Category: Games

Hermen Hulst, managing director and co-founder of Dutch developer Guerrilla Games, is PlayStation’s new head of Worldwide Studios. The change comes as part of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s restructuring ahead of the launch of the PlayStation 5, slated to release during fall 2020.

Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida is also leaving his current role to lead a new initiative nurturing third-party independent studios. These moves follow the departure of Worldwide Studios Chairman Shawn Layden after 32 years at the company.

Hulst will start his new role immediately and manage all of Sony’s game development across 14 internal studios, including the likes of Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, and Santa Monica. In an interview with GamesIndusry.biz, PlayStation CEO and President Jim Ryan–who was previously PlayStation Europe chief–noted that Hulst’s appointment shows that Sony is thinking globally as it moves towards the next generation. “I think everybody in Europe should be thrilled and happy and proud that that is happening,” he said.

“Hermen is one of the most effective and well-respected leaders in the video game industry. He is a passionate advocate for the teams he leads and understands how to empower creative talent to build great experiences. I have no doubt Hermen can lead our teams to deliver compelling and diverse experiences at a steady cadence.”

Hulst most recently oversaw the development of Horizon: Zero Dawn at Guerrilla Games–a successful new franchise for PlayStation–and worked with Kojima Productions on the imminent Death Stranding. The studio is also well known for developing the Killzone series of games, and a sequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn is looking more and more likely. Angie Smets, Jan-Bart van Beek, and Michiel van der Leeuw will take over as joint studio heads at Guerrilla in Hulst’s place.

Meanwhile, Yoshida’s new role emphasises Sony’s commitment to supporting indie developers. “Everybody knows just how passionate Shu is about independent games,” Ryan continued. “These wildly creative experiences deserve focus and a champion like Shu at PlayStation who will ensure the entire SIE organisation works together to better engage with independent developers through a culture of supporting and celebrating their contributions to PlayStation platforms.

“I think we’ve always been there with indies, and when they were fascinated and engaged with virtual reality, that’s when we pivoted our engagement with them. So our work with the indie community has remained at the levels that it was during the early days of PS4.”

AMD has finally announced its long-awaited Ryzen Threadripper 3rd Generation line of high-end desktop processors.

In this new generation of 7nm CPUs, we’re only getting two chips: the Threadripper 3960X and 3970X. The new 3960X is AMD’s new baseline Threadripper CPU and it offers 24 cores and 48 threads meanwhile the 3970X offers 32 cores and 64 threads.

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After weeks of teases, Pokemon Go‘s mysterious Team Rocket bosses–Cliff, Arlo, and Sierra–have finally made their debut in the game. Players around the world now have the opportunity to encounter and battle the three evil trainers, and they’ve arrived alongside a new Special Research questline that leads to the mastermind behind the organization: Giovanni.

The key to encountering the new Team Rocket leaders is the Rocket Radar, a device made out of the Mysterious Components that Rocket grunts have been leaving behind when defeated. If you collect six of these Mysterious Components, you can assemble a Rocket Radar, which will reveal the leaders’ hideout and allow you to challenge them.

Just as with Rocket grunts, if you defeat the Team Rocket Leaders in battle, you’ll then have a chance to catch one of the Shadow Pokemon in their possession, and Niantic teases that these monsters “might have special qualities.” Defeating Rocket leaders and grunts will also help you complete tasks in the game’s newest Special Research questline, which will culminate in an encounter with Team Rocket head honcho Giovanni. Defeat him and you’ll have a chance to rescue a Shadow Legendary Pokemon.

Of course, that’s not all that’s happening in Pokemon Go right now. The game’s first Gen 5 Legendary, Cobalion, recently made its debut in five-star Raids, and you’ll be able to encounter it until November 26. The paid Regigigas event recently ended, but the Legendary Pokemon will return to the game as part of EX Raids later this month.

Finally, November’s Community Day is right around the corner. This month, the event takes place on Saturday, November 16–the day after Pokemon Sword and Shield launch for Nintendo Switch. The featured Pokemon this time around is Chimchar, the Fire-type starter from Diamond and Pearl. On top of increased Chimchar spawns, you’ll have your first chance to catch a Shiny Chimchar during the event, and Pokemon eggs will hatch at a quarter of the distance they normally require.

Black Friday is no longer confined to a single day. In 2019, Black Friday is a multi-day, multi-sale series of savings events. The price drops have already started and several retailers have dipped their toes into the lake of savings to test the waters.

Amazon remains one of the most dependable and easy-to-access retailers for Black Friday savings, but it lacks the doorbuster deals offered at retailers with physical locations like Walmart. That doesn’t mean it still doesn’t have drastic savings to entice you to spend your holiday money on the sort of items you’d expect to see for Black Friday.

There’s no flier or ad for Amazon Black Friday 2019, but we can do our best to predict some of the deals based on past deals and announcements from companies like Nintendo. Also, Amazon is notorious for price-matching competitors, so if you see a great deal at Walmart or Best Buy, expect it to show up on Amazon soon thereafter.

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Sony is continuing its leadership shakeup ahead of the PS5 launch as Shuhei Yoshida steps down from his Worldwide Studios presidency to helm a new indie-focused venture. Meanwhile, Guerrilla Games co-founder and managing director, Hermen Hulst, is the new head of Worldwide Studios effective immediately.

Yoshida’s switch in focus to independent developers is part of a wider push by Sony to bring in fresh talent. His initiative will nurture external indie studios that PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan called the “lifeblood of the industry.”

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Ryan said Yoshida “will ensure the entire SIE organization works together to better engage with independent developers through a culture of supporting and celebrating their contributions to PlayStation platforms.”

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The creator of the original Fallout and co-director of The Outer Worlds, Tim Cain, loves chocolate so much that developer Obsidian has a Slack channel dedicated to daily tasting sessions. To immortalise their boss’s adoration of cocoa, the dev team deliberately snuck a few Easter Eggs into The Outer Worlds – not literal chocolate eggs though. Sadly.

During development, The Outer Worlds staff had daily chocolate meetings arranged over Slack by Cain who would begin by sending out the details of that day’s confectionery. He explained the process to PC Gamer, how he’d write “if it’s single origin, what country it’s from, the cacao percentage, any flavoring agents. We all eat a piece and we talk about it and then I blog it, and so that way I have a list of everything chocolate I’ve eaten since 1993 and whether I liked it.”

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Actor Chris Evans has criticized the CGI casting of James Dean, who will be digitally resurrected for a secondary lead role in the Vietnam War film Finding Jack.

The Captain America star shared his reaction to the news on Twitter on Wednesday, as he retweeted the story from The Hollywood Reporter regarding Dean’s posthumous role in the upcoming action-drama and sarcastically remarked, “I’m sure he’d be thrilled.”

“This is awful,” he continued. “Maybe we can get a computer to paint us a new Picasso. Or write a couple new John Lennon tunes. The complete lack of understanding here is shameful.”

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Overwatch 2 was one of the major announcements of BlizzCon 2019, and the big surprise news was that all new characters, maps, and modes coming to the sequel would also be added to the first Overwatch. Series director Jeff Kaplan has said that this was a difficult decision to make and convince people on, but that it was ultimately the best choice for players. But it has also meant, in the short term, that the Overwatch experience has perhaps been less fresh than it could have been.

Speaking with Kotaku, Kaplan opened up about why the original game has seen fewer new seasonal events over time. “Overwatch 2 was 100 percent the reason,” Kaplan said, stating that the team was pained because it could not craft interesting new seasonal events. “Like, I sit right next to one of the designers of Junkenstein’s Revenge–this brilliant guy named Mike Heiberg–and he’s like, ‘I have all these ideas I want to do for Halloween this year.’ And I’m like, ‘I understand, Mike, but we’re focused on this other thing right now.'”

Kaplan says that, once Overwatch 2 is done (and it’s not clear when that will be), the original game will benefit too. “The fact that we can pick up again with that live service cadence, where we’re 100 per cent focused, is really exciting to me.”

Hopefully Overwatch 2 will be worth the wait. We’ve gone hands-on with the game’s new campaign at BlizzCon, and collected together all the details we know so far.

It’s going to be a big week for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Community manager Ashton Williams confirmed on Twitter that the military shooter’s next big update should release sometime before the week is out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

This is the big update that developer Infinity Ward has been talking about for some time already. The update will include general stability improvements and bug fixes, as well as bigger-ticket items like weapon tuning and adjustments to footstep audio. There will also be changes to how claymores work “and more,” Williams said.

Modern Warfare’s co-director of multiplayer, Joe Cecot, added that there will be even more updates and improvements to the game in the upcoming update, though he did not offer any details on what they might be.

The update will be release “over the next few days,” Williams said in a tweet sent on November 6. That means it should be released any time now, though as Williams mentioned, specific release timing could change. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

Since launch, one of the biggest complaints players have put to Infinity Ward is that two weapons in particular–the M4 rifle and the 725 shotgun–are overpowered. Williams said in a follow-up tweet that the 725 should be among the weapons that gets addressed in the update. Players have also reported that claymores are generally over-used and too effective, so it will be interesting to see what changes are in store. There should also be fixes for the Spec Ops mode, Williams said in another tweet.

Modern Warfare launched on October 25, and it needed just three days to bring in more than $600 million in sales. Its sales over its first three days were better than every other Call of Duty released during this generation of consoles.