Author Archives: Eric Abent

With the meteoric rise of Apex Legends, it's only natural that people are wondering if Fortnite - which has dominated the battle royale space for the past year - is feeling the heat. After all, Apex Legends was able to claim 50 million players after only a month of availability, and surely some of those must have been converts from Fortnite, right? While a few of them probably were, it seems that Apex Legends hasn't had a noticeable effect on Fortnite's player base.

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Most of us have probably experienced toxicity in one form or another while gaming online, and it's a problem that doesn't seem to be getting any better. In-game toxicity is bad enough in games where you have to pay to play, but in free to play games, the number of unsavory folks one encounters can seem to quickly grow out of control. Most developers, of course, implement in-game reporting systems and teams of people to dole out punishments for toxicity, but now Intel is looking at ways that AI can help.

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Every year at GDC, Epic Games hosts a keynote address, and this year, it isn't really surprising that at least part of the keynote centered around the Epic Games Store. The company announced more exclusives for its storefront during the keynote, and the list includes Obsidian's upcoming game The Outer Worlds. If we were to hazard a guess, we'd say there probably aren't going to be many Obsidian fans who are happy with this move.

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For at least a few months now, we've been hearing rumors of an upcoming all-digital Xbox One S. This rumored console is said to ship without a disc drive, which would essentially make it the entry-level machine for the Xbox One family. Today, we're getting a glimpse at what its box art could look like, along with a rumored launch date for the console.

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Earlier today, Nintendo hosted another Nindies Showcase to announce some indie titles heading to the Switch soon. The presentation lasted around 30 minutes and covered a fair amount of ground, with a few very exciting announcements along the way. There's a lot to cover, so let's dive into all of the games that were revealed.

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Crypt of the Necrodancer is one of the most beloved indie games around, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise to hear that a follow-up was announced during today's Nindies Showcase. The nature of that follow-up might surprise you, though, as this game is set to feature characters from The Legend of Zelda. Cadence of Hyrule is the name of this new game, and it'll be arriving later this year on Switch.

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Nintendo kicked off its latest Nindies Showcase in a big way today. Right at the beginning of the show, Nintendo announced that Cuphead will be coming to the Switch. That's a surprising announcement in itself, as it seemed that Cuphead would remain a console exclusive on the Xbox One.

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Apparently, launching one VR headset this spring isn't enough for the folks at Oculus. In addition to the standalone Oculus Quest, the company announced today that it'll also be launching the Oculus Rift S. The Rift S brings back the tether, meaning you'll need a relatively beefy gaming PC to use it, but in return Oculus promises "access to the most immersive content that VR has to offer."

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Yesterday, Google made a pretty big splash by announcing an extensive cloud gaming initiative known as Google Stadia. It was an announcement we knew was coming thanks to last year's test of Project Stream, but the service that Google announced yesterday certainly seems to take things one step further by integrating YouTube and Google Assistant in clever ways. Microsoft, of course, has been working on a game streaming platform of its own for a number of years, and Xbox chief Phil Spencer seems to welcome having Google as a competitor in the space.

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Apple is keeping its string of device reveals going, first revealing a pair of new iPads on Monday and then updating its line of iMacs yesterday. Though some rumors claimed that we'd see a new iPod Touch today, we're actually getting a new pair of AirPods. An AirPods follow-up has been rumored for quite some time, so the fact that we're seeing them now shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

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It's hard to believe that it's been more than 10 years since Castle Crashers first found its way to Xbox 360. In the time since then, it's found a lot of fans on a variety of different platforms, and developer The Behemoth announced today that it isn't quite done porting the game to new consoles yet. Castle Crashers Remastered, which launched for Xbox One and PC back in 2015, is heading to Switch and PS4, and it'll arrive later this year.

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Season 1 has officially arrived in Apex Legends, and alongside it is a rather hefty patch. Not only does this patch add the season 1 Battle Pass to the game, but it also adds the new Octane Legend. Though a new playable Legend is always going to be one of the biggest parts - if not the biggest part - of an Apex Legends patch, there's plenty more to dig into.

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