Gamer's Outpost Press (Archived)

by Paul Tassi via Forbes

Every year there are a number of gaming controversies or odd new stories that end up being memorable, but this year, the one that takes the cake is the absolutely bizarre saga of Sony’s PS4 Slim. It’s a video game console that Sony will not acknowledge officially exists, but it’s made its worldwide debut all the same in something that transcends the very concept of a “leak.”

A “leak” is when we hear whispers about the horsepower of the Neo and Scorpio, or the concept of Nintendo’s probably-portable NX. But with the PS4 Slim, despite Sony not admitting the system exists, the unit itself has already made its way into the wild via allegedly broken street dates, and has even been reviewed in full by one reporter who got her hands on one.

The obvious notion is that Sony is waiting until its September 7^th PlayStation show to announce the Slim alongside the Neo, but the timeline of events here has been nothing short of bizarre.

August 21^st – Images of the PS4 Slim, including full packaging for the unit,first appear on NeoGAF via a listing on the UK’s Gumtree, offering the system for sale.

by Will Nicol via Yahoo! Tech

It hasn’t even been three years since Sony released the PlayStation 4, yet both Sony and Microsoft have more powerful consoles in the works. After the seven-year life span of the PS3, a new PlayStation may seem sudden, but Sony’s new console isn’t an entirely new device. Instead, Sony will launch the PlayStation 4 “Neo,” an upgraded version of the current console that features more powerful components.

Why iterate on the PS4? Technology moves fast, and consoles quickly become outdated in terms of performance and graphical power as PC hardware continues to advance. By updating console technology over the course of a generation, Sony — and Microsoft with its recently announced Project Scorpio — can provide console users with gaming experiences that won’t lag too far behind those on PCs. In a way, console manufacturers are simply following the model set by other devices, namely smartphones, improving on hardware rather than trying to reinvent the wheel with a each generation.

Although Sony has yet to formally reveal its console, leaks and rumors have flooded the internet for months. Here are some of the bigger rumors and leaks about the new PS4, some substantiated by Sony, some not.

Name and specs

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Andrew House confirmed reports that Sony will launch an upgraded version of the PlayStation 4, which Sony internally referred to as “Neo,” in June, 2016. In an interview with the Financial Times, House suggested the new “high-end” PS4 would support 4K resolution.

The PlayStation Neo codename and the console’s specs were initially reported in April, 2016 by Giant Bomb, based on documents outlining Sony’s plans for the console. According to the report, the Neo’s CPU will apparently have a faster clock speed, running at 2.1GHz  — up from the current model’s 1.6GHz — and a more advanced AMD GPU with 36 compute units (CUs) running at 911MHz, up from 18 CUs running at 800MHz. The Neo may also have an increased memory bandwidth of 218GB/s. A 42-page report about Sony’s roadmap for the Neo with the same specs, rumored to be the report Giant Bomb cited, leaked to the public in July, 2016.

These hardware improvements would allow for better performance and graphical fidelity. In particular, The Neo can support 4K resolution and virtual reality, which is fitting given that Sony is producing both 4K televisions and the PlayStation VR headset. For those unsure what 4K means, when it comes to televisions, 4K refers to pixel resolutions of 3,840 × 2,160, which offers four times as many pixels as a typical 1080p display.

Giant Bomb’s sources indicated that, although Sony is not mandating that developers support 4K, Neo versions of games must have frame rates that meet or surpass the current frame rates on the current PS4.

The advent of virtual reality seems like a good reason for designing a better PlayStation. Although PlayStation VR will be compatible with the current model PS4, virtual reality is incredibly taxing on even high-end PCs. If Sony wants to offer a competitive VR experience, Neo’s more powerful hardware is a rational step.

PS4 and Neo will coexist

When owners of the current PS4 hear about the Neo, they may worry that they will need to buy the new model in order to play the latest games. Speaking to the Financial Times, Sony Interactive CEO Andrew House assured audiences that all PS4 games released in the future will run on the current PS4 model. This is in line with the Giant Bomb report, which asserted that not only will all PS4 games be compatible on both models, but that Sony plans to prohibit developers from designing features, modes, or unlockables exclusively for the more powerful hardware. Moreover, multiplayer modes cannot separate users on regular the PS4 and Neo.

