The Nintendo Online mobile companion app will launch on July 21, along with the release of Splatoon 2, which will take advantage of the app for both stat-tracking and social features. The story of Nintendo’s tentative embrace of mobile phones has been somewhat dwarfed in the last year by the explosive success of the Switch and the NES Classic, but the launch of the mobile app and the company’s new online service for the Switch casts the spotlight once again on Nintendo’s moves into the 21st century.
SplatNet 2 is the Splatoon 2-specific section of the Nintendo Online mobile app. It will allow players to track different stage schedules, gear collected, global stats, and gameplay data like how much ink they have spilled. It will also serve as a hub for social activity, providing in-game voice chat and the ability for players to send multiplayer invites over social media and create private lobbies for their friends. SplatNet 2 (as part of the Nintendo Online mobile app) will be exclusive to smartphones.
The online subscription service will be free for all users when it launches later this month, but starting in 2018 will require a subscription fee. This will range from $4 per month up to $20 per year for the best value, which is about a third of the cost for a year of PlayStation Plus, for instance. In addition to online play and voice chat (though only through the mobile app as the Switch itself has no voice capability), the service will also act as a classic games library, offering a rotation of classic Nintendo titles for players to download similar to Xbox Games with Gold or Sony’s similar perks for subscribing. The first games announced for the rotation are Super Mario Bros. 3, Dr. Mario, and Balloon Fight, all for the NES.
Splatoon 2 follows up on Nintendo’s surprise hit from 2015, which reinvented the competitive, team-based shooter as a family-friendly, third-person explosion of color. As inklings, players shoot ink as both a weapon and a means to spread their color around the arena in an area control game, also allowing them to turn into squid form and quickly swim through their own color. The sequel adds more maps, gear, and modes, such as the new Salmon Run, a cooperative mode where two to four players fight off waves of enemies and bosses to collect enough power eggs (and live long enough) such that they can move to the next round. It also adds a new class of special weapons, such as missiles or an explosive hamster ball, which can be used once the player’s special meter is full.
Splatoon 2 launches alongside the first piece of the Nintendo Online mobile app on July 21, exclusively for the Switch.
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.