Episode 75 – Activision Moves Esports from Twitch to Youtube, Blizzard Ruins Warcraft 3 with Reforge

recorded on Jan 31, 2020

Headliners
Activision moves all esports exclusively to YouTube from Twitch after Twitch deal ends (Forbes)
• Activision announced a partnership with Google to stream the COD League and OWL exclusively to YouTube for the foreseeable future after the Twitch deal expires
• The Twitch deal was for 2 years and now that it is over Activision is leaving them
• Noticeably though Activison mentioned nothing about bringing their games to Stadia

Blizzard messes up Warcraft III Reforged and ruins their reputation even more (Forbes)
• Warcraft III is a 17 year old game so fans were excited to jump into the remaster
• Blizzard falsely advertised enhanced cut scenes, improved graphics, voice work and UI
• There are a ton of bugs, crashes, late texture pop in, cut scenes ending in defeat screen
• Connecting to custom games and even connecting to the campaign is a massive issue
• Both the original and the Reforged versions use the same online infrastructure so the problems with Reforged are affecting the original game
• Some notable basic feature from the original are missing in the Reforged version
• The new user agreement copyrights all user created work as Blizzard’s own
• Blizzard is rejecting refunds for most saying that all purchases are final and there are rumors that they are banning users that are trying to help others get refunds
Little Bits
Thoughts on how Byleth plays in Smash Ultimate (Us: FPSGUIDES)

GeForce NOW, Nvidia’s cloud streaming service, is coming out of beta (wccftech)
• The service basically lets you rent out Nvidia’s servers while using your PC libraries
• The beta began in December 2017 for Mac and January 2018 for Windows
 
• The non basic (free) version, The Founders Edition is priced at $5/month
o This is a limited time offer if you agree to a 12 month subscription
o Includes raytracing support, free trial period 3 months, priority access to servers, and extended session length
o The low price is to directly combat with Amazon, Stadia, and Xcloud
• The free basic version has 1 hour sessions and standard or queued access to servers

Rapid Fire

Valve Index VR Headset sold 103,000 units in Q4 after Half-Life: Alyx announce (SuperData)

Nintendo Switch has officially outsold the Xbox One after last year’s holiday season (Forbes)
• The Switch has sold around 52 million units surpassing the Xbox one and doing so in 34 months compared to Xbox One’s 74 months……damn!

Nintendo officially says have no new Switch models planned for 2020 (Kotaku)

Upcoming Releases and Deals

Xbox Games with Gold for February are as follows (GameSpot):
• TT Isle of Man: Feb 1 – Feb 29
• CAll of Cthulu: Feb 16 – March 15
• Fable Heroes: Feb 1 – Feb 15
• Star Wars Battlefront: Feb 16 – Feb 29

PS Plus games for February are The Sims 4, Firewall Zero Hour, Bioshock Collection (Sony)

Metro Exodus second DLC, Sam’s Story, will release on February 11 (IGN)

The Outer Worlds releases on Nintendo Switch March 6 (Gematsu)
Rumor Mill
New rumor claims PS5 is “better” than the Xbox Series X in almost every way (Tidux Twitter)
• I do not think this leak is real but we will see
• CPU PS5 = XSX
• GPU PS5 < XSX (less the 1TF) • RAM PS5 > XSX (BW and size)
• SSD PS5 > XSX (Speed and size)
• Performance PS5 > XSX

Some details on From Software’s new game Elden Ring have “leaked” (Comicbook.com)
• The world is more of an “open-field” concept rather than open world
• The world will be more open than all of their previous games
o From Soft is planning to blend corridor like sections with its more open elements
• The games is directly inspired by Shadow of the Colossus

 
Resident Evil 8 details may have been leaked and some highlights are below:
• The perspective will be first person and Chris Redfield returns in some capacity
• Will not be called Resident Evil 8 rather will have a clever title
• Regular zombies will appear instead of the Molded from Resident Evil 7
• There is a persistent shadowy “female” figure that follows you around

Let’s Argue

How should Blizzard fix this massive screw up and how do they win back fan support?