No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…
The annual Game Developers Conference took place earlier this week in San Francisco, and as you’d expect, it dominated the headlines all week. But before we talk about the future, let’s flashback to last year as this year’s GDC Awards honored The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as “Game of the Year,” while the IGF Awards selected Her Story as the recipient of the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize.”
But GDC is always about what’s next and the next “next thing” is most definitely virtual reality. So Oculus took center stage at the gathering of developers and announced that the Oculus Rift will launch with 30 games on March 28. Not to be outdone, Sony confirmed their PlayStation VR headset will launch in October and that it’ll be priced at $399.
But I think it was Microsoft who made the most announcements at GDC, including confirmation that’ve enabled Cross-Network Play between players on an Xbox One, a Windows 10 PC, and “other networks.” The consolemaker also pulled back the curtain on more than three dozen ID@Xbox games which will be released in 2016 and heavily implied that The Behemoth’s Pit People will also be available this year. However, the biggest bit of noise that Microsoft made at GDC may have been the afterparty they threw featuring dancers in bikini tops and miniskirts. That decision was… let’s go with ill-advised.
Finally out of GDC, the Princeton Review has published their list of the best colleges for Game Design, with the the University of Utah and the University of Central Florida coming out on top.
Elsewhere on Warp Zoned this week, I’d like to direct you to our first part in a new series, It’s In Your Blood: A History of Horror Games, and a review of Broforce.
You can read all about the rest of the week that was after the break.
New Game Announcements
- Shadow Complex Remastered will be available for the PS4 in May.
- Axiom Verge is officially coming to the Wii U and Xbox One in 2016.
More News
- Microsoft is once again “temporarily” dropping the price of the Xbox One by $50.
- The Lego Avengers Season Pass will include five new Level Packs.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan will be released on May 24.
- RBI Baseball 16 will be available to download on March 29 and a retail disc is on deck for an April 5th release.
- The first Fallout 4 expansion, Automatron, will be released on March 22.
- Square Enix’s I Am Setsuna was inspired by Chrono Trigger.
- The second episode of The Walking Dead: Michonne will be released on March 29.
- The retail version of Hitman containing all seven episodes will be released in January 2017.
- Two Tribes has announced they will retire after the release of Rive in September 2016.
Rumor Has It
- Deep Silver is planning to make a “major announcement” at E3 2016.
Etcetera
- Conan O’Brien challenged Conor McGregor in EA Sports UFC 2.
New Release Round-Up
- Retail Releases: Pokken Tournament, EA Sports UFC 2, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, more
- Nintendo Download: Pokken Tournament, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Mutant Mudds Super Challenge, more
- PlayStation Store: EA Sports UFC 2, Salt and Sanctuary, Paragon, more
- Xbox Games Store (Wednesday): EA Sports UFC 2, Shadow Complex Remastered, Dungeon of the Endless, more
- Xbox Games Store (Friday): Spareware, 101 Ways To Die, Shred It!
- Next Week’s Retail Releases: Hyrule Warriors Legends, TrackMania Turbo, Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo, Republique
