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Ubisoft confirms Watch Dogs Wii U for November 18
Update: Ubisoft confirmed a November 18 release date for Watch Dogs on Wii U. That's for North America, with Europe locked in for November 21. Ubisoft's press release notes users can bring up a "detailed and interactive" map of Chicago on the GamePad, and that off-TV play is also supported. Original Story: Ubisoft Mexico may have let the Watch Dogs out a bit early, with a now-removed Facebook post pinning the game's Wii U release date for November 18. That's a Tuesday, the day of the week games are typically released in North America, and company CEO Yves Guillemot has already slated the Wii U version for November. According to IGN's translation, the Facebook post noted that players can use the Wii U's GamePad as an interactive map of the game's Chicago setting, or simply as a controller.
Deals with Gold: Watch Dogs, Borderlands DLC blow-out
This week's edition of the Xbox Live Deals With Gold promotion features discounts on two Xbox One games, two Xbox 360 games and a slew of Borderlands 2 downloadable content. On the Xbox One side of things, the cartoonish, turn-based warfare of Worms Battleground receives a 40 percent discount while open-world hacking adventure Watch Dogs is discounted by 30 percent. The Xbox 360 sees the lion's share of this week's deals as both Borderlands and Borderlands 2 are each priced at 75 percent off. What's more, nearly all of the copious DLC released for Borderlands 2 to date has had its price cut in half, making this an opportune time to grab any downloadable add-ons that might be lacking from your copy of Gearbox's open-world first-person shooter. If you're tempted to pick up any of these discounted items, keep in mind that they are only available for a limited time. Come September 15, Xbox spokesman Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb will replace these deals with an entirely new set. [Image: 2K Games]
Watch Dogs story DLC 'Bad Blood' arrives later this month
The new storyline missions Ubisoft promised Watch Dogs owners at the game's May debut will finally arrive on September 30 as a downloadable addition dubbed "Bad Blood." The 10 missions included in Bad Blood center on dreadlocked hacker Raymond "T-Bone" Kenney as he attempts to help an old pal in the wake of the events of Watch Dogs. In addition, the DLC introduces the new "Street Sweep" contracts, in which a player (or two in co-op mode) sets out to rid Chicago of street crime with extreme prejudice. New weapons, perks and outfits round out the downloadable addition, though Ubisoft's announcement offers no further details on those aspects of the DLC. Ubisoft has yet to reveal the price attached to Bad Blood individually, though the DLC is included in the $20 Watch Dogs Season Pass. [Image: Ubisoft]
Ubisoft execs take the Ice Bucket Challenge as Rabbid looks on
No one is immune to memetic charity, which is why Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and Ubisoft EMEA executive director Alain Corre are seen below the break enduring a frigid deluge in front of Notre Dame cathedral. Guillemot and Corre are taking part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a stunt in which the notable (and not so notable) video themselves having ice water dumped over their heads and/or donate money to the ALS Association, a non-profit dedicated to battling Lou Gehrig's Disease. Since this is an Ubisoft production, however, the two executives tapped some of the publisher's most famous characters to join in the footage, including Watch Dogs lead Aiden Pierce and Assassin's Creed: Unity protagonist Arno Dorian. And of course, there's the Rabbid who is doing an admirable job of behaving, despite his species' tendency toward chaotic, madcap hijinks. In keeping with tradition, Guillemot and Corre have nominated three others to film their own Ice Bucket Challenge videos: Sony Computer Entertainment president and Group CEO Andrew House, Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison and legendary Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. [Image: Ubisoft]
How much is that Watch Dogs in the window? $36 on Amazon
Amazon, in a bid to recoup recent outlay, is offering open-world vigilante-em-up Watch Dogs as its Gold Box Deal of the Day. Ubisoft's game with the waggly tail is down from $60 to $36 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with the PC version nearly half-price at $32. The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are available at $40. If you've really got money to burn, the normally $130 Limited Edition is going for $85. It bundles in a steel book case, the soundtrack, a real-life vigilante mask for use on your own hacking exploits, a hardcover art book, and a 9 inch Aiden Pearce statue.
Joystiq Weekly: EA Access, Divinity: Original Sin review, The Last Of Us revisited and more
Welcome to Joystiq Weekly, a "too long; didn't read" of each week's biggest stories, reviews and original content. Each category's top story is introduced with a reactionary gif, because moving pictures aren't just for The Daily Prophet. EA announced EA Access this week, a monthly or yearly service that gives subscribers a digital library of games from the publisher's catalog. PlayStation Plus and Games With Gold are comfortable ideas at this point, but for such a substantial publisher to start their own service on a console without making any hardware themselves? That's pretty interesting. Hopefully we won't see a flood or other publishers launching competitors for PlayStation and Xbox's services, though. Paying one monthly fee for Netflix and maybe two monthly fees for video games is manageable, but if the console space starts feeling crowded with subscription services, we can imagine the sense of value will be continually reduced with each additional arrival. Then again, we could probably stomach one more if Nintendo cooked up something for the Virtual Console... There's way more to this week than pondering our breaking point for monthly subscription fees though. Capcom, Sony and Nintendo had earnings reports, Homefront: The Revolution got adopted by Deep Silver's parent company, and PlayStation Now entered its open beta. It's all waiting for you after the break!
Watch Dogs DLC tease rats out Camden, New Jersey
According to a new tweet from the official Watch Dogs Twitter account, Camden, New Jersey was the most crime-ridden US city in 2012. That's not at all true, but it's apparently a solid enough fiction for a DLC tease. "Our data indicates surveillance has become more prominent in high-crime areas," the account states before linking to the above infographic. First, let's debunk that core claim. Depending on how you categorize crime, the dubious honor of highest US crime rates in 2012 would go to either Detroit or St. Louis. Camden doesn't even make the top-10 lists (though Newark, New Jersey ranked among the highest crime rates per capita in 2011). Despite this, the Twitter account claims that "a surveillance program is now in effect." Shortly after the tweet was issued, a fan did the sensible thing and plainly asked if this cryptic message was related to upcoming DLC. Watch Dogs fans have long been waiting for the first installments of the singeplayer campaign promised by the game's Season Pass, and based on the Twitter account's brief reply - "Coming this fall" - it's probably safe to assume Camden, New Jersey plays some part in the additional content. How exactly is anyone's guess, so please deposit those guesses in the comments below. [Image: Ubisoft]
Watch Dogs is still the UK charts' best friend
Watch Dogs continues to rise above the summer drought, notching its sixth week in total as the British No. 1. Again, there's not one new release in the UK top 40, so it's not shocking to see the country's games market drop another three percent in revenue this week. The Last of Us: Remastered should reinvigorate the market, but until then we're staving off the tumbleweeds with more music below the break. This week, we're honoring Watch Dogs' achievement with a 1969 rock track that featured memorably in British gangster film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Woof!
UK charts: Watch Dogs stands guard, market melts in heat
Watch Dogs notched its fifth UK number one this week, the most for any game in 2014, and that's all well and good. Frankly, the entire country is just too exhausted from the relentless summer heat to notice. Brits are so used to rain, clouds, rain and more rain, so prolonged heatwaves like this one tend to take their toll. Maybe the heat's even affected games retail in the country, with nationwide sales enduring a 14 percent drop in revenue from the week before as the heat ramped up. Then again, it really doesn't help when you're having a summer drought of new releases. Since the UK charts refuse to play - it's another week of tiny changes - we're continuing our run of music below the break. In the words of Avicii, wake us up when it's all over.
June NPD: Hardware sales up, Watch Dogs and Mario Kart top games
June was a big month for the gaming industry, according to the NPD, as hardware sales shot up by more than 100 percent, and collective sales of hardware, software and accessories grew by 24 percent. "The 106 percent increase in hardware sales was lifted entirely by console hardware sales, which were up by over 200 percent," notes NPD analyst Liam Callahan. Sony claims the PlayStation 4 was yet again the highest-selling console (for the sixth consecutive month), and Microsoft says that the Kinect-less Xbox One doubled its sales in June. Nintendo's Wii U has experienced a 48 percent growth in hardware sales for the first half of 2014, a feat the company attributes primarily to the success of Mario Kart 8. Despite a decline in overall portable console sales, the 3DS saw a 55 percent increase in sales over May, according to Nintendo. Though Mario Kart 8 has been very successful, it did not take the top software sales spot for June.
Watch Dogs bites back at Sniper Elite 3 in this week's UK charts
Watch Dogs wins the latest round of musical chairs in this week's UK charts, ending Sniper Elite 3's two-week tenure at No. 1. The open-world gruff man sim makes it four weeks in total at the top, and Ubisoft says it's shipped 8 million copies since the game's May launch. With not one new release in the top 40, there's barely any significant change in this week's top 10 outside of Tomodachi Life and Battlefield 4 sneaking back in. Since it's so quiet, we're continuing where we left off in the last charts round-up and posting some super-awesome music below the break, in the spirit of kicking the week off the right way. This week, we're commemorating Germany's triumph in the World Cup Final with the country's brightest young pop sensation.
Ubisoft reports first-quarter growth of 374%, bolstered by Watch Dogs
Ubisoft announced its financial results for the fiscal quarter ending on June 30, revealing that it has shipped more than 8 million copies of its hacking-themed sandbox action game Watch Dogs to date. Reporting €360 million (approximately $490 million) in sales for the first quarter of 2014-2015, Ubisoft notes a year-on-year improvement of 374 percent compared to the €76 million recorded for the same quarter last year. The publisher attributes its growth to the release of Watch Dogs and a strong showing in its digital segment with recent games like Valiant Hearts, Child of Light, and Trials Fusion. Ubisoft previously reported a 32 percent jump in year-on-year digital sales for the 2014 fiscal year. More details regarding Ubisoft's first-quarter financial performance will be available soon. [Image: Ubisoft]
Watch Dogs ships 8 million copies
Ubisoft has shipped 8 million copies of Watch Dogs since the game's launch in May, the company announced in its Q1 2014 – 2015 financial report. Sales for the quarter were above expectations, hitting €360 million of an expected €310 million, and that's thanks in large part to Watch Dogs, Ubisoft says. In its first week at retail, Watch Dogs sales hit 4 million, making it Ubisoft's "best-selling game ever in week one." It also broke the publisher's day-one sales records. "The success of Watch Dogs and the quality of our games portfolio presented at this year's E3 highlight our strategic positioning as well as our continuous drive for innovation, and affirm our long-term approach," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said in today's report. "Watch Dogs is now well-positioned as a major franchise and we will be able to replicate and build on its success in the coming years. Its sales performance testifies to Ubisoft's expertise as a creator of blockbuster brands." [Image: Ubisoft]
Watch Dogs DLC with 3 new missions goes live today
DLC adding three single-player missions, new weapons and bonuses makes its way into Watch Dogs today. Season Pass holders received this round of DLC last week, but everyone can purchase it today for $7. The three missions are The Palace, Signature Shot and Breakthrough. In The Palace, you must sneak into the mansion of an internet mogul and wipe his hard drive before a planned police raid takes place, and then silence the mogul. Signature Shot has you intercept a biometrics weapon intended for the captain of the Black Viceroys gang. In Breakthrough, you have to get into a meeting between The Chicago South Club and a group of CEOs, but first you must take out the vehicles blocking surveillance devices positioned around the meeting. The pack also introduces the Biometric Rifle and Auto-6 Pistol, as well as bonuses, outfits and weapons boosts. [Image: Ubisoft]
Watch Dogs multiplayer tuned to keep you playing
The Watch Dogs development team has made a few alterations to the multiplayer component of the open-world hacking adventure which should encourage players to see hacking sessions through to the end. "From now on, the victim of a hacking invasion will never lose Notoriety, even if they fail to find the hacker," wrote an Ubisoft representative on the game's forums. "In addition, players losing a ctOS Mobile Challenge will never lose Notoriety. As long as they have passed a few checkpoints, they will gain Notoriety, even if they lose the match." Prior to these changes, it was common to see players disconnect to avoid the Notoriety hit as soon as they began to fall behind their online opponents. Granted, these alterations won't stop players from disconnecting if they suddenly get bored and decide to visit the local Taco Bell, but they do offer more incentive to keep playing, and fewer viable reasons to quit once a session has begun. [Image: Ubisoft]
Hit List Q&A: Watch Dogs creative director Jonathan Morin
In the "Hit List" from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the video game industry's top talents describe their current gaming addictions, their most anticipated releases and more. This week: Jonathan Morin, creative director of Watch Dogs. With over fifteen years in the industry and thirteen of them at Ubisoft Montreal, Jonathan has held various roles in Game Design, Level Design and Art on games such as Peter Jackson's King Kong and Far Cry 2. For the past couple years, Morin has worked as Creative Director on Watch Dogs. In university Morin studied Human Science, Computer Science and briefly considered a career in mathematics education but chose to apply these skills in an environment that would be a bit less predictable. At the upcoming D.I.C.E. Europe conference, Morin will be speaking in a session titled, "Mind the Gap - Igniting People's Sense of Wonder." Morin tends to see games like musical instruments built for players to blow our minds with their creativity. It's an apt analogy but bringing everyone in a development team to think this way is challenging. After all, every brain is different. Working on a game as big as Watch Dogs made Morin realize that no matter how big the game is, or how many people are involved, or in how many countries, often the biggest borders he faced are hidden in an inevitable "gap" between two minds. "Mind the Gap" is a session that explores the importance of listening to others and challenging your own creativity. In this session, Morin will look at how these perception gaps impacted every aspect of his reality: his interactions with executives, the team, marketing, press, and ultimately how players play. In the end, Morin feels the hardest borders to cross are the ones we create in our own minds.
Watch Dogs patched on PlayStation, updates planned for Xbox, PC
Ubisoft has issued a patch for the PlayStation 3 and PS4 versions of its open-world hackathon Watch Dogs that corrects a number of in-game issues and progression glitches. Post-update, Watch Dogs will attempt to reconstruct corrupted save files so that affected players can resume storyline progression, though Ubisoft notes that some collectibles may remain lost. The patch also fixes a major bug affecting in-game hacking, and addresses reported issues regarding empty weapon wheels, broken mission structures, and multiplayer respawning. Ubisoft reports that a PC patch with additional platform-specific fixes will arrive "in the coming days," while Xbox 360 and Xbox One updates are slated to launch next week. [Image: Ubisoft]
Watch Dogs still top dog in UK, despite the World Cup
The UK is still barking mad for Watch Dogs, even at the start of the World Cup. The footie tourney helped 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil surge to second in the charts, but it couldn't stop Ubisoft's big dog from notching its third No. 1 in a row. No surprises it's otherwise a quiet week for the UK charts, since few are brave/foolhardy enough to release a game during E3 week. Enemy Front is the only new release at 19th, Mario Kart 8 hangs tough in fourth, and Murdered: Soul Suspect drops from third to ninth.
Watch Ubisoft's E3 2014 press conference stream here [Update: It's over!]
Bonjour, everyone! Ubisoft's E3 2014 press conference is happening at 3:00 p.m. PT (6:00 p.m. ET) today, and we expect plenty of tasty tidbits and news from the French developer/publisher. In fact, we'll be voicing said expectations, as well as analysis and commentary via our liveblog, so feel free to garnish this stream with a dash of Joystiq personality and pop open a tab next to this one. The Los Angeles Staples Convention Center is plastered with a giant Assassin's Creed: Unity poster, but we also expect to hear more about the recently-announced Far Cry 4 too. Ubisoft has featured surprise announcements the past two years as well - Watch Dogs in 2012 and The Division in 2013. Could we have another big surprise this year? If you close your eyes and wish hard enough, Beyond Good & Evil 2 could still happen! Update: Ubisoft's conference may be over, but you can re-live its many announcements in old-fashioned text form. [Image: Ubisoft]
Watch Dogs connects with UK audience, Murdered: Soul Suspect charts
Watch Dogs broke UK sales records for a new IP last week and, despite an 80 percent drop in sales, kept its spot the top dog status on the UK charts again. Mario Kart 8 grabbed the silver cup as Murdered: Soul Suspect had a surprisingly strong debut, selling only 400 copies less than the kart racer. Minecraft Playstation 3 Edition and Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition will be with us forever.
