The Elder Scrolls Online: Gates of Oblivion reveal event has been pushed from January 21 to January 26 due to the U.S. presidential inauguration taking place on January 20.
The January 26 event will be streamed on Bethesda’s Twitch channel beginning at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET / 10 p.m. GMT, the company announced on Twitter. Bethesda’s Pete Hines, ZeniMax Online studio director Matt Firor, ESO creative director Rich Lambert, and other members of the development team will be on hand “to talk about the Gates of Oblivion’s new worlds, challenges, systems, and adventures.”
Gates of Oblivion was announced at The Game Awards with a 2021 release window. The MMO’s previous three expansions were all released between late May and early June, though Bethesda has yet to announce a date for Gates of Oblivion.
ESO’s last expansion, Greymoor, offered players a return to the province of Skyrim. IGN’s ESO: Greymoor review called it “a strongly nostalgic return to the northwestern corner of Skyrim” marred by a “formulaic story [that] isn’t as compelling.”
Pokemon Go‘s Sinnoh Celebration event is underway until January 17, and it’ll be followed by a Hoenn Celebration next week. That event will kick off on January 19, and now developer Niantic has shared more details about what Pokemon and bonuses will be available.
Throughout the Hoenn Celebration event, the following Pokemon will be appearing in the wild more frequently than usual:
Treecko
Torchic
Mudkip
Taillow
Loudred
Nosepass
Aron (and Shiny Aron)
Meditite
Roselia
Carvanha
Numel
Baltoy
In addition to those wild spawns, the following Pokemon will be hatching from 5 km eggs throughout the event:
Skitty
Aron
Corphish
Lileep
Anorith
Bagon
Beldum
You’ll also be able to encounter various Gen 3 Pokemon through event-exclusive Field Research tasks and in Raids. As part of the festivities, Niantic is bringing the Legendary Groudon and Kyogre back to the game from January 19-26. You’ll also be able to encounter a Rayquaza that knows the Charged Attack Hurricane if you complete all of the event’s Timed Research tasks.
Pokemon Go’s Hoenn Celebration runs until 8 PM local time on January 24. You can read more details on the Pokemon Go website. The event will be followed by a Johto Celebration that’s scheduled to run from January 26-31, although further details about that event will be announced at a later date.
In the meantime, the Sinnoh Celebration runs until January 17 and features a variety of Gen 4 Pokemon, including the Legendary Heatran. January’s Community Day is also just around the corner. That event takes place this Saturday, January 16, and features Machop. February’s Community Day is scheduled to follow on February 7 and will feature the Grass Pokemon Roselia.
Little Nightmares 2 is less than a month away from release, and to celebrate, publisher Bandai Namco is giving away free copies of the first game on PC. From now until January 17, you can claim a free Steam code for Little Nightmares via Bandai Namco’s website. Codes will be delivered via email within two weeks, and the sign-up page says “while supplies last,” so you may want to get your name on the list quickly.
This isn’t the only way to snag Little Nightmares for free this month–Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can claim Little Nightmares right now as part of January’s Games with Gold offerings. It’s free on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S for members until January 31.
Released in 2017, Little Nightmares is a horror puzzle-platformer about a little girl named Six trapped in an underwater vessel called the Maw. Similar to games like Inside and Limbo, Little Nightmares doesn’t have any dialogue and instead tells its story through its atmospheric setting and disturbing background visuals. As Six makes her way through the Maw in an attempt to escape, you’ll have to avoid capture by the Maw’s creepy residents and solve puzzles to navigate the various rooms.
The game earned an 8/10 in GameSpot’s Little Nightmares review for its haunting narrative, tense cat-and-mouse-style chases, and enthralling visuals, though editor Matt Espineli lamented the game’s shorter length.
“It’s likely you’ll finish Little Nightmares in one or two sittings; its brief length may diminish the spark of its highs, making you wish there was more to prolong the time it takes to overcome its tense set pieces,” he wrote. “But regardless of how you view the time you spend with the game, its strange and distorted world is enough to pull you back in for a second playthrough. The journey to reach its provocative conclusion is filled with unnerving questions and imagery that take hold of your morbid curiosities and pull you deep into introspection. While its puzzles are at times too straightforward, Little Nightmares is a chilling odyssey well worth taking.”
On February 11, you’ll be able to explore the world outside the Maw in Little Nightmares 2, which follows a new young protagonist, Mono, as he teams up with Six to explore a mysterious signal that’s distorting the world around them. Little Nightmares 2 preorders are available now for PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S, including a preorder bonus and physical Day One edition. Plus, check out our early impressions of Little Nightmares 2, including our most recent experience playing through the game’s school level.
