Month: July 2020

Following numerous other companies, including Starbucks, Ford, and Coca-Cola, Sony is pulling all PlayStation advertising from Facebook and Instagram until at least the end of July.

The move will see the removal of all advertising on the social media platforms, both paid and unpaid. Facebook has come under fire recently for continuing to allow hateful content and misinformation to exist on its platform unchallenged, while other platforms have acted against such content. Twitter has started being more aggressive with flagging problematic tweets, especially from politicians, while Twitch has suspended numerous channels and streamers, including Dr. Disrespect and Donald Trump.

In a statement (provided to GamesIndustry.biz), Sony makes it clear that they support the growing #StopHateForProfit campaign. “In support of the #StopHateForProfit campaign, we have globally suspended our Facebook and Instagram activity, including advertising and non-paid content, until the end of July. We stand for working (and playing) together for good.”

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Breaking Bad and The Mandalorian star Giancarlo Esposito will be featured in a big upcoming video game, but he can’t tell you about it yet. Speaking to Collider, Esposito provided just a tiny tease, saying he worked on the game earlier in 2020 using some kind of new technology.

“This video game I did; which is going to be huge. Can’t really mention,” Esposito said.

He said he performed his part in this video game with “this new style of acting,” but he never fully elaborated on this. He was responding to a question about how Fortnite developer Epic’s Unreal Engine is being used to film The Mandalorian in new and unique ways, but Esposito stopped short of confirming if this was the same tech/setup that he used on the mysterious video game.

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A Plague Tale: Innocence has been a major success for developer Asobo Studio, critically and commercially, and has now racked up a huge sales number. The game’s official Twitter account has now announced that the game has sold over 1 million copies since it released in May 2019.

The game, an action-adventure that involves dodging rats and being stealthy, was one of GameSpot’s best games of 2019.

In the tweet, A Plague Tale’s developers thank the game’s community of players, stating that “this wouldn’t have been possible without our community and we’d like to thank every one of you for supporting the game.”

The game is also available through Xbox Game Pass–which, believe it or not, can actually lead to increased sales.

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Death Stranding is releasing for PC on July 14, giving PC players a chance to experience Hideo Kojima’s strange opus. We’ve already seen the minimum and recommended specs for the game, but now publisher 505 Games has revealed some more details about what to expect if you load the game up on a powerful rig.

Death Stranding on PC will feature Nvidia DLSS 2.0 technology, as long as you have a GeForce RTX GPU installed. This means that the game can run with a frame rate over 100fps at 1440p, or at over 60fps with a 4K image.

The press release sent to GameSpot includes a quote from Kojima Productions’ Akio Sakamoto, praising the game’s PC release with NVIDIA tech. “The extra performance Nvidia DLSS 2.0 delivers in Death Stranding allows gamers to unlock the vast graphical potential of the PC platform by increasing the graphics settings and resolution, delivering on the vision we have for the game,” Sakamoto says.

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In addition to Halo Infinite and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the team at 343 Industries is working on a Halo TV show with Showtime and starring Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief. The production was shut down in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s unclear when it may start back up again. While we wait for that, Halo’s transmedia boss Kiki Wolfkill has shared some new insight on the show and what it’s trying to do

Appearing on Star Wars writer Gary Whitta’s Animal Talking show, Wolfkill said it has been a “mind-bending challenge” to translate the video game series to TV.

Instead of directly adapting a previous Halo game or book, the TV show is seemingly going to tell an entirely new story. Wolfkill’s team has been working with Showtime–which is GameSpot’s sister company–on finding the best way to retain the essence of Halo and bring it to a new medium. This has been hard work, both on this Halo TV show and in the past. Fans will no doubt recall how Peter Jackson’s Halo movie famously fell apart.

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Jump Rope Challenge, the free Nintendo Switch fitness game that released in June, has just received a free update that adds several new costumes to the game’s rabbit protagonist. They’re mostly the usual suspects, but there’s one surprise.

Here’s the complete list of character costumes included in the update.

• Mario
• Luigi
• Peach
• Toad
• Bowser
• Wario
• Link
• Samus
• Isabelle
• Squid Kid (girl)
• Squid Kid (boy)
• Arcade Bunny

The most interesting addition here is Arcade Bunny, a character who has only ever featured in one other Nintendo game–Nintendo Badge Arcade, a 3DS title that handed out badges that could be attached to the system’s home screen. Arcade Bunny was a fully fleshed-out character, and since the 3DS title stopped receiving updates many fans have missed them.

New backgrounds have been added to the game too, as well as a new ability–you can now double-under by swinging your Joy-Cons very quickly.

Jump Rope Challenge will remain free to download on Nintendo Switch until September 30, 2020.