Nioh was released in the midst of a growing niche of hard games (some call this the “Dark Souls” category), and grew in popularity. Nioh 2’s marketing is on the other side of this spectrum of growth, there’s this silent, but growing anticipation for Nioh 2. The sequel to Nioh has been in closed alpha for a while now. It was followed by a TGS 2019 trailer, and so now Nioh 2 has a new release date, and a new Open Beta happening as we speak.
Nioh 2 is to be released exclusively on PlayStation 4 on March 31, 2020. November’s free games for PlayStation Plus subscribers are the original Nioh, and Outlast. Finally, Nioh 2’s Open Beta begins today (November 1st), through November 10th.
For years, Activision has been dabbling into the growing eSports trend. Activision first dabbled with a tournament series called “Call of Duty World League” in 2016, and continued into the 2019 season. Activision decided to forego the World League in favor of the new franchise model that closely resembles sports franchising. In fact, they acquired MLG in 2016 to solidify their intent of being the “ESPN for gaming.” In 2017, they tested a franchise model with Overwatch. It was called Overwatch League, and the way it works is that you’ll need to pay $25 Million to Activision/Blizzard as a franchise fee to be installed as the “home” team for that location. The result was the following: It garnered over $200 Million in sponsorships and broadcasting. Most package deals are around $10 Million a contract. Activision recently revealed Call of Duty League, which is launching in 2020.
There was two teams that wanted to participate in the new Call of Duty League. Optic Gaming, and 100 Thieves. Optic Gaming was acquired by Immortals Gaming Club in June. The founder of Optic Gaming left the company, and joined a different gaming organization called NRG. 100 Thieves, on the other hand is a company that was founded by Matthew Haag, otherwise known as “Nadeshot.” Matthew was a part of Optic, so when he said 100 Thieves isn’t participating in the Call of Duty League, controversy ensued. Same with Optic, well, they’re going to have a Call of Duty League spot, but the Immortals acquisition made the founder of Optic leave.
In any case, here’s Nadeshot’s comments about the decision to not participate in the Call of Duty League…
To learn more about the new Call of Duty League, go to the official website of the league. It shows only two teams with spots: Los Angeles is taken by IGC, and KSE. IGC is “Immortals Gaming Club” as mentioned earlier, I’m not sure what this means, though – are they going to use the IGC name or Optic Gaming…? The other spots listed has been taken, and they are as follows:
Atlanta’s franchise spot was taken by Atlanta Esports Ventures.
Dallas’s franchise spot was taken by Envy.
Florida’s franchise spot was taken by Misfits Gaming.
Minnesota’s franchise spot was taken by WISE Ventures Esports.
New York’s franchise spot was taken by Sterling.VC
Paris’s franchise spot was taken by c0ntact Gaming.
Toronto’s franchise spot was taken by “Toronto” (Yes, that’s a team name.)
After Activision had a few incredible trailers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, you’d think that Activision is done…? Not by a long stretch. Activision/Blizzard has a PC store called Battle.net, which was originally an online service by Blizzard for PC players. It’s now a joint PC store between Activision and Blizzard. Both companies merged together in 2008. However, Blizzard’s Battle.net is for Blizzard games, and they refer Activision’s games as “partner games.” Recently, when Blizzard updated the website, they made a sneaky announcement. The final specs for Modern Warfare has been released…
To play Modern Warfare on your PC, you’ll need the following minimum, and recommended requirements…
Minimum Requirements – Operating System Windows 7 64-bit (SP1) or Windows 10 64-bit – Processor Intel Core i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300 – Video NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon HD 7950 – DirectX 12.0 compatible system – Memory 8 GB RAM – Storage 175 GB available hard drive space – Internet Broadband Internet connection
Recommended Specifications – Operating System Windows 10 64-bit latest update – Processor Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X Processor – Video NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 or AMD Radeon R9 390 / AMD Radeon RX 580 – DirectX 12.0 compatible system – Memory 12 GB RAM – Storage 175 GB available hard drive space – Internet Broadband Internet connection
To purchase the PC version of Modern Warfare, here is where you’ll have to purchase it.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Blizzard’s Battle.net service on October 25, 2019.
