It is Friday and, as often happens, I have a few items which I want to note but which I do not really want to create whole blog posts about.
- Aether Wars
Tomorrow is the day, the time for the big attempt at the world record for most players together in an online battle… or so CCP and Hadean keep telling me. They have had a count down all week on Twitter. But it is tomorrow, Sat 23 Nov 2019 at 20:00 UTC.
Aether Wars Tech Demo
As I mentioned in my previous post, the client is available on Steam. It is a quick and easy download and you don’t have to register or sign up or anything, just launch the game when the time for the event comes up. The event itself has not changed much since the summer version, which I wrote about here.
See you there tomorrow? What if I told you there was a Steam achievement for joining it? Because there is.
You could also win an all expenses paid trip to Fanfest 2020 in Iceland by just showing up, but I am betting the achievement will have more influence on who plays.
- Stadia Launches
Google’s cloud gaming service, Google Stadia, went live this week. Reports were that the phone app required to configure the service and buy games was downloaded 175,000 times, which doesn’t exactly put the launch into the realm of unqualified successes. However, the launch was only for people who pre-ordered the $129 Chromecast Ultra package. Numbers will no doubt go up when the free version is released next year, but the press has not been kind to it and data usage could still be a problem for some.
Like some others, I don’t really get why Stadia is even worth considering relative to any of the possible alternatives, which might just mean I am not the target audience. Still, there was an excellent long Twitter thread comparing Stadia to a similar product design from the past that stirred up my own lingering feeling that Google was doing this more because they can than because they believed there was a market.
But the real pessimists have started a countdown clock to Stadia’s expected demise, a number reached based on the average life of Google products. And they do have a point.
- Minecraft Plans
I was going to mention this previously… and then forgot. Such is my life. But back at Minecon it was announced that the next update for Minecraft will focus on the Nether, adding new biomes and structures and mobs. There are some basic details here However, if you put a bed down in the Nether and try to sleep in it, it will still explode.
As usual, the update will only affect new worlds or areas explored after the update drops.
- Pokemon Sword & Shield Sells Big
I mentioned last Friday that Pokemon Sword & Shield was launching.
The core RPG line continues
While I wasn’t buying a copy… we don’t own a Switch… it turns out a lot of people were on board with the new game as it sold around six million copies in the first week, making it the fastest selling Nintendo Switch title so far.
Announce you’re making a real core Pokemon RPG game and people will line up.
- Mobile WoW When?
Bobby Kotick was up talking about the idea of perpetual franchises, which I guess is the line you take when you cannot make anything new that outsells the stuff you already have. Seriously, the Activision Blizzard big money makers remain World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush Saga.
As part of that he said that the growth would be staggering once they brought all of these to phones. That makes me want to ask where Diablo Immortal is, but never mind. However it sure sounds like we’re going to get some flavor of Warcraft on mobile. Maybe. Some day.
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