Gaming - Page 1100

As part of its huge holiday push, Microsoft is hosting its own Black Friday sale on Xbox LIVE that promises huge price cuts of up to 70% off across 150 different games.

Microsoft is really breaking out the big guns for the holiday season, and is actively trying to sway users over to Team Lime-Green's court. The Redmond tech giant knows that a ton of people are going to snag the $299 Xbox One bundles on Black Friday, so its slashing prices on more than 150 digital games so users can fill out their library.

From November 20-23, Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers will get early access to the Black Friday sale with savings up to 40-60% off select games. Major Nelson was quick to note that Gold members will also get an extra 10% off, so you might want to re-up your subscription to take part. If you've let your subscription lapse, Microsoft will let you get a full month of Gold for just $1 if you re-up from your Xbox 360, but we're not sure if this price counts towards renewed or brand new subs.

Intel has launched a new promotion that bundles three free games with purchases of select Skylake and Haswell Core i7 CPU's, including the anticipated Just Cause 3.

The Intel Enthusiast Game bundle emphasizes chaos and action, with over $100 of free games including Avalanche's upcoming open-world Just Cause 3, a copy of Valve's immortal shooter CS: GO, and premium credit for the free-to-play World of Warships game. After buying a qualifying Haswell or Skylake CPU, users can redeem their voucher at Intel's promo site. We're not sure if the keys are for Steam versions of the games, but likely so.

Qualifying purchases include the full range of Intel Core i7 Haswell CPU's from the Core i7-4770 S to the expensive Core i7-5960X, as well as the new Skylake Core i7-6700 and Core i7-6700K processors. Newegg notes that all keys must be used and redeemed by February 16, 2016.

Eidos Montreal today announced some disappointing news for Deus Ex fans: the newest entry, Mankind Divided, has been hit with a significant delay. Mankind Divided was originally planned to release in February, but has now been pushed back all the way to August to "exceed player expectations".

In a recent update, the devs revealed that Mankind Divided will now release on August 23, 2016, pushing back the game into a new quarter of 2016.

"Expectations for Mankind Divided are extremely high, and we not only want to meet those expectations but exceed them," said Eidos-Montreal studio head David Anfossi. "We're confident and proud of the game so far. However, as we are now playing through the game in full we can see that it will require more time in post-production for tuning, iterations, and refinement to meet your high standards. In order to achieve this, we need to move the release date of the game to August 23, 2016."

A well-constructed post on Reddit by user 'serfbufo' has so far earned them three lots of Reddit gold and major support from the /r/gaming community. The topic at hand is a botched PlayStation network refund due to an account hand and unauthorized payments.

Serfbufo says that they have been in discussion with Sony over the past three months, something that began due to $499.1 of unauthorized charges being issued to a debit card. After being promised money back by Sony representatives at multiple occasions, in the end Sony has delivered only $230 in total back to this disgruntled user.

This hack has seen serfbufo contact Sony through live chat, phone calls and emails alike, with another claim being launched as you read this. There's no saying whether the full funds will be ever sent back, but it's obvious that this user is jumping through every hoop they can in order to win back what is rightfully theirs.

Now that Star Wars: Battlefront is here, AMD has announced it is bundling the new first-person shooter from EA DICE with their latest Fiji-powered video cards, including the Radeon R9 Nano, R9 Fury and R9 Fury X.

AMD owners will be able to redeem their Star Wars: Battlefront key until January 31, 2016, when the promotion ends. AMD doesn't have an unlimited number of keys, with the chipmaker noting that the campaign period ends on January 31, 2016 or "when supply of Key Codes is exhausted, whichever occurs first".

In order to redeem your Star Wars: Battlefront key, you'll need to redeem it by February 29, 2016 at the latest, after which the AMD Unique ID you'll need to redeem your key will be invalid. You'll need to visit this site to redeem your key.

Not content with reigning over almost every facet of gaming, industry titan Electronic Arts has set its sights on conquering the open-world action genre that's currently dominated by Assassin's Creed.

In order to make its own Assassin's Creed-style game, EA will use the prowess of ex-Ubisoft dev Jade Raymond who played a critical role in the Assassin's Creed franchise. Raymond joined up with EA earlier this year to found the Montreal-based studio Motive.

