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On a personal note, I have now been at IGN 9 years, almost exactly to the day. People that don’t know IGN very well only know us as a set of letters or as a large media company. Those of you reading this and fans of our shows know that isn’t true. We’re a diverse, passionate group of fans that feel lucky every day to make shows, review products, talk about, and guide you through all the stuff you’re into. Even when it’s hard, it’s a pleasure.
IGN isn’t “IGN” – IGN is Daemon, Tina, Peer, Miranda, Sam, Max, Brian, Stella, Ryan, Terri, Lucy, Zach, Jonathon, Joe, Janet, Casey, Brandin, Destin, and so, so many more. And of course an equally large set of passionate professionals working behind the scenes, too. Thank you for continuing to watch and read what we do.
We genuinely appreciate your support and your readership. It really means everything to us that you’re here. IGN couldn’t exist without you, so thank you again.
PS: Iggy, pictured above in his full glory, was created by one of our awesome designers Angela and I love him.
UPDATE: The Back to the Future 4K trilogy gift set is available again for preorder at Amazon.
Few movie series have withstood the test of time quite like the Back to the Future Trilogy. It’s kind of crazy how well they hold up, in spite of being a product of their time and completely missing the promise of working hoverboards in the year 2015. And yet… part two is (arguably) the best in the trilogy.
That’s not to say the other two movies aren’t great, because they are, but something about part two really sticks with people. The hoverboards from Back to the Future 2 are a pop-culture legend, and the upcoming 4K Blu-ray release of the original trilogy finally does what we’ve all been wanting since 1985: it brings us a real, working hoverboard.
OK, a tiny hoverboard replica, but it’s still a hoverboard!
Preorder the Back to the Future 4K Blu-ray Set With Hoverboard
The Amazon edition of the Back to the Future 4K Blu-ray gift set includes the following:
All 3 original movies on 4K Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray
Digital codes for the movies
Blu-ray bonus disc with special features
Collectible packaging
Levitating freaking hoverboard replica
In addition to Amazon, Best Buy and Target also have retailer-specific gift sets, although the Best Buy version does away with the hoverboard in favor of a triple-threat of exclusive Back to the Future steelbooks.
If you’re a steelbook collector, you know what that means: you have to buy the Amazon or Target set, too. Sorry, but such is life.
IGN reached out to Analogue to get clarification about today’s pre-order for the Analogue Pocket. Following reports that some customers couldn’t complete their pre-orders after having a unit in their cart, Analogue responded:
“Shopify’s shipping calculator was slowed down by immense traffic – we’ll have a solution in the future. We apologize to those who experienced this issue.”
Analogue also reiterated that it is selling the Pocket during a global pandemic, which has made logistics more complicated. “This is certainly not a typical product launch.”
The company says customers should sign up for email notifications to be alerted when the Pocket and accessories will be available again.
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Original Story: Analogue Pocket, the stylish third-party handheld console coming in 2021, has sold all of its pre-order units within 15 minutes of going on sale – and some of those who missed out aren’t happy.
Announced in a tweet, Analogue said that it was aiming to produce more and meet demand. It’s unclear how many units were available to buy initially, and Analogue’s mention of the “unfortunate global state of affairs” implies there may be production problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially reducing how many units could be bought.
Pocket pre-orders are sold out. We will be producing more and do our best to meet demand during this unfortunate global state of affairs.
Unfortunately, many potential buyers seem to have run into an issue where they were able to add a Pocket pre-order to their basket, but ran into issues with Analogue’s shipping calculator (with many reporting upwards of 5 minutes of wait time), only to be told that pre-orders had sold out once the calculation was complete.
IGN has contacted Analogue for comment on potential pre-order issues, but has not heard back at time of publish.
Added everything to my cart at 10:59 EST. Shipping did not populate for 7 minutes at which time it had already sold out. Cool.
You guys are holding tens of thousands of dollars for nearly a year but you somehow can’t afford enough stock to last longer than 10 minutes. Very Cool
Some are reporting that pre-ordered units are already showing up on auction sites for more than double the $200 asking price, although I’ve been unable to personally verify this at time of writing.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
An American Pickle debuts exclusively on HBO Max on August 6.
