Gaming - Page 1107

We knew it was coming thanks to a leaked trailer, but now EA has let the cat out of the bag with an official trailer for Battlefield: Hardline. Not only that, but the company also unveiled a full release date: October 21.

The trailer doesn't show off too much, but that's because E3 2014 is right around the corner. For me, it looks like Payday mixed with Bad Boys, which is something that you can't complain about. The full reveal by EA will take place next week, something that I'm sure a lot of gamers are looking forward to.

It's Tetris' 30th birthday, and in honour of the block-arranging, totally addictive, all consuming game that propelled the Gameboy to stardom, programmer Alexey Pajitnov has had a chat with Britain's Guardian newspaper.

In it Pajitnov details his time spent at a Soviet computing lab, and his childhood love for puzzles. In the early 80s it dawned on him that perhaps puzzles would be a good basis for a videogame.

Pajitnov says the key game mechanic - that of disappearing lines - was inspired by just how quickly the screen filled up with the blocks, before going on to call Nintendo's choice of music "embarrassing" for Russian culture.

The Xbox One has been criticized as not performing as well as the PS4 by some game developers. Microsoft is looking to unlock more performance for its new game console with a software update. The update will reportedly increase the GPU bandwidth inside the console.

The increased bandwidth will hit in the June system update. Along with more GPU bandwidth, the update will also bring with it external hard drive support. Microsoft's Phil Spencer announced that the update would be coming via a tweet.

Microsoft said, "In June we're releasing a new SDK making it possible for developers to access additional GPU resources previously reserved for Kinect and system functions. The additional resources allow access to up to 10 percent additional GPU performance. We're committed to giving developers new tools and flexibility to make their Xbox One games even better by giving them the option to use the GPU reserve in whatever way is best for them and their games."

Popular mobile game Temple Run from Imangi Studios has been downloaded more than 1 billion times since it was released in August 2011, according to company officials. Originally developed by three people, the game has seen continued success as casual gaming still increases even higher in popularity.

Gamers have run more than 50 trillion meters in the game, playing 32 billion games, according to Keith Shepherd, co-developer of the game.

It's possible Imangi Studios, which has seen great success with Temple Run 1 and Temple Run 2, could develop a third game in the future. However, the studio currently has other mobile games currently in development, so no public announcements have been made just yet.

Gaming peripheral company ROCCAT has unveiled the Tyon customizable PC gaming mouse, aimed at giving gamers a mouse that can be modified. The Tyon has 16 assignable buttons, 31 distinct functions, with an 82000 DPI laser sensor, and 32-bit processor with 576KB memory. Release information and pricing hasn't been released for the United States.

The PC gaming industry is evolving and changing rapidly, and it's important for peripheral makers to try to keep up. The Tyon also has a 2-way analog stick and easy-shift on-the-fly button duplicator, so gamers can make adjustments while playing.

"Today's gaming experience demands that players adapt to the many dimensions of gameplay, whether on land, at sea, in air or space," said Rene Korte, ROCCAT founder and CEO. "Our designers and developers worked in close collaboration with gaming experts to craft, test, fine-tune, and ensure that the Tyon's abilities meet these challenges."

Gamers on the Xbox 360 that have Xbox Live Gold membership can get a cool free game this month. The game is called Dark Souls and it will be available to download until June 15. When June 16 rolls around, Xbox 360 gamers will be able to get Charlie Murder and Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition for free.

Dark Souls is a game that will have players fighting the undead with each enemy becoming more and more difficult to kill. Last month it was revealed that Xbox One gamers would also be getting some free games in the Games with Gold program.

Xbox One gamers will get Max: The Curse of the Brotherhood and Halo: Spartan Assault. Exactly when those two games will be available for Xbox One gamers to download is unknown.

Fans of the video game Red Dead Redemption have been clamoring for a sequel to that game for a long time now. There seemed to be some concern that a sequel wouldn't be made. Considering the original Red Dead sold 13 million units, the fear of no follow up to the original seems out of place.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has made some comments recently that seem to indicate that a sequel to the game is in the works. He described the Red Dead franchise as being permanent and sitting alongside Grand Theft Auto and Borderlands. Those are two of Take-Two's most popular franchises putting Red Dead in good company.

Zelnick also mentioned during the conference where he talked about Red Dead that his company uses a selective approach to releasing games. He says Take-Two doesn't want to flood the market with games. Rather than giving consumers more, he says they want better games.

With Watch Dogs going on sale tomorrow, and some people already enjoying the open-world hacking title - but with Bitcoin miners attacking their system - NVIDIA GeForce owners are going to be enjoying increased performance, and better graphics.

NVIDIA worked closely with Ubisoft Montreal for Watch Dogs, as it fell under NVIDIA's Gameworks program. NVIDIA's Gameworks helps developers with a set of tools in order to fully utilize all of NVIDIA's technologies, something we saw in a video not too long ago. This is great for NVIDIA users, but AMD Radeon owners will not see these extra effects on PC, on top of reduced performance.

