Gaming - Page 1106

Back in August, the creators of Pokemon ruthlessly slapped a copyright infringement claim on a good-natured Pokemon celebration. The party was to be held at PAX and was totally unofficially and not sanctioned or sponsored by The Pokemon Company.

Like Nintendo, the company has a very black and wide approach to what it considers copyright infringement and really doesn't ever make consolations. So naturally the Pokemon Company pressured and threatened Larkin Jones, the event organizer, with legal action. Jones canceled the event and cooperated. But now the Pokemon creators demand Larkin pay a $4000 fine for using copyright images like Pikachu on the fliers. Jones just doesn't have the cash to pay it, and has turned to a Go Fund Me campaign to raise the funds. This led to more than a hundred gamers coming together and pledging their support, and Jones raised the money in just three days.

"The day before the PAX party, Pokemon sued me. Without even a cease and desist. Totally didn't expect that,"

What better to make sensationalist media outlets perk up and blame real life violence on video games other than this realistic Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA 4) mod? This 'ultra graphics mod' is named 'SG ENB v2.0 [1.0.4.0] and sets out to turn GTA 4 into a hyper-realistic, action packed, real-world experience.

The video above showcases simple gaming actions which take place with the help of an NVIDIA GTX 970 running at 2560x1440, but there's no saying what will happen to your precious framerate when the going gets tough and RPG's start flying.

This mod joins the plethora of GTA IV and Skyrim enhancers that reiterate why enabling gaming communities to make expansive mods is such a good thing. If you're wanting a higher resolution look at the screenshots, click on the images below or head here for the full album. There's nothing else to say here other than: enjoy the photos.

Rather than sticking to pre-defined PR lines, Xbox boss Phil Spencer really takes the executive rigamarole out of his interactions with the public. More than once we've seen and heard Spencer say and do things that shows he's really on the same level as gamers, and now he's actually delivered some level-headed responses to Xbox LIVE disruptions.

When a huge global service like Xbox LIVE is down, it prevents millions of users from playing their games on their off hours or even watching Netflix. Interruptions are a big deal especially during the holiday season when users are downloading day-one updates, firmware updates, or trying to play online-only games like Destiny. Phil Spencer knows that downtime is a huge inconcenience, and even went so far as to say that it makes Xbox gamers actively distrust Microsoft.

Yesterday Xbox LIVE was down for quite some time on the Xbox One. When an everyday fan asked Spencer what was wrong with Xbox LIVE, he opened up and actually answered: "We are on the issue, apologies. We know the issue and what the fix is, shouldn't be too long," Spencer said, adding in the following: "We have to earn [your] trust, each day, and I know service disruptions hurts that trust."

Microsoft has just folded one of the industry's premiere and leading 3D physics providers into its massive ecosystem, giving the Redmond-based tech giant a huge home field advantage.

"Microsoft's acquisition of Havok continues our tradition of empowering developers by providing them with the tools to unleash their creativity to the world," Microsoft said in the official announcement. "We will continue to innovate for the benefit of development partners. Part of this innovation will include building the most complete cloud service, which we've just started to show through games like "Crackdown 3."

Havok is used in pretty much every game with a 3D environment. If you pick up any game released in the last 15 years or so, odds are that it will have Havok's logo on the back. The suite has powered tens of thousands of games across the entire spectrum of gaming, from yesteryear consoles like the PS2 and GameCube to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well as an entirely galaxy of PC games. Picking up Havok is a monumental step forward for Microsoft and gives them a massive new armament to have priority for its first-party Xbox One exclusives as well as AR games with the HoloLens.

Today marks the last bundle in Microsoft's second Xbox One anniversary celebration, and it looks like they've saved the best for last. Now gamers will have the traditionally meaty Fallout franchise to chew through with their new consoles.

The new Fallout Xbox bundle comes with the new 1TB Xbox One console that doubles the stock 500GB storage, a download key for Fallout 4, another download key for Fallout 3 which will be playable thanks to the Xbox One's incoming backward compatibility update, an Xbox One controller fitted with the new 3.5mm headset jack, and a 14-day voucher for Xbox LIVE Gold.

This bundle is scheduled to launch alongside Fallout 4's release on November 10, 2015. Since it has the expanded 1TB HDD the bundle will retail for $399 rather than the more comfortable $349, but that extra space will help you further down the road if you're an active gamer.

