The skies are growing brighter every minute of the evening now that we’re well and truly into spring, so what better way to celebrate the encroaching (if still somewhat distant) summer solstice than with a news roundup?
We know, we know, we’d be doing this no matter the weather or the occasion, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to attach some significance to things just to keep the wheel turning, right?
In any case, grab your favourite hot drink and your most comfortable chair and join us as we take a look at what’s been happening in gaming news this week!
That 2020 State of Decay 3 trailer was basically made up, it turns out
Remember the 2020 State of Decay 3 trailer that promised an impressively ambitious-looking zombie sandbox, complete with zombified animals? Well, it turns out that trailer was basically hogwash.
According to a new interview with developer Philip Holt, the trailer was effectively mocked up so that the game could be released, and essentially nothing of State of Decay 3 actually existed when the trailer was created.
A recent alpha playtest announcement trailer is much more accurate when it comes to the current state of the game, but it won’t feature things like the aforementioned zombie animals.
Star Wars Eclipse is probably a long way from release
A new report this week claimed that Star Wars Eclipse, the upcoming adventure game from Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream, could still be a long way away from release.
Sources told Insider Gaming that development on the game was “very slow going” and that not much progress has been made over the last few months, although quite a bit of Eclipse has apparently been completed.
Don’t expect to see this one until at least 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, and it could be longer than that.
Tons of games are coming to Xbox Game Pass in April
This week, Microsoft announced the Xbox Game Pass haul for April, and it’s a very big one indeed this month, with tons of games making their way to the service over the next few weeks.
Games like the Pixel Remaster version of Final Fantasy IV, theme park sim Planet Coaster 2, and action roguelite Hades 2 are all joining Game Pass in April, and that’s just for the first half of the month.
Traditionally, Xbox has split monthly Game Pass releases into halves, so it’s likely we’ll see even more games arriving in the back half of April.
A new No Man’s Sky update brings creature-battling
Space sandbox No Man’s Sky continues its mission of redemption into its tenth year, as a new update launched this week that brings a whole new gameplay system with it.
The Xeno Arena update lets you catch and battle creatures from across No Man’s Sky’s storied galaxies, and the mechanics for doing so are pretty in-depth as well.
Combined with tons of balance changes and gameplay tweaks, the new system makes Xeno Arena an update you won’t want to miss if you’re a fan.
Pokemon Champions isn’t faring so well in the wild
A free-to-play (or “free-to-start”, as Nintendo calls it) battler by the name of Pokemon Champions launched this week, and judging by player reactions, it’s not faring very well.
Leaker Centro Leaks referred to the launch as “terrible”, decrying the game’s low Pokemon count, poor performance (even on the newer Switch 2 console), and “slow, clunky menus”.
They’re not the only one, either, prompting the game’s developer to issue an apology and promise to fix the game in future. Here’s hoping they can pull that off.
Home Safety Hotline is getting a movie
Have you played the weird 2024 analogue horror game Home Safety Hotline? Would you like to see a movie based on it? If you answered “yes”, you’re in luck this week.
The Home Safety Hotline movie doesn’t have a release date yet, but it will be directed by Love and Monsters’ Michael Matthews, with the script being penned by Nick Tassoni.
The story will revolve around an “unemployed loner” who takes a job at a home security company only to realise their job now involves “protecting customers from horrific monsters”.
Dune: Awakening is rejigging PvP thanks to its lack of popularity
Dune: Awakening developer Funcom revealed this week that it will revamp the game’s PvP systems in order to make them “optional and incentivised” at endgame rather than mandatory.
The studio says that more than 80% of its player base simply hasn’t engaged with PvP over the course of its time with the game, and so a new “PvE-first approach” has been effected.
This will mean the disabling of the Hagga Basin PvP zones, as well as new “separate Deep Desert instances” that allow you to choose between PvE-exclusive play and PvP-enabled exploration.
Marathon probably isn’t shutting down anytime soon, but there could be problems
This week marked a month since the launch of first-person extraction shooter Marathon, on which many eyes fell in order to glean predictions about the future of live-service games and the industry as a whole.
Well, according to a report by Forbes, team morale is pretty high. The publication’s Paul Tassi reports that there is “less panic” on Bungie’s part than during the game’s fraught pre-launch period, with staffers “heads-down, working on new content”.
However, as Tassi points out, Marathon’s player numbers have declined fairly quickly, even when accounting for the usual live-service drop-off. There’s no imminent shutdown, but concern may well remain at Sony.
Epic will apparently be releasing a Disney extraction shooter soon
According to a Bloomberg report this week, Epic is planning to release an extraction shooter based on Disney characters later this year, likely hoping to compete with Marathon and Arc Raiders.
This is, per Bloomberg, a completely new game, and not just a mode within Fortnite. The battle royale game has been struggling with dwindling player counts recently, prompting Epic to lay off over 1000 employees this month.
We don’t know much about the Disney extraction shooter yet, but we’re expecting to learn more in the coming months, assuming Bloomberg’s reporting is accurate.
