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All Articles: Anthem
A major Anthem bug is randomly shutting down PS4 consoles
Man, it has been a rough couple of weeks for BioWare’s Anthem. The game’s VIP Beta was met with a resounding “meh,” the convoluted release schedule left fans confused, and the critical reception to the eventual retail release has been less than kind (in fact, it quickly became the developer’s worst-reviewed game ever).
But wait, it gets worse. Electronic Arts confirmed last night that Anthem will completely crash (for seemingly no reason) for a random assortment of PS4 players. The publisher is currently gathering information about the bug on their Answers HQ forum, and so far more than 300 people have responded:
We’re aware of a crashing issue some of you have been reporting for #AnthemGame. We’re investigating and ask that you share your crash data reports when prompted. If you have, we’ll be reaching out to gather info; if not, please reply to this thread on AHQ:https://t.co/36P21YFjYL
— EA Help (@EAHelp) March 4, 2019
Is Anthem shutting down your PS4 console? If so, please share your information with EA so they can get to the bottom of this.
New Retail Releases: Anthem, SteinsGate Elite, More
BioWare is back in the spotlight this week thanks to the launch of Anthem, their latest co-op sci-fi adventure. Anthem will be available for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and players will take control of exosuit-wearing Freelancers in a fight against “a shadowy faction threatens all of humankind.”
Microsoft will also team up with BioWare to produce a 1 TB Xbox One S + Anthem Bundle.
Elsewhere on store shelves this week, Spike Chunsoft will expand the SteinsGate saga on the PS4 and Switch with SteinsGate Elite, a remastered re-release of the first game in the franchise. Players will be able to experience a more “immersive” version of the time-travelling adventure in SteinsGate Elite, which will also include “animated scenes from the anime.”
PS4 owners looking a different kind of turn-based RPG this week might want to look at Idea Factory’s Death End ReQuest. According to the developer, players will be able to change the game’s genre, and switch the action to a fighting game, a shooter, or even a slot machine.
Finally this week, Switch owners will be able to take their console of choice off-road in V-Rally 4, a new racer from BigBen Interactive.
That’s all for now, but we’ll be back later this week with a look at the newest additions to the PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, and Nintendo eShop.
Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 remake wins “Best of Show” at E3 2018 from Game Critics Awards
The “media and influencer outlets” represented by the Game Critics Awards have selected this year’s Best of E3 winners. Capcom crawled away with “Best of Show” thanks to the Resident Evil 2 remake.
Meanwhile, Media Molecule’s Dreams won “Best Original Game,” while fellow Sony stablemate Marvel’s Spider-Man won “Best Console Game” and “Best Action/Adventure Game.” The Game Critics Awards honored a rather diverse slate of games this year, giving “Best PC Game” to BioWare’s Anthem, “Best AR/VR Game” to Tetris Effect, and “Best RPG” to Kingdom Hearts III.
Unsurprisingly, the massively-popular Super Smash Bros. Ultimate took home “Best Fighting Game.”
Among non-playable games, a “Special Commendation for Graphics” was awarded to CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II, and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima. The Last of Us Part II also received a “Special Commendation for Sound” and Cyberpunk 2077 also collected a “Special Commendation for Innovation.”
The full list of winners can be found after the break. (more…)
Anthem nabs five nominations in Game Critics Awards’s Best of E3 2018 roundup
Every year, the Game Critics Awards, a consortium of more than 50 major publications that cover the video game industry, gets together to choose the best games at the E3 Expo. The nominees for “Best of E3 2018” were announced this morning, and BioWare’s Anthem lead the way with five nominations (including “Best of Show”).
From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is also in the running for “Best of Show,” and it’s standing close behind Anthem with four total nominations. After that, a mob of games collided in third place with three nominations apiece (including Battlefield V, Dreams, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Resident Evil 2, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate). All but Battlefield V and Dreams are also up for “Best of Show.”
The PS4 was the most-honored platform with 58 nominations, followed by the PC (with 55), the Xbox One (with 51), and the Switch (with 10).
Several games that clicked with fans at home during the pre-E3 press conferences (including Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, The Last of Us Part II, and many others) weren’t eligible for nomination because they weren’t available to play by the judging panel.
But most of those games will likely get another shot next year (especially since I expect to be old and gray before Death Stranding is released), and you can find all of this year’s nominees after the break. The winners will be announced this coming Monday, July 2. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged Anthem, Battlefield V, Dreams, E3 2018, FIFA 19, Fortnite, Forza Horizon 4, Kingdom Hearts III, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Overcooked 2, Resident Evil 2, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Spider-Man, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Tetris Effect, Total War: Three Kingdoms
EA’s E3-adjacent EA Play 2018 event will include Battlefield V, Anthem, new EA Sports games, more
UPDATE: EA has announced that “Battlefield 6” will officially be known as Battlefield V.
ORIGINAL STORY: It’s beginning to look a lot like E3…
Even though it’s only February, Electronic Arts has announced the first details of this year’s EA Play event on their official website. As always, the event will run adjacent to the E3 Expo from June 9-11, and it’ll be open to the public.
Fans who visit the Hollywood Palladium during EA Play will get the chance to try out the upcoming Battlefield 6, this year’s slate of EA Sports games, and The Sims 4. An “inside look” at BioWare’s Anthem will also be on display, as well as “a few surprises”:
At EA Play 2018, you will have a chance to play our next Battlefield experience, new EA Sports games, and get an inside look at the stunning new action game, Anthem. The Sims 4 and our mobile games will be on hand, and of course, we have a few surprises as well.
