Gaming - Page 1117

2014 has proven to be quite the lucrative year for Valve as reports indicate that the company's digital PC gaming storefront Steam raked in an estimated total of $1.5bn in total sales last year.

Valve's in-house mega blockbusters DOTA 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 were responsible for a considerable bulk of the figures, pulling in more than $450m profit across all three games.

Industry research company SuperData affirms that Valve also amassed $330m in royalties from third-party titles sold on Steam. As per company policy, Valve takes a 30% cut of each sale. Considering Steam has a library consisting of over 781 million games, and that the service hit a peak of 9.2 million users, it's no wonder Valve can pull in that kind of revenue.

id Software understands the importance of eSports in 2015, but said Doom isn't being designed specifically to become the next big eSports platform.

Just creating the multiplayer mode is a priority, and id Software will go back and analyze eSports potential after Doom has been released. Of course, id is familiar with multiplayer success, especially with Quake 3 and Quake 4, which were popular among professional gamers and players at LAN parties.

"We're not developing [Doom] specifically with how we address eSports. There's tons of moments, even just watching the [multiplayer matches] at Quakecon, where there's very eSports moments in it," said Marty Stratton, developer at id Software, in a statement to GameSpot. "It really just illustrates how eSports can be born out of that. But we're really [working on] how we entertain millions of people on their couches everyday. So that's really been our focus."

It looks like Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro still want to work on a gaming project, even though Silent Hills was scrapped. Details regarding the project haven't been disclosed, but could give gamers something to look forward to one day.

"I love working with Kojima-san. We are still in touch," del Toro recently told IGN. "We are still friends and working into doing something together, but that's not going to be [Silent Hills]."

It's a shame that Silent Hills was scrapped, as both del Toro and Kojima were excited about the progress being made:

Microsoft is bringing some new major changes to the Xbox Onewith the Fall update, including voice-assisted support from Cortana and a new dashboard layout--but speed is their top priority.

"Brand new Xbox One User Interface experience that will be going out this fall and is really focused around speed and getting to things faster," Xbox's Richard Irving told GamingBolt at E3 2015. "Our design point of the new Xbox experience is speed and making all of the things you do on Xbox Live, both in and out of the game much faster."

As an Xbox One owner myself I can attest that the console's menus can be sluggish. Firing up an app or starting up Snap Mode can take a bit, meaning you'll sometimes miss that perfect moment you wanted to record.

The Raspberry Pi has proven to be the fruit of choice for clever tecchies and inventors everywhere, leading to a fascinating array of technical creations that amuse, mystify and outright dazzle.

The Pi Boy Portable is a prime example. Build using the Raspberry Pi, customized 3D-printed shell parts and a small screen, Thingiverse user Jooxoe3i has created a tiny portable Super Nintendo console built for retro gaming on the go.

The Pi Boy Portable build is inspired by a combination of custom eye-boggling inventions including adafruit's DIY Raspberry Pi Gameboy and Carasibana's Super Game PiSP, a PSP-shaped SNES retro handheld.

Nintendo has ambitious plans to make the new Zelda Wii U game the "best Zelda experience" yet--but to beat all the other entries in the series the Japanese gaming titan will need to really push the bar.

"We confirmed that a Zelda game, a new Zelda experience is in development for the Wii U and we have our team hard at work on that," Nintendo exec Scott Moffitt told iDigitalTimes in an E3 2015 interview. "We want that to be the best Zelda experience. Fans have been waiting for and deserve a game when it's ready, when it's fully featured and when it can live up to what we would like to deliver."

Originally slated for a release this year on the flagging Wii U console, Nintendo delayed Zelda Wii U for TBA 2016 leaving the possibility open for a cross-platform launch on Nintendo's mysterious new NX platform.

Doom is one of the most iconic video game series, with three games released since the first one launched in 1993 - but id Software is aware of the changing times. Gamers, many of whom have a rather shot attention-span, have focused on a number of other game titles.

"id hasn't made a game in the current pantheon of first-person shooters," said Pete Hines, VP of Marketing at Bethesda, in a statement to GameSpot. "It's not a part of that conversation. You can go to any sixteen-year-old at Quakecon and ask them what their favorite shooter is and they're going to say Call of Duty and Battlefield and Halo, but not Doom, because why would they?"

The studio previously discussed how it scrapped the "Doom 4" game title, saying it felt too much like Call of Duty - and not enough like Doom. It's reassuring to hear developers were willing to go back to the drawing board when it came to Doom, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

The closed alpha of Hitman is a huge resource hog, where even NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan X can't run the game at a stable 60FPS at 1080p on 'Ultra' settings. Now we are noting here many times: this is just an alpha, and not indicative of the final version of the game.

