Plus Death Stranding gets a release date and Xbox’s handheld is set to release this year
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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 and Apple 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 Death Stranding 2 gets a release date and it’s pretty soon, Microsoft’s Xbox handheld is looking more real and Pokémon GO maker Niantic is sold to a Saudi conglomerate.
Here is the news for Sunday 16th of March. Let’s go!
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PROMO: Join the SIFTER community on Discord at sifter.com.au/discord
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FIONA: Get ready for the weirdness, Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has a release date and it’s very soon.
Announced at a SXSW panel the PlayStation 5 exclusive game will launch this year, on the 26th of June.
Old mate has collected hundreds of his famous pals - Elle Fanning, Lee Dong-Seok, Debra Wilson are new and Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux and Troy Baker are also joining the gang.
KYLE: There is a new 10 minute trailer for the game and of course it’s nuts, but what everyone is excited for is a bandana wearing Luca Marinelli who plays a new character Neil who looks like the spitting image of Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid.
He’s probably known now as a stealth actionman or something like that.
He’s a tease our Kojima isn’t he.
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KYLE: Microsoft is getting in on the handheld action, with an Xbox branded console reportedly set to release later this year, or maybe next year there are some conflicting reports.
Jez Corden at Windows Central says he’s got the inside scoop, and Microsoft has partnered with an unnamed PC manufacturer and put together a handheld console codenamed Keenan.
FIONA: It’s an interesting move from a company that has been far more focused on acquiring studios and launching digital platforms than making new hardware.
Corden goes on to speculate on what this console could deliver, and what it means for the Xbox brand in the long run, but it is largely assumptions at this stage.
We’ll keep you updated as soon as more information is released.
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FIONA: A leak from Sony’s PlayStation group has shown they’re working on an AI-powered version of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West.
Narrated by Sharwin Raghoebardajal, software engineering director at Sony Interactive Entertainment, the video shows that Aloy can have a conversation with a player through voice prompts during gameplay.
The video showed AI-powered synthesized voice and facial movements, both in a demo setting and within the full game.
The video has since been pulled by a copyright agent which counts PlayStation as a client.
Here is Aloy’s real life human voice actor Ashly Burch sharing their very understandable concerns.
[AUDIO]
KYLE: Raghoebardajal indicated that it is just a prototype and was developed with Guerrilla Games to demonstrate the technology to Sony staff.
The tech demo uses OpenAi’s whisper for speech-to-text, both GPT-4 and Llama 3 for conversations and decision making, and Sony’s own Emotional Voice Synthesis system.
Of course it’s fun to imagine a situation where you could ask an NPC literally a question and they’d answer... It’s scifi magic.
But like at what cost?I don’t know man. Seems grubby to me.
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KYLE: The developers behind Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom have been bought out in a massive deal.
Confirmed by Niantic and the Pokémon Go Team, the mobile gaming company Scopely has bought Niantic’s game division for $3.5 billion.
Other titles that are being handed over to Scopley are Monster Hunter Now, Scopley also now owns Niantic Campfire and Wayfarer apps.
FIONA: Niantic’s games business has over 30 million monthly active players and over $1 billion a year in revenue, and of course most of that is driven by Pokémon Go.
However some Pokémon players are a little bit worried as Scopely is known for aggressive monetization in its games including Star Trek Fleet Command and Marvel Strike Force.
But in some good news Scopley has said they’re going to retain all members of the Niantic Games Team, and in the meantime Niantic’s geospatial tech platform will be developed into a new business called Niantic Spatial.
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FIONA: And in some fun gaming tech news, the internet has found that SNES consoles seem to be getting faster as they age.
On Bluesky TASbot shared that the audio processing unit clock seems to be running faster years later and also speeds up while warm.
The result of this is music and sounds within the game are slightly higher in pitch.
KYLE: We know the CPU clock uses a quartz crystal and that seems to be running fine, however the APU uses a ceramic resonator. What impact that has, who knows?
TAS.bot seems pretty keen to find out why exactly it’s happening and of course we don’t really know how this will affect games but I’m sure the internet will figure it out.
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KYLE: That’s it for the headlines, here are the games coming out this week.
FIONA: Assassin’s Creed Shadows is finally out, and it’s the setting we’ve all been waiting for, 16th century Japan. That’s coming to PC, Xbox Series X and S, and PlayStation 5 on Thursday. Keep an eye on sifter.com.au for a review from Gianni Di Giovani.
KYLE: Also out Thursday is Wreckfest 2, an arcade racer with a particular focus on crashing into everyone and everything. Customisable cars, realistic damage, what more could you want. Grab it on PC, Xbox Series X and S, and PlayStation 5 on the 21st.
FIONA: How do you like this title Kye? Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. This alchemy-focused JRPG has got all the hits, with crafting, battles, and building. Grab it on all platforms on the 21st.
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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: Keep an eye on our website, we’re posting reviews and stories over there all the time, head to sifter.com.au.
FIONA: SIFTER is produced by myself, Kyle Pauletto, Adam Christou, Courtney Smith and Chris Button. The episode is edited by both Senior Producer Mitch Loh and Gianni Di Giovanni who is SIFTER’s Executive Producer and 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.
