Latest News - Page 2523

It's always nice to see the inner creative processes that go on when making a video game. Getting behind the scenes can help you to appreciate the game even more if you hadn't before, or even help give insight into the difficulties a developer goes through to bring us the final product. The latest developer diary for Final Fantasy XIV is all about the narrative and creating the overarching story.

The creative process is different for everyone and is always, almost, a sacred process to be cherished. In the case of the stories that are in Final Fantasy XIV, the main loremaster, Kazutoyo Maehiro, doesn't ever write scenarios around characters, but that they naturally emerge as he's working.

The end result is a very well put together narrative that's coherent with not only the entire Final Fantasy XIV story, but with past games from the franchise. It all comes together quite nicely. And this MMORPG is one that will likely continue to call upon the inspiration from previous games to make for a very personal and exciting experience.

Goodyear has been in the tire game for 117 years, and now it's looking to turn it on its head with spherical tires. Eagle-360 tires, as they're known, are only a concept, but the company says they "present an inspiring solution for the long-term future when autonomous driving is expected to be more mainstream."

Safety is a major concern of autonomous driving skeptics and Eagle-360 tires are a direct response to that: as they are multi-orientation and sport "active technology", they can move in all directions which is said to make for increased maneuverability and reduced sliding caused by black ice, obstacles, and so on. Additionally, sensors register tire wear for extended mileage, and communicate road conditions to the car and nearby vehicles. Interesting to note: the tread is 3D printed, and so could be customized for different terrain in different regions, making for safer driving due to better equipped vehicles.

As for luxury features, the tire is suspended by magnetic fields, and as such is said to offer more comfort and less noise than with a traditional tire.

The memory masters at Seagate have just smashed through the world SSD speed record with a new blazing-fast solid state drive.

During a demonstration, Seagate's new ultra-fast SSD hit an unbelievable transfer rate of 10GB/sec, which is 4GB/s faster than the former world's-fastest SSD. The company's new 10GB/s SSD is built for high-end enterprise use, and utilizes the NVMe protocol and rides 16 PCIe lanes for maximum throughput. The drive also meets the storage specifications outlined by Facebook's Open Compute Project.

"Your data is only as good as how easily you can access it and put it to use," Seagate's SSD executive Brett Pemble said. "Seagate is committed to providing the full spectrum of technologies to help meet the diverse needs of organizations so they can unlock this value. Whether for consumer cloud or business applications, this SSD will help improve on demands for fast access to information, where split seconds drive incremental value gains."

SEGA and Creative Assembly are going to delay the launch of Total War: Warhammer for a month longer than they originally intended. It'll now be launching on May 24th 2016 instead of the earlier April 28th release date.

The developers are very excited about the game and want us to be able to get the most out the game. Namely they want it to be as polished as possible before they release it, hoping to avoid the pitfalls that some recent releases have suffered. "This could be the best Total War game we've ever made. We don't want to rush it," said the creative director, Mike Simpson.

This is the first foray into high fantasy for Total War, with a lot of excitement surrounding it. That said, because it's a PC only game, and previous Total War games have had some performance issues, they're looking at making sure that it's optimized on a variety of hardware. Specifically, they want us PC gamers to have a chance to enjoy it at 60FPS in even the most massive of battles at the highest of settings.

The Khronos Group's open source Vulkan API launched publicly last month, which brought some to wonder if Star Citizen would come to support it. Development subscriber Kyran inquired on exactly that for the '10 for the Chairman' Q&A video series, to which Chris Roberts, Chairman of developer Cloud Imperium Games, responded with what could be interpreted as a yes.

"We have looked at Vulkan; we're pretty excited by it," he says. "So we are considering our options between Vulkan and DirectX 12. We haven't made a full decision."

He continues: "Vulkan has some advantages, the biggest one being as long as it works properly that it can work on a PC but also work on Linux and work on other platforms, whereas DirectX 12 is specifically just for Windows. They are both very similar architectures; essentially Vulkan's not that different from what Mantle was originally set up to be. So we're considering it. You never know whether we will do DirectX 12 or Vulkan first."

Far too often publishers milk games franchises to the point where the cash cow dries up. We've seen this with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise, whose lukewarm reception led the publisher to rethink its annual strategy. Thankfully, Take-Two Interactive affirms that we won't ever have to worry about Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption games going down this path.

In a recent presentation in New York, Take-Two president Karl Slatoff discussed why the company doesn't ship out annual sequels. "We don't intend to change annual strategy because of product fatigue. We create franchise value and games have to be managed deliberately. It's tempting to have continuous releases and milk a franchise as far as you can, [but] we've seen that fatigue in other franchises in the games industry. With almost every single franchise for us, the latest release is bigger than the one before."

