14 / wfmag.ccNewsAttract Mode
Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda
Funky News Flash incomingActivision Blizzard says new Call of Duty ‘already
generating excitement’ in playtests. WHODA THUNK IT01Headlines
from the virtual front
- System Shocker
Not issue 31’s cover star – that’s still
safe – the other one, System Shock 3,
is reportedly done for, with most of
the dev team having left OtherSide
Entertainment and the project entering
an enforced limbo. Maybe even
an outright cancellation. This sad
state follows Starbreeze pulling out
of publishing duties as part of its
restructuring and selling the rights back
to OtherSide. The studio was unable to
find any publisher willing to take on the
project, and given how putrid Underworld
Ascendant turned out, that might be of
little surprise. Still, people have lost their
jobs, and that’s no cause for pithiness.
Hopefully, all those negatively impacted
can sort things – or have sorted things –
out for themselves.- Fergie time’s up
Rod Fergusson will be out of the
Coalition’s doors at some point in March,
not joining Dan Houser, but instead
on his way to Blizzard to oversee the
Diablo franchise. Fergusson had been
at the Gears of War-only studio since
2014, but was involved in the production
of every Gears game released at the
time of writing. So, waist-high cover in
Diablo, then?
“I began working on Gears of War
over 15 years ago,” Fergusson wrote
on Twitter, “and since then it has been
the joy of my life. But now it’s time for a
new adventure.” An adventure in LOOT.- Luxury consoles
A Bloomberg report claims Sony is
struggling to keep the cost of the
upcoming PlayStation 5 down, owing to
the increased cost of obtaining parts
for the console. Scarcity of components
means manufacturing costs are rising,
and Sony’s pursuit of NAND flash
memory and DRAM – both popular with
smartphone manufacturers – seems to
be to blame. One element pushing the
cost up that wasn’t unexpected for Sony
was the cooling system, which sounds
like it’ll be more than capable of kicking
out that heat – seems the company
may have learned from the jet engine
PS4 Pro. All said, it’s looking like the PS
will cost at least $470 (£360 – but it’s
never a straight conversion) right now.
If Sony brings back former CEO Ken
Kutaragi just so he can tell us all to get
two jobs to afford it, then it’s fair to
assume time is, indeed, cyclical and not
a linear path as we might once have
foolishly believed.0302