NUMBER One!
Today Microsoft officially announced that it would not be splitting off the Xbox division of the company. CEO Satya Nadella spoke at the Code Conference this week, stating "I have no intent to do anything different with Xbox than we are doing today." This news comes off of rumors from a few weeks back that the company would split off the game division to help better display the revenue for both Microsoft and Xbox.
It did seem strange that the rumors of splitting off the games division kept cropping up. Typically, splitting off divisions like this only happens when either the company or the division is in trouble and the company is trying to make either or both entities look good. Seeing as the Xbox division is just making Microsoft money and the company is not really losing tons of money, it just doesn't make sense to split them.
NUMBER Two!!
Bethesda Softworks revealed it's newest free-to-play game Battlecry. Marketed as a Team Fortress 2 without guns, players will take on 31 other combatants in this 3rd person online action game. This will be the first time Bethesda has decided to take on free-to-play and will be developed by Zenimax's Battlecry Studios.
This is interesting simply for the fact that Bethesda has a huge amount of cache' and have actively decided to move to a free-to-play format. Free-to-play has grown in popularity over the past year, making the move from phones and tablets to PC and console gaming. Personally, I'm pretty excited about this game because it looks killer.
Number THREE!!!
Watch_Dogs is the fastest selling Ubisoft game ever. Speaking through Ubiblog, communications manager Gary Steinman announced that the game, which took five years to develop, has sold more copies than any other game Ubisoft has ever created. Though no specific numbers were given, taking into account how popular franchises like Assassin's Creed and Rayman are, the game would have to sell a very large amount to top them. Hopefully we will get some more definitive numbers soon.
Number FOUR!!!!
Jack Tretton has finally revealed his newest job position. After having left Sony as SCEA President, Tretton will now take a seat on the advisory board for Genotaur. Genotaur is a start up that specializes in AI development.
This is interesting news, especially when you look at Tretton's history at Sony. The man launched Sony's four consoles and helped bring the PS4 to its success today as the (current) reigning champ. This is great news for the people at Genotaur.
NUMBER FIVE!!!!!
In an interesting turn of events, gamers will be able to view the Sony E3 conference from a movie theater. Announced via PSBlog, the conference will stream from over 40 different theaters nationwide.
I can easily see this becoming a thing. There are so many people who would love to go to E3 and see the conferences live, and this could easily become the next big thing, where gamers gather together in mass to celebrate and talk about all of the mad announcements. I will be interested to see some numbers on this event after E3.
Here are some smaller news stories and announcements that are pretty self explanitory:
- A new Harvest Moon spiritual successor game is announced for 3DS.
- Pushmo World announced for Wii U.
- Plants v. Zombies: Garden Warfare teased for PS4.
- Concept art for the next Hitman game has been revealed.
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