Gaming - Page 1132

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".

Netflix may have filmed the third season of House of Cards in 6K, but why do you need that huge resolution when you're hacking the video service to run on a NES? Yes, a Nintendo Entertainment System.

A trio of Netflix engineers has a semi-working version of Netflix working on the NES, something they hacked together for Netflix's recent winter hack day. The team managed to throw up some frames from the House of Cards intro, all on a "unmodified" NES, with "some assembly required". Not only that, but they managed to get a limited browsing interface, with the feed showing some of Netflix's upcoming original shows.

Microsoft has introduced a new Xbox One bundle, something that includes Halo: The Master Chief Collection, with a bundled price of $349. Inside of the new bundle, you get the Xbox One, with a download code for Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

The download is a huge 59.1GB, which includes Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary (both digital remasters), Halo 3, and Halo 4. The Master Chief Collection also provides gamers with access to the live-action Halo: Nightfall series which is available on Xbox LIve.

The biggest thing to take away from this is that there are still countless problems with Halo: The Master Chief Collection, with people reporting even with the latest patch, the game is still broken with matchmaking issues, and so much more.

We're beginning to see the first rumbles of a new Gears of War game from Microsoft, after the company acquired the rights to the franchise from its creators, Epic Games.

The previous Creative Director on Kinect, Kudo Tsunoda, has teased a new Gears of War game, where he revealed his new role within the software giant. Microsoft has talked about Tsunoda's new position: "While the Halo, Gears of War, Forza and Minecraft franchises will continue to report to Phil Spencer, Kudo will lead the vision and experience development of our other Microsoft Studios portfolio investments in the United States, Europe, and across our Global Publishing team".

What's more exciting, is that we could see the new Gears of War released on the PC for Windows 10, or even better - for HoloLens. We should see more news on the new Gears of War as we slide closer to E3 in June.

It's been causing some major confusion recently, did you know that Steam now blocks most major email address' in their chat program?

After talking to a friend of mine and asking for his email, I received a message from him saying "https://gmail.com." At first I thought he was trying to troll me so I went along with it, later on after some more frustration we realized that Steam chat was actually blocking what we were sending to each other.

As you can see above, on the left I sent him a few different test emails to check exactly what is blocked. His result is on the right, showing that all of these email address' have been effectively turned into URL's. For those who don't keep up with Steam updates and patch notes, this little bit of news may cause you some headaches in the future.

Blizzard has announced its plans for non-subscription-based options for its time-sucking game World of Warcraft, something the company is calling "WoW Tokens".

The way WoW Tokens work is that they can be purchased with real money, with players able to sell these Tokens within the World of Warcraft auction house. Other WoW players can then purchase these WoW Tokens from the auction house with their in-game gold, where they will have 30 days of game time attached to them.

Blizzard has developed a special formula to determine the price of these WoW Tokens in the store, where the developer will "take into account supply and demand for Tokens as well as other elements of the World of Warcraft economy in each region" reports Polygon. The Tokens are not resellable, because they are set at a gold price, so once you've purchased it from the auction house, the WoW Token is soulbound to your character, and must be redeemed by you, and you only.

We knew it was coming, but now it has been confirmed: Rock Band 4 is coming to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 later this year. Harmonix has also said it teamed up with hardware manufacturer Mad Catz for the accessories side of things.

This is great news, as the developer has said that Rock Band 4 will be backwards compatible with every single Rock Band guitar and drum et you have collected, all the way back to 2007. If you don't want to use your old instruments, the developer will be offering up some new instruments of course. But it's not just the instruments that will be backwards compatible, as all of the previous DLC will be carried over (platform dependant) which is great to see.

The backwards compatibility for both the hardware and DLC could be because Harmonix is no longer being published by EA, where Harmonix has partnered up with Mad Catz to manufacturer the new hardware, as well as distribute the new boxed game. Better yet, Rock Band 4 won't be superseded by another Rock Band game anytime soon, as Harmonix will be updating Rock Band 4 with new songs, modes and other community-driven content.

