In wake of Steam's Review system being abused by gamers due to Dota 2 being blamed for killing Half Life 3 and gamers supporting PewDiePie regarding Campo Santo's DMCA, Valve have made some changes in how Steam's game reviews work. Valve hope to prevent incidences like the two mentioned don't reoccur as those reviews don't provide a true reflection of the experience with the game.

Valve have immediately introduced a new feature called Histograms, a feature that shows a histogram of the positive to negative reviews since the game was released on a daily basis. This data reflects dramatic increases in positive or negative reviews from a certain period, indicating a time where possible outside influences (eg. No Half Life 3 or Campo Santo's DMCA) have affected reviews. You can isolate days to read particular reviews for the day, or days of your interest.

New heroes always add a new element to a game, too many new heroes too quickly can generally lead to balancing issues that can break a game. During a video withIGN's new Expert Mode, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan discussed Overwatch's next hero, referred to only as "Hero 26".

"Hero 26 is very playable and very fun internally, and that's all I'll say. It's not coming out as soon as you think, but Hero 26 is already amazing." Kaplan then further elaborated "I don't think there's such a thing as too many heroes, but I think we also need to come out with heroes at a good pace."

Cross-platform between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sounds like a complex dream, or perhaps it's as simple as setting a few parameters?

It was reported and later confirmed by an Epic Games representative, that cross-platform play between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for Epic's Fortnite was enabled over the weekend due to a configuration issue.

"We had a configuration issue and it has now been corrected" the spokesperson said.

We're still just under two months away from the release of Need for Speed: Payback, with publisher EA and developer Ghost Games releasing the PC system requirements.

Need for Speed: Payback requires a Core i3 6300 or AMD FX 8150 processor as a minimum, coupled with a GeForce GTX 750 Ti or Radeon HD 7850, which will be good for 720p @ 30FPS with low settings. If you want 1080p 60FPS at high settings, you'll need a Core i5-4690K or AMD FX 8350 along with the Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 1060.

NVIDIA is celebrating Need for Speed: Payback with a new 4K gameplay video, powered by a single GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. NVIDIA explains: "Check out our exclusive Need for Speed Payback Graveyard Shift PC gameplay in 4K running at 60 FPS, captured on a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti PC. Watch as Tyler heads to the airfield and takes on the street league Graveyard Shift, race down the runway, grab some serious air, and work his way up through Silver Canyon".

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has left effects throughout the entire gaming industry, and now Epic Games is getting into the Battle Royale style games with their own Fortnite title.

Fortnite: Battle Royale will be - if you haven't already guessed it, a Battle Royale gameplay mode for Fortnite. If you don't know about Fortnite, it's a cartoonish (think Team Fortress 2) style, building-focused, zombie game.

The new Fortnite: Battle Royale will be released on September 26 for PC, Xbox One, and PS4 - and it'll be free to play, too.

Project CARS 2 is about to slide onto the market, with news breaking that developer Slightly Mad Studios is working on a new Fast and the Furious game.

Eurogamer reports that the CEO of Slightly Mad Studios, Ian Bell, teased the game in a big way. Bell said: "Guess what the latest Need for Speed game is doing and have a think about which Hollywood film they're copying, and then I can tell you we have a six-year deal with that major Hollywood company that'll beat what Need for Speed is doing. For the next six years".

Considering the kind of money that Fast and the Furious makes with each movie, it makes sense for there to be a game to tie into it. What do you think about the Project CARS developer making a Fast and the Furious game? What would you want to see in the game itself?

2K Games is selling a $150 copy of NBA 2K 18 on the Nintendo Switch...which is half of the console's asking cost. Yes, really.

In today's industry the gaming world is inundated with expensive collector's editions, pre-order bonuses, season passes, and over-priced digital deluxe special edition gold-platinum mega editions, publishers it seems games-makers are all too eager to sell you anything but the base $59.99 copy of the game. One such explosively expensive digital version has popped up on the Nintendo Switch's eShop and is asking gamers to spend $150--or 50% of the Switch's $299 price tag--on a single game: NBA 2K18.

The NBA 2K18 Legend Edition Gold version costs a staggering $150, easily making it the most expensive game on the Switch's eShop. Yes, this kind of thing has invaded the Switch too--no longer is it the last bastion of hope against crazy expensive video game temptations. A quick cursory search showed that there are currently no other digital deluxe versions of games available on the Switch storefront. So what do you get if you spend $150 on this edition? 250,000 VC, which are units to spend on the game's massively lucrative microtransaction packs, 40 MyTEAM Packs--what you spend VC on--that are only doled out once a week, and a bunch of in-game digital jerseys and shoes.

Yes, really.

Xbox division head Phil Spencer has now been promoted to a bigger leadership role at Microsoft, a move that strongly re-iterates the technology titan's support for gaming.

Phil Spencer, the man who's credited with essentially "saving" the Xbox brand and reversing significant damage incurred by the 2013 Xbox One launch, has now been promoted to a new role in Microsoft's executive branch. Mr. Spencer is now the Executive Vice President, Gaming at Microsoft, a promotion from his previous role as Head of Xbox

"Phil Spencer is executive vice president, Gaming at Microsoft. In this role, Spencer is accountable for leading Microsoft's gaming business across all devices and services," the company's leadership profile reads. "With his team and game development partners, Spencer continues to push the boundaries of creativity, technical innovation and fun across gaming genres, audiences and devices."

Nintendo will sell 130 million units of its Switch handheld-console hybrid in four years of availability, investment firm Credit Suisse predicts.

Japanese console-maker Nintendo has been lifted to "outperform" status by Swiss investment broker Credit Suisse, who now forecasts the company to sell around 130 million Switch consoles by 2020. This prediction, which would see the Nintendo Switch beating the mega-popular Wii and the 3DS' current 67.08 hardware sales by 94% in four years, is predicated wholly on the basis that the Switch will be accepted mainly as a handheld by consumers. However Nintendo has been adamant in defining the Switch as a "home console first and foremost," and the portability aspect is seen as a sidenote, despite the fact regions like Japan thrive on handheld gaming.

Credit Suisse analyst Keiichi Yoneshima explains the prediction by saying the Switch will hit its sales peak about three years after its launch, or 2020 during Nintendo's fiscal 2019 year timeline.

"As Nintendo's Switch is a unique game platform for use as either a console or handheld, there was initially some uncertainty over whether its sales cycle would more closely resemble that of a console or handheld. Although the Switch is currently categorized as more of a console, we expect it to sell like a handheld," the analyst said.

Capcom's new MMO-style Monster Hunter game gets an official release date, and it's sooner than we expected!

Monster Hunter World will see a simultaneous global release on January 26, 2017 on PS4 and Xbox One, Capcom today confirmed at this year's Tokyo Game Show. A PC version will release sometime later in the year. The game, which brings players from all across the world together with online-based co-op play, sees gamers entering an engaging and dynamic world replete with seamless map roaming, drop-in and drop-out multiplayer, and tons of monsters that're bound to a realistic food chain. In a recent article I admitted Monster Hunter World looks truly alive, and I can't wait to return to a proper console-based MonHun experience.

Launching this ambitious online game in January means the title will fall within Capcom's fiscal year 2018 timeline, which ends on March 31, 2018. This will ensure the publisher ends its fiscal year with massive earnings from the landmark RPG--not only is the game a mainline entry in the massively popular Monster Hunter franchise, but it's an online game which offers tremendous potential for monetization.

The developer plans to sell a combined 10.3 million units of Monster Hunter World and Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, and forecasts that both games will make up 44.78% of games sold throughout the fiscal year period. You can read more about Capcom's financial performance here.