Fast Travel Through the Week: November 10th Edition
Fast Travel Through the Week: November 10th Edition
Each week, Fast Travel helps you get 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 little 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
Normally a patch wouldn’t be the biggest news of the week, but this patch fundamentally changed one of the biggest esports in the industry. LoL patch 7.22 made massive changes to both gameplay and the way you level up and acquire items. Several old things were done away with and new versions of Runes and Blue Essence were introduced.
On top of that, level caps were taken away and nearly every champions was altered in one way or another.
The PUBG Fortnite battle continued in dramatic fashion this week as both games reached a 20 million milestone almost simultaneously. For PUBG it was 20 millions copies sold and for Fortnite it was 20 million players.
These achievements were just fuel for the rivalry fire that has developed between the two games. As arguably the two biggest names in the emerging Battle Royale genre, PUBG and Fortnite were destined to be rivals from the start, but quips from Bluehole and a surging numbers from Fortnite have made things even more interesting.
Game companies aren’t so different than normal companies, especially when it comes to start-ups and tech companies. Even though making games is probably infinitely more fun than making finance apps, the operations side of a business boils down to generally the same things. Telltale learned that the hard way this week as they were forced to layoff almost a quarter of their workforce.
The One X is finally here and Xbox chief Phil Spencer marked it’s arrival by announcing Microsoft’s intent to move towards software and services.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Spencer declared that he and his team needed to grow as content and service providers. “Our ability to go create content has to be one of our strengths. We haven’t always invested at the same level. We’ve gone through ups and downs in the investment.” The timing of such a remark might seem odd, but it’s likely good news for Xbox owners. Spencer’s quote confirms that it’s highly unlikely we’ll see a new Xbox console in the next few years. That means One X owners don’t need to worry about their brand new hardware being out of date anytime soon.
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Indie Spotlight
On the user side, the aim is for Jump to become a service that tailors content to both general audiences and individual users, much in the way Netflix does. The service finds what gamers enjoy playing and suggests similar games, cutting through the chafe of hundreds of games to deliver a more nuanced collection.
On the developer side, Jump wants to see the gaming community flourish. In an interview, Palma told us that Jump’s goal is always to work with developers for what is best for them. That means letting them go through a natural release process on marketplaces like Steam – with releases, sales, initial bursts, etc. – and to then work with Jump to continue to monetize the game and grow the audience around it.
The Best Thing on the Internet, This Week
November 4th was officially dubbed ‘Game Day’ by the charity organization Extra Life. In just 24-hours, Extra Life – with the help of thousands of streamers, organizations, and gamers worldwide– was able to raise $1,805,727. This puts Extra Life’s current 2017 total at $7.3 million, $700k above what they were able to raise last year.
Despite all the recent press about toxicity within the gaming community, gamers have proven themselves to be one of the most giving and supportive groups out there. Numerous organizations stepped up to the plate to take time out of their schedules to officially sponsor their own streams on Game Day, including the staffs at Imgur and Reddit. There were streams of D&D, esports, new titles like Mario Odyssey, and even classic arcade titles like Turtles in Time.
TL;DR for the Week
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Pushes Back on Open World
- Two Star Wars-Themed Graphics Cards Coming From Nvidia
- Xbox One X Bundle Makes Its Debut
- Microsoft Plans to Launch a Game Streaming Service
- PUBG Hits 20 Million Units Sold
- Fortnite Reaches 20 Million Players
- Apple Aiming to Sell AR Device by 2020
- Harry Potter AR Game Coming From Makers of Pokemon GO
- Nintendo’s Miiverse Is Gone for Good
- Hulu Launches on Nintendo Switch
- New Game From PUBG Devs Is an Open World MMORPG, ‘Ascent: Infinite Realm’
- EA Says Yearly Releases of Madden and FIFA May Come to an End
- EA to Acquire Titanfall Developer Respawn
- Fortnite: Battle Royale Passes 800,000 Concurrent Users
- Eleague Adds Rocket League To Its Esports Lineup
- Call of Duty: WWII Doubles Infinite Warfare Sales Worldwide
- Members Vote to End Video Game Voice Actors Strike
- Assassin’s Creed Origins Launch Sales Double Syndicate’s
- Bandai Namco Ramping up Support for the Nintendo Switch
Also…
Don’t forget to check out some of our other weekly pieces, The LoL Weekly Preview, Recap and Highlight, as well as Something I’m Forgetting and Week in Review.
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