Category: Games

With Microsoft’s acquisition of quirky indie studio Double Fine Productions, announced during the company’s E3 2019 presentation, Microsoft now has 15 studios under its Xbox Game Studios umbrella. While president Tim Schafer has confirmed the purchase will have no effect on how the California-based studio conducts its business, the company did take to Twitter to satirize the news.

Schafer, in a 30-second video posted to the official Double Fine Twitter account, basically said Microsoft rolled up with “a bunch of money” and made the team an offer they couldn’t refuse. The video features all the slow-mo head movement and melodrama that would make any soap opera jealous.

The studio’s next game, Rad, a post-apocalyptic action game published by Bandai Namco, is set to release on August 20 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Psychonauts 2–set to arrive sometime in 2020 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One–will mark the studio’s first game published under the Xbox Game Studios moniker.

More E3 News:

Cyberpunk 2077 features The Matrix actor Keanu Reeves in a major role. The character he plays, Johnny Silverhand, was in a rock band called Samurai. But will Reeves sing in the game? He wants to, but the game’s developer, CD Projekt Red, apparently has other ideas.

“No, they don’t want me to sing,” Reeves told IGN.

CD Projekt Red recruited an unnamed rock band to do the music, Reeves said, “so they’re going to be doing that.” Still, Reeves says he may be able to have some influence on the music.

“We have a bit of time, so maybe we’ll see what happens,” he said. “Maybe the lead singer of the band will let me have some kind of influence in there. We’ll see.”

It’s a bit of a bummer that Reeves apparently won’t sing in Cyberpunk 2077. He’s got the chops to pull it off, after all, so maybe something will happen down the line.

Silverhand appears as a hologram in your character’s head. He’s a key character who is second only to the player character, V, in terms of spoken dialogue. “He’s the No. 2 character in terms of lines of spoken text across the entire game,” CD Projekt Red founder Marcin Iwinski said.

“You will see a lot of Keanu and hear even more of Keanu,” Iwinski said.

Cyberpunk 2077 now has a release date: April 16, 2020, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Look out for more Cyberpunk news as E3 goes on, including how the team got Keanu Reeves involved in the first place, and our preview of the new gameplay CD Projekt Red demoed at the show, as well as a look at its story.

Dr. Mario World, which is Nintendo’s next mobile game, will release on July 10. Nintendo announced the release date today and also shared the first screenshots and gameplay.

In the match-three puzzle game, game you’ll use capsules to eliminate various viruses. The video below shows the first gameplay and explains how it works. Also in the video Nintendo talks about Dr. Mario World’s mictotransactions, which come in the form of Diamonds that you can buy through the in-game shop. They’re available in various allotments, starting with a pack of 20 for $2 USD and running up to 1,050 Diamonds for the price of $70 USD. The Diamonds can be used to continue gameplay, obtain items, and restore stamina. Check out the video below to learn more.

Dr. Mario isn’t the only star of the game. You can also purchase other doctors, including Dr. Peach, Dr. Yoshi, and Dr. Toad, from the in-game shop (though it’s not clear if these extra doctors are sold for real money). Each doctor has a unique skill that is exclusive to them, which encourages players to get them all.

Dr. Mario World was announced by Nintendo back in February, at which time the company only confirmed the existence of the game but not any details about it.

Nintendo’s next mobile game after Dr. Mario World is Mario Kart Tour, which is already in beta-testing in various parts of the world.

For a long time, Nintendo refused to bring its mega-popular franchises to mobile devices. However, this changed in 2015 when Nintendo announced it would develop games for smartphones and tablets. The first of these was Miitomo, which was later followed up by Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and others.

Just before the release of Rockstar’s open-world action game Red Dead Redemption 2, reports emerged about the working conditions at the studios that developed the game. This naturally led to a discussion about unions, which are largely non-existent in the video game world. Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two, has now weighed in on the subject of unions. He told GI.biz that it’s “hard to imagine” why his developers would want to unionize, but if they do, management would work on a collective bargaining agreement with them.

Before making his point about unions in the games industry specifically, Zelnick offered a higher-level view of why he believes unions exist in the first place.

“Unions tend to develop when labor relations are not typically non-existent,” Zelnick said. “And typically unions have been most beneficial when there were more workers than there were jobs. And where the jobs were low-paying jobs. We have fewer workers than we have jobs, and they’re high-paying jobs.”

“Right now, Take-Two has 500 open positions. There are 220,000 or so people employed in the US video game business. They make about $100,000 on average, maybe more. It’s hard to imagine what would motivate that crew to unionize,” Zelnick added. “But we’re a compliant company and will serve the law. If our colleagues want to engage in collective bargaining, then we will.”

Unions are common in other popular media industries such as TV and film, but the video game business is largely unionized. Unionization efforts in the video game industry appear to be ramping up of late, with groups like Game Workers Unite appearing at recent industry events like E3 and the Game Developers Conference to spread the message.

The practice of “crunch,” or working overly long hours to finish a development milestone in gaming, is often connected to unionization efforts and measures to improve the work-life balance of developers. Recently, GameSpot spoke with the developers of Ubisoft’s The Division 2, and they told us what is being done to minimize crunch and promote a healthy work-life balance.