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Doublejump Digest: November 2, 2020

This week in gaming: AMD teases new graphics cards, Cyberpunk 2077 delayed again, Nintendo drops another Partner Showcase, 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 Monday night, and head on into the archive for news from weeks gone by!

FROM DOUBLEJUMP 

MAJOR NEWS

AMD teases first details of its GeForce-fighting graphics cards:

Just one day after NVIDIA released its RTX 3070, AMD finally took the wraps off its hotly-anticipated “Big Navi” series of graphics cards that should give its competitor a run for its money. The new RX 6000 series is based on the same “RDNA2” system architecture that’s powering the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X; with AMD promising performance parity with NVIDIA’s equivalent RTX 3000 cards. 

The RX 6800, RX 6800XT, and RX 6900XT will all boast 16GB of GDDR6 memory, with AMD sharing benchmark figures that show the latter two cards outperforming NVIDIA’s RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 respectively in games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Forza Horizon 4. AMD has not announced Australian pricing as of this writing, but it has slated the RX 6800 and RX 6800XT for release on November 18 and the RX 6900XT on December 8. 

 

CD Projekt RED delays Cyberpunk 2077 again, doesn’t tell staff about it:

It’s a Doublejump déjà vu report, as another delay for Cyberpunk 2077 sends the release to December 10. CD Projekt RED co-founders Adam Badowski and Marcin Iwiński announced the delay via Twitter, citing that the main issue is “shipping the game on current-gen, next-gen and PC at the same time”. Even though the game went gold last month, Badowski and Iwiński also revealed that it will ship with a “Day 0” patch full of further optimisations. 

An anonymous source from within the studio told Game Informer that “90%” of Cyberpunk 2077 developers were unaware of the decision to delay the game for a third time. The logic behind that internal secrecy is apparently due to the board’s concern that anyone knowing about the delay in advance could impact CD Projekt RED’s share prices on the Polish stock market. 

In a subsequent investor meeting, CD Projekt RED’s joint CEO, Adam Kiciński, aimed to alleviate some concerns about the much-maligned crunch that the studio has mandated by explaining that “a large part of the team is not crunching at all since they have finished their work; it’s mostly about Q&A and engineers, programmers – but it’s not that heavy; of course, it will be extended a bit, but we have feedback from the team; they’re happy about the extra three weeks, so we don’t see any threats regarding crunch.”

 

Nintendo drops a demo for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, showcases Bravely Default II, No More Heroes 3, and more in latest surprise stream:

In the most recent surprise Partner Showcase — and, according to Nintendo, the last one of the year — the Japanese company unveiled more details of some holiday titles and beyond. The most exciting trailer of the stream showed more gameplay footage from Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the musou-style prequel to the highly-acclaimed Breath of the Wild, and topped it off by revealing that a demo has been made available on the eShop. Best of all is the news that any progress you make in the demo will carry through to the finished game, which is set to hit store shelves on November 20.

In other news, Claytechworks has announced that it has collected about 22,000 questionnaire answers from fans who played September’s Bravely Default II demo, and has opted to delay the game to February 26 in order to implement a number of requested changes. This is a great move because, in the immortal words of Shigeru Miyamoto: “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”

This presentation also marked the first unobscured gameplay footage of No More Heroes III — as well as the announcement that the first two No More Heroes titles are now available on Switch in glorious 60FPS.

 

Big week of PlayStation Plus news: Bugsnax comes to Plus at launch; Destruction-All Stars delayed to February but now included with the service; new details on the service’s Collection:

The PlayStation 5 is less than a fortnight away, and Sony took to its blog throughout the week to make a couple of announcements that are sure to excite early adopters. 

First of all, Bugsnax, the cute but somewhat sinister Pokémon Snap-esque game coming our way from studio Young Horses, will be available to PlayStation Plus subscribers at launch on November 12. However, it is important to note that, despite the fact that Bugsnax will be available on both the PS4 and the PS5, only the PS5 version will be made available via PlayStation Plus — which implicitly means that interested PS4 players would have no choice but to buy the game.

Secondly, Sony has released the upcoming line-up for its PlayStation Plus Collection, an initiative that will bring PS4 heavy-hitters over to the PS5 with no additional cost to PlayStation Plus members. The full lineup consists of 20 games, including first-party (Bloodborne, Days Gone, Detroit: Become Human, God of War, Infamous Second Son, Ratchet & Clank, The Last Guardian, The Last of Us Remastered, Until Dawn and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End) and third-party (Batman: Arkham Knight, Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: Black Ops III — Zombies Chronicles Edition, Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, Fallout 4, Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition, Monster Hunter: World, Mortal Kombat X, Persona 5 and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard) releases from the past few years.