"We've never really operated in the largest genre of gaming, and that's the action genre," EA's CFO Blake Jorgensen said during a presentation at the UBS Global Technology Conference. "That's the Assassin's Creed-style games; more open-world, more single-play versus multiplayer. It's not been an area that we've operated in. We recently hired Jade Raymond, who was behind the Assassin's Creed franchise for Ubisoft and she will be building an action genre for us through a studio we're building out in Montreal right now. So a lot of excitement around the action genre."

JRPG fans rejoiced when they heard Tales of Zestiria was making its way to PC this year, the first game in the series to do so, but one of many similar titles in recent years.

It's a great port, too, except for the crippling 30 FPS cap. Fortunately, the community has come together to release TZFix, a tool that not only increases the maximum framerate to a much smoother 60 FPS, but fixes various issues, including stutter, Steam broadcasting, the aspect ratio in FMVs, the UI, and in the field, and the Field of View in the field as well. And then there are the feature additions of significantly increased character shadow detail, and a framerate counter with "instantaneous frametime" (not precisely sure what this means, but possibly a handy frametime graph for stutter detection and such).

You can download TZFix here. Most user reports indicate it's flawless though there are some concerning reports of specific issues as well. At least some of these are likely to be patched out at some point, but in the meantime, if you experience any issues, hit the sources below for information on workarounds and more.

Star Wars: Battlefront has just been released, and EA is already teasing sequels. Big surprise, huh? We've known for a while that EA signed a 10-year licensing deal with Disney to make Star Wars games, and it looks like these titles will carry through the original trilogy and beyond.

"We struck a licensing deal with Disney a few years back that's almost ten years in length," EA exec Blake Jorgensen said during a company presentation. "The game that comes out tomorrow, Star Wars Battlefront, is a traditional first-person style shooter game. Our goal is to make future Battlefront games as well as other style games around the Star Wars franchise, both on mobile as well as console and PC. It's a huge opportunity for us."

"We get access to all of the historical content as well as all the new content developed. The beauty of the Star Wars franchise is it's almost unlimited in what you can do with it," the exec continued. "We know Disney has done a great job with other franchises and we believe they'll do the same with Star Wars over time in delivering new worlds, new characters, new vehicles, all the things that make great video games. Our goal is not to make video games directly about the movies, it's to use the IP in the movie to make great, exciting games."

Last week we reported that Bethesda had secured a huge $750 million from Fallout 4, but this is because the company shipped some 12 million copies worth $750 million, but this number doesn't represent $750 million in actual sales.

Bethesda announced that it shipped 12 million copies for day one sales, or $750 million worth of the game. The developer is reportedly already shipping more copies of the game to retailers in order to "meet ongoing market demand". Bethesda Softworks President Vlatko Andonov said: "We're extremely proud of Todd Howard, Game Director at Bethesda Game Studios, and his experienced team of developers for their talent and dedication in creating this extraordinary game. Fallout 4 is a masterpiece in game development and storytelling, providing fans hundreds of hours of fun as they explore and are challenged by this fascinating, beautifully crafted world".

According to SuperData, Fallout 4 has been selling well through digital sales, too. SuperData says that 1.87 million units were sold digitally in the first 72 hours, 1.2 million of these were on the PC through Steam, while the rest were sold on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. SuperData's Joost van Dreunen said that $100 million in revenue was secured through digital sales, with van Dreunen saying that Fallout 4's success is proof that PC gamers don't "exclusively purchase games at a huge discount and instead prove themselves willing to shell out full price for select titles".

Bethesda has overhauled Fallout 4 in such a way that every SPECIAL stat is fantastic in its own way. Not only does each stat have its own balanced effect in-game, but they are now tied to a dynamic Perk tree, pretty much nixing all chances of being a "jack of all trades".

It used to be that Fallout players could get away with pulling SPECIAL points away from a specific stat to fuel better ones, but Fallout 4 doesn't have a "dump stat" so to speak. Luckily the game still has bobbleheads, which are a must-have to round out and smooth your character's prowess. Whether you've skimped in Agility or pulled a ton of points away from Perception, our bobblehead guide will show you where each of these comical collectibles are hiding so you can shore up those rough edges.

Fallout 4 has 20 bobbleheads this time around, and you'll notice right away that these collectibles are a bit different. The SPECIAL bobbleheads--Strength, Agility, etc--all raise the specified stat point by 1. Bobbleheads like Melee, Repair, Science and Small Guns, however, give you extra perks. You can find the full range of effects and locations in our comprehensive checklist below.

