New Cyberpunk 2077 information is set to be revealed this week ahead of its April 2020 release. CD Projekt Red is hosting a stream for the upcoming game that will unveil a 15-minute edit of what was shown to attendees and press at Gamescom last week.

The stream will be hosted by Hollie Bennett, CD Projekt Red’s UK head of comms, and will feature interviews with a lineup of developers ready to shed additional insight on the footage that’s shown. The stream promises to delve into the thought process behind creative decisions, reveal information about Pacifica–one of the districts of Night City–and share tons of new information on the playstyles you’ll be able to adopt in Cyberpunk 2077.

The company also planned to showcase gameplay at PAX West but there’s been a change of plans and it will be streaming from Warsaw instead. “There are many logistical (and some creative) reasons behind this decision,” CD Projekt Red said on its website. “The most important thing we want to say is that we’re sorry for the change of plans. We know that many of you waited to meet us face to face in Seattle and it bums us out that we won’t be able to see each other there.” Despite this, the PAX cosplay contest is still on, there just won’t be a developer panel on-site.

The stream takes place on August 30 at 2pm EST // 11am PT // 6pm GMT // 8PM CEST on the official CD Projekt Red Twitch and Mixer channels.

We also recently learned that the map in Cyberpunk 2077 is smaller than The Witcher 3, but that it’s much denser. The game is expected to have a new game plus mode, too, and will feature a harder difficulty that turns off the game’s UI. Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red says it is looking into multiplayer. Producer Richard Borzymowski told GameSpot that while nothing could be confirmed, the team will “think [about expansions]” after game development is done.

Cyberpunk 2077 launches April 16 2020 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, with an unannounced release date for Google Stadia.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/upcoming-cyberpunk-2077-stream-will-show-new-foota/1100-6469408/

Bungie and Activision worked together on the Destiny franchise up until the two companies split up earlier this year, with Bungie self-publishing the sci-fi series going forward. Bungie’s David Dague has now discussed the split-up in more detail, notably dispelling the idea that Activision was a “prohibitive overlord.”

“I think we need to dispel the notion Activision was some prohibitive overlord that wasn’t letting us do awesome things,” Dague told Eurogamer. “We launched this franchise with Activision, naturally and over the course of time we both decided we had different goals for what we wanted it to be, so we both went our separate ways. It was amicable, and here we are making this game on our own, doing what we think we need to do to make it awesome.”

In addition to funding and offering a deep network of resources in publishing, sales, marketing, and more, Activision put some of its own studios, High Moon and Vicarious Visions, to work on Destiny content to help spread the development load. Those studios will no longer be working on Destiny, so how does Bungie plan to fill that gap?

“By doing all the work ourselves!” Dague said. “We’re committed to doing all the things we’re doing right now–Solstice of Heroes is ours, Moments of Triumph, Shadowkeep, Season of the Undying and three more seasons after that… There’s really nothing more to say but we’re on our own now and Destiny will be what we make of it.”

Just recently, Destiny 2 director Luke Smith spoke about how developing the content for the game’s Annual Pass was “harder on the team than we anticipated.”

“Working on the game was starting to wear people down,” Smith said. He added that all of the work that went into creating the new content “put the team into an unsustainable development cycle.”

Going forward, and now with Activision no longer having a say, Smith said Bungie has developed a “more systemic, standardized set of mechanics for progression to keep our teams healthier.”

Going back to Dague, he told Eurogamer that the day-to-day development on Destiny hasn’t changed that much following Bungie’s split with Activision. “Things aren’t that different, really,” Dague said.

Discussing the Activision-Bungie break-up earlier this year, Activision management said the Destiny franchise was failing to meet its commercial projections. “Destiny is highly critically acclaimed, high quality content, but it was not meeting our financial expectations,” executive Coddy Johnson said.

Destiny 2’s next big expansion is Shadowkeep, and it launches in October. Ahead of that, Bungie has rolled out cross-save support–and it’s pretty great.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/destiny-dev-says-activision-was-not-a-prohibitive-/1100-6469402/

It appears Epic Games is teasing some kind of collaboration or crossover event between the massively popular battle royale game Fortnite and Gearbox’s shooter-looter Borderlands 3.

The Fortnite Twitter account posted a mysterious image that says, “When you see it…” The message used the hashtag #FortnitexMayhem.

This hashtag, combined with an image of a Psycho bandit from the Borderlands series makes it pretty clear this is in all in reference to some kind of crossover event between Fortnite and Borderlands. The most obvious possibility is that Borderlands skins are coming to Fortnite, but nothing is confirmed at this stage.

Epic and Gearbox are already working together, as Gearbox is releasing Borderlands 3’s PC version on the Epic Games Store as a timed exclusive through April 2020. A promotional event for Borderlands 3 within Fortnite would likely be kicking off soon, as the game releases on September 13.

Fortnite has hosted numerous collaborations and crossover events, including one of its biggest ever when Thanos from the final Avengers movies appeared in the game with his own limited-time mode. Additionally, there was a Fortnite x Stranger Things crossover event as well.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fortnite-teases-crossover-with-borderlands/1100-6469400/

World of Warcraft’s Classic edition is out now, and it’s helping World of Warcraft in general have a massive day on popular game-streaming site Twitch.

World of Warcraft is far and away the most popular game on Twitch today, August 26, and the release of WoW Classic undoubtedly played a major role in that. The game topped 1 million viewers on Twitch today, which is multiple times bigger than all other games.

Twitch’s public stats show that right now, at 10 PM ET, World of Warcraft has 593,000 viewers, which is well ahead of the No. 2 game, Fortnite, which has 120,000 viewers. It’s not surprising that the launch of a much-anticipated game would lead to a huge surge in viewers, and it will be interesting to see if World of Warcraft can continue to stay popular in the days and weeks ahead.

On Mixer, it’s a different story. Fortnite remains the most popular game by viewers, behind the Music category and Fortnite.

The downside to WoW Classic’s popularity is that players are facing lengthy server queues, even though Blizzard added an additional four servers ahead of launch.

WoW Classic, as its name suggests, is a re-release of the original MMO from 2004 with some functionality changes. It’s free for existing subscribers of WoW. For more, check out GameSpot’s rundown of everything you need to know about WoW Classic.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wow-hits-1-million-viewers-on-twitch-with-classic-/1100-6469398/

World of Warcraft’s Classic edition is out now, and those playing the up-to-date version are getting a special treat to celebrate the release and the 15th anniversary of the genre-defining MMO.

Blizzard is planning a host of celebrations for the coming months in the regular WoW, the first of which is an in-game event in WoW’s latest expansion, Battle for Azeroth. The event is a “special raid” that challenges players to go up against some of WoW’s most fearsome bosses.

Players must have reached WoW’s current level cap, 110, to take on the raid. Those who successfully take down the bosses will earn the Obsidian Worldbreaker mount. Blizzard said this creature was inspired by the mighty Deathwing the Destroyer.

For those looking for something simpler, Blizzard is giving away a series of “limited-time bonuses” simply for logging into Battle for Azeroth. The items include the Lil’ Nefarian pet, a special in-game achievement, and other bonuses; the full list will be announced in the upcoming weeks.

WoW Classic is proving to be extremely popular, so much so that players are facing lengthy server queues, even though Blizzard added an additional four servers ahead of launch.

WoW Classic, as its name suggests, is a re-release of the original MMO from 2004 with some functionality changes. It’s free for existing subscribers of WoW. For more, check out GameSpot’s rundown of everything you need to know about WoW Classic.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/wow-classic-anniversary-event-adds-new-raid-and-fr/1100-6469396/