Gaming - Page 1147

SCEA head Shawn Layden recently said online harassment in gaming is "completely unacceptable," and is one of the highest profile executives to speak out against cyber harassment. Layden also complemented his own company's stance on women in gaming, saying Sony is "best in class," in its efforts to get women more involved in the gaming industry.

"Over the past couple of months, there's been a small group of people who have been doing really awful things," Layden recently noted. "They have been making some people's lives miserable, and they are tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It's not right."

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo offered public statements, published by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), speaking out against harassment in the gaming world.

Bungie is currently pushing out a new patch for Destiny, bringing the open-world title up to version 1.0.3. The new patch has the developer baking in fan-requested features, such as a beta for voice chat when in the matchmaking screen. The full patch notes are available on Bungie's website.

The problem is, if you're playing Destiny, you're going to need to leave your game in order to download, and install the patch - something that weighs in at a very connection-straining 2.44GB. Bungie has released this patch, as the start of a series of updates that will end in the first DLC for Destiny, The Dark Below, being released on December 9.

Bungie has also doubled the number of bounty slots, upping the number from five to 10, provided gamers with the ability to preview emblems, and armor shaders, too. The new update also makes some slight changes to Destiny's Iron Banner: Fireteam leaders, which now need to be at level 10. Players will also need to be within three levels of their opponents in order to be competitive. Players below level 20 will also need to be with a Fireteam leader in order to enter. There's also a 10-15% increase in the incidence of public events, descriptions for skull modifiers, as well as the usual slew of fixes, bugs and other bits and pieces.

While many gamers across the world are looking forward of their copy of Dragon Age: Inquisition, those in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will not. EA has cancelled pre-orders from these countries and started refunded money to those who placed an order for physical and digital copies.

EA said in its EA Help website: "In order to avoid a breach of local content laws, EA has withdrawn Dragon Age: Inquisition from sale in India and the game is no longer available for pre-order. Customers who pre-ordered the game will be contacted directly and will be fully refunded."

EA regional marketing director Simon Smith-Wright said, "The current action we've taken only affects Dragon Age Inquisition." It should be noted that EA did not give any proper reasons for refusing pre-orders from these countries. Later, nation-wide distributor Milestone Interactive confirmed speculation made by many gamers that it was due to the options of engaging in same-sex and bi-sexual relationships. For those who don't know, India has a law under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1861 declares that having sex between two consenting adults of the same gender punishable by law.

It looks like myself, and countless other gamers aren't the only ones pissed off with Ubisoft right now, with a former Minister and Presidential Candidate in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, denouncing Assassin's Creed: Unity as "propaganda" that favors the "favors the narrative of France's ruling elite over the revolutionaries" reports Polygon.

Mélenchon spoke on French radio, with the Daily Telegraph translating him, where he said: "[Unity] presents an image of hatred of the Revolution, hatred of the people, hatred of the republic which is rampant in the far-right milieu". He added a description of Marie-Antoinette as "that cretin, who is celebrated as a poor little rich girl" in AC:U.

He also said: "The man who was our liberator at a certain moment of the Revolution, because the Revolution lasted a long time, Robespierre, is presented as a monster. It is propaganda against the people, the people who are [portrayed as] barbarians, bloodthirsty savages. In 1789 there were the poor aristocrats, and they are presented as fine upstanding people".

Far Cry 4 has launched in the last 24 hours, with Ubisoft already patching up the first-person shooter on the PC to version 1.2. The patch includes some things that should've made the launch version, such as support for NVIDIA's SLI technology. The day one patch on the PS4 brings it up to version 1.01, and a 600MB download for PlayStation owners. The PC version on the other hand, had two patches to bring it up to version 1.2.

What I don't understand is, Ubisoft worked closely with NVIDIA on Far Cry 4 (and Assassin's Creed: Unity) but SLI support was missing from the game as it says right there in the patch notes that the patch "added SLI support". For one of the biggest releases of the year, and a game NVIDIA had invested heavily into, one would think SLI testing would've been done very early on and baked into earlier code of the game - not having to provide SLI support after the game was released.

The patch notes are quite lengthy, but we have them listed below (or in the for you:

Nintendo continues to take shots at the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4, as all three console giants prepare for a 2014 Christmas holiday shopping season slugfest.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Nintendo continues to speak out against rival consoles, trying to promote the cheaper device.

"The good news, for us, is that we're presenting the best value right now in new home consoles," said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America president. "$299, includes two games; it's a compelling proposition for consumers this holiday. For us the message is simple; you want to play these great games, you want to have these fantastic experiences, you have to upgrade to the Wii U."

Ubisoft has had a hard week, with the troubled launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity causing some serious headaches, but now Ubisoft North American President, Laurent Detoc, has sat down with IGN to have a chat, with some interesting things being said. The thing is, this chat happened nearly a year ago, so don't be fooled that this was a recent chat.