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What might our ancestors think if they could see us now? That question serves as a springboard for An American Pickle, the new Seth Rogen comedy based on a charming Simon Rich short story. Scripted by Rich, the film follows a Jewish immigrant whose awoken after 100 years of being preserved in pickle brine and is now eager to meet his only living descendent, a Brooklyn app-developer. (Both are played by Rogen.) While the premise is promising, the execution aches from the growing pains of Rogen’s shifting persona.
Since 2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Rogen has played a string of manchild roles. Whether he’s a chuckling stoner, a perplexed police officer, a flustered baby-daddy, or a harried homeowner facing off against Greek Life co-eds, Rogen has made the struggles of Millennial “adulting” a constant source of comedy. However, as he edges closer to 40, this shtick risks going stale. So he’s begun to mix it up, playing a stubborn and schlubby but undeniably sharp speechwriter in the Charlize Theron rom-com Long Shot. With An American Pickle, he pulls double duty, playing a modern manchild terrified of taking his shot and the outspoken ancestor who knows too well that tomorrow is never promised.
An American Pickle’s story begins in the 1919 Eastern European town of Schlupsk, a place of muck, salted fish, and brutal Cossack rampages. There, Herschel Greenbaum (Rogen) is a ditch digger who dreams of providing more for his wife Sarah (Sarah Snook), a vision of womanhood who has all her teeth (“top and bottom!”). So, they go to America in hopes of working hard to build a future for their family, one of power, success, and seltzer. (Yes, seltzer.) Then, a series of incredible coincidences drops Hershel in a brining tank, where he is forgotten for a century. When he arises, he’s saddened by the loss of the world he knew, but takes comfort in meeting his great grandson, Ben Greenbaum (also Rogen), who has an enviably big Brooklyn apartment and a lot of unresolved grief over his parents’ deaths.
While Hershel is low-key confounded by these modern times (what with interracial dating, women’s rights, and the high cost of produce), he is most perplexed by his descendant’s priorities. Ben doesn’t observe Jewish religious traditions and hasn’t visited the family graves in years. He has no wife, no children, and no career that Herschel can comprehend. So tensions rise. In no time at all, the pair declare each other enemies. Herschel strikes out on his own with a pickle cart with wares pulled freegan-style from dumpster diving. Meanwhile, Ben stews over how to ruin his eccentric great-grandfather.
What’s fascinating about An American Pickle is how Rogen v. Rogen plays the actor’s current casting niche against his potential future. Ben is another manchild role, as he — according to Herschel — hasn’t achieved many of the requisites of manhood, including the ability to “throw your punch!” But frankly, Rogen seems to chafe in the part. Ben’s muttered complaints and perpetually furrowed brow express his juvenile frustration aptly, but he lacks the verve and comedic punch of Rogen’s previous manchildren. It’s as if Rogen’s bored by this archetype. Even with a tragic backstory, Ben feels hollow. Herschel, however, is where An American Pickle gets its bite.
With a long, bushy beard, an Eastern European accent, and a brusque bravado, Herschel is a fascinating new terrain for Rogen. It’s little wonder that Brooklyn hipsters, online influencers, and ambitious interns flock to Herschel and his peculiar pickles. With this role, Rogen is offered a chance to shake off the stoner/screw-up persona and dig into a totally different character. Herschel is gruff, passionate, and borderline bullying. Being 100 years behind the times, he spouts opinions that haven’t aged well, which sparks drama. Nonetheless, his chutzpah is exhilarating, so the audience is hooked on his every move, be it awkward or outrageous.
It’s easy to imagine this role going to someone like Kurt Russell or Bruce Willis. Hershel is at his core the kind of tough guy rogue who’d fit nicely in an ’80s action-comedy. Which is why the casting of Rogen is both curious and brilliant. He gives a fresh flavor to this macho man, punctuating moments of impulsive violence or social faux pas with an earnest jubilance or abrupt tenderness. In this role, Rogen sums up the tragedy and comedy of what it means to be alive and truly know the joys (a loving wife with dreams of her own gravestone) and the pain (losing many friends to Cossack murder) of it all.
An American Pickle works best when it rests on Herschel. The first act is hilarious and surprising, as it keeps us close to this curious character, even threading in narration that’s hilariously frank. However, once Herschel meets Ben, Rich’s script stumbles. It’s as if it knows the emotional beats the story needs to hit, but not how to get there. So Rogen faces off against Rogen in a series of clunky verbal battles about religion, grief, and Twitter. There are also sloppy swings at criticizing everything from think pieces and hipsters, to cancel culture, and Donald Trump’s Twitter outbursts. Some of these score laughs, but they also distract from the intriguing central story and its complicated hero.
