Update: The console has sold for $360,000, including the buyer’s premium. That means the $1.2 million previously offered by a private buyer would have made much more sense. You live and learn, clearly.

Only one bid was made, which suggests that Palmer Lucky could be the winning bidder. We’ll update this post once that is confirmed.

Original Story [Fri 14th Feb, 2020 10:45 GMT]: Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey is claiming to be the current high bidder for the mythical Nintendo Playstation console, which went up for auction this week.

Bidding started at $31,000, but now stands at a whopping $350,000, and Lucky is claiming on social media that his bid is currently in the lead. Given that the owners have already turned down an offer of $1.2 million, the price could rise dramatically.

When quizzed on Twitter why he wants to own this elusive piece of hardware so badly, Luckey replied:

Because I have the largest game console collection, and I am on a quest to digitize and preserve the history of physical videogames. Perfect VR will ensure the original experience lives on forever, but we need to keep these things alive and functional in the meanwhile.

Public availability is just a matter of time, I have been keeping things low key until then. I am preserving the original copies in the most advanced videogame storage facility ever constructed.

While it seems Luckey’s intention is to purchase this unit and ensure that it is documented and preserved, rather than seeing it fall into someone’s personal collection and be locked away forever, not everyone is thrilled at his altruistic approach:

Luckey – who has a personal fortune of around $730 million, so can certainly push that figure up higher if he needs to – is famous for founding Oculus VR, the company which spearheaded the recent Virtual Reality revival.

He sold the company to Facebook in 2014 for around $3 billion and was apparently fired from the firm in 2017 after it became clear that he had secretly supported Donald Trump in his run for the presidency.

He later founded Anduril Industries, which creates autonomous drones and sensors for military purposes.

Update [Fri 6th Mar, 2020 17:25 GMT]: The Entertainment Software Association has issued us with the following statement:

We can confirm that iam8bit is no longer part of the inter-agency group working on E3 2020. We greatly value their passion for the video game industry and the contributions they brought toward our vision for this year’s show. We have an innovative and experienced team in place including Endeavor’s creative agency 160over90, event innovators Mat+Lo and longtime E3 partners, GES, Dolaher Events and Double Forte—all collaborating to bring to life an exciting and authentic experience for fans, the media and the industry.

Original Story [Fri 6th Mar, 2020 12:50 GMT]: E3’s status as the gaming world’s premier expo has been rocked recently by a series of unfortunate events. Last year, the personal details of over 2,000 journalists were leaked by the ESA, the organisation which organises E3, predictably denting confidence in the show.

More recently, Sony confirmed that it would be shunning the event for the second year on the bounce, while video game celebrity and Game Awards host Geoff Keighley also stated publically that he would not be attending in 2020 – the first time he hasn’t gone in 25 years.

To make matters worse, the state of California – which includes the city of Los Angeles, where the show takes place – recently confirmed a state of emergency over the recent coronavirus outbreak, which, in turn, has forced the ESA to scale back its ambitions for the show.

That scaling-back could well be responsible for the latest blow to E3 2020’s prestige – iam8bit, the company responsible for its ‘creative direction’, has resigned its position:

It’s with mixed emotions that iam8bit has decided to resign as creative directors of what was to be an evolutionary E3 2020 floor experience. We’ve produced hundreds of gaming and community events and it was a dream to be involved with E3. We wish the organisers the best of luck.

While Nintendo and other companies have pledged their support to E3, there’s still a chance the event could well end up being cancelled or postponed due to the coronavirus infection.

Should it go ahead as planned, E3 2020 will take place between June 9th and June 11th.

Beating Zelda: Breath of the Wild isn’t especially hard, but it takes a moderate amount of effort – especially if you want to do it in style. That’s precisely what YouTuber PointCrow has done – he’s bested this classic action-adventure without allowing Link to take a single, solitary step.

