Gaming - Page 1138

Destiny has been super successful for Activision and Bungie, with the former company investing some $500 million into it before things even kicked off. Well, gamers across the world are addicted, but I think we just found one that takes the cake.

'yavin427' has constructed himself a "servomechanism" that make meleeing automated, while the character in Destiny stands in one place. This leaves Yavin with the ability to open up an early Ocean of Storms level on the moon, and just let the 'robot' have at it. Enemies will rush the character, while the bot either performs a melee attack, or shoots until it dies. Once it has died, it will reload the level to that checkpoint, and let the character do it all over again.

This leaves Yavin to sleep and level up, and once he wakes up he enjoys the higher level, and all of the glorious weapon drops and experience rewards, all while he rests. Yavin took to Reddit, where he wrote: "Woke up this morning to a brand new 20! Had about 3600 kills, and 900 deaths (lol), and like 50 green engrams. I started at level 16.5 yesterday afternoon, and reached 20 sometime while I was asleep. With the armor I had waiting for him he is now a 26. Seems to be getting anywhere from 15 to 215 exp per run, depending on timing".

Diablo 3 gamers are reporting problems with "major lag" while trying to play online, with the issue first surfacing over the weekend.

"We've been asked to collect some information for our network engineers on this issue," a Blizzard support rep said in a Battle.Net forum thread. "We'd like to have your trace route info when you trace to 12.168.209.68. We'd also like to see the results when you run our Looking Glass utility to see the return path of the trace from Blizzard to you."

Blizzard also wants gamers to identify their ISP and geographic location when reporting data in the public thread. With that information, Blizzard engineers will work as quickly as possible to solve gamer lag problems.

Microsoft Xbox One gamers can now sign up for the Neverwinter closed beta, beginning on February 5 and running for just three days, according to Perfect World Entertainment. Gamers are required to have an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play the title.

Neverwinter is scheduled to launch sometime during early 2015, and is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). "Consoles are a perfect fit for action-oriented MMORPGs like Neverwinter, and we are thrilled to be one of the first publishers to bring premium free-to-play titles to leading next-gen platforms," said Alan Chen, CEO of Perfect World, in a statement.

Neverwinter originally launched on the PC in 2013, with the Tyranny of Dragons expansion released in August 2014.

According to posts on both MMO Champion and the Battle.net forums, serious veteran World of Warcraft gamers are receiving a "tenth anniversary physical gift" from Blizzard.

Just who is receiving this physical gift? In order "to be eligible for this gift, a player must have created a World of Warcraft account within 60 days of the game's release in America or Europe" which falls between November 23, 2004 and February 11, 2005 according to the post on MMO Champion.

Over on the Battle.net forums 'Smitti' posted a picture of the physical gift, which is a small scale version of the orc statue that was erected on Blizzard's campus.

We've heard rumors of a redesigned, or slim PlayStation 4 to be announced in the future, but Samsung looks like it has just unveiled what will turn out to be one of the new components of the refreshed PS4 console: high-density 8Gb GDDR5 memory chips.

Samsung's latest GDDR5 VRAM chips are built on the company's 20nm technology, and are the first 8Gb density modules to hit mass production. Not only could these chips find their way into Sony's PS4 console, but it will also be a great next step for gaming laptops, as they can start baking mass amounts of VRAM into them.

Joo Sun Choi, the Executive Vice President of Memory Sales at Samsung electronics arm said: "We expect that our 8Gb GDDR5 will provide original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with the best graphics memory solution available for game consoles as well as general use notebook PCs". In the company's press release, Samsung said: "Combining only eight of the new 8Gb chips will achieve the same density as the 8 gigabytes (GB) needed in the latest game consoles". So we can see from these two quotes, game consoles seem to be a big part of the announcement of the 8Gb GDDR5 VRAM chips, which is an interesting turn.

One of the biggest launches on the PlayStation 4 this year is definitely 'The Order: 1886' from Ready at Dawn and SCE Santa Monica Studios. The game has been delayed, but it provided the developer with more time to get used to the additional power under the hood of the PS4, as well as fix up the game before it was released instead of launching it and it being broken like most games of 2014.

The studio has announced the game has gone gold, and released a new trailer to the game to tease fans before the big launch on February 20. Between the last couple of videos of The Order: 1886 and this latest trailer, we can see some improvements in the graphics and the game itself. Something that's nice to see after it was delayed, providing the studio with more time to get things right.

We've seen the last year or so filled with games that are requiring 6GB of RAM or more, such as Assassin's Creed: Unity, Watch Dogs, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and more. Well, CD Projekt Red's delayed title The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt also requires 6GB of RAM.

The developer actually recommends that you have 8GB of RAM, but 6GB of RAM is required at a minimum. As for the CPU side of things, you'll need an Intel Core i5-2500K or an AMD Phenom II X4 940 to run the game at a minimum, while the developer recommends gamers to have an Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-8350.

The GPU side of things isn't too bad, with the minimum requirements at an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870 while the recommended specs want you to have a much higher-end GTX 770 or R9 290. A 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 is required, as well as 40GB of free HDD space.