Microsoft has revealed a new version of its Microsoft Store for Xbox, which will start being released to Insiders on August 5, and arrive this fall for all users.
Shown off on the Xbox Wire blog, the store is a complete redesign (and clearly a newer version of the store design that leaked in June), which should be twice as fast to load, easier to search, and safer. The post only mentions this store with regard to Xbox One, but we’ve previously heard that that Series X will have the same UI as Xbox One, so we may well be looking at the next-gen store too.
The store should start up within two seconds, and be faster to browse and watch trailers within. Trailers can be played inline while browsing (i.e. without opening the game’s store page), and can be set to autoplay.
The store also now includes a “fully redesigned navigation system”, which will allow for better search filtering, a rebuilt wishlist that will alert you to sales on items you’re watching, an updated shopping cart, better-surfaced listings for games available from previous console generations, and more. In a walkthrough with Major Nelson, Microsoft’s Cody Bird explained that the store’s been designed in part to be more easily navigable for new users.
The store will now only be usable if users are signed in, which has two main purposes. The first is that the store will seemingly recommend games more relevant to your interests, but the second is that game age ratings are better shown, and can be filtered on children’s accounts to stop underage players viewing content inappropriate for their age.
Some Xbox Insiders will be able to try out the new store from August 5, and it will be gradually rolled out to more and more users ahead of a fall release. Cody Bird added that this is the “starting point” for the new store, not a finished product, and it will continue to evolve after launch.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Grand Theft Auto V Online will have exclusive content on next-generation platforms. It was previously announced at the PS5 reveal event that GTA V and a standalone version of GTA Online will be coming to next-gen, sometime in the second half of 2021.
During the latest financial earnings call for Take Two, Rockstar’s parent company, the company said that the next generation version of GTA Online will have “additional content exclusive to the new consoles and PC.” No further details were given about the content during the call, but the new content coming in 2021 shows Rockstar’s commitment to GTA V and GTA Online.
The next-gen versions of GTA V and the standalone GTA Online will feature a slew of technical improvements, visual upgrades, and performance enhancements that will take advantage of the new consoles. Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said that the improvements will include making a “more responsive” version of the game. All of this information was a reiteration of the company’s previous announcement about the next-gen version of GTA V and GTA Online.
PlayStation Plus members on PS4 can get $1 million in-game dollars added to their GTA Online bank accounts each month until the launch of the game on GTA V. The standalone version of GTA Online for the PS5 will be free for the first three months for PS5 owners.
Grand Theft Auto V is getting a big summer update sometime soon, with another big update taking heists to a new location coming later this year.
When 2K Games announced that NBA 2K21 will be priced at $70 for next-generation consoles, it kicked off speculation that there will finally be another price hike for video game software in the PS5 and Xbox Series X generation.
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick defended the price point for NBA 2K21 and said that the price hike reflects “the quality of the experience,” in a new interview. Zelnick also spoke on the price hike during today’s Q1 earnings call with investors.
“There hasn’t been a price increase for frontline titles for a really long time, despite the fact that it costs a great deal more to make those titles,” Zelnick says in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. “And we think with the value we offer consumers… and the kind of experience you can really only have on these next-generation consoles, and the price is justified.”
During the Q1 earnings call, Zelnick clarified that it will announce pricing “on a title-by-title basis,” but defended the price point as a great value based on the hours of entertainment games like NBA 2K offers.
Other video game developers have been asked about a potential price hike for next-gen video game software. Ubisoft says its next-gen titles being released in holiday 2020 will be $60, though future titles may have different pricing.
For more than a decade, Crossfire has been a powerhouse in PC first-person shooters outside the US, especially in Asia. The free-to-play title is primed to make the leap to Xbox One and Xbox Series X later this year as CrossfireX, and with it will come a new addition: a single-player campaign created by Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Control, Alan Wake, and Max Payne.
During Microsoft’s recent Xbox Games Showcase, we got a closer look at what Remedy has planned for CrossfireX, although the details were still pretty vague. After the show, Remedy gave a more thorough presentation to media that provided more insight on what CrossfireX’s campaign will be like. The presentation also provided a sense of what Remedy is adding to the Crossfire formula and how the studio will boil down more than a decade of growth, adaptations, and alterations into a coherent story.
The hands-off gameplay demo we saw expanded on the CrossfireX trailer that appeared during the showcase, focusing on Luis Torres, a “skilled thief” and civilian in the game’s world. The mission we saw started with Luis handcuffed on a prison bus, where a guard speaks with him in a brief character-building moment–before a drone flies beneath the bus and explodes, flipping it. It seems that Global Risk, one of the two factions at the heart of Crossfire, and its leader, General Maddox, are after Luis. Luckily, he escapes the crash and absconds into a hospital, where the player takes control of him to shoot their way through Global Risk goons and meets up with Black List operatives hoping to extract him.
As far as gameplay is concerned, CrossfireX currently looks pretty similar to other military shooters of the type. There’s a lot of aiming down sights, a lot of checking corners and doorways, a lot of dropping enemies with a quick burst to the chest or a well-placed headshot before moving on to the next corridor. We didn’t see much of the game in action, but the presentation did show off a mechanic that distinguishes CrossfireX from being another Call of Duty or Battlefield: Combat Breaker–an ability that slows down time to allow Luis an extra second or two to line up shots and take down enemies, not unlike the Bullet Time mechanic in Remedy’s Max Payne series.
Apart from that, however, CrossfireX currently seems to play very similarly to the other big FPS titles on the market, at least in its single-player campaign. It’ll be released in batches called “Operations,” which Remedy says will last around three hours each. Two are confirmed at the moment, one played from Black List’s point of view and the other from that of Global Risk.
A lot of Crossfire’s world has been established in broad strokes–the two factions are private military corporations whose employees differing worldviews, both engaged in a “sprawling, global conflict,” communications director Thomas Puha said in an email interview with GameSpot. “Black List is more of an emotional ragtag group of members, whereas Global Risk is organized and well stocked,” he explained.
The factions, their viewpoints, the people who fight for them, and their conflict is the key to Crossfire’s identity and the thing that Remedy is trying to get across in the campaign.
“At the same time (Smilegate) has been expanding multiplayer, they’ve actually been doing quite a bit of worldbuilding,” explained executive producer Tuukka Taipalvesi. “So they’ve tried to connect the various game modes to one another with story bridges, and they’ve built, I don’t know how deliberately, a timeline for their IP. So that’s where we started. We took all that information and did some data archeology on it, and basically built a baseline layer of a Crossfire universe timeline from all of this that was available. And from that, we started to see a historic event within the timeline that’s a good spot to set a game in, kind of like a historic junction point within the universe, so that it’s interesting from both factions’ perspectives.”
Crossfire’s years of multiplayer support have led to a huge number of modes. Some of them are straightforward deathmatch or objective-based games that don’t stray far from the original formula: two groups of soldiers battling it out. But as modes got more diverse, they also got weird. For instance, there’s a horror-tinged zombie and mutants mode in which characters become huge, hulking creatures.
Remedy was cagey about whether mutants and zombies might make their way into future content for CrossfireX’s single-player, but for now, the focus is on establishing and developing gameplay that serves the story and also feels like Crossfire.
“It’s the first single-player campaign for the franchise, as well as being on console, so while there’s a decade worth of multiplayer game modes and history out there, the campaign has to establish its own identity and it definitely took a while to achieve that,” Taipalvesi said. “I think the connecting tissue and backbone really are the two factions: Global Risk and Black List.”
Remedy worked closely with Smilegate to make sure that whatever it was creating for the story side of CrossfireX would feel true to the rest of the game. This extends to gameplay itself, since Remedy is using its Northlight engine, which we last saw in Control, while the multiplayer side uses Unreal 4 Tuning controls and guns to make them feel consistent across both modes is part of that process.
Not everything in the weirder realm is getting left behind, though. There’s also a multiplayer mode in PC Crossfire and CrossfireX, Spectre Mode, in which some players use active camouflage to become invisible and terrorize other players–and we’ve seen hints that these camouflaged soldiers will be part of the campaign. In fact, the gameplay portion shown during the Xbox showcase and the hands-off demo is from a set of missions collectively known as Operation: Spectre. CrossfireX’s campaign will come in sets known as “operations,” which Remedy says will last about around three to four hours each. Two are currently confirmed: Operation: Spectre and another operation played from the point of view of Global Risk.
Much of the mission with Luis found him working with Black List operative, Nicholas, who was sent to help him escape his Global Risk enemies. The back-and-forth between the characters hints at some of what Remedy is bringing to the table from a storytelling standpoint. Taipalvesi said the characters in CrossfireX have “slightly more melodrama than perhaps you’ve grown accustomed to,” which goes along with the campaign’s more in-your-face tone than Remedy’s other titles.
After shooting through some corridors, the demo amped up the action, with Luis fighting his way to two Black List operatives, Cora and Logan, who were waiting for him in an ambulance. A chase followed, with Cora cracking wise before she and Luis opened fire out the back of the ambulance while Global Risk vehicles pursued.
Things hit a climax when an armored truck rammed into the ambulance, its occupants unloading on the ambulance with a heavy machine gun. Instead of blasting away at it ineffectually, Cora threw an oxygen tank at the truck, which Luis shot with the help of his Combat Breaker. The tank exploded, taking the truck with it–but also starting a chain reaction of collapsing the overpass roof under which the ambulance was fleeing. The demo ended with Logan taking the ambulance through the barricade and over a cliff toward a waiting lake below.
It was an intense demo that carries all the frenetic action and over-the-top set pieces you’re used to seeing in similar blockbuster shooter franchises, but so far, we’ve only seen an inkling of what CrossfireX will be like in the moment-to-moment. What we’ve seen of the gunplay looks fairly standard for the genre, and military shooters live and die by how good their gunplay feels, as well as how smartly their missions are designed–two elements that are still unknown for CrossfireX.
And although Remedy is known for its storytelling as much as its gameplay mechanics, we’ve seen only the barest hints of where CrossfireX is actually going. Banter between characters seems promising, but much of it also carried that action movie cadence of one-liners that gives little indication of how deep or well-rounded the story and characters might be. Right now, CrossfireX has a lot to live up to, both in a crowded shooter genre and with a years-long multiplayer legacy. What we’ve seen so far shows promise, but we’re still waiting to find out how CrossfireX will distinguish itself on the single-player side.
Here’s a good deal for all the nineties kids out there, or anyone interested in retro gaming. Right now at Amazon and GameStop you can scoop up a Sega Genesis Mini for $49.99, a nearly 40% discount off the MSRP. That’s a great deal on what what we called “the closest thing we have to a perfect all-in-one mini console so far” in our Sega Genesis Mini review. Grab one for yourself before the price goes back up.
What makes the Genesis Mini so great? For starters, it comes loaded with 42 classic games, most of which are excellent. On top of that, the hardware is great. The miniaturized console features a high level of detail, and the two full-sized controllers are 1:1 reproductions.
The UI is also beautifully designed. You get a number of viewing options for the collection, including game covers and spines. And if you switch the language to Japanese, the entire UI switches to the Japanese covers (and ROMs) of the games. Speaking of games, here’s the full list of what’s included in the Sega Genesis Mini.
This $49.99 price point is close to the lowest we’ve ever seen this retro mini console go. And since it’s unclear when the price will go back up, you’ll probably want to grab one sooner than later.
But by announcing a hero exclusively to PS4 and PS5 players, Square Enix and Marvel Games have stirred frustrations for non-PlayStation players, and raised some odd questions about Marvel’s Avengers’ future.
Spider-Man — a new take on the hero and not the same version as the Peter Parker we played in 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man — will be made exclusive to PlayStation players sometime in 2021. Square Enix has not confirmed if there’s any timed exclusivity window to this or if he’s permanently only available to PS4 and PS5 players. And as of writing, there’s no indication Xbox and PC players will receive platform-exclusive characters to balance things out.
So, if you want to play as Marvel’s flagship hero (and the U.S.’s current favorite Marvel hero), you have to buy Avengers on PlayStation.
Despite some rocky showings at E3 last year, recent War Table presentations have earned a lot of goodwill for Marvel’s Avengers, and on a more general note, the game is, of course, coming off of the box office record-shattering, blockbuster filmmaking-defining run of MCU movies that culminated in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Avengers as a brand is bigger than ever, and so to have such a beloved hero only available on your systems makes the PlayStation version the clear winner for those who own multiple systems.
It’s, quite simply, a brilliant marketing move on a brand recognition level. This only further solidifies PlayStation’s connection with Spider-Man. Even if it’s not the same Spidey as in the 2018 game, that PS4 exclusive is one of the biggest games of the generation, and the best-selling superhero game ever in the U.S. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is positioned as one of THE reasons to buy a PS5 this holiday. And now, if you want to play the Spider-Man featured in Marvel’s big Avengers game and see him team up with other Marvel heroes, PlayStation is the only place to do just that.
And that brand connection is, on the surface, only even more beneficial to the wider Sony corporation. As far as we publicly know, Marvel still holds ultimate rights to Spider-Man, and that’s why we can see the character appear in the multiplatform LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 or a Nintendo Switch-exclusive like Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. But Sony has held the movie rights to Spidey for a long time and looks determined to maintain that hold, famously leading to the brief dark times when Spider-Man was going to be yanked out of the MCU, only for Sony and Marvel Studios to come to a renewed agreement to keep him involved… for now. But make no mistake, Sony is doing everything it can to build out a Spider-Man universe that all but features the character. From Venom to Morbius (and its odd inclusion of a Marvel’s Spider-Man trailer Easter egg) to the burgeoning Spider-Verse franchise, many more planned Spider-Man-adjacent character movies, Sony is obviously hoping to use what it can to build out a live-action Spidey-verse either to eventually bring the character into its fold exclusively once more or to at least make the best of both cinematic universes.
Spider-Man is the crown jewel of Sony’s film lineup, even if they’re currently sharing custody with Marvel, and so to have the character in any medium possible associated with the brand is a good thing not just for PlayStation but Sony overall.
But for Players…
At the very least, this announcement likely ensures a healthy playerbase for Marvel’s Avengers on PS4 and PS5 going into 2021. Regardless of how the game is received at launch, the story of many games-as-a-service titles is often written in the months and years after. Giving players on PS4 and PS5 a reason to check in on the game next year as big as Spider-Man will surely bring back even some players who may not stick with the game after launch.
But it’s sure as hell not fair for players on Xbox or PC, who have no idea at this stage if they’ll ever get to play as Spider-Man in Avengers, if they’ll receive other exclusive characters to balance things out, or if they’ll just never see the webhead swinging around their games. Cross-play between consoles isn’t announced for Avengers yet (only between generations, so PS4 and PS5 players can play together, but not with Xbox or PC players), and system-exclusive characters make the idea of that even less likely at a time when cross-play and cross-progression have become ever more routinely part of gaming. Sure, it’s entirely possible he will eventually be brought to other systems and the terms of this agreement just prevent that from being announced yet, but as of right now, that remains cruelly unclear.
It also raises the unfortunate question of how substantial the Spider-Man content will be, and how essential it will feel to the overall game if only a portion of the audience can play it. Marvel has promised all future DLC characters, which will be free to players, will come with their own story-related content. If Spider-Man’s story is only part of some Avengers players’ experiences, will it not be well integrated into the rest of the team or world’s ongoing story? Will it be particularly self-contained, and will character interactions be superficial, since they theoretically can’t drastically affect ongoing narratives? Or does Crystal Dynamics create a multiverse of Marvel’s Avengers stories, one for Xbox and PC players and one for those on PlayStation?
The latter sounds too unwieldy, and the former is a valid concern that could dampen potential excitement for Spidey content in Marvel’s Avengers. Personally, the thrill of playing Marvel’s Avengers comes from the interconnectedness between the characters and the ongoing nature of its storytelling.True, comic-book style storytelling can be integrated into an ambitious Marvel gaming world on a level not seen before in consoles and PC games. But if such a major character – it’s Spider-Man! – can only be played by some players, how does that translate to the overall story ambitions of Avengers, and to the Spidey-specific stories they’re planning?
It’s all unclear at this point, but what is clear is that creating a fractured player-base is like dividing kids in a schoolyard but only some of them get all of the equipment while the rest have something half-built. Destiny players were upset about PS4-exclusive weapons and missions, and it makes sense – when a game is meant to be played across different platforms, not one made by or for a platform holder, you roughly expect to get the same experience from one system to the next. And a full, playable, new character and associated content is a much larger pill to swallow than, say, some exclusive costumes or even sidequests.
Platform exclusives like this always feel mean, even if they make sense from a business perspective. PlayStation wants to bring players into its systems with likely one of the most requested characters for Avengers’ lineup and there’s already an association of the character with Sony. But for players on other platforms, it feels like a slap in the face, and only fuels the console divide further at a time when playing together, no matter where we play, is becoming more important than ever.
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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor and host of Podcast Beyond! Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.