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CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwiński appeared on a video today to apologize on behalf of the company and the leadership team over the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Iwiński promises more updates will be regularly delivered along with free content, including the promised free next-gen upgrade for PS5 and Xbox Series X, now targeting the “second half of 2021”
CD Projekt never revealed when a next-gen upgrade for Cyberpunk 2077 will be released, other than that it would be released for free sometime in 2021. But now, Iwiński confirms that players will likely not see the update until the latter half of the year.
Iwiński’s video, which is nearly five minutes long, briefly touched on several questions about Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, including why there’s such a gap between PC and console versions of Cyberpunk 2077, and over how it handled review copies.
Dear gamers,
Below, you’ll find CD PROJEKT’s co-founder’s personal explanation of what the days leading up to the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 looked like, sharing the studio’s perspective on what happened with the game on old-generation consoles. pic.twitter.com/XjdCKizewq
In regards to bringing Cyberpunk 2077 to consoles, especially older ones, Iwiński says “things did not look super difficult at first, while we knew the hardware game, ultimately, time has proven that we’ve underestimated the task.”
He says the main culprit was the in-game streaming system, which is “responsible for ‘feeding’ the engine with what you see on screen, as well as the game mechanics.” Iwiński cites the disk bandwidth performance on older systems as being unable to keep up with the packed city design.
Iwiński also says its internal testing “did not show many of the issues” players experienced and that each day of work “saw significant improvements” to performance. But even then Iwiński says the developers were working on optimizing the console version for the Day 0 patch up until launch. This accounts for the delay between getting PC review codes out and console review copies out on December 8th, according to Iwiński.
As for early 2021, CD Projekt will push several patches regularly throughout the year. The first update will be released “in the next 10 days” and a larger “more significant update” will be released weeks after that.
CDPR’s new road map. Source: CD Projekt
There are still plans to release free DLC as with The Witcher 3, but they may not target “early 2021” as previously expected as CDPR has shifted its priority to “working on the most important fixes and updates” and DLC will follow afterward.
Following the rocky launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in December, developer CD Projekt Red has released a statement from studio co-founder Marcin Iwinski in which he offers a personal explanation of what happened in the days leading up to the game’s release.
“Despite good reviews on PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted it to meet. I and the entire leadership team are deeply sorry for this, and this video is me publicly owning up to that,” Iwinski said.
“Please, don’t fault any of our teams for what happened. They are all incredibly talented and hard-working. Myself and the board are the final decision-makers, and it was our call to release the game. Although, believe me, we never ever intended for anything like this to happen. I assure you that we will do our best to regain your trust.”
Iwinski proceeds to dive deep into the specific issues with the last-gen console versions of Cyberpunk 2077. He said the technically complex nature of the game led to some issues. In particular, he said the “main culprit” for the issues was related to how the team had to constantly improve the in-game streaming system for old-gen consoles. The hard drive bandwidth of the last-gen consoles was a constant challenge for the developer.
The studio’s own testing of this streaming technology showed improvements, and the studio felt the last-gen edition may be in a good place with the Day Zero patch, Iwinski said.
The executive pointed out that issues related to COVID-19 and working from home led to some further complications and problems for Cyberpunk 2077.
CD Projekt Red has already released three hot fixes for Cyberpunk 2077, but the company isn’t stopping there. The goal is to fix more bugs and crashes, and the next update will arrive within the next 10 days, Iwinski said. Another, more significant update is coming in the following weeks.
In addition to that, CD Projekt Red still plans to release free DLC packs for Cyberpunk 2077 later this year, while the free next-gen update for PS5 and Xbox Series X is planned for the second half of 2021.
A FAQ page posted to CD Projekt Red’s website has some further insight on what the studio is doing to make things right. In particular, the studio says it is trying to avoid crunch–the industry term for developers working long hours to finish a project–for the upcoming patches. “The team is working to bring relevant fixes to the game without any obligatory overtime. Avoiding crunch on all of our future projects is one of our top priorities,” the studio said.
Additionally, CD Projekt Red said it hopes to be able to work with Sony to bring the PS4 edition of Cyberpunk 2077 back to the PlayStation Store soon.
“We are working on fixes and updates, and are working with Sony to bring Cyberpunk 2077 back to PlayStation Store as soon as possible,” the studio said.
Q: Why is there such a gap between PC versions of Cyberpunk 2077 and old-gen consoles?
