Gaming - Page 1107

Yes, you read that right. RETRO VGS is a retro console vying for your Kickstarter backing and it's asking for a hefty $1,950,000 from users in total, made up mostly of $299 - $499 donation packages which earn you different levels of console goodness.

The main selling point of this console seems to be the cartridges themselves. Pandering to a retro and collectible audience, the Kickstarter bio talks about how cartridges are great for buying and trading, centering also around the constantly-felt issue of release-day patches and other issues felt by many gamers who are playing on newer consoles or computers. Striving to do away with patches all together, RETRO VGS tells games that all compatible titles "are tested thoroughly before release, just like they used to be."

While also promising to never release a DLC, it just doesn't seem quite right that a never-before-seen retro console is going to be able to drum up almost $2 million in funding over a 45 day period. In saying this, almost $66,000 has already been raised in five days, so maybe this will gain some more traction in coming weeks. However, at a rate of $66,000 every five days, a successful outcome is looking bleak.

With about a month away from Halo 5's release, 343 Industries has already begun plotting out the next Halo game while fleshing out key details for the next ten years of the franchise's future.

"We do kind of know what's going to happen in the next game pretty well at this point," ex-Bungie alum and 343 exec Frank O'Connor said in an upcoming GoldenJoysticks presentation. "We're doing serious real planning and even some writing on the next game already, and that's a luxury - we've never been in that position before. So we both know at a very high level what's going to happen in, say, ten years from now. But at that very granular level knowing what's going to happen in the next game and that's just been a great feeling for me".

It's worth mentioning that proper development hasn't been initiated, and this is the early planning phase to continue the long-running Reclaimer Saga following Halo 5: Guardians. Even still it would behoove 343i to take caution and not jump the gun too quickly: we've seen what happens when too much is attempted too fast with the catastrophic Master Chief Collection, which is still missing key pieces even today. We can only guess what MCC would be like if 343i hadn't been focusing a huge portion of its assets on Halo 5.

Activison has confirmed that last-gen versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will be missing half of the game upon release, and will only ship with multiplayer. That's right, PS3 and Xbox 360 flavors won't have a campaign.

"The Black Ops 3 PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will feature Multiplayer and Zombies gameplay only, not Campaign," reads the official statement. "The ambitious scope of the 1-4 player coop Campaign design of the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions could not be faithfully recreated on old generation hardware."

But why would Activision cut out such a huge portion of the game? Hasn't Treyarch been responsible for a number of Call of Duty games on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3? Interestingly enough Treyarch is only developing the current-gen versions of Black Ops 3. Instead of having the industry vets handle these ports, Activision hired a Beenox and Mercenary Technology to port to X360/PS3. So now things are making sense, and once again Activision has let an inexperienced dev team handle something important, and they dropped the ball (kind of like Sledgehammer did with Advanced Warfare's singleplayer).

Although Xbox division head Phil Spencer thinks that the divisive console wars bring out the worst in gamers, the team leader for Redmond's gaming sector is very optimistic about the state of console gaming as a whole--and a lot of that has to do with the Xbox One's momentum.

"Gaming is in a healthy spot. You have to earn your customers, but we seem to be doing that," Xbox boss Phil Spencer said in an interview with VentureBeat. Spencer goes on to highlight some of the breakthroughs the Xbox brand has made and how they will open up new doors in the future. "We have a ton of opportunity in front of us. We launched Windows 10 at the end of July, beginning of August, and we've seen very good uptake from the game experiences we have in there. We have a lot more opportunity as we bring more games into that experience as well. I'm not frustrated by it. I'm only frustrated in that there's not more time for us to do more things faster. It takes time to get good things done."

While the PlayStation 4 beats out the Xbox One in terms of raw hardware, the key to the Xbox's potential lies in Microsoft's grand plan. The console is set to be a gateway for cross-platform game streaming, effectively bridging consoles and PC. In just a few months the Xbox One is set to evolve with the power of Windows 10 and manifest Microsoft's plans with features like backward compatibility with 100 Xbox 360 games, a dramatically faster UI, and the seeds for DirectX 12 integration.

Today's video games are a joyous din of sound that adds a new level of immersion. In a sense, video games are all about creating a fantasy to trick our senses into experiencing a virtual world. Without the basic framework of sight and sound, the illusion completely breaks down and the game loses a huge portion of its believability.

