Month: January 2020

Bungie is currently advertising for a new position is an “Incubation Art Director,” one who would oversee art direction on a new IP. The job description outlines a game that sounds very different from previous Bungie titles, like Destiny 2 and Halo.

“Are you on a mission to create games that bond players together into deeply invested communities?,” the description opens. So far, so Destiny, but things change in the next lines. “Would you like to work on something comedic with lighthearted and whimsical characters?” Bungie’s games haven’t, historically, been particularly funny or whimsical.

“As the Incubation Art Director, you will define the look of a new Bungie IP and work on all aspects of art to guide a prototype on the path to production,” the description continues. “Most importantly, you will work with a fun, dedicated, and passionate cross-discipline team devoted to making a new franchise at Bungie.”

A year ago, Bungie split from publisher Activision, and has more control over its own future, and what it will develop, than it has since before the release of the original Halo in 2001. This job is asking for a candidate with serious credentials, too– they must have “At least 5 years of game art production experience, including experience in an art leadership role,” as well as a “Proven track record of delivering clear and consistent visual feedback that elevates other artists’ work.”

It’s not too much of a surprise to see Bungie expanding beyond Destiny–back in June 2018, a partnership with Chinese company NetEase saw Bungie being given $100 million to develop a non-Destiny game.

Around the time of the Activision split, analysts predicted that Destiny 3 would come in 2020. Bungie has not clarified whether they will continue to expand Destiny 2 or if they’re working on a third game in the series yet.

During the Electronic Arts earnings call today, management shared an update on the company’s stance on supporting the Nintendo Switch. So far, EA has only released 5 games on Switch, including FIFA 18, FIFA 19, FIFA 20, Unravel Two, and Fe. But looking ahead, can fans expect more releases on Switch.

EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said EA has been “very pleased” with “how well Nintendo has done with the Switch.” Nintendo just recently announced that the Switch has passed 52.48 million units sold, which is a very strong start for the system that launched in 2017.

The executive said EA is “always” discussing ideas with Nintendo for future game support. “As the platform grows, our interest in developing for it grows,” Jorgsensen said.

Jorgensen went on to say that EA has been cautious thus far with supporting the Switch because the platform’s best-selling games are made by Nintendo. That being said, with more than 52 million consoles sold, it seems the Switch has reached a critical mass for EA.

The executive teased, “You will hear some more things” in the future about EA’s plans to support the Switch.

For more on EA’s earnings report today, check out the stories below.

• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Sells Above Expectations
• EA Made Almost $1 Billion From Microtransactions Last Quarter

With its latest patch for Destiny 2, Update 2.7.1, Bungie accidentally created more problems than it solved. The patch added a bug to the game that caused players to lose some of their upgrade materials and currencies–a big problem, especially because the issue cost players their Bright Dust, a currency they can earn in-game to buy premium items from Destiny 2’s microtransaction store, Eververse.

In response, Bungie took down its Destiny 2 servers for most of the day on Tuesday after the patch was released, and rolled back the game to before Update 2.7.1 was implemented. The developer detailed the rollback on its This Week At Bungie blog, where it explained that this is the first time it has ever had to roll the game back to an earlier state.

“Earlier this week, when we deployed 2.7.1, we discovered an issue causing players to lose various currencies. Our team immediately took action and brought the game down for maintenance while we worked to discover the source of the issue. We did this to minimize any further impact to players. We ended up doing the first-ever character rollback in Destiny’s history to ensure that no one lost any of their hard-earned materials. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused by the unexpected maintenance and appreciated everyone’s patience while we worked to get the game back online.”

“Fix the timeline” is, of course, a joke about Destiny 2’s current content season, the Season of Dawn, which is all about using time travel to undo events and save the legendary Guardian Saint-14 from death. The rollback undid the bug and restored everyone’s materials and currencies, and Destiny 2 is functioning normally now. But the rollback means we’ll have to wait for a later patch that fixes some of the issues in 2.7.1, including some exploits for the Wormgod’s Caress and Winter’s Guile Exotics, which Bungie has disabled in the meantime.

The weekly update on Tuesday, February 4 will introduce the Season of Dawn’s next piece of content, the Empyrean Foundation. Data-mining suggests it’ll be the first stage in returning the Trials of Osiris to Destiny for the first time since 2018 (back when a similar version was known as the Trials of the Nine). In the meantime, use our Bastion guide to get Destiny 2’s latest Exotic, and check out our Corridors of Time guide to find out what you missed with the game’s recent puzzle–which required a big swathe of the community to solved and might have changed how Destiny 2 tells its story.

A major part of Star Trek: Picard‘s second episode, “Maps and Legends,” is a meeting that takes place at his home in La Barre, France. An old friend from Jean-Luc Picard‘s days on the Stargazer, the ship he served on before the Enterprise, comes to visit–and brings some bad news.

Picard’s friend Dr. Benayoun doesn’t say exactly what’s wrong with the captain, but we get a few key hints. It’s one of a number of related neurological syndromes but it’ll take more tests to find out for sure. And while some are treatable, no matter which disease Picard has, it’ll end in his death. It might also already be responsible for things Picard has been experiencing, like his strange dreams of Data and his anger during the interview about the Romulan supernova in Episode 1, “Remembrance.”

During the conversation, Benayoun tells Picard the issue is related to the parietal lobe of his brain, to which Picard responds that he’d been told years earlier that it could develop a problem. That’s actually a reference to the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “All Good Things.” During the final episode of the series, Picard experienced time skips that placed him back at the beginning of his career on the Enterprise, in the present, and far into the future after he had retired from Starfleet. In that future, Picard suffered from a neurological disorder called Irumodic Syndrome, which will slowly rob him of his faculties and the ability to tell reality from fantasy, before finally killing him.