Forbes editor Jason Evangelho wrote a piece, benchmarking two cards against each other: the $500 Radeon R9 290X against the GeForce GTX 770 priced at $300. You can see in the image above that the $300 GPU does quite well for itself, keeping up with, and in one test beating the R9 290X which is $200 more. So, GeForce users - enjoy your increased performance and graphical bells and whistles enabled, but AMD fans - you're out of luck. It'll still run without a problem, but consider this like Mantle on Battlefield 4 - there are benefits on both sides of the GPU war.

Kids love to play games on tablets and smartphones. The problem that some parents have is that many of the games available for the iPad and iPhone aren't exactly educational. Some would also prefer their kids to play with toys that aren't digital. A new series of games have surfaced from a company called Tangible Play that combines digital and real-world play for an interesting experience.

The game series has three games known collectively as Osmo for kids that are able to connect with physical toys that children can touch and feel in the real-world. The games include Newton, Words, and Tangram. The games come with a stand to hold the tablet at a specific angle and a clip that goes over the camera.

That clip directs the camera to the surface where the game is being played. The game is then able to mimic the actions kids take in the real-world on the screen of the tablet. Newton is a drawing app that can create obstacles to play a game. Words is sort of like Scrabble. Tangram is a puzzle game that lets you match the shape on the screen using flat pieces. Osmo is currently crowdfunding and needs $50,000. During funding, the game will sell for $49 with the normal street price being $99.

In a twist of fate, a game about hacking the world around you, has malware and hacks built into the illegal copy of it. The torrent of Ubisoft's upcoming open-world hacking game Watch Dogs is hiding some serious malware.

For those who are downloading Watch Dogs over torrents are finding themselves with some pretty serious malware, that makes the people who distributed the copy money through installing a Bitcoin miner onto gamers' PCs. Not only that, but the pirated copy of Watch Dogs is plagued with bugs, with it increasing CPU consumption by as much as 25% by running a process named "winlogin.exe" which shouldn't be confused with the legitimate "winlogon.exe".

We would suggest not downloading Watch Dogs illegally in the first place, grabbing it from the store or Steam, but if you have downloaded the torrent - the best and most thorough way of ridding your PC of the malware and Bitcoin miner associated would be to format your entire drive. Sure, you can run an anti-virus or anti-malware software, but a Bitcoin miner isn't a virus, so you might find yourself in a spot of trouble.

Computex kicks off for another year next week, but the teases are coming in thick and fast - this time, from ROCCAT. ROCCAT has a new website that is telling gamers to Own the Couch, teasing that it will announce something that is its "contribution to your living room experience" on June 10.

With a June 10 tease, ROCCAT is poised to show off or announce something big at E3 3014. ROCCAT's new website is its first step toward a game-changing product announcement on June 10, something we look forward to seeing. The video above is what you see on the Own the Couch website, so I'm going to take a guess that we're going to see some new gaming peripheral, but we could be surprised yet.

Star Citizen's crowdfunding has no signs of stopping, reaching a world-record crowdfunding total of $44 million. This surge in funding is most likely due to the upcoming dogfighting module which drops in a few days.

The last time we heard about Roberts Space Industries' space shooter was late last month, when Star Citizen reached $43 million in funding. There are more than 450,000 backers - myself included - and with the total of $44 million raised, $34 million of that has been raised since June last year.

The next stretch goal is at $46 million, which I'm sure will be hit before the end of next month, where backers will receive in-game "scanning software" which will allow them to find resources within the world of Star Citizen. The latest fundraising milestone has seem creator Chris Roberts release a piece of concept art for a "negotiation room" where players can make deals inside their ships.

Video game hardware purchases grew 47 percent, reaching $983 million during Q1 2014, according to The NPD Group research company. Both next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony, along with a resurgence in PC gaming, led to a great market for gamers wanting to purchase new hardware, software titles, and gaming accessories.

"For the first quarter of 2014, content spending increased for used games, digital full games, DLC, and mobile with a modest increase in subscription revenue," said Liam Callahan, NPD Industry Analyst, in a press release. "This is another example of the interplay of physical media as well as digital downloads as consumers transition further into this console generation."

The Sony PlayStation 4 game console outsold the Microsoft Xbox One for the fourth consecutive month in the United States - though both game consoles have doubled combined sales of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, respectively. It will be fun to see what both companies do in the next quarters, especially the 2014 holiday shopping season.

Sony is doing some good business with the PS4, but where's the next-gen Uncharted game everyone wants to see? Well, when Uncharted 4 finally arrives, the next adventure could be a little darker than the previous Uncharted games that have been released.