According to the Giant Bomb report, PS4 games released from October onward will be required to make games ship with two discrete optimizations; one for the standard PS4 and another for the “Neo.”Developers can also patch older games to support the Neo hardware, if they wish to do so.

by Giancarlo Valdes via Venture Beat

Four U.S. soldiers against the army of a notorious drug cartel doesn’t sound like a fair battle. But Ghost Recon players have been in dire situations before.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands (heading to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC next year on March 7) is the latest installment in the long-running tactical shooter franchise. This time around, the action takes place in Bolivia, which publisher Ubisoft says is the biggest open-world it has ever made. These massive games (including Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs) are an important part of the French company’s success in the $99.6 billion game industry.

In Ghost Recon: Wildlands, the Santa Blanca cartel has taken over Bolivia’s cocaine supply. Santa Blanca’s leader is the brutish El Sueño, and it’s up to the four Ghost operatives to take him down and dismantle his empire from the inside.

I wasn’t impressed with Wildlands at all when I first saw it last summer. I watched a presentation that was so dramatic that I couldn’t take it seriously. At the end of it, I still wasn’t sure why Wildlands needed an open world. But after playing it at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show with three other players, I can see why developer Ubisoft Paris is so bullish about it.

According to senior producer Nouredine Abboud, Wildlands is the culmination of four years of work that began shortly after the release of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier in 2012.

“And at the end of Future Soldier, the big answer [of what to do next] was to have a large playground. In this large playground, you can actually choose everything: you choose the location, the time of day, the weapons, etc.,” said Abboud in an interview with GamesBeat. “As opposed to games that have smaller maps where you have limitations … . Being in this big map, it’s exactly like the soldiers on the battleground [in real life].”

“We needed this big map because we wanted the player to be able to play depending on their play style,” added creative director Eric Couzian.

Adapting with your teammates

Wildlands has more than 100 story missions, and you can tackle them (with up to three online friends or with computer-controlled teammates) in any order you want. Everything you do — like interrogating cartel leaders or disrupting their supply chains — will bring you closer to El Sueño.

Unlike past Ghost Recon games, the designers haven’t scripting anything. Couzian told me the A.I. is “completely autonomous,” and enemies will behave differently depending on the time of day, the weather, and the ecosystem (you’ll fight in jungles, deserts, mountains, and more).

In the demo, it was a sunny day as my team embarked on a mission to capture a Santa Blanca lieutenant. After using our drones to scout the small compound from above and mark the enemies on our screens, we tried to take out as many people as we could with our sniper rifles. But our main target freaked out and ran away — Couzian later told me that guy is a coward, so he’ll always try to escape if he thinks he’s in danger. The lieutenant hopped in a car and drove away as my team scrambled down the hill on foot to chase him.

We grabbed a few vacant cars on the road and cornered the target at a nearby gas station, where he had reinforcements waiting for us. In the end, my team interrogated him for intel. But if we had been more careful in the beginning, we could’ve avoided the chase altogether and grabbed the guy in the compound.

“It’s also why the open world is so interesting,” said Couzian. “We don’t know where the action can lead you because the A.I. will escape and grab a car and then it’s up to you to decide how to chase him.”

For our next mission, we headed to the Rosario prison village to gather more information about a local cartel boss. A helicopter was next to the gas station, so we used it to get to Rosario quickly. In the full game, however, grabbing a chopper won’t be that easy; the developers placed it there for the demo. You can’t just summon a vehicle whenever you need it. Instead, you’ll have to find areas in Bolivia where the enemy keeps their helicopters (along with the 59 other types of vehicles you might want) and steal them.

At the village, the four of us split into smaller two-man teams: one to take care of the snipers, and the other to destroy the mortars. As it turns out, drug cartels don’t like it when you blow up their stuff. My partner and I killed a few stragglers as we carved a path to our objective. After downloading files from a PC, we all jumped into a jeep and drove away.

Part of Ghost Recon’s DNA

While the demo was fun, I hope Wildlands isn’t just about killing my way through a third-world country. It’d be a waste to build such a huge chunk of land solely for fighting. I want to explore and talk to the civilians and find out about their lives, too. One of my favorite things to do in Assassin’s Creed’s historic cities is to just walk around and see the sights without worrying about who I’m murdering next. Even The Division, another huge Ubisoft-made shooter, has that to some extent.

Either way, it was just a matter of time before Ghost Recon morphed into an open-world game. Both Abboud and Couzian have been working on the series for over a decade, so they’ve made significant changes to the series before. They said a Ghost Recon game has to have three things: tactical combat, reconnaissance gameplay, and the social experience of playing with your friends. For the Ubisoft Paris team, Wildlands is the next big step in that formula.

