Bandai Namco flight sim ‘Ace Combat 7’ goes multiplatform for 2017 release

By Danny Cowan January 27, 2017

ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN New Years Showcase Trailer | PS4, PS VR, XB1, PC

Publisher Bandai Namco revealed that its upcoming flight sim Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown will launch across multiple platforms in 2017, and is now set to arrive for the Xbox One and PCs in addition to a previously announced PlayStation 4 release.

PlayStation VR owners will still want to keep an eye out for the PS4 edition, however, as the port will offer exclusive missions specifically suited for Sony’s virtual reality headset.

Ace Combat 7 continues Bandai Namco’s long-running flight simulation series for the current console generation. The game offers a lengthy single-player campaign mode penned by Sunao Katabuchi, who previously tackled scriptwriting duties for the PlayStation 2 series entries Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies and Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War.

The story remains a central part of the experience in the series’ latest sequel, continuing a tradition established in the franchise’s early days for the original PlayStation and PS2. Previous games in the series featured campaigns offering multiple branching storyline paths, and with writer Katabuchi at the helm, Skies Unknown will likely follow suit.

The last time the series attempted a multiplatform release was in 2011 when Ace Combat: Assault Horizon launched for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows PC platforms. Many longtime fans considered Assault Horizon a disappointment due to its drastically overhauled dogfighting mechanics and outsourced writing staff, who shifted the series away from its traditional fantasy setting in favor of a story that took place in the United States.

A new trailer released this week for Ace Combat 7 makes note of several fictional settings for its campaign missions, potentially marking a return to form. Other returning features include online multiplayer dogfights and a one-on-one local versus mode.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown launches for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms later this year.

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Overwatch 2 is going free-to-play. Here’s why

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Overwatch 2 is going free-to-play this October. The upcoming competitive shooter from an embattled Activision Blizzard was expected to launch in 2023, but we learned that it was coming a bit earlier than expected and would be free during the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase on June 12. Still, this is a shocking shift for one of Blizzard's biggest franchises and one that has a lot of implications for the pace of updates and new content. Ahead of a livestream that gives more details about the free-to-play shift, Digital Trends spoke to some members of the development team, including Game Director Aaron Keller and Overwatch VP and Commerical Lead Jon Spector, to learn why exactly the Overwatch 2 team decided to embrace free-to-play.
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At launch on October 4, Overwatch 2 players can expect three new heroes (including a support character teased in the release date trailer), six new maps, over 30 new skins (including a mythic skin for Genji), the Push game mode, and the game's first battle pass. Barring any issues that cause the team to reschedule, the second season will begin on December 6 and introduce another new tank, a new map, and a battle pass with over 30 new skins. More heroes, maps, modes, and the PvE story campaign will start to roll out throughout 2023.
Blizzard plans to make seasons last nine weeks, with three or four new heroes added yearly. If you play games like Apex Legends or Valorant, this cadence of releases should be familiar to you. Keller and Spector claim that other successful free-to-play games aren't what caused Blizzard to make this shift. Instead, they say factors like lowering the barrier of entry for interested players and not wanting to hold on to finished content played a part in Overwatch 2 going free-to-play.

"We don't want to develop things and try to pool it together into a big box release; we'd rather just put content out when it's ready and do it as quickly as we can," Keller says. "As we kept working on some of the more innovative gameplay for the PvE side of Overwatch 2, it meant that it was going to take longer for any of our PvP features to go public. We want to release stuff as frequently as we can, but it was taking us too long to be able to get it in front of our players."
The original Overwatch has floundered since it stopped getting significant content updates in 2020 so Blizzard could focus on Overwatch 2. By releasing the sequel as a free-to-play game this year, that long wait ends -- and players won't have to worry about it happening again for a long time. The developers also stressed that Overwatch 2 would feel more like a sequel than an update when it launches, thanks to the new content and rework into 5v5 matches. Spector explains that many systems fell in place simultaneously, like cross-play, cross-progression, and the seasonal model, so it made sense to lower the barriers to entry and launch free-to-play this year.
"We are dedicated to putting out content frequently and consistently in perpetuity."

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Jotaro Kujo stands before a battle in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R.

While Street Fighter 6 was the talk of the show floor at Summer Game Fest Play Days, another fighting game also managed to impress me at the event. That title was JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R, a fighting game based on the popular and heavily-memed anime and manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The original JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle was first released in Japan in 2013, scoring a rare perfect score from the popular Japanese outlet Famitsu. Anime fighting games vary wildly in quality, but this was considered one of the better ones thanks to its thoughtful and rewarding gameplay.
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Although JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R didn't get a remake-level visual overhaul, fans should still appreciate many of the graphical tweaks and just how pretty this game is. Even though I was playing a PS4, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R was one of the best-looking games at Summer Game Fest Play Days. The anime already has an extremely distinct art style and features a cast of overly-muscular characters, so it transitions to a fighting game almost perfectly. Pulling off special moves that you've seen in the manga and anime or calling out a stand yourself is super satisfying, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R will show them in all of their extremely detailed glory.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R - Early Access Demo
Even the voiceovers and character models got updates to match the voice acting and styles fans will remember from the anime. We don't get many video games based on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, so it's nice to see this one put in extra care to respect the source material and improve upon the original release. That said, graphics will only get you so far in a fighting game. It's the gameplay mechanics that really ensure a fighting game lives or dies.
Thankfully, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R is a lot of fun to play.
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Street Fighter 6 director reveals World Tour mode’s true purpose

A player stands in Metro City's Times Square equivalent in Street Fighter 6 World Tour.

While Street Fighter 6’s traditional Fighting Ground experience made a solid first impression at Summer Game Fest, its significantly more ambitious World Tour mode is still shrouded in mystery. We briefly got a look at this ambitious mode during the game's State of Play trailer. We see what appears to be a player-created character explore Metro City and other locations from a third-person perspective, breaking boxes and getting into fights with the people he meets.
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Street Fighter 6 - Announce Trailer
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In World Tour, players will explore Metro City and other iconic Street Fighter locales with a player-created avatar. Nakayama hopes this experience will strengthen Street Fighter 6's appeal to those who aren't already diehard fans of the series or genre.
"World Tour is a completely different mode that delivers a completely different experience than the traditional fighting," he said. "Even if someone's not a hardcore fan of fighting games, we wanted to incorporate things to make people become fans of Street Fighter outside of the traditional fights."
World Tour certainly looks unlike anything the Street Fighter series has done before. Still, Nakayama hopes that World Tour players will learn more about the world and characters of Street Fighter along the way and fall in love with fighting games as a whole."We want players to dive into this mode and be able to learn how to love fighting games through the things that you do during the journey of World Tour," Nakayama proclaimed. "There will also be opportunities to meet some of the fans' favorite characters, like Ryu and Chun-Li, through World Tour. We want to provide an experience where players can learn more about those characters' backstories and discover what kind of people they are within Street Fighter 6."

World Tour is one of Street Fighter 6's three main pillars, the others being the standard Fighting Ground mode and the multiplayer-focused Battle Hub. He commented how it's always hard to tell how much is enough to put in a game for fans, especially following Street Fighter V's rocky reception at launch due to a lack of content. However, he hopes World Tour provides enough to negate that criticism.
"We were definitely aware of some of the criticism that we faced with Street Fighter 5, and we want to continue to learn from those criticisms and make Street Fighter 6 a better product," he explained. "It's challenging to decide how much is enough for the users, but we continue to work very hard on it and strive to create something that will get appreciation from players."
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