The Tremors reboot TV show has been canned, says Kevin Bacon, despite a “fantastic pilot.”
After 25 years, the sci-fi franchise was set to return to our screens as a rebooted TV show based on the original 1990 film. Plans for the series were announced in 2015, and US network SyFy became involved last year.
Rockstar has announced that a new trailer will be released for Red Dead Redemption 2 on Wednesday, May 2.
The trailer will go live at 8am PT / 11am ET / 4pm UK (that’s 1am AEST on Thursday May 3), and you’ll be able to watch it here on IGN, or on our YouTube channel.
Rockstar’s given no word on what to expect from the trailer, but after one trailer focused on the game world and another revealing something of the story, we’d hope for a chunk of representative gameplay to have a look at.
Don’t expect Microsoft to make its own Battle Royale game. That’s according to Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who said on Twitter this week that he understands that while Battle Royale games like Fortnite and PUBG are massive, none of Microsoft’s studios will make their own. That is, unless they can come up with an interesting idea for how to make something compelling.
“Millions are playing [Battle Royale] games right now. I don’t want to just build one because others have built them,” he said. “[Fornite: Battle Royale] is massive, PUBG is huge, new [Battle Royale] variants being built by some very quality devs, I’d rather support unless we find something special in [first-party] that’s a different take.”
Millions are playing BR games right now. I don’t want to just build one because others have built them. FNBR is massive, PUBG is huge, new BR variants being built by some very quality devs, I’d rather support unless we find something special in 1P that’s a different take.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) April 29, 2018
Spencer’s comments seem to suggest that none of Microsoft’s studios will create a new, standalone Battle Royale game. But this leaves open the possibility for an exisiting Microsoft game to add a Battle Royale mode or for a new game, like Halo 6, to include one. Nothing is confirmed at this stage, it seems.
It makes sense that Microsoft wouldn’t be all that interested in making its own Battle Royale game given its exclusive partnership with the team behind PUBG. If Microsoft were to put out its own Battle Royale game, it would theoretically compete with PUBG, and that’s probably not something Microsoft wants to do.
Microsoft’s stance sounds similar to that of Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two. Take-Two president Strauss Zelnick said the success of Battle Royale games has been “really interesting” to see. However, he said that he wants his company’s labels–Rockstar Games and 2K Games–to blaze their own trail instead of being “derivative” by following in the footsteps of something that came before it. “Titles, even really good titles that are derivative, never seem to do as well as innovations that are unexpected,” Zelnick said at the time.
Electronic Arts has also weighed in on the Battle Royale phenomenon. CEO Andrew Wilson said in January that games like PUBG and Fortnite have changed how people think about shooter games. However, EA wants to make something new.
“Given that we have some of the best shooters in the marketplace, you might expect that we’re also thinking about new and innovative ways to play,” Wilson said. “And that doesn’t mean just kind of [making] PUBG replicas inside the Battlefield universe, but it does mean that our Battlefield teams–and I talked a little about this in the prepared remarks–are looking at how they innovate in every aspect of the game, including core gameplay and map design.”
In PUBG, Fortnite, and other Battle Royale games, players are dropped into an environment and compete until only one is left standing. It’s basically like The Hunger Games.
With E3 right around the corner, it will be interesting to see if any new Battle Royale games get announced or if existing games announce Battle Royale modes. E3 takes place in early June, so it won’t be long until we learn more.
I bought my Xbox 360 in late 2007, during a murky period between quitting a bad retail job and starting another bad retail job, and a week before I received my first paid games journalism commission. The system came packaged with Forza 2 and Viva Piñata, but I also grabbed Mass Effect (which I would only finish two years later) and Call of Duty 4 (which I became obsessed with). It’s one of my favourite consoles ever, and from the very beginning I was impressed by the blade menu system, the growing back-catalogue of games, and Xbox Live. I was also taken with its achievement system, which seemed, to me, like a smart way of tracking progress across your entire game collection.
In the year that followed, as I wrapped up my undergraduate degree, sold phones for minimum wage in my day job, and made my first tentative steps towards becoming a serious games journalist, my Gamerscore started to matter to me. It didn’t take long for me to became focused on overtaking friends who had bought their consoles earlier than I had. I was fixated on pushing myself to reach each new number I could justify calling a ‘milestone’, and while this feeling would occasionally calm down, it never fully went away. Achievement and trophy systems are everywhere now, but none of them are quite so direct and easy to parse as your Xbox Gamerscore, and none of them have grabbed me with nearly the same intensity.
Blizzard has begun the process of hiring design staff for an unannounced first-person game – quite possibly the same game it was building an engine for in 2016.
A new job listing for a Senior / Principal Game Designer asks for someone with “experience in developing weapons, abilities, and gameplay systems in action or first-person shooter games.”
In 2016, Blizzard was advertising for a Lead Software Engineer to build a first-person game engine for an action-oriented game that could be played across multiple platforms.