Ever since the PlayStation Vita released in 2012, there has been much debate over the exact clock speeds of the handheld's ARM Cortex A9 CPU. While Sony has stayed silent on exact details, hackers have finally unearthed some concrete details on the speeds of the PS Vita's quad-core processor.

Since the iPhone 4S uses the same ARM Cortex A9 CPU and was released in a similar timeframe as the PS Vita, the major consensus pinned the handheld's CPU at the 800MHz mark. But the recent findings show that the PS Vita's CPU actually runs at 333MHz by default and can be boosted to 444MHz with Wi-Fi turned off. Given that the ARM Cortex A9 processor has a max speed range of 800MHz - 2GHz, Sony actually underclocked the CPU frequency to about half of its suspected speed.

While Sony has no interest in upgrading the PlayStation Vita with a modern SKU, Nintendo took the opportunity to refresh its popular 3DS handheld with the New 3DS. Nintendo's New 3DS packs in beefier specs and the 804MHz speeds of its custom ARM 11 CPU actually almost doubles the CPU frequency of the PS Vita.

Pre-orders have just opened up for Fallout 4's $30 season pass, but why should you bother with it when mod support is coming in 2016?

When Fallout 4 releases in November, just about everyone in the known universe is going to put their lives on hold for a post-apolcayptic joyride in an irradiated Boston. Gamers will pour hundreds and hundreds of hours of their time into the game, exploring every nook and cranny whilst building up their respective survivors. Given that Fallout 4 will take over 400 hours to complete, isn't it really too soon to even think about DLC?

We all know how the games industry works. Pre-orders are the bread and butter for devs, and often season passes and DLC are planned out way before the game is actually finished. Now Bethsoft is participating in this, but they're also going to roll out full mod support across all platforms, bringing mods to consoles for the first time. This is huge. Before now console gamers have been locked out of user-created content and were at the mercy of whatever developers decided to throw at them.

Ubisoft has confirmed that microtransactions are here to stay in the modern Assassin's Creed universe: we've seen them in Black Flag, Unity, and now they're coming to 18th century London in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate.

The paygate content will be "100% optional" so you can still all of the game's content without paying extra. Syndicate's microtransaction model will be focused on the money vs. time convenience scheme that involves shelling out cash to get the strongest items and possible level up faster. It'll likely be in the same currency tier scheme we see in freemium mobile games and F2P games like Warframe. Ubisoft maintains that Syndicate's microtransactions will be closer to Black Flag than Unity--which is a smart thing to say, considering how Unity is associated with catastrophe.

"Assassin's Creed Syndicate will include paid options to save time and accelerate progress," Ubisoft dev Francois Pelland said in a community Q&A on IGN. "The pay model allows players who do not have time to fully explore our huge game world to still be able to eventually acquire the game's most powerful gear as well as other items. Rest assured, all of AC Syndicate's content is available without paying anything additional and the game has been balanced such that microtransactions are 100% optional."

Due to overwhelming pressure from fans, Square Enix has pulled the plug on the "Augment Your Pre-order" scheme for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

The scheme itself was a brand new method to encourage and rack up pre-orders, and was universally condemned by gamers and the gaming press. Essentially players were strongly enticed to pre-order the game (which is a dangerous proposition in today's industry) to earn extra redeemable bonuses, and if enough gamers pre-ordered, the game would release four days early.

"We quickly noticed that this approach created even more frustration than before, resulting in a resounding amount of negative feedback," the publisher wrote in the official announcement.

NVIDIA has just unveiled GeForce Now, its rebranded game streaming service that was until now, known as Grid. NVIDIA plans to compete against PlayStation Now, but at a much cheaper price point.

GeForce Now will be offering gamers the chance to stream games from their servers at 1080p 60FPS, blasting the titles to their Shield console, Shield Tablet, or Shield Portable. NVIDIA has more than 50 games on their GeForce Now service, with games like Alan Wake, Ultra Street Fighter IV, Grid 2, Dirt 3, Borderlands and multiple Batman titles. If you want to purchase games outright and play them instantly, you can get some hours pumped into titles like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Saints Row: Gat out of Hell and Resident Evil: Revelations 2.

NVIDIA is launching GeForce Now on October 1 in the United States, EU and Japan for $7.99 per month. The company is including a free three-month trial membership which will allow gamers to try out the service before they dive head first into it.

With the non-stop growth of digital downloads physical media has its days numbered, or not. According to GameStop CEO Paul Raines, "disc-based games will be around forever".

During a chat with Fortune, Raines added: "The market has seen physical music sales down 50 per cent from its peak and physical movie sales down 60 per cent from its peak, but even in a doomsday scenario, disc-based games will be around for a long time. I see a complimentary business where we sell discs plus download like the current console mode".

What about VR headsets? Raines had something to say about that too, adding: "Analysts believe there could be 10 million VR users by the end of 2016, and there are hardware forecasts of $30 billion by 2020. We're going to be the destination for VR". He said that GameStop customers will soon be able to stop by their stores to test out the three main VR headsets: the Oculus Rift, Sony's PlayStation VR and the HTC Vive.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 is a colossal failure: the game is riddled with glitches, terrible graphics, physical bugs and is just a heaping hot mess of bad game. But who's to blame? Taking a closer look reveals that Activision should have known better.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 is one of the most memorable failed games in recent memory, and it only just launched. It's been hailed as broken on all accounts and is utterly embarrassing in every capacity. If anything Tony Hawk 5 should be sold as a $10 game on the Xbox LIVE Arcade--that Activision charges $59.99 for it is quite telling. Even the game's 7.7GB launch day update, which is actually bigger than the total 4.4GB of the game itself, couldn't fix things. Yes, it's worse than Assassin's Creed: Unity. But why? How did this happen?

The game crashed simply because Activision once again handed off a big-name franchise to another amateur developer. The publisher did this with the last-gen ports of Black Ops 3, leading to the game's entire campaign being gutted out on Xbox 360 and PS3. Despite the fact that Robomondo Games was responsible for the critical failure that was Tony Hawk: Shred, the $120 game with a skateboard controller, Activision went ahead and entrusted Tony Hawk 5 to Robomondo. And it completely backfired.

It should come as no surprise, but Riot Games is working on a new game. It probably isn't something new to know, but until now it had not been confirmed if the League of Legends developer was going to follow up from one of the biggest eSports games ever.

Riot Games' R&D boss Ryan Scott took some questions from fans about what's coming next for the developer, and when asked about what he's working on, Scott said: "No deets for a while, but trying to get the 's' in the Riot Games name". Another fan questioned Scott's Twitter profile, which said that he's a "turn-based strategy and FPS fan", eluding to which genre Riot Games is working on. Scott added: "Genre-wise [it's] pretty broad. The important thing for us is to make something meaningful, not a 'me too' game".

I'm not sure if I'd have confidence in Riot only working on a single game right now, but I'd say there are multiple games in the pipeline and the one that is closest to being revealed, is being eluded to here. It would be silly for Riot to not want to release another game that will surely make the company hundreds of millions of dollars like League of Legends has and continues to.

While Konami continues to find itself between a rock and a hard place concerning its reputation in the gaming sphere, the overseas publisher has asserted that it's not giving up on AAA games. The Metal Gear brand will continue without Hideo Kojima, and console games won't be jeopardized in favor of freemium mobile schemes.

"We've said in the past that the Metal Gear brand will continue," said Konami's UK community manager Graham Day in an interview with GameOn Daily. When asked if Metal Gear can maintain its luster without Hideo Kojima at the helm, Graham responded in the affirmative: "Of course, Metal Gear can definitely continue without Hideo Kojima. Metal Gear is about the story, it's about the characters. We look at things like Metal Gear Rising and that was an example of the title being taken in a new direction by separate teams."

The Day also iterates that Konami wants to keep bringing games to the console realm, and a new mobile focus doesn't mean all other platforms will be shut out. "Yeah, we're still committed to console gaming. That's never changed. I think some things are being taken out of context. Just because [Konami] is embracing mobile gaming it doesn't mean everything else has to quit. Konami has a history of making the best games around, and that is something we'll continue and that won't change anything going forward."

In the current age of console gaming, we've seen this outrageous trend of carving out a portion of a game and only making it available to a specific console. It's called timed exclusives, and it's a new way to make exclusive content without actually having to make an exclusive game. Activision has done it with Destiny, Square Enix has done it with Rise of the Tomb Raider--but Bethesda has affirmed it won't be participating in this ridiculous charade with Fallout 4.

In a recent Twitter exchange, Bethsoft's VP of Marketing and PR Pete Hines officially declared that Fallout 4's content won't be locked behind a console-gate, suggesting that the game will be the same across all platforms. "We aren't doing a DLC exclusive with anyone," Hines said poignantly.

Bear in mind that Fallout 4 does have a $30 Season Pass that unlocks all of the game's planned DLC. Bethsoft isn't about to pull an Evolve and shell out multiple passes either; this is a one-off purchase that grants "all DLC ever released for Fallout 4".

Just how well did The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt do on the PC? Not too shabby; DSOGaming reports that from their calculations, "at least 30%".

In their recent article, GSOGaming said: "This means that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt sold, at least, 1.8 million copies on the PC. This basically means that the minimum percentage of the PC sales - compared to the total sales - is 30%. Again, this is pure speculation as we don't have the full picture here".

Then we have Karolina Gates from CD Projekt Red, who said that as of June 30, 30% of the sales were on PC. This means that the PC version of the game has been doing quite well, even up against the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game.

Fallout games have always been tremendous timesinks that demand hundreds of hours of play, but Bethesda has usually been pretty good about optimizing install sizes for all its games. Fallout 4 won't be any different: according to a listing on the Xbox Marketplace, Fallout 4 only weighs in at 28GB on the Xbox One.

While the file size hasn't been revealed for PlayStation 4 or PC just yet, most multi-platform games stay within the same storage requirement ranges. We shouldn't see any major discrepancies other than a few gigabytes or so difference. With a number of high-profile games releasing on the coming months, Fallout 4 fans can at least rest easy knowing they won't have to make too much room for Bethesda's post-apocalyptic adventure.

Then again, Fallout 4 doesn't really tap that well of incredible fidelity that we see in most AAA games, so the devs have a lot less layered data to optimize. The lack of pristine graphics should shave off a good portion of the game's required storage. Bethesda has outright admitted that they had to water down the graphics as a trade-off to maintain other parts of the game.

Xbox One owners have speculated for quite some time that certain features could dramatically improve the console's everyday performance, being led to believe that things like DirectX 12, Windows 10 implementation and giving developers access to the system's seventh core could change everything. With the help of Microsoft, one dev team has tapped the Xbox One's seventh core and reveals that the performance gains are anything but dramatic.

"Yes, we are using [the seventh core]," Larian Studios' co-founder and CEO Swen Vincke said in an interview with Gamingbolt. "Not a lot [of benefits] apparently but we are using it. You can only use 60 or 70% of it so that is not big of a difference. Essentially it won't make much of an impact."

Right now Larian Studios is working on a PS4 and Xbox One console port of the cRPG Divinity: Original Sin, and during the dev cycle Larian has spent a lot of time getting intimately acquainted with current-gen console architecture. The bump in processing speed granted by the Xbox One's seventh core didn't seem to help very much, despite the speculation that the extra core could be responsible for some Xbox One games hitting PS4-level performance.

In an age where free to play mobile games dominate the handheld gaming space, Sony is extremely reticent to release another PlayStation Vita handheld. At EGX 2015, Sony exec Shuhei Yoshida said that the current mobile climate "isn't healthy" for a new PS Vita because the Japanese gaming titan would have a hard time finding a foothold in the competitiv emarket.

"That's a tough question," Yoshida said when asked outright if Sony is considerating a new PS Vita handheld. "People have mobile phones and it's so easy to play games on smartphones. Nany games on smartphones are free, or free to start. So I hope, like many of you, that this culture of playing portable games continues but the climate is not healthy for now because of the huge dominance of mobile gaming."

Although the PlayStation Vita is a big part of Sony's next-gen PS4 ecosystem, with Remote Play letting gamers stream PS4 games right to the handheld, sales for the Vita have flagged in all markets except for Japan. This is largely due to Sony's favoritism for their native homeland, with Japan seeing a steady influx of quality games and content that just don't come overseas. This lack of focus has made many PlayStation Vita owners feel abandoned throughout the years.

The install size for Halo 5: Guardians has been spotted, and if you're an avid Xbox one gamer you might want to shell out for an external HDD or delete some games to make space.

Halo 5 will take up 46.19 GB of the Xbox One's memory, making it the console's eighth largest game to date. This means that Halo 5 will take approximately 12.7% of the Xbox One's 500GB hard-drive, which actually only has 362GB available. The lack of storage space is one of the major frustrations in this current generation of gaming, and as time goes by, it'll only get worse and worse.

If that wasn't enough, 343 Industries will likely roll out a day one patch to soak up even more gigabytes, so we might be looking at a 50GB+ install size just like the ill-fated Master Chief Collection. Gamers are already having to swap and re-install and download games in order to maintain space, and both Sony and Microsoft have attempted to put a band aid on the storage limitations with their respective 1TB PlayStation 4's and limited edition 1TB Halo 5 Xbox One, but they're just delaying the inevitable.