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Bethesda Heading Toward Potential Standoff with Sony

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It appears that The Elder Scrolls: Legends card game could pit Bethesda in a standoff with Sony over cross-play across consoles, as Sony has been stubbornly resistant to the idea of cross-play across multiple platforms and consoles, despite willingness from other brands, such as Microsoft.

“It’s way more pertinent to Legends,” Pete Hines, Bethesda’s senior vice president of marketing and communication said, according to EuroGamer’s Robert Purchese.

“Fallout 76, sure: it would be nice if I could play on my Xbox and my kid is playing on his PC and we can play together, but if we can’t, OK. There’s lots of games – I play Overwatch on Xbox and he plays on PC separately and has a whole separate account. It’s not critical.

“But for Legends it’s absolutely critical,” he said, “both cross-play, which is how Legends works right now on every device – you’re playing against somebody who could be on any device – and, more importantly, cross-platform progression, which means no matter what you do on any platform, you load up the game and so long as you’re logged in, here is all your progression, here is everything you had, everything you were doing.

“If you were in the middle of a match on PC and I flipped that [he gestures at my laptop] closed while you’re in the middle of a match and you load it up on your phone, you would be right back in the match where you were. That is a must for us on any platform. If we have to start segmenting our audience to say ‘folks on this platform can only play folks on that platform’, or ‘any progress you make on that platform can’t be there’, then man, that’s a bad situation.”

Fortnite has been putting pressure on Sony as well, and has been vocal with their support of cross-play, and with the popularity of Fortnite, Sony has still be steadfast in their current ways, which raises the question, what can Elder Scrolls do to sway Sony?

. “We continue to make our case for ‘this is how it needs to work’ and ‘this is how it needs to function’. But we are moving ahead with the assumption that any platform we release it on must support cross-progression and cross-play.

“I am aware of the conflict that arises given that statement but we are continuing to work on it.”

He said Bethesda is “always” talking to Sony about the issue. “But in fairness not just with Sony – with everybody. We need everybody to be on board and understand – Nintendo, Microsoft – this is how we’re proceeding. I don’t want anybody to think I’m trying to single Sony out because I’m not,” he said. “These conversations we have, we have with everybody, including Apple and Google.”

And if Sony stays their course, what would Bethesda do then?

“This is a really good question,” Hines continued. “I imagine the answer is fairly dire but I don’t want to jump to conclusions yet because there’s a lot of space between ‘yes’ and ‘no’. What if they so ‘no’ to this but ‘yes’ to this?” It could present an unforeseen and workable solution.

“It remains to be seen,” he said. “Whatever they say, we will continue to have a conversation with any platform directly. I don’t want to play this out in the court of public opinion. We respect Sony, we respect Microsoft, we respect Nintendo. If I or my company has an issue, we will bring it up with them directly; we know who to call, we know who to email – we’ll talk to them and see if we can figure it out.”

 

 

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Capcom Announces New Content for Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak

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Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak

Capcom has officially announced that Free Title Update 4 will be arriving for Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak on February 7th which will include new foes alongside new Anomaly Research content, Event Quests and a new paid DLC.

Velkhana, the elusive Elder Dragon, has been spotted by the scouts of Elgado Outpost and poses a chilly challenge as it can freeze hunters in an attack, and will join the arrival of Risen Crimson Glow Valstrax when the new update drops.

New Anomaly Research will be available, Afflicted Chaotic Gore Magala joining the A8 Quests, and the Anomaly Investigation cap will be upped to 220.

More is in the works for Free Title Update 5, which is currently slated to arrive in April

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Overwatch 2 Aims to Penalize Players Who Are Friends with Cheaters, Increased Voice Comms Monitoring

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Overwatch 2

Blizzard is leveling up their efforts to thwart cheaters and misconduct within Overwatch 2, as the company aims to penalize players who are friends with cheaters and will amp up their monitoring of voice communications.

The company detailed this in the brand new update for its Defense Matrix Initiative, which is focused on curbing “gameplay sabotage, abusive chat, and cheating” stating their plan to come down on players who team up with cheaters, and more.

Blizzard admitted that cheating in Overwatch 2 is a problem and has “actioned over 50,000 accounts” since the game launched and starting in Season 3 they will be actively identifying players that purposely team up with players who are regularly flagged as cheaters, and will also face potential discipline.

Overwatch 2 will also have improved protection for streamers, as the issue of Stream sniping continues to be a problem, and in Season 3 they will be “introducing new streaming protection features that should be a huge step toward enabling content creators to share Overwatch 2 with their fans safely.”

Blizzard is encouraging players to report any disruptive or problematic behaviour in their matches.

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EA Shuts Down Apex Legends Mobile, Stops Development on Battlefield Mobile Game

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EA and Respawn Entertainment is shutting down their Apex Legends mobile game with the company announced that they will be sunsetting the title this May with EA adding that they have also stopped development on a mobile Battlefield title.

According to Respawn Entertainment, the decision to sunset Apex Legends was not an easy one to make but the company said that “factors” beyond its control have prevented it from “maintaining the high-quality experience and content” players deserve and expect.

Despite the game having a rather strong start, Respawn said that the content pipeline for the game began to “fall short of that bar for quality, quantity, and cadence.”

EA announced that they made the decision to halt the Battlefield mobile title as they wish to create “deeply connected Battlefield ecosystem” which made them arrive at the decision to “pivot from the current direction”

“We remain highly committed to unlocking Battlefield’s enormous potential,” the company said in the statement. “We’re hard at work at evolving Battlefield 2042 and are in pre-production on our future Battlefield experiences at our studios across the globe.”

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