5. GOG.Com spring sale

Starting March 21st– 28th, Gog.com is selling over 600 title with flash sales and other deals that will give your wallet a beating.  You can get some top notch titles like Colonization, classic X-COMs, and Heroes of Might and Magic for up to 75% off.

In particular are some awesome RPGS, like Bards tale 4; Kingdom Come: Deliverance; and Witcher 3, all of which are majorly discounted.  If you have money to burn before the summer creeps up on you, then give it a look.

4.  Life is Strange 2, Episode 3 Releases May 9th

Game

If you are into the series, or into storytelling-based games, Life is Strange took over as the current, major flagship for the genre once Telltale games bit the dust.  If you find yourself enthralled with the series, you wont have to wait much longer for the new episode. 

NOTE:  Do not start the series here! You will otherwise miss out on so much if you haven’t been following all along.

3.  Indie Games Invade the Switch

The hits just keep on coming for the Switch.  Announced earlier this week:

  • Cuphead – April 18, 2019
  • Overland – Fall 2019
  • My Friend Pedro – June 2019
  • Neo Cab – Summer 2019
  • The Red Lantern – 2019
  • Darkwood – May 2019
  • Katana Zero – April 18, 2019
  • Rad – Summer 2019
  • Creature in the Well – Summer 2019
  • Bloodroots – Summer 2019
  • Pine – August 2019
  • Super Crate Box – April 2019
  • Nuclear Throne – Available today
  • Ultra Bugs – 2019
  • Swimsanity – Summer 2019
  • Blaster Master Zero II – Available today
  • Stranger Things 3 – July 4, 2019
  • Cadence of Hyrule – Spring 2019

Somewhere in the distance, you can hear the screeching of other platforming gamers lament about Nintendo dominance.

2. Financie Inc. Raises funds to Turn Dreams into funding with Social Networking Service “FiNANCiE”

This is a bit strange, but to explain in short sum: it’s the monetization of ideas. The plan is to create a fan-economy by using Ethereum to fund ideas that are supported by fans on the social network site.  A global version will be released by the end of the year.  Ultimately, the site’s goal is to take any “regular” (i.e. no-professional game designers) people with good ideas and essentially crowd source them.  In other words, its Kickstarter and Facebook smooshed together as a “dream-sharing  service”.  Its only available in Japan at the moment, but if you can read Japanese you can find out all about it HERE.

1. Google Stadia Changes the Game Forever

The top news this week is the unveiling of Google’s Stadia.  Stadia is Google’s gamer streaming service that allows you to stream play triple any game (without a crazy gamer rig) for a Netflix-like monthly fee. You can stream on any device from phone to tablet, to Smart TV, to potato PC.  The beta used Assassins Creed as their test game.  In order for it to run properly, however, you will need a 30MB/s connection.  Stadia has the technical capability to run 4k/60 FPS, with 8k support sometime later on.  Testers found that it ran well with little hiccups at these settings. 

This is a major technical achievement and is widely seen as the holy grail for gamers everywhere.  It could change not only the gaming industry, but the hardware industry as well.  This is not a novel idea; there have been other services that have tried and failed.  What makes this exceptional is the backing of Googles infrastructure, and the oodles of money backing the company.  There are still some hurdles to overcome, notably US bandwidth issues in rural areas, Verizon with its competing service, the death of net neutrality messing with speeds, and how exclusive titles would work on a streaming platform.  But if anyone can find away around these things, it would be Google.