There really wasn’t anything that happened this week that compares to BioWare and Mass Effect: Andromeda’s marketing implosion. From the gosh-awful animations to the blatant racism on display by the developers, to the revelation that you can’t even make fair skinned people in the game, Mass Effect: Andromeda and whatever hype it had leading up to its release on March 21st is completely dead in the water.
Other notable news bits this week included Kotaku being caught in another conflict of interest, Nintendo addressing the desynchronization for the left Joy-Con controllers on the Nintendo Switch, and SAG-AFTRA managing to sign additional developers into a new agreement for union members. These stories and more in this March 18th, 2017 edition of the Weekly Recap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ1nVFCp4wc
Kotaku’s Conflict Of Interest
Kotaku got nailed with yet another conflict of interest, this time involving Rich Stanton not disclosing the fact that he wrote several articles over the course of a single day and failed to disclose his ties to the project. Hoping to customize your teammates in Mass Effect: Andromeda? Well, that’s a no go. BioWare has removed the customization features. Asian countries have supposedly been influencing those over the World Health Organization proposals to include video game addiction into the list of international diseases. And we have an exclusive interview with Samual LeFlamme, the composer who worked on Outlast 2, the upcoming horror game for home consoles and PC.
Nintendo Finally Addresses Joy-Con DeSynchronization
The Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Con desynchronization has been making headlines all over the place but Nintendo has been quiet about it, up until now. They announced that the issues of desynch is actually “not significant”. Sony announced that the PS4 will soon have its library of games made available on the PlayStation Now service, which means that PC gamers will be able to play PS4 games through the cloud streaming service. If you’ve been having problems with Steam glitching and re-downloading games even though it was already supposed to be installed, there’s a guide to help fix the Steam downloading glitch.
Nintendo Switch Sells 1.5 Million In One Week
Within the span of a week, Nintendo managed to move 1.5 million Nintendo Switch SKUs globally. The Cemu 1.7.3 Wii U emulator has managed to run The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild… but it only does so partially and barely at 21fps. All great things begin somewhere, though. A cool new futuristic cyberpunk shooter called Nex Machina was announced, featuring voxel based destruction, advanced physics and an all new lighting engine. And Ubisoft has finally fixed the For Honor multiplayer issues that have been plaguing the game since launch, so hopefully all those disconnections will finally be resolved.
SAG-AFTRA Signs More Developers Onto New Agreement
The SAG-AFTRA strike has continued on and they’ve managed to make some headway by signing on additional game companies, including 15 companies since October, 2016 and up to 30 within the first three months of 2017. Speaking of headway, some new development diaries have been made available for Shenmue 3. Bandai Namco also revealed that two licensed characters from other properties would be joining the roster of Tekken 7. According to publisher Strategy First, Flatout 4 could appear on the Nintendo Switch depending on how things go with the system and the success of the game. Sonic Forces was also unveiled by Sega and it’s due for release at the end of the year during the holiday season. And Outlast 2 was denied a ratings classification in Australia, despite the fact that the game’s demo was rated R18+ in Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ADHqDevmE
Mass Effect Andromeda: No More White People In Space
Creating a white person in Mass Effect: Andromeda is no longer an option, which is why you may have noticed a bunch of brown people running around as the main characters in the game if the default Scott and Sara Ryder aren’t chosen. Well, it’s been revealed that you can’t make fair skinned characters in Mass Effect: Andromeda and that may or may not change with a new patch. A new strategy game called News Tycoon is due for release on March 24th, allowing users to finally clean up the news journalism ring. Curious how much is broken in Mass Effect: Andromeda? Well, there’s an article detailing everything broken within the first hour. And former Gears of War front man, Cliffy B., has finally come out and said what all of us were thinking: Gears of War 4 was a safe space, non-risky third-person shooter.
