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Doublejump Digest: December 01, 2019

This week in gaming: Microsoft talks down VR, Red Dead Redemption 2’s coming soon to Steam, Codemasters goes slightly mad, and more!

In the spirit of keeping our readers up to date with what’s happening in the video game industry, the Doublejump Digest is a brief collection of the major news stories from the past week. Keep an eye out for the Digest every Sunday night, and head on into the archive for news from weeks gone by!

FROM DOUBLEJUMP 

  • John returned in fine form with another Press X to Adapt piece, and this time he focussed on Capcom’s homage to Dawn of the Dead in 2006’s Dead Rising.
  • Luke donned his reviewer’s cap to put Pokémon Sword and Shield under the Doublejump microscope and it them to a fresh-yet-imperfect return for the series.

MAJOR NEWS

Microsoft: No one’s asking us to bring VR to Xbox: 

Speaking with Stevivor at XO19, Microsoft Executive VP of Gaming Phil Spencer said that the company is not focussing on virtual reality for Project Scarlett in part because players aren’t asking for it.

“I have some issues with VR. It’s isolating, and I think of games as a communal, kind of together experience,” he said. “We’re responding to what our customers are asking for and… nobody’s asking for VR. The vast majority of our customers know if they want a VR experience, there’s places to go get those. We see the volumes of those on PC and other places.”

Read Dead Redemption 2 is coming to Steam next week: 

Rockstar Games has taken to Twitter to announce that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be released on Steam on December 5 following a month of being exclusive to the Epic Games Store and the Rockstar Games Launcher.

Codemasters acquires Project CARS studio: 

Veteran British racing game studio Codemasters has announced that it has acquired compatriate developer Slightly Mad Studios, the people behind Project CARS, Need for Speed: Shift, and Shift 2: Unleashed. Codemasters now owns the rights to Project CARS as well as “an unannounced Hollywood blockbuster title” with neither revealing more information about this unnamed project.

Respawn increases Apex Legends’s level cap: 

Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has revealed that it will increase the game’s level cap from 100 to 500 in an upcoming update and increase the amount of earnable Apex Packs from 45 to 199 as well. Respawn plans on rewarding Apex Packs retroactively, making the level grind less steep, and adding 36 new Gun Charms at Epic and Legendary loot tiers.

Report: Here’s the PlayStation 5 dev kit in the wild: 

Twitter user Alcoholikaust has posted the first public image of the PlayStation 5 development kit found in the real world. The image shows a pair of PS5 development kits on a developer’s desk in front of kits for the PS4 and PS4 Pro. The Verge journalist Tom Warren later confirmed the image’s veracity and explained that the PS5 kit’s unusual shape is designed to allow developers to stack multiple units without compromising cooling performance.

Blizzard: Overwatch 2 will tell a more traditional story: 

Overwatch 2 Lead Writer Michael Chu has told the PlayStation Blog that the upcoming multiplayer shooter will tell a more traditional story than its predecessor.

“With story missions, we’ll have a more traditional way to tell a story in the Overwatch universe: a complete story with [a] beginning, middle, and end,” he explained. “In addition, we’ve finally moved the story forward after Winston’s recall, and we hope to continue to push events into the future in the stories to come.”

Chu earlier noted that Blizzard aims to cover the actions of former Overwatch heroes following Winston’s call at the end of the game’s reveal trailer.

OTHER NEWS

 

  • Titanfall 2 leads this month’s free PlayStation Plus games: EU PS Blog
  • Some of Command & Conquer’s original developer are working on a spiritual successor to Command & Conquer: Renegade: Eurogamer
  • Ghost Recon: Breakpoint’s first raid is ready for the toughest players to tackle: YouTube
  • Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Black Flag are heading Switch-side this month: Eurogamer

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