Month: December 2017

Nintendo Switch game cards currently have a capacity of 32 GB, which is potentially limiting for some titles. According to a new Wall Street Journal report, Nintendo is planning to release 64 GB cards for the system, but they won’t launch on time.

The report claims that Nintendo wanted to launch these higher-capacity cards in the second half of 2018 but has now informed developers that they won’t be available until 2019. According to the report, Nintendo ran into “technical issues” with the 64 GB cards.

By comparison, Blu-ray discs for the PS4 and Xbox One can hold 50 GB of data. Nintendo apparently intentionally sought game cards instead of discs for the Switch as part of its effort to make the system more portable, which is one of its defining attributes.

While there is no doubt that downloading games is becoming more and more popular, some still prefer physical media when buying their games. As WSJ explains, publishers are of course aware of this and some US-based companies that produce “data-heavy games” may now delay their titles until the 64 GB cards are released.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the 64 GB Switch cards, as some “outside developers” told WSJ that the Switch “might not be well-suited to data-heavy titles regardless of whether the 64-gigabyte card is available.”

For context, some of the Switch’s best games, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, weigh in at under 16 GB. Go to WSJ to read the full report.

The Switch launched in March this year and was a quick success. The hybrid console has sold more than 10 million units worldwide.

2017 will be remembered as one of the best years for games, but great tech and hardware came out as well. Microsoft and Nintendo launched new consoles that changed the way we play. A resurgence of competition in the PC hardware market gave us more performance for our dollar with new tech from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. Let’s look back at the 9 best gaming hardware launches of the year.

Nintendo Switch

Nintendo tried something risky with its console-handheld hybrid, and it paid off. By nature of the tablet design, it doesn’t pack the most powerful specs but the quality of games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey prove that you don’t need the best graphics to make the best games. Being able to play these games on the big screen in the living room and then picking up where you left off later on the go is one of the things that make the Nintendo Switch special.

Microsoft Xbox One X

If you want the most power out of a gaming console, Microsoft’s Xbox One X largely lived up to the hype. Six teraflops of GPU power translates into much higher resolutions and more detail in games that are enhanced for the Xbox One X. Gears of War 4 and Halo 5 look better than ever running at 4K, and multiplatform games like Assassin’s Creed Origins and Middle-earth: Shadow of War look best on the Xbox One X.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 was the fastest graphics card we had ever tested when it debuted in 2016, and it was overtaken by the GTX 1080 Ti this year. It’s based on the same Pascal architecture of the other GTX 10-series cards but it features more CUDA cores, texture units, and video RAM. All of these enhancements make it the fastest consumer-level graphics card and the best option for maxing out PC games out at 4K.

AMD RX Vega

AMD inserted itself back into the high-end video card market with the RX Vega 64, an answer to Nvidia’s GTX 1080. According to our tests in our review, Vega 64 runs slightly better at 4K than the GTX 1080, and it did so for $50 less when it launched at $500. The more affordable RX Vega 56 is essentially a toned-down version of Vega 64, and the card is great for 1440p GPU that bested Nvidia’s GTX 1070 in many of our tests.

AMD Ryzen CPUs

AMD made a comeback in the CPU space as well when it released the Ryzen series. The Ryzen 7 line topped the consumer-level options with are 8-core / 16-thread CPUs using the new Zen architecture. The mid-range Ryzen 5 family of CPUs soon followed with multithreaded six-core and quad-core options. Lastly, Ryzen 3 offered great entry level quad-core processors. AMD was able to pair multi-core performance previously reserved for workstation CPUs and unprecedented value.

Intel 8th-gen Core CPUs

Intel also came out strong with their own family of new CPUs. For the first time in the Intel Core lineup, the flagship consumer-level model increased core count by going from four to six (Core i7-8700K). Intel gave a boost to the mid-range Core i5 lineup as well going from the traditional four-core setup to a six-core. With the Core i3 family, gone are the days of settling for dual-core when you’re on a budget now that these cheaper CPUs come with four cores.

Nintendo SNES Classic Edition

Nintendo did nostalgia right with the SNES Classic this year, a follow up to the NES Classic that came before it. This cute rendition of the original SNES packed 21 great games from the console’s time in the early to mid ’90s. Super Mario RPG, Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and Earthbound can be played on modern TVs with ease. Star Fox 2 even had its official release through the SNES Classic.

New Nintendo 2DS XL

If you still haven’t had the chance to play some of Nintendo’s expansive 3DS library, we highly recommend the New 2DS XL that came out this year. It leaves the 3D capabilities behind like the original 2DS, but and adopts the clamshell chassis and larger screens of the XL systems. It’s got a sleek, minimalist design, and packs the enhanced hardware of the “New” 3DS models that some games require.

TCL P-Series (55P607) 4K HDR TV

For several years, 4K TVs have been quite expensive, but TCL’s 55P607 proved that you could get an excellent, yet affordable 4K TV. In addition to giving you ultra high definition, the TV does HDR, which makes colors more vibrant and lighting more realistic. To top it off, it’s a smart TV that comes with Roku support built right in and costs around $600.

Be sure to check out all our end of the year content here on GameSpot; we’ve wrapped up the best games for each platform, our top 10 of 2017, and shed some light on many games that we love:

• The 5 Best Switch Games Of 2017
• The 5 Best PS4 Games Of 2017
• The 5 Best Xbox One Games Of 2017
• The 5 Best PC Games Of 2017
• The 5 Best 3DS Games Of 2017
• Top 10 Games Of 2017
• Most Read Stories Of 2017
• Game Of The Year 2017 Editor’s Spotlight Awards
• Lowest Reviewed Games Of 2017

The X-Men have been stuck in a prolonged rut for the past couple years, and even this spring’s ResurrXion relaunch hasn’t done much to reinvigorate the franchise (hence the impending cancellations of books like Generation X and Iceman). Recently, it seems as though Marvel’s recipe for fixing things mostly boils down to bringing back the fan-favorite characters they’ve killed off lately. Wolverine returned in Marvel Legacy #1. Professor X is back in Astonishing X-Men, sort of. And now, the most iconic, perpetually dead mutant of them all is making her long-awaited return. But just as with Wolverine and Xavier’s resurrections, it remains to be seen whether Jean Grey can rekindle the spark the X-Men have been missing.

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Nintendo reportedly won’t offer 64-gigabyte game cards for Switch until 2019.

The Wall Street Journal says Nintendo originally planned to deliver the bigger Switch game cards to developers in the second half of 2018. But there’s apparently been a delay due to technical issues.

The largest Nintendo Switch game card currently is 32 gigabytes. That’s considerably smaller storage compared to a Blu-ray, which can hold up to 50 gigabytes of data for a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One game.

Now there have already been data storage issues with Nintendo Switch games. For example, NBA 2K18 on Switch requires an additional microSD card because of the hybrid system’s small internal storage of 32 gigabytes. The same is true for LA Noire.

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With the new year just a few days away there’s a lot to look forward to. It’s the chance to have a fresh start, begin working towards your new goals, and–most importantly–there’s a new batch of video game freebies courtesy of Sony’s PlayStation Plus service. The publisher has detailed everything that will be available to subscribers in January 2018, and it’s a pretty good selection.

Headlining the offerings is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for PS4. The dystopian cyberpunk role-playing game once again casts you as Adam Jensen and tasks you with catching a terrorist group, which you can do by being a stealthy detective or a tech-enhanced killing machine, or some mixture of both.

Along with that, Batman: The Telltale Series will be available for free in January. This is the first season of Telltale’s Batman story and puts players in tricky situations as both Bruce Wayne and his crime-fighting alter-ego. The decisions you make will have some consequence on the relationships around you, and the overall story. Both Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Batman: The Telltale Series will be available for free through PS Plus from January 2.

PlayStation VR owners, meanwhile, will be able to get StarBlood Arena to play with their headset. And That’s You! for PlayLink will continue to be available for free. For PlayStation Vita owners there’s Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness, a game based in the same universe as the excellent anime Psycho-Pass. Finally, those on PlayStation 3 can grab Sacred 3.

With the announcement of these new additions time is running out to get your hands on December 2017’s free PS Plus games, which includes Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition and Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. You can see all of December’s PS Plus games here or take a look below for the full list of January’s free PS Plus titles.

January 2018 Free PS Plus Games

PS4

• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (PS4)
• Batman: The Telltale Series (PS4)
• StarBlood Arena (PS Plus bonus – PS VR required)
• That’s You! (PS Plus bonus – PlayLink)

PS3

• Sacred 3 (PS3)
• Book of Unwritten Tales 2 (PS3)

PS Vita

• Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness (PS Vita)
• Uncanny Valley (PS Vita & PS4)

There are many things you can see about Blade Runner 2049. It’s visually stunning, an epic sci-fi adventure, and a nearly-perfect follow up to a beloved film from 25 years earlier. However, another thing you can say about it is that it’s long–very long. In fact, it’s nearly three hours long.

As it turns out, one very important person in the Blade Runner universe agrees. Ridley Scott, who directed the first Blade Runner film, spoke with Vulture and offered his honest thoughts about the film. “I have to be careful what I say. I have to be careful what I say,” he says. “It was f***ing way too long. F*** me! And most of that script’s mine.”

Scott isn’t credited as a writer on the film–he is an executive producer–but claims he’s a major piece of the writing process on Blade Runner 2049. “I sit with writers for an inordinate amount of time and I will not take credit, because it means I’ve got to sit there with a tape recorder while we talk,” he explains. “I can’t do that to a good writer. But I have to, because to prove I’m part of the actual process, I have to then have an endless amount [of proof], and I can’t be bothered.”

What were Scott’s contributions? The director says he’s responsible for the creation of Joi (Ana de Armas), the holographic girlfriend of K (Ryan Gosling), as well as the backbone of the plot.

“The big idea comes from Blade Runner. Tyrell is a trillionaire, maybe 5 to 10 percent of his business is AI. Like God, he has created perfect beings that, for all intents and purposes, there is no telling the difference from humans. Then he says, ‘You know what? I’m going to create an AI. I’ll have a male and female, they will not know that they’re both AIs, I’ll have them meet each other, they will fall in love, they will consummate, and they will have a child.’ That’s the first film,” Scott says. “The second film is, what happens to the baby? You’ve got to have the baby, you can’t have the mother, so the mother has to inexplicably die four months after she breastfeeds. The bones are found in the box at the foot of the tree–that’s all me.”

Unfortunately, in the end, even Scott’s script notes couldn’t make the movie a financial success. While it was met with critical acclaim, the big budget sequel performed below expectations at the box office, making only $91.5 million in the United States and Canada. Worldwide, Blade Runner 2049 grossed $258.2 million.