But, with the alpha build of Hitman already chewing up a serious video card like the Titan X and not even being able to spit out 60FPS at 1080p, is worrying. YouTuber 'polaric90' has posted a video using a Titan X, with an average frame rate of around 40FPS. With the performance on one of the best cards on the market not even hitting 60FPS at only 1080p, what will happen at 1440p? 4K?

The biggest thing to worry about here is the console versions of the game, which are much slower than a Titan X. It looks like the developer has quite a bit of work to do on optimization between now and December 8, when Hitman reaches the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

With this generation of consoles and their 'increased horsepower' over the previous generation consoles, we're not seeing that many AAA titles run at 1080p 60FPS. This will hopefully not be the case when it comes to Doom, with id Software saying that it's aiming for 1080p 60FPS.

During a talk with GameSpot, Marty Stratton, the Executive Producer of Doom said: "When you're developing, you make thousands of decisions that have an impact on performance or visual fidelity. We've always been at the forefront of saying we want our games to run as fast as possible at the highest resolution possible. So for us, that goal is 1080p and 60 FPS. Along with that goal, the mantra of our technology team is that we want to be the best-looking game out there at 60 FPS and 1080p. So you draw that line in the sand".

Stratton said that for the best Doom experience, 1080p 60FPS is where it's at, he elaborated: "For us it isn't just a lofty technical goal. We really do think it's important to the feel of the game, it's important to the way our combat feels and our movement feels. It's got to be fast, it's got to be fluid, and it's all based on that. It really is a gameplay goal first and foremost. You do make decisions here or there. Ultimately I don't think you can ever expect most consumers to really nitpick".

With the PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight being a huge mess, so much so that Warner Bros. pulled it from Steam, good guy NVIDIA is stepping up to the plate to help fix it out. NVIDIA's Tom Peterson talked about the game during his appearance on MMORPG.com yesterday, saying that some of NVIDIA's best are on the case.

Peterson said: "We're fixing a ton of things that are not necessarily related to us. Some of it may be related to our driver, some not. But at the end of the day the game is the focus and we're going to make it great". Peterson continued: "We have 200 to 300 engineers that are really visual scientists. They're the best out there. Artists, Ph.D.s. ... We've taken the approach that says let's capture what they've got in their minds, convert it to algorithms ... test it and QA it, and then provide it as middleware effectively to game developers".

Why is NVIDIA helping out? It feels like this is just NVIDIA being a helpful member of the PC community, especially when Peterson added: "I look at [Arkham Knight] as an example of where NVIDIA can help a developer get to market with a quality game. Warner Bros. ... made a few mistakes getting the game out. It wasn't fully performance optimized for PC. So now we're deploying our QA resources and our engineers to make that game as good as it possibly can be".

After 15 years of black-market gaming, China has opened up a new door to the bustling video games industry by scrapping its restrictive ban on games systems. The country's Ministry of Culture states that hardware titans like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo can not only sell but also manufacture video games consoles anywhere in the country.

This new legislature is a huge win for console-makers, as they have free reign to tap the Chinese market. Last year the Chinese government made a similar reversal with the launch of the Xbox One in the region, but console-makers were bound by unfavorable restrictive policies. To sell their consoles in China, console-makers had to agree to specific rules like being told where manufacturing facilities could be placed, gaining approval from regulation officials, and have every individual console inspected before being sold.

Now China has nixed all of these regulations and opened a new frontier of free-trade for video games consoles, completely overturning the decade-and-a-half ban.

Fallout Shelter will launch for Google Android mobile users on August 13, and will be available for free via the Google Play store. In its first two weeks of release for Apple iOS, the game became a top-downloaded game - and helped generate $5.1 million in revenue.

"Whether you're playing on Android or on iOS, Fallout Shelter will feature new game updates, including Mr. Handy as an all premium reward," according to a Bethesda blog post. "Have him collect resources inside your Vault, send him into the wasteland to collect loot, and defend your Vault from creatures and disasters, including all new Deathclaw invasions and Molerat infestations."

Expect Bethesda to support the game "for a long time," according to Bethesda - as the game studio is overwhelmed with support by iOS gamers.

The opening night of All Work All Play in Melbourne, Australia saw a few dozen of us nerds bustle with excitement at our 'full-time hobby' finally getting some mainstream screen time. Although the small turnout was a little disappointing, some familiar faces had woven themselves out of the wood work, these being the types of people you would have seen hunched over a CRT monitor in 2005, wearing baggy cargo shorts and sporting too much gel in their hair.

Although it kicked off with a rough start (technical difficulties), the end result was captivating for us enthusiasts. Following a few champions throughout the entire film, this ESL-led documentary honed in on the former director of pro gaming, Michal 'Carmac' Blicharz and Cloud 9, an underdog League of Legends team.

Following journeys both personal and on-stage, the production quality matched that Valve's 'Free to Play' and poised itself as a film that can educate and capture the imaginations of eSports enthusiasts experienced and new.

In what should come as a total surprise, Mortal Kombat X has topped NPD Group's sales rankings for video games at the retail level in the US for the first half of 2015. Considering the #2 title is Grand Theft Auto V, this is a huge scoop for Warner Bros., especially after the huge issues surrounding Batman: Arkham Knight.

Most of the games on the chart will be games you either own, or have heard of, but it's quite surprising to see Mortal Kombat X top the list. Here's the top 10 sales rankings for video games at retail for the first half of 2015, according to NPD Group:

343 Industries has revealed new info on the importance of teamwork in Halo 5: Guardians' campaign mode, underlining key mechanics and tweaks they've made along the way.

For the most part 343i has kept the standard Halo formula in tact for Halo 5, but this time around the game has a decidedly more strategic co-operative feel. Gone are the days of lone-wolfing it in Master Chief's boots: throughout the missions you'll be accompanied by three other Spartans all with their own attributes, Loadouts, and specialized HUD's.

"Your team is your weapon," reads the developers' new Halo Waypoint update.

While Valve still hasn't confirmed the development of Half-Life 3, rumors have circling Reddit that the script for Half-Life 3 is finished, but it won't be released 'due to fear'.

Well, someone reached out to Valve's Marc Laidlaw, who said: "I can't comment on Valve's internal process, but I can say that it sounds like someone is trolling. Anonymous sources have been posting speculation masquerading as inside knowledge since the Half-Life 1 delay in 1997. If that's any comfort, please rest assured that in my experience at Valve, fear is the last thing that would ever drive a decision about what to work on".

When it came to the question of "If the story is finished, why not release it as a book or a comic", Laidlaw responded with: "There's a misunderstanding that I've always tried to address straight on when this question comes up, which is that a Half-Life story can somehow exist outside of a game. It can't. The story is created through the process of trying to figure out how to best use the features of the engine within the interesting set of constraints it poses".

Some of the developers that worked at CD Projekt RED, the studio behind The Witcher series of games, have moved over to IMGN.PRO. IMGN.PRO is the studio responsible for Kholat and Fool's Theory, with the company joining forces with the ex-CD Projekt RED developers.

IMGN.PRO is working on a new 'demanding, ambitious' title that is powered by Unreal Engine 4, with IMGN.PRO's co-founder, Lukasz Kubiak, teasing: "Evolution is a keyword when thinking both about our business and our new project. Merging our team with the Fool's Theory crew gives us access to the best people in the industry. Since the beginning of Kholat development our goal was to deliver ambitious, high quality games. Nothing has changed in this matter. Despite the fact, that now we want to go even further. With such a talented and experienced team, we intend to create a truly sensational game. The new project we are currently working on will be completely different than Kholat, much bigger and way more powerful".

The former Senior Quest Designer at CD Projekt RED, and Fool's Theory founder, Rokosz, said: "We started working on a game that will be a daring combination of some isometric genres. I don't want to reveal too much details at this point other than we're developing the game on Unreal Engine 4. It was a natural choice for us, taking into consideration how experienced the team is in working with this tool. I can assure you that the game will break some proven schemes and we'll be revealing more information about it very soon".

Some of the most popular stories from the last month or so have been our articles on the Unreal Engine 4 powered showcases of Mario and Sonic, but now it's time for Pokemon.

YouTuber'CryZENx' has released yet another video showing what a possible Pokemon game powered by Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 could look like, which you can view above. It's quite astonishing what can be achieved with Unreal Engine 4, but I just want to play a Mario, Sonic or Pokemon game in UE4 already.

Five Nights at Freddy's 4 is now available on the Steam marketplace more than two weeks ahead of its projected release date.

Rather than waiting until next month, Scott Cauthon, the game's creator and developer, finished the game early and went ahead and released it right away. Cauthon statement announced the news last night on the official Five Nights at Freddy's Steam community page, leading to resounding fanfare and applause. He said: "Ok, so as many of you already know, I'm bad with release dates. The game is finished. :) Enjoy!"

The game's release date has been pushed up twice now, as the game was originally slated to release on Halloween 2015, then was pushed forward to August 8.

Fallout Shelter has been a major success for Bethesda, generating more than $5 million in just two weeks, but that doesn't mean the game studio will create a large catalog of mobile games.

"We'd been thinking about [making Fallout Shelter] for a while. It was a case of 'We won't do it unless it's a good fit," said Pete Hines, VP of PR and marketing at Bethesda, in a statement to IGN.

"This isn't the start of a formula where every time we make a game we need to do a mobile game... that's not why Fallout Shelter was great. People appreciate the game because it doesn't have our hand in your pocket. It did monetization in a way that people didn't have a problem with."