During the Switch reveal trailer, Nintendo showed off an arena with thousands of screaming Splatoon fans, and it seems that the gaming company wants to make this a reality. Nintendo has announced that spectator mode will be coming to Splatoon 2, a feature that was notably missing from the first game.
For a while it was uncertain if the Switch would support LAN adapters or other USB peripherals, as it doesn’t have a built in Ethernet port. This was a major concern for competitive Nintendo gamers that want the absolute minimum latency when playing Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, or Splatoon. This announcement cements the fact that the Switch can handle more than wireless play. It also opens up the possibility for other USB adapters, such as the Gamecube controller adapter that’s pretty much necessary for competitive Super Smash Bros.
The Splatoon competitive scene has largely been underground. Because there hasn’t been a great way to view the game, it hasn’t taken off on streaming site Twitch. Couple that with the overall low sales of the Wii U, and the install base isn’t very large. But Nintendo’s Switch is exciting many, and it’s likely the console will outsell the Wii U by a good margin.
Splatoon itself was a major success for Nintendo. It was released as a multiplayer-only affair for a console with very few sales. The game also lacked some key features at launch that were later added in via updates. But considering all of that, Splatoon, which was a completely new IP, sold 4.61 million units worldwide. With only 13.82 million Wii U units sold to date, that means 33 percent of Wii U gamers own a copy of Splatoon.
Splatoon 2 is set to release later this year for the Switch.
Update: Nintendo has released a video detailing Splatoon 2’s Global Testfire. Think of it as beta access that lets Nintendo test the game with a large player base. The Testfire will go on from March 24-26 during six one-hour blocks.
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.