Doublejump Digest: June 4, 2018

This week in gaming: Pokémon fever returns in abundance, Fortnite is coming to Switch, PUBG Corp. gets testy, and more!

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Doublejump

5 min readJun 4, 2018

In the spirit of keeping our readers up-to-date with what’s going on in the video game industry, the Doublejump Digest is a brief collection of the major news stories that happened in the past week. Keep an eye out for the Digest every Sunday night, and head into the archive if you’ve missed any!’

Major news releases:

Game Freak reimagines the original Pokémon games on Switch and more:
During a press conference in Japan, publisher The Pokemon Company and developer Game Freak announced a slew of new Pokémon that are coming to Nintendo Switch and mobile devices.

While its next generation of RPG games are not due until next year, Switch players will get their hands on Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! This November. These titles are reimaginings of Pokémon Yellow and star Pikachu and Eevee as the player’s starter companions in their respective games. Both will integrate with Pokémon GO and will include all original 151 Pokémon.

“Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! are kind of inspired and based on Pokémon Yellow version,” Game Director Junichi Masuda told Polygon. “They had added elements from the animated series, like Team Rocket and the characters that appeared in the animated series.”

Luckily, Switch owners can already get their hands on Pokémon Quest, which is a free-to-play mobile take on the Pokémon franchise. Instead of the traditional Pokémon Trainer storyline, players will be tasked with either leading their fighting companions on “expeditions” or managing their base camps. The game is scheduled to be released on iOS and Android later this year, and none of the three versions will require an internet connection to play.

Report: Fortnite is coming to Switch, PUBG Corp. is suing Epic Games for alleged copyright infringement:
South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee has reportedly classified a Nintendo Switch version of Fortnite according to a since-removed listing on its website.

Eurogamer has reported that this news lines up with an earlier leak showing Epic Games’s popular shooter as one of the games that Nintendo intends to showcase at E3. Neither Nintendo nor Epic have confirmed the game’s Switch release as of this writing, but an announcement is very likely given the immense popularity of Fortnite: Battle Royale on other systems.

This popularity has seemingly troubled PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS developer PUBG Corporation, who has filed a lawsuit against Epic Games in South Korea alleging that Fortnite: Battle Royale infringes on its copyrighted game elements. PUBG Corp. told Bloomberg that the lawsuit “is a measure to protect our copyrights”, while a court official confirmed that the suit was originally filed in January.

This is not the first time that PUBG Corp. has sued competitors. Back in April, the company sued Chinese mobile gaming company NetEase over its Knives Out and Rules of Survival battle royale games.

Network Ten signs esports broadcast deal:
Network Ten and Gfinity Australia jointly announced (via Mediaweek) that they have partnered to be bring the 2018 Gfinity Elite Series Australia competition broadcast on ONE.

The competition began this past weekend and is scheduled to run until July 15. During this time, ONE will air a three-hour program every Sunday at 10am AEST that includes live Rocket League matches and highlights from ones for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Street Fighter V.

Ubisoft confirms Assassin’s Creed Odyssey:
Not long after the game’s existence was leaked through JeuxVideo-Live’s photo of a keyring donning its branding, Ubisoft took to Twitter to confirm that it will showcase Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at E3.

According to JeuxVideo-Live’s original report, Odyssey serves as a sequel to Assassin’s Creed Origins and is set in ancient Greece. This appears to be supported by the Spartan-like helmet shown in the Twitter tease and the game’s logo.

Chinese company invests US$100M into Bungie, Destiny 2 Year 2 reveal coming soon:
The Washington-based studio made the announcement on Friday, revealing that Chinese gaming company NetEase (yes, the company that PUBG Corp. is suing) has invested approximately US$100 million to help the studio develop “new worlds to come”.

When asked about the motivation behind the deal, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons explained to GamesIndustry.biz that it was not simply a way for Bungie to enter the Chinese gaming market.

“Really, what this partnership is about is bringing the expertise [that] NetEase has [in] sharing ideas and allowing us to incubate new ideas,” he explained. “There’s no explicit deal [to publish our games in China]. It’s more that they share our passion for games, our passion for building worlds that inspire friendships and building communities, and that’s the entire focus of it.”

He added that NetEase’s “significant amount of experience in mobile” and reiterated that Bungie has not yet begun working on anything but Destiny content before discussing the studio’s global ambitions.

“But ultimately, we want to be a global game and entertainment company,” he said. “We want to be able to build games that are inspiring people from around the world, and this partnership in part will allow us to do that, to begin that incubation and development process in a real way.

In related news, Bungie has announced that it will reveal its plans for Destiny 2’s second year of content during a livestream starting on Wednesday at 2am AEST. The developer will also host Season 3’s first Faction Rally event next week, which will feature a number of changes that are designed to making pledging to a particular faction “a meaningful choice”. One of these changes is the new Renown system that will allow players to scale up the difficulty of activities in exchange for greater rewards.

Notable game releases:

BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle (PC and PS4)
ONRUSH (PS4 and Xbox One)
Vampyr (PC, PS4, and Xbox One)

Major video releases:

Team Sonic Racing — Reveal Trailer:
Sonic and friends return to the racing arena this Summer!

Vampyr — Launch Trailer:
The folks at DONTNOD have invited us to live life as a vampire.

SOULCALIBUR VI — Maxi Announcement Trailer:
Forgot your swords, I’ll keep my nunchucks, thank you very much.

LEGO DC Super-Villains — Announce Trailer:
Minifig Joker is a force to be reckoned with!

Other news:

Evolve’s servers are shutting down this September: Polygon
Check out this month’s Games with Gold offering: YouTube
Astro and Nintendo have partnered to create some beautiful Zelda and Mario headsets: Polygon
Arc System Works has outlined “non-negotiable” streaming restrictions for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle: Gamasutra