The most important omission from this list is Marvel’s Spider-Man, which will make its way to the PS5 in the form of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered; for now, players will only be able to get their hands on it by purchasing the Deluxe Edition of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, as it’s not being sold separately as of this writing. 

Lastly, Destruction All-Stars, a game which was previously slated to be a launch title for the PS5, will now be available in February instead. The good news following this delay is that the game will be available for free to PS Plus subscribers upon release, a strategy that has worked wonders for titles like Resogun and Rocket League in the past.

 

Apex Legends is coming to Steam alongside Season 7:

A monster week of reveals for Apex Legends included a series of videos and a community update for Season 7: Ascension. The new season’s major content will include a new arena, the “gravity-defying utopia of Olympus” and a new Legend, Dr. Mary Somers (a.k.a. Horizon). The game itself has hinted at Horizon being a new Legend throughout this past season, as well as her connection to current Legend Ash. The gameplay trailer shows off Horizon’s gravity-based abilities, including a black-hole that pulls enemies towards her.

On top of the new map and Legend, players will enjoy a new Battle Pass full of cosmetics to pursue, a new assault vehicle called the Trident and a community system called Clubs, designed to help players build Apex Legends communities and make it quicker and easier to squad up with like-minded players.

Game Director Chad Grenier also gave an update this week on the Steam and Switch ports for Apex Legends. Grenier revealed that Respawn has delayed the Switch port into next year, but promised cross-play functionality and “full feature parity with the other versions of the game” on day one. He also noted that the game will be available on Steam when Season 7 begins this coming Saturday, November 7, and will share all existing account progress with Origin.

NOTABLE GAME RELEASES

  • Ghostrunner (PC, PS4, Xbox One)
  • Pikmin 3 Deluxe (Switch)
  • The Dark Pictures — Little Hope (PC, PS4, Xbox One)
  • Watch Dogs: Legion (PC, PS4, Xbox One)

VIDEOS AND TRAILERS

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales — Into The Spider-Verse suit reveal:

Sure, the fact that Miles Morales will feature a Spider-Verse suit was inevitable (there is no universe in which Sony does not capitalize on the success of the animated feature), but that does not at all detract from how stunning it looks in motion, especially since Insomniac’s tweaked the suit to mimic the film’s frame rate.

 

DiRT 5 — Official Launch Trailer:

DIRT 5 is out on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this Friday, November 6, and it’ll be available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S at launch — current-gen owners will be able to upgrade to the next-gen version for free. 

 

INDIE SPOTLIGHT

Single-player Killer Queen title comes to Early Access: 

Developer BumbleBear Games’ first single-player entry into its popular Killer Queen franchise, ABS vs THE BLOOD QUEEN is a two-dimensional platformer wherein players will “escape an onslaught of spooky zombie insects in Hell” on their way to a clash with the titular Blood Queen. It offers Daily, Monthly and Random modes, each with their own global leaderboards, and will run you AU$21.50 on Steam. 

EVERSPACE 2 delayed to January to make way for Cyberpunk 2077:

CD Projekt RED’s latest blunder has had an impact on German developer ROCKFISH Games’ plans to release its Kickstarter-backed space looter-shooter, EVERSPACE 2 into January, explaining to its backers that “there is quite an audience overlap between the two titles” and “competing with [arguably the] most anticipated video game in history is just not a good idea.” Both are very good points, but the studio opted to alleviate any frustration by opening “the first 10ish hours” of the game from today.

OTHER NEWS

  • Some Ubisoft PS4 games won’t work on PS5: Engadget
  • Gears 5‘s latest update brings the Bautista out: Kotaku
  • Square Enix talks Final Fantasy XVI‘s worlds and characters: PS Blog
  • Sharkmob is working on a Vampire: The Masquerade battle royale game: VG247
  • Shadowlands is World of Warcraft‘s most-preordered expansion: PC Gamer
  • Dragonborn is the latest game for the… Game Boy: Nintendo Life
  • Mike Zaimont was working on a Guilty Gear XX Accent Core R patch until just last month: Kotaku
  • Kojima Productions is hiring for a new project: IGN
  • Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six: Quarantine are now coming next year: VentureBeat
  • A Dutch court denies EA’s bid to keep gambling fines from going public: GamesIndustry.biz
  • The Biden/Harris political campaign now boasts a Fortnite island: Kotaku

This article was originally published on Doublejump. You can support the site by following us on social media, becoming a Patron, and/or purchasing some merchandise!