A silent void might be the future of video games; that is unless voice actors and big publishers can agree on a deal. Video game voice actors are not happy with the current terms of their contracts and have made demands through the SAG-AFTRA union. Sadly nothing's working. "We've been through two rounds of negotiations with our employers, and they've rejected every proposal we've made."

The battle has delivered a behind the curtain look at how the industry works. Voice-over actors don't get royalties if a game is incredibly successful--they're paid a flat fee and that's it. Actors don't get extra pay in vocally stressful roles, and often a stunt coordinator isn't present when the actor is pushed to do stunt-like activities to add realism. Voice actors often don't even know the full depth of what they're getting into when they're hired. Not only have publishers denied the proposals, they've instituted a punishing set of restrictions to add insult to injury.

EA has just announced that the open beta for Star Wars: Battlefront will be held from October 8-12 across Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC (via Origin) with offline split-screen co-op included.

Players will only get four days to try the beta, which will offer three different gametypes across a trio of unique environments set in the cinematic universe, complete with Hero and Villain support with Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. No details on the beta's matchmaking system have been uncovered so far, and we'll likely have to wait to find out concrete info. The beta will feature three modes including the following:

EA will also test out the Battlefront Companion experience during the beta, which adds a card-based mini-game that unlocks credits that can be used to buy content within the retail game. It looks like EA will launch the companion experience in a web browser format over at the official Star Wars Battlefront website instead of an app.

It looks like Half-Life 3 won't be playable on Valve's own Vive VR headset--or any virtual reality headset for that matter. Valve's own Chet Faliszek was on hand at EGX where he delivered a panel discussing the future of VR. When the audience was allowed to ask one-on-one questions the inevitable Half-Life 3 query popped up, and of course Faliszek wasn't surprised.

Will Half-Life 3 be made in VR? "We were kinda thinking that was what you were going to ask...no," Faliszek answered at 43:34 with an air of finality, saying no more on the subject.

The Valve dev went on to talk about other troublesome hurdles that VR is facing, including the dreaded snake's nest of cords and cables. Right now every VR peripheral requires a wired connection to maintain the high-data low-latency streams that are essential to create the illusion of virtual reality. "Wireless is going to be really hard. And so what we've seen is the controllers are wireless, and they let you have input so you can kinda be free that way. And the cables and cords actually get thinner. Once you do [VR] enough you get this kind of cable management in your head where it becomes less than an issue. We wish there was no cable but there's physical limits."

Hi-Rez Studios is known for being the makers of popular games like SMITE and Tribes, often going down the free-to-play route and sometimes allowing users to play all characters without paying real-life money or spending horrendous amounts of hours grinding away. This new title to come to the table is called PALADINS: Champions of the Realm and it's a fully-unlocked free-to-play team-based FPS.

If you watch the video above, the first thing that sticks out is the ability to use mounts in an FPS game which is pretty damn neat, what else is cool is that it's going to be at TwitchCon this weekend, free for anyone to try out. The Early Access waiting pool is now open for signups, with this set to kick off "later this year" as pointed out in a recent press release.

What makes this game truly different is the use of power up cards, enhancing each characters abilities and allowing for a chop and change menu between the three you currently have active, depending on your needs. For more information on this, watch the video above.

Valve was at SIGGRAPH this year, with Dan Ginsburg having some interesting things to say about the various APIs at their fingertips including DirectX 12 and Vulkan.

In the video above (1:40:01 into the video), Ginsberg says that Valve has been working with Vulkan since its inception, and that there's no big reasons for developers to use a DX12 backend in their games. Ginsberg adds that Vulkan is far superior than DX12 in various areas. He said: "Unless you are aggressive enough to be shipping a DX12 game this year, I would argue that there is really not much reason to ever create a DX12 back end for your game".

He added: "And the reason for that is that Vulkan will cover you on Windows 10 on the same class of hardware and so much more from all these other platforms and IHVs that we've heard from. Metal is single platform, single vendor, and Vulkan... we are gonna have support for not only Windows 10 but Windows 7, Windows 8 and Linux".

In a move that doesn't seem so surprising, the Hitman reboot has been delayed from its original December 2015 release window to March 2016.

IO Interactive, the developer behind Hitman, has said that the delay applies to all versions of Hitman: the Xbox One, PS4 and PC versions. The launch plans have changed, with IO Interactive and publisher Square Enix to launch Hitman in stages, starting with the larger initial launch. After that, we'll see the rest of the locations in Hitman released over time.

