Gaming - Page 1107

It's no secret that Deus Ex games don't shy away from sometimes touchy subjects, and while Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has its own curious plot points, don't expect Eidos Montreal to directly touch on religion.

"One thing that we never touch on from the front is religion," said Jean-Francois Dugas, game director at Eidos Montreal, in the latest issue of GamesMaster. "The subject we're tackling, it goes into religion from the aspect of do we choose to play God or not? But we try to keep it as agnostic as we can because the field is too sensitive. We also don't want to be offensive in any way, or tackle something we don't really understand ourselves. Instead we distill transhumanism, and what it does for human beings regardless of your beliefs."

Eidos Montreal showed off the game during E3 2015, and featured a game preview and a second portion demonstrating its actual gameplay. The studio wants to focus on allowing players to mix in a bit of stealth and head-to-head action, providing gamers the chance to play through the game how they feel most comfortable.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently sent an email to all of the company's employees, as everyone anxiously awaits the Windows 10 launch, and wants to help "empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more."

Not surprisingly, gaming earned its own spot in the email:

"We will pursue our gaming ambition as part of this broader vision for Windows and increase its appeal to consumers," Nadella said in his email to employees. "We will bring Xbox Live and our first-party gaming efforts across PC, console, mobile and new categories like HoloLens into one integrated play."

Electronic Arts was happy with the reception that Star Wars Battlefront received during E3, and is continuing to push forward with the latest Star Wars game.

EA COO Peter Moore noted that the company would delay the game if it wasn't right, and another company official noted the "10,000 ways to f***" up game development - and how it's promoted to the public.

"No, but I think we've reached a point where we're worrying less about what we are doing and what we have done. Before you a show a game to the world, there's ongoing speculation about it," said Patrick Bach, GM at DICE, in a statement to GameSpot. "There are 10,000 ways to f*** this up, and people are super detailed on how we will screw up. And I read these posts and I think, hey, I think fans are going to be super happy with what we're doing."

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick wants to release quality game titles to its customers, and that doesn't mean risking game quality - and possible burnout - just to launch a title.

Take-Two has been criticized in the past for heavy reliance on Grand Theft Auto, but Zelnick noted that while the company has evolved, there has been added diversification of its product lineup. In addition, Zelnick is aware of a common concern among game studios and publishers: burning out a franchise with sometimes unnecessary yearly releases:

"I think the biggest distinction between us and some of our competitors is we don't annualize our non-sports titles, and that's for a couple of reasons," Zelnick recently told Games Industry. "One is we want to have the highest quality in the business and that takes time, and two, we like to rest our IP in between releases because we believe that's what keeps it fresh and permanent. We don't want to burn off our franchises. It's an unusual strategy - I think we stand alone with that strategy, but it's really paying off."

Bethesda Softworks is almost done with Fallout 4 development, and everything is looking good for a fall launch.

"We're pretty close to being done, which you have to be if you're going to ship in five months," said Pete Hines, VP of PR and Marketing at Bethesda, in a statement to GamesRadar.

Hines also noted the overall anticipation for the game, which is why there has been such a short window of game promotion: "If we didn't feel that was enough time to generate the excitement that we expected and the interest that we wanted, then we would have announced it earlier. So part of it is because we felt like it was a big enough title that we could get away with it."

After an extremely busy E3 gaming show earlier this month, there are a lot of things gamers across all platforms can be happy for. It turns out, PC game sales are expected to top video game consoles by the end of 2016 - with console games reaching an estimated $28 billion, while PC games will hit $29 billion, according to the PwC industry researcher.

If true, this is a major shift in the gaming market, which was dominated by PCs, transitioned to consoles, and looks to be switching once again. Most popular game titles released today feature a PC version and are available on new-generation consoles - but with resolution and fps restrictions, the PC Master Race fans can enjoy wider customization of their gaming experience.

It's not just a battle between PC and console games anymore, with a growing number of mobile and Web-based games.

Wargaming has found itself in hot water with gamers, where it partnered with Humble Bundle last month on a deal for its popular World of Warships game, which is still in beta.

At the time, the MMO developer was offering anyone who purchased the bundle access to the upcoming closed beta, a premium ship dubbed 'Murmansk' and 1,000 premium credits. Anyone who purchased the bundle would see their items carried over from the beta to the full game, but after Wargaming applied the latest patch to World of Warships, gamers have noticed that the ship, and premium credits, are gone.

Even when re-entering the code they were provided when they purchased the bundle, gamers were hit with the same brick wall: no premium ship or premium credits. Wargaming then posted a statement that the Humble Bundle deal that included the premium ship and 1,000 credits was only for the closed beta period, leaving gamers feeling like they had been bait and switched by Wargaming.

A lot of Batman: Arkham Knight PC gamers haven't had a pleasurable gaming experience during launch week, as there are a number of performance problems, bugs, and game glitches. Warner Bros. rightfully decided to temporarily suspend future sales of the PC version as the studio works to resolve issues.

Why was it the right call? Put simply, the studio had a bit of advice to PC gamers suffering issues: turn down the settings.

"We continue to work closely with AMD to resolve these issues as soon as possible; make sure you have the most current drivers and check back here for updates on when the next driver version is available," Warner Bros. said in a statement.

In the aftermath of Warner Bros pulling the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight because of it being a complete mess of a PC port, Electronic Arts' COO, Peter Moore, has come out talking about Star Wars: Battlefront.

Moore said that Electronic Arts wouldn't have a problem delaying a game if it wasn't ready, just like it did with Battlefield: Hardline. Moore said: "You can't ship it if it doesn't work or the quality isn't right. You just bite the bullet. Trust me, shipping Hardline in March was not the easiest thing to do from a business perspective, but it was the right thing to do from a player perspective".

Does that mean EA could postpone Star Wars: Battlefront? No. Moore said that the game is already "rock solid" even in huge 40-player matches, so a delay "ain't going to happen" according to Moore.

It looks like next month is going to be quite the Comic-Con, with our first glimpse at the PC version of Star Wars: Battlefront. Up until now, all of the gameplay we've seen is from the console versions of the game.

EA took to its official Twitter account for Star Wars, where they said: "Join us at the @thenerdmachine during #SDCC and try #StarWarsBattlefront on PC!". We also found out that DICE had unprecedented access to original Star Wars props and locations, allowing the studio to create the impressive visuals we've seen in Battlefront.

Mathew Everett, Community Manager for DICE, recently talked about the collaboration between DICE and Lucasfilm, where he said: "The Sullust they use within the comic is based on the Sullust we're introducing into the Star Wars universe in Star Wars Battlefront. This has been a part of the collaboration we have had with Lucas over the last few years".

Firaxis and 2K Games have shown off a new video featuring game play from XCOM 2. The following video features 10 minutes of gameplay and added commentary from XCOM 2 producer Jake Solomon. You'll learn some of the differences between XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2:

The second game takes place 20 years after the original XCOM, with humans living under control of the successful conquerors. The XCOM serves as resistance fighters using guerrilla warfare tactics against the superior alien army. Gamers can launch attacks using new melee weapons and flying drones, while relying on a customized stealth system.

XCOM 2 will feature customized levels so every gaming experience will be unique to individual players. XCOM 2 will be a PC exclusive and is scheduled for launch this November.

During Bethesda's first ever keynote at E3, the company showed off the latest Doom video game, Fallout 4, and introduced Dishonored 2. Grabbing attention during a major press conference and keynotes are simply more effective at this year's E3 over trying to woo people to the studio's on-floor booth.

"I don't know if we'll do one next year," said Pete Hines, VP of Bethesda, in a statement to the Telegraph. "I don't know if we'll do one again. This year felt like the right time to do this kind of thing. Honestly, [this is] where my focus is: execute on this stuff that we're talking about and work with the MachineGames and Tangos and all the other studios to say 'OK, how do we do the next thing with you guys even better?' What does that look like? And how do we push ourselves forward?"

It's an honest opinion from Bethesda, as many large game companies strive for press conferences and keynotes at E3 and other major events - it allows them a small windows where all of the attention is on just their products and hardware.

Warner Bros. Games has temporarily suspended sales of Batman: Arkham Knight for PC gamers, as there were just too many performance issues. To help get things fast-tracked, it looks like NVIDIA is going to help the game studio identify what's going wrong.

"We are working with WB Games and the development teams to address the performance issues of the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight," NVIDIA confirmed. "We have made our QA and engineering resources available will provide updates when they are available."

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. offered a public apology related to performance issues: "We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. We take these issues very seriously and have therefore decided to suspend future game sales of the PC version while we work to address these issues to satisfy our quality standards."

Nintendo has announced that Splatoon, a colorful squid-based game for the Wii U game console, has topped 1 million copies sold worldwide. The multiplayer version of the game features four players competing as the squids try to spray ink in the digital world.

There were 476,000 physical and digital units sold in the Americas, at least 368,000 units sold in Japan, and more than 230,000 units sold in Europe - along with 20,000 units moved in Australia and New Zealand.

"Ever since Splatoon launched on May 29 in the United States, we've seen thousands of people go online to have fun in this colorful, chaotic competition," said Reggie Fils-Aime, company president of America at Nintendo, in a public statement. "This milestone puts us in a nice position as we prepare to launch 11 more exclusive Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games before the end of the year, plus amiibo, digital offerings and games from our third-party partners."

Bethesda will hook a fanatical gamer up with a copy of Fallout 4 after he mailed over 11 pounds of bottle caps to the studio. It turns out the Fallout team over at Bethesda do have a great sense of humor!

"He told me since I was the first person to do this, I would be receiving a copy of the game this November, and that he would be running my caps over to deposit them at the People's Bank of Point Lookout," GatorMacheteJr said in an update. In case you forgot, the People's Bank of Point Lookout is a pre-apocalyptic bank that was in Point Lookout Fallout 3 add-on.

Matt Grandstaff, Global Community Lead at Bethesda, offered the following tweet:

With gaming on the rise, ESL has just announced its latest ESL One Frankfurt event cracked the 1,000,000 concurrent viewer milestone, spread across Twitch TV and MarsTV in China.

Featuring many of the worlds best Dota 2 teams fighting for sponsorship cash thrown in by GIGABYTE, G2A, NVIDIA, Corsair Gaming, NEEDforSEAT and more another large feature was the $5,000 cosplay competition which saw Timbersaw from the Czech Republic take home the gold.

Managing Director Pro Gaming at ESL, Ulrich Schulze, is certainly happy with the results, stating "It was very important to us that we make ESL One Frankfurt 2015 more than just an esports competition. We're looking to continually build on this with future ESL One events."

With this leak shared on popular image website Imgur by a user named AgriosEndendros, depicted is the then-proposed Red Bull and Destiny partnership for 2015.

What you're reading here is the plan to ensure gamers must purchase specialty Red Bull cans in order to unlock 30 minute windows of XP gain and a new Destiny mission, which we shared news on recently. Want more bonus XP? You're going to need to buy another can.

An interesting part of this leaked document is slide number 5, which is about the "360* Marketing Campaign" and outlines the fact that there has been "300+ Opinion leader Kits seeded." In non-marketing terms, this means that people who are likely of strong opinions or influence (often people ranked high on the social or online ladder) have been sent some special information and possibly compensation in order to ensure they are always positive about this campaign.

There was a time when Doom 4 was a thing, but Bethesda decided to cancel the project after the team wasn't happy with what they were making. Bethesda boss Pete Hines talked about Doom 4 during E3, where he said during a video interview with Polygon: "We weren't happy with the game that was being made".

He continued: "We decided that it wasn't Doom enough and needed to be thrown out and started over. Some folks left and some faces changed at the studio. Out of that change - which was not easy for those guys to go through - some amazing things happened. You can probably close your eyes and imagine a 'Call of Doom' or a 'BattleDoom' game, where it starts to feel way too much like: 'Wait, this doesn't feel like Doom, it feels like we're playing some other franchise with a Doom skin on it".

Hines had more to say, adding: "It wasn't fast enough. The way that the demons worked. The visceralness of the combat. A lot of the stuff that you see with the finishing moves wasn't part of it at all. The combat was more disconnected, you almost found yourself taking cover at times and using things from other FPSes, which might be fine for them, but for Doom it just doesn't feel right".

Slightly Mad Studios might have just announced Project CARS 2 nice and early, but the original game is being patched up as we speak. Patch 2.0 for Project CARS is massively extensive, offering up to 5% more performance on the PC when under Ultra settings. But that's not all, check out the full Patch 2.0 release notes below:

Performance Improvements

Physics & AI

It was only a few days ago that we reported that the PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight was a pile of... well, you can use any word you want there. So much so, that Warner Bros. has just announced that they're suspending any and all sales of the PC version until the technical issues can be ironed out.

The company took to their company blog, saying: