Will we ever get a new IP from the studio that made Ratchet & Clank? Will we ever get* Fallout: New Vegas 2*? Will we ever get a true competitor to Steam? You’ll be seeking concrete questions to all of these hypotheticals after today’s edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s regular roundup of gaming news and culture. Dragon Ball Z has come to Minecraft. Finally there’s an add-on I won’t get angry at my kids for buying without my permission.

Expect a bunch more Marvel games from Insomniac

“We have been working together for more than a decade and developed such a shorthand across multiple Marvel’s Spider-Man games that when the time finally came to bring Logan back in spectacular and visceral fashion, it was obvious to everyone on our team that Insomniac was the perfect choice,” Marvel Games General Manager Haluk Mentes recently told Game Informer. “It was our shared culture and values that brought us together, and we’re so proud to continue collaborating for many years to come.”

Looking beyond Spider-Man 3, the malicious Insomniac hack from a couple of years ago outlined potential plans for next year’s Wolverine game to be a launchpad for a full set of broader X-Men spin-offs. There’s no confirmation yet as to whether that’s still in the cards but it doesn’t sound like Insomniac will have a lot of space to invest in making a new original IP anytime soon.

Fortnite Simpsons has been huge

Springfield’s takeover of the battle royale led its main mode to spike at over 2.5 million concurrent players, according to stats on Fortnite.gg. “In 48 hours, we welcomed the biggest number of new and returning Fortnite players since last holiday season,” Epic Games recently confirmed. It also touted an accompanying “Fortnite | The Simpsons” short popping off on Disney+ streaming. Some players are already calling on the company to extend the latest mini-season past its November 28 expiration date.

Stop asking about Fallout: New Vegas 2

Obsidian Entertainment is tired of getting that question. “I know everyone on the internet, on every game we announce, asks: When’s the next Fallout: New Vegas? When’s the next whatever?” VP of operations Marcus Morgan told The Game Business.** “**But this year, all three of the games are IP that we’ve created. Our history prior to Microsoft surrounded working on others’ IP. And this is the joy that we get of…how do we build our own IP? And we’ve got to the part where we have sequels to all of them.”

Besides, as mentioned elsewhere, a Pillars of Eternity III in the mold of the recent Baldur’s Gate seems way more appealing at this point.

Battlefield 6 is overhauling Challenges and Assignments

“This update makes significant reductions to challenge requirements, cutting down on time investment while maintaining a focus on skill-driven progression that rewards consistent play,” reads an update on the EA forums. “Challenges and Assignments are tuned around defined playtime targets, and these changes bring their requirements in line with those goals to make them more achievable within a reasonable session length.”

Football Manager 26 is getting slammed on Steam

The early user reviews are in and not good, with complaints about bad UI and missing features. “I’ve been playing FM since the Amiga days of CM 93/94,” one fan wrote. “I remember the disaster that was CM4. I had a physical game code which shipped with o and 0 and no way to tell them apart. I’ve been a part of the days when we couldn’t patch the game without going to a forum on dial up, downloading the patch and applying it yourself. This game, is by far, worse than all of those other releases.”

72 percent of devs think Steam is a monopoly

That’s according to a new survey reported on by GamesIndustry.Biz. Very few of the 300 gaming execs and developers who responded seem happy with the current state of PC gaming storefronts. But Valve is still king, despite competition from the Epic Games Store and GOG. Network effects make it hard to imagine a true competitor ever really threatening Steam’s dominance, at least in the short term.

ICYMI:

• Walmart is fighting back against Pokémon card scalpers
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment sounds both better and worse than its predecessors
• Fortnite spotlights one of the biggest Simpsons mysteries

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