Good Morning San Diego
Good Morning San Diego
E134: A look at Comic Con in Anchorman's hometown.
Good morning gamers! Last week’s San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) was a thrilling four-day extravaganza filled with amazing panels and reveals. The video game industry had a relatively strong presence, featuring panels for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Star Wars Outlaws and Mortal Kombat 1. Here’s what you may have missed,
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 premiered its official story trailer alongside a panel about “Symbiotic Relationships”. Both Miles Morales and Peter Parker are at the peak of their Spider-Man game, while also balancing the hardships of their personal lives. Kraven and his hunters, Mr. Negative and Venom all play important roles in the storyline with the latter being a unique Venom story. Additionally, a large part of New York will be explorable including Brooklyn and Queens, and the game takes place roughly 9-10 months after the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Star Wars Outlaws made an appearance with two panels. The first panel revealed two of the game's locations, the new moon Toshara and Tatooine. They also revealed that cooking and food is very important in the game, and players can even work for or betray Jabba the Hutt. A lengthy Q&A interview with creative director Julian Gerighty dug even deeper with additional dev insights and story details.
Mortal Kombat 1 made a massive entrance showcasing multiple new trailers and characters, including the return of fan favorites Li Mei, Tanya and Baraka. They also confirmed a handful of DLC characters such as Quan Chi, Ermac, Takeda, Peacemaker, Omni-Man, and Homelander as Kombat Pack DLC fighters.
Borderlands Echo Vision Live, a new interactive streaming series set in Gearbox’s Borderlands universe was announced. Additionally, The Borderlands movie starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, Jamie Lee Curtis and Olivier Richters hits theaters on August 9, 2024.
Nostalgia is Real
Nostalgia is a real sentiment that everyone experiences because it provides fond memories of people, places, events or other meaningful experiences. Nostalgia is a powerful tool in gaming as it can take players back to some of their favourite moments.
Activision resolved the matchmaking server problems for older Call of Duty titles, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The fix was made possible with the help of Microsoft's backward compatibility support on Xbox, enabling Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S owners to play these classic games. As Microsoft works on completing the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, the expectation is for more improvements and integration of Activision games into Xbox Game Pass.
The Coalition has reportedly fixed the matchmaking and multiplayer issues for the original Gears of War trilogy. These fixes are important as gamers have begun to flock back to their favourite games by the hundreds of thousands. Players are now able to find matches on games that were released over 14 years ago in under 20 seconds. The sheer number of players buying an Xbox console and old games will surely impact the future maintenance of fan favourite games.
Esports Corner
🥇Congratulations to ManuBachoore for winning the FIFAe World Cup, and to the top-6 teams from the CS:GO BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023.
Blizzard’s Overwatch League is on the eve of its 7th season, and recently introduced Overwatch 2 as the main game. Viewership has plummeted over the years and the league is reportedly in danger of shutting down after “around 50 employees” from the esports department were laid off. At the end of this current season, teams will vote on a new operating agreement. If franchised teams opt out of the league, they will be entitled to a $6m termination fee from Activision Blizzard.
Members of the Rocket League esports scene have launched the Rocket League Players Association (RLPA), an organization meant to represent the best interests of the players and to help strengthen communication with Psyonix. The organization includes both players and coaches, and will operate under an elected model with distinct committees representing each region. RLPA co-founder Jonny Davies said “there’s been a call for it within the community”.
BLAST has officially opened their “host destination process” for the locations of their upcoming 2024 events across multiple titles including CS2 (BLAST Premier) and R6 (BLAST R6). Head of commercial solutions James Woollard claims that BLAST events provide more than $24.7m in economic impact for the host city economies.
Gaming Roundup
High on Life, the comedic first-person shooter with action-adventure elements is now available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
GI Joe: Snake Eyes, the AAA game being developed by Atomic Arcade has completed the concept stage and is now entering the pre-production stage.
Resident Evil 9 is reportedly targeting a 2025 release. The report also says that Capcom will announce a “big game” later this year with a Fall 2024 release date.
Xbox has extended their Activision Blizzard King merger deadline to October 18th. The deal’s breakup fee after September 15th is $4.5 billion.
Arkane Studios is hiring for a new single-player action RPG game with immersive simulations according to a new job posting.
Xbox Live Gold is being replaced by Xbox Game Pass Core on September 14th. The new service will give players access to 25 titles from Xbox Game Studios.
Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a new action adventure game from publisher GameMill Entertainment and developer IguanaBee, launching Fall 2023.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage won’t receive any DLC or extensive post-launch support says Ubisoft dev Stephan Boudon.
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