Bethesda's massive open-world games often come with caveats, with bugs, glitches and performance hitches being the most common trade-offs. We've known for a while now that Fallout 4 has performance disparities between consoles and PC, but now users have spotted a quest bug that will crash the game across all platforms.

The bug was first reported on the Bethsoft Forums a day after the game came out, and is repeatable across PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. According to the post, the glitch is quite nebulous and hard to pinpoint. The most definite reports pinpoint the Monsignor Plaza and the C.I.T. Ruins as the exterior environments that trigger the crash, along with the Hunter/Hunted questline and some bits of the Boston After Dark quest path. Reports indicate that having the Nick Valentine quest Unlikely Valentine active will trigger the crash when visiting aforementioned areas.

Users are reporting various effects including simple crashes to desktop on PC and error messages on console, and even the more extreme corrupted saved data files. PC users are able to use Fallout 4's console commands to reset the affected quests via codes, so if you're having troubles be sure to scan the forum posts.

The gaming community has been divided over the pending release of the latest Star Wars Battlefront title. On one hand it's freakin' Star Wars, but on the other hand, some players are concerned about the limited in-game options, power-up style pickups and the high price of its Ultimate Edition.

With the Standard and Deluxe Editions also available for pre-order, the Ultimate Edition offers one major improvement over the others in the form of a Season Pass. Described in Origin as necessary to "expand your galaxy," the Battlefront Season Pass grants you access to four upcoming expansion packs and access to the "Shoot First" emote two weeks early, whatever that is.

In addition to these expansions, the Ultimate pack you get all the goodies as per the lower graded pre-order options. These include instant access to Han Solo's DL-44 blaster, Ion Grenades and Ion Torpedo's, which are things you're going to unlock anyway. Also thrown into the mix are two exclusive motes: Ion Shock, which looks like a Storm Trooper trying to do the 'Thriller dance' and another mote called 'Victory'. Yep, you can pay to have your character fist pump harder than the rest.

Conducted by 'MyVoucherCodes', a website described as a "well-known gaming and sex authority," we have now come to learn that PC gamers are apprently much better in bed than those who prefer consoles.

Comparing the numbers, this poll saw 54% of PC enthusiasts gather a 'good' rating, followed by 22% rated as excellent. Close behind was Xbox gamers who ranked 47% in the 'good department', followed by a dismal 3% 'excellent' rating for PlayStation users. Besides an all-round rating of proficiency in the bedroom, 11% of respondents reported that they wished for less sex and more game time.

In other interesting news, the poll returned a 20% rating of dissatisfaction with bedroom performance overall, showing that while PC gamers might be better, apparently many still suck.

Activision is pushing out a new update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, which is a patch aimed at providing better performance. The new patch weighs in at 520MB. It was only last week that we reported that Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 made $550 million in its first 72 hours.

Treyarch and Activision haven't been advertising the 520MB patch through the usual COD general community channels, so there's no patch notes other than a brief Steam Community note saying that it has "bug fixes and performance improvements". There are some gamers who are still having issues getting Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 to run well on their systems, so here's hoping this patch fixes that.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 might have made a huge $550 million in its first 72 hours on sale, but 91% of gamers in the UK decided to buy it for their consoles, instead of gaming PCs. But how's the PC performance side of things going?

According to DSOGaming's performance analysis of Black Ops 3 on the PC, the game scales well on older CPUs with the site simulating dual- and quad-core CPUs for their testing. The site said: "Call of Duty: Black Ops III scales amazingly well on more than four CPU cores, something that did impress us. However, the game was running with constant 60fps even on our simulated dual-core system. Truth be told, those seeking for constant a 120fps will have to rely on a really high-end CPU and an SLI configuration, but we're pretty sure that most will be happy with a constant 60fps experience".

DSOGaming notes that Black Ops 3 is described as a "GPU bound title" and in order to max out the in-game settings for 1080p with 100% resolution scaling, players will "need NVIDIA's top of the line GPU", the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. The site said in order to play the game maxed out at 1080p with their GTX 690 at a constant 60FPS, they needed to drop down most of the settings to High.

Some gamers have been playing Star Wars: Battlefront over the last few days, with Jason Evangelho from Forbes saying that after playing Battlefront, he "walked away disappointed and discontent".