A: Cyberpunk 2077 is huge in scope, it features a multitude of custom objects, interacting systems and mechanics. In the game, everything is not stretched out over flat terrain where we can make things less taxing hardware-wise, but condensed in one big city and in a relatively loading-free environment. We made it even more difficult for ourselves by first wanting to make the game look epic on PCs and then adjusting it to consoles — especially old-gens. That was our core assumption. And things did not look super difficult at first, while we knew the hardware gap, ultimately, time has proven that we’ve underestimated the task.
Q: What was the main issue that made development for consoles that difficult?
A: The main culprit was having to constantly improve our in-game streaming system for old-gen consoles. Streaming is responsible for “feeding” the engine with what you see on screen, as well as the game mechanics. Since the city is so packed and the disk bandwidth of old-gen consoles is what it is, this is something that constantly challenged us.
Q: Didn’t you test old-gen consoles to keep tabs on the experience?
A: We did. As it turned out, our testing did not show many of the issues you experienced while playing the game. As we got closer to launch, we saw significant improvements each and every day, and we really believed we’d deliver in the final day zero update.
Q: Why was there a gap between PC and console reviews?
A: We started sending out PC review keys to start the review process in the first week of December. Come December 10th, launch day, we had a really good start with PC reviews, and while it’s not perfect, this is a version of the game we were, and still are, very proud of. When it comes to the review process for consoles, at the same time PC codes were sent out we were still working hard to improve the quality of the game on old-gen consoles. Every extra day that we worked on the day zero update brought visible improvement — that’s why we started sending console codes for reviews on the 8th December, which was later than we had planned.
Q: What have you done since launch to make the game better?
A: Our top priority since launch has been to fix bugs in Cyberpunk 2077. We have already released three hotfixes which have improved the game, but these are just the beginning.
Q: What are you going to do going forward to fix Cyberpunk 2077?
A: We are focused on fixing the bugs and crashes players are experiencing across every platform. You can expect more in the way of patches — both small and large — to be released regularly. The first update will drop in the next 10 days, and it will be followed by a larger, more significant update, in the weeks after. Our plans for supporting Cyberpunk 2077 in the long-term are unchanged, and we will continue to introduce updates and patches to give all players across all consoles and PCs a better experience with the game.
Q: You have said there would be free DLC for the game in ‘early 2021’, will this be impacted by improvements?
A: We’re still planning on releasing free DLC for the game, just like with The Witcher 3. However, we have decided that our priority is working on the most important fixes and updates. We will be releasing free DLC afterwards — we’ll have more to say about that in the coming months.
Q: When can we expect the next-gen update for Cyberpunk 2077?
A: For those who are playing the game on next-gen consoles via backwards compatibility, we are planning the free, next-gen update for Cyberpunk 2077 on Xbox Series consoles, and PlayStation 5, this year. We’re aiming for the second half of the year and we’ll reveal more when we have more to share.
Q: Are you making the team crunch to work on the patches?
A: The team is working to bring relevant fixes to the game without any obligatory overtime. Avoiding crunch on all of our future projects is one of our top priorities.
Q: When is the game coming back to PlayStation Store?
A: We are working on fixes and updates, and are working with Sony to bring Cyberpunk 2077 back to PlayStation Store as soon as possible.
Q: What is the status of the Help Me Refund initiative?
A: The initiative is progressing according to plan and we just sent out the first wave of reimbursements.
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Steam has released its 2020 Year in Review, which reveals that the hours played on Steam was 50.7% greater than 2019.
Steam began its 2020 Year in Review by acknowledging the COVID-19 pandemic that is still ongoing, and noted that while Steam was seeing “significant growth” before the lockdowns began, video game playtime surged when people began staying at home.
This change led to new record breaking stats for Steam, including 120 million monthly active players, 62.6 million daily active players, 24.8 million peak concurrent players, 2.6 million new purchasers per month, 21.4% more games purchased compared to 2019, and the previously mentioned 50.7% more hours played compared to 2019 statistic.
The increase in people purchasing and playing games led to a huge increase of traffic, with March 2020 seeing a 30-40% increase in total traffic related to game downloads. Cyberpunk 2077 also added to that server stress, with the game breaking records for download traffic with a peak of 52 terabytes per second, which doubled the previous record. This, and so much more, led to 25.2 exabytes of data being downloaded from Steam in 2020. For reference, an exabyte is 1 million terabytes.
While Steam had announced earlier this year that it made changes to game update downloads to manage bandwidth during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has now revealed here that “various countries’ government bodies approached us and other large Internet companies to see how we could help mitigate the rise in global traffic that ISPs were seeing, because it was getting to a point where it was affecting people’s ability to work from home and their children’s remote schooling.”
