonflights. In fitting with the dragon theme, players will be able to tame, ride, and customize their own Dragon Isles Drakes, which take advantage of the new Dragonriding flight mechanic. A new playable dragon race, the Dracthyr, is also being introduced. The Dracthyr are only able to be the new Evoker class, which can be played either as a caster DPS or a healer.

Unlike more recent expansions which have added new means of player-power progression in the form of things like Artifact Weapons and Azerite Armor, Dragonflight will look to focus on more ever-green aspects of the game. Class talents, for example, have gotten a complete overhaul to more closely resemble the game’s classic talent trees, and the nearly-two-decade-old MMO’s UI and interface are getting a much-needed facelift. Professions are also being reworked.

In addition to news about the expansion’s release, Blizzard confirmed Dragonflight season 1, which will introduce the Vault of the Incarnates raid and mark the start of its PvP and Mythic+ dungeon seasons, will start the week of December 12.

Blizzard is also bringing back an XP boost event ahead of Dragonflight’s arrival. From October 4 until the currently unknown release of the game’s pre-patch (which will add the ability to create Dracthyr characters), players will be granted the Winds of Wisdom buff, increasing XP gains by 50%.

For more on Dragonflight, be sure to read our hands-on impressions with the expansion’s alpha.

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Google Stadia Is Shutting Down On January 18, 2023

Google has announced that its cloud streaming service Stadia will officially be shut down on January 18, 2023. All Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store will be refunded, including games and add-on content purchased from that storefront.

“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,” Stadia VP Phil Harrison wrote in a blog post. “And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.”

Though Stadia as a gaming platform will be retired next year, Harrison added that the technology pioneered by the service will be used in other Google services such as YouTube, Google Play, and Augmented Reality projects. The company also plans to make the underlying technology available to industry partners, which “aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed” Harrison explained.

Stadia was first revealed in early 2019 at that year’s GDC event, and officially launched in November that year. The streaming service had an impressive number of third-party games available, with big names such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Cyberpunk 2077, and Doom Eternal in its library. Google also had big plans for exclusive titles on Stadia and began investing in its own game studios, but by February 2021, it had shut down that division and announced that it would no longer develop its own games.

“The good news is that the ball is mostly in Google’s court. Stadia has a strong foundation as a streaming service, and its biggest issues seem solvable,” Peter Brown wrote in GameSpot’s Google Stadia review. “Google needs to address the pricing structure and figure out how to make it work for customers who are trained to view streaming as a subscription service. Until it gets there, Stadia will struggle to be viewed as anything more than a costly curiosity.”

In the last few years, Stadia also began to face some stiff competition. Amazon entered the cloud gaming market with Luna, and Microsoft began working on its own streaming project that leveraged its own impressive library of titles, Game Pass subscription, and cloud gaming technologies. Logitech’s just-announced dedicated cloud gaming handheld system is compatible with Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming.

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Saudi Arabia Looking To Invest Almost $38 Billion In Games Industry, Could Acquire A Publisher

Saudi Arabia is planning to invest another $37.8 billion in the gaming market through its government-funded gaming conglomerate, The Savvy Gaming Group.

According to a new Axios report, more than $13 billion will be set aside for the “acquisition and development of a leading game publisher to become a strategic development partner” and a further $18 billion will be used to secure minority investments in other companies and studios. As for which gaming company could be acquired, Ubisoft is an unlikely target as a reported deal with Chinese conglomerate Tencent is being put together as a way to keep potential competition away.

Savvy has been on a buying spree as of late, investing serious amounts of cash into global organizations while working to build esports organizations and game development studios in the Middle East.

In a press release, Saudi and Savvy officials added that these investments are aimed at diversifying the country’s economy as part of the Vision 2030 strategy. These deals have faced criticism from around the world, due to Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights, Savvy board chairperson Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman being implicated in the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and support for the War in Yemen.

Critics have labeled the acquisitions as an image makeover project for Saudi Arabia, which Savvy CEO Brian Ward has denied.

Saudi Arabia recently invested $1 billion into European giant Embracer group and acquired a 5.01% stake in Nintendo. Beyond those investments, billions of dollars from the fund have also been used to acquire stakes in EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Take-Two Interactive.

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Scorn Gets Reverse-Delayed, Coming Out A Week Early

Some good news for prospective Scorn fans: in what is an incredibly rare move for a video game, developer Ebb Software is moving the release of the game forward by a week.

This now makes the release date October 14, just over two weeks away. The announcement was paired with a short, simple trailer showing the player character falling from a great height as it cuts back and forth between flashes of the original release date and the new one.

Scorn finally received its release date earlier this year at the Xbox showcase, once again showing off the incredibly gross, H.R. Geiger inspired aesthetics. The game was first announced back in November 2014, launching a Kickstarter the following month, though it wasn’t successful. But it later received private funding from an investor, and also held another Kickstarter in 2017, which was successful.

You’ve waited long enough… pic.twitter.com/KNDeCoFMe2

— Scorn (@scorn_game) September 29, 2022

Pre-ordering the game on Steam also nets you a 10% discount, so worth considering sooner rather than later considering how much less time you have to do so now.

Scorn does look like it’s going to have a pretty incredible yet horrifying setting, and nothing in the world has any intention of helping you do whatever it is you’re meant to be doing, but it could probably push you in the right direction a little bit more than it seems like it will.

This isn’t the first big game release to be brought forward this year, as back in April Nintendo announced that Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s release date was brought forward by two whole months.

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Nintendo Game Tester Alleges They Were Fired For Asking About Unions

A former QA tester for Nintendo is alleging that their firing from that position was the result of an inquiry about unionization during a company meeting in January.

In an interview with Axios Gaming, Mackenzie Clifton–who is coming forward after filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board earlier this year–is claiming that a question asked to Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser during a meeting in January ultimately led to their termination one month later.

Nintendo has been the subject of multiple labor-related allegations this year.

According to the interview, Clifton asked Bowser “what does NoA think about the unionization trend in QA in the games industry as of late?” Their inquiry was not answered in the meeting, however according to Clifton a supervisor from contracting firm Aston Carter told them it was a “downer question” and told them to ask questions of that nature to the firm, not to Nintendo directly.

Clifton was later fired for publicly disclosing sensitive information according to Nintendo, though when Clifton pressed for an example of her transgression, they were shown a single tweet from mid-February that read “in today’s build someone somewhere must have deleted every other texture in the game bc everything is now red. Just like, pure red. it’s very silly.”

In the months following the NLRB complaint, multiple accounts about subpar work conditions at Nintendo have emerged. In August, Kotaku reported that female testers hired from a separate contracting firm called Aerotek were subjected to discriminatory behaviors, including harassment and inappropriate conduct from male employees. Nintendo has not commented on any of these allegations as of this writing.

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The Walking Dead: All Stars Gets Its First Major Update, Including A New Character

After its release in August, mobile game The Walking Dead: All Stars has dropped its first big update, introducing the Headhunting system, a new PVP mode called Last Man Standing, and a new character, Annie, who fights alongside her hawk Phoenix.

While some of All Stars’ characters are taken directly from the comics others, like Annie, are designed solely for the game. Annie is a neutral aligned character, who has a special bond with her hawk Phoenix, and also boasts mystical powers. Annie can direct Phoenix to provoke enemies in battle, and can heal allies with medicinal herbs.

The new update also introduces Headhunting, a new system players can use to recruit allies. The press release says players can use the Headhunting system to acquire characters “from various alignments–from mythical overseers to vicious predators.”

A new elite PVP mode is also being added to the game–named Last Man Standing, the new league will only be open to top players from Frontier battles, requiring players to rank between 1 and 10. Last Man Standing competitors will have to “battle every single rival in the league to make it to the finals.”

All Stars will also be running limited time events, such as the Town Management bingo-style event offering rewards that can be put towards character growth, with players who complete all the bingo games unlocking a free epic-tier character. Limited “Inventory Clearance and Growth Support” events will also be starting from October 4, giving players more chances to earn extra rewards.

The Walking Dead: All Stars is a character collection RPG based on The Walking Dead comics, which is free to play now on Android or iOS.

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Pre-Registration Is Now Open For Mobile Game King Of Fighters Arena

King of Fighters Arena, a new real-time PVP mobile game in the long-running fighting game franchise, has now opened up pre-registration on iOS and Android. Developer Netmarble has also launched the game’s official site, providing more information on the game, including a development roadmap, playable characters, and plans for blockchain monetization.

Described as a follow up to its mobile RPG King of Fighters Allstar, the new game is an action PVP game that allows players to battle each other in real time. The developer has promised to make all King of Fighters characters playable, with 37 characters available for free at launch. Netmarble hasn’t said whether any characters that may be added in subsequent updates will also be available for free, but has said that the roster will continue to “grow through special collaborations and events.”

As a free-to-play game, King of Fighters Arena appears to be basing its money around blockchain integration, including its own token called Fighters Club Token, and an NFT market based around “Fighters Cards.” Players will be able to trade the regular in-game currency for FCT if they choose to engage in the game’s blockchain economy, though KOF Arena’s timing is less than ideal with the crypto market currently in a downturn.

Pre-registration is available now on the Apple Store and Google Play, with players who pre-register unlocking limited edition cosmetic rewards including the “Fighter Illust Collection and Fighter Background Collection to adorn and represent your fighter, [and] a Limited version of Special Title and Title Panel.”

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Dead Space Remake Promises No Loading Screens Or Cuts

Since it was first announced, EA Motive has had one ambitious promise for the upcoming Dead Space remake: that it will stay true to the original, while also being fully rebuilt from scratch in a new engine. A new blog on the topic has explained a little more about where the game has been expanded and modernized, and how Motive has tried to stay faithful to the original.

In terms of upgrades, one big difference is that the game will be playable as “one sequential shot,” as described by senior producer Philippe Ducharme. “From the moment you start the game to the moment you end the game, there are no camera cuts or load screens–unless you die. The Ishimura is now fully interconnected, so you can walk from Point A to Point Z, visit the entire ship, and revisit locations… It’s now a completely unbroken experience.”

