Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is giving RPG fans something to look forward to in 2017 as his studio Mistwalker prepares to unveil its next highly anticipated project.
Speaking as part of a 4Gamer roundtable discussion this week, Sakaguchi revealed that Mistwalker’s next game will be announced in 2017 ahead of its upcoming release.
Sakaguchi additionally stated that Mistwalker has entered a partnership with Bravely Default developer Silicon Studio, giving the team access to a suite of developer tools and middleware for its next game.
Prior to founding Japanese game developer Mistwalker in 2004, Hironobu Sakaguchi was a key player during the production of several landmark Square games throughout the ’80s and ’90s, including Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and the original Final Fantasy. Sakaguchi stepped up to a directorial role for Final Fantasy II, III, IV, and V, leading the long-running series to worldwide popularity during its formative years.
Sakaguchi’s studio Mistwalker later produced two of the Xbox 360’s most popular JRPGs, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. After following up with The Last Story for the Nintendo Wii in 2011, Mistwalker turned its attention to mobile platforms, producing multiple Android and iOS apps in the years since.
Mistwalker found its greatest success to date in 2014 with Terra Battle, a free-to-play tactical RPG for iOS and Android devices. The project reunited Sakaguchi with fellow Final Fantasy series veterans Nobuo Uematsu, Hitoshi Sakimoto, and Yoshitaka Amano, and the finished product has been downloaded more than 2 million times across iTunes and Google Play.
Thus far, it’s unclear whether Mistwalker’s next project will be for consoles or mobile devices. Sakaguchi previously announced plans to produce a scaled-back console version of Terra Battle following its success on mobile platforms, but details regarding the proposed port are not yet known.
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.