At E3 2013, one of the bigger games demonstrated to a favourable reception was Tom Clancy’s The Division. Shown off at the event using the new Snowdrop engine the game looked good and the game was very well talked-about about after the event. The game was scheduled to be released at some unscheduled time this year, but now the word’s come through that the game has been delayed until some unscheduled time in 2015 purely so Ubisoft can work on making sure the game works.

It doesn’t really come as a surprise. There’s been little word on the game since E3 ’13 and games get delayed all the time these days, release dates pushed back to allow for games to be tweaked to a level closer to perfect due to unexpected obstacles appearing. At the very least, pushing back a release date to make sure a game is working properly is preferable to games that get released in a buggy half-finished state just to meet a deadline. Also the statement that was released says that everyone involved are ‘proud’ to be working on such a project. So the delay is going to bring a better game from a group of people who are passionate and in love with the idea of the game they’re creating. This can only be a good thing all round.

We should be seeing more footage of The Division now at E3 this year, so we should get some information about how much work has been completed since the event last week and possibly be able to estimate how close to being finished the game is and therefore maybe which quarter of 2015 we could see the game being released. Until then though, we just have to wait.

Sources around the internet, including Variety are reporting that YouTube is nearing a deal to buy streaming site Twitch for $1 billion. The deal is purported to be an all cash offer that would close imminently. Countering this, The Wall Street Journal has released a report stating that discussions on this deal are early. If such a deal does go through, it would pull a massive amount of traffic firmly into the Google stable.YouTube  missed out on the rise of streaming, and Twitch is the premier destination for the folks that want to see all manner of games played live. Twitch functionality has even been built into both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, and theres no doubt that YouTube would like to aggregate all of that traffic, and ad revenue, under on easily controllable Google colored umbrella.

Naturally, spokespeople for both Twitch and YouTube have declined comment. And, of course, rumor also has it that if the deal really is in the works, Google is already lawyering up to combat the likely regulatory challenges.

Stay tuned to Sanitarium.fm for the latest on this story.

The beauty of indie games are that the studios are small, creative and as long as they can make it work as a game, they are free to program and serve up to us any number of weird, wonderful and crazy ideas for sale to the gaming public. That’s how games like ‘Glorious Leader!’ get born.
 
Made by the people at Moneyhorse Games, the game is a 7-level retro-style side-scroller in which you play as Kim Jong Un in an epic adventure in which you fight off the entire American army while either on foot or riding a magical unicorn. If you have a friend to come play with you, the second player can be Dennis Rodman. Seriously.
 
There’s a trailer up on Youtube now and the game will be out for PC, mobile and tablet soon. Can’t wait to see the let’s play videos for this one.
 

Take Two Studios have spoken about a desire to maybe acquire a few more studios through purchase to help with their future ‘growth’ plans.

Take Two have had a good fiscal year in 2014. They posted net profits of $2.35 billion, with sales of Grand Theft Auto 5, the latest in that franchise, making up about half of those profits for Take Two. Thus the CEO of Take Two, Strauss Zelnick has said in a statement that while they typically prefer the ‘organic’ growth of studios internally, if there was a chance to grow the company by acquiring a smaller studio that fit with their ideals and disciplines for ‘inorganic’ growth “then [they] would absolutely do so”.

He also spoke about future plans in other areas, mainly in the way of which platforms we could look to find future games being released for. While both the Oculus Rift and Nintendo’s consoles were talked about, there doesn’t seem to be any plans to release games for either in the near future with it being “too early right now” for Oculus support and although Nintendo is still considered an important business partner there hasn’t been a lot of talk about releasing games on their platforms. He has praised Microsoft’s recent decision to unbundle the Kinect from the Xbox One too, saying that anything that “increases the installed base” is good news.
 
 
Take Two Interview is here.

Halo 5 was announced yesterday and already speculation is rife about what the new game might bring in terms of story, locations, weaponry, vehicles, enemies… and about the identity of the Spartan pictured on the game’s launch artwork piece which shows them standing on top of Master Chief with the game’s long-time protagonist appearing in a way that looks like the mystery Spartan’s reflection in some unseen pool of water.
 
The answer for the last one came today in the form of a tweet from Josh Holmes who is a dev on the game. Well, sort of.
 

For everyone speculating about the mysterious Spartan in Halo 5: Guardians, he’s not Palmer (or Cortana!). He’s a NEW character. 🙂 #Halo

— Josh Holmes (@JoshingtonState) May 16, 2014

 
‘Palmer’ refers to Commander Sarah Palmer from Halo 4 and Halo: Spartan Assault and Cortana is Master Chief’s long-time companion. So if this tweet is to be believed we can soon count a new character among the ranks of the Spartans who have been named characters in the past Halo games.
 
Not many more details have yet been released, except for art of a dry, dusty alien settlement which could be a potential location for the next set of Spartan adventurers and inevitable battles. We’ll just have to wait until E3 to get the big reveals though.