“We can clearly say that if the initial Ghost Recon team had access to the tools we have right now, they probably would have done what we’re doing,” said Abboud.  “They would have gone open world because that’s really in the DNA of Ghost Recon.”

by Alex Gibson via We Got This Covered

While Uncharted 2: Among Thieves’ might have put Naughty Dog on the map, few would disagree that the smash hit post-apocalyptic action game The Last Of Us is the studio’s finest work. In fact, The Last Of Us is arguably one of PlayStation’s greatest ever exclusive games and one of the must-play essential titles of the last generation. No surprises then that a sequel to that much revered game is eagerly awaited, and now that the critically acclaimed final chapter to the Uncharted series, A Thief’s End, is done and dusted, many gamers are frantically scouring the internet for any details or clues to its release date.

Indeed, many had predicted that an announcement from Naughty Dog during E3 might well occur, and there was plenty of good reason behind that bold claim. After all, Naughty Dog stunned PlayStation fans back in late 2011 when it first teased trailers for the original The Last Of Us barely a month after the launch of Uncharted 3. Based on that logic, E3 2016 seemed like E3 was a potentially perfect outlet to tease the studios next project. Sadly, that wasn’t to be and we were instead presented with Days Gone, the long awaited unveiling of Sony Bend’s new IP.

Of course, the announcement of Days Gone was exciting in itself given that gamers have tentatively been predicting its emergence for years after radio silence from Sony Bend for what has seemed like an eternity. Ironically, the studio’s last two games, both debuting over 4 years ago now, were spinoff titles based on Naughty Dog’s own Uncharted franchise. Bend has been a lesser known entity in the Sony first party eco system, and while Uncharted: Golden Abyss was a fine game, Days Gone is Bend’s first foray into developing their own AAA IP; a third person action adventure title nonetheless, which are apparently the only sort of games that Sony are interested in commissioning at the moment.

Rumors suggesting the narrative premise for Days Gone had actually long been floating around the internet, with several inside leaks suggesting the game would indeed be an open world survival horror title from as far back as early 2015. Yet, nobody could have imagined the Days Gone would follow such a similar beat to The Last Of Us in regards to theme and aesthetic.

There are those that argue against that comparison, citing differences in tone and game design as significant enough to differentiate the two franchise, and while there is some merit in that sentiment, even the strongest advocates surely can’t deny that Days Gone, a narrative partly inspired by The Walking Dead television show, does put it extremely close to The Last Of Us in regards to overall genre and premise.

Sure, Days Gone might be less linear in its game design, incorporate a motorbike for traversal and feature much more frequent combat, but the crossover with The Last Of Us is still obvious. Both titles transcend the zombie genre, a genre that is still firmly the zeitgeist of the times. Clickers, walkers, freakers; call them what you want, give them whatever degree of intellect, bill them as infected or mentally ill, it’s all essentially the same. Similarly, you can expect familiar narrative themes like morality, ethics, family and gender intertwined in a story that explores sociology in a world devoid of law and order. These are themes we’ve not only explored in The Last Of Us but others post-apocalyptic video games as well, not to mention movies, television and comics.

So, beyond mere commentary on the obvious similarities of the two games and the slightly tired but still ever popular zombie genre, how does any of this impact The Last Of Us 2? Certainly, we’re pretty sure that Neil Druckman and co. are working on the sequel, not least because we’ve had several slips of the tongue from industry insiders and voice actors such as Nolan North regarding future workings on the title. More importantly, however, Druckman previously stated that he and Bruce Straley were throwing ideas around for a sequel prior to being asked to work on Uncharted 4, and it’s that information that perhaps provides an interesting case study in regards to studio direction.

As a publisher, Sony has control over the direction of their first party studios, and while a sequel is highly likely (Sony would be mad to walk away from the potential earnings of such a massively popular IP), one shouldn’t be surprised if the game was put heavily on the backburner so it doesn’t detract attention from Days Gone.

Indeed, the two titles are so similar in genre it seems unlikely that Sony would want either of them launching anywhere near each other. Perhaps the most the alarming news for those eagerly anticipating news on The Last Of Us 2 is that Days Gone isn’t as far through development as many people had expected. In fact, when quizzed about the release date for Days Gone, the game’s lead director, John Garvin stated that it was not safe to assume that it would launch in 2017. In light of that information, Days Gone’s long development period is likely to push a sequel from Naughty Dog to 2019 or possibly 2020.

