Plus Lenovo Legion Go handheld officially announced, THE ELDER SCROLLS 6 moves into development
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SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Daniel Ang, 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
GIANNI: and I’m Gianni Di Giovanni
KYLE: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
GIANNI: This week - there’s new handhelds on the horizon, Phasmophobia has been delayed for console and Saints row studio Volition has been shut down by Embracer and more.
Here is the news for Sunday 3rd of September. Let’s go!
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PROMO: Join the SIFTER community on Discord at sifter.com.au/discord
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GIANNI: Veteran games studio Volition - who has been operating for thirty years - has just been closed down by its parent company Embracer Group.
You may know Volition for their recent ‘Saints Row’ reboot, which was met with largely negative reviews when it was released last year.
Volition paved the way in the 90s and 2000s with their Red Faction FPS titles, the Freespace series and the trippy windows 95 shooter, Descent.
KYLE: And the bad news continues, with further reporting from gamedeveloper.com that several former staff members at Embracer Group’s Gearbox Publishing had also been made redundant in the past week.
Time will tell how many more jobs or studios may be shuttered by Embracer in the coming weeks.
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KYLE: Lenovo have now confirmed all the details for their upcoming handheld console.
The Legion Go will sport an 8.8-inch QHD IPS display with a 144Hz refresh rate, all powered by AMD's Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip, and will feature detachable controllers reminiscent of Nintendo Switch's Joy-Cons.
You’ll also be able to pair the console with the Lenovo Legion Glasses, a pretty slick looking Augmented Reality headset that will project the game onto a virtual screen.
It’s not just about the hardware either. The Legion Go will be integrating closely with Xbox Game Pass with games like Halo Infinite and Hi-Fi Rush being used in its marketing material.
It’s looking like it’ll set you back around 1400 Australian dollars, with a release date sometime in October.
GIANNI: Speaking of Handhelds we got the official name and pricing for the PlayStation remote play device. It’s a PSP, that’s right….a PlayStation Portal.
The device which only does remote play from your PS5, will set you back $199US and will be available in U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, Canada and Japan on the 15th of November.
You’ll be waiting a bit longer if you’re here in Australia with us, there is no confirmed release date yet.
I think I’m the target market for this thing, having played the majority of the Last of Us part 2 using remote play, but even I wish it did some more things… we’ll see how it goes.
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GIANNI: The spooky ghost-hunting game Phasmophobia has been delayed coming to console after an office fire.
Developed by Kinetic Games, the survival game is one of the most-played games on Steam and was announced earlier this year that the game would be coming to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PSVR2.
In a statement the team said that due to a recent fire incident in their office building and unpredicted development issues, the console development has been severely impacted and will now be released in October.
KYLE: In the meantime, the Ascension update for Phasmophobia on Steam has been rolled out with a whole heap of changes.
There are now different tiers to each item that you can unlock, heaps of bugs have been squished, the progression system has changed and many of the ghosts and paranormal beasties have been tweaked.
It’s made the game a lot more challenging but hey - it’s still a lot of fun trying to use the Tier 1 items to figure out if you’re being haunted by a Demon or a Myling.
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KYLE: The hit run-and-fun 2D sidescroller Alien Hominid HD is coming to next gen consoles.
The developer, The Behemoth, announced earlier this week Alien Hominid, which originally started as a flash game on the entertainment website Newgrounds in 2002, would be released on Xbox, Switch and Steam.
The game has had a history of ports and updates with it being brought to PS2, Xbox and Gamecube in 2004, Game Boy Advance in 2006, and finally an HD version on Xbox 360 in 2007 which is still the only way to play it on modern systems using the Xbox backwards compatibility.
GIANNI: There isn’t a release date as of yet but in addition to Alien Hominid HD the team announced you can also purchase it in a bundle with Alien Hominid Invasion, which is an all-new re-imagined version with new gameplay and mechanics.
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GIANNI: With Starfield finally launching next week, Bethesda has revealed it has commenced work on The Elder Scrolls 6, with the company’s head of publishing Pete Hines this week sharing that the game is now in early development, moving past its pre-production phase.
Sadly, if you're like me and can’t wait for more news or even a second of footage, you might want to temper your expectations and prepare to wait for a couple more years.
KYLE: Hines said Starfield remains the studio's primary focus, with significant post-launch support already planned and Phil Spencer has suggested that The Elder Scrolls 6 could be five-plus years away.
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KYLE: Sonyis upping the price of their PlayStation Plus service across the world, with quite a huge hike for local Australian subscribers from September 6.
The standard 12 month essential plan has jumped up 15 dollars to 95.95 per year.
but it’s the Deluxe 12 month subscription (which gives you access to the full PS+ game library) that has received the biggest price hike, going from 154.95 dollars to 196.95.
GIANNI: A PlayStation plus subscription is required to use many games’ online features on the playstation network and the change comes as inflation, energy prices basically everything on the whole planet continue to skyrocket.
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GIANNI: That’s it for the big headlines, here’s what’s coming out over the next week
KYLE: Console players rejoice, Baldur’s Gate 3 finally arrives to Playstation 5 on Tuesday September 5 with the Xbox Series X and S editions planned for later in 2023. Baldur’s Gate 3 launched to a heap of praise on PC in early August, quickly becoming one of the highest rated games of the year. If you enjoy your Dungeons & Dragons, this one cannot be missed.
GIANNI: Coming out on the 6th is the full release of Bethesda’s highly anticipated new space RPG Starfield. Explore over a thousand planets, customise spacecrafts, battle space pirates, and uncover the stories of a massive universe when Starfield comes to PC and Xbox this Wednesday. And keep an eye on sifter.com.au for our review and our episode of Drop Rate.
KYLE: There’s a new Final Fantasy game on the horizon… a mobile game. Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis comes to IOS and Android on September 7. Not much is known about how it’ll play just yet, but it’ll be a reimagining of the original Final Fantasy 7 and the ‘Crisis Core’ spin off game and also promises a new take on the story of Sephiroth.
GIANNI: Out on the 8th is the latest version of basketball series NBA 2K24. You’ll get a bunch of new game modes and customisation options, along with a hefty assortment of microtransactions. It comes to all platforms.
KYLE: Life Sim fans can snuggle up and get cosy with Fae Farm, a new cartoony, technicolour farming/life sim game out on PC and Nintendo Switch on Friday September 8. It mixes dungeon crawling with farm sim activities, so think Rune Factory meets Animal Crossing.
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PROMO: Articles to read, videos to watch and podcasts to listen to on sifter.com.au
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GIANNI: This has been Walkthrough by SIFTER, my name is Gianni Di Giovanni
KYLE: And my name is Kyle Pauletto. Thank you so much for listening.
GIANNI: We know you love our podcasts, so why not become a monthly backer on Ko-Fi? Your support lets us keep making our shows and It’s easy to do, head to sifter.com.au/support where support starts from just $1 a month that address again is sifter.com.au/support
KYLE: SIFTER is produced by myself, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Adam Christou who was script editor on this episode, Daniel Ang and Chris Button. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer who also edited this episode, and my cohost Gianni Di Giovanni is SIFTER’s Executive Producer.
GIANNI: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune.
Thanks to Audio Technica Australia for their support of SIFTER’s podcasts.
KYLE: Thanks again for listening, we’ll be back with more news next Sunday.
