Arc System Works’ and Toybox Inc.’s world-building ecology sim Birthdays: The Beginning will miss its targeted March launch date, publisher NIS America announced this week.
The creativity-sparking life sim will now launch in May for the PlayStation 4 and PC platforms via Steam.
Announced earlier in 2016, Birthdays: The Beginning is a simulation game where players customize a growing, living world to attract new lifeforms and evolutionary species. Individual worlds will differ based on choices players make throughout the quest, as different creatures will inhabit player environments based on factors like climate, temperature, and the availability of certain foods.
Birthdays: The Beginning is developed in a partnership between Guilty Gear series developer Arc System Works and Toybox Inc., a studio founded by Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada. Wada serves a key creative role in the project, drawing the attention of Harvest Moon fans in search of laid-back gameplay in a similar vein as their preferred farming simulation series.
Wada’s previous design credits include Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, Harvest Moon 64, and Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. Prior to founding Toybox Inc., Wada served as an executive producer for cult-status games like Deadly Premonition, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Half-Minute Hero, Shadows of the Damned, and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle.
NIS America did not address the delay beyond a brief press release and an updated Facebook cover photo. The reasoning behind the shift in release date remains unclear, but the project remains in development.
Birthdays: The Beginning is scheduled to launch digitally and at retail in North America on May 9. A European launch is scheduled for May 12.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.