After around 10 hours with the game, Evangelho said: "That sobering truth is that there simply isn't enough content or variety here to justify a $60 purchase". Now that's a huge statement for one of the biggest game releases of the year, but it seems like this is the word on the street for Star Wars Battlefront. After I saw Evangelho's comments, I dug a bit deeper and looked at the review on VideoGamer.com, which mirrored his thoughts on the game.

VideoGamer.com says "Give it a few hours, however, and the allure of this spectacle begins to fade. Soon, you're left to reckon with the fact that while Battlefront excels in making real those dreams of fighting Darth Vader on Hoth, it doesn't nail the rather more prosaic elements of first person shooters".

System Shock, and its even better sequel were two of my favorite games as a young gamer. But now there's news that there's a remake of System Shock coming out, thanks to Night Dive.

During an interview with Night Dive for Fast Company, PCWorld has reported that a "full-fledged remake" of System Shock is on the way. From the interview: "With most of its current catalog, Night Dive merely licenses the rights for a rerelease, and splits the sales revenue with the rights holder. Night Dive is becoming more interested in acquiring rights in their entirety, as this gives the company much more flexibility".

They continued: "One example: Night Dive is developing a full remake of the original System Shock, going well beyond the basic rerelease that launched a couple months ago. Night Dive has acquired the full rights to the franchise, and Kick says he's been working with Robert Waters, the game's original concept artist, to reimagine his designs from the early 1990s".

The operating system powering the new wave of Steam Machines, Valve's newborn SteamOS, might be in trouble. It looks like the Linux-fueled SteamOS is underwhelming in actual real-time gameplay when compared with today's Windows 10 standard, showing a possible grim future for the fledgling living room PC market.

Ars Technica has published a new tech demo that saw Windows 10 go head-to-head with Valve's SteamOS. The results showed SteamOS somewhat holding its own in GeekBench tests, but Windows 10 completely dominated over the Linux newcomer in gaming benchmarks. Ars notes that SteamOs dropped frame-rates up to 58% lower than Windows 10.

With Shadows of Mordor running on Ultra settings at 1792x1120 resolution, SteamOS maintained a paltry 14.6 FPS, with Windows 10 pegged at 34.5 FPS. On Low settings for the same game, SteamOS runs at 61 FPS whereas Windows 10 hits 95.5 FPS. Benchmarks for Metro: Last Light were more of the same. With Metro running at 2560x1600 resolution with minimum presets, SteamOS hit 40 FPS with Windows 10 at 50.5 FPS.

During the weeks before Fallout 4 came out just about everyone was joking that the game would consume their lives; millions of people would call in sick using a note from Dr. Pete Hines, wives and girlfriends would be neglected, and bomb shelters would be built to house Fallout 4 addicts everywhere. Interestingly enough, Fallout 4 has indeed disrupted people's lives in many ways, including their daily consumption of porn.

Pornhub revealed that site traffic dipped as much as 10% on the day of Fallout 4's launch, proving people were more interested in putting their hands on a controller than...well...you know. The spike was short-lived, though. Users soon came back for their naughty digital fix in a massive influx, showing that like war, porn never changes.

"Like watching a good Pornhub video, anticipation of the release had been building up, and once the moment arrived, dedicated gamers thought of little else - including visiting Pornhub," the site wrote on its metric update. If you're keen to see the full scope of how a huge game like Fallout 4 can interrupt daily habits--even those shameful and seedy online visits--drop on over to the site. Pornhub keeps a watchful eye over its visitors, and there are some pretty dynamic stats going on. Remember that console gamers can get in on the action, as Pornhub also supports play on both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Fallout 4 might have been the most anticipated game in recent memory, and the newly released success reports pretty much prove this to be true. Despite the frame-rate controversy that fractured the gaming community, Bethesda's open-world magnum opus went on to become a smash hit across all platforms.

Bethsoft today announced concrete Fallout 4 sales metrics, revealing that the game amassed $750 million on its first day of availability. The open-world post-apocalyptic adventure also managed to completely smash the video game pre-order record, with the super rare Pip-Boy Edition being the "fastest-selling collector's edition in gaming history in retail stores."

While gamers argue that the PC version of Fallout 4 is the best (myself included), the game has made serious strides on Steam, with Bethesda touting that Fallout 4 was the number-one game played with over 470,000 concurrent Steam users. With the launch of such a high-profile game, a ton of gamers were curious to see it in action--and as a result more Twitch users tuned into Fallout 4 streams than any other game launch of 2015, including Halo 5.