It seems likely that Naughty Dog won’t be encouraged by Sony to divert too many resources to a sequel title to The Last Of Us. Indeed, while it’s possible the game is in a pre-alpha state already, you’d wager that Naughty Dog are busy giving attention to other projects such as Uncharted 4’s single player DLC. It’s also unclear how much time Druckman is being allocated to assisting with The Last Of Us movie. We’ve heard rumors that the film adaptation isn’t going smoothly, with Druckman himself commenting that he’s only been involved briefly as the script is being finalized. Yet, you’d have to imagine his involvement would ramp up once filming is underway, if that ever occurs.

We’ve waited a long time for Bend’s new IP, and the studio can probably be satisfied with the interest the teaser trailer piqued at E3, but equally as many eyebrows were raised when presented with yet another zombie post-apocalyptic genre of video game. Of course, The Last Of Us’s overwhelming popularity sets it apart from generic zombie titles and the same eyebrows might not have been raised if that had been the announcement at E3, even despite its extremely similar premise.

Unfortunately, those who were hoping for a quick post Uncharted 4 announcement and then a speedy turnaround time between release dates as per Uncharted 2 to the original The Last Of Us should probably taper that expectation. It would be mad to ignore that Days Gone might well seriously impact when we’re likely to see a sequel for The Last Of Us. Indeed, while its pleasing to finally get a glimpse of what the talented team at Bend have been working on, it’s a shame that it likely comes at the expense of a sequel to Naughty Dog’s masterpiece and arguably PlayStation’s best ever game.

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by Erik Kain via Forbes

Microsoft just made a huge mistake that the company can’t walk back from during its E3 2016 media briefing this weekend.

First, the company announced a brand new Xbox One: The Xbox One S. This is a slimmer, sleeker, and more powerful Xbox One than the big, clunky thing we have on our entertainment stands at the moment. It’s more attractive and, according to Microsoft, will even play games better thanks to its High Dynamic Range capabilities. It will also play 4K video.

A limited edition of the Xbox One S will launch in early August. It comes with a 2TB hard drive and costs $399. Two standard versions will be available soon after. The smallest and cheapest is a 500GB edition for $299, and one step up you can get the 1TB version for $349. (Limited is obviously the way to go given how fast modern games eat up hard drive space.)

This, in and of itself, would have been a really terrific announcement for Microsoft to make. It would have been a great console to sell this holiday season, both on its own and as part of various bundles.

Unfortunately, Microsoft then shot itself in the proverbial foot. They also announced the Xbox One “Scorpio,” an even more powerful console, with a release date in 2017.

The Scorpio is much faster and more powerful than vanilla Xbox One, from graphics oomph to memory bandwidth. Perhaps more importantly, the Scorpio is likely more powerful than its upcoming competition.

According to an analysis at Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry, the Scorpio is almost certainly faster than the upcoming PS4K Neo console as well—possibly as much as 40% faster. Read that analysis for all the juicy details. Suffice to say, Scorpio looks like it will be a beast—a huge upgrade from vanilla Xbox One in almost every sense.

That’s terrific! It’s almost like having a new console, and it transforms the way we think about upgrading consoles into something far more akin to upgrading mobile phones.

Microsoft’s mistake wasn’t to create the Scorpio, which could easily give them a new boost in the console race they’re currently losing to Sony. Their mistake was announcing it at the same time they announced the Xbox One S. The announcement turns many potential “S” buyers into potential “Scorpio” buyers. Most consumers won’t have cash on hand to upgrade vanilla to “S” and then “S” to “Scorpio” just a year later.

What Microsoft should have done was remain tight-lipped about Scorpio to give the Slim a chance to actually sell and flourish. They should have kept their plans under wraps until at least early 2017, if not E3 2017, where such an announcement would have made waves (especially with units to play on.)

This was a huge wasted opportunity for Microsoft, and could very easily result in lost sales of the new S this Fall and holiday season. On the other hand, it’s nice for budget conscious consumers. It gives them a clear roadmap so that they can easily decide whether to upgrade now or wait.

For that, at least, we can tip our hats to Microsoft. It’s always nice when to hold off on making large purchases, when something better is just around the corner.

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by Tom Warren via The Verge

Microsoft had a bold vision for its Xbox One console that involved its Kinect accessory. While the Kinect for Xbox 360 was one of the most popular game console accessories of all time, a bundled Kinect with the Xbox One introduced a $100 price premium over the PS4 competition. Despite switching course and unbundling the Kinect, Microsoft hasn’t recovered yet in the games console battle, with reports suggesting it has sold 20 million Xbox One consoles vs. Sony’s 40 million PS4 shipments.

