The remake of Knights of the Old Republic is now in a strange situation, after Embracer’s sale of Saber Interactive.
23.02.2024 - 19:21 / news.blizzard.com / Happy Friday
Hi everyone, and Happy Friday! :)
It's been a very exciting week and a half for Overwatch 2! Season 9: Champions shipped with a new and improved version of our Competitive system and a pretty comprehensive set of changes to the core mechanics of our game.
We're incredibly invested in these changes having a positive impact on the game and are committed to making rapid iterations to them to make that happen. In fact, earlier this week, we made our first pass at tuning with a set of refined projectile sizes and health changes for some of our heroes. We'll keep an eye on how these play out in order to inform you of our next set of changes.
Let's talk about the reworked Competitive Play system, which also launched with Season 9. There's been a lot of excitement around it. In fact, there's been a pretty sizeable shift in our player population because of it. Previously, Quick Play was the most popular mode in Overwatch. It accounted for roughly 40% of the total match hours in the game, while Competitive Play sat at around 35%. Those numbers have since shifted, and Competitive Play now makes up about 45% of match hours, with Quick Play around 32%. An interesting thing to note here is that the total number of hours that people are playing Quick Play isn't down; it's just that people are playing a lot more Competitive Play! We're really excited about this and take it as confirmation that people would like to see more changes and improvements to that side of the game, as well as systemic PvP improvements.
Speaking of improvements, we'll be making more changes in mid-Season 9 and Season 10. One of the largest of these will include the removal of grouping restrictions in Season 10. We'd like people to be able to play with their friends in every area of the game, however we'd also like to keep Overwatch's competitive integrity intact. Groups with a large range of player skill—what we call wide groups—will only play against other wide groups. Narrow groups will only be matched with other narrow groups. For most players we think this will have a big benefit to their match quality. We'll also be adding features to the Competitive Progress screen, such as Match History and a Scorecard, implementing role-specific titles, showing the rank range on the scoreboard, and more. We're also looking into a small set of Top 500 improvements but haven't nailed down which season they'll go live yet.
Lastly, I'd like to take a quick moment to talk about our Quick Play: Hacked feature. The biggest goal is to help inform the types of improvements we could make to the core game.
For instance, based on the first one we ran, Quicker Play, we're looking at making a few changes to the game. We'll be increasing the speed of the Push bot when he's
The remake of Knights of the Old Republic is now in a strange situation, after Embracer’s sale of Saber Interactive.
Inflexion Games CEO Aaryn Flynn has released a new devblog on what we can expect from Nightingale’s dev team in the short term and a little further down the line. The survival crafting MMO entered Early Access almost three weeks ago, and the team has mentioned a few things they’re working on, but this is our clearest roadmap so far.
Watching Netflix’s cosmic philosophy movie Spaceman, the most obvious question is about the plot: Is that giant alien space spider real, or a hallucination? But the second most obvious question might be Why is Adam Sandler starring in this movie? Sandler has taken on a number of increasingly high-profile dramatic roles since he first surprised his fans and dodged his comedy-career typecasting with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love back in 2002. But his roles have always been tinged with comedy, even if it’s dark, wry, or despairing comedy. Spaceman is something new: a grim story that doesn’t crack a smile as it sends Sandler into space as Czech astronaut Jakub, a man whose life, relationship, and maybe psyche are all disintegrating during a long solo journey.
doesn't explain all its systems perfectly. It leaves many things open for players to explore and discover on their own. Sometimes, these things are fun to experiment with, like 's Skill Cores and the new Folio system of progression. Other times, they seem like unintended omissions.
Netflix’s new Adam Sandler movie is unique in the Sandman canon: Despite sending the comedic actor to space for an encounter with an oversized alien spider, most of the potentially corny laughs are swapped for melancholic tears. Like Solaris, The Fountain, and Ad Astra before it, director Johan Renck’s Spaceman is a meditative intragalactic drama orbiting around a heartfelt performance from Sandler. It’s not the first movie with the kind of visual effects that demand an actor’s unbridled imagination, but filming Spaceman was a test that took him outside his comfort zone.
Apple has been speculated to launch the new iOS 17.4 update this week and now it has finally been released for iPhone and iPad users. The iOS 17.4 was said to be one of the major updates, especially for the European Union region where rules have been changed to reduce the monopoly-like status of the big tech companies. Additionally, the company has also kickstarted its iOS 18 development which may be deployed in September with the iPhone 16 series launch. If you have been waiting for the iOS 17.4 update, then check out what it has in store for iPhone users.
There’s an obvious question at the heart of Spaceman, Netflix’s science fiction movie where Adam Sandler’s forlorn astronaut character spends half the story talking to a tennis ball communing with a giant alien spider that he names Hanuš. But even without watching the movie, viewers may wonder: Is Hanuš actually real?
Gamers are being inspired by the Willy Wonka fiasco that recently happened in Scotland, recreating the barren and meme-worthy experience in their favorite titles. Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Far Cry 5 have both gotten humorous renditions of the disastrous event, which drew in customers with its misleading AI-generated advertisements. The forlorn recreation of Roald Dahl’s magical world turned out to be a threadbare experience with a lone Oompa-Loompa rationing out jellybeans to children and The Unknown (a nonexistent character made up by AI) then jumping out to scare them silly.
Immortals of Aveum was one of those games that got swallowed by the unprecedented slew of triple-A releases that dominated gaming in 2023. A new IP from a new studio, the game didn't fare well at launch, sandwiched as it was between behemoths like Diablo IV, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield, Armored Core 6, et cetera. This led to Ascendant Studios having to lay off around 45% of its employees just a few weeks after the debut of Immortals of Aveum.
Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead have said they will be able to get back to working on future “improvements” for the superb bug-stomping, bot-blasting shooter after finally resolving the weeks-long server struggles caused by the game’s immense popularity.
The global tech stage is set at the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 in Barcelona, where industry giants are showcasing the latest breakthroughs in mobile technology. This year, Alphabet seized the spotlight, revealing new features in its Google Android ecosystem designed to enhance user experiences worldwide.
With Helldivers 2's severs holding firm, developer Arrowhead Game Studios is ready to return to its "original plan" for the shooter.