Daily Brief - Tuesday 17th November

Hello, and welcome to another issue of the Bellular Daily Briefing - industry news that's built for scrolling

Incoming! Worms celebrates its 25th anniversary today

The franchise first launched on the Commodore Amiga in 1995 and has gone on to sell over 75m copies across its various instalments - becoming a staple of local multiplayer.  

- Team17 are celebrating the milestone with a series of special promotions - including up to 80% off the new Team17 online store and a snazzy anniversary pin set in collaboration with Pinfinity.

Microsoft are still considering next-gen pricing

Xbox CFO Tim Stuart has said that Microsoft will be making announcements on pricing "in due course" - with the first wave of Xbox Series X|S games not hitting the "new" $70 pricing.

- Game pricing is a hot topic at the moment so we'll have to keep an eye on things. Though, with both the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 experiencing significant stock shortages at launch - maybe it doesn't matter what price games are.

Halo Infinite will skip The Game Awards this year

343 Industries community manager Brian Jarrad has stated that, in lieu of an appearance at the December show, the developer will publish a "high level update" on Infinite "within the next few weeks." 

- The reason given for skipping the show is the amount of work that goes into creating "a big beat" for something like The Game Awards is better served elsewhere. It makes sense, but it still would have been nice to see more of Halo Infinite in action. 

New Super Mario 3D All-stars update sures up Super Mario Sunshine 

Version 1.1.0 adds inverted camera controls to the anniversary collection, as well as GameCube controller support for Sunshine. 

- The update also adds a suite of general fixes which Nintendo say are intended to "improve overall gameplay across all three titles." Sunshine was pretty buggy at launch, so hopefully these updates put it in a better place.

Overwatch overhauls matchmaking...again 

Speaking during a recent developer update, game director Jeff Kaplan outlined the priority pass system - whereby players are rewarded for queuing into less desirable roles with priority entry to more desirable ones.

- The aim of the priority pass system is to incentivise players to play a wider range of in-game roles, thereby reducing overall queue times for all players. While Tank and Support queue times are typically very short, Damage absolutely aren't - so anything to bring wait times down and game time up. 

And that's everything for today - catch us back here tomorrow for another dose of daily news!