It’s that time of week again when we take a fond look back at the top five news stories from the week, and oh what a week it was. 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
Watch Dogs Multi-Player gets hacked
Yes, you read that right, Watch Dogs multi-player has been hacked, but not the way you’d think. Ubisoft has finally lifted the veil when it comes to the multi-player aspect and it’s rather unconventional. As it stands right now, in multi-player, there will be a gamer that will be playing the role of Aiden Peirce. What makes this very interesting is that another player that is playing Watch Dogs will be able to hack into that game.
Senior Producer Dominic Guay has said “There will be no menus or lobbies. We plan to do it in a very organic way as they play through the adventures. The way it works is that the player is in the city doing his own thing and at some point he gets hacked. Aiden tries to find out who hacked him using cameras around the city and prevent the other player from hacking his game by killing him [the hacker] or chasing him down – however he wants to handle it”
The moment that the hacker is found out and dealt with; the player that suffered the hack can freely return the favor, thus starting what seems to be a high-tech game of cat and mouse.
Number 4
Confirmed: PS4 will be Region Free
As confirmed by Shuhei Yoshida, the PS4 will be region free. Yoshida, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president announced via Twitter in a short but sweet message, “And yes, PS4 is region free”
The PS4 being region free was mentioned earlier by Brad Douglas of Sony, who stated via Twitter as well that the system would not be region locked.
Number 3
Super Smash Bros. Announced for 3DS and Wii U, Coming 2014
Nintendo finally announced and revealed the next entry in the Super Smash Bros. series, which is coming to the 3DS, as well as the Wii U. The game, set to release next year, features newcomers Mega Man and Villager (Animal Crossing) as well as the return of Mario and Co.
Trailers and massive amount of screenshots can be found in the original story.
Number 2
Xbox One Launching This November for $499
The Xbox One has been given a release window of November 2013, with a launch price of $499/€499/£429.
Microsoft announced the date and price towards the end of their E3 press conference today, as well as a new model for the Xbox 360, which they announced, would be available starting today. Additionally, Microsoft and Xbox Live appear to be pulling a PlayStation Plus as, from now until the launch of the Xbox One, Xbox Live Gold members will be able to download two game for free, starting with Halo 3 and Assassin’s Creed II.
Pricing of the new Xbox 360 model will be the same as existing models, as the standard will be $199 for the 4GB and $299 for the 250GB edition or the Kinect Bundled edition.
Number 1
Playstation 4 Details
It would seem that Sony are taking the same route as Microsoft have taken with Xbox Live, in terms of they are now going to require you to have Playstation Plus subscription, in order for users to enjoy playing online. It isn’t clear if this means that you need a Playstation Plus subscription to use such features as Netflix as well. Now personally, if there is one thing that Microsoft truly excels at, it’s the online community. It is rich and very featured base; voice chat transmits better and most importantly, it’s security seems to be top notch. Sony have had issues in the past, with at least two different hackings that saw Playstation Network taken offline for several days. So, it’s a tad worrisome because now, if you are a online mutli-player guy, you will pay $49.99 for Playstation Plus for a year, opposed to $59.99 for Xbox Live for a year, but if the Network goes down again, via a hack, that leaves your $50 being wasted.
according to a Japanese magazine, Playstation 4 will be launching with a 500GB Hard-drive, the same as Xbox One. It is unclear at this time if they have plans to release further models, but taking Playstation 3 into account, it seems highly possible. A dualshock 4 also ships with the console, since you know, those are important for playing the game. It will also include a headset but the most worrisome piece is, for the first time, it will come with an HDMI cable and no composite cables. Depending on what tv you have, if you don’t have a flat screen, then you might be out of luck. So, that means that hopefully you’ve kept your composite cables that were included with your Playstation 3
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:
- Mirror’s Edge 2 Announced
- Rainbow 6: Patriots Jumping to Next-Gen
- Pokémon X and Y Releases on October 12th
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.