Gaming - Page 1118

Activision and Treyarch will launch a global multiplayer beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 next month, in an effort to ensure a smooth game launch later this year.

The multiplayer beta will be available for the PC, Microsoft Xbox One, and Sony PlayStation 4. PS4 gamers will get first crack on August 19, while PC and Xbox One gamers will be able to start playing on August 26. The multiplayer beta will last just four days.

"During the beta, fans will have an opportunity to try the new momentum-based, chained movement system, find the perfect Specialist to fit their play style, get a feel for the new multiplayer maps and more," said Scott Lowe, communications manager at Activision, in a blog post.

The Microsoft Xbox One has greatly suffered while trying to sell its Xbox One and keep up with the Sony PlayStation 4, handily outsold in the United States, Europe and Japan.

It's been a difficult battle that Microsoft is taking seriously, and there have been moments of relief - like after the holidays, when gamers could purchase several Xbox One gaming bundles.

"This progress, as well as the excitement we generated at E3 - with Xbox exclusive gaming content and backwards compatibility - demonstrates the building momentum that exists with the Xbox ecosystem," said Amy Hood, CFO at Microsoft, while speaking during a recent financial call.

As a staunch supporter of Destiny's Titan class (Defenders do it best!), I get excited at the prospect of modeling an incredibly detailed miniature version of my in-game character on my desk...or shelf...or anywhere else.

But where are all the Destiny action figures? Halo has a ton of them, made by McFarlane Toys no less. What about Bungie's newest shooter? Bambaland has answered the call with their gorgeous new Titan action figure that features all the articulation, detail, and eye-catching glory you'd expect from a proper Light-infused space hero.

The only catch is that it's $190. Well the one that comes with the Hawkmoon is $190, maybe the basic retail versions are a little cheaper. At that price range it's clear that the figure is meant to be a handsome bounty sitting atop a collector's shelf of prized valuables. Most of us don't plan to buy it, but it doesn't hurt to window shop. So let's take a closer look, shall we?

The digital download of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, scheduled for release later this year, will only require 25.1 GB of free space for Sony PlayStation 4 gamers.

Considering how large some recent games have been, some of you may be happy to hear that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will only be about 25 GB. The massive open-world game is smaller than the PlayStation 3's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which is about 26.6 GB.

The game features real-time cutscenes, very little audio files since Snake doesn't talk much, and good compression could attribute to the relatively small file size.

If you're in the market for a new GPU and have had your eye on Metal Gear Solid V, then NVIDIA has you covered.

For a limited time NVIDIA will hand out free copies of Konami's latest tactical espionage adventure to those who purchase a GeForce GTX 980 Ti, 980, 970, or 960 GPU or 980/970M notebook. The copies will be digital, much like NVIDIA's past promotions that include titles like The Witcher 3. Let's hope that this promo goes better than the ill-fated Arkham Knight fiasco.

Interestingly enough, the ex-Konami franchise creator Hideo Kojima released a new promo poster for the game, which can be found below. Kojima's name is markedly absent from the promo. After the heated controversy between Konami and Kojima and subsequent cancellation of the highly anticipated Silent Hills it's fair to say that the publisher has a lot riding on this one. They can't afford a blunder on any platform, especially not on PC.

It looks as if the Xbox One's hot new backwards compatibility feature isn't actually so new after all. In fact Microsoft might have planned to include it before the console was even released, despite Don Mattrick's "backwards compatibility is really backwards" antics.

A very interesting snippet has surfaced as part of an Xbox Wire interview with Xbox's Director of Program Management, Mike Ybarra. "The Xbox Engineering team spent over three years making backwards compatibility a reality," reads the line in question.

Over three years? Wait, that doesn't exactly add up. Since it originally released November of 2013, the Xbox One will only turn two this November, so a round of quick math will reveal that Microsoft had indeed banked on backwards compatibility before the system was released on store shelves. Even with that extra forethought and planning, the Xbox team hasn't had an easy time tackling the feature.

Amid reports that professional eSports players were abusing Adderall during sanctioned tournaments, the Electronic Sports League (ESL), is taking steps crack down on performance-enhancing drugs in the world of pro gaming.

The Daily Dot reports that ESL is working alongside the World Anti-Doping Agency and the National Anti-Doping Agency to institute random drug screens for tournament participants. "We have known for some time that [performance enhancing drugs] would be a challenge at some point and we need to face that," the ESL stated. "As the stakes rise (we issue $500k per season of the Pro League alone) the athletes will push for whatever edge they can, however they can."

Due to the ramifications the ESL is hard-pressed to take action to put out the PR fire as soon as possible. Many key hardware titans have put their might under the banner of pro gaming, and these reports could very well blemish companies like AMD, NVIDIA, and Microsoft.

The Microsoft Xbox One may not be able to steal all momentum from the Sony PlayStation 4, but is giving Microsoft plenty of reasons to celebrate. During Q4, Microsoft sold 1.4 million Xbox 360/Xbox One systems, a massive increase from the 1.1 million sold year-over-year - but Microsoft declined to break down sales for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

It looks like the Xbox business is giving Microsoft increased optimism with the looming launch of Windows 10, with Xbox console sales, revenue, and Xbox Live transactions all increasing. In addition, the company's gaming division saw 27 percent year-over-year growth, and plenty of upcoming video games look appealing.

"Xbox platform revenue increased $86 million or 10 percent," according to a Microsoft report. "[That was] driven by higher volumes of consoles sold, offset in part by lower prices of Xbox Ones sold. Xbox Live transactions revenue increased $205 million or 58 percent, reflecting increased users and revenue per user."

When people think of eSports, they likely don't think of physical injuries that could keep gamers out of major tournaments and high-profile events. However, it looks like repetitive motion injuries are taking their toll, with players reporting tendinitis, tennis elbow, trigger finger, and carpal tunnel syndrome as some of the injuries they're facing.

Many professional eSports players spend the majority of their day practicing, both in teams and individually, and hours of continued gaming can pose major health risks. It's not uncommon for professional gamers to spend at least half the day gaming, with another couple hours invested in replay analysis and film study.

"If you don't rest the body doesn't have a chance to heal itself, to go into a homeostatic state and say okay, now I can repair myself," said Dr. Levi Harrison, a hand and arm surgeon, in a statement to Motherboard. "Whether it's non-stop gaming or non-stop MMA training, the body doesn't like that, and there's a price."

Red Dead Redemption was the most-requested game to receive backward compatibility for the Microsoft Xbox One, but the title has been dethroned by Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

The top 15, as reported by GameSpot:

1.Call of Duty: Black Ops II

The addition of backward compatibility for the Microsoft Xbox One likely played a part in massive Xbox One sales during the month of June. The company saw a 51 percent year-over-year bump when compared to June 2014, and there was a massive sales boost of 79 percent during E3 week.

In addition to a new controller, game titles and other content to look forward to - Microsoft introduced backward compatibility, so gamers will be able to play their Xbox 360 titles on the Xbox One. Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the Xbox platform has built momentum in part because of backward compatibility and exclusive games that will be available in time for Christmas.

"June was a good month and I think backwards compatibility matters," Spencer said via Twitter. "Lots of 360 owners deciding when to make the jump, big focus for us."

EA Sports has recently announced in a press release that two female players will now feature on FIFA box art for the first time. Set to showcase athletes Alex Morgan and Christine Sinclair, this US National Women's team forward and Canadian captain will both feature alongside Lionel Messi on the FIFA 16 covers in their respective countries.

Alongside this cover addition, there has also been the addition of 12 Women's National teams into the game itself, giving players the ability to compete with these teams in friendly and online matches.

Alex Morgan is excited to be a pioneer in this field, stating that she knows "people all over the world play this game and I'm really excited that FIFA 16 is putting such an important spotlight on women's soccer. And now to share the cover with today's greatest player is surreal."

The latest v1.07 patch rolled out to The Witcher 3 a couple of days ago, and while there are some improvements and bug fixes for the most part, there seems to be lowered performance on the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game, when compared to v1.05.

In the video above from DigitalFoundry, you can see that the frame rate dips into the (in my opinion) very unplayable levels of around 20FPS. Eurogamer explains: "Essentially, gameplay on Xbox One now appears to rely on a similar double-buffer v-sync set-up to the PS4 game, locking its frame-rate to 20fps during these lulls in performance. This means that the reading on our graph is consistently lower on patch 1.07 as compared to 1.05, where it was free to waver between 20-30fps freely. On a matching route through the bog, frame-rate can be up to 8fps slower on the latest version of the game".

They continue: "That said, patch 1.07 comes with an exhaustive changelog that impacts more than just frame-rate, but overall image quality remains static. A cursory glance suggests the visual settings remain the same between the two, up to and including foliage and shadow LODs. Xbox One's curious dynamic resolution also shows no gains in holding a genuine 1080p during open-world travel or combat - it continues to upscale from a lower resolution".

It looks like there are some very exciting things to expect from DirectX 12, but Forza Motorsport 6 on the Xbox One will not be making use of Microsoft's next generation API.

Executive Producer on Forza 6, Ryan Cooper, said during a chat with Gaming Bolt: "Yes, we're really excited about DX12 and I think there is going to be a ton of potential with that. However we're not utilizing Dx12 in Forza Motorsport 6 on Xbox One. We're always looking to push the boundaries. Take our Forza Tech engine for example; that's an engine that has been in development for over 10 years and with every version of the game we're always trying to push the technology boundaries of what that engine can do. With the addition of night racing and racing in the rain and the ability to present that to players at 1080p/60 fps is really a technical achievement we're proud of".

Interestingly, Forza 6 will be running at 1080p 60FPS without DX12. But, with the Forza Tech engine being in development for 10 years now, Turn 10 Studios must know all of the optimizations required on the Xbox One to hit 1080p 60FPS, without DX12. We should see a DX12-powered version of Forza 6 in the future, but what could it deliver over the DX11-powered version? Prettier graphics? With 1080p 60FPS, we shouldn't see any increased performance, so it could just be eye candy.

There's a big reason why the remastered versions of Prototype and Prototype 2 launching on the Xbox One and PS4 didn't get much marketing, because it seems like the remastered versions of the game are piles of crap, that run worse than their previous generation counterparts.

Eurogamer's Digital Foundry has done some digging, discovering that the Xbox 360 version of Prototype and its 2012 sequel runs better than the new Xbox One version. The remastered versions of Prototype and Prototype 2 run at 1080p, but the in-game performance is quite subpar, especially in combat sequences, according to Eurogamer. The cutscenes even feature lowered performance, but the in-game performance reaches just 20-25 FPS, which a bunch of screen tearing, and in battles it gets even worse.

Eurogamer notes: "Worse still is the fact PS3 completely overshadows Xbox One in playability. Throughout our tests, Sony's last-gen machine runs with no tearing at all, and yet still manages to consistently best both Xbox machines in frame-rate, both old and new".

Something that first leaked onto Reddit and was later confirmed by Newegg, is that NVIDIA will soon be bundling Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain with various GeForce video cards.

MGS V will replace Batman: Arkham Knight as NVIDIA's new GeForce promotional deal, and rightfully so, since Arkham Knight won't be back on the PC until later this year. Newegg support confirmed the deal, saying: "Hi everyone! We had a little slip up and posted this deal ahead of schedule. It is not currently available, but stay tuned, it will be soon!"

We should see NVIDIA bundle Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain with its GeForce GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti and Titan X video cards.

We have now got a more precise release window for Star Marine, the first-person module of the ambitious Star Citizen. During an interview with Gamers Nexus, Star Citizen's mastermind Chris Roberts said that Star Marine would be out in "three, four, maybe 5 weeks" from now.

Roberts talked about the work required for the first-person module in deeper detail, which adds another dimension of personal combat and piloting space vessels, into a playable state. Roberts added: "We made a conscious decision very early to do it correctly. The proper third-person animations drive the first person. It makes things harder because you can't cheat in a lot of different ways".

It was the bigger quote about Star Marine has me excited, where Roberts explained: "The arms are [normally] right in front of the eyes. With Star Citizen, it's different than a normal FPS because it's essentially a whole world simulation. It's not just running around with a gun; it's interacting with stuff, flying ships, and interacting with people cooperatively. If someone is sitting next to you in the Constellation, you need to see what he's doing with the controls". He continued: "We don't separate between first and third person. It's all unified. The third-person animations drive the first-person; when you're looking around in first-person, you're looking through the eyes. [...] It makes things harder because you can't cheat in a lot of ways".

Project CARS has received yet another update, bringing the game to v2.50, delivering a bunch of improvements and fixes along the way. The developer has worked on the various game-stopping crashes, but there is a fair bit of fixing under the hood for Project CARS with this patch. The full changelog for v2.50:

Game Crashes

Pitting, tuning, setups

Hearing of professional athletes taking performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) to get an edge on the competition isn't a shock anymore. However, you may be a bit more surprised to hear about PED use among eSports competitors.

Kory Friesen (a.k.a SEMPHIS), a former Cloud9 team member and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive professional player, recently said the entire team used Adderall. Friesen made his comments after discussing in-game communication between Cloud9 teammates (via Mohan "Launders" Govindasamy):

"The ESL comms were kind of funny in my opinion. I don't even care. We were all on Adderall. I don't even give a f**k. It was pretty obvious if you listened to the comms. People can hate it or whatever."

The gaming world was turned upside down after it was announced Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, 55, died earlier this week. Nintendo senior managing director Genyo Takeda delivered the memorial address during Iwata's funeral, which was posted online by Polygon.

In the eulogy, Takeda spoke of Iwata's personal and professional successes, and vowed to support Iwata's legacy.

"As we gather here today for a joint funeral with Nintendo Co., Ltd. and Mr. Iwata's family, I would like to share my heartfelt condolences. President Iwata, allow me to call you Iwata-san, just as I always used to.