I have to start with an appeal to Sony and Microsoft. Please announce your next generation consoles. Microsoft in particular, but not because it’s any more or less important than Sony, but because I can get away with calling their theoretical platform the PS4. My personal moniker for MS’s next-gen is neXtBox and I kind of hating typing that out. Regardless, why am I opening with such an appeal? I mean, other than the obvious reason that if it’s coming I want to see it. Mostly it’s because it’s obviously coming and we all know it but you act like it’s some big secret. Capcom, Rockstar, Obsidian, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Square, name any other developer with some sort of credibility. All of these guys are talking about the next-gen games they’re building, but you aren’t talking about where we’ll be playing them. Even LucasArts is clearly building Star Wars 1313 for your next toys. They’re just playing along with your charade by saying it’s on a high end PC. I don’t need the full rundown of technical specs, just the basics: a name, maybe a picture of the controller, and some concept art for the shell. A launch window would also be appropriate, though we all know it’s probably late 2013, early 2014.
So what’s inspired my appeal? It’s actually not the desire to know more about these secret games being developed. It’s that Ubisoft has announced their next-gen plans and they seem to exactly the opposite of Capcom’s planned strategy to make more games more quickly with less staff. Speaking of the next line of gaming platforms, CEO Yves Guillemot is expects “something really new, really interesting that will boost the market enormously.” His plan for that “something” is to go “toward bigger games, and yes, we will make less of them.” Ubisoft quality has been improving steadily throughout this console generation so they’re definitely a developer I’ll be watching when we make the shift. As much as I love the Assassin’s Creed series, I’m okay with getting one every two or three years if it’s top-shelf quality. Losing Brotherhood and/or Revelations would have been fine with me, assuming AC III is as good as it looks.
Borderlands 2 launches today. What better time to start talking DLC? Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford has already started dropping hints about potential add-ons. We know four packs are planned for the year (and you can save $10 on the whole bundle by getting the season pass), but we might now have an idea of what we’ll see in one of them. According to Pitchford, he’s “always wanted to ride a sail barge and drive a sand skiff. [He’s] always wanted to do that, and [they’ve] got some cool stuff that’s along those lines.” I doubt I have to explain a “sail barge” or “sand skiff” to anyone who reads Big Shiny Robot! but…. Remember the beginning of Return of the Jedi when Leia’s in the gold out fit strangling Jabba and Luke is flipping around killing everyone? The big one was a sail barge, the small one was a sand skiff. I’m the one gamer on the planet who didn’t care for the first Borderlands. Pitchford may have just talked me into the sequel and its DLC simply by referencing Star Wars. Well played, sir.
SEGA has apparently decided to own the first week of October this year for digital releases. NiGHTS into dreams… and Sonic Adventure 2 will be dropping simultaneously for PSN (10/2) and XBLA (10/5). Both games will run $10. Nid… will include the 1996 “Christmas NiGHTS” DLC, formerly available on Saturn only as a magazine promotion. For an extra $3 you’ll be able to add the “Battle Mode” to Sonic Adventure 2, effectively getting you the modern version of Gamecube’s bundled reissue, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle.
Bioware officially announced Dragon Age III: Inquisition this week. Very little detail has been given so far, but the title should give you a few hints. No confirmation of returning characters, release date, etc. were discussed. Here’s what we do know: The team consists of veterans from the last two games and “talented new developers;” and it is being built on a new engine with better customization options, based on DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine. I doubt we’ll see much more on this one until after the holidays. This could be a Spring release like they did with Mass Effect 3 or it could be slated for holiday 2013. I think that will depend heavily on when Microsoft and Sony actually discuss their next-gen systems. No confirmation yet, but it appears this will be on current-gen, appropriately filling out a complete trilogy for this generation.
I don’t know how well anything Rock Band still counts as news, but they’ve announced a pretty ridiculous DLC sale. There’s something like 1,100 plus songs getting discounted. I haven’t confirmed, but it looks like everything that had been released prior to Rock Band 3 is on the list. You can kind of double down on this discount as well – all of these songs will play in both Rock Band Blitz and Rock Band 3. The graphic doesn’t format well into the post but click on it a few times and it will be legible. You’ll still need a giant screen TV to read all the singles at the bottom.