Activision and Infinity Ward has been teasing, speculating, and hyping up their new take on the Spec Ops mode weeks or months, depending on how vague its been. It’s been announced that the Spec Ops reveal was in the cards this week. In a Blog Post by Activision, Spec Ops has been revealed, and detailed.
Since World at War, Call of Duty games has always been shipped with a Zombies horde kind of mode. When it was Infinity Ward’s turn in the development cycle, people would wonder what will be their horde mode? It was answered with Modern Warfare 3: Spec Ops. Since then, Infinity Ward has been switching it up. 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts had a different horde mode: Extinction. In Extinction, instead of humans, it was aliens. 2016’s Infinite Warfare took on a different interpretation of that horde mode by going back to zombies, but with a twist – a more cel-shaded, a more cartoony touch to it. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is going back to Spec Ops with a new twist, too. It’s not going to be your typical horde mode, but an open-world horde mode.
Spec Ops in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is an co-op experience. The mode joins MP, and Campaign as part of the entire Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game. Hence the moniker: MP Universe. Infinity Ward has been empathizing the emphasis on cross-play since the reveal of Modern Warfare.
Spec Ops in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is an extension of the campaign (story mode). So, once you finish the campaign, you can continue in Spec Ops. You and 3 other players can join up in a session to explore the Open World of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Each enemy will react to your actions in-game.
At launch, Spec Ops will have four multi-stage Operations across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Activision says that there will be more post-launch. All free, too. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has been a subject of controversy because people jumped to too many conclusions too quickly. Spec Ops is available to everyone. The only thing that is exclusive to PlayStation 4 owners is the Survival Mode. Survival Mode is a part of Spec Ops.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Blizzard’s Battle.net service on October 25, 2019.
Not a whole lot of people know about Nioh, or even the upcoming Nioh 2. The first game was released in the middle of the Demon’s Souls craze, which was followed up with the Dark Souls games. In the midst of all of it, is a rise of games that is hard, and I don’t mean hard as in “Hard Mode,” I mean hard as in, you start the normal single player campaign with challenging enemies. Nioh’s marketing relies on this love for challenging gameplay. In fact, the reason why you don’t hear about Nioh 2 all too often or is being talked about is because they want to take their sweet time in developing the game. They even had a closed beta for the game, but not for the usual marketing reason, they wanted to see how people react to the new Nioh title. They want the marketing to be a slow burn in getting the feedback, getting the messaging out, and getting people hyped up in small doses. Well, this week, Tokyo Game Show 2019 took place between September 12th through 15th, so it should be fairly fresh until Sunday (September 15th). A new trailer was released during TGS 2019…
Nioh 2 will be released exclusively for PlayStation 4 in 2020. No firm release date has been stated, but it will arrive Early 2020. Stay tuned as we know more about Nioh 2’s release date.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake has been having a long history. For many years now, Final Fantasy fans has been clamoring for a remake to Final Fantasy VII (7), and so at E3 2015, it was revealed. No one heard from Square Enix since then. That is, until this year, when they have more to share. It was on Sony’s new State of Play livestream. Shortly thereafter, it was shown off a bit more at E3 2019. And so, at Tokyo Game Show, more Final Fantasy 7 Remake gameplay was shown off…
Final Fantasy 7 Remake will release worldwide for PlayStation 4 on March 3, 2020. This will be the first in many episodes slated to be released.
In March, Apple announced their streaming services that would come this year. Today, at the annual iPhone event (typically in September), Apple didn’t just announce their latest devices, they also announced when some of its services would arrive. Apple TV+ arrives November 1st, and Apple Arcade arrives pretty soon: September 19th.
Apple TV+ is launching at $4.99 a month. However, if you buy Apple TV, Mac, or iPhone, you get Apple TV+ for a year. If you want to continue the subscription, that’ll be $4.99 after the year is up. Apple Arcade is launching at $4.99 a month, and Apple promises that 150+ games will be available on launch day, and/or in the following months. The service will be available in 150 countries. There is an ability to switch from an iPhone to iPad to Mac or the Apple TV system to pick up from where you left off on the previous device.
