Gaming - Page 1103

We've known for a while that both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will have mod support for Fallout 4, allowing console owners to tap the wealth of potential that user-created mods bring to any Fallout game. But now Bethesda has confirmed that the mods themselves will still need a PC to create.

Bethsoft exec and wise Fallout guru Pete Hines revealed the news in a Twitter interaction, iterating that mods will indeed be playable on consoles, but the PS4 and Xbox One won't be getting the mod tools required to create mods.

Fallout 4's modding suite will be pretty expansive and matches the exact same software that the studio used to create the game. Sadly users will have to wait until 2016 before the modding tools are released. "Early next year we'll release for free the new Creation Kit for the PC. This is the same tool we use in the studio. You'll be able to create your own mods and share them with others. We're especially excited these same mods will then be coming to Xbox One, and then PlayStation 4."

Despite being more powerful than Microsoft's Xbox One console, Sony's PlayStation 4 leaves much to be desired; its Jaguar APU is quite outdated and matches up to yesteryear PC builds in terms of performance. But it looks like Sony might consider refreshing the PlayStation 4 with new hardware to meet and go beyond the 1080p 60FPS standard.

In a recent interview with Japanese publication 4Gamer, Sony exec Masayasu Ito said that the PS4's x86 architecture opens up the possibilities for expanded hardware in the future. "The PS4's x86 architecture makes the console forward compatible, making it possible to incorporate performance enhancements required at any time," Ito said, answering the query on a possible enhanced PS4.5 console. "[As such], the possibility of a high-performance version of PS4 is an idea that can be considered."

It's been no secret that consoles have always lagged behind PC's in terms of hardware, and consoles traditionally ship with outdated hardware. With today's blistering-fast evolution of tech, that disparity has become pretty obvious, especially with mid-range PC's easily maintaining 1080p 60FPS, and let's not even get into 4K gaming which is becoming more mainstream with 4K displays dropping in price as each month passes. It'd be great to see the PS4 adopt dedicated GPU and CPU solutions to help significantly boost performance, but that would likely compromise the console's unified 8GB GDDR5 RAM system and call for a complete overhaul.

Thinking back to when I started 'gaming' in 1994 and beyond, games like WarCraft II, Age of Empires and Red Alert series filled up my childhood gaming experiences, with Real Time Strategy (RTS) games being king of the times. Advancements saw awesome games like StarCraft: Brood War and WarCraft III blossom into flourishing eSports titles, played around the world by gamers who were vying for thousands of dollars in prize money.

Skip ahead to 2015 - where is the RTS scene right now? As written by Evil Genius' Geoff 'iNcontroL' Robinson, it would seem that RTS is now a completely dying genre. With Robinson pointing out StarCraft as "the last stand," he makes mention that while we have Call of Duty titles being sequentially released yearly, when's the last time you saw consistent, competitive, RTS releases?

With WarCraft 4 quite possibly far away on the horizon, Robinson made mention that he believes "the RTS genre is just not what people get excited about these days," reasoning that "RTS games require patience, deep thought, speed, a bit of a gamble and so much more."

If there's one game that's on my radar, but I'm ready to be disappointed with, it would have to be The Division. The latest video released on YouTube showcases the incredible lighting and weather effects in the game, so check it out below.

As you can see, The Division is running on a Xbox One, and it still looks great. After a tumultuous time of purported graphics downgrades, it's nice to see that it still looks great. We've heard that there could be a post-release graphics upgrade, so we don't know what to expect when it arrives. We do know that The Division will be capped at 30FPS on both the Xbox One and PS4.

While Nintendo disappointed Wii U owners across the globe by delaying the new Zelda Wii U game to 2016, the games maker plans to use that extra time to pepper some hidden surprises that will make the open-world Zelda adventure much more memorable.

In a recent interview with IGN, Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma revealed that he will adapt his own interpretation of fan's feedback and inject it right into Zelda Wii U's huge open world.

"We actually had some feedback from Skyward Sword, where people were saying, 'This is not exactly the Zelda game I was looking for, I was looking for a bigger open world.' Unfortunately, I can't go into details but I'm hoping to put a surprise, or kind of a twist, on my view of an open world game. I hope that you'll look forward to it."

Bethesda Softworks today announced that one of this year's most monumentally anticipated games, Fallout 4, has officially gone gold and is completely finalized.