Take-Two Interactive understands that there's a delicate balance when it comes to the games industry. A high-profile AAA has to be carefully curated and managed in the marketing sector, and it's important that the companies build up as much hype and interest as possible. If you saturate the market with too many franchise releases, interest starts to wane, and the whole thing falls apart rather easily.

Amazon has their fingers in nearly every type of media there is. They have a successful games studio, a television and movie studio that's working on several exciting new projects, a hardware division that's had great success and now they're breaking into virtual reality.

At least so far as a job announcement that's been posted on Glassdoor seems to indicate. They want to help integrate VR into their Amazon Video projects, probably to dive into something new while others are still planning how they'll attack it as well.

The job posting says they're looking for a senior software development manager to lead a team to build a VR experience within Amazon Video. So far Netflix and Hulu have VR apps that give you a sort of theater experience, though this may be more than just a VR-centric app, and more a full-on VR video experience right from their own internal player. My guess is that they want to expand their web application to include a VR hub for those that make VR and possibly even integrate that into their own video projects.

In the games industry, it's only natural that any high-profile online game is accompanied by a rocky launch. In The Division's case, though, dastardly gamers have already found a way to grief other players by simply standing in their way.

In The Division, players can stand in the way of doorways and block them off from other players. Ubisoft made the decision to make all in-game avatars solid rather than allowing players to pass through one another, which is standard for any huge MMO-style online game. This oversight has caused a substantial amount of grief in the community, and armed trolls with an effective way to frustrate just about every would-be Division agent in New York.

Sadly, griefers can inhibit progress right at the game's start. Right after the opening cutscene, players start off in a safehouse that has only one exit. By simply standing in the way, griefers are pretty much denying access to the rest of the game, taunting other players by dancing and waving in place.

If you rely on the Netflix Mobile App to get your fix of drama, action or comedy on a regular basis, it's likely that your phone plan data is suffering as a result.

As seen on Gizmodo Netflix has been, and will be, working on a better experience for users, implementing what Gizmodo's Campbell Simpson explained as "a number of small but significant changes." Recent changes to this service include the evolution of the home screen, with plenty more improvements currently in testing and on the horizon for this media giant.

A large planned change is a 'data saving' feature set for availability to mobile users on iOS and Android platforms. Explained as an algorithm based service, rather than a clear-cut bitrate or resolution limiter, it means that the quality control and limitations will be fluid and change user to user.

Were you affected by the massive 2011 hacking of Sony's services? Do you happen to want some free stuff for your trouble?

Sony is sending out emails to those that were affected by the massive 28-day hack from April of 2011 and allow those that filled out the lengthy claim form the ability to redeem codes for free stuff on the services that you were signed into.

The free download codes are for a number of different PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PSP games. If you were one of those that downloaded a free game as part of the Welcome Back promotion that happened right after they got their services back up, then you're only allowed to have one free game. You can also choose from some premium themes as well.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 was just released at the end of last month and PopCap and EA just now announced the Graveyard Variety Pack, the first of many free DLC packs for the amusing game.

The update is quite generous with what they've added to it. They've created a new Aqua Center map that's rather elaborate in design and have put a lot of different, new, quests throughout the Backyard Battleground map. It wouldn't be Plants vs. Zombies if they didn't add in more options to customize your characters in wild new ways, either. So there's a lot of fun new costumes and options to choose from. They've also gone and balanced the characters a bit more from all the great feedback they've had from players.

And in case you're in love with microtransactions, EA has also added a few more packs so you can get even more customization options. $2.49 can get you 56K coins to spend on your wacky characters. But, just remember that these microtransactions are optional and solely cosmetic. It's a nice surprise to see PopCap dedicated to bringing value to a game that's always had a special place in a lot of gamers hearts. This franchise is genius.

Contrary to the promises made by an Ubisoft developer, console players have no option to improve frame rates in The Division.

According to the claims made by an unknown Ubisoft developer, PS4 and Xbox One gamers would be able to scale down lighting effects to boost frame rates in The Division. Now that the game is out on all platforms, console gamers can confirm that the settings simply aren't there.

"You can disable certain lighting aspects to improve frame rates in the console versions. I don't know of another game that does that. So if you want to choose frame rate over visuals, you can if you want," reads the erroneous quote given by a purported developer on a Team Epiphany stream.

Including an interesting $9.90 (AU) monthly 'Plan Freeze Fee' that Vaya enforced on consumers in addition to regular access fees even when their contract was over, this mobile company has been under Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) investigation due to some creative charges.

Another one slammed on end users was sent via email in February 2015 and depicted that users will need to pay a "once-off, refundable $20 (AU) Security Deposit" for the use of a Vaya mobile, with this company telling users to refer to its Terms and Conditions for more information. While the ACCC believed that the freeze fee and security deposit emails were misleading and failed to inform users of rights of termination, Vaya has responded with its side of the story.

Vaya's response to the investigation was to refund all customers incorrectly recruited into the freeze fee campaign, further outlining contract termination rights in what Gizmodo claims as an attempt to be more transparent with its users and the ACCC.

Yesterday we were shocked with the news that Microsoft was going to shut down Lionhead Studios and cancel their titular product, Fable Legends, but they've announced they won't be shutting down the current beta immediately, and will let players that are already in, continue to play until April.

No new players are being let into the beta, but if you're already in, and enjoying yourself, then you'll be able to continue your adventures until April 13th at 3:00PM GMT. After that, the servers will officially be shut down and the game will be gone for good.

So far there's been no word as to whether we'll see Fable be taken up by another studio, but we do know that for the time being, development has ceased completely. Fable Legends was a showcase of the capabilities of DirectX 12 and was one of the best examples of it too. It didn't use asynchronous compute quite to its fullest, but it did end up using it right. It's sad to see a game that's also quite fun to play, wander into oblivion.

Designed as a promotion between Samsung and Six Flags in order to promote the brand new Gear VR hardware, users now have the option to wear this device while literally riding a roller coaster.

While some users and companies have made pneumatic roller coaster seats that move and jostle in conjunction with VR headsets, this literal roller coaster ride pits you as a fighter pilot battling against all odds, with the real g-forces of the roller coaster assisting in the whole sensory-overload experience.

As seen on Gizmodo this promotion is set to kick off on March 10, with it set to extend to Six Flags sites in Arlington, Atlanta, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Lake George, Montreal, San Antonio, Agawam (Massachusetts) and Upper Marlboro (Maryland).

The March update for Star Wars Battlefront is quite small, probably because the next major patch and content drop is going to be the Outer Rim expansions coming later this year. But we get to enjoy a new survival mission on Tatooine and a new map based on Endor.

The new survival mission is called Rebel Depot, and like the name suggests, you'll have to attempt to survive against all odds, defending the precious depot. The new map is Survivors of Endor and can be played as part of Walker Assault, Supremacy and Turning Point.

This update is small, but the developers are hard at work putting the final touches on the Outer Rim update that will add in new playable heroes, more maps and even a new game mode, Extraction. Extraction looks interesting and depending on how it's implemented, it could be quite a popular new mode. As the name suggests, you'll be tasked with extracting resources from hostile areas.

It seems that SFF computers are all the rage recently, seeing companies like Corsair teasing its Bulldog, other manufacturers releasing Steam machines and ORIGIN PC proudly promoting this beast of a machine.

The Chronos gaming desktop is presented in a Small Form Factor (SFF) chassis, packing within some seriously powerful technology. Measuring in at 11.75" (H) x 4" (W) x 13.75" (D), a recently issued press release reinforced that this product is "ORIGIN PC's smallest form factor chassis ever offered." While it may be small, it certainly doesn't lack performance, with ORIGIN PC mentioning that there is plenty of space to fit an NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z within.

With further capacity for five hard drives, the top of the range Chronos can come packaged with an Intel Core i7 5690X or XEON and is said to support all Mini-ITX platforms that are based around Z170 and X99.

The leaks are already starting for Fallout 5, with voice actor Ryan Alosio teasing that Fallout 5 is in development. Alosio was the voice of Deacon in Fallout 4, and is quite active on social media like Instagram - which is where the leak on Fallout 5 started.

Alosio started a conversation about a collage of himself voice acting, and what he thought was a picture of Deacon wasn't actually Deacon, but it ended up being a picture of Zeek, instead. Well, his followers caught wind of it quickly, and corrected him. Alosio put up another picture, this time a correct one, but posted a weird explanation - which we've got below:

But things got even better, with 'fallout_temple' replying, saying "I knew you'd click onto it, I saw your last one and was like BRUH. I'll repost this one and shout out this week ok?" - to which Alosio replied to the Fallout Temple account, confirming that work on Fallout 5 was already underway, with the game in pre-production right now. He said:

Can you believe that The Division is finally here? The opening cinematic for The Division has been leaked, which is something you can watch below.

The Division is available right now on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC - with Ubisoft detailing its extensive DLC plan for 2016 recently. We should expect around 26 missions in total for the game, with more missions to arrive with the various DLC releases throughout the year.

Sniper Elite 4 has just been announced, with developer Rebellion saying that the game is in development, and will be released later this year.

The new game will hit the Xbox One, PS4 and PC - missing out on the last-gen consoles, with Sniper Elite 4 taking place in Italy. Rebellion teases that Sniper Elite 4 will offer breathless emergent stealth action, with unrivaled sniping freedom throughout a bunch of maps that are much bigger than the ones found in Sniper Elite 3.

Rebellion explains Sniper Elite 4's storyline as: "Italy, 1943. Covert agent and elite marksman Karl Fairburne must help free Italy from the yoke of Fascism and defeat a terrifying new threat that could halt the Allied fightback in Europe before it's even begun".