Gaming
May System Update Arrives On Xbox One
The May system update for the Xbox One has arrived, bringing with it an array of new features. The features were detailed in a blog post on the Xbox website.
Voice Messages
Xbox users can now record short voice messages and send them to each other through the messages app. This feature was actually introduced in the April update, but was only available to preview members. Apparently this feature was in high demand, with the Xbox Feedback site showing that it was “the No. 1 feature requested in the Friends and Parties area.” The messages app can be accessed with a double tap of the Xbox button. Xbox claims the feature will allow users to “quickly and easily record audio to send to your friends or others through your snapped messages app.” Messages can also be sent between an Xbox One console and an Xbox 360. Pretty nifty.
Power On From SmartGlass
Speaking of nifty, there’s now an app for iOS, Android, and Windows Phones called Xbox One SmartGlass. If your phone is on the same network as your Xbox One, you can now use the app to power on your console. Apparently, this feature request on the Xbox Feedback site had more than 4,000 votes, so it’s also been in high demand. It should prove extremely useful for those too lazy to go to the next room to turn on their Xbox.
Selectable Power Mode
Users will now be able to choose what power mode their console should use. It can be set to “instant-on”, which means you can use the “Xbox On” voice command to turn the console on, or it can be set to energy-saving mode, which will require users to press the power button to boot it up.
Dedicated Servers For Party Chat
This is another feature that was made available in a previous update, but only for preview members. It enabled dedicated chat relay servers to solve a bug that broke party chat for the some users. This feature won’t roll out right away, but over the next few weeks. “We will start to expand the availability of the party chat relay services beyond preview members to a broader audience as we continue to fine tune the feature and scale out the servers needed to support party chat relay services.” That’s code for saying they don’t have the capacity to give it to everybody yet, but they’re working on it.
We’re seeing some pretty nice features coming to the Xbox One, but might all be too little too late. The Playstation 4 is apparently taking the world by storm, leaving Microsoft’s console playing catchup. If you’re an Xbox One user, you can always go to their Feedback site to leave your suggestions.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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