The developer has teased that the tagline to Hitman is: "Enter a world of assassination", with that world being a constantly changing, evolving landscape. IO Interactive wrote on the official Hitman blog: "These few extra months will mean we can add more to the launch content of the game, more than we had originally planned, and then follow with a tighter frequency of updates, which ultimately will create a better game for everyone. And in the end, that's what we're all looking for".

Frontier Developments, the studio behind Elite: Dangerous, have just announced that their game will have support for Steam VR thanks to the HTC Vive headset.

Elite: Dangerous already has VR support thanks to the Oculus Rift, but this is a very good announcement for the Vive. HTC is set to unleash the Vive sometime in November in a very limited run, with more headsets being made available early next year. Creative Director of Frontier Developments, Jonny Watts, explains: "Back in December 2013 we were among the first to support virtual reality with a triple-A game, and for me, exploring, trading and fighting throughout Elite Dangerous' 1:1 scale Milky Way remains an unequaled virtual reality experience. We have been working closely with Valve to bring Elite Dangerous to HTC Vive, and we are delighted with the quality we have been able to achieve".

The big difference between the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive is that the Rift is more of a sitting experience, and while the Vive can be used in the same way, if you've got the room for it, it's going to offer a much better VR experience. You'll be able to achieve this if you have a 15x15-foot room, with the Vive sporting its 'Lighthouse' base station. This blasts sensors into the room picking up an entire VR space that you can play in.

Sony has quietly added the PlayStation 4's first paid early access game to the platform, a move that could pave the way for cross-platform game testing and development.

Although Dungeon Defenders II is still in development, it will be available on the PlayStation 4 on September 29. Trendy Entertainment's arena sequel has been on Steam's early access since late 2014 and is now coming to Sony's PS4 in a "pre-alpha" build state.

Curiously enough Sony hasn't exactly billed the game as "early access". To be a part of the pre-alpha testing players will have to buy an in-game microtransaction bundle to get in, which start at $14.99. "Please note that Dungeon Defenders II is still under development," Trendy Entertainment's Philip Asher said in the update. "During this time some features, like local co-op and controller support, will be ahead of the PC version, but other features and content will be rolling in after they are released on PC."

As Sony's direct competitor in the console war, Microsoft has kept up with the old mantra of "know thy enemy" quite well. As a result, Xbox division head Phil Spencer has made some predictions on Sony's next move, and "fully expects" that Sony will expand the PS4's recent price cut overseas to the west.

"When I think about the playbook they've used in the past, I fully expect [Sony] will drop [the PS4's] price," Phil Spencer told IGN in a follow-up interview. "If history tells, then we'll see a price drop from them coming."

DICE has confirmed that Star Wars: Battlefront will indeed have dedicated servers to power the game's new skill-based matchmaking system, putting the fears of a peer-to-peer system to rest.

"We'll still have dedicated servers [in Battlefront], absolutely," DICE's Jamie Keen told PlayStation Lifestyle at TGS 2015. "It's one of the hallmarks of making sure we deliver an unparalled online service for the game." Given Battlefront has the 40-player Walker Assault mode, most gamers assumed DICE would go with dedicated servers. Then again the Frostbite engine has P2P support "baked in" and has been used for Battlefront 3's co-op missions.

We still don't have any concrete details on how Battlefront's new matchmaking system works, but DICE has made the extremely unpopular decision to cut out server browsers entirely on PC. This led to considerable backlash from the PC gaming community that sees server browsers as a must-have for games like Battlefront, giving users the freedom to pick and choose the type of maps and sessions they want to play.

Bungie and Activision are sending a clear message with Destiny's new The Taken King expansion: if you don't want to buy it, then there's no reason to play. Rather than moving away from the controversial paid DLC models, Destiny has embraced them in a whole new way for Year 2, which offers a decidedly shocking look at the future of the franchise.

Destiny's The Taken King isn't just an expansion: it's a whole new game. Bungie has finally made Destiny into the game we always wanted. But even with all of these new additions and changes, Activison and Bungie are still up to the same old marketing tricks.

Just as I was starting to have faith in Bungie again, I'm reminded how exactly Destiny works. The game is built upon a ridiculous paygate scheme that literally forces gamers to purchase new expansions if they want to continue onward. With every passing DLC, little bits and chips of the core game are locked off: Xur selling expansion-only gear, daily heroic missions and weekly Nightfall strikes featuring DLC-only missions.

Reports indicate that Konami has finally thrown in the towel for AAA games development, and is no longer willing to gamble on franchises and game releases outside of the safety umbrella of the Pro Evolution Soccer sports line.

The reports come straight from two French game outlets, which was then verified by Eurogamer that Konami is indeed shutting down all plans for future AAA releases--except for PES games. The news was reinforced by the departure of Julien Merceron, Konami's worldwide technology director, and it looks like Konami will completely focus on mobile games from hereon out.

That effectively means that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which is simultaneously lauded as a masterpiece and seen as an unfinished game by the community, will be the last Meta Gear Solid game. Konami prepared for this move when it fired Hideo Kojima and dissolved his development team, a move that ushered significant backlash from its own audience. Gamers also watched in horror as reports of Konami "imprisoning and exploitating" its employees with unfair working conditions surfaced on the web.

On the heels of the revamped Apple TV, Amazon throws its hat into the Android micro-console ring with the $140 Fire TV Gaming Edition that merges 4K video streaming with set-top box gaming.

The Fire TV Gaming Edition only supports 4K video streaming and doesn't do 4K gaming--which isn't a surprise since it runs mobile games. Under the hood it packs 2GB of RAM, a MediaTek quad-core processor at 2GHz speeds for "75% more processing power than previous models" and a Power VR GX6250 GPU for grpahics. 8GB of onboard memory storage is included along with an equipped 32GB Micro SD card in the expandable memory slot. The hybrid gamebox can hit 4K video streaming at 30fps and 60fps in 1080p, but we're not sure if the latter resolution is for gaming or not.

Amazon boasts that the Fire TV Gaming Edition "has more games than Apple TV, Roku, or NVIDIA Shield" and every unit comes with a free copy of the amazing 8-bit platformer Shovel Knight and Capcom's DuckTales remake. The Fire TV microconsole can be connected to the internet via ethernet or MIMO Wi-Fi over 802.11a/b/g/n/ac networks. The set-top box also supports Bluetooth 4.1 and has the standard fare of ports consisting of HDMI out, DC power, ethernet, Micro SD and USB port in a compact 4.5in x 4.5in x 0.7in form factor.

Fallout 4 has been built from the ground-up as a layered experience with deep customization and RPG elements, but Bethesda has also made some significant strides in the action department with the help of FPS masters at id Software.

"If you were to pick it up and play it, it does feel like a modern shooter," Bethsoft exec Todd Howard said in an onstage interview. "The guns feel great and you can aim down the sights...you can play it in first-person, or third-person and then we also have VATS. Since id Software was part of our company the first thing we did was call them and said 'we're going to do this from scratch, so give us some tips.'"

Usually in multi-faceted RPGs there's more emphasis on level-ups and skill trees rather than the gunplay, but Bethesda wanted the whole package for Fallout 4: deep character customization, a huge webwork of skills and perks, a massive crafting system and smooth, fluid firefights. "We didn't want to [compromise] the game's action because it's a role-playing game. We felt we could do this and layer the game's stat system ontop of that--let's have our cake and eat it too."

Even though the Xbox One is in Microsoft's limelight, the console-maker is keen on keeping last-gen gamers happy with new updates and improvements. The latest of which sees Microsoft quadrupling the Xbox 360's cloud storage up to 2GB of extra memory space.

While 2GB might not sound like a lot, it will definitely come in handy when backward compatibility comes to the Xbox One in November. Users can upload their Xbox 360 saved data to the cloud and retrieve it on the Xbox One, allowing you to pick up right where you left off.

Plus the extra storage is great for things like migrating profiles and save data between consoles. Plus it's always great to have extra space to store data if you ever fill up your HDD and have to move files and games around. 2GB won't hold a full Xbox 360 game or a digital download with Games With Gold, but it will hold up most Xbox LIVE Arcade games, save files and some of your epic Halo: Reach clips.

A newly released mod unlocks every single researchable item for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, including extra hidden characters like Raiden and gear earned from console-exclusive DLC.

The mod goes by the nondescript "DLC and All Item Unlocker" and unlocks the game's full suite of secret items that are normally unlocked through progression. That being said the mod just gives you shortcut access to the templates and doesn't instantly grant you the items themselves--you still have to have the right materials, GMP and leveled R&D prerequisites in order to make and equip the gear.

If you don't have Ground Zeroes this mod will give you access to the content unlocked when transferring a save file, including Snake's golden bionic arm and the retro Snake outfit earned from the PlayStation-exclusive Deja Vu mission. Other goodies include the Raiden suit, Quiet's Naked Gold and Silver outfits, the Cyborg suit and a plethora of visual staples that nod to the franchise's storied history.