Ahead of the game’s release next week, Microsoft has published Dead Rising 4‘s launch trailer–and it’s unique. The video is narrated by protagonist Frank West, who is reading through a version of “The Night Before Christmas.” Obviously, this is has a zombie spin, and there are some great rhymes such as “With nowhere to go and no safety in sight, I picked up my bat and prepared for a fight.”
As he’s reading the book, the trailer shows footage of West acting out the things he’s reading. The climax of the trailer is when West finds an exo suit. “And then they were, right there on the floor, the exo suit and weapons I’d asked Santa for,” he says. Check out the full video in the embed above.
Dead Rising 4 launches for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC on December 6; it’s a timed exclusive, which means it could come to PS4 and Steam in the future. The game’s DLC offerings will include an 18-hole mini golf course that supports up to four players online and holiday-themed weapons.
If the client hasn’t appeared yet on PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, or Origin yet, keep checking, as it should populate across all three networks today, December 2. The trial period wraps up on December 4, so you can play all weekend.
Additionally, all progress from the trial will carry forward to the full game, should you decide to buy it. You can save big, too, as the game is marked down to $36 on PS4 and Xbox One, and $40 on PC.
If you already own Injustice or Haunted House games, they should show up automatically in your Xbox One game library. If not, you can pick them up on your Xbox One or through these links: Injustice ($20; 7.8 GB), Haunted House ($5; 282.5 MB). As mentioned, Injustice’s Ultimate Edition requires the game disc.
Pokemon Go‘s Nearby feature is now available in more regions, developer Niantic Labs announced on its website. The feature, which alerts you to nearby points of interest, is now available in the rest of the continental United States (sorry Hawaii), as well as “large parts” of Europe.
Niantic added that it won’t stop looking at feedback regarding Nearby to improve it in the future. “We will continue to review the feedback submitted on our official social media accounts and in other channels and make changes if necessary,” the developer said.
Pokemon Go’s Nearby feature debuted only in San Francisco, California, before expanding in November to all states west of the Mississippi River (with the exception of Hawaii and Alaska), as well as Canadian regions such as British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the western half of Ontario. And in Australia, Nearby is now available in all states and territories.
“Our first six months has been nothing short of exciting and your continued support has been inspiring,” Niantic said. “We have a lot of content, features, and functionality that we will be implementing over the coming months and years. Our goal is to to always improve on existing features where we can while also releasing exciting new content and functionality.”
Are you still playing Pokemon Go? Do you enjoy the Nearby feature? Let us know in the comments below!
Steam’s annual Winter Sale will begin on December 22, according to a report on NeoGAF, which Eurogamer separately confirmed. The sale period is said to run through January 2.
2015’s Steam Winter Sale also started on December 22 and ran until the beginning of January. Last year, the sale offered discounts on “thousands of games and software,” while there were also Winter Sale-themed trading cards available exclusively during the sale period.
Since this year’s Steam Winter Sale hasn’t been officially announced yet, there is no word on specific offers or other details. We will have all of that information for you as soon as it’s divulged.
The Titanfall 2 free multiplayer trial officially runs December 2-4, but if you have an EA Access (Xbox One) or Origin Access (PC) membership, you can start playing right this moment.
Additionally, all progress from the trial will carry forward to the full game, should you decide to buy it.
No version of EA Access is available on PlayStation 4, so people on Sony’s platform cannot play early. Starting December 2, the trial will become available for everyone across Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
Winter doesn’t technically begin until later this month, but The Witcher developer’s DRM-free PC store GOG today launched its annual Winter Sale, which is called “The Monstrous Winter Sale.” There are going to be “hundreds” of deals in the sale, while GOG is kicking things off by giving away a free copy of Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition.
The BioWare-developed RPG is free for the first 48 hours of the sale, which kicked off today.
New deals will be added every day at 3 AM PT / 6 AM ET. Keep checking back for more.
Another element of GOG’s Winter Sale is that you will earn XP for every dollar spent, every time you check in, and when you collect badges. If you collect enough XP, you’ll be able to unlock free games like Shadow Warrior Classic Redux and Shadowrun: Dragonfall, among others. Learn more about the XP system here.
Final Fantasy XV is off to a hot start. Square Enix announced today that the long-awaited RPG has shipped 5 million copies worldwide following its launch on November 29 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The news comes from a Japanese press release that was translated by Siliconera. It also explains that the five million figure includes digital sales and that Final Fantasy XV has become the fastest-selling entry in the series to date. Shipment figures pertain to the number of copies sent to retailers, and does not necessarily represent how many have actually been sold to consumers.
