 Hey everyone, welcome to VG News. We've got five big stories for you today. If you're looking forward to these stories or you're enjoying the show at all and you're not subscribed, I would appreciate it if you would subscribe. We're on a road to 150,000 subscribers. Also, a quick note on not having a show yesterday. We just didn't have enough big news that made it worthwhile to do a show. We wanna make sure that while VG News is planned to come on every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, every time you get a VG News, you know to expect a high quality production with news that is worth your attention. And that begins right now with Star Wars Outlaws, which is probably the most anticipated Ubisoft game in some time. It seems to be breaking away from the traditional Ubisoft formula of finding towers and all that sort of stuff, like Assassin's Creed is set up for a long time and Watch Dogs and all that and going more in an original direction with a Star Wars property. And Star Wars obviously is a massively popular property that deserves, in my opinion, high quality video games. So what we have to do though here is go over all the news that dropped, including the new trailers, take a look at it and let's get this big news out of the way. The first bit being that the game launches on August 30th, which ensures it will be massively featured at this June's Ubisoft Forward, which happens on June 10th. It's heading to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC. Although we might have some hope for you, future Switch 2 owners, whenever that comes out. We'll get to that in a moment. There's some news around that. Now, while the base game is looking pretty fantastic, this is through and through a modern AAA game. That means there has to be other ways that can make money off you besides just buying the game. Hell, I had to call it a base game because that's just the thing we have to use to indicate there are other versions that include more stuff. So setting aside the base game, that means we have a lot more to dive into. So let's do that, shall we? The Gold Edition comes in at a price of $109.99 US and includes three-day early access and the DLC season pass. You can also get pre-order bonuses if you do pre-order the game, which include a cosmetic pack for your speedster and a cosmetic item for your Trailblazer spaceship. You can also get extra pre-order stuff at two retailers. GameStop is offering a Sabak character pack while Target is offering a free steelbook case. Then of course, there's an ultimate addition to the game, but it's only available digitally. You get all these aforementioned pre-order bonuses and included Gold Edition items, but there is even more included for the price of just $129.99, including the Sabak Shark Bundle, which includes cosmetics for Kay, her blaster, Nix, Speeder, and Trailblazer spaceship, along with a digital art book. As a note, the season pass includes two additional narrative expansions that release after launch, plus a launch exclusive Jabba's Gambit Mission Day One with extra cosmetics for Kay and Nix. Beyond this, there is a slight possibility that Star Wars Outlaws may eventually come to switch too. First, a Google search listing states there will be another platform that is currently unannounced, though it doesn't say as much on the website today, suggesting this could have been an earlier version of the website that has been logged by Google. Beyond this, the studio that worked on Sparks of Hope is also involved with this title and has extensive experience working on Nintendo's current hardware, and it's highly likely that they would be the team that has a Switch 2 dev kit, assuming the Ubisoft reports of them now having Switch 2 dev kits are true. So you never know. What we do know is the game is launching on August 30th, but setting aside that repeat, there's actually this thing that's coming out a bit negative, there's one caveat, and that is that even physical editions of the game require an online connection to install the game. Now, this is obviously a factor of modern gaming and people are worried about long-term access to the game, and I totally understand those concerns. I also think that this could be for another reason that makes more logical sense from a business perspective, unless they're still doing online DRM, which, look, they've used DeNovo and a whole bunch of other services in the past for online DRM, so I'm hoping that that's not what they're doing here, and this is their solution instead, because Ubisoft has a leak problem, just like Nintendo really, where all of Nintendo's games get leaked online and everything is known early and the game's playable early on emulators. Same thing happens with Ubisoft, especially with PC versions of the game. You can just literally play them on PC weeks early. Well, one way to come at that is to simply make all the physical game files unplayable without a required day one patch. So, this could literally just be that, hey, we want to require a day one patch to ensure our games don't leak. It could be something that maybe they update and make it not be a thing later. Maybe they release physical copies later that include the patch on it. That's those are things that could happen. Obviously, at this point, we don't really know. We also could just say maybe the game's so big it doesn't fit on a Blu-ray disc, although that would be insane because those can hold a lot of data. But that's sort of where it stands right now. I don't really know what to think until the game comes out and we see what's going on and interview questions happen and someone asks them why they feel like they need to have this online requirement to install the game. But we do live in a world where our consoles are always online. So it doesn't really make a big difference for me. But I can understand the long term concerns with the game being available once game servers are no longer available. And speaking of game servers no longer being available, this is a real concern because the Wii U and 3DS servers just shut down on Monday. Now we already covered that on Monday's VG News and we known about this for a bit because Nintendo pre-announced that April 8th date. But what is lesser known to some extent is the Pretendo Network, which is a online infrastructure for things like Wii U and 3DS to continue to play those games online, ran entirely by fans. Now, for a while this network has only been available to modded 3DSs and modded Wii Us running Homebrew. Look, this thing's been running since around 2018 and reportedly Nintendo is aware of its existence and hasn't done any legal action against it. They probably could do legal action if they wanted to because these are obviously Nintendo's games and Nintendo should have control of their online access but they have it. So maybe Nintendo's just gonna let this go because it doesn't actually harm them financially. Whatever that case might be because they don't sell Wii U or 3DS games anymore or even the systems anymore. So they might not care. But what's really cool is an update they put in a recent blog post where they are giving a gift to Wii U users where you guys with Wii Us can just change some DNS settings without modifying your Wii U at all and now go ahead and play your Nintendo games on Wii U online yet again. Here's the update from their website. It says as a parting gift to you all we are releasing a private SSL exploit for the Wii U titled SSSL. Found by our very own Shutterbug this exploit allows users to connect a Pretendo network from a stock Wii U with no homebrew or custom firmware at all. Only a DNS change. We've been holding on to this exploit for the day for quite some time in case Nintendo decided to issue patches for it. Select services which use their own SSL libraries are unsupported. This includes several third party titles like Watch Dogs and YouTube as well as titles that run in an embedded browser like TV, the eShop and Miiverse applet. Miiverse functionality in games is still supported however through SSL. We hope this new method of connecting will be useful for those who have trouble installing homebrew, those who are worried about mods and for users who may live in areas where local law may make it more difficult to install mods. For more information see our updated setup guide and honestly this is just really great news for people who want to continue to play their Wii U games online. What's really cool is you could in theory still play like the Wind Waker HD and still send the tingle bottles out to people. So it's just really neat. I hope Nintendo decides to not shut this down. I don't know how long this network is gonna be viable to stay online and obviously costing someone money somewhere. We don't know how big the user base is. Obviously the Wii U user base was already pretty small and it's probably even smaller for something like this. A 3DS base being a bit bigger. Either way I'm just glad this network exists and I think this is a good way to get into our next topic because something hasn't existed for a little bit and that is Blizzard Entertainment Games in China. Blizzard Entertainment has a hard time putting their games out in China. In fact, having games in China in general is very difficult unless you're partnered with very specific companies like Tencent, NetEase and all of that for distribution in China. They just have some very weird laws around distribution and so unless you're partnered with these companies you really can't just get your games to be legally playable in China. Well there was a prior agreement between Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase that allowed World of Warcraft and Starcraft and all of those Blizzard games Diablo to be playable and quite popular among especially the PC gamers out in China. Well that ended a little while ago, about two years ago and because of that those games have been banned in China. You have not been able to play them legally not saying people that work around for it. I have no idea, I don't live in China but you weren't allowed to play those games legally and all the Chinese servers were shut down. Well, that has changed now as Microsoft and Blizzard Entertainment have entered into a brand new agreement with NetEase and now it's in a press release. Let's read a big chunk of this press release because this is really big news. We at Blizzard are thrilled to reestablish our partnership with NetEase and to work together with deep appreciation for the collaboration between our teams to deliver legendary gaming experiences to players in China said Johanna Ferry's president of Blizzard Entertainment. We are immensely grateful for the passion the Chinese community has shown from Blizzard games throughout the years and we are focused on bringing our universes back to players with excellence and dedication. Celebrating our collaborations, we are thrilled to embark on the next chapter built on trust and mutual respect to serve our users in this unique community that we built together said William Ding chief executive officer of director NetEase. Our commitment to providing more exhilarating and creative entertainment experiences remains unwavering and we are excited to see positive synergies foster to encourage and empower collaborations to bring the joy of gaming to a broad community. Blizzard and NetEase have done an incredible work to renew our commitment to the players. Blizzard's universes have been part of players' lives in the region for many years returning Blizzard's legendary games to players in China. While exploring ways to bring more new titles to Xbox demonstrates our commitment to bringing more games to more players around the world said Phil Spencer CEO of Microsoft Gaming. That's right. This deal actually goes beyond just bringing games to China. Also NetEase is now gonna be able to bring some of their titles to the Xbox ecosystem. So this is a dual partnership that's actually expands upon the previous agreement that was just between Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase. So this is really just mostly a positive for gamers. I know there's a lot of controversies that come around when we talk about China in general but I'm just talking about the users and the individual people. I've got nothing against any of that stuff and I do believe that people that play games in China deserve access to games. So if this gives them access to those Blizzard games I think that is really, really important. Also bringing more games to Xbox can't hurt anything. So in the end I think this is a pretty good and fruitful partnership regardless of what you might think of NetEase. We're just gonna sit here and say that this is just a good thing. Look, I want people to have access to games. I hate when because of governmental reasons access is shut down. It sucks that they have to go through NetEase to make this happen. But hey, at least they can bring those games back and now there's renewed faith of Xbox and maybe more Xbox games might come through this partnership to China as well. So we'll just have to wait and see on that but I'm pretty excited about that. Just like I'm excited about Epic Mickey ReBrushed and that's because we got this following eight minute gameplay from GameSpot. So check this out cause it actually looks pretty good. Now the game does normally look better than ever but some strange things are being noticed by fans of the original release including myself by the way. As an example, they don't appear to have actually replaced all the models and textures and because of this the replaced ones look really good but it's very jarring when you encounter unreplaced ones. Additionally, there are some missing sound effects from the original game and the projector level is mysteriously just missing the entire unique soundtrack to that level. I don't understand what's going on there. Now that doesn't mean everything is bad. They did add in a manual camera eliminating some of the frustration with the original Wii release and the motion control camera and people seem genuinely pleased with most of the visual overhauls that were made. Still, it does appear so far that at least based on this footage, the game is a bit rough around the edges and might not have gotten the full attention to detail many fans feel like it deserves. Of course, Epic Mickey ReBrushed doesn't release until sometime this fall barring any sort of delays and this media preview could have been earlier more stable build and maybe not representative of what the final game will be which may have all of the models and textures replaced and have the missing music and sound effects elements put back in. It's hard to know until we have the reviews on the final release. Still, it's at least a promising look for the most part even if a bit jarring in some aspects and personally, I'm just really happy this game is coming back. Like all our stories will have links to this new footage and all of that down in the description if you wanna go check it out. Listen, judge for yourself. Obviously, we were able to show some of this stuff here but not all of it, so go check it out. I think it's worth checking out if you're really excited for this game. Now, another series that I'm always excited for is Prince of Persia. And oh boy, we got some updates from you because look, it's getting a lot of love in 2024. They had The Lost Crown come out earlier this year to many critical and fan praise. There's now a rumored game of Roguelite coming from the Dead Cells developers in the Prince of Persia franchise and now we gotta talk about the Sansa Time remake because look, that thing was announced years ago although people were not excited by the footage as you can see right here. People were just not happy with what they were seeing here. This didn't feel like they were doing Sansa Time justice. Well, things are changing now because look, according to an article by Tom Henderson over at Insider Gaming, we have some new details on this remake of Sansa Time which was rebooted back in 2022, May of 2022 exactly. Cause that's when Ubisoft announced the game was moving away from Ubisoft Mumbai to Ubisoft Montreal which marked a major shift in the development for what is believed to be a nearly finished product at the time. At least that's what they said when they announced it. Now the details are rolling in and honestly I can't help but smile. The game has been remade from the ground up starting over again as if making a brand new entry in the series. Tom Henderson claims they were sent footage of the game under the condition it does not get posted publicly that shows the game is still in early stages with some missing textures and assets thus making it likely a 2025 or 2026 release. However, what is present is promising. The game is taking a more realistic approach to its visuals including a complete graphics overhaul, new animations and mechanics for combat and parkour and they have even gone so far as to rewrite aspects of the game's story and literally redo all the motion capture for the title. Now, unfortunately for some, the original voice of the prince, Yuri Lowenthal is not reprising his role according to Tom Henderson even though he had done so in the prior announced remake. This may be so they can go with a more authentic voice for the ethnicity of the character something that I think many people would welcome but it's unknown who the new voice actor is at this time. It was suggested Ubisoft is planning to give a prominent update publicly for the project soon but he doesn't know when this will happen. Obviously I think this could happen June 10th at the Ubisoft forward it just makes a lot of sense. June 10th is really not that far away if you think about it just a couple of months so I do think that that is highly plausible and we're gonna look forward to that because we'll be covering that event live right when we live reacting to the Ubisoft forward on June 10th. It's gonna be a pretty interesting summer game fest season there. Who knows if we have to maybe push VG news that week or whatever but that's gonna do it near for VG news today. I hope you enjoyed those five really big stories. I love making this for you. I hope you guys love it too and we continue to grow this new show together and don't worry folks, we still have standard Nintendo videos like we just have one yesterday and we might have one later today. Who knows? It just depends on their actually being Nintendo news to talk about. Thank you guys for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.