Electronic Arts revealed that a trio of high-profile sequels — Titanfall 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and a new Battlefield game — are on track to hit store shelves by the end of the company’s next fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2017.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed the existence of all three of the upcoming titles during the publisher’s quarterly earnings call for the final months of 2015. (Technically, October-December, 2015 is the third quarter of the company’s 2016 financial year. Weird, right?) More specifically, Wilson said that the next entry in the Battlefield series will be released during the 2016 holiday season, and suggested that the next Mass Effect would be released “later in the fiscal year.”
“Looking ahead to FY2017 … an all new Battlefield game from DICE will arrive in time for the holidays,” Wilson said. “We are excited to have a new Titanfall experience coming from our friends at Respawn, and of course Mass Effect: Andromeda from the team at BioWare will launch later in the fiscal year.”
EA said Mass Effect: Andromeda, a new story kicking off a new post-Shepard phase in the Mass Effect series, would come out during the 2016 holiday season when the game was announced at E3 2015.
Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment confirmed it would collaborate with Electronic Arts on a Titanfall sequel back in March, 2015, about a year after the game’s release. While Respawn developed the original as an Xbox One exclusive, Respawn CEO Vince Zampella said the upcoming game will launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
Wilson’s announcement marked the first official mention of a 2016 entry for the Battlefield franchise, though word of a new game in the mostly annualized franchise — Battlefield: Hardline was pushed back from October, 2014 to March 17, 2015 — was expected; if not during this call, than later this year.
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.