Games News: Press Start: PS4 games to be announced night before launch, Project Gotham Racing could return and more

Sony may well be saving some game announcements until the very last moment... Photograph: Ina Fassbender/Reuters

A selection of links, hand-picked by the Guardian games writers.

More PS4 games will be announced the night before the console launches | VG247

This one speaks for itself:

GameTrailersTV will be doing a "#PS4ALLACCESS" thing on November 14 (PS4 Eve) at 11pm EST with Geoff Keighley pimping some "world premieres and announcements" that will "definitely" involved games that have not been announced for the console. (Perhaps including Journey.) You can stream it, so if you're waiting in line for your this could help you amp yourself up to dangerous levels.

For heaven's sake Sony, Keighley gets all of these things. Did you not see Cara and Keith's Powerlunch? We could have done this one for you!

Project Gotham Racing 'might have a future on Xbox' | CVG UK

IGN has been talking to Xbox exec Phil Spencer about lots of stuff – including the possibility of a new Project Gotham title!

Asked if the franchise has a future on Xbox, Spencer told IGN: "Maybe. I think the Kudos system that we had in PGR was the real secret sauce. I thought that was the thing that people really loved. It had a great feel, it was there at launch, which I think was important."

Okay, so he did go on to say that the slate is rather full of racing titles at the moment, but let's just dream while we can.

Bungie talks Destiny competitive multiplayer | GameSpot

Bungie community manager Eric Osborne has been chatting about how important competitive multiplayer is for the studio and forthcoming opus, Destiny:

"Competitive multiplayer is a huge focus for the team. We love it. We play it at lunch weekly. We fight about it. We constantly go back and forth. The perspectives vary wildly inside the studio," Osborne said.

"But it's already got to the point where it's really fun and it's really about tweaking and iterating and playing it every day and finding that spot we think is unique but also feels familiar for those who are into competitive multiplayer that's skill-based, 'I'm better than you not necessarily because of the gear I have but because I'm better than you.'"

No more word, though, on exactly how PvsP gameplay will be fed into the pervasive Destiny universe.

PS4 pre-orders "much, much, much higher" than past consoles | GamesIndustry International

Just in case you were concerned that Sony hadn't received enough interest in its new machine:

Sony's games business may have lost $8 million in its recent quarter, but the good news is that early indicators for the PlayStation 4 are very positive. In the company's earnings call (as transcribed by Seeking Alpha), CFO Masaru Kato enthused, "Compared to past platforms, the pre-orders that we have received for this new platform is much, much, much higher."

Sony is expecting to sell 5 million units by the end of its fiscal year on March 31, 2014, and the company is bullish on its projections given the pre-orders it's seen so far. An exact number hasn't been provided, but in August Sony Computer Entertainment boss Andrew House did note that over 1 million units had already been pre-ordered. After the launch of the PS3, the console went on to sell about 3.5 million units by the following March, so if Sony can hit 5 million in that same period with PS4 it would be a significant improvement.

Yes it would, especially as consoles were supposed to be an anachronism in smartphone era...

2DS enjoys half-term sales spike | MCV

Some good news for Nintendo's hardware division, at last:

2DS was launched three weeks ago alongside Pokémon X and Y. The machine was on sale for around £110, but last week major retailers including Argos, Amazon and Tesco cut the machine to under £100 to coincide with the school half-term

It proved to be the magic price point, as sales of 2DS has shot up 64 per cent week-on-week. 2DS was comfortably the UK's best selling console last week, and that's without combining the sales of 3DS and 3DS XL.

Now, if they could just start shifting Wii Us – company president Satoru Iwata has just admitted the machine has been a failure so far.

Chess 2: The Sequel - How a street fightin' man fixed the world's most famous game | Eurogamer.net

This is another really fascinating feature from Eurogamer, looking at how chess has often evolved in the past to meet the demands of different ages – and how it may need to evolve again, according to one Zachary Burns:

"The reason for that?" asks Burns. "Yes, we've explored the game very deeply, but even beyond that, it's just kind of a draw-y game. Even if one player has clearly demonstrated superior play - let's say one player only has a king remaining at the end and the other player has a king and two knights - even though they're at a significant material advantage, that game might still be a draw because draws are built so heavily into the game mechanics." Even worse, games often end in resignation when an actual victory starts to loom on the distant horizon. Chess really is in an odd place, then. In fact, modern chess is at risk of being a game that only amateurs and intermediates can have much fun with.

From here we meet David Sirlin – chess fan and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix re-balancer – and the concept of Chess 2.

In short, Eurogamer senior writer Christian Donlan does it again.

You can follow Press Start at Pinboard.

Source: Theguardian. com

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