It’s that time of week again when we take a fond look back at the top five news stories from the week. Welcome to the Weekly Wrap-Up. Below you’ll find a brief summary of the stories, but for the full articles, click on the hyperlink. Feel free to let us know if you agree or disagree with our choices; if you have suggestions for future entries, feel free to email me at jeremy.tyler@bagogames.com.
Enjoy!
Number 5
Tesco Has Been Selling Tomb Raider Early… Cue Investigator Square Enix
It appears that some gamers have been lucky enough to snap up a copy of the new Tomb Raider game earlier than they should have.
Although the game is officially due out as of tomorrow (March 5) some branches of UK supermarket giant Tesco have already been selling copies of the games to hungry gamers. This came after MCV confirmed this saying that they purchased a copy of the game (as well as took a photograph) for £32.00.
Number 4
Vita Sales Soar After Price Drop In Japan
Recently, the PlayStation Vita had its price cut in Japan and according to GameWatch (as translated by Gematsu) it has seemed to be a successful move for Sony in the land of the rising sun.
It turns out that since the price cut went into effect on February 28th, sales of the PlayStation Vita have increased by a factor of four, impressive! This quadruple quantity of portables being sold was a result of Sony cutting both versions of the Vita to 19,980 Yen which roughly translates to $214.
Unfortunately however, Sony is unlikely to offer a price cut overseas after the company announced that it had no plans for a price drop in other territories due to decisions regarding price drops being made on a region-by-region basis
Number 3
EA Clarifies Their Statement On Microtransactions, Won’t Be in All Games
Electronic Arts and microtransactions aren’t two things you really want to hear are working together, but it isn’t something that’s going to change anytime soon. The company, however, caught a bit of hell when they stated all their future games would include microtransactions and have since come back to clarify what they really meant:
“I made a statement in the conference along the lines of ‘We’ll have microtransactions in our games,’ and the community read that to be ‘all games,’ and that’s really not true,” said EA CFO Blake J. Jorgensen at the 2013 Wedbush Transformational Technology Conference.
According to Jorgensen, all of their mobile games will contain microtransactions, but only because they will all be a part of the free-to-play model. Games that appear on consoles and the PC will see no microtransactions, and will instead receive ‘extensions’. He goes on to use Battlefield Premium as an example.
“You’re going to see extensions off of products like Battlefield Premium which are simply not microtransactions,” he said.
Number 2
Mike Capps No Longer at Epic Games
Mike Capps, former president of Epic Games who stepped down last year, is no longer at the company. The news comes from a post he made on his Facebook page.
“When we announced that I wanted to transition out of my leadership role at Epic, the plan was for a continued but less active role, service on the board of directors, and ideally, being that eccentric semi-retired guy who still comes to playtests and gold parties. I’m sad to say that plans have changed, and as of February 11th, I’m no longer affiliated with Epic Games,” he said.
This isn’t a completely out of nowhere announcement, as the staff at Epic was made aware of the news before Capps made it known to the public.
Number 1
Respawn Co-founder Retires
Jason West, co-founder of Respawn has reportedly left the company due to family issues. West, formerly the president of Infinity Ward, which he started up with Vince Zampella, launched Respawn with Zampella in 2010.
The pair was dismissed from Infinity Ward and subsequently became embroiled in lawsuits with Activision. They claimed they were unfairly let go whilst Activision asserted the pair had been secretly working with EA during their time at Infinity Ward. A settlement was eventually reached.
Honorable Mentions
This week had a lot of big news and the news staff and I found it hard to narrow it down to the usual five stories. Here are some of the articles that didn’t make the top 5, but were still important, nonetheless:
· Nintendo Updates Wii U System Software: “First Of Several”
· PSN Gem “Journey” Cleans Up At BAFTA Game Awards
· Ubisoft Executive Director Would Like a Wii U Price Cut
If you missed out on the big news items this week, you can check out our weekly podcast and get an audio update of this week’s madness from our podcasting team. Listen to us as we talk about some things seriously and a few other things not so much. We guarantee this episode will make you shake your fist at times and nod your head at others