This Week on JungleDrums:
Your host, AcuteJungle66, is joined by SergeantJay to delve into this week’s gaming and tech news! Microsoft calls it quits on Groove Music, loot boxes ‘felt like a good fit’ for Middle-earth: Shadow of War, C64 mini is coming, and more!
- More than a decade after Microsoft introduced the Zune, they have finally given up on their own music service and are partnering with rival Spotify. As of December 31st, the subscription service will no longer exist. Anyone with a subscription to Groove will be able to move their playlists and collection to Spotify. As part of the tranistion, qualified Groove Music Pass users will also be able to receive 60 days of Spotify Premium for free.
- One of the most controversial features of the upcoming Middle-earth: Shadow of War is the introduction of loot boxes. According to Monolith’s Vice President of Creative, Michael de Plater, they are actually a good fit. The team wants players to continue enjoying the game for a long time by providing an infinite variety of Orcs through the boxes. He states that “The ability to go to a market and purchase additional Orcs felt like a really good fit.”
- We discussed the clever re-purposing of hardware in the SNES Mini last week, but something new (that is old) is on the horizon. Retro Games Ltd. are continuing the growing trend of retro reboots with the C64 Mini, a miniature homage to the Commodore 64 home computer. Expected to arrive in early 2018, the C64 Mini is expected to come with 64 games pre-installed and will include a joystick.
- Empyre: Lords of the Sea Gates released on October 4th. Fellow Scholarly Gamer Josh Crete published a stellar review of this brand new title just the other day. The game is available now on Steam, and if you have a peek at the reviews section there you will see a familiar site!
- Star Wars Battlefront 2 is EA’s latest foray into the wide world of Star Wars, giving players a chance to place themselves in epic battles spread throughout every era of Star Wars, from Naboo to Endor and everywhere in between. The Star Wars Battlefront 2 Beta is currently live on Xbox One, PS4, and PC for pre-order customers. The open beta for everyone else is scheduled to start on October 6th. As usual, the beta serves as both a stress test for customers and as a kind of demo for prospective buyers.
- We discussed this briefly when it was just a rumour, but now we have a launch date for the Nvidia GTX 1070 Ti. October 26th is the ‘paper launch,’ whilst in-store availability is expected one week later on November 2nd. Whilst very little is actually known about the performance of the card, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for the eventual benchmarks from all the usual suspects.
About JungleDrums:
JungleDrums is a weekly news show run by Scholarly Gamers’ Content Coordinator, AcuteJungle66. Topics discussed in the show focus heavily on gaming, highlights, streams, and tech, but will typically hover around hot-button topics of the week. Joining AcuteJungle66 are a rotating selection of guests, ranging from friends and those interested in the topic at hand, fellow Scholarly Gamers, or members of raiding parties from gaming staples of his such as Destiny 2, The Division, or Rainbow Six Siege.
