Weekend News Recap – 22 February: Smite, Team Fortress 2 and Nintendo NYC

It’s Monday, in case you didn’t know. And while that six-letter noun might strike fear into the hearts of even the toughest CEOs of the world, it really doesn’t have to. At least not anymore. Relive the weekend in our new Monday morning segment — the Weekend News Recap: 20-21 February Edition.

Most read stories last week

• Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive: the VR rivals dissected
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 now available in South Africa
• Samsung Gear S2 review: intuitive but imperfect

Smite, the popular third-person MOBA, is finally making its way to the PlayStation 4. The game, already an eSports hit, has been available on PC and Xbox One for a while now, but developer Hi-Rez Studios is ensuring that it’s covering its entire possible user base.

This move does not signal a change of heart from Hi-Rez to enable cross-multiplayer though. Nevertheless, the game will remain free and PlayStation Plus-independent.

Let’s get nostalgic for a moment. Valve is finally preparing Team Fortress 2 for its eSports bow with the competitive matchmaking beta arriving sometime this week.

“For this initial phase of testing – which will begin in the next week or so – we’ll be gradually granting random members from this group an in-game item called a Competitive Matchmaking Beta Pass,” Valve notes in a recent Steam post.

For more granular news on how to improve your changes of gaining access to the beta, have a look at the post in full here.

Seagate has announced the “world’s slimmest and fastest” 2.5-inch mechanical drive. Available in 1TB and 2TB formats, the Mobile HDD (not exactly an inspirational name) boasts a hefty 128MB cache and is a claimed 25% lighter than other drives in its size range.

“Laptops today must satisfy consumer demand for fast computing and high capacity storage capabilities on one hand, while also offering compelling designs and slim styling on the other,” the company’s SVP of client storage, Matt Rutledge, notes.

#NintendoNYC is officially open! pic.twitter.com/qNoPjtDBcX

— Nintendo NY (@NintendoNYC) February 19, 2016

In other gaming news, New York City’s Nintendo store has reopened. The Japanese gaming company’s flagship American store consists of 10 000 square feet of space, which includes equipment for tournaments and large events (possibly a few launches or two).

And finally, be sure to check out all of our MWC 2016 coverage on our liveblog here as well.