Microsoft unveiled a new Xbox One S console on Monday, and it’s 40 percent smaller with a Bluetooth controller. It looks great, and it’s arguably the console Microsoft should have shipped originally. While it looks Surface-inspired, sources familiar with Microsoft’s Xbox work tell us that Mike Angiulo’s team helped build the new Xbox ahead of Surface chief Panos Panay’s rise to leader of Microsoft’s hardware efforts.

Hardware planning takes years, and it’s clear Microsoft quickly realized that bundling Kinect was a mistake. The new Xbox One S doesn’t even include a Kinect port, and Microsoft has created a USB adapter that you’ll need to use if you want Kinect support. It’s a free adapter if you already own an Xbox One and Kinect. “In order to make the Xbox One S as compact as possible and make all of these updates, we removed the dedicated Kinect port from the back,” explains Matt Lapsen, general manager of marketing for Xbox devices. Perhaps surprisingly, the HDMI-in ports for Microsoft’s Xbox TV controls are still there, alongside an IR blaster to control set-top boxes.

Microsoft is now working to bring Cortana to the Xbox One in an update this summer. While it was originally supposed to debut last year, Microsoft announced Cortana would require Kinect at E3 last year, before mysteriously delaying the feature. It’s clear part of that delay was related to getting headsets working with Cortana, and you won’t need a Kinect to use the digital assistant this summer.

The removal of the Kinect port on the Xbox One S is the final admission that Microsoft’s accessory is dead. It’s hard to imagine that the Project Scorpio console will re-introduce a Kinect port next year, and the accessory wasn’t even mentioned during any of Microsoft’s demos on stage. Microsoft claimed at E3 last year that “there are games actually that are coming out for Kinect,” but at E3 this year the only mention is a USB adapter that admits Kinect failed.

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by Ollie Barder via Forbes

The news that Sony has got a 4K update to the PS4 is indeed surprising, as it shows a worrying degree of hubris that I thought would have been excised during the PS3 era. After all, what will the already 40 million strong install base think by having their PS4’s made redundant like this?

In the weirdest form of a company competing with an almost imaginary foe, Sony has decided to keep up with the likes of the PC market and update their PS4 to support 4K, among other improvements, as well as hoping they will also supersede the Xbox One even further.

The reality is that the PC and console market have always been entirely separate. PC has always been in ahead of what consoles could do and that didn’t stop the likes of the PS2 selling 150 million units in its lifetime. In addition, the Xbox One fell behind the PS4 not down to its technical faults but due to its overall focus as a system.

by Matt Weinberger via Business Insider

In the last two years, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has made huge strides in how the world looks at the company.

Once viewed as an imperialist tech superpower, Microsoft is now considered a gentle giant willing to partner up with anyone and everyone.

From releasing more Android and iPhone apps, to making its flagship technologies available on competing platforms like Linux, Microsoft is much more open than it used to be.

But this week at the annual E3 video-game expo, Nadella’s peace-and-love philosophy is going to get its biggest test to date, as the company will get up in front of the notoriously finicky gamer community to share the latest on the ongoing merger between the Microsoft Xbox One video-game console and the Windows 10 PC.

Some of the strongest Microsoft-at-E3 rumors on the table include an expanded partnership with recent bestie Facebook to bring the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset to the Xbox One console, and the opening up of the digital Xbox Store to let players on both Xbox and Windows 10 buy games for the other platform.

Those rumors dovetail nicely with Nadella’s broader ambitions. Microsoft sees Windows 10, which came to the Xbox One console in late 2015, as a single platform for every kind of device — PCs, tablets, phones, virtual reality, and, yes, video-game consoles — so your apps and data can follow you everywhere and anywhere.

“Microsoft holds a unique platform role and is strongly positioned to bridge the community divide between core PC and console gamers,” IHS analyst Piers Harding-Rolls told GamesIndustry.biz.

It’s a now-or-never moment for Microsoft: The rival Sony PlayStation 4 has sold 40 million consoles, while estimates place the Xbox One in the neighborhood of 20 million. (Microsoft no longer reports Xbox sales figures.) Meanwhile, Windows 10 has over 300 million users — giving Xbox games a vast, untapped audience.

Given that Microsoft’s smartphone ambitions never took hold, the Xbox One is the first non-PC, consumer device where the company’s multidevice, one-store-to-rule-them-all approach will really get put to the test.

The problem is that by bringing the Xbox and the PC closer together, Microsoft also risks alienating its most passionate, and most demanding, customers: gamers.

Now or never

In 2013, the Xbox One console had a disastrous launch. It was originally pitched as an all-in-one multimedia device, combining movies and TV with video games — an idea that was met with disdain by its core gamer demographic, who demanded a more dedicated video-games machine.

Microsoft compounded the error with unclear communication on whether the Xbox One would function without an internet connection, which was meant as an antipiracy measure. The final nail in the coffin was a price tag that was $100 higher than the PlayStation 4, thanks to a mandatory Xbox Kinect body-tracking sensor that few games actually took advantage of.

The ensuing backlash hobbled sales of the Xbox One out of the gate, a wound from which it never totally recovered. Meanwhile, sales of the PlayStation 4 exploded.

Microsoft has made several improvements and course-corrections to the system since, but Xbox One sales never properly accelerated, and the company has been living in the shadow of that disaster ever since.

Now Microsoft is throwing itself right back into harm’s way. The PC has a certain stigma, often well deserved, as being a more complicated way to play games. Where a video-game console is designed to just work with the titles designed for it, PC gaming requires ensuring that your hardware and software meet certain minimum specs.

So there’s a concern as to whether putting Windows on the Xbox might overcomplicate what’s been a very straightforward, plug-and-play way to game.

Worse, gamers are wary that the Xbox One could just become more like a generic PC, drifting away from its focus on gaming to fulfill Microsoft’s relentless push to put Windows 10 everywhere.

The bigger picture

To preemptively deflect charges of getting away from gaming, expect Microsoft to keep hammering its message of more-games-everywhere.

With an expanded digital store, and an Oculus Rift virtual-reality integration, it means that the Xbox One will one day have access to Windows games, Xbox games, and Oculus VR games. It’s a potentially more vast games library than Sony could ever muster with the PlayStation 4, even with its forthcoming PlayStation VR headset.

After all, even when Sony releases a new, more powerful version of the PlayStation 4 later this year, it’s still limited to PlayStation 4 games, and PlayStation 4 developers, and PlayStation 4 owners. Microsoft has access to Windows developers, and all of the more than 300 million Windows 10 users.

In so doing, Microsoft stands to increase overall adoption of Windows 10: Whether you’re playing on an Xbox or a PC, it’s all just Windows. With the growth of Windows 10, Microsoft stands to make money from stuff like transactions in the Windows Store or the premium Xbox Live gaming service.

Still, melding the Xbox One and Windows 10 also fulfills another strategic imperative for Microsoft. Nadella has long said that he sees the Xbox One as the company’s play for the living room and connected home, competing with the likes of the Amazon Echo and Apple TV.

That means the real test for Microsoft will be to choose its words, and its announcements, carefully. Microsoft may be newer and friendlier nowadays, but it’s walking a tightrope with an audience that could make or break its next big bet.

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by Dave Thier via Forbes

In a few days, Bethesda kicks off the annual E3 expo with its second-ever press conference, and the pressure is on. The company made an impressive debut last year with the official reveal for Fallout 4 as well as the surprise launch of Fallout Shelter, and rumors are beginning to swirl about what we’ll be seeing this year. We know we’ll be getting a look at Dishonored 2, and it’s reasonable to assume we’ll see the next major expansion for Fallout 4 as well. rumor has it we’ll also be getting Wolfenstein 2, The Evil Within 2, Prey 2, and, most interestingly, a remaster of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim for current-gen consoles.

That’s what Eurogamer and always talkative industry insider Shinobi602 are saying, at least. The remaster would come with updated visuals, all DLC and, crucially, mod support ala Fallout 4. That last one is probably the biggest deal, and the one thing that might rope in Skyrim players that devoured the thing first time around but might not might come back just for better visuals. After all, Skyrim already has a mature and developed modding scene, and I’d be interested in showing up for some new weapons, armor, enemies and the like.

It’s an exciting prospect on a certain level: I’m a sucker for Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, and I’ll play them wherever I can find them. Part pf me, however, wishes that the team wasn’t putting the effort into Skyrim. It was a great game, but we all played it not too long ago, and it wasn’t the best game in the series anyway. Some readers will already know where I’m going next: I’d sell my soul for a modern console remaster of Morrowind, but something tells me I’m not going to get it. It wouldn’t come with the same mod excitement: Morrowind has mods, of course, but they wouldn’t be up to par with modern visual expectations.

We’ll see, however. Bethesda has kept secrets before, and it’s entirely possible that the company has something up its sleeve for this press conference that hasn’t been leaked to death already. Check it out on Sunday.

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