Plus Valve announces SteamOS will be shared with handheld rivals and Red Dead Redemption PC port is confirmed unofficially
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SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Courtney Smith, Adam Christou and Chris Button. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Audio Technica Australia for their support of SIFTER.
KYLE: Hi I’m Kyle Pauletto
FIONA: and I’m Fiona Bartholomaeus
KYLE: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
FIONA: This week Hi-Fi Rush is revived as PUBG developer buys the studio, tens of thousands of players are already enjoying Valve’s next game Deadlock and the hefty downloads for COD games get a little bit more manageable.
Here is the news for Sunday 18th of August. Let’s go!
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PROMO: Join the SIFTER community on Discord at sifter.com.au/discord
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FIONA: You may want to sit down for this one, because shocking, we actually have some GOOD industry news.
It’s been three months since Microsoft went on a studio and project scrapping rampage, with one the more surprising casualties being Tango Gameworks, the developers behind the gamepass hit Hi-Fi Rush.
Miraculously, the studio has been brought back to life thanks to PUBG publisher Krafton.
KYLE: Krafton have purchased both Tango Gameworks, and the HiFi Rush IP from Xbox and holding company ZeniMax.
And better yet, the media release announcing the purchase heavily implies that we could get more Hi-Fi Rush in the future, stating the teams will continue developing the IP and explore future projects.
Making another Hi-Fi Rush seems like the easiest business decision ever, hopefully some of the original crew that made that magic can stick around for the sequel.
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KYLE: The Asus ROG Ally is a powerful handheld, but frequent reviews have noted that sadly its Windows operating system holds it back but that is all about to change.
Earlier this week someone spotted a line in Valve’s latest SteamOS release notes saying “added support for extra ROG Ally keys”, and Valve designer Lawrence Yang confirmed that it was relating to third-party device support for SteamOS
FIONA: Yang said Valve is making steady progress on the ability of other platforms using the operating system but it won’t be ready for a while.
The company has always said its long term plan was to let other companies use SteamOS too and now it looks like we’re getting a tiny bit closer to that.
Which is an incredible win for handheld players, I’m sure spurred on in no small part by Valve’s ability to sell more Steam games, but hey we’ll take it.
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FIONA: Speaking of Valve, their new shooter game, Deadlock, has just hit a peak of around 34,000 concurrent players despite it not even being announced yet.
It’s the first new game from Valve in 4 years and we already know a fair bit about it including its characters and their full movesets, it has a popular subreddit, and you can even see its update history on SteamDB, yet, total silence from Valve.
KYLE: According to SteamDB’s creator, a Steam key submission made the details of Deadlock's playtest available for public view and Valve just didn’t do anything about it, from there players were able to invite their friends.
From the data, it looks like the studio has been increasing its playtest capacity.
The whole thing is pretty bold, but hey it’s got us talking.
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KYLE: If you’ve ever tried to play Call of Duty Warzone, you would have noticed the absolutely ludicrous hard drive destroying download sizes.
Well worry no longer! This space invader will now be split off into its own download, you don’t need to have the entire latest mainline game on your machine even if you don’t own it.
FIONA: In order to prepare for this change, guess what you need to do Kyle?
KYLE: Tell me Fi
FIONA: It’s a different massive download, this time to reorganise the files on your Xbox or PlayStation when the early patch launches on the 21st of August.
I guess it’s just one last massive download for old time’s sake.
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FIONA: Grab your cowboy hat and get ready to ride into the sunset as Red Dead Redemption PC port has unofficially been announced.
Eagle eyed fans noticed this week that the description on the PlayStation Store has been updated to say ‘now on PC for the first time ever’, which it isn’t yet but it’s the first real bit of information about the port.
KYLE: Alongside the usual PC specific enhancements like frame rates, the updated description also mentions that the PC version would be single player, will include content from the Game of The Year Edition, and feature all of the 2023 console version upgrades.
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KYLE: That’s it for the big headlines, here are the games coming out this week.
FIONA: Out on the 19th E-no-tria: The Last Song, a soulslike based on Italian mythology where you play as the Maskless One, tasked with freeing the world and becoming the Mask of Change. That’s out on PC, Xbox Series S and X, and PlayStation 5 this Monday.
KYLE: Up next we have Dustborn, a story driven action adventure title set in an alternate version of the United States. It follows a crew of misfits on the run who will need to use their special powers to fend off their pursuers. Grab it on PC, PlayStation and Xbox this Tuesday.
FIONA: Also out Tuesday is Black Myth: Wukong, the highly anticipated action RPG by Chinese developers Game Science. It’s another soulslike, this time inspired by Chinese mythology, and it’ll be available on PC and PlayStation on the 20th, with an Xbox release that’s TBA.
KYLE: The brand new PVP hero shooter Concord is out this week. It features 16 playable alien characters with varying abilities, plus the promise of more to come, and ongoing story missions. That’s out on PC and PlayStation 5 on the 23rd.
FIONA: And a wild one to close out the week, Tactical Breach Wizards is an Xcom like game where magical folk in kevlar vests take out the baddies. Seems very tongue in cheek, chuck a grenade then cast healing word. Lets go! Pick it up on PC on the 23rd.
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KYLE: This has been Walkthrough by SIFTER, my name is Kyle Pauletto.
FIONA: And my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus, thank you so much for listening.
KYLE: We’ve been firing up the old Twitch channel and streaming a bit more thanks to our friend Courtney, if aren’t following us on Twitch what are you doing? Here is the link twitch.tv/sifterHQ that’s twitch.tv/sifterHQ come hang! We’ll let you know in Discord with a special alert when we go live!
FIONA: SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, myself, Adam Christou, Courtney Smith and Chris Button. The episode is edited by both Senior Producer Mitch Loh and Executive Producer Gianni Di Giovanni, who is also Walkthrough’s script editor.
KYLE: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune, and Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER’s podcasts.
FIONA: We’ll be back with more news next Sunday. See you then.
