Gaming - Page 1116

Batman fans are going to go bananas for the new limited edition Batman: Arkham Knight PS4 bundle, which sees Sony's console featuring custom artwork for the Batman: Arkham series.

The new bundle will feature an MSRP of $449.99, and will include a limited edition Steel Grey PS4 system chassis with a "custom Batman: Arkham Knight faceplate, a matching DualShock 4 wireless controller in Steel Grey and the explosive finale to the award-winning Arkham trilogy, Batman: Arkham Knight".

There's a second bundle that will include "Batman: Arkham Knight PS4 Bundle available for $399.99 (MSRP), which includes a PS4 system and DualShock 4 controller in Jet Black and Batman: Arkham Knight".

Digital game developers are being enticed to head across the pond and set up shop in the UK, with millions of dollars in possible tax breaks. Up to an estimated £115 million ($171 million) could be at stake over the next four years, though the government hasn't set a tax break cap yet.

To qualify for the tax break, however, developers will be required to take a "cultural test," in an effort to verify they are creating games directed to Europe. Games in the English language, made by European developers, in-game locations in Europe, or with characters with European influence, will earn more points of the test.

"I remember when people were first talking to me about this," said Jason Kingsley, chairman of the London-based game industry group Tiga, in a statement published by the Wall Street Journal. "They were saying, 'Are we going to have tons of games based on double-decker buses and people with bowler hats?" The answer is no. But you could have games like that, and they would probably qualify very easily."

We've just learned that the Nantwich Education Partnership, a group of head teachers from 16 different English schools, will be reporting parents to the police if they allow their children to play 18+ games such as GTA V.

A letter has been sent home to parents explaining that these types of games may leave their precious children "vulnerable to grooming for sexual exploitation or extreme violence" while further resulting in "early sexualised behavior."

The letter went on to state that "if your child is allowed to have inappropriate access to any game, or associated product, that is designated 18+ we are advised to contact the police and children's social care as this is deemed neglectful." Alongside GTA 5, Call of Duty, Dogs of War has been pointed out as a highly influential title.

Nintendo and Sony are extremely popular in their native country of Japan, but Japanese game studios have to make changes on story lines of games - especially role-playing games - in an effort to cater to audiences in both countries. A well known Japanese game director recently spoke about what he believes are the differences between RPGs in the United States and JRPGs available in Japan.

"One difference is that [Xenoblade Chronicles] did a good job of incorporating the innate heroism of JRPGs... allowing the user to become the hero, to become the protagonist," said Tetsuya Takahashi, director at Monolith Software, speaking in the newest Iwata Asks interview series. "On the other hand, games made in the west - and this is only my personal opinion - they are very well made, down to the last detail, but there's something stoic about them, and often the heroism aspect seems to take a bit of a back seat."

It's hard enough to make a hit video game in one region of the world, but trying to get it to translate elsewhere can sometimes seem like an impossible task.

It's hard to believe, but it was almost 20 years ago that Nintendo ushered in 3D console gaming with 'Super Mario 64' - even if it's blocky polygons have aged about as well as Keith Richards. But now, one enterprising devotee has remade the entire first level of the game, and it's even playable in a web browser for you right now!

Unity developer Roystan Ross says that "Everything is just as you remember" with the exception of some minor changes, including "some really minor stuff that nobody cared about like red coins or the Wing Cap or the Big Bob-omb. Replacing them are crowd pleasers like giant springs and coin blocks."

'Super Mario 64 HD' is available here, or at least until Ninty's legal eagles swoop down like Koopa Troopers: https://roystanross.wordpress.com/super-mario-64-hd/

We've talked about these Aussie battlers before as they caused a global upset by taking down 3DMAX, ESC Gaming and Dignitas to qualify for the latest ESL tournament.

In sad news, Azad "topguN" Orami is the second ever person to depart from their active roster, quoting life commitments are now taking over as a priority.

Quoted as "the spiritual backbone of the team," the ex-CGS player was well known for his witty humor and amazing Desert Eagle plays.

Valve's upcoming Dota 2 tournament The International is one of the biggest gaming events each year, with tickets now on sale. The first wave of tickets will go on sale any minute, but if you miss the first wave, there will be a second on March 27 at 1am EDT.

Last year, the tickets sold out in less than an hour, with ticket sales limited to five per household. This year, The International returns to its Key Arena in Seattle, taking place between August 3-8. The event itself runs for six days, extended by two days compared to last year's The International which ran for four days.

Valve will pit 16 teams in a championship Dota 2 touranement, with team invitations to be sent out "shortly after" May 1. Last yar, the grand final was taken out by Newbee, which defeated ViCi Gaming to take home $5 million.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but Nintendo has announced that it has delayed The Legend of Zelda for the Wii U into 2016. Nintendo's producer on the game, Eiji Aonuma explained: "We are not longer making a 2015 release our number one priority".

Aonuma continues, saying that "we have discovered several new possibilities for this game" which sounds quite exciting. Nintendo needs The Legend of Zelda for the Wii U to be perfect, but maybe we're seeing it delayed for something new coming out in the coming months? A next-gen console, possibly?

Free-to-play PC game Halo Online will launch as a closed beta in Russia only, giving gamers the chance to experience the multiplayer-only gaming experience. The game will be available to Russian gamers this spring, and runs a heavily customized Halo 3 game engine.

It's unknown if gamers in North America and Europe will get a chance to test Halo Online, with the following statement published online: "Right now our focus is on learning as much as we can from the closed beta period in Russia. Theoretically, any expansion outside of Russia would have to go through region-specific changes to address player expectations."

A full Q&A is available online regarding Halo Online.

Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford said Borderlands 2 has sold "well over 12 million units," and continues to rack up impressive sales figures.

The game was originally released in 2012 and became 2K's bestselling game ever in 2014, with more than 9 million units sold. There is a lot to be happy for, as The Handsome Collection will likely help boost sales even more, available for the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 game consoles.

"We announced [The Handsome Collection] after the Xbox One launched," Pitchford said. "And a lot of people that had upgraded, they really wanted the Pre-Sequel on that platform... so, we got a lot of people telling us 'Please bring this to next-gen!,' and our publishing partner, 2K games thought it was probably worth doing. We were too busy, we didn't have the resources to do the upgrade.

One of the games that is right around the corner is Batman: Arkham Knight, but Rocksteady Studios has announced that they've delayed the game by three weeks. It had an original release date of June 2, but there's a new release date of June 23.

The studio has explained the delay, with Game Director Sefton Hill saying: "We're a developer that hates to make any compromises, so we are sorry to say this means it's going to be just a little bit longer until you can play the epic conclusion to the Arkham trilogy. As a reward for your patience and understanding, and to make the wait even more unbearable, we are pleased to whet your appetite with a new gameplay video of Batman: Arkham Knight. Thanks so much from everyone at Rocksteady for your continued support. We are working as hard as we can to make you proud".

In the meantime, the studio has released a seven-minute gameplay video captured from the PS4 version of the game. We are also told to expect that there will be a Batman: Arkham Collection remastered version of the game due for the PS4 and Xbox One that will be made available sometime later this year, cranking at 1080p.

Clearly labeled as a "Kickstarter staff pick," a bunch of ex-Star Citizen developers are teaming up to reboot the age-old classic of Descent - labeling this title Descent Underground.

In a conversation with the project lead Eric Peterson he stated that "our team of ex Star Citizen developers are busy building our passion project" and their aim for this reboot is simple, "taking an old classic - keeping the flight dynamics and introducing a variety of game play like drilling through walls, team based combat, variety of ship types... all in AAA fashion."

With over $200,000 already raised of their $600,000 goal, you can gather a copy for yourself through a $25 investment - seeing 50% off the retail price alongside an in-game bonus.

Hideo Kojima is infamous to gamers, with his name being attached to every single Metal Gear Solid game, until now that is. The infamous "A Hideo Kojima game" has been removed from the advertising images for the new Metal Gear Solid 5, and Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes on Konami's website.

Effective on April 1, and reportedly not an April Fools prank, Kojima's name does not appear on Konami's updated list of corporate officers. He is, however, listed as an executive content officer and director of Kojima Productions. This is where it gets weird, as Kojima Productions looks like it isn't operating anymore, or at least the website is redirecting to the Konami website, with the Kojima Productions Twitter account being rolled into the Metal Gear Solid Twitter account. Furthermore, the Kojima Productions LA studio, set up in September 2013, has been renamed to Konami Los Angeles Studio.

Konami has talked with Eurogamer, where it said: "Konami Digital Entertainment, including Mr. Kojima, will continue to develop and support Metal Gear products. Please look forward to future announcements". Konami did elaborate, adding: "As we have already announced, we are shifting our production structure to a headquarters-controlled system, in order to establish a steadfast operating base capable of responding to the rapid market changes that surround our digital entertainment business".

Something strange just happened: Microsoft has teamed up with Chinese giant Tencent to announce that they are bringing League of Legends to Windows 10. Firstly, where's Riot Games? Secondly, why wouldn't League of Legend work on Windows 10 by default?

There will also be other games connected to this partnership, with Cross Fire and Dungeon & Fighter delivered to the Windows 10 marketplace. Tencent will be offering a free upgrade to Windows 10 in order to reach "as many Chinese consumers as possible, as soon as possible". But with League of Legends now arriving on Windows 10, and Windows 10 running on "the broadest types of devices" according to the head of Windows, could we expect League of Legends on mobile devices in the near future?

We've heard rumors of Nintendo moving into the mobile market, but now the time has come: Nintendo has teased it has mobile games coming in the future. The news came from a talk between TIME and a few of Nintendo's top executives.

When it comes to Nintendo and its mobile future, the Japanese giant talked about free-to-play and in-game purchases. Satoru Iwata, the President and CEO of Nintendo, said: "Nintendo does not intend to choose payment methods that may hurt Nintendo's brand image or our intellectual property. It's even more important for us to consider how we can get as many people around the world as possible to play Nintendo smart device apps, rather than to consider which payment system will earn the most money".

The bigger question is, will Nintendo be designing games for mobile, or dedicated gaming hardware. Iwata added: "I have never intended to dismiss the entertainment experiences that people are enjoying on smart devices or any other media. On the other hand, my understanding is that, on smart devices, the main demand is for very accessible games which smart device users can easily start and easily finish. These are not necessarily the characteristics that people demand from games for dedicated video game systems".

Valve has a discouraging "F" grade from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a score that the gaming company plans to improve in the future. In comparison, companies such as Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts have A+ ratings on the BBB website.

The company's rating is generated because of 717 complaints filed against it, Valve has failed to respond to 503 complaints, 17 complaints were not resolved, and Valve has "failed to resolve underlying cause(s) of a pattern of complaints."

"The BBB is a far less useful proxy for customer issues than Reddit," said Erik Johnson, business development lead of Valve, in a statement to Kotaku. "We don't use them for much. They don't provide us as useful of data as customers emailing us, posting on Reddit, posting on Twitter, and so on."

We heard the rumors of this not too long ago now, but Respawn Entertainment has now confirmed it is working on a "multiplatform" sequel to the mech-powered shooter. Repsawn CEO Vince Zampella himself confirmed the news with IGN.

Zampella told IGN: "I guess EA announced a sequel, so I could play coy and pretend I don't know anything about it, or... yeah. So we're working on a sequel". While Titanfall 2 is under development, the studio is also "starting up a second team and doing some smaller stuff too", according to Zampella.

In regards to what to expect from the sequel to Titanfall, Respawn hasn't even given a nugget of information out, other than that they plan to "do something difference" in regards to charging for downloadable maps. Zampella added: "I think having the maps like that in packs, it does split the community and it makes it harder for matchmaking, it's messy".

We knew Star Citizen was going to be huge in scope, but it looks like it's going to be a mammoth download, too. The Director of Game Operations, Jeremy Masker, has taken to the game's official forums in a question about Star Citizen's footprint on gamers' HDDs.

Masker said: "As I have already said, I would not count on this. The game compression and asset removal is unlikely to yield such high gains that we will be able to reduce our client size to 30-40gb. The size and number of assets that are left to deliver means that our client size is much more likely to be 100gb".

He continued, talking about the future patches on top of the initial installation, where they will be over 20GB in size. Masker said: "Also, yes we are optimizing game patching for speed and to only deliver diffs, but this is unlikely to reduce actual patch size. Again, each patch has 100s of assets, each of these assets are at times 200mb, this leads to 2-6gb patches, and if we end up doing a file type re-factor and have to re-download 30-40% of the assets on the hard-drive, then the patch will be 14-20gb".

Slightly Mad Studios has delayed Project Cars yet again, with its April release date being pushed into mid-May. You might remember the game was delayed from late last year to March. Then from March to April. Now, from April to mid-May.

The latest delay in a long list of pushbacks has been explained by Slightly Mad Studios in a press release, where the studio said: "Despite our long heritage and pedigree in making critically-acclaimed racing games, Project Cars is by far the grandest and most intricately detailed of them all. Despite therefore the game being 99.9% complete, the remaining 0.1% attending to small issues and bugs has been tricky to anticipate. We're absolutely dedicated to delivering a ground-breaking experience and by targeting mid-May fans can be assured that's what they'll receive".

The studio will be providing Project Cars plays with some free content because of the delay, osmething they will announce in the near future. Slightly Mad Studios' boss, Ian Bell, said: "This gift, that we're sure is going to excite fans, will be available from day one and revealed shortly. Keep an eye on our website for more info".

Bad news for Uncharted fans, with Naughty Dog and Sony announcing they've delayed Uncharted 4: A Thief's End into Q2 2016. The game was meant to be released sometime this year, but has been pushed back into April-June of next year.

Uncharted 4's directors, Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann took to the official PlayStation blog to explain: "Since we showed you our first gameplay reveal of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, more of the game and story have come together, and it's become clear to us that this game is much more ambitious than we originally envisioned. After spending so many years with Nathan Drake, he means a lot to the team, and telling the climactic chapter of his adventures is a task we don't take lightly - this game deserves every bit of the attention to detail, precise pacing, and nuanced storytelling Naughty Dog is known for".

"So we've made the difficult choice of pushing the game's release date. Giving us a few extra months will make certain that Uncharted 4: A Thief's End not only meets the team's high standards but the high standards that gamers have come to expect from a Naughty Dog title" they continued". The duo added: "Thank you for your patience - we know the extra wait will be excruciating, but you'll see it will be worth it as we reveal more about Uncharted 4 over the next year. The team at Naughty Dog will be heads down working through 2015 making sure that Nathan Drake's story gets the closure it deserves. Come Spring 2016, you and Nate are in for one thrilling, emotional ride".