For their new game, Ubisoft constructed a game engine they called Snowdrop. It’s supposed to help support its lobby-free multiplayer functions along with the open-world, dynamic weathers and so on. Now we could see it being used for some of Ubi’s other IPs in the future.

Head of IP at Ubisoft Massive, Martin Hultberg, was interviewed and revealed that Snowdrop could be seen in other franchises in future.

“Internally we try to share as much technology as possible between the studios. It’s just more efficient that way. In our case we developed the Snowdrop Engine from the ground-up because we needed middleware that could run on the new consoles and PC, while doing everything we wanted to do with the open world, the weather, time of day and such features. Now we’ve made that engine available to other studios, and not just the Clancy teams. Any Ubisoft team can use Snowdrop now.”

Also, the Division’s ‘Dark Zone’ could see the functionality traveling across to other teams under Ubisoft’s umbrella as well in future. “I think that feature could definitely be incorporated into other Ubisoft games like Assassin’s Creed. It’s a really immersive feature that I think fits with pretty much all Ubisoft’s IPs.”

Ubisoft have recently announced their intention not to make a new Assassin’s Creed game in 2016, so I wonder if a desire to build their next game in that series upon this game engine is a part of that? It’ll be interesting to see if that theory holds water when the next one is announced.

Plague Inc: Evolved, successor to the highly successful 2012 iOS game Plague Inc., is out of early access and into official release as of 18th feb. 2016 for PC, Mac, Linux.  The game features many devastating ways to exterminate the human population of Earth.  It is hailed as a “highly authentic simulation of a world-ending pathogen”, so realistic that the developer was invited to the Center for Disease Control to speak about the game’s infection models.

Plague Inc. boasted a staggering 65,000,000+ players, and Plague Inc: Evolved has already sold over 800,000 copies before even leaving early access.

The game boasts a plethora of features, including:
10 different types of diseases, including the use of bio-weapons, mind control, and zombies.
20 Scenarios; spread a plague during an ice age, handle new strains of older diseases, and many more challenges!
Steam Workshop support where over 10,000 players have already created their own scenarios, worlds, and diseases.

The latest update brings multiplayer into the mix, where players can either join up in Co-Op to eradicate the world together, or compete against one another or AI to wipe out humanity and each other.

Plague Inc: Evolved by Ndemic Creations is now available on Steam!

XCOM 2’s release was quite good as far as the launches of big-name games has gone in recent years. No big issues, although some have reported performance issues that affected their gameplay by tkaing framerates down below what they should have been. And in a game that is all about getting things done in as few turns as possible… it sort of ruins the immersion, you know?

Last week publisher 2K Games acknowledged the issues, saying that they were “gathering more information from users” and today Lead Designer Jake Solomon said that the developer Firaxis was “working very furiously” to get XCOM 2 running smoothly.

He also said that the issues hadn’t been caught before launch purely because it doesn’t seem to effect every computer and every build. Where as some less powerful computers have reported no problems, so high-end expensive custom rigs have been seeing issues left, right and centre.

“We didn’t catch this stuff in compatibility testing. We’re fully, fully accountable for the product in people’s hands, so we certainly take responsibility.”

He admits that some of the camera pauses after events take far too long, and that all the issues with the stuttering and framerates annoy the developers as much as the players.  While he couldn’t say when the fixes would be coming he was adamant that Firaxis was working hard on them and that there would be “fixes coming soon.”

If you were thinking about getting the season pass for Fallout 4, one of the most popular games of last year, you’d probably better get it soon if you want to pay less. The price has been confirmed to be going up as a result of the 3 pieces of upcoming DLC.

Starting from March Fallout 4 is going to be getting a new DLC once a month, the first being Automatron that will introduce new robotic material and enemies as well as letting you use their parts to construct your own robots. After that we’ll get Wasteland Workshop that will allow for the entrapment and possible taming of several creatures across the Commonwealth as well as new settlement building options and finally a new adventure with Nick Valentine as you’re introduced to the island of Far Harbor in the DLC of the same name – the largest and therefore most costly of the upcoming DLCs.

Automatron will retail at $9.99 in the US, £7.99 in the UK and $16.95 in Australia; Wasteland Workshop will cost $4.99/£3.99/$7.95 AUD; and Far Harbor will cost $24.99/£19.99/$39.95 AUD. Bethesda have also said that they plan to introduce “up to $60” worth of more Fallout material over the year.

Obviously the season pass does allow you to get access to all this DLC and at the moment it is priced at $29.99 US, £24.99 UK and $49.95 Aus. From March 1st it is due to increase to $49.99 US, £39.99 UK and $79.95 AUD which is quite an increase in price.

So if you want to keep up to date with what’s happening in the Commonwealth, you’d better move fast. Your time’s running out.

A few days ago, after having it alluded to by an entry in the Brazilian Rating Board, we had it confirmed that Quantum Break would be coming to PC. And free if you pre-ordered the Xbox One version.

A little more detail has emerged now though and among the news of specs and other things, there’s one big piece of information that stands out – it won’t be made available on Steam. Instead it will only be available through the Windows Store.

The news was confirmed in the Major Nelson Radio podcast, as Xbox marketing man Aaron Greenberg was asked about the game coming to Steam to which he replied: “Quantum Break on Windows 10 is a Windows Store exclusive.”

Of course, this could be down to how the Xbox and PC versions will communicate with each other to allow for cross-platform action, as well as Microsoft just wanting to keep their game available through first-party means. It’s just that not bringing it to what is arguably the biggest digital retail market on the PC right now could hurt its sale chances.

Only time will tell though.