Monthly Archives: June 2017

Nintendo has always been an important player in esports. While the spotlight in recent years has quickly been focused on PC titles like Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, and League of Legends, Nintendo has always been giving out love to its grass roots esports communities.

If you've ever been part of a Smash Bros. event, whether it's as a competitor or a spectator, you'll know that the eSports communities surrounding some of Nintendo's games are some of the best communities in the world.

Despite the healthy scenes that exist for some of Nintendo's top titles, they still haven't broken out to the mainstream audiences as massively as Counter Strike or League has in recent years.

Nintendo wants to work to bring their eSports titles to mainstream audiences, and they're interested in taking a different approach to get there.

Nintendo of America's president Reggie Fils-Aime has got a few words to say about Nintendo on eSports. He shared his ideas in a recent

A brand new free DLC pack is making its way to all Titanfall 2 players and it's going to change how weapon loadouts work.

The new DLC pack has been dubbed "The War Games" and it will be launched on June 27 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

The highlight of the new DLC pack has to be the first new map, aptly named War Games. This map takes some inspiration from the layout in Angel City to create a multi-level small city. The aesthetic for the War Games map is quite unique - all of the elements in the map feature a VR style graphics style.

Another new map will be making its way into the War Games DLC. The second map is called Traffic.

Traffic is considered by Respawn to be a "weather test site" that spans across an intersection between two busy modes. Traffic is locked down to the 6v6 Fire mode.

Gameplay-wise, the most important change to the new update is the additional weapon slot for a player's loadout. Starting June 27, it will now be possible for

Players of the original Destiny won't be getting much when transitioning to Destiny 2, but there are a number of freebies up for grabs to those that did spend time in the first game of the franchise.

Bungie published a new blog post to explain their plans for veteran Destiny players, starting by saying, "Even before our old friend Cayde revealed that your stuff (but, more importantly, his stuff) would soon fall prey to the Red Legion, we let you know that we were going to honor our veteran players who join us again in Destiny 2. Today, we're going to shine a little light on what you can expect if you count yourself among those ranks."

Bungie was hesitant to go into too many details - it seems that they've carefully planned out rewards for returning players, but they do not want to spoil the fun. Bungie did, however, mention that there will be a number of ways players will be able to showcase their early support for the Destiny franchise.

Firstly, Bungie announced a

What is Sonic Mania? We've explained exactly what the new Sonic game is in this blog, as well as providing details about its release date.

Sonic Mania is a brand new Sonic game that's planned to launch later this year. Sonic Mania will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and the PC. The game will first be available starting from August 15.

Sonic Mania is not the new Sonic Forces game. Instead, Sonic Mania is a celebration of 25 years of Sonic the Hedgehog - it's a throwback to the fans and it's a 2D re-imagination of the original Sonic the Hedgehog.

The graphics style for Sonic Mania is exactly what you'd expect for a retro re-imagination. The background music fits in perfectly as well, as does the gameplay. Sonic Mania is a new game, but you'll be convinced it isn't - it includes old levels from the original Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as 'remixed' versions of those same levels.

Players will be able to play as Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles

You may not have heard of Tencent yet, but if you're into eSports, you'll certainly be introduced to them during the next few years.

Tencent is a Chinese internet investment company that has purchased or invested in some of the biggest names in internet and video game history. Tencent has subsidiaries including Riot Games (League of Legends), Supercell, (Clash Royale) Epic Games, (Gears of War) and a range of other internet companies.

Over the next five years, Tencent has pledged to invest close to $15 billion dollars in the eSports industry. This $15 billion will go towards running tournaments across the globe, improving prize pools and payouts, developing new talent, and helping to lay the groundwork for the future of eSports and providing tools for upcoming teams and organizations to get off of the ground.

Tencent hasn't given too much information about what exact plans they have prepared for the next five years, but they seem very dedicated to turning eSports into

The range of rewards Twitch Prime is offering to gamers has been incredible so far this year. Next up, Twitch has teamed up with Blizzard to give out a free Overwatch Golden Loot Box to all Twitch Prime members.

Starting today, anybody with a Twitch Prime account (Or Amazon Prime account) can go onto Twitch to collect their free Golden Loot Box.

The Golden Loot Box is guaranteed to contain a legendary item of some sort. This offer will continue until August 2017. When August hits, the Overwatch promotion won't end. Instead, the Golden Loot Box will be replaced with 5 free loot boxes.

5 more loot boxes will then be given out for free in October. Blizzard also plans to launch a number of promotions through Twitch Prime for Hearthstone and for Heroes of the Storm later in the year as well. We'll let you know more about that when Blizzard releases more information.

It should be noted that if you have Amazon Prime already, you'll be able to sign up to Twitch Prime

Capcom is looking to team up with Bandai Namco to improve the matchmaking experience for Street Fighter V players.

Chances are, you may have noticed some network issues or latency with the Street Fighter V online servers. It's something that Capcom has acknowledged themselves, and they're actively looking to improve the situation.

In fact, Capcom is trying so hard to improve their online experience that they're teaming up with a team that knows how to do online matchmaking right; Bandai Namco.

The Tekken 7 matchmaking experience is far superior to what's offered in Street Fighter V, so the partnership between Bandai Namco and Capcom to improve the server performance in SF5 makes perfect sense.

Interestingly, the statement released by Capcom seemed to suggest that Bandai Namco and Capcom would be working together on more than just matchmaking performance in the future. This looks like the start of a long, beneficial partnership for both parties. You can see the

After recent events, ZeRo has built a new tier list for Super Smash Bros 4. The list includes each of the SSMB4 characters, besides the Miis, and has listed each one based on their performance in competitive events.

Whether you play competitively or simply want to know which characters to pick to give yourself a better chance at beating your friend when they come round to play, this new tier list is worth taking a look at.

Before we share the entire Smash Bros 4 tier list, let's first take a look at the top 10 picks from ZeRo. The top ten characters in ZeRo's tier list have been showcased below:

• 10: Mario
• 9: MarchCina
• 8: Fox
• 7: Sonic
• 6: ZSS
• 5: Diddy Kong
• 4: Sheik
• 3: Rosalina
• 2: Cloud
• 1: Bayonetta

Bayonetta was an interesting choice for number 1, especially considering that not a single Bayonetta player has won a major tournament with that character.

As ZeRo is

Perhaps after seeing the success of the Friday the 13th game, the Dead By Daylight developers have now pushed out their release for their game across PS4 and Xbox One.

The new Dead By Daylight console launch is available exclusively as a digital download from either the Xbox Games Store or the PSN marketplace. The new console version has a number of achievements for Xbox One and trophies on PS4 for players to unlock.

For those unaware, Dead By Daylight is a survival multiplayer game that gives players the chance to play as either one of the survivors or as the killer.

When playing as the single killer, you must attempt to kill each of the survivors before they can escape. When playing as the survivors, you must team up with other players to either escape or take the killer down.

There are a number of different killers available, some of which are based on real life serial killers or serial killers from pop culture. The killers available in the console release

Following the poor server performance during the release month for the new Friday The 13th game, the developers have apologized by offering the first upcoming DLC release to all players for free.

Gun Media wanted to thank their player base for the patience they have had with the server issues, and have mentioned that a previously planned paid DLC pack will now be pushed out to all players for free.

The new DLC pack includes a retro style Jason and a new soundtrack created by Swedish electronic artist Mitch Murder to fit the retro style. Each of the counselors has new clothing items in the upcoming DLC pack too, and every player will be rewarded with 13,000 customization points.

On top of the new content, Gun Media has revealed that they will be running a double XP event from June 23 to June 25.

Gun Media revealed in their press release that they were surprised by the huge following Friday the 13th the game received during its launch month. "Overall, Gun Media