Author: Trafficblast

Sony Interactive Entertainment has acquired Audiokinetic, the creators of Wave Works Interactive Sound Engine (Wwise). Wwise is a piece of software specifically tailored for audio design in video games and other interactive media, and it’s been used by dozens of both triple-A and indie developers in hundreds of games.

“A rich and all-encompassing audio experience is increasingly critical to the overall gameplay experience, further enhancing immersion and emotion for the player,” said Sony Interactive president and CEO John Kodera. “Audiokinetic is a preeminent provider of audio solutions for the gaming industry, and we are confident that this acquisition will allow us to further grow the PlayStation platform and contribute to the broader gaming industry.”

The acquisition is expected to close by the end of January, but Audiokinectic will continue to operate on its own. “It’s our goal to support Audiokinetic’s efforts to advance its audio technology while maintaining independence and platform neutrality,” Kodera said.

Wwise has been used by developers for pretty much every system platform for the past two generations, including Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, Switch, PC, and mobile devices. Games that have used Wwise include several mainline Assassin’s Creed games, BioShock Infinite, Rocket League, Destiny, Firewatch, Alien Isolation, Monster Hunter World, Overwatch, PUBG, Nier: Automata, and many more.

Sony’s PS4 had a fairly good year in 2018. The console continues to support some of the best first-party exclusives on the market–some of which are on sale right now. However, Sony made a few missteps with the console as well. The company stubbornly refused to reverse its position on cross-platform play with Xbox One and Switch until finally relenting with the success of Fortnite. PlayStation Now’s potential continues to remain unfulfilled, and PlayStation Classic pales in comparison to what Nintendo delivered with its NES and SNES Classic consoles. Sony’s acquisition of Audiokinectic suggests the company is looking for new avenues to improve its products, which points to a more promising future for whatever comes after PS4.

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Overwatch is launching a new update that packs in a limited-time event, with some special rewards for the taking. The event is based on the new short story Bastet, which Blizzard published recently. Ana’s Bastet Challenge kicks off today, January 8, and will last through January 21.

During the event dates, scoring wins will earn you special new cosmetics on top of your usual rewards. You can earn a player icon (win 3 games), a victory pose (win 6 games), and an epic Bastet Ana skin (win 9 games). On top of that, watching promoted Twitch streamers during the event can net you five Ana’s Bastet Challenge sprays. Check out the official blog for more details.

The update also includes skins for the Overwatch League. You can snag a Hero skin for the Atlanta Reign, Chengdu Hunters, Guangzhou Charge, Hangzhou Spark, Paris Eternal, Toronto Defiant, Vancouver Titans, and Washington Justice. You can get each one for 100 OWL tokens, which includes both the home and away outfits. The 2019 season will kick off on February 14.

The Bastet short story also made waves in the fan community for confirming that Soldier 76 identifies as gay, due to a revealing dialogue exchange with Ana about a past relationship. This makes him the second queer character in Overwatch fiction, in addition to Tracer.

Though Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a From Software game through and through, the studio’s making sure to separate the upcoming action-adventure game from its recent titles. One way it’s doing so, aside from ditching online multiplayer, is modifying how character progression works. In a feature published by Game Informer, the studio detailed the way progression works and how it differs from other games like Bloodborne and the Dark Souls series.

In Sekiro, you play as a shinobi dubbed The One-Armed Wolf. Because From has created an established character, there are no customization options in regards to changing class; players start the game with a sword and will likely end the game with a sword (though secondary equipment by way of the prosthetic arm may change). With this limitation in class customization, Sekiro will feature a skill tree that allows players to unlock new moves and abilities.

Players kill enemies to gain experience and collect gold; in other recent From games, experience and currency were one in the same. After killing enemies, new levels are achieved upon filling an experience bar. Once players unlock skill trees by finding particular items within the game’s world, players can invest those experience points in one of three skill trees shown to Game Informer: samurai arts, a traditional warrior archetype that favors power and aggression; shinobi arts, skills focused on evasive and crowd-control maneuvers; and the prosthetic arm.

As noted by From’s president, Hidetaka Miyazaki, during E3 2018, Sekiro is “probably even more challenging than previous From games.” As such, death will likely come swift and often. However, unlike previous From games, Sekiro won’t feature the infamous corpse run. Instead, experience and gold collected during that life will stay with the player upon either restarting or resurrection. While this may seem to be a strange departure for the masters of the masochistic action game, Miyazaki told Game Informer that “death will have a detrimental effect” but didn’t divulge how or in what way.

Though players can use experience points to upgrade attributes and spend gold to purchase items, improving The One-Armed Wolf’s other stats require more exploration. Similar to The Legend of Zelda’s heart pieces, Sekiro will have prayer beads scattered throughout the world–either hidden in rooms or on enemies and mini-bosses–that increase the protagonist’s health. According to From, there may also be upgrade tools for the prosthetic arm and ways to build upon the game’s resurrection mechanic.

With the absence of online multiplayer and honing in on a single-player experience, From says this method of character progression allows it to fine-tune the depth of individual encounters. It also allows them to focus on character progression instead of just player progression “While you are a fixed shinobi protagonist, you do feel like there’s a sense of progression, there’s a sense of building your own character and finding your own playstyle, and experimenting with this throughout the game,” Yasuhiro Kitao, From’s manager of marketing and communications, told Game Informer.

Sekiro is scheduled to launch on March 22, 2019.

HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel TV show still doesn’t have a proper name, but its cast is getting bigger. The show, which will star Naomi Watts and Josh Whitehouse in leading roles, has added eight more names to its roster of stars.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the newly revealed cast includes Naomi Ackie (Star Wars: Episode IX), Toby Regbo (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), Denise Gough (Angels in America), Ivanno Jeremiah (Black Mirror), Jamie Campbell Bower (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn), Georgie Henley (The Chronicles of Narnia), and Alex Sharp (To the Bone). Much like everything else about the series, all character details are a tightly held secret.

What we do know is that the new show is set long before the events of Game of Thrones. A logline, per THR, reads “Only one thing is for sure: From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend–it’s not the story we think we know.”

George R.R. Martin, who wrote the novels the franchise is based on, teased on his blog that the prequel would be called The Long Night. He later noted that HBO says a name has not been given to the series. In Game of Thrones lore, the Long Night refers to a time roughly 8,000 years before the events of the series during the Age of Heroes. It’s during this time that the White Walkers make their first appearance in Westeros in the middle of a particularly brutal winter.

Directing the pilot episode for the series will be SJ Clarkson, who is also signed on to helm the next Star Trek film. Clarkson has an impressive TV resume, that includes directing episodes of Orange Is the New Black, Jessica Jones, Bates Motel, and Dexter, among others.

Jane Goldman, who wrote the pilot script and collaborated with Martin on the story, will serve as showrunner on the prequel. A production start date has yet to be revealed, though THR says more casting announcements should be announced at a later date. The final season of Game of Thrones will premiere in April.

The holidays have come and gone, but Sony’s PSN Holiday SaIe is still going strong. At long last, we’ve reached the fifth and final week of this promotion, which offers discounts on over 1,600 games, expansions, and digital items for PS4, PS3, and Vita (and PS Plus members get an extra discount on many of the items). So take a look at some of the best deals available. Just make sure to finalize your purchases before the discounts go away on January 15.

So what’s on sale? It might be easier to list what isn’t, but let’s look at some of the highlights. New discounts this week include $15 for Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of the first game in the series, which originally appeared on PS2 in 2006. And if you still have a PS Vita, you can grab what’s arguably its best game, Persona 4 Golden, for just $10.

Aside from that, you can get PS4 exclusives like Bloodborne for $7, Shadow of the Colossus for $14, and The Last Guardian for $11. Both Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End can be scooped up for $16 each. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, a standalone coda to the series that focuses on characters besides Nathan Drake, is down to $8. And for longtime PlayStation fans, each installment in the Jak trilogy is available for $6.

Many third-party heavy hitters are on sale for fantastic prices as well. Grand Theft Auto V is down to its lowest-ever price at $15. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is on sale for $18, and the content-rich game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition is $20. You can find a somewhat exhaustive list of our picks below, or you can head to the PlayStation Store to find a fully exhaustive list of every item on sale until January 15.

Destiny 2‘s latest weekly reset includes new content, and right now, pretty much every hardcore player in the Destiny community is trying to figure out how to access it. Teams are currently investigating a new location called Niobe Labs, where they’re trying to solve an involved puzzle that requires having certain weapons to find hidden symbols, which players have to shoot in a particular order to activate.

Niobe Labs is set to unlock the last new activity of The Black Armory, the latest Destiny 2 expansion. That’s the Bergusia Forge, the fourth and final of the Forge areas where you can craft new, powerful weapons as part of the expansion. Over the last month since the expansion launched, the community has been uncovering and solving puzzles related to the Forges, each requiring a different weapon that’s become available as each new Forge has been unlocked.

With the release of Niobe Labs, it seems we’re dealing with the culmination of all those puzzle-solving efforts, and teams are currently standing in the special room trying to figure out what exactly they have to do in it. On Twitter, Bungie said once one team figures out Niobe Labs, the Bergusia Forge will be unlocked for the rest of the player base–kind of like what happened when new content unlocked after the first successful completion of the Last Wish Raid in the Forsaken expansion late last year.

You can access Niobe Labs and try to solve it yourself if you want, although unless you’re following the progress of the rest of the Destiny community on streams and Reddit, you’ll probably be wasting your time. The room is located in Earth’s EDZ, in the Outskirts area.

As you enter the Outskirts, head south past where the Forge Saboteurs sometimes spawn and cross the bridge toward Sojourner’s Camp. Pass through the camp area (you’ll have visited here during Destiny 2’s original story campaign) and look for a broken metal bridge at the far end. You can cross that bridge to access a gorge, which will lead you to a cave through which you can pass to access the hidden facility beyond.

Streamers like Teawrex, Datto, and Professor Broman are currently broadcasting attempts at solving the puzzle, and progress is being made, at least. You can also track the progress of the efforts on the Destiny 2 subreddit. For those of us who can’t add our genius to figuring out the Black Armory’s final brainteaser, watching and waiting is about all there is to do.

Over the past year Netflix has been increasing its focus on animated content, and there are some high-profile projects set to hit the service. Directors Tim Miller (Deadpool, the upcoming Terminator sequel) and David Fincher (The Social Network, Seven) are the latest names to work a new animated series for the company.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Miller and FIncher will executively produce a series titled Love, Death & Robots for Netflix. It’s an 18-part anthology show aimed at an mature audience that will span several genres, such as sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and comedy. The animation styles will vary too, from traditional 2D to more modern CG styles, and each episode will run from 5 to 15 minutes. While it does not yet have a premiere date, Netflix has released some images from the show. Check them out below:

In a statement, Miller said: “Love, Death & Robots is my dream project. It combines my love of animation and amazing stories. Midnight movies, comics, books, and magazines of fantastic fiction have inspired me for decades, but they were relegated to the fringe culture of geeks and nerds of which I was a part. I’m so f***ing excited that the creative landscape has finally changed enough for adult-themed animation to become part of a larger cultural conversation.”

As the producer of House of Cards, Fincher has been involved with Netflix since the company started producing original content in 2012, and more recently made the acclaimed Mindhunter for the service. Miller has previously worked with Fincher, and created the spectacular animated title sequence for his 2011 movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

In October, it was announced that Guillermo del Toro is working on a new animated movie version of Pinocchio for Netflix, and there are also a further six major animated projects in the works. The company continues to push into this area ahead of the launch of Disney’s streaming service Disney+ next year. Netflix also reportedly plans to launch its own animation studio, which will enable it to make projects in-house without having to outsource much of the technical work to existing animation companies.