While many remakes focus on technical upgrades, Motive’s Dead Space will also be making changes to the story, updating and extending the lore of the original game to accomodate for details and characters added later in Dead Space 2, 3, and the comic books. Isaac becoming a voiced character is one of the major changes we can expect, but the developers have also promised more narrative side quests, and bigger roles for certain characters.

“Some characters who were a bit more secondary, who only appeared in audio logs, like Dr. Cross–we gave them some actual screen time,” explains creative director Roman Campos-Oriola. “And we wanted to give a bit more background and agency to some of the characters from the cast, like Nicole. So we’re creating a whole layer of narrative side-quests that will allow you to see, for example, what happened to Nicole during the outbreak.”

With the remake being fully rebuilt in the Frostbite engine, Motive have had to rebuild every asset from the ground up, promising serious technical improvements. One of the features that has seen big improvements according to the developers is navigating in zero gravity.

“There’s much more 360-degree freedom; now when you play Dead Space you feel like you’re in space,” said Campos-Oriola. “This also allows us to revisit some of the old content and create new ways to navigate, new paths, and new environments with new challenges.”

Motive also points out big technological improvements to lighting, volumetric effects, and to Dead Space’s novel dismemberment system.

Through all of the development process, Motive has continued to consult with a “Community Council” made up of some of the franchise’s most “diehard fans,” who have been allowed to see what the studio is working on and give their feedback. Motive has also been notably responsive to online feedback to development progress it has shared publicly, such as fan feedback on the audio treatment for some of the game’s most iconic weapons.

The Dead Space remake will release on January 27, 2023 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

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Intel Demos Sapphire Rapids Hardware Accelerator Blocks In Action At Innovation 2022

With Intel’s annual Innovation event taking place this week in San Jose, the company is looking to recapture a lot of technical momentum that has slowly been lost over the past couple of years. While Intel has remained hard at work releasing new products over the time, the combination of schedule slips and an inability to show off their wares to in-person audiences has taken some of the luster off the company and its products. So for their biggest in-person technical event since prior to the pandemic, the company is showing off as much silicon as they can, to convince press, partners, and customers alike that CEO Pat Gelsinger’s efforts have put the company back on track.

Of all of Intel’s struggles over the past couple of years, there is no better poster child than their Sapphire Rapids server/workstation CPU. A true next-generation product from Intel that brings everything from PCIe 5 and DDR5 to CXL and a slew of hardware accelerators, there’s really nothing to write about Sapphire Rapids’ delays that hasn’t already been said – it’s going to end up over a year late.

But Sapphire Rapids is coming. And Intel is finally able to see the light at the end of the tunnel on those development efforts. With general availability slated for Q1 of 2023, just over a quarter from now, Intel is finally in a position to show off Sapphire Rapids to a wider audience – or at least, members of the press. Or to take a more pragmatic read on matters, Intel now needs to start seriously promoting Sapphire Rapids ahead of its launch, and that of its competition.

For this year’s show, Intel invited members of the press to see a live demo of pre-production Sapphire Rapids silicon in action. The purpose of the demos, besides to give the press the ability to say “we saw it; it exists!” is to start showing off one of the more unique features of Sapphire Rapids: its collection of dedicated accelerator blocks.

Along with delivering a much-needed update to the CPU’s processor cores, Sapphire Rapids is also adding/integration dedicated accelerator blocks for several common CPU-critical server/workstation workloads. The idea, simply put, is that fixed function silicon can do the task as quickly or better than CPU cores for a fraction of the power, and for only a fractional increase in die size. And with hyperscalers and other server operators looking for big improvements in compute density and energy efficiency, domain specific accelerators such as these are a good way for Intel to deliver that kind of edge to their customers. And it doesn’t hurt either that rival AMD isn’t expected to have similar accelerator blocks.

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PlayStation’s New Loyalty Program Rolls Out October 5 For North America

PlayStation Stars is a new loyalty program that anybody with a PlayStation account can join, and it launches quite soon. It does not require a PlayStation Plus membership and will first debut in Asia on September 29, North and South America on October 5, and Europe and Australia on October 13.

PlayStation Stars works by rewarding players who complete campaigns and activities like a Monthly Check-in campaign–essentially just playing any game–or earning specific Trophies. For example, one of PlayStation Stars’ first campaigns is called Play/1994, a feature that asks players to launch the correct game when an audio cue is played.

Rewards include loyalty points and digital collectibles that are, notably, not NFTs. Loyalty points can be exchanged for PSN wallet funds or select PlayStation store products. Digital collectibles are figurines from franchises, items from Sony’s history, and more, which can be displayed in the PlayStation app. They can’t be sold, traded, and do not use any blockchain technology.

There are four status levels in PlayStation Stars, determined by the number of non-common Trophies you obtain and the number of full game purchases in the PlayStation store. The higher the status level, the more rewards and benefits you get.

As for those who do have PlayStation Plus memberships, subscription payments do count towards loyalty points.

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