Steam also revealed that it saw 104 million SteamVR sessions, 1.7 million first time SteamVR users, 71% more VR revenue, and a 30% increase in VR playtime. VR game sales rose 32% year-over-year, and that’s not even counting Half-Life: Alyx, which added another 39% on top of that number.
Controller usage on steam also saw an increase, with 46.6 million players using a controller, 1.68 billion game sessions with players using a controller occuring, and 452 million game sessions with Steam Input happening.
Sales were also a big part of Steam’s 2020, and this helped lead to a 36% increase in the number of games that grossed over $100,000 from the 2019 Winter Sale to the 2020 Winter Sale.
In closing, Steam shared some initiatives it has planned for 2021, including Steam China, user experience improvements, steam login improvements, a possible revamp to the Steam Points program, improvements to Linux and Steam Labs, and much more.
Moon Knight, one of many upcoming projects waiting in the wings slated for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has added May Calamawy (Hulu’s Ramy) to the show’s cast in a key role. The casting choice was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, although what this role is remains unclear and not even a character name has been revealed.
It was previously announced that the project would be helmed by Mohamed Diab (Crash) and Jeremy Slater (Umbrella Academy), and further aided creatively by indie auters and directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (the team behind the 2019 sci-fi horror film Synchronic). Benson and Moorhead are known for their eerie and surreal sensibilities, so that is at least somewhat of a clue to what direction Moon Knight might be taking.
No mention of the MCU this week would be complete without a nod to the upcoming WandaVision, which is set to premiere on Disney+ on January 15. In addition to having the distinction of being the first entry in the MCU in over a year, the show kicks off Marvel Phase 4. If you need to familiarize yourself before the show debuts, the previous link will get you up to speed.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is about to move into Phase 4, finally, as the Disney+ original series WandaVision debuts with its first two episodes on Friday, January 15. However, before the show hits the streaming service, there will be a virtual launch event featuring the cast.
The event will kick off on Marvel Entertainment’s Twitter at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET. The actors featured in the announcement tweet are Paul Bettany (Vision), Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda), Teyonah Parris (Monica Rambeau), and Kathryn Hahn (Agnes).
While details about the virtual launch event are scarce, fans can most likely expect the cast talking about their experiences on the show and maybe we’ll even get a new clip before the series airs.
WandaVision will be a bit of a departure from what fans of the MCU are familiar with. Aside from the fact it is the first Disney+/Marvel original series, the show will bit a bizarre. The series follows the titular characters who are stuck in a sitcom that is jumping between decades, recreating some iconic TV atmospheres, and that includes a nod to Full House–a series that starred Elizabeth Olsen’s older sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley.
Early audience reactions have arrived, and they’ve been mainly positive. GameSpot’s Chris E. Hayner tweeted, “this show’s dedication to the bit of resembling shows like Bewitched, I Love Lucy, and The Brady Bunch had me staring at it dreamily.”
And because this show pulls from many classic American sitcoms, you may wonder what shows the series pulled from. Director Matt Shakman mentioned I Love Lucy, My Three Sons, Bewitched, and quite a few other notable sitcoms in a recent interview.
While 2020 was the first year without a single release in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since it started, there is a wide variety of titles set to be released over the next few years. The MCU is about to make its TV debut with WandaVision, which releases on Disney+ this week, and Black Widow will hopefully hit theaters this spring. Now Marvel Studio boss Kevin Feige has spoken about how the studio decides which projects will be series, and which will be movies.
In an interview with Collider, Feige explained that it was down to the characters, their stories, and which medium will best serve them, and gave the upcoming series Ms. Marvel as an example.
“It really is about the individual stories you want to tell and a bit informed by the bigger picture,” he said. “We knew that we wanted to introduce Ms. Marvel first and her family and all of her great supporting characters and her origin in a Disney+ long-form series, and then bring her into Captain Marvel 2. There will be some times where the opposite happens. The character is introduced in a movie and brought onto a Disney+ series. So, it really just varies based on the story or the genre that we want to explore.”
WandaVision is an example of the latter approach. Wanda Maximoff and the Vision have featured in several MCU movies, most recently Avengers: Endgame, but the new series will allow Marvel to explore their characters in more detail. As Feige stated last month, “[They] never had a chance to dominate the narrative because there was so much else going on. It felt fun to finally give them a platform.”
Despite the slate of MCU movies on the way over the next few years, Feige has clearly recognized the importance of streaming to the franchise. In an interview with Emmy.com, he stated that streaming was “the future” of the MCU. “[It’s] where consumers want to watch things,” he said. “And hopefully they’ll want to watch our longform narrative series. You go to movies for things you can’t get on streaming, and you go to streaming for things you can’t get in a theater. And of course, everything in a theater goes to streaming eventually.”