Fallout 4 is now totally finished and ready to be shipped into the hands of millions of eager, awaiting fans. In less than three weeks time you'll be able to jump into post-apocalyptic Boston for some first-person havoc, tackling a number of quests and leveling up your survivor with a slew of new dynamic perks and customizations.

If you're a PC owner, be sure to check out Fallout 4's official specs to make sure your rig is compatible, but in all honesty it should be considering Bethesda's new Fallout really isn't graphically or performance intensive.

Graphics card maker Sapphire has a new blog post up on its website detailing all the reasons you shouldn't be pre-ordering games. This is pretty bold, given Sapphire no doubt has relationships with companies very invested in the pre-order system.

The post, by North America PR and Marketing Manager Edward Crisler, starts with a good point, noting pre-orders made a lot more sense before digital, but now with unlimited copies of everything on both PC and console, they are unnecessary.

Next he gets very direct, saying that pre-order funding is being misused in paying for game development instead of the original purpose. "[This] is not a bad idea," he explains, "Except it has not helped make games better - in fact it has made them worse."

While PlayStation Vita gamers have long felt that Sony has abandoned them, the Japanese console-maker has now confirmed that it'll be halting all first-perty games development on the yesteryear handheld.

The news comes straight from Sony Computer Entertainment Senior Vice President Masayasu Ito, who confirmed the news in a recent interview with Japanese game site 4Gamer: "Currently, first party studios have no titles in development for PS Vita," Ito said, closing the door on hope of new Sony titles on the handheld. "Since third parties are working very hard on PS Vita, SCE's own strategy is to focus on PS4, which is a new platform."

Sony apparently doesn't realize that one of the main reasons the PlayStation Vita never took off in the U.S. is because of the lack of game support. The disparity between games released in Japan and those released in the West is incredibly skewed to the overseas region, with North American gamers missing out on a huge portion of games and content.

With everyone and their uncle trying to get into eSports, we're now seeing industry juggernaut Activision-Blizzard enter the fold. Activision has just announced it has created an entire new division that is completely dedicated to eSports.

This new division is being led by Steve Bornstein (the former CEO of ESPN) and Mike Sepso (the co-founder of Major League Gaming), which gives some serious credit to eSports, on top of what we've seen from other companies and startups like Unikrn. The Director of Research and Consumer Insights at SuperData, Stephanie Llamas, told GamesIndustry.biz "This is major for eSports since they are the first publicly traded, multi-platform publisher to participate at this level".

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter also chimed in, where he said: "I think it's analogous (on a much smaller scale) to Facebook buying Oculus. Whatever people thought about the opportunity before, they have to consider it much more seriously now that there is a commitment from a well-capitalized firm. Activision clearly sees a ton of potential to profit from eSports, whether from tournament fees/commercial sponsorship fees from events, selling tickets to events, televising events (and collecting ad revenue) or sponsoring skill based wagering on events. They clearly see an opportunity, and are apparently willing to make a large bet on the potential of that opportunity to drive future profits".

Just as we thought Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 couldn't get any worse on last-gen consoles, beleaguered developer Beenox has revealed that it's now targeting 30FPS on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ports of the game.

When Activision announced that Black Ops 3's campaign would be totally cut out on last-gen flavors of the game, we know there was something seriously wrong. What happened? Isn't Treyarch one of the best developers, didn't they make a number of Call of Duty games on last-gen consoles, thus unlocking the potential of PS3 and Xbox 360? The problem was handing the game off to the inexperienced devs at Beenox--a move that is further impacting the game's release.

"I'd say that we tried to hit the 60 frames-per-second target, but it becomes harder when you're working on current gen platforms," Thomas Wilson, creative director at Beenox, told Develop Online in a recent interview. "We're basically looking more at something like 30fps. But still, the experience is very enjoyable, otherwise it's not Call of Duty."

It looks like Ubisoft's latest Rainbow Six shooter will continue the awkward trend that the games industry is moving toward, specifically the FPS genre. Rainbow Six: Siege might have microtransactions despite being a full-priced AAA game--a move we expect to see in F2P shooters.

Rainbow Six Animation Director Scott Mitchell hinted at the the news in a recent interview with Angry Joe, letting slip that Ubisoft's tactical shooter will leverage microtransactions in the form of "Rainbow Credits". "So the in-game currency is called Renowned, but we also have Rainbow Credits that can go towards unlocking things," Mitchell said, then asked an off-screen Ubisoft PR rep if he could talk more about the credits. The rep responded with a curt "no".

Renowned is the game's unlockable progression system, and Mitchell describes it as "essentially an in-game currency that you can use to buy skins, operators and weapons". Angry Joe caught the slip and pounced on it, trying to glean more info, but none was offered. Then he went on to ask if at any point gamers would be able to spend real money to buy Renowned or items, and Mitchell responded with a telling "we'll actually be going into this later with the DLC plan and all that kind of stuff very very soon."

In what has been described on Reddit as "a rough week for starcraft," the last seven days has seen the scene completely rocked by retirements, arrests, scandals and the extremely sad announcement of terminal cancer.

Starting with the arrests, news was posted just a few days ago about an official Police investigation which has now been thrown into public action, seeing PRIME head coach Park 'Gerrard' Wae-Sik and professional gamers Choi 'YoDa' Byeong-Heon and Choi 'BBoongBBoong' Jong-Hyuk arrested alongside nine other unidentified individuals. These arrests are allegedly due to major match-fixing scandals, seeing players lose games on purpose for financial gain - something that was also found out and acted against in the North American Counter-Strike scene, but not on this scale as there were no arrests made or charges placed. For more information on the StarCraft betting scandal, check a comprehensive thread here.

Sitting alongside the unexepcted arrests was the shocking and saddening announcement that YouTuber and eSports personality John 'TotalBiscuit' bain was not only closing his StarCraft II team, Axiom eSports, but has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Footage of the cancelled Battlefront 3 sequel has surfaced, giving us a look at the true successor of the franchise that we'll never get to play.

The ill-fated Battlefront 3 sequel originally started development in 2012 by the studio Free Radical, and it really looks to be everything we'd ever want in a Battlefront game. A NeoGAF user has tracked down new footage for the canned Battlefront 3, but bear in mind the video is from a 9 month old PC build of the game, and it's an early build at that.

The game looks as if it features much more than DICE's Battlefield-esque FPS action, including immersive galactic dogfights--real Rogue Squadron-level dogfighting with multiple tiers and massive Star Destroyers hulking in the background--as well as authentic third-person combat in the vein of the original series.

Xbox Australia plans to show off live Halo 5 gameplay footage on the world's most gigantic aerial screen in a bid to promote 343i's new shooter.

Microsoft really wants the world to know about Halo 5, and the Redmond-based tech giant is pulling out all the stops in one of the most memorable promotional showcases in gaming. At 7:30PM on the eve of Halo 5's launch, October 26, Xbox's Australia division will broadcast live Halo 5 gameplay onto a massive floating screen 2,000 feet in the air.

The huge floating screen has a projected path down the coastline from Curl Curl to Coogee, where it will fly back and forth a single time. The team boasts that the screen can be seen from over 3 kilometers (9842 feet) away. Plus Xbox affirms that the broadcast won't be sent from the ground: a fan will be picked to play the game remotely via helicopter, hinting that the player will be able to use the giant floating viewscreen. "A lucky fan in Australia will play "Halo 5: Guardians" from a helicopter flying over Sydney, as gameplay is broadcasted via a screen suspended from a second helicopter," reads the official announcement on Major Nelson's website.

Although Harmonix's latest entry in the acclaimed Rock Band franchise has been met with much fanfare and applause, the game still pushes an incredibly massive library of individually-priced downloadable songs onto players.

Nowadays video games have been plagued with a huge assortment of tricks and tactics aimed at separating you from the cash in your wallet: microtransactions, season passes and DLC being the main breadwinners. One of the biggest moneymakers has been music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero--and Rock Band 4 continues this trend in earnest.

Rock Band 4 has a total of 1973 DLC songs that are individually marketed at $1.99 a piece, and to buy all of them you'd rack up a tab of almost $4,000--or $3926 to be exact. That's a lot of money for any video game, let alone an interactive music simulator like Rock Band.

Silent Hills could've been one of the best horror games ever released, but the game will most likely never see the time of day. But what does filmmaker Guillermo del Toro have to say about the cancellation of his horror game that he collaborated with Hideo Kojima, the mastermind behind the Metal Gear Solid franchise?

