The countdown finally reached zero, and the rocket that’s been patiently waiting in Fortnite’s enemy lair launched yesterday at 13:30 EST. Players gathered to watch, and for a moment, it looked like a scene from Cape Canaveral, where shuttles would blast off on orbital missions.
The launch was visible from most of the island, but it was also broadcast on in-game television screens, reinforcing that connection to Moonshot and giving the event a certain gravitas. The rocket climbed into the night sky, and the gathered players (generally) looked on peacefully.
But then things got strange. The rocket’s first stage burned out its fuel and detached, tumbling back to Earth (or wherever Fortnite is supposed to take place) and landing somewhere in Anarchy Acres. After a moment’s pause, the second stage ignited, and the rocket resumed its ascent, moving faster until it finally disappeared out of sight, leaving only a contrail.
Fortnite is the only one with hyperspace rockets, but ?
The rocket - or something like it - then appeared to fall back to terra firma, its nose pointed at the ground as four laser beams focused in on Tilted Towers. Once all four had lined up, the rocket’s third engine stage ignited and it hurtled toward its target - only to disappear into a shimmering crack in reality itself.
Another crack opened, this time over Moisty Mires, and the rocket emerged, flying horizontally across the landscape and again disappearing into a crack in the fabric of reality. Another crack opened near Loot Lake, and the rocket burst through at high speed, this time headed upwards. It hurtled back into the night sky, only to disappear again as it smashed a massive crack in… reality itself, apparently.

Halo is finally coming to your tv screen, Overwatch fans can't decide whether or not they like playing nice, and Lucasfilm is adjusting its future plans. It's the top five news stories you might've missed this week.

Time limits are a much maligned bit of game design. A single level with a race against time is fine, Halo's final warthog run or Call of Duty Modern Warfare's desperate fight through a nuclear silo. But turn that into a whole game? People still argue over The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Dead Rising. The creeping pressure is quite the stress, and finding a balance that still pays off people's potentially lengthy investment should they fail to meet certain actions in time is evidently not easy. Minit's solution is right there in the name and it's magic.
Minit has a time limit, at the end of which you will die and lose your progress through the game's world. Some things are kept but you'll be starting from the last bed you slept in. What makes it work? You're only sent back a mere minute in time. That sharp focus and tiny scale turns the time limit from just an obstacle and into a way to actively encourage the player. 60 seconds isn't much to lose and so instead of a frustration, it's a prompt to do things better, quicker and smarter next time. It pushes you to really engage with the world because, when every second counts, you've got to find every shortcut, every exploit and get very good at taking out or avoiding enemies. That self-imposed limit means the designers have to fill every space, every single screen with things to do as players will return again and again. Density over vastness.
This mechanic highlights so many of the problems in other game worlds, especially open worlds. Some games are so big, and yet we engage with such a small percentage of their space in a meaningful way. When time isn't an obstacle, why not have miles and miles of samey fields? "More is better" is such a common characteristic of big budget titles and the result is big spaces, filled with repetitive content and scarcely anything memorable. Our interactions with so many gaming worlds is passive. Even when they're pretty enough to make us stop and snap a screenshot we're still not learning them or unravelling them. They just want to get us to the next item on a checklist.

Looks like Sony didn't want Cross-play for a "dumb" reason according to former Sony boss, Xbox fans will be happy about the Fallout 76 Beta, and Reggie Fils-Aime explains Wii-U's failure.

Time limits are a much maligned bit of game design. A single level with a race against time is fine, Halo's final warthog run or Call of Duty Modern Warfare's desperate fight through a nuclear silo. But turn that into a whole game? People still argue over The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Dead Rising. The creeping pressure is quite the stress, and finding a balance that still pays off people's potentially lengthy investment should they fail to meet certain actions in time is evidently not easy. Minit's solution is right there in the name and it's magic.
Minit has a time limit, at the end of which you will die and lose your progress through the game's world. Some things are kept but you'll be starting from the last bed you slept in. What makes it work? You're only sent back a mere minute in time. That sharp focus and tiny scale turns the time limit from just an obstacle and into a way to actively encourage the player. 60 seconds isn't much to lose and so instead of a frustration, it's a prompt to do things better, quicker and smarter next time. It pushes you to really engage with the world because, when every second counts, you've got to find every shortcut, every exploit and get very good at taking out or avoiding enemies. That self-imposed limit means the designers have to fill every space, every single screen with things to do as players will return again and again. Density over vastness.
This mechanic highlights so many of the problems in other game worlds, especially open worlds. Some games are so big, and yet we engage with such a small percentage of their space in a meaningful way. When time isn't an obstacle, why not have miles and miles of samey fields? "More is better" is such a common characteristic of big budget titles and the result is big spaces, filled with repetitive content and scarcely anything memorable. Our interactions with so many gaming worlds is passive. Even when they're pretty enough to make us stop and snap a screenshot we're still not learning them or unravelling them. They just want to get us to the next item on a checklist.

Epic its 2019 Fortnite World Cup competition, which is open to all players and includes a not insignificant $100 million USD prize pool.
Fortnite's 2018-2019 competitive season, , will incorporate community events, online events, and major competitions all over the world. Anyone that wishes to participate is free to do so - but, to earn a spot in the World Cup, players will need to enter official qualifiers, which begin this autumn. The competitive season culminates with the Fortnite World Cup event itself in late 2019.
World Cup play will focus on solos and duos (although there'll apparently be "plenty of opportunities to squad up in competition too"), and Epic stresses that entry is based on merit - it won't be selling teams or franchises, and won't allow third party leagues to do so either.

Our E3 bulletins run every day this week. Previous entries: |
E3 2018 has now officially started. This fact is almost completely lost on those who have been working on it and watching it and creating disparate reams of #content on it, who have been processing announcements and livestreams that began last week. The harsh reality of the 21st century is that E3, like Black Friday and Brexit, can no longer be bound by the rules of time and will continue until morale and revenue improves.
As usual, opening was marked by a Nintendo happening, the scale of which has dwindled in recent years from full-bore conference to pre-prepared video, and this year hit its lowest ebb for a while with a performance that was light on wit, heavy on Smash Brothers, and yet which contained possibly the most significant release of the week in the form of Fortnite, which went live on Switch following the conference.

After nearly a decade of struggling to field a competitive basketball game, last year EA Sports that signal a better future for the NBA Live franchise. NBA Live 19 looks to continue the upward trajectory with some needed changes to the on-court action and some interesting additions to The One mode. Here's everything we learned from playing a couple games and chatting with creative director Connor Dougan.  GAMEPLAY

• NBA Live 19 introduces the Real Player Motion technology recently seen in EA Sports titles like FIFA 18 and UFC 3, which EA Tiburon believes has resulted in more realistic player animations. "When you compared us to 2K in the past it just wouldn't feel as smooth; we had this kind of stiffness," Dougan says. "With Real Player Motion and changing our player skeleton and models, we feel we have a nice jump in animation quality."
• Some of the new animations I saw in gameplay included new contested dunks, players fighting through screens during pick and rolls, and way more physicality off the ball.
• The new animation system comes hand-in-hand with reworked dribbling. Expect to see many more signature animations like LeBron James puffing out his chest and James Harden coming up the court with more relaxed body language and his standard crossovers. You can also pull off basic moves by flicking the left analog stick; you no longer always need to use the right analog stick, but if you do expect to find more moves for star players than before.
• EA also did a lot of "live environment" work to make the players better interact with the world around them. Expect to see players crashing into the stanchion, diving into the crowd, taunting one another, and even exchanging pleasantries with the opposing team's bench along the sidelines. 
• Overhauled triple-threat controls integrate new jab steps and a new pump fake system. 
• Building off last year's one-on-one gameplay, EA is bringing the cat and mouse game to off-ball interactions as well, which should hopefully make playing in space more engaging. You use the left trigger to engage in off-ball defense, which tries to slow down your mark. The offensive player has counters like V-cuts and L-cuts to break off your defending. 
• The reworked shooting system now includes varied jump heights and release points for different players, which should make it feel more authentic. 
• Last year's CPU A.I. had problems feeding star players. EA says this year's dynamic gameplay A.I. does a better job of recognizing when a star is heading up and will continue to feed a hot hand. Stars will strong personalities will start to talk trash when firing on all cylinders. 
• You can now switch to take control of an off-ball player in versus by holding the RB and flicking the analog stick toward the player you want to control. 
• You can triple-tap the steal button to perform a hard foul when you need to stop the clock.
• The transition game also gets a jump in CPU A.I. Expect to see players on the break cut to the hoop stronger and the trailing wing players space out for open threes.
• If you own a player by continually scoring on them or breaking their ankle, you can affect their mentality. When a player is adversely affected, their ratings take a hit. 
• To mix up replays, NBA Live 19 introduces cell phone cutaway highlights, where the perspective shifts to a person in the crowd capturing the play of note.

THE ONE

• Last year, you played as a former blue-chip college prospect trying to overcome a horrific injury. This year you start earlier in the journey as a hot high school prospect. Rather than go to college, you try to build your rep on the street courts. 
• Eventually if you earn enough prestige, you get invited to a pre-draft camp where you can prove your mettle by playing in a few prospect games. 
• During your rise to stardom, influencers and broadcasters will show off your highlights. 
• The dialogue system returns from last year, but it leans more heavily toward meaningful choices this time. 
• Expect to see more hairstyles, tattoos, and clothing options this year. 
• Cosmetics are no longer locked behind loot crates. You can buy what you want when you want. 
• The progression system is similar to last year, but adds a new wrinkle with the icon abilities. These abilities give you branching choices that let you to have more say over what type of specialist you are. Say you choose shot blocking as your icon ability. Eventually, you may be presented with a choice. For instance, do you want a higher percentage of success for each shot block, or extend the radius where your shot block is effective?
• EA has added several new traits to the progression as well. 
• EA realizes there were too many ball hogs in online team play last year, so it reworked the grading system to give players more points for teamplay and less for being selfish. If you take a bad shot, you will get hit with a -10. Doing it again knocks you another 20 points, and it continues to scale the punishment so people have way less incentive to try to shoot out of slumps. 

SQUAD

• Last year in The One's  Street mode you went to different venues to play with random collections of players. This year you can custom build your squad by earning players as you rack up Ws. As you beat different teams, you can add star players to your lineup that can be swapped out as you see fit. 
• The players you start with are largely scrubs and low-level NBA benchwarmers, but you can eventually earn stars and even NBA legends. 
• Your streetball endeavors take you to new courts around the world, including France, Brazil, and the Phillippines. Expect a few new North American courts as well. 
• Many of the live events in NBA Live 19 will be centered on earning new squad players who are only available for a limited time. 

We still have a lot to learn about how EA Tiburon plans to improve the Ultimate Team and Franchise Mode experieince of NBA Live 19. Stay tuned in the coming months as we dive deeper into the title. 
The free NBA Live 19 demo releases on August 24 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The First Trial starts on September 3 on Xbox One, and final release drops for both consoles on September 7. 

Developer Sumo Digital landed a hit with its 2012 kart-racing game Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Now, the developer is partnering with Sonic Team, stripping away the non-Sonic characters, and adding a new layer of team-based strategy for Team Sonic Racing.
In this new kart-racing title from Sega, the developers are focusing entirely on the Sonic universe, which means no Aiai or Ryo Hazuki this time around (sorry, fellow Shenmue fans). Instead, players get a roster of 15 Sonic characters. In the build I played, I could choose between Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, Shadow, Rouge, and E-123 Omega. Each character fits into one of three classes: speed, technique, or power. Once you choose a character, you're placed in a team of three based on the character's alliances; Sonic was always placed with Tails and Knuckles, while Rouge raced alongside Shadow and Omega.
When the race begins, it plays out much like a standard kart racer. Characters drift around corners, acquire consumable items, and avoid zany obstacles in the push to be first. In addition to the tried-and-true formula, players can help their teammates; you can gift items, request items, and slingshot around teammates by following their path. The game will also include a solo mode that removes the team-based mechanics, but outside of an occasional pure kart-racing foray, I don't foresee myself playing that mode much.
At the end of the race, it assigns points for your team based on where each member finished. This means you must help your team in order to actually win. In one of my races, my team finished third, fourth, and fifth, but because we were the most consistent team, we came in first in the race. In another race, I finished first, but my teammates were in the middle of the pack, so we came in second overall. I like that twist of having to keep an eye on your standing in the race, as well as your teammates.
When the game ships, it will feature stages that are both brand new to the Sonic universe, as well as familiar levels. While the developers wouldn't spill any additional details, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka tells me that some stages will feature recognizable songs from Sonic's past, and that Jun Senoue is composing the game. In addition, Senoue's fan-favorite band, Crush 40, performs the main theme.
Team Sonic Racing may not have the fancy transformations or characters outside of the Sonic universe, but it makes up for it with thoughtful team-based mechanics that add new twists to the formula. Sonic Team Racing is set to launch this winter on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.