Never a fun one to report, many servers for several great games are being shut in the immediate and near future. Servers for Resistance: Fall of Man, Resistance 2, and Resistance 3 are shutting down as of today. Gran Turismo 5‘s servers are shutting down next month. Any games still using GameSpy’s servers will be shutting down by May 31st if they don’t find an alternate provider. Iron Galaxy, Epic, and Capcom are several studios that have slowly been phasing out of GameSpy’s services. Still ,some possible victims of their shut down include heavy hitters like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV. Frankly, this probably just the first of many lists for PS3/360 generation games seeing an end to their online components.
The recent management changes at Microsoft have led to more than a few rumors about a potential sell of the XBox brand. New boss of the department Phil Spencer assures you that is not the plan. Spencer talked about recent conversations he’s had with Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO. Those conversations apparently brought in other hitters in the department. According to Spencer:
The discussions he and I had along with Terry Myerson (Executive VP of Operating Systems) and Stephen Elop (Nokia Executive Device & Services VP); different leaders in the group, was really around us using gaming, looking at gaming and the fans of gaming we have and hearing our internal employees’ passion for what we’re building, and making sure gaming is something that permeates every consumer product that we build led by what we’re doing with Xbox One.
Part of that future for the XBox brand could be in television shows. In addition the projects already announced (Steven Spielberg’s Halo, Halo products from Ridley Scott and David Zucker, street soccer series Every Street United, and a Bonnaroo documentary series) a few newcomers have joined the lineup. We can look forward to Humans (sci-fi), an animated series from Seth Green’s Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, and sketch comedy shows from the likes of Sarah Silverman and Michael Cera.
EA Sports UFC has been issued a release date, June 17, 2014. EA picked up the franchise rights after the THQ collapse and this will be their first title in the brand after that acquisition. As a special bonus, pre-orders will get instant access to a rather unusual bonus fighter. Those who don’t pre-order will still be able to unlock Bruce Lee, creator of the Jeet Kune Do style of martial arts, after completing the career mode on Pro Difficulty.
Kind of weak start to the week. Hopefully we’ll have some bigger drops to report on Friday.