During an interview with Bloody Disgusting, del Toro said that some of the stuff they were working on in Silent Hills was spotted in The Last of Us. He said: "We had a great experience and had great story sessions with hundreds upon hundreds of designs. Some of the stuff that we were designing for Silent Hills I've seen in games that came after, like The Last of Us, which makes me think we were not wrong, we were going in the right direction".

"The thing with Kojima and Silent Hills is that I thought we would do a really remarkable game and really go for the jugular", del Toro continued. He added: "We were hoping to actually create some sort of panic with some of the devices we were talking about and it is really a shame that it's not happening. When you ask about how things operate, that makes no f**king sense at all that that game is not happening. Makes no f**king sense at all. That's the randomness that I was talking about".

We've known for quite some time that Nintendo's new NX platform would have its own handheld controller, but new reports indicate that the second half of the NX could be a 3DS-like on-the-go handheld rather than being tethered to a central console.

Information gleaned from Nintendo's NX patent filings have already told us quite a bit about the Japanese console-maker's plans for the future. We know that the NX is made up of a stationary console and a handheld controller, and that the NX will have cartridge-based games much like the 3DS (which further adds credence to a mobile handheld). But it looks like the controller will be a cross between a 3DS and a Wii U.

"The exact shape of the NX hardware isn't yet clear," reads a report on the Wall Street Journal. "People familiar with the development plans said Nintendo would likely include both a console and at least one mobile unit that could either be used in conjunction with the console or taken on the road for separate use."

With regular sales on its entire library of games and huge widespread platform for communities and gamers, Steam is seen as the leading ecosystem for PC gaming. But the trade-off lies in Steam's customer service, which is extremely lacking--and that's putting it lightly.

If you have a specific problem with a Steam game, you have two choices: just let it go and avoid the game altogether, or contact Steam customer support. The latter of which can be the entry point to a whole new can of worms, leading to days upon days (sometimes weeks) of waiting for a reply. The platform still doesn't have a phone system, so millions of users are at the mercy of a support ticket system built around e-mail communication.

Valve knows that Steam support is pretty bad, and the company says it's working on optimizing the service, and plans to have some fixes in place by Christmas. "It's meant that training people in third-party has taken longer than we expected," Valve's Erik Johnson told Kotaku. "It bugs us, but it is what it is. We think we'll have the support wait time down to an acceptable point by Christmas time. That's our goal. It's a function of training up more and more people answer customer issues. We're not there yet. It's getting better internally; it's just that it hasn't yet translated to great support for users. We're gonna get there, though."

The Star Wars: Battlefront beta was seen as a huge boon for EA and DICE, with a huge portion of gamers having a blast in the 20v20 Walker Assault skirmish or Drop Zone PVP chaos. But all in all the beta was quite limited, but a recent leak shows how little content the beta actually offered.

As with any beta release of a popular AAA game, dataminers completely scoured every inch and cranny of the beta's core files, finding a treasure trove of content that will be released in the final game. The unearthed code was formatted for legibility by Reddit user me_and_my_johnson, and reveals the full array of heroes, weapons, traits, upgrades, maps and everything else that EA and DICE have planned for Battlefront's release this November.

Be aware that the list contains spoilers and is an entirely massive and comprehensive amount of data consisting of over 17 pages in Google Docs. One of the most amazing surprises is Leia's hero ability--we knew she'd be in the game from previous leaks, but her super is pretty amazing...however we won't spoil the fun.

While Valve has started to ship its new Steam hardware out to pre-orderers across PC and Mac, the tech only actually works on one platform. When Mac owners get their hands on Valve's new streaming box and controller combo they'll be sorely disappointed to find the tech doesn't function on their platform--but Valve is on the case, and they're making it right.

Due to "temporary software issues" Valve affirms the Steam Controller and Steam Link PC game streaming set-top box aren't compatible with OS X. The digital storefront giant says that these issues will be fixed via a number of firmware updates that will roll out in the next few weeks, but until then Mac users are out of luck.

To make up for the inconvenience and disappointment, Valve is starting to gift free copies of its huge $100 Valve Complete Pack that contains every released first-party game it released. Email correspondence between a frustrated Mac owner and Valve reveals more details: