Not connecting with new games

We are barely two months into 2024, and the biggest story so far is new games that players can’t play due to server errors. Check out the latest on that, announcements from the Nintendo Direct partner showcase and much more. Here we go!

Nintendo Direct, partner

Nintendo held a partner showcase version of their Direct press conference this past week. You can watch the video in its entirety above. But here are some of the highlights:

• Former Xbox exclusives Grounded and Pentiment are coming to Switch. Pentiment is available now, with Grounded releasing April 16. 
• World of Goo 2 launches in May as a Switch console exclusive. 
• Monster Hunter Stories, a game that has been available in Japan since 2016, arrives on Switch this summer.
• Epic Mickey Rebrushed is a remake of the 2010 game, and is coming later this year.
• Super Monkey Ball returns on June 25 with Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble.

Check out a full list of all the announcements here. Which game are you most excited for? Let us know in the comments. 

You’ve been served

Smaller and independent games are having a moment to start 2024. But when your game suddenly becomes an unexpected hit, it takes a toll on the backend servers required for them to run. This recently happened to Helldivers 2 and Last Epoch, with players for both games having issues logging on to play. 

Arrowhead studios, the creators of Helldivers 2 admits they underestimated how popular the game would be. The company has been frantically updating the game, and the company CEO said it’s worth waiting until the server problems are fixed to purchase the game. A number of issues contributed to the server errors for Helldivers 2. The game was apparently built on a discontinued engine, making more work for the engineers who work on the game. Also, players are staying logged in overnight so they don’t lose their spot on the server, preventing other players from joining a game. A new patch was recently released to log off inactive players, and another to raise the server cap to 700,000 users. So far, it seems like the changes have worked. 

The studio behind Last Epoch experienced a similar fate when the game launched this past week. Eleventh Hour Games founder and game director Judd Cobler posted on Reddit that “within 20 minutes of launch 150,000 people had joined us. …This did mean that all of our scale testing efforts were immediately put to the test, and unfortunately a service failed in a way that we didn’t suspect, and we immediately went to work to investigate and resolve it." Cobbler initially said he was optimistic about the launch, but his expectation “aged like milk.” Players who experienced the issue are receiving an in-game gift for having to deal with the downtime. 

Palworld, which recently hit 25 million players, is the exception. However, the company was paying nearly $500,000 per month to keep the servers up. Early on, the CEO decided money was no object, and told employees to “never let the service go down no matter what.”

Side quests (more stories worth reading)

💻 Nvidia’s new PC app will no longer require you to login to update your GPU drivers. 

🏈 Electronic Arts offered 11,000 college football players $600 and a copy of the game to appear in College Football 25. 

🥽 Sony is testing PC support for their PlayStation VR headsets. 

🔫 A trailer for the Borderlands movie dropped this week. Could Borderlands 4 be coming soon as well? 

🗡️ Final Fantasy VII Rebirth reviews dropped, and it is the second highest rated game in the Final Fantasy series on Metacritic. Gene Park of The Washington Post said it’s “so good, it nearly wrecked my life.”

📈 Valve announced Steam statistics for 2023, including that over 500 games grossed over $3 million. 

💿 After leaks last year showed a new Xbox without a physical drive, Phil Spencer says getting rid of physical games “isn’t a strategic thing for Xbox.”

🤜🏽 The League Of Legends fighting game has a new trailer and a new name: 2XKO.

🎶 Fortnite’s latest celebrity partnership: Lady Gaga. 

🐉 Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree has a new trailer and arrives June 21.

📉 Warner Brothers says the Suicide Squad game “fell short of expectations.”

🎮 Microsoft’s Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves are officially coming to PlayStation 5. 

🚢 How soaring costs and long delays from the Red Sea shipping crisis are taking their toll on the board game industry.

🐲 Baldur’s Gate 3 will get official mod support, including on consoles. 

🤛🏻 The new Mortal Kombat DLC features John Cena as Peacemaker.

💵 Analysts say Sony is likely to launch PlayStation 5 Pro this year. 

🗾 Mother 3 is coming to Switch, but only in Japan. Also, the creator of the game asks fans to stop asking him about an English release of the game. 

📱 Popular MMORPG Warframe is now available on iOS. 

☢️ A Fallout: New Vegas Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit) mod that was lost for over seven years was found and is now available again. 

🕹️ Brie Larson talks to IGN about her love of Nintendo games. 

New Releases this week:

2/28: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake (PlayStation, Xbox and PC)
2/28: Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC)
2/29: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PlayStation)
2/29: Hidden Winter Cats (PC)
2/29: Robin Hood - Sherwood Builders (PC)
3/1: The Mobius Machine (PlayStation, Xbox and PC)
3/1: Ufouria: The Saga 2 (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC)

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