Can you believe it’s Thursday already? That’s right, lovely people of the internet! We’re only one day away from the wonderful freedom provided by the weekend, where you can catch up on your current backlog of games. As for myself, I’ll be further purging plenty of Kratos’ family members from mount Olympus in God of War 3 Remastered. There’s also the disappointingly short Batgirl DLC that you can clear up in a couple of hours, or you can take your free time to join the Rocket League hype. Until then, let’s get to the minutia of this evening’s news. Today’s Gaming Daily features Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection getting a playable demo later this summer, the story behind Gwent, Batman: Arkham Knight not being fixed on PC for quite some time according to EB Games, Sonic looking majestic running on Unreal Engine 4, and Oculus acquiring Pebbles Interfaces.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection will be getting a playable demo this summer.

I know, we’re all disappointed that Uncharted 4: A Thieves End has been pushed out of this year, making us wait an ungodly amount of time to get our hands on the Indiana Jones-like action game. But the good news is that Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection will be here soon enough to fill some of the void. As I’m sure you’re aware of, the collection is set to make its debut on October 9^th for the PS4, featuring the 3 main campaigns from the franchise. If you are still on the fence about whether the upgrade is necessary, or if you haven’t played through these masterpieces, you’ll be able to play the demo later this summer.

On an update on the official PlayStation Blog, Sid Shuman gave an update on the game. He’s claiming that he has played through the helicopter sequence in Uncharted 2, which looks even crisper thanks to the horsepower of the PS4. More importantly, he mentions that the games will include natural progression to the game controls seen in Uncharted 3 for the sake of gameplay parity. Not the best news for purists, but it should make for a more seamless transition between titles.

HT: Playstation Blog

The Story behind Gwent.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Damien Monnier (Senior Gameplay Designer) and RafaÅ‚ Jaki (Business Development Manager) from CD Projekt Red to talk about fan favorite The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s mini-game, Gwent. The stories they had to share were fairly awesome. They shared that part of the inception of the card game came in a bathtub and required plenty of photoshop work to get the head of the studio to accept the idea. There’s even a translation hiccup on one of the cards that reads “aim for the dick, always” that they left as is. Also, they are mulling over the idea to bring Gwent into the mobile space and even a physical form, but they need to tweak it to work with multiplayer.

HT: Nerdist

Batman: Arkham Knight may not be fixed on PC until September according to some leaked emails.

The torment for PC gamers continues, as it’s starting to look like they may have to wait a couple more months to experience the final installment in the Rocksteady’s Arkham franchise. This is according to an EB Games employee email which implies that Warner Bros. told him that the game won’t be fixed on PC until Spring. Now that may seem a bit confusing, but this is based off of an Australian email, and Spring for them is in about two months. That’s a long time for mouse and keyboard gamers to have to wait.

The email reads as follows:

“We have stopped sales of Batman: Arkham Knight PC while Warner and Rocksteady work on addressing performance issues with the game. The latest information from Warner is that the updates won’t be available until Spring. Due to this we have made the difficult decision to recall all PC stock from stores to return to the vendor until an acceptable solution is released.”

If only Warner Bros. would have just taken our very own Malik Forté’s advice and just delayed the port, they could have avoided this predicament. Sure, fans would have initially made a ruckus over a delay, but there is no way it would have been as bad as the shade being thrown their way now that thing’s have transpired as they have. Alas, now everyone is angry and it’s further muddling the good name of Rocksteady.

HT: Kotaku

Sonic looks majestic running on Unreal Engine 4.

The Blue Blur is back. Well, sort of. Youtube user CryZENx has released a video of Mr. “Gotta go fast!” himself running around some grassy locations using the glorious Unreal Engine 4. Every blade of grass and terrain looks meticulously placed and absurdly detailed, down to even the blue hedgehog himself, who looks incredibly crisp. The lack of obstacles for Sonic to run through is alarming, but at least everything looks great– other than the hedgehog looking out of place in the ultra-realistic surroundings. This short is a mash up using the Kite demo in the engine. Check it out above.

HT: Nerdist

Oculus acquires Pebbles Interfaces.

With so many virtual reality headsets racing to the market, each company is trying to differentiate themseleves from the competition. Oculus in particular is trying to take their tech to the next level by nailing partnerships, and today they have announced that the company has acquired Pebbles Interface, an Israeli-based company focused on hand tracking and things of the sort. Financials have not been disclosed, but Wall Street Journal is reporting that the deal is worth upwards of $60 million.

CTO of Pebbles Industries, Nadav Grossinger had this message to share in his excitement to join Oculus:

“At Pebbles Interfaces, we’ve been focused on pushing the limits of digital sensing technology to accelerate the future of human-computer interaction. Through micro-optics and computer vision, we hope to improve the information that can be extracted from optical sensors, which will help take virtual reality to the next level. We’ve always believed visual computing will be the next major platform in our lifetime, and we’re excited to join the Oculus team to achieve that vision for the future.”

This is a great move for both companies in an effort to dominate a market that holds plenty of potential. If the VR headset manages to incorporate this technology in a meaningful way, it can become a great tool for developers. But, like all of these futuristic pieces of gear, it will come down to software, accessibility, and of course, pricing. You can watch a full demo of the acquired tech above.

HT: Oculus

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That’s it for this wonderful Thursday evening. Don’t be down on the PC port of Arkham Knight, do yourself a favor and pick it up on console since it works much better there. Other than that downer, VR headsets are becoming increasingly more interesting by the day, and more Uncharted should never be frowned upon. Glide your way into the comments section below to let us know if you are joining the VR bandwagon. You can also reach me on Twitter for some friendly conversation about all things gaming: @collegescrubz.