Gamer spends $30,000 on Star Citizen so far, says he'll spend more

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Nov 9, 2015 5:11 PM CST

With close to $100 million in funding so far, Roberts Space Industries is going to infinity and beyond with Star Citizen, but so is one gamer in particular, who has spend $30,000 on the unfinished game so far, with no signs of stopping.

Ozy311, or Chris spoke with PC Gamer, where he said that he has taken up second jobs to fund his Star Citizen adventure, where he calls Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts one of the most influential people of his life. Even after spending $30,000, Ozy311 says that he'll continue to spend more on the game. Ozy311, or Chris, spent $15,000 on highest package in the game 'The Completionist with the Million Mile High Club', and many ships after that.

Chris explains where his interest started when it comes to Star Citizen, where he said: "Well, we're all of the era growing up with Star Wars, Star Trek, just the fantasy of not being stuck to this planet. Through growing up with all the different flavors of Star Trek, and Star Wars, Battlestar: Galactica, and Starship Troopers, and Firefly. All these science fiction movies, and you just wish you could live that life. There's always been stabs and attempts at it and, it's not been done correctly yet. Chris Roberts came back after being gone for so long, and had a vision, saying that he felt the technology and the PC market was there now to try to create his ultimate dream. He put forth a Kickstarter and it's done amazingly well. He only asked for $2 million and here we are, over $94 million later, and it's going strong".

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NASA releases stunning photos of Antares rocket explosion

A little more than a year ago, Orbital Sciences and NASA teamed up to launch the Antares rocket from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The unmanned mission -- intended to deliver food and equipment to the International Space Station (ISS) -- was not successful: the rocket exploded within seconds of launching. The ISS was said to be "in no danger of running out of food or other critical supplies", however.

While unfortunate, the event did produce some stunning photographs, which NASA released last week. Our choice favourites are below; you can see the full batch of photos in extremely high resolution here.

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Microsoft unveils first wave of Xbox One backward compatible games

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 9, 2015 9:16 AM CST

Playing Xbox 360 games on Microsoft's Xbox One console has been a hugely requested feature since the console released in 2013. Now Microsoft is making good on their promise by releasing the full list of the first 104 Xbox 360 games that have made the cut. Sadly it looks like a good portion of popular favorites are absent--most notably Red Dead Redemption and Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Microsoft unveils first wave of Xbox One backward compatible games

Backward compatibility is here, but it's not coming with the huge bang we all expected. Sure Microsoft is going to release it on November 12 with the advertised "over 100 Xbox 360 games", but I must say that the list is pretty underwhelming. But don't worry, Xbox fans: Microsoft affirms that this is just the beginning of backwards compatibility, and "more titles will be revealed starting December". That seems to be a big trend with Microsoft and the Xbox brand, always telling us great things are coming later on.

Anyway, let's take a quick scan of the games. There's a ton of Xbox LIVE Arcade titles on here with games like Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3, Super Meat Boy, Metal Slug 3, Perfect Dark, Doom II and Ikaruga. Then there's the gimmicky Kinect games that probably don't interest much of anybody. The main AAA games include old gems like Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, Borderlands, Just Cause 2, Assassin's Creed II, Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2, and Fallout 3...which no one will likely play with Fallout 4 releasing tomorrow. But hey, when Halo: Reach becomes playable, maybe we'll finally have a good Halo game on the Xbox One?

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Snapchat has over 6 billion video viewed per day through its app

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Nov 9, 2015 12:33 AM CST

Snapchat is huge. Back in May of this year, Snapchat was racking up 2 billion video views per day, but now the messaging app giant is reporting that it's pulling in a huge 6 billion video views per day.

The news is coming from The Financial Times, but Snapchat has confirmed the 6 billion figure. It's not known where the views are coming from, and whether they're mostly user-generated views, from viewers watching Snapchat's live events, or through its Discover section. Wherever they're coming from, 6 billion is a lot.

With Facebook seeing 8 billion video views per day, Snapchat is quickly catching up, and at this rate should overtake them before the end of the year. But where will it begin to taper off is the real question.

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UK governments wants all citizens to have 10Mbps Internet by 2020

If you live in the UK and have subpar Internet, that will hopefully all change in the next few years if the UK government has a say about the matter.

The UK government is working on a Universal Service Obligation that would see all UK residents with at least 10Mbps Internet connections by 2020, where providers would be required to connect you, even if you live in a remote area. Starting early next year, consultations will begin, where it will hopefully see Internet access being branded as a basic utility, just like electricity and water.

But even by 2017, the UK expects to have around 95% of people connected to broadband. But, this expansion needs to be large enough to encompass the rest of the UK residents, and at least 10Mbps. The UK government says the Internet would be "affordable", but didn't state where pricing will start.

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Fallout 4 already seeing users complain about performance on PS4

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Nov 8, 2015 4:15 PM CST

Well, we knew this would happen - well at least I did - and here we are, Fallout 4 is experiencing performance problems on the Xbox One and PS4. Users are reporting that the frame rate drops to well below 30FPS, even when there's no on-screen action.

