Fast Travel, a Weekly Gaming Recap – January 12th Edition

by Jordan Love | Jan 12, 2018 | News, News Section, Videogames

Fast Travel, a Weekly Gaming Recap – January 12th Edition

by Jordan Love | Jan 12, 2018 | News, News Section, Videogames

The Fast Travel weekly gaming recap is your resource for staying caught up on everything going on in the gaming industry. We start by highlighting a few of the week’s biggest news pieces. Then it’s on to a dollop of indie news. Followed by a helping of “The Best Thing on the Internet, This Week.” And finally, we gather up all the week’s headlines and smash them into a TL;DR pie for you to enjoy.

This Weeks Headlines

Steam Concurrent Users Break 18 Million Thanks to PUBG

The concurrent users for Steam – meaning those logged in and active – recently reached 18.5 million users, shattering the previous records which all hovered around the 14 million mark.

PUBG’s beta release came in March of 2017 and just a month later, Steam began to see a dramatic increases in concurrent users. These numbers steadily increased all year, rising by nearly 1 million users a month at times.

Dark Souls, Kirby, Luigi and More Revealed in Nintendo Direct Mini

Mario Tennis Aces is an all new game coming to the Switch this later year, but it was far from the only announcement at this week’s Nintendo Direct event. The other major new game reveal was Dark Souls Remastered, a game that was previously announced for Xbox One and PS4, but which had only been rumored for the Switch. Dark Souls Remastered will land on the Switch on May 25.

Among the other big announcements was a new trailer for Kirby Star Allies, set to debut on March 16. We got new looks at the indie hits Fe and Celeste as well, which now have confirmed release dates of February 16 and January 25 respectively.

As for the updates to existing games, Pokken Tournament DX, Super Mario Odyssey and Mario + Rabbids are all getting some fresh DLC. Pokken‘s DLC includes Blastoise on March 23, Mario + Rabbids’ is getting Donkey Kong sometime in the Spring and Luigi is coming to Odyssey and bringing the all new Balloon World with him in February.

Overwatch League To Be Streamed on Twitch

It’s official, the inaugural season of the Overwatch League will be streamed entirely on Twitch.

Blizzard and Twitch announced an addition to their original contract this week that will bring OWL to the streaming platform for at least the next two years. The deal encompasses the entirety of the league’s first two seasons, meaning that playoffs and all-stars should be streamed on twitch as well.

Vive Takes VR To Another Level With Wireless Pro Headset

The Vive Pro is an almost completely redesigned version of the original Vive, with expanded track space, a 1440 x 1600 pixels per eye display, redesigned ergonomics, 3D spatial audio with a new built-in Hi-Res certificate headset and more. It’s better in almost every way and that’s not even taking into consideration the biggest improvement of them all, the all new wireless adapter.

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The Best Thing on the Internet, This Week

Tyler1 Shatters Twitch Streaming Record with His Return

According esports consultant Rod Breslau, the previous streaming record for a single streamer, not an organization, was held by Faker, who recorded 245,000 viewers with his first official stream. Tyler1 didn’t just surpass that number – he shattered it. Last month, the Tyler1 Championship Series brought in over 200,000 viewers, more than the EU LCS average tournament viewerships, but that’s barely half of what he pulled in for his official return. At his peak, Tyler1’s latest stream had a reported 380,000 viewers, which is more concurrent viewers than most esports average and almost 100 times higher than the average number for major streamers.

To give some perspective, some of the most popular streamers, such as Lirik, imaqtpie, and Nightblue3, might average 10,000 or so. Sometimes, those numbers will trend as high as 20,000 or even 40,000. 380,000 is unheard of.