Apple will continually add more films, TV shows, sports content, kids content, game content to Apple TV+ and Arcade as time goes on. No word on how periodically the rollout of such content will be – monthly, bi-montly, weekly, bi-weekly, by seasons like network television that we experience today, or when Apple feels like it…? Apple didn’t clarify.
If you want to see the entire iPhone event, here’s the video which was livestreamed…
We are just about 50 days away from the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. But, before we experience the full game on October 25th, we can play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s beta to get the feel for the game. Activision and Infinity Ward recently laid out the roadmap for the countdown to the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare…
Due to the agreement with Sony, PlayStation 4 players will get the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Multiplayer Beta starting September 12th, with other platforms to follow…
Weekend 1 – PlayStation 4 Exclusive:
September 12 to September 13: PS4 Early Access
September 14 to September 16: PS4 Open Beta
Weekend 2: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, & PC on Blizzard Battle.net:
September 19 to September 20: Early Access on Xbox One and PC. Open Beta on PS4
September 21 to September 23: Open Beta on PS4, Xbox One, & PC
You can pre-order Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on CallofDuty.com or participating retailers, or your console platform’s digital store, or on PC, you need to purchase it directly on Battle.net
To learn more about the Beta, visit the Beta F.A.Q here. Once you’ve pre-ordered the game from a retailer, redeem it here.
In the info blowout about the “Road to Launch” plan, Activision and Infinity Ward not only laid out the plan for the Multiplayer beta, they also announced that they’ll talk about Crossplay details. So far, we know nothing about how Crossplay will work in the final build or the beta build, but in recent speculation & tinkering with the Modern Warfare Alpha we had in late August, Cross Play on Modern Warfare will be based around your friends list. If you’re invited into a lobby, you and your friend(s) will be in the crossplay matchmaking pool. Activision and Infinity Ward alluded to how normal multiplayer matchmaking is going to be like: Solo Console players will be paired with Console players, and the PC players will be paired with other PC players. However, during the Modern Warfare Alpha, players were tinkering with mouse and keyboard on PS4, and players could actually use them without any issue. Players could use mouse and keyboards on PS4 as if they were playing on PC. Nobody knows if this will be fixed or whatever, but it was there in the 2v2 Alpha.
They also announced that they’ll reveal a campaign cutscene, or gameplay video. We literally don’t know what this “Campaign Premiere” will entail, but it’ll be at the end of September. We had hints and rumors that Spec Ops would come to the rebooted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but they confirmed that they’ll unveil Spec Ops on the week of October 7th.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Blizzard’s Battle.net service on October 25, 2019.
Mortal Kombat 11 was released in April with a resounding success. The week before the launch of Mortal Kombat 11 (which was April 23, 2019), there was a datamine leak that unearthed some of the Kombat Pack 1 characters:
Shang Tsung
Joker
Nightwolf
Sindel
Terminator
Spawn
Ash Williams
Fujin
Sheeva
Nobody believed the leak. Nobody on Twitter believed it, nobody on Facebook believed it, and nobody on Reddit believed it. In fact, the original leak was updated with the trailer to prove to everyone that they were all wrong. The trailer was dropped during Gamescom 2019…
They will not all be launching at the same time, though. Shang Tsung and Nightwolf are available now. “Terminator T-800” will be released on October 8, 2019. Sindel will be released on November 26, 2019. Joker will be released on January 28, 2020, and finally, Spawn will be released March 17, 2020.
After a new Death Stranding trailer showing off gameplay released by Hideo Kojima, people were yearning for more, because Death Stranding is still mysterious even though there was a lot to digest from the trailer. At Gamescom 2019, Hideo Kojima made a surprise appearance during the Opening Night Live kickoff event. Geoff Keighley gave Kojima a lot of stage time to talk about Death Stranding, and Kojima in turn released not one, not two, but three trailers. Hideo Kojima said that more gameplay will be revealed during Tokyo Game Show. Enjoy the trailers, though…
In the next trailer, you’ll notice that there’s an interesting cameo in Death Stranding. Geoff Keighley is in the game as a character named Matthew Mercer.
Death Stranding will be released for PlayStation 4 on November 8, 2019.