The news is coming from Tidux, an industry insider, who has tweeted that Uncharted 4 would be a "darker" entry in the franchise, with an even heavier focus on the story. Tidux tweeted "Uncharted 4 is a darker, story heavy game," with another tweet teasing "Blended with awesome epic moments," but if that wasn't enough, he adds "latest version of Uncharted 4 is bananas, simply bananas".

I'm looking forward to seeing what both Sony and Naughty Dog can do with the increased horsepower in the PS4 with a next-gen Uncharted game, but I'm hoping it's not too constrained if it's going to work on the slower, ageing PS3.

Weeks before E3 2014 kicks off, we're hearing about Half-Life 3 from the co-creator of Counter-Strike, Minh Le. Le has said that he's personally seen artwork of Half-Life 3, and even captured a look at Left 4 Dead 3, too.

Le talked about Half-Life 3, where he said: "I don't know if I can talk about that, to be honest, but I think it's kind of public knowledge that people know that it is being worked on. And so if I were to say that yeah, I've seen some images, like some concept art of it, that wouldn't be big news, to be honest".

He continued: "But yeah, I guess I could say that I did see something that looked kinda like in the Half-Life universe. It wouldn't surprise anyone if I said they're doing it, they're working on it, yeah. So to go on a limb I'd say I did see some concept art for Half-Life 3". When it comes to Left 4 Dead 3, Le had much more to say: "The one thing I'm really excited about is Left 4 Dead, the new Left 4 Dead. I saw it, it looks great. I was really excited when I saw that. I was like 'wow, this looks great'".

Apart from arriving on 3 trillion 1.44-inch floppy discs, Watch Dogs on the Commodore 64 would look like the video below - kinda. Balazs Kalocsai's retro look at Watch Dogs is quite funny.

But if you're after the real Watch Dogs, that arrives on May 27 on the PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. On the PS4 it will be running at 900p, with the Xbox One version running it at 792p - both versions will be running the open-world game at 30FPS. PC users on the other hand, have a much bigger, better looking version of Watch Dogs waiting for them when it's released - not long to go now, folks!

Over $6 million has been raised for the prize pool of Valve's DotA 2 International tournament, making nit the largest tournament in gaming history! Last year, the DotA 2 International saw a huge $2.8 million prize pool, but the 2014 tournament has dwarfed it.

Where is all of this money coming from? Crowdfunding, that's where. Anyone who buys a DotA 2 Compendium from Valve contributes $2.50 to the growing prize pool, which has a heap of stretch goals attached to it. Most of them have been unlocked because it has ballooned out to $6 million now.

Ubisoft accidentally posted the name of its upcoming Far Cry 4 which also outlined more details about the game's storyline. The protagonist of the game 'Ajay Ghale' will be travelling to Kyrat to fulfil his mother's dying wish but getting caught up in a civil war to overthrow the oppressive regime of dictator Pagan Min.

Currently, Ubisoft has altered the description of the game in its Ubi story, but Redditors were quick enough to spot it. The first name 'Ajay' is one of the most common Indian names, whereas Ghale is from Nepal. However, its most likely that the lead is from the fictional country 'Kyrat'.

Alex Hutchinson, Ubisoft Montreal's creative director, said via Twitter,"Just so it's clear for those jumping to conclusions: He's not white and that's not the player.". Hutchinson responded to another article claiming that the promo art depicts 'a blonde light-skinned man in a shiny pink suit against the backdrop of the Himalayas, smirking as he uses a defaced statue as a throne'.

If you've been waiting for a better look at Bungie's upcoming first-person multiplayer shooter, Destiny, then now is your time to check out some new gameplay footage from the PS4, below.

In the video, Bungie talks about how it made the world of Destiny, and the various skills and abilities that players will be able to use to play against, or with each other. Destiny won't just be hitting the PlayStation 4, but the PlayStation 3, Xbox One and Xbox 360. Destiny should be quite the game, with Activision already spending $140 million, with $500 million prepared for a massive marketing campaign to start soon.

Activision sees Destiny as its next $1 billion franchise, which should join Call of Duty in that cash-creating club.

According to Crytek's US Engine Business Development Manager, Sean Tracy, the 8GB of RAM in the next-gen consoles isn't that much. Tracy has said that the 8GB of RAM in the Xbox One and PS4 isn't impressive.

Tracy elaborated: "8 gigs can easily be filled up. But also keep in mind that developers don't necessarily even have access to all 8 gigs of it. For example the Xbox One retains some of the RAM for OS purposes". He continued, saying that the computational requirements of games will quickly hit the new 8GB ceiling, noting that his team has already struggled with the 8GB of RAM ceiling on Ryse: Son of Rome on the Xbox One.

"[8 GB of RAM] will be one of the limiting factors surely in this generation," added Tracy, he also added: "As hardware gets stronger the complexity of scenes can be increased and the dynamism within them. However, with that said it's not the raw power alone that will allow for photo-realistic graphics but technology that intelligently scales and utilizes all that the hardware has to offer".