March is fast approaching, which means we’ll need to say goodbye to another batch of Game Pass games very soon. This month’s list of leavers includes a few heavy hitters, like the horrifying Alien Isolation, and a duo of big JRPGs that are likely impossible to binge in just two weeks.
Evo 2022 just wrapped up this morning, and as a UK resident who stayed up to watch the whole thing until roughly 30 minutes before work started, it was exhausting. I’m not talking about the run time, I’m talking about the back-to-back banger announcements coming from multiple fighting game developers over the weekend. A large quantity of which, you’ll be happy to know, revolves around the implementation of rollback netcode.
For those not in the know, rollback netcode has kind of been the hot topic over the past few years (although arguably it’s been heating up for over a decade now), reaching its burning point during the worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns. While before a large chunk of games struggled to match you up with opponents online without lag, dropped frames, or teleporting, we’ve now seen a vast selection of games past present and future featuring this improved netcode moving forward.
While new characters may seem far more exciting for the average player, and this weekend didn’t hold back with announcements for rad new roster additions, it’s way more important in my book to see pre-existing games with entrenched communities get the support they need via online overhauls.
Arc System Works has announced that Dragon Ball Fighterz is finally getting rollback netcode, but there's a catch.
Let's start with the good news: Dragon Ball Fighterz is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X, at some point anyway, and with that will come the fabled rollback netcode (which will also come to the PC version of the game). What's the bad news, you ask? The PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game won't be getting rollback netcode, it looks like.
The news was announced at Evo, and the official Bandai Namco Esports account put out a statement going into a bit more detail. "As a result of our continuous testing to include the rollback system, it has been confirmed that the implementation can be applied to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, and we have officially been working on its production," reads the statement.