One user 'Kenzodielocke' reported that on his PS4 the game "has massive problems holding the 30fps when inside buildings, cages or whatever you have a load time when you get in". He continued: "This get's way worse when people shoot at you or throw molotow cocktails. I am no technical expert, but I think this game might be locking itself like The Witcher 3 did. Firefights in buildings feel exactly like fights in The Witcher 3 in the swamp when it's raining. In the open world the game has hiccups too, but not as bad as in buildings. This just isn't fun, when you can't even aim properly because of the frame rate".

The thread on NeoGAF is huge, so feel free to read through it for more people complaining about the performance and FPS in Fallout 4. There are people without problems, but it seems like even with the day one patch, performance issues are there.

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Blizzard teases the possibility of Warcraft 4 and Starcraft 3

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Nov 8, 2015 1:24 AM CST

We all know that Blizzard would make untold amounts of money if they were to release a new Warcraft or Starcraft game, but at Blizzcon, not only did the studio release the full trailer to the Warcraft movie, it teased sequels to two of its biggest franchises.

During an interview with Starcraft II lead developer Tim Morten and GameSpot, Morten said: "I can tell you that, today, our focus is 100% on this content that we've announced here at the show. What the future holds really depends so much on what we hear back from players. We love RTS, we love this genre. The StarCraft universe is fantastic; the Warcraft universe clearly has more stories that can be told".

He continued: "There are new Blizzard IPs; there's the potential to make completely new stories altogether. We want to hear back from our players what they would be excited about, but as a team, we've just been so busy finishing Legacy of the Void and teeing up this new content that we haven't had a chance to make any decisions".

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343i promises to fix Halo 5's aiming while announcing new REQ packs

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 7, 2015 12:11 PM CST

Halo 5 has proven to be a huge boon for Microsoft and 343 Industries. The game has earned a staggering $400 million since its release, making it the most successful Halo game launch ever. Players have also spent an insane $500,000 on in-game REQ packs. Even with these huge numbers quite a few gamers still aren't happy with Halo 5, and 343i has pledged to fix things...but not before it teases new REQ packs.

343i promises to fix Halo 5's aiming while announcing new REQ packs

In a new community blog update, 343 Industries has acknowledged that Halo 5 has some serious issues with its multiplayer aiming. The studio goes into a long diatribe explaining that the issue is caused by a "slow turn bug" that occurs due to "variance in controller hardware".

The explanation reads more like damage control. The whole part about how 343i worked alongside the Halo Pro team and used feedback gleaned from the Halo 5 beta and remote user feedback via Halo surveys just reads as a kind of blame deflection. After delivering promises, 343 Industries reveals it's ready to unleash a new series of REQ packs for users to spend their money on starting November 16. But don't worry, Halo 5 is getting four new maps to justify that half a million dollars in "crowd-funded" content.

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Activision's upcoming Call of Duty movie will be filmed at 24FPS

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Nov 7, 2015 1:41 AM CST

Activision Blizzard may have spent a huge $5.9 billion acquiring King Digital Entertainment, the makers of Candy Crush, but it has larger plans for some of its biggest franchises - TV and movies.

The company has revealed it has opened up a new film and TV studio that will create content based on Activision Blizzard's extensive library of franchises. The company has secured former Disney executive Nick van Dyk to co-lead its new venture, with another not-yet-named Senior Creative Executive joining the team. Van Dyk will run the physical production, distribution, finance, strategy and operations of the new project.

The first project has already started, with a new animated TV series based on the Skylanders game called Skylanders Academy. Skylanders Academy has some large voice talent attached, with Justin Long (Alvin and the Chipmunks, Ask Me Anything), Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical), Norm Macdonald (Saturday Night Live) and Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul).

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is completely FUBAR on PC right now

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Nov 6, 2015 9:22 PM CST

Another AAA launch across multiple platforms, and it looks like we have another mess. Activision has launched Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, with this year's COD release developed by COD franchise veterans Treyarch - except, it's very buggy.

There are various issues being reported online about the game on the official Black Ops 3 forums, and the Steam Community forums. The issues range from rendering the game being impossible, it not booting up properly, and if users get to the main menu they can't select any options. There are a myriad of performance problems, with huge performance issues even on high-end hardware like GeForce GTX 980 Ti cards. CPU usage hits 100% even on decent processors, too.

Treyarch is telling gamers to play around with the .ini file for the game, where the studio notes that there are "very low frame rates" on "certain [Intel Core] i5 CPUs" and that it's working on a fix. The studio has also said that players should enable V-sync and setting the frame rate to something below the refresh rate on your monitor. But Activision (and Treyarch) these problems should not exist, not on a game with a $100 million+ budget, and not on a game where the graphics engine hasn't changed for more than a decade.

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