GDC 2015 - While the world thought that Bethesda would show off Fallout 4 at the Game Developers Conference, we didn't see it. Instead, they have just unveiled Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, with the first gameplay trailer available below.

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is an "all-new standable prequel" to Wolfenstein: The New Order, and will be made available digitally on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC on May 5, for just $19.99. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood has players taking their hero BJ Blazkowicz "back to the year 1946 in an adventure that spans eight chapters and two interconnected stories (released together) that will lead into the events you know and love from The New Order".

GDC 2015 - Sony has announced that it has sold over 20.2 million PlayStation 4 consoles at GDC 2015, with the 20 million plus consoles being sold up to March 1.

Sony notes that this is units sold through to customers, where in a press release the company added that the PS4 "continues to demonstrate the fastest and strongest growth in PlayStation hardware history". It wasn't too long ago that the company announced it had reached 18.5 million PS4s sold, back on January 4.

Sony Computer Entertainment's President and Global CEO, Andrew House, said: "We are so grateful for the enormous support from PlayStation fans worldwide, and we are truly humbled that gamers around the globe have continued to select PS4 as the best place to play".

GDC 2015 - Valve has just announced Steam Link, something that will be released later this year and will "extend your Steam experience to any room in the house". Steam Link will work with your PC, Mac, Steam Machines and even Linux-powered systems. It will stream content from Steam to the Steam Link device, with the only requirement is that they're on the same network.

Valve's new Steam Link will be capable of 1080p at 60Hz "with low latency", and will be made later this year in November for $49.99. The company also took the opportunity to announce its new Steam Controller, which will also be available in November.

Steam Link is "designed to take advantage of the PC horsepower you already have in your home, with In-Home Streaming" while the hardware includes three USB ports, and HDMI out. All you have to do is hook it up to your TV through HDMI, into your network, with Steam Link doing the rest of the work to detect any and all computers in your house running Steam.

GDC 2015 - Valve has announced Source 2, the graphics engine that will most likely power Half-Life 3, if it ever arrives. The new Source engine has been teased for a while now, we it appeared in some DOTA 2 code a while back.

The new Source 2 engine, according to Valve's Jay Stelly: "With Source 2 our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not just for the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favourite games".

Just like Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 5, Valve's new Source 2 is also "free to content developers". Valve tease: "This combined with recent announcements from Epic and Unity will help continue the PC's dominance as the premiere content authoring platform".

Sony wants to cash in on the rising number of free-to-play game titles for the PlayStation 4 game console, with officials saying there has been continued growth of free-to-play.

"We're really looking at this as a significant part of our digital business," said Sara Thomson, senior account executive of the free-to-play business at Sony, during GDC. "I think that it's going to be a really big chunk of our revenues in the next few years; 3-5 years. And it's already growing at amazing rates that are really quite surprising."

The gaming market has changed and more free-to-play games helped cause a shift among game studios and console makers - with great long-term potential of free-to-play games on consoles, according to Sony.

Epic Games has moved away from its subscription model for Unreal Engine that it unveiled last year, where it has just announced that it is providing its graphics engine to developers for free. Yes, for nothing.

There is a slight catch, with Tim Sweeney explaining: "You can download the engine and use it for everything from game development, education, architecture, and visualization to VR, film and animation. When you ship a game or application, you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter. It's a simple arrangement in which we succeed only when you succeed".

This provides Epic Games with the great chance of helping the community grow, getting more and more developers to use Unreal Engine. Sweeney continues: "The past year has been a whirlwind for everyone at Epic Games. Our community has grown tremendously. The quality and variety of creative work being done has been breathtaking. When we asked people to submit their projects to be shown this year at GDC, we had the challenge of picking just 8 from over 100 finalists that were all good enough to show".