Morning DLC: Video Game News & Rumors 1/29/2016

"When providing a rundown of its fiscal 2017 (April 2016-March 2017) heavy hitters in its latest financial report, EA offered the following statement:“In Q1, we’ll begin with the creative and innovative Mirror’s Edge Catalyst from DICE launching in May. A great line-up of EA Sports titles are in development for next year, and we look forward to sharing more about these new experiences in the months ahead. An all-new Battlefield game from DICE will arrive in time for the holidays, we’re excited to have a new Titanfall experience coming from our friends at Respawn – and of course, Mass Effect Andromeda from the team at BioWare will launch later in the fiscal year.”"

New Mass Effect and Titanfall to hit before end of EA fiscal 2017

While there has obviously been speculation about the big three shooters to be making their way from EA in this coming year, this is the first official announcement of the timeline in which we may see them. It seem EA will be very busy after they have launched the upcoming Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2.

How about some predictions? My predictions are as follows:

• The new Battlefield will likely be a late October title (will most likely fall within a week or so of Call of Duty).
• The new Mass Effect is going to be the Winter albatross with a mid-November release like Star Wars Battlefront.
• I say Titanfall hits right back in the same sweet spot it hit before with a February launch right in time to give a month of sales before the end of EA’s fiscal 2017. With Sony blowing most of their first party productions out this year (or so it seems) that would make Titanfall the king of spring while Battlefield and Mass Effect simmer coming out of Winter.

"In 2015 the happy news was confirmed that support for the Unity middleware development platform was coming to New 3DS; that was pleasing news in consideration of the large number of Unity-developed titles on the Wii U eShop. It’s a very common tool for smaller developers, in particular, so supporting it – and offering free licenses, as Nintendo does on Wii U – is a sure-fire way to attract releases that would otherwise skip the hardware.We heard from developers last Autumn / Fall that the New 3DS support was making progress, and now Unity has formally launched the tools to all developers. In a detailed blog post outlining core details there’s information on version numbers implemented, improvements still to come and more."

New Nintendo 3DS gets Unity development support

While this may be news to some, the New Nintendo 3DS is a pretty amazing machine but one of the issues for Unity developers is up to this point there was no standardized toolset to develop on the platform. It is a pretty stark weakness for any platform to not have the full support of one of the most popular development platforms out there. Well, this has been remedied and now the New Nintendo 3DS can sing its new song courtesy of Lil’ Jon: “Ports! Ports! Ports.Ports. PortPorts! Ports! Ports! Ports. Ports. PortPorts!”

"Madden NFL 16 is just the latest EA game to join The Vault. Members can also play Battlefield™ Hardline, Dragon Age™: Inquisition, FIFA 15, Battlefield 4™, and more as much as they want. Members also get a chance to try upcoming EA games before they’re released, and save 10% on all EA digital purchases on Xbox one — full games, pre-orders, expansion packs, Madden Ultimate Team items, and everything in between."

Madden NFL 16 joins EA Access Vault

It is a bit surprising this happened so soon, but then again I imagine everyone who wanted Madden has already bought the game. EA Access continues to be a surprisingly good service for those who would like to try out the best of what EA has released on PS4/Xbox One. There are about 15 or so games in the vault now with none of them having left as of yet.

I was skeptical of how much they would allow to accumulate in the Vault, but EA has steadily increased the number of games in the vault each quarter. For those who own an Xbox One, this is looking like a much better deal than I originally envisioned.

That’s your Morning DLC folks. Have a happy Friday!