The upcoming sequel to Destiny has been delayed from its projected release date in September, 2016, according to a report from Kotaku Friday.
Though Activision has never officially announced a Destiny sequel or its release date, documents outlining the publisher’s 10-year plan for the franchise were released during a 2012 lawsuit between Activision and former Infinity Ward developers. According to that plan, Bungie would deliver four Destiny games biennially, and an expansion pack in year between releases. Destiny was released in 2014, Destiny: The Taken King was released in 2015. “Destiny 2” should be released in 2016.
This should not come as a surprise to Destiny fans: As the report points out, the game’s development and planning has been plagued by design overhauls that have drastically changed the game’s business model and content. According to another report from Kotaku last year, the developer re-wrote the game’s narrative during the summer of 2013, less than a year before the game shipped.
On the other hand, Bungie has warned fans that the timeline fans they’ve held on to since 2012 does not reflect their development cycle. In September, 2015, Bungie community manager Eric Osborne said the ten-year plan was strictly a legal document that was not directly applied to the game’s development cycle.
“It has nothing to do with the development of the game proper, Osborne told Edge. “To think that somehow, before Destiny had shipped, we had some ten-year plan written down somewhere? It’s comical.”
According to Eurogamer, Bungie has ditched the 2016 DLC release calendar for Destiny in order to free up more resources to work on the new game.
Meanwhile, Bungie announced plans to launch a Valentine’s Day-themed event in Destiny next month called “Crimson Days” Thursday on Reddit. Bungie said it would announce a “larger game update,” which will come out some time “after February.”
It’s unclear whether or not Destiny 2 will still be released in 2016.
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.