Though the time skips were the result of interference from the godlike alien entity known as Q, in the actual present, Picard had himself checked out by the Enterprise’s doctor, Beverly Crusher. She found a slight structural abnormality in Picard’s parietal lobe, which she said could lead to Irumodic Syndrome or some other neurological disease–or nothing at all. It seems that while Q’s vision of the future didn’t come to pass exactly as Picard saw it on TNG, some parts of it might have been true.

So what does that mean for Picard? In “All Good Things,” Picard’s former crewmates began to doubt his assertion that he was experiencing time skips and worried that he’d lost touch with reality. Having experienced that and knowing the importance of the mission he’s trying to undertake to find Soji, he’s probably going to hold back that information from any comrades that accompany him. Surely, that’ll create conflicts later on, especially if the disease progresses.

Of course, Picard’s vivid dreams of Data also seem like they’re more than just the random interactions of a neurological disorder. He dreamed of Data immediately before Dahj found him, and it was a dream that reminded Picard of the painting Data made for him, titled, “Daughter.” So while Picard’s developing disease could be a major problem, it also seems possible that there’s more going on with what he’s sensing than we yet know.

There’s another potential wrinkle involved, too: Picard’s assimilation by the Borg. Though he has fully recovered from his experiences as Locutus of Borg, his name as a Borg drone when he was captured by the Collective in Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s possible there are still lingering effects. Since the Borg Cube known as the Artifact is playing a major role in the show, and we know that former Borg drones Hugh (from TNG) and Seven of Nine (from Star Trek: Voyager) are set to show up later in the season, it stands to reason that there may yet be more effects from Picard’s time with the Borg than he has realized. At the very least, we know a lot of the psychological scars persist, as Picard struggled to deal with his assimilation in both TNG and in the sequel movie Star Trek: First Contact.

Regardless, the issue with Picard’s parietal lobe is surely going to have an impact on the mission going forward–even if it just serves to make Picard more cavalier with his life, since he knows he’s going to die soon anyway. But it seems very possible that the legendary captain may find himself struggling to lead before long, which would be a huge problem for anyone who decides to follow him.

Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is already a hit, but EA now says the single-player Star Wars adventure is on track to hit 10 million unit sales.

During EA’s Q3 2020 financial call with investors, EA revealed that “Sales of Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order significantly beat our expectations.” CFO Blake Jorgensen says that EA originally predicted Jedi: Fallen Order to sell between 6-8 million units for the fiscal year, but Star Wars already “hit the high end of that in the third quarter.”

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EA now says that it anticipates Jedi: Fallen Order to sell “around 10 million units in the fiscal year, a very strong result for a single-player action game.”

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a single-player game developed by Respawn Entertainment. The game follows Jedi-in-hiding Cal Kestis as he battles the Empire while rediscovering his Jedi training following their extermination from Order 66.

Not only is Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order critically-acclaimed, but according to EA, the game is selling well above sales expectations. According to the NPD Group, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was December 2019’s best-selling game and the sixth best-selling game of 2019 after only just two months.

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Elsewhere in the call, EA shared a few details about next-gen consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X. According to EA, the next-gen consoles will be ‘substantially greater’ than current-gen hardware which will lead to innovations in both games and genres.

Read IGN’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order wiki here for walkthroughs, tips, and more.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.

The real-time strategy action hybrid original Xbox game Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders is coming to PC soon.

According to an official press release from developer Blueside, the classic will launch on Steam sometime during Q1 of 2020. The announcement follows the launch of Kingdom Under Fire 2, which was released on Steam late last year after coming out on PlayStation 4 in 2013.

Coming to PC in early 2020 will put this version of Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders just shy of 16 years behind the original release on Xbox, which came out on October 12, 2004.

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This new version boasts the same real-time strategy elements as the first entry in the series, and will allow players to craft their troops to specific roles as well as level them up and upgrade the equipment and weaponry. Players will also still be able to use heroes during specifically controlled moments and make use of the four different nations to explore the full plot of the game.

While the action is said to be unchanged and authentic in this port, keyboard and mouse support has been added to the gamepad controls of the original as well as HD graphics.

In news of other titles coming to PC, reports are strongly suggesting we’ll see PS4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn get a PC port at some point.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]Hope Corrigan is an Australian freelance writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

EA has shared its thoughts on the next-gen consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, and the company said that what it’s capable of on those platforms will “blow people’s minds.”

During an investor call for EA’s Fiscal 2020 Q3, EA’s leadership team was asked about their plans for next-gen consoles. While EA declined to share any specific details like game titles or announcements, EA appears bullish on the generational leap that will come with the next wave of hardware.

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“The power of the new consoles is gonna be substantially greater than existing consoles,” said EA CFO Blake Jorgensen during the call. “We can do a lot more [with PS5 and Xbox Series X]. Things we’re doing will blow people’s minds.”

Jorgensen also said there’s going to be so much “innovation” not just from EA but from the whole industry. Not only with more sophisticated games but even the creation of new genres.

While EA declined to share what kinds of games or experiences it’s developing for next-gen consoles, the quote seems to indicate that the technology leap between current-gen consoles like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to next-gen is greater than previously anticipated.

There are already some rumors about what kind of tech will be in the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but neither Sony nor Microsoft have confirmed specs. During a recent GDC survey, over 10 percent of developers said that their next projects are slated for next-gen consoles.

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In other EA news from today’s investor call, EA announced that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has greatly exceeded sales expectations. The company raised forecasts and now expects Jedi: Fallen Order to sell 10 million units, 2 million more than its previous expectation of 8 million.

Check out our Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order guide for walkthroughs, tips, and more.