Its been another busy week in gaming with Halo CE Remaster rumours, Nintendo apparently the only ones in the games industry who can turn a profit with out mass layoffs, new Intel chips to help in their battle against ARM, everyone laughing at the proclomations of Sonys CEO, and looking forward to the Xbox showcase next week where Gears of War 6 is expected to feature.
Halo Evolved – again
Microsoft is reportedly working on a remaster of Halo: Combat Evolved, the original Halo game from 2001. Of course Halo CE has already been remastered with the anniversary edition, but this is much derided by the fan base for taking so many liberties with the art style of the original. Many areas of the original are cold and dark and sparsely decorated, which gives the game an eerie quality. How much of this can be carried over to a remastered version for modern audiences remains to be seen.
For Halo fans there are plenty of questions left to answer (will it have sprint?). What game engine will it use? Is this what Certain Affinity have been working on all this time? is the sequel to Halo Infinite still being worked on? Will it be any good? The discussion on Twitter and Reddit is sure to last many many months to come!
This remastered version is being considered for release on PlayStation consoles as part of Microsoft’s “Project Latitude” program to bring some Xbox games to other platforms.
However, Microsoft has stated they are not planning to go “fully multiplatform” and will still have some Xbox exclusive games. The games currently being considered for multiplatform release under Project Latitude include Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, Age of Mythology: Retold, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Starfield, the Halo: CE Remaster, and Doom: The Dark Ages.
PC players really just want a PS5
Sony CEO outlines plans for launching titles on PC and how these will impact PS 5 sales. Also they expect PC releases to be a sales driver for pc gaming. Seems like everyone reported on this but tweets from Tom at The Verge and others show this to be not a very good idea.
Nintendo buck the trend
Nintendo are famed in the games industry for always doing their own thing. When others were chasing pixel and polygon shifting power in the PS2 and Xbox 360 days, Nintendo were dusy releasing family friendly consoles (at a family friendly price) and selling them by the bucket load. So it should come as little surprise that while the rest of the industry deals with an uncertain economy, over expansion and the effects of mass consolidation, Nintendo are holding on to their talent and even expanding their staff base. Now if only the rest of the industry would see the benefit of investing in your staff and growing your pool of talent, instead of chasing short term goals and pleasing share holders.
Gears 6 is on its way
After the somewhat controversial Gears 5, in which we were subjected to large semi open world sections of bland nothingness (dont get me wrong the environments were stunning, but really what was the point), rather than the tight duck and cover shooter that made the series popular, it seems increasingly likely we will see a Gears 6 announcement at the Xbox state of play event next week. This announcement, plus the news that a new Doom game is on the way (cross platform) and the next Call of Duty will be coming to GamePass should go some way to repairing the damage done by Xbox’s mixed messaging around the future of the platform, specifically the console itself.
New Intel CPUs
New Intel CPUs have been announced and whilst on the suraface this is not gaming news but one that make me think we could be seeing a new generation of devices that takes advantage of the power savings here very soon. Given what Sarah Bond said about upcoming devices being very exciting this sort of news gives me hope that Microsoft has something cooking.
See you next week for another round up of the weeks most interesting stories.
Twice the bits 
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