Detoc told IGN that the company would break its annualized schedule for Assassin's Creed "if it's not good enough". Detoc continued: "If we think we've ended up with a 70 percent Assassin's Creed game, we're not going to ship it. That damages the brand. I'm not going to give you the names of products, because you know them as well as I do, but if you start to make games at 70 percent, even with a big brand, eventually people are going to change their mind about that brand. They won't want it anymore. That's what saves the recurrence. There are 30 million people or so who have been playing Grand Theft Auto. Last year, to pick a round number, we had about 10 million people playing Assassin's Creed. When we come up with an Assassin's Creed the next year, there's another 10 million brand new people who might be interested in the new setting, because of the new history, or the new naval battles and the pirates. It's a variation on gameplay from even last year".

"You bring something fresh, but you have to bring quality too," he added. "There's a lot of people who can play your game. We have fans who come back to the franchise and we're very thankful for them, because we think we're giving them a good game to play, and they give back to us when they buy it. But there's a lot more people out there who we can sell games to. I like to think that we don't delay everything. It's the reason for the delay that really matters. It's a lot easier to predict the release of an Assassin's Creed, because we understand what it takes. It's a lot easier to predict a franchise that has more recurrence, for sure, than a new IP".

Human Element, if you haven't heard about it yet, is developed by fresh LA-based studio Robotoki. Robert Bowling, the ex Creative Strategist of Call of Duty, and the Lead of Infinity Ward, formed the studio in 2012 - but have only just announced that they have now abandoned the free-to-play design of Human Element, which will now launch as a premium product in November next year.

With Robotoki dropping the free-to-play side of Human Element, it has agreed to end its agreement with Nexon, a free-to-play giant, laying off a portion of its staff. Bowling said in a statement with Gamasutra: "As the game evolved we realized that the elements that make Human Element the most fun would be hindered by keeping it a free-to-play experience. Therefore, we made the decision to switch to a premium experience for our players; which also meant that working with the premier publisher in free-to-play was no longer the best partnership fit for the game we were creating".

A Nexon America rep chimed in, saying: "Nexon and Robotoki have come to a mutual decision to end their publishing agreement for the game Human Element. As development of the project progressed the direction of the game naturally evolved, and it no longer aligns with the Nexon portfolio".

Ubisoft has come out with some great content for us to write about all year, limiting its games like The Division to 30FPS, saying that "resolution doesn't matter", telling everyone to turn their Internet off to get better frame rates in the obviously still broken Assassin's Creed: Unity, and now we're here at Far Cry 4.

What has Ubisoft done now you ask? The studio has cut the ability for gamers to make maps for the competitive multiplayer in Far Cry 4, with the option of creating maps for Assault, Hunt, Outpost and Extraction still there, just not the player-vs-player multiplayer maps. Ubisoft Montreal's Creative Director, who believes Alex "Resolution Doesn't Matter" Hutchinson offered the following explanation for why Ubisoft didn't provide it with this year's Far Cry adventure, he said that Ubisoft "always squeeze in as much as we can, but we're always prioritizing".

Hutchinson added that the team are "going to keep supporting the game so hopefully we can get it done post release. No promises but we will try". I'm sure it'll arrive soon, but they'll probably slug you $20 for it or something.

I'm sure that by now, most gamers have heard about the colossal mess Ubisoft has found itself in with the launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity, something we've been all over - and not just for the last week like most, but for most of the year.

Well, now the company has taken to their forums, providing angry gamers with multiple ways to the slew of issues on AC:U for all platforms. One of the fixes for the "frame rate issues" as Ubisoft puts it, is to "in the meantime", Ubisoft suggests "that you disconnect from your internet connection (wifi or network cable).It could potentially improve frame rate".

There are many other issues, with one of the bigger ones being "graphical and collision issues" having Ubisoft say they're "WORKING ON IT" according to their forum post. It was only two days ago that Ubisoft was laying blame on AMD for AC:U's various issues, so let's see where we go from here and how long it takes a AAA developer to fix a AAA game that had tens of millions of dollars poured into it, yet launched like this - just sayin'.

Driveclub has been in shambles since it hit the road and launched a couple of months back, but Evolution Studios, the developer behind the PlayStation 4 exclusive racing game has announced that two DLC packs will be given to Driveclub owners.

The developer was originally going to charge for the two premium DLC packs, with the Ignition Expansion and Photo-Finish Tour Pack offering racers up to five new cars, 22 new tour events, 10 new livery items and an additional 10 trophies to win. These two DLC packs were previously part of the premium Season Pass subscription, something that will extend into four more packs in July. Season pass subscribers will receive 38 cars, 80 livery items, and 176 tour events, according to Evolution Studios.

On Tuesday, the developer will release a title update that will include a Photo Mode, as well as some adjustments to multiplayer collision which will reduce spin outs.

Sony PlayStation 4 gamers have experience trouble with the PlayStation Network, and company officials recently apologized for the sporadic problems. More than 13.5 million PS4 units have been sold since the console's launch, and the PSN's struggling network isn't too surprising - and Sony is scrambling to try to prevent additional network problems in the future.

"Listen: We're really, really apologetic," said Michael Ephraim, SCE Australia managing director. "Dealing with network and digital - I'm not trying to spread or deflect anything, but dealing on such a robust network is a tricky experience. The good thