Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Xbox 360
Just Dance 2018 will launch for all current consoles (and the Wii) on October 24
I can’t believe it… someone is still producing Wii games in 2017. Ubisoft has announced that Just Dance 2018 will be available on October 24 for all current consoles (PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U), as well as the original Wii.
The Just Dance 2018 soundtrack will include more than 40 songs, and Ubisoft delivered a sneak peek at the first 11 as part of the game’s first trailer:
Just Dance 2018 Tracklist… So Far
- Ariana Grande (featuring Nicki Minaj) – “Side To Side”
- Bebe Rexha (featuring Lil Wayne) – “The Way I Are (Dance With Somebody)”
- Beyonce – “Naughty Girl”
- Big Freedia – “Make it Jingle”
- Bruno Mars – “24K Magic”
- Clean Bandit (featuring Sean Paul & Anne-Marie) – “Rockabye”
- Groove Century – “Daddy Cool”
- Hatsune Miku – “Love Ward”
- HyunA – Bubble Pop!”
- Jamiroquai – Automaton”
- Shakira (featuring Maluma) – “Chantaje”
Ubisoft also announced plans for an exclusive addition to Just Dance 2018 on the Switch that makes use of the console’s HD Rumble feature. Players will be able to grab two Joy-Con controllers and load up Double Rumble Mode to create “new Double Rumble choreographies that are tied to the game’s vibration system.”
But don’t worry, six players will still be able to bust a move in Just Dance 2018 with the mobile-friendly Just Dance Controller App on the PS4, Switch, Wii U, and Xbox One.
New Retail Releases: Arms, Cars 3 Driven To Win, Psychonauts In the Rhombus of Ruin
It’s common knowledge that game publishers try to avoid releasing big new games during the E3 Expo, but as we all know, Nintendo’s methods are anything but common.
This week, the consolemaker will launch their stretchy-armed fighting game, Arms, for the Nintendo Switch. Featuring support for motion controls with the Joy-Cons and standard controls with the Switch Pro Controller, Arms will give players plenty of options to battle it out with the its colorful characters.
Also set to launch this week is a game adaptation of Pixar’s Cars 3. Cars 3: Driven To Win was developed by WB Games and Avalanche Software, and will be available for the PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PS3, Wii U, and Xbox 360.
Finally this week, Double Fine will release a retail edition of the PlayStation VR-exclusive Psychonauts In the Rhombus of Ruin. All copies of the game will also come with a download code for the original Psychonauts.
While we’ll be preoccupied with the E3 Expo for most of this week, we’ll be back soon with a look at this week’s newest additions to the PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, and Nintendo eShop.
FIFA 18 will be available on September 29 with Cristiano Ronaldo on the cover
EA Sports has announced that FIFA 18 will be released across the globe on September 29. The publisher also confirmed that Cristiano Ronaldo, the award-winning forward for Real Madrid and Portugal’s National Team, will serve as the game’s global cover athlete.
Ronaldo also lent his “footballing” expertise to FIFA 18’s development team with a motion capture session that will inform “important gameplay elements” in the game:
To deliver innovation in FIFA 18, Cristiano Ronaldo’s data was recently recorded during a training session at a mobile EA Capture studio in Madrid. Data capture of Ronaldo’s acceleration, run cadence, skills, and shooting technique were all recorded to bring veracity to his likeness and personality in FIFA 18. His data also informed important gameplay elements including fluidity, player responsiveness, and explosiveness.
The first trailer for FIFA 18 has been embedded above, and EA Sports has promised to reveal more details about Ronaldo’s contributions to the game during their E3 Press Conference, which is scheduled to take place this Saturday, June 10 at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time). A livestream of the presentation will be available to watch on EA.com.
FIFA fans will also be able to purchase a special Ronaldo Edition of FIFA 18 for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The Ronaldo Edition will grant access to FIFA 18 three days early, and come bundled with bonus content for FIFA Ultimate Team including 20 Jumbo Premium Gold Packs, eight Special Edition Kits, and a Cristiano Ronaldo Loan Player for five matches.
FIFA 18 is in development at EA Vancouver and EA Romania, and will be available on September 29 for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
Kyrie Irving will be the cover athlete of NBA 2K18’s Standard Edition
e very interesting. To add a little more spice to the proceedings, 2K Games announced today that Cleveland’s Kyrie Irving will be the cover athlete for the Standard Edition of NBA 2K18. Shaquille O’Neal was previously announced as the cover athlete for the game’s Legend Edition.
“It is well known that I’m an avid player of this series and I am honored to be the cover athlete of NBA 2K18,” said Irving. “It’s surreal to be featured on the cover and I can’t wait to dominate on the virtual court with all of my fans this Fall.”
“It’s obvious that Kyrie isn’t disappearing from the spotlight anytime soon, so we’re thrilled to have him as our cover athlete, alongside Shaq for the NBA 2K18 Legend Edition,” said Alfie Brody, the Vice President of Marketing for NBA 2K. “He’s a more-than-worthy recipient of this honor, and joins so many other greats who were cover athletes before him.”
The NBA 2K18 Standard Edition will come packed with a variety of in-game content including 5,000 Virtual Currency, 10 Weekly MyTeam Packs, a Kyrie Outfit Pack, and more. Players who pre-order the game will also receive the game four days early thanks to 2K’s “Early Tip-Off Access” program.
NBA 2K18 will be released for the PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on September 19.
The Video Game Canon: Street Fighter II
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at Hollywood’s influence on Street Fighter II (and it’s influence on Hollywood). Here’s a teaser…
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior wasn’t the first fighting game ever released, but it single-handedly helped shape the genre for decades to come.
Capcom’s masterpiece rose to prominence by replacing the small and stiff characters of previous fighting games (including its predecessor, 1987’s Street Fighter) with highly detailed characters that seemed to fly around the screen. Instead of generic fighters clad in traditional karategi uniforms, Street Fighter II starred a diverse group of characters with fantastical “special moves.” And young fans lined up around the block to do battle with “World Warriors” like E. Honda, a sumo wrestler with a lightning-quick Hundred Hand Slap; Zangief, a Russian giant who fought bears; Blanka, a green-skinned prince who controlled electricity; and Dhalsim, a yoga master who breathed fire.
Rather than rest on their laurels, Capcom refined Street Fighter II’s controls and added more characters to the select screen through the release of four subsequent revisions. This parade of improvements (and Street Fighter II’s eventual release on home consoles) helped ensure the game’s status as the biggest fighting game of the early 90s arcade renaissance. By the late 90s, a loosely-connected group of enthusiasts for Street Fighter II began building a “Fighting Game Community” online, which eventually grew to include organized tournaments (like the annual Evo gathering) and a dedicated fandom that could rival any professional sport.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Posted in Features, PS3, Retro, Switch, Top Story, Video Game Canon, Xbox 360
Tagged Street Fighter II
Xbox Game Pass launches June 1 but Gold subscribers can try it out now
Microsoft has announced that their Netflix-like game subscription service, Xbox Game Pass, will be available to all Xbox One owners on June 1. But if you’re an Xbox Live Gold subscriber, you can sign up for a free trial right now at Xbox.com.
Unlike Sony’s streaming-based PlayStation Now service, the Xbox Game Pass gives subscribers the chance to fully download any of the games on offer. Players will also be able to earn Achievements with these full-game downloads, and they can even be played offline for up to 30 days.
All Xbox One and backwards compatible Xbox 360 games available with the Xbox Game Pass can be purchased at a 20% discount (so you can keep playing them if they’re ever delisted from the service), and Microsoft is currently offering more than 100 games to subscribers. Some of the first games available include big hits like Halo 5: Guardians and the BioShock trilogy, as well as smaller games like Mega Man Legacy Collection and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. The full list can be found at the Xbox Game Pass’s official website.
After your free trial expires, Xbox Game Pass will be available for $9.99 per month.
Take-Two has shipped more than 80 million copies of Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online is more popular than ever
Grand Theft Auto V continues to steamroll the competition. Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick lead off yesterday’s quarterly financial report by announcing that the publisher has shipped more than 80 million copies of the game since its release in 2013.
Even though that’s an absolutely astonishing number, Grand Theft Auto V still trails Wii Sports and Minecraft on the list of best-selling games of all time.
Grand Theft Auto V’s continued sales success is mostly due to the way its sprawling single-player story draws in new players every month. But the game’s multiplayer component, “Grand Theft Auto Online,” has actually never been more popular. According to Zelnick, Take-Two made more money through microtransactions in “Grand Theft Auto Online” during their last fiscal year (April 1, 2016 – March 31, 2017) than ever before. Not bad for a game that’s almost four years old.
New content for “Grand Theft Auto Online” is released on a nearly weekly basis, and Zelnick confirmed that Rockstar Games is currently hard at work on even more updates to the game mode:
On “GTA Online,” we have said that plenty more content is coming. More announcements will be made by Rockstar Games. The title is absolutely being supported by the label.
With Red Dead Redemption 2‘s recent delay, this strategy will surely sell more copies of Grand Theft Auto V (and keep “Grand Theft Auto Online” players happy) for a long time.
The Switch continues to soar as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was the best-selling game in April 2017
Nintendo continues to dominate the retail charts with another strong showing in April for their Switch console. According to The NPD Group, Nintendo added another 280,000 Switch consoles to its tally last month, and the newly-launched Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold more than 459,000 copies (in just two days) to take the top spot on the list of best-selling games. The company’s success also seems to be great for the industry as a whole, as the industry generated $636 million in sales in April 2017, a 10% increase over the year before.
The other big news in April is that Persona 5 pushed the franchise and gave the RPG the #2 spot on the best-seller list, just below Mario Kart 8.
“Persona 5 experienced the strongest debut month for any title in Persona franchise history, with packaged dollar sales five times that of the previous best-selling debut, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4,” NPD Analyst Mat Piscatella told GamesIndustry.biz.
Additional new releases were thin on the ground in last month’s Top 20, but Lego Undercover‘s re-release on the PC and current-generation consoles helped it secure a spot (#13). And as expected, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild continued to sell well, landing in the #3 position for the month. But the big retail winners in April all came from the backlist, including Grand Theft Auto V (#6), Overwatch (#9), Call of Duty: Black Ops II (#10), and Minecraft (#20).
The NPD Group’s complete list of best-selling games for April 2017 can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Wii U, Xbox 360
Tagged Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, For Honor, Grand Theft Auto V, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix, Lego City Undercover, Lego Worlds, Mario Kart 8, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Minecraft, MLB The Show 17, NBA 2K17, Nier: Automata, NPD, Overwatch, Persona 5, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege