Video Games
‘Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed – Ecto Edition’ Now Available on the Switch and Steam
It just wouldn’t be the Halloween season without Ghostbusters. And for Switch fans, the day has finally arrived with the launch of Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed – Ecto Edition via the Nintendo eShop. Not only that, but Spirits Unleashed is also now available on Steam after being previously releases on the Epic Games Store.
“We are super excited to bring Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed to all gaming platforms,” says IllFonic CEO & Co-Founder Charles Brungardt. “As a lifelong fan of Ghostbusters, IllFonic has been hard at work to bring busting and haunting to all fans with the Ecto Edition. We are expanding the story, adding new maps, ghost types, and more.”
Also available as a free update for current players on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, the Ecto Edition includes a new story expansion, new ghost types, two new maps and more.
The story expansion adds several new story acts to the narrative progression of Spirits Unleashed, including a new adversary to battle. To access the new content, all you have to do is level up your character.
As for the new ghost type, the Overlord and its variants have arrived just in time for Halloween. This new ghost type is imbued with never-before-documented passive abilities that makes them even more difficult to tether. The Overlord’s aura emits a looming dread, compounding a creeping sense of fear within anyone in range. Overlords don’t “slime” or “shock” those in their way; rather, they devastate them by swiping with their claws, and hurling any physical objects that are in range.
For the new maps, we get a haunted restaurant in Petey’s Pirate Cove, and the Galway Subway Station, which has seen an influx of old-timey train cars and encounters with tormented apparitions.
Lastly, there’s a whole new assortment of cosmetics and gear shells to unlock, along with the usual bug fixes and improvements.
Overshadowing the announcement of Ninja Theory’s third entry in the Hellblade series earlier this month were reports that the developer was facing possible closure by Microsoft, alongside South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games and Double Fine. Now according to a new story by GamesBeat, another developer under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella is potentially facing closure in Undead Labs, who are currently working on State of Decay 3.
Earlier this month, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma had announced that Microsoft was in the process of ‘resetting’ Xbox. That resulted in a report by Bloomberg during Summer Game Fest that revealed that multiple developers were negotiating with Microsoft to spin off of Xbox to avoid closing down. Now, according to the GamesBeat report, Undead Labs is now part of that group of developers negotiating to be bought to avoid layoffs.
The article states that Undead Labs could lose 110 jobs if it were shut down, while Compulsion could lose 90 jobs, Ninja Theory could lose 135 jobs, and Double Fine Productions could lose 100 jobs.
Other developers and publishers at Microsoft also reportedly face cuts, including Blizzard, id Software and Bethesda.
Undead Labs was acquired by Microsoft back in 2018, with State of Decay 3 being announced in 2020. News on the development of the game was quiet until 2024, when a new trailer was released. Updates on the game again were hard to come by until last January when then-Xbox Game Studios lead Craig Duncan revealed that development was still very much alive. That was followed up this month with an official announcement that State of Decay 3 would be coming next year to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store.