Gaming - Page 1116

Microsoft and Sony have struggled in the short amount of time they promoted the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in China, but hope things begin to turn around. The country is beginning to change, and recently scrapped a ban on game consoles - so there is greater hope of future sales.

"The reason we are here today is not only to bring Xbox One to China but to open up the world to games made in China," said Phil Spencer, Xbox chief, speaking during Chinajoy. "We believe it is incredibly important to open up the opportunity to all developers in China."

Chinese gamers will get the chance to play the Halo: The Master Chief Collection in August - the first Halo game officially launched for the Xbox platform in China - and has great potential to win over gamers.

Square Enix's hotly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake might not feature the classic turn-based combat fans know and love; Square Enix's Tetsuya Nomura affirms that "dramatic changes" are incoming, but also affirms the game will still be recognizable to lifelong fans.

"We are bringing dramatic changes to the Final Fantasy VII Remake," Tetsuya said in an interview with Official PlayStation Magazine's UK branch. "That being said we want to clarify: we're not going to be changing it into a shooter or something like that. We are going to be bringing dramatic changes, but we want to make sure it's still recognisable."

In lieu of the beloved ATB system used by the iconic original, could Square Enix opt in for a sort of combination of real-time role-based combat like Final Fantasy Type-0, or maybe even go all in for the action like Final Fantasy 15?

Tom Cruise really makes the Mission Impossible movies something special, but with the release of the latest movie in the franchise, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, they pushed it too far when it came to believable gaming in the movie.

In one particular scene, Simon Pegg (who plays Benji Dunn) is playing Halo 5 on a triple-monitor setup. To most moviegoers, this seems innocent enough until you see that the game is Halo 5, on a Xbox One, on triple monitors. This is an impossible feat for the Xbox One as it only supports at single display output.

The camera pans back and you can see Pegg clearly holding an Xbox One controller, and then the camera pans to the cover of Halo 5. It's not much, and as I said to the normal moviegoer this isn't going to break the movie for them, but for me, it was definitely a laugh. Hopefully people don't go out and buy an Xbox (the only place for Halo 5 when it's released later this year) expecting to hook it up to triple monitors.

Bethesda is currently knee deep putting the finishing touches on Fallout 4, with the studio teasing that mod support won't be arriving until 2016. Pete Hines, the VP of Marketing for Bethesda announced the news during a brief talk with IGN recently.

Hines said: "Our entire focus is on finishing the game. Nobody cares about mods if the game sucks. This has always been our philosophy. We shift energy to construction tools, the creation kit, and all of that stuff once the game is done, and we start to figure out what all of that is going to look like".

He makes a very valid point, and I'm sure most would agree that they're rather have a more stable, better-performing Fallout 4 than mod support early on. Hines continued: "The idea is that [the tools] will work on all platforms, but the truth is the system doesn't exist. It's still being built and worked on and it's going to take awhile. It's going to take clearly into next year because we can't even start it".

At E3 2015 Microsoft delivered a strategic bomb by announcing backward compatibility on the Xbox One, which will allow gamers to play older Xbox 360 games on the console for free. Although the Redmond-based console-maker plans to kick off the feature with a slew of games, the future of backward compatibility will ultimately be left to the discretion of developers and publishers.

"So, we'll start with 100 titles this autumn, and we'll be adding titles as time goes by," Microsoft's corporate VP Kudo Tsunoda told the Official Xbox Magazine. "At some point we're going to need to get - obviously - the permission of the owners of the content, the publishers and the developers. So 100% is always a hard thing to achieve in anything."

Microsoft currently plans to support 100 Xbox 360 games by this Fall, and expects to have the feature fully up and running by holiday 2015. The feature is currently its actually testing phase for Xbox One Preview Program members, but the library is quite small and includes games like Perfect Dark: Zero, Banjo Kazooie and Mass Effect (which actually runs pretty good on the Xbox One).

Microsoft is working on Xbox One games being streamed to your PC, but now it looks like we might see PC games being streamed to the Xbox One according to the latest interview with Xbox boss Phil Spencer, and The Verge.

Spencer said that Microsoft is working on getting PC games streaming to the APU-powered Xbox One, but in order to have that working, the company wants to see proper mouse and keyboard support on the console. Not only that, but the company will have to overcome many other obstacles, such as the consumer having enough horsepower in their PC to render the game and then stream it over the network.

Furthermore, the Xbox One would need some tuning to be able to handle the game coming in over the network and the added overheads that come with it, as well as the mouse and keyboard control scheme in the games. If Microsoft does manage to get PC games streaming to the Xbox One, it will be competing with NVIDIA's GameStream technology which streams your PC games to your compatible Shield devices.

Nintendo is enjoying great success with Splatoon, as the game has topped 1.62 million units sold - and helped drive Nintendo's revenue. The company is continually adding new content, and is enjoying a successful sales and marketing campaign focused on the family-friendly game.

"With respect to Wii U, Splatoon, which was released globally in May and gathered attention, marked 1.62 million units in sales and contributed to vitalizing the Wii U platform," according to a Nintendo report. "By maintaining the attention level of Splatoon, which enjoyed a good start, we will strive to further enhance the sales toward the year-end sales season."

The Christmas holiday shopping season is a major time for gaming hardware and software, so Nintendo hopes Splatoon will help convince consumers to pick up a Wii U.

Nintendo has finally sold more than 10 million Wii U units, with the sales figure reached during its fiscal quarter that ended last month.

During its most recent quarter, the company sold only 470,000 units - a drop from 510,000 units year-over-year.

The Wii U publicly launched across the world in November, and has endured an incredibly slow growth rate - though Nintendo hopes that begins to change with games such as Splatoon.

id Software has blended characteristics from the original Doom video games with a more modern twist, hoping to keep gamers interested.

"Ultimately, I don't think it's about old and new," said Marty Stratton, executive proder of Doom at id Software, in a statement to IGN. "It's about what's fun and what's Doom. We started early on with trying to figure out the game's identity. Not what is 'old Doom,' but what is Doom? How does it make us feel? What do we want from a Doom experience? When we boil it down, are the things we're doing feeding into that?"

When playing Doom next year, there are a few things you'll likely notice: your health doesn't regenerate, so you won't need to bother trying to hide and wait fights out. You also won't need to bother reloading, and your actual movement in the game is quite fast. The multiplayer experience features loadouts, and the minute you spawn, you'll be ready to go.

If there are certain features you'd like to see in Fallout 4, don't hold your breath, as the game is "basically done."

With most of the hard work already done, and the gaming community excited, Bethesda is spending its time fixing bugs and finalizing things.

"Let's be honest, [right now] it doesn't matter what anybody wants for a feature in Fallout 4," Pete Hines, VP of marketing at Bethesda, in a statement published by GameSpot. "The game is basically done. It was by and large done before we announced it, in terms of the features going in. You're not adding new features in May, June, July in the next year you're releasing; you're trying to get everything fixed."

Xbox boss Phil Spencer believes it's a great time for the gaming console market, and years ago shot down talk of the console business dying. Instead, the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 have both garnered major attention by gamers:

"I have a lot of respect for the team at Sony and the success they've had with PS4, and it's a great time for the console industry," Spencer said in an interview with Edge. "I've said this a few times, but four years ago when I was sitting doing these interviews it was, 'do people need consoles any more?' and, 'isn't this just dead? Everybody's playing on their phone.' And now you're looking at the PS4 having sold over - I don't remember their last number - but over 20 million."

Game studios still must work hard to develop AAA games for consoles that are successful - and some wonder if game console units are actually profitable for Microsoft or Sony. In the end, manufacturers will continue pushing forward with consoles, as gamers are still interested in buying them.

There was some surprise when Square Enix announced Rise of the Tomb Raider would be exclusive for the Microsoft Xbox platform for one year.

"I hope fans know that it wasn't an easy decision. I think any sort of partnership at this level is a decision that took a long time for us to get to," said Phil Rogers, CEO of the Americas and Europe at Square Enix, in a statement to The Examiner. "The decision at a studio level, we took very, very seriously. We knew it would, in the short-term, disappoint fans."

Square Enix apparently made the decision after noting Microsoft's continued passion for the Tomb Raider series: "Having been working with us on previous games in a lesser sense, they've been supportive. [However], for Rise of the Tomb Raider, they've just brought this passion and belief that has really enabled us to blow people away. People should feel that about Microsoft. Their commitment to Tomb Raider is just amazing for us."

Square Enix's Japan division today announced that it has expressed interest in releasing the new Dragon Quest XI: In Search of Departed Time on Nintendo's new NX hardware.

The Japanese publisher revealed the new game during a special Dragon Quest themed presentation, revealing that Dragon Quest XI will be releasing on PlayStation 4, the 2DS and 3DS handhelds, and possibly Nintendo's new NX system.

"In addition we are considering the launch of Dragon Quest XI on Nintendo's in-development console, the NX," the publisher said in a new expressed interest press release.

Bethesda wants to give gamers an enjoyable - and customizable experience - while playing Fallout 4, and won't rely on just pre-determined frameworks to get the job done.

If you remember purchasing a house in Skyrim, there was a minimum amount of customization available to gamers. That apparently won't be the case in Fallout 4:

"It's not just, 'Hey, here's Breezehome [one of the houses in Skyrim],' where we just picked a house, and you can buy it, and you can go to somebody and say, 'Here's this much gold, and put this thing into my house.'" said Pete Hines, VP of Marketing at Bethesda, in a statement to GameSpot. "[In Fallout 4] it's, 'Now I'm building it, I'm actually building the house, I'm building the wall, I'm placing the door, I made the table, I made the mattress.' It's that sense of making your own way in the world and defining, 'Who am I and where do I live and what's my story in this world?"

We've seen a considerable amount of old school games being teased on Unreal Engine 4, with Mario, Sonic and even Pokemon, but now it's time to see what a possible open-world Kirby game could look like in Unreal Engine 4.

For fans of Kirby, is this something you want to see happen? A massive, beautiful, next-gen Kirby game could be something that could happen in the future. While this is just a tease, there's no stopping the developers from making these games using Unreal Engine 4.

343 Industries took some heat after it was announced Halo 5: Guardians won't support split-screen - and now the game developer is discussing its decision.

"The decision to remove split-screen support from Halo 5: Guardians was one of the most difficult ones we've ever had to make as a studio," said Josh Holmes, executive producer, in a blog post. "We know that for many of our fans, Halo has meant playing together with friends in the same room. We all have great memories of past Halo split-screen multiplayer matches."

Indeed, it looks like 343 Industries wanted to "deliver a true next-gen experience" and "tough choices had to be made." To help deliver the best gaming environment, there needed to be room for scale - and Halo 5 could have been comprised if a split-screen setting was included in the game.

Bethesda may have waited until June to announce Fallout 4, but the studio had a great interest in having the game take place in Boston for years now. In fact, the location was decided before Skyrim was released in 2011, and developers started thinking about Bean Town in 2008.

"Long ago... Pre-Skyrim. The ideas for Fallout 4 started right after Fallout 3 and have gotten worked on and been percolated since 2008," said Pete Hines, VP of Marketing at Bethesda, in a statement to GameSpot. "We're talking about its infancy, we're talking about jotting some stuff down, we're talking about, 'I want to do it in Massachusetts, and have it be about this, this, and this."

Fallout 4 game development started after Skyrim had been supported "for several years," and the studio was comfortable moving on to the next project.

Bungie has a long-term plan for Destiny, and gamers will be able to support their current Guardian for quite some time. It turns out, with Bungie's current 10-year support plan, gamers may not need to make a new character - or switch - anytime soon.

"We certainly take it seriously that Destiny is a ten-year thing," said Luke Timmins, engineering lead for the Destiny video game, in a statement to GamesRadar. "It's a long-term thing and with these adventures that we're adding my contract to you - and any player - is that your Guardian will always be there. We're going to keep adding new stuff for you to do and I'd hope you'll look at The Taken King and be like, 'I'm looking forward to logging on again and hooking friends online.'"

Destiny: The Taken King is scheduled for launch on September 15, and it looks like Bungie plans to support your characters for a while. The expansion will be available for $40. In addition, it looks like Bungie is already working on a new "upcoming title," so Destiny fans will be quite busy.

Ouya CEO Julie Urhman today confirmed that PC hardware maker Razer has bought out the company. Urhman inadvertently broke the news by tweeting a cavalcade of thank you messages signalling something big had happened.

The ex-CEO further tweeted the following message to Razer, confirming the buyout speculations: "Can't wait to see what you do. Take care of my incredible team and community...I know you will."

Razer has since issued a lengthy announcement post. "Today we're pleased to welcome OUYA to the Razer family," reads the announcement. "With them in the Razer fold, we plan to further embrace hardcore gaming in the living room and take Android gaming to the next level."

Hori's new Tactical Assault Commander 4 is a keyboard and mouse duo aimed at emulating PC quality FPS control on Sony's PlayStation 4 console. Armed with the new controller, gamers can now hone their headshot skills to a heightened degree with the kind of precision that a steady mouse can offer.

The mouse and keyboard are both wired via USB and feature programmable macro buttons for customized play. Like previous models, the peripheral sports must-have modes like snipe and walk buttons, and the traditional WASD scheme shouldered by Triangle (Q) and Circle (E) for easy maneuvering. It also has keys to match a DualShock 4 including a Share button for screenshots and video.

The keyboard is decidedly created with right-handed gamers in mind--lefties are out of luck with this model. Hori affirms that the Tactical Assault Commander 4 is cross-platform compatible and is fully functional on the PlayStation 3, so you can fire up yesteryear classics like Blops 2 for practice.