If you are able to make it to Hollywood, we have a lot in store for you: hundreds of game stations, awesome game demos, lots of experiences for attendees and families, including music, art, food, and entertainment for everyone.
Tickets for EA Play 2018 will be available this Spring, and best of all, they’ll be free.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Anthem, Battlefield V, E3 2018, The Sims 4
Anthem was officially delayed to Early 2019 to make room for Battlefield V
UPDATE: EA has announced that “Battlefield 6” will officially be known as Battlefield V.
ORIGINAL STORY: Electronic Arts delivered their quarterly financial report yesterday, and the megapublisher used the opportunity to shuffle their upcoming release schedule.
Confirming rumors we first heard last week, EA’s CEO, Andrew Wilson, announced that BioWare’s Anthem will now launch in Early 2019:
Our new IP, Anthem is a stunning project from BioWare that will blend genres with a shared world experience that evolves around its players. Excitement for Anthem is building, and we’re deeply invested in delivering a great new experience with this game when it launches in [Early 2019].
None of EA’s executives had much else to say about Anthem, but Wilson returned during the Q&A portion to fill in a few more details about the delay. According to the CEO, Anthem was delayed to give it some breathing room away from the Fall 2018 launch of Battlefield 6:
The first thing about Anthem is regardless of kind of how it’s being portrayed, we are not looking at that as a delay in the game. We’ve chosen to launch Anthem in [Early 2019] and the date is really determined by portfolio of balancing consideration not for product readiness reasons. It’s tracking well on its development milestones. We are really confident of its ship date.
We are really excited by the way the next Battlefield is shaping up and it might set… it probably doesn’t make sense to launch Anthem right up next to it. And when you think about Anthem as a brand new IP, we also believe it make sense to give it its own launch window so that we can give us a focus and attention that it deserve and give it some free air.
As for Battlefield 6, Wilson promised that it will appeal to “longtime fans and new players alike” with “innovation at every level, incredible stories at the core, astonishing visuals, and gameplay that will captivate every Battlefield fan.”
EA might have delayed Anthem into 2019 as Dragon Age 4 begins development
According to a new report in Kotaku, BioWare is currently going through a bit of a rough patch, and it looks like both Anthem and Dragon Age 4 have been affected.
Speaking to several people “familiar with the project,” Kotaku’s Jason Schreier has learned that EA has pulled the entire BioWare team onto Anthem (minus the small teams maintaining Star Wars: The Old Republic and doing pre-production work on Dragon Age 4). But even with this increased amount of manpower, Schreier’s sources say that Anthem will most likely be delayed to Early 2019:
Anthem, which was announced at E3 2017, is now scheduled for release in early 2019, according to three people familiar with the project. The “fall 2018” window mentioned during that E3 announcement was “never realistic,” one source said. Exact dates remain in flux—and Anthem’s developers must also plan for a beta release, an EA Access launch, and an ongoing schedule of patches and updates—but it appears unlikely to developers that publisher EA will allow BioWare to delay the game any further than March 2019, when the company’s 2019 fiscal year comes to an end.
As for Dragon Age 4, a small part of BioWare has begun to work on the game, and the team is currently looking to add “live” elements to the game that’ll keep players coming back after they complete the main story:
The day following the publication of this article, BioWare studio head Casey Hudson confirmed that the next Dragon Age will indeed be a live game. “Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you’ll be relieved to see what the team is working on,” he wrote on Twitter. “Story & character focused. Too early to talk details, but when we talk about ‘live’ it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story.”
While Anthem’s likely delay and Dragon Age 4’s “live” makeover were the big scoops to come out of Schreier’s sources, his report also includes several gritty details about the day-to-day environment at BioWare and how many of the developers feel about the company’s direction.
Electronic Arts reiterates that Battlefield V and Anthem are coming in 2018
UPDATE: EA has announced that “Battlefield 6” will officially be known as Battlefield V.
ORIGINAL STORY: Electronic Arts delivered their quarterly financial report to investors last night, and Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen delivered some (not unexpected) news about the publisher’s 2018 slate of games.
Jorgensen reiterated that the currently untitled Battlefield 6 will be released in 2018, alongside a “full slate” of EA Sports titles (presumably FIFA 19, Madden NFL 19, NHL 19, and NBA Live 19), and BioWare’s Anthem. It looks like multiple in-game events for Star Wars: Battlefront II are also on tap for next year:
The core of our fiscal 2019 is in a full slate of sports titles and their associated live services, plus new live services from Star Wars: Battlefront II. We will add the next Battlefield game and moved into the action genre with Anthem. We expect our subscriber base to continue to grow and our new mobile titles to benefit from players looking for deeper experiences with higher production values.
Later in the presentation, CEO Andrew Wilson added that EA Sports is planning something connected to next year’s World Cup:
On World Cup, we don’t have any news to announce right now, but at EA Sports we have a long tradition of celebrating the World Cup and bringing it to life for fans, stretching back to the World Cup 1998. So as it gets closer, the world’s largest sporting event, we’ll announce more details on how we’ll continue this tradition.
Electronic Arts’s stock is down more than 4% in trading on the stock market so far today.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged Anthem, Battlefield V, Star Wars: Battlefront II