Naturally, he couldn’t help it that Link walks during cutscenes – those steps don’t count – but for the rest of the game, Link uses other means of transport to get around. This includes hopping and backflipping, as well as using items like bombs to get where he needs to be. It’s not plain sailing, as you can imagine; there are a few points where Link is simply swarmed by enemies, and without the ability to avoid them, PointCrow dies several times over.

But! He keeps at it. Items such as Majora’s Mask make it harder for enemies for spot Link, while the Phantom Armour Set makes him more powerful, which means battles are easier. It’s still a hard slog – the total playtime is over seven hours – but it’s a pretty impressive feat nonetheless, and a really cool way to add some additional challenge to what is already a fantastic game.

You can watch the run below, but be warned, there’s some rather colourful language.

Drew: Hey all, I’m Drew. I started playing FPS games back during some of the early Halo titles, and since then been in love with Bungie FPS games. I’ve attended a few MLG events and made some great friends through competitive Halo, and that trend continued into Destiny where I’ve had the pleasure of attending some great community gatherings and made some lifelong friends. In my personal life, I’m a musician, and enjoy other hobbies like playing soccer and the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG.

I suppose that I’m best known in the Destiny community for making opinion and review videos where I try and include a high degree of depth and analysis. Second to that, I guess most people would identify me for being a controller player, sniping, and having 42,069 kills on my Twilight Oath kill counter—oh, also jamming to Taylor Swift while sniping.

Drew: My favorite Subclass is definitely Spectral Blades, I think both the neutral game and Super are incredibly powerful and rewarding. Second to that, I really love the new changes to the Attunement of Sky Dawnblade. The dodge handles momentum much better now and allows for some incredible movement and plays. Both Supers remind me of some characters I like in my favorite anime, Sword Art Online, so I love the fantasy behind them.

I’m not sure I could name my absolute favorite weapons in the game, there are too many I love because of either aesthetics, functionality, or memories I have associated with them—and occasionally for all of the above. If I had to include some names that would probably find themselves in my top-ten list, they would be (in no particular order):

Izanagi’s Burden

Suros Regime

The Chaperone

Not Forgotten

Twilight Oath

Mida Multi-Tool

Redrix’s Claymore

Outbreak Perfected

Drew: My YouTube Channel is home to many hot takes, thoughts, and opinion videos. These are my best attempts to break down different elements of the sandbox and show how they work, for the purpose of better understanding the game and creating the most effective and fun loadouts possible. I do reviews on specific weapons and armor pieces (as well as comparisons between them), and sometimes show off synergistic loadouts including different weapons and armor that I find to be very effective, fun, or both. My Twitch channel is where I like to relax and be a bit more candid—usually sniping, trying out different weapons, going for cool clips, and talking with chat.

Drew: I’ve most certainly picked out my Trials dream team, and of course it includes CammyCakes and Sidezz. We’ve played together since the beginning of Destiny 2, and I can confidently say that they are incredibly talented players and two of my best friends. We may not be the best in the game, but I feel we have great synergy together—we complement each other’s gameplay and are also very like-minded so we’re able to discuss our mishaps/losses to focus on improving.

Drew: Only last thing I’d like to add is that I think the Destiny community is fantastic, and I’m so thankful for meeting some great individuals (many I can call friends) and creating lifelong memories with them. I hope we—as players, content creators, and developers—continue to lift each other up and spread kindness to keep making great memories and grow the community.

New blocks, new sounds, more changes for the Nether!  I mean, what did we expect?  This is building towards the Nether Update after all.

• Added crimson and warped hyphae – all-sided “stem” blocks including stripped variations
• Use a smithing table to fuse the Netherite ingot with your diamond weapon/tool/armor
• New ambient sounds for the Nether biomes

• Fish now despawn when further than 64 blocks away from the closest player
• Hoes are now more like other tools used to break blocks
• Updated the Netherite item textures
• Bartering loot has been tweaked once again to bring back Soul Sand, make Netherite Hoes less common, and remove/add items to better fit survival players

HOE CHANGES

We’ve made some changes to Hoes to make them more useful in the Nether.

• Each tier has different speed at which Hoes mine blocks they are effective against
• Hoes can now be enchanted with the following enchantments: Efficiency, Fortune, Silk Touch
• Those enchantments can now be provided through the enchanting table.

BARTERING LOOT

• Soul Sand is back!
• Netherite Hoe much less common
• Shroomlight removed
• Warped Fungus removed
• Iron Nuggets added

ENTITY UUIDS

• UUIDs of the owners of projectiles, such as arrows or snowballs, are now stored as an array of four integers. All UUIDs will be stored in this format in the future

NEW TAGS FOR ITEM FRAMES

• Invisible – makes item frame invisible (item inside frame remains visible)
• Fixed – prevents item frame from being broken and the item inside from being removed

TARGET_HIT ADVANCEMENT TRIGGER TYPE

• signal_strength matches the signal strength output from the block on hit
• projectile matches the projectile entity
• shooter matches the player who shot or threw the projectile

• MC-130906 – Dolphins are moving very fast when near a boat
• MC-131046 – Angry dolphins give players dolphin’s grace
• MC-146824 – Inconsistency: Ladders and tripwire hooks cannot be placed on the sides of redstone blocks, observers and target blocks
• MC-147496 – Dolphin tries to catch the boat of the non-player ride
• MC-152441 – Corner quartz stairs (not corner smooth quartz stairs) do not have the border on the back/bottom that a normal quartz stair would have
• MC-165518 – Village houses desert_temple_1 and plains_temple_4 have no floor at entrance
• MC-169533 – Asymmetrical walls in snowy_cartographer_house_1
• MC-169715 – Misrotated block in snowy_small_house_3
• MC-169869 – Mooshroom using incorrect texture in Programmer Art
• MC-170242 – Asymmetrical walls in taiga_medium_house_4
• MC-170470 – At snowy_library_1, the snow block is placed next to the window, which causes ugly visual effect
• MC-170819 – Netherite sword and boots textures have transparent pixels
• MC-170829 – When dropping netherite tools and armor into lava, it sounds as if they are burning
• MC-170897 – Fossils in soulsand valleys can be generated in the air
• MC-171367 – Warped Fungi item does not match block texture
• MC-171447 – Crimson root item form has inconsistent texture
• MC-172077 – Piglins with NoAI shake in the overworld
• MC-172082 – Piglins do not serialize their conversion time
• MC-172242 – Left handed piglins don’t look at gold ingots in their right hand
• MC-172567 – Wither skeletons don’t automaticly attack piglins
• MC-173021 – Unuseful warning is logged when server receives incorrect vehicle movement packets
• MC-173090 – Attacking baby piglins don’t anger any adult piglins
• MC-173165 – Piglin Bartering Loot Table contains an extra “set_count” function
• MC-173168 – The word “backup” appears instead of the phrase “back up.”
• MC-173169 – Piglins still aren’t attracted to powered rails
• MC-173176 – Serialization error affecting operators list and whitelist
• MC-173244 – Target block moved by pistons permanently keep their signal strength

In this update we are introducing a new system for gathering data on the type of changes that are harder to evaluate or predict without very large number of games, such as gold bounty formula changes.

We expect the number of times that we actually do this during the year to be very low, however when we do it it’ll be during weekdays only at the lowest point of user activity, between 4 and 6PM Seattle time. In addition, we are adding a convar “dota_disable_experimental_gameplay” that can be used by players to disable it. Any gameplay changes will only be active in matchmaking games where no players have the convar set. The changes will never be active in lobby and league games.

We recognize that in some cases players will back solve what changes were done, however we won’t announce changes ourselves in part because we don’t want players to overcompensate with knowledge of them and because generally we prefer to not reveal potential upcoming changes.

Although the type of changes we are thinking about, like gold distribution, take much more than a game or two to show their full impact, we will still be able to get meaningful data and analysis on the direction and scale of changes.