The game was the first in the longrunning franchise to launch globally on the same day. According to Famitsu (via Siliconera), the game also set a new record for launch-day digital sales in Japan.
“While it’s safe to assume fans and outsiders will find some aspect of Final Fantasy XV disappointing–be it the shallow story or finnicky Astrals–it would be hard for anyone to deny that Final Fantasy XV is a fascinating game after giving it a chance,” reviewer Peter Brown said. “Where its characters fail to impress, Final Fantasy XV’s beautiful world and exciting challenges save the day.”
As it stands today, the physical gaming market is still very big business for Electronic Arts, but the FIFA and Battlefield publisher is bullish on a more digital-centric future.
Speaking today at a Nasdaq investor briefing in Europe, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen pointed out that the company already makes more than half of its total revenue from digitial sources. This is spread between full-game downloads, add-on content, subscriptions, and mobile. The other half is physical, which is a significant chunk of the pie, but digital may overtake it in the coming years.
EA’s latest numbers showed that 25 percent of its full games were downloaded last fiscal year, spanning Origin, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network; that figure will rise to “closer to 30 percent” for the current fiscal year. Some games skew higher toward digital than others, Jorgensen said, without naming any names.
While impediments like bandwidth speed and the need for a credit card still exist, Jorgensen said consumers are driving the trend towards an all-digital future because ultimately it’s convenient.
“Like in books, music, film, and TV, we see that the consumer will ultimately consume [games] digitally,” Jorgensen said.
Over the next five years, Jorgensen predicted that full-game download figures for EA games could reach 50 percent. This benefits EA, as the margins are higher for digital products that aren’t sold at a physical retailer. Brick and mortar stores remain important, Jorgensen said–for now at least.
“Like everything else, the consumer is ultimately going to default to convenience” — Blake Jorgensen
“We’re careful to continue to work with our retail partners; they are very important in the mix, but we’re also ultimately trying to be where the consumer ultimately wants to consume the product,” he said.
For Jorgensen, he believes getting in a car and driving to a store might be a thing of the past.
“Like everything else, the consumer is ultimately going to default to convenience,” he said. “If it’s a choice of getting in the car and driving to the store and the weather is bad outside, if you want to download it, I think you’ll see more people do that.”
Helping drive digital adoption, Jorgensen said, are consoles that come with larger hard drives. He said 1 TB is considered the “standard” today, though the most heavily advertised consoles–the $300 Xbox One S and PS4 Slim–come with 500 GB hard drives. Both console families have 1 TB options, too.
Also during the event today, Jorgensen talked about the future of the Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront franchises. Check out the story linked below to learn more.
Speaking today at an investor briefing in Europe, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen discussed a number of interesting topics, including the future of the Battlefield and Battlefront franchises.
Starting with Battlefield, Jorgensen confirmed that there won’t be another game in the series anytime soon. “We won’t have another Battlefield for a couple of years,” he said during a Nasdaq speaking event, suggesting the next one might not come until 2018 or later.
Though he didn’t give anything away about what this game will be, Jorgensen was asked how EA is thinking about further engaging players in the product. He was asked if the EA Sports Ultimate Team model could be applied to Battlefield–and it sounds like EA is cooking something up.
“We’re looking at all of our games and asking, ‘How might we provided additional opportunities for the player to engage?’ The players want to engage deeply in the game,” the executive said.
Jorgensen said you can poll EA executives and developers and they’ll tell you that driving engagement is the company’s principal focus for all of its games, ahead of financial considerations. At the same time, he pointed out that if people engage with a game more, “they may monetize more over time.”
Another key consideration is to keep the core gameplay intact. EA is “looking for ways to [deepen engagement] without disturbing the gameplay,” Jorgensen said, pointing out that FIFA‘s Ultimate Team mode doesn’t take away from the bread and butter of the franchise.
Finding a way to add an Ultimate Team-style mode to Battlefield is overall a “great challenge” and an “exciting” one,” Jorgensen said.
“It’s not just about building another game. If we can build another stream of revenue that’s high-profit, it’s highly accretive to the overall company,” he explained.
Also during the event, Jorgensen discussed the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront sequel. Some criticized the game for not going deep enough, something that Jorgensen acknowledged in the past and again today.
“If there was criticism, they just wanted more,” he said. “So we’re taking that criticism to heart as we build the next game and trying to address any of the issues that they had.”
The first Battlefront’s next expansion, Rogue One: Scarif, adds content and characters from the upcoming movie. The DLC comes out in December, before the film arrives.
