Protect Gotham
Protect Gotham
E80: Gotham Knights producer reveals exciting new game details.
Good morning gamers! Gotham Knights executive producer Fleur Marty and game director Geoff Ellenor revealed some new details about the game in an interview with Game Informer. Gotham Knights is set to release on October 25th, 2022 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Customization options will be earned by playing through the story and unlocking different blueprints for gear and suits. Marty says that each of the Knights will have 11 different suit styles. The Batcycle is not upgradeable, however players can adjust the looks and noises whichever way they want.
The beginning of the game is a reveal of Batman’s death, and then the story shifts focus to the four Gotham Knights and how they’re processing the grief in their own different ways. Ellenor says the importance of the story is in how the Gotham Knights take on Batman’s job and manage to work together. The Gotham Knights must come together quickly and take on the Court of Owls. Marty says that this is the biggest version of Gotham City ever in a video game and that players will have a lot of layers to go through. The Batcycle is a key long-range method of transportation.
Cooperative Play will allow players to invite friends into their games and to control the matchmaking settings. Players who decide to play co-op will be able to take advantage of unique co-op takedowns. Marty and Ellenor also stated that both players can use the same Gotham Knight in co-op but the entire campaign can be completed in single player or co-op - there’s no missions that will require co-op.
Xbox Cloud Gaming
Cloud Gaming isn’t a new service (aka Google Stadia), and the technology definitely isn’t perfect but the concept of “gaming anywhere” is very clearly a major component of Xbox’s strategy. Their partnership with Samsung that puts the Xbox app on every Samsung Smart TV and their upcoming Xbox streaming stick codenamed “Keystone” indicates that Microsoft is focused on expanding Xbox and Game Pass outside of just console sales. In fact, Xbox recently created their own cloud gaming division led by Kim Swift to help build cloud-native games for the Xbox ecosystem.
As Microsoft takes even bigger strides toward improving Cloud Gaming, here’s some new information that surfaced last week during Xfest.
Latency Improvements are coming to cloud gaming with the expansion of Direct Capture tech to a wider selection of games. It currently takes 8-72 milliseconds for controller inputs to register in-game but this new tech cuts that latency to anywhere between 2-12 milliseconds (at the expense of visual fidelity, of course).
Mouse and Keyboard Support is also coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming for PC users but there is no official rollout date yet. Microsoft told developers that they can start adding the support to their games so it isn’t too far away.
Microsoft Edge is getting a whole bunch of new Xbox performance features including an Efficiency Mode to reduce the amount of resources the browser uses when cloud gaming and a Clarity Boost to improve the overall gaming experience. The browser's homepage is also much more gaming oriented now.
Esports Corner
According to a study conducted by the gambling company BetVictor, Fortnite and Rocket League are the esport titles with the youngest peak competitive ages. Fortnite’s peak competitive age is 16 while Rocket Leagues is 17, with players from each of those titles earning roughly USD $30 million and USD $5 million respectively. Other than Overwatch that has a peak competitive age of 18, every other esport game has a peak age of 20+.
Ubisoft has officially announced that their upcoming Rainbow Six Siege international event will be hosted in Berlin this August. The event was originally supposed to take place in the United Arab Emirates but severe community backlash forced Ubisoft to reconsider those plans.
More than 200 esports organizations have expressed preliminary interest to join the Valorant Partnered League for next season. Unlike other esports franchised leagues, Riot Games is not requiring a buy-in fee for Valorant but there will be a limited number of spots available per league. Each of the three major leagues, North America (incl. Central and South America), EMEA and Asia will only support 10 spots.
The Intel Extreme Masters is set to begin in early July with a total of 24 teams competing for the $1m grand prize and a chance to hoist one of CS:GOs most coveted trophies. 8 teams have directly qualified for the group stages while 16 others will fight their way through the Play-In stage. The grand finals will take place on July 16 and 17 where 6 teams will put it all on the line.
Gaming Roundup
Tony Hawk says that remakes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 & 4 were abandoned once Activision merged Vicarious Visions into Blizzard.
Destiny 2 cheat distributor, Elite Boss Tech has agreed to pay Bungie $13.5 million in damages and to stop producing new cheats.
Sony will reportedly reveal three new gaming headsets and two new gaming monitors on June 28th alongside its new “INZONE” brand.
Activision Blizzard shareholders approved a proposal to publicly disclose their efforts to stop workplace discrimination and harassment.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, the platform Battle Royale game developed by Mediatonic has gone free-to-play on Xbox and the Nintendo Switch.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass has been announced with new outfit color variants, hero character, quests and story scenario.
Sega and Creative Assembly have teamed up to develop HYENAS, a new multiplayer sci-fi FPS “multi-team robbery game” coming in 2023 to Xbox, PlayStation and PC.
FromSoftware game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has said that their next major game is in the “final stages of development”. Current theory is that it’s Armored Core 6.
On This Day
Last week, some legendary video games celebrated their release anniversaries.
June 21, 2005, DICE released Battlefield 2.
June 23, 1996, Nintendo released Super Mario 64.
June 23, 2008, DICE released Battlefield Bad Company as part of their Battlefield series.
June 23, 2015, Rocksteady studios released Batman Arkham Knight.
June 25, 2009, Electronic Arts released Fight Night Round 4.
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