In an official statement, Devolver Digital and Dennaton Games have publicly stated that "in response to the report itself, we are concerned and disappointed that a board of professionals tasked with evaluating and judging games fairly and honestly would stretch the facts to such a degree and issue a report that describes specific thrusting actions that are not simply present in the sequence in question and incorrectly portrays what was presented to them for review."

Unhappy with the Australian Classification Board and their decision to refuse Hotline Miami 2 classification in Australia, the Devolver Digital and Dennaton Games teams have pointed out misconceptions revolving around the apparently classification report. They state that "the opening cinematic that was first shown in June of 2013 has not changed in any way. We also want to make clear that players are given an choice at the start of the game as to whether they wish to avoid content that alludes to sexual violence. The sequence in question is presented below in context, both after choosing the uncut version of the game and after choosing to avoid content that alludes to sexual violence."

Not only is the public quite annoyed thanks to the boards standings, but it seems the developers are claiming fair-play was not on the agenda. It's been further noted that a Reddit user has captured a screenshot of an email sent from the co-creator of this title, Jonatan Söderströmm, in which he tells people to "just pirate is after release" if "it ends up not being released in Australia." He went on to state that there is "no need to send us (the developers) any money, just enjoy the game!."

Australian residents have been, once again, told to take a long walk off a short pier - with Hotline Miami's long-awaited sequel being refused classification in Australia due to sex and drug usage.

What does the Australian Classifications Board have to say for themselves?

The launch of Watch Dogs was filled with controversy, with a delay, and then a deliberate bake down of graphics. But, we all knew Ubisoft were only beginning to start its downhill sprint toward pissing gamers across the world off.

Now we have Jonathan Morin, the Creative Director behind Watch Dogs talking about the sequel to the action adventure hacking title. Morin spoke with GamesTM about Watch Dogs, saying the team won't be keeping things the same when it comes to the sequel. Morin explains "I don't think Watch Dogs is perfect in any way and there's a lot of room for improvement. But you don't always see this when you ship a game. We deliver what we believe the brand should be at the time".

Morin continued "But afterward, when you cool down after five and a half years [of development] and take your vacations and people play the game, certain elements become clear. They let you continue to bring what you envision to the next level with the fans included this time, which is where I think it really gets interesting. When you start a new project [and new IP], it's a blank page and everything you do is what you want to do. With a sequel, there is more pressure to push a brand forward and we now have to appeal to fans in a new way". Morin added: "We have to give [the development team] something hard to do. If we don't, they could fade out, which means you don't benefit from their knowledge or they will leave. Our team is really assimilated with the challenge we have and who knows where it will lead us next".

While DayZ has the hearts and minds of PC gamers across the world, H1Z1 is an up-and-coming zombie shooter from Sony Online Entertainment which has just entered into its Early Access territory... and it is making huge headlines already, and not the good ones.

SOE has pushed in "paid airdrops" into the Early Access of H1Z1, which lets gamers purchase airdrops of crates that have ammo and guns inside, which is just a different way of having a "pay-to-win" title. It gets better, as keen-eyed gamers have noticed that 8 months ago SOE President John Smedley said on Reddit "We will NOT be selling Guns, Ammo, Food, Water ... i.e. That's kind of the whole game and it would suck in our opinion if we did that". There was an update to that thread, where Smedley added "We are not interested in selling weapons. Weapons are only acquired by crafting or exploring and finding one. We are not selling power".

Considering H1Z1 is a free-to-play, paid airdrops are kind of the reverse of that. More so when the President of SOE comes out and blatantly calls it out months and months ago, saying they would "NOT" be selling guns, ammo, and more in-game items. But don't worry, Smedley understands that you're pissed off, as he said on Twitter that he can't disagree with people that are upset about the changes. He said "here's what I can't disagree with - people that are pissed off at us that we changed our minds about it. fair point".

2014 was a massive year for gamers, but more specifically PC gamers were able to enjoy multiple digital distribution services like Steam, Origin and that inbred cousin we all love to hate: uPlay.

EA has just released some great details on Origin, showing that there were over 1.1 billion hours of games played on its service, which is 7,483 times longer than the average person sleeps in a lifetime. When it comes to their free games through Origin's 'On The House' service, over 25.2 million games were given out for free, or one free game for every seven gamers in the US (of which there are a total of 188 million).

As for gaming sessions, there were 1.7 billion game sessions over the year, and over 1.4 billion logins, too. That's close to one login for every single PC in the world, which is a huge number. But when you have games like Battlefield 4, Titanfall, and more - you can see why these numbers will only continue to grow going into the New Year.

Microsoft was pushed around by Sony throughout much of 2014, as the PlayStation 4 handily outsold the Xbox One, but that changed to end the year. Microsoft outsold the PS4 in hardware sales and video games in November and December, with a strong focus on carrying the momentum in 2015.

"Bundles were a major driver of hardware sales this December compared to last with 71 percent of hardware unit sales stemming from bundles including software, which compares to 32 percent of hardware sales last December," said Liam Callahan, analyst at The NPD Group, in a press statement.

The PS4 sold 18.5 million PS4 units in 2014 - and Microsoft hasn't updated its numbers since November, after saying it surpassed 10 million units shipped.

The Sony PlayStation 4 dominated the console market in 2014, outselling the Microsoft Xbox One throughout the entire year. The PS4 racked up 18.5 million PS4 sales worldwide, dominating every month except for November and December, The NPD Group said.

"PlayStation 4 was the top-selling console in the US and globally in 2014," a Sony spokesperson told GamesBeat. "And [it is] the fastest selling console in PlayStation history with 18.5 million sold through after just 14 months in the market. We are humbled by this success and want to thank gamers worldwide for helping us achieve holiday sales of more than 4.1 million across 123 countries and regions."

However, Sony has faced increased pressure from the Xbox One to close 2014, as Microsoft has offered competitive price cuts - and gamer bundles - as gamers have a lot to cheer for. Sony will face increased pressure from Microsoft in 2015, so it cannot bask in its 2014 success for too long.

There's another Battlefield: Hardline beta coming, which will reach the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC sometime soon. There's no solid ETA on it just yet, but it should be in the immediate future.

EA hasn't mentioned the date yet, but it does tease what we can expect. We will continue to see the main Conquest mode features, but the new beta will include a new game mode: Hotwire. Hotwire is explained by DICE as "an all-new mode coming to Battlefield focused on combining all-out warfare with all-out speed".

There will be no progression cap during the beta, so you can go rank crazy if you want. Any and all progress will not be carried over to the full game, which is still on track for release on March 17.

Twitch has finally unleashed something broadcasters can jump for joy over, with a new music section launched which features over 500 royalty-free tracks that broadcasters can use in either live, or archived videos.

These songs, according to Twitch "will not be flagged by the audio recognition system implemented in 2014 to protect audio copyright holders and Twitch broadcasters alike". Twitch's Chief Strategy Officer Colin Carrier said: "Our community has been vocal about the importance of music for their broadcasts and their love of music in general. By working with both established and upcoming record labels, we are now able to offer music for them to use that is cleared for live broadcasts and archiving."

Not only that, but the new Music section has been added to Twitch's main game directory. This provides artists with a way of "creating, performing and presenting original songs" after Twitch approves it of course, where they continue "certain established labels and artists" may also host "radio-style listening shows and broadcast large scale events, such as music festivals".

Microsoft owned the holiday season with the Xbox One and its $349 price tag, but then the price went up to its normal $399 as Microsoft removed the discount. Well, it's been 12 days, so Microsoft is discounting the Xbox One by $50 once again, but this time for a much shorter amount of time.

As of tomorrow (Friday, January 16) the company is dropping the price of the Kinect-less Xbox One by $50, but Microsoft isn't sure when this sale will end. When asked why Microsoft is cutting the price again after 12 days of it returning to normal, Corporate Vice President of Marketing for Xbox, Michael Nichols told Polygon: "Over the last year we made a bunch of moves to engage fans better. Included in that was a real lead up to the holidays".

Not only will the price cut take place, but Microsoft plans on throwing out new games, improvements to Xbox Live, and much more. Nichols added "It was really about positioning ourselves to have a breakout holiday. We were as aggressive as we could be to see how people would react. The results were staggering, it was a terrific response to the changes we made".

The video game industry had a lot to cheer for, as developers are excited to make games for the Microsoft Xbox One, Sony PlayStation 4 and PC, but slumping game sales caused major headaches.

Hardware sales are racking up strong sales numbers, but not enough gamers are purchasing new titles, according to The NPD Group. Hardware sales increased 20 percent, up to $5.07 billion throughout 2014 - but Microsoft and Sony are engaged in a price war, with console prices continually dropping.

Disc video game sales in December dropped 2 percent year-over-year, down to $1.28 billion, as the industry strives for stability. A 2 percent year-over-year drop is smaller than previous months, and could indicate that gamers were willing to break out the wallet for new titles.

Microsoft has announced a new skin pack featuring characters from "The Simpsons," which will be available on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One in late February. It will cost $1.99.

Gamers will get to try out Home, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, and 19 other characters from the longstanding popular TV show. Support for Minecraft on other platforms is expected to follow the Xbox 360/Xbox One launch.

"We have an active community of more than 14 million die-hard Minecraft fans on Xbox Live enjoying the wide range of downloadable content on Xbox, and they have been clamoring for us to bring Simpsons characters to the game," said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, in a blog post. "We are thrilled to partner with Twentieth Century Fox and Gracie Films to bring The Simpsons to life on Minecraft Xbox 360 and Xbox One editions. I can't wait to see what the community creates."

Game developers have noticed the rise of eSports, as 12 percent of game developers say they are creating a game they believe fits the description as an eSport, according to the GDC State of the Industry report. Game studios describe a potential eSport as one that is a "competitive, skill-based multiplayer game.

Furthermore, 79 percent of survey respondents believe eSports will be a long-term, sustainable market, especially with Twitch and other broadcasting competitions making viewership even easier.

"Creating a game as an eSport causes it to become a hobby and an interest outside the act of playing it," a game developer said in the GDC "State of the Industry Survey." "This increased engagement is one way of allowing a game to become part of a player's life in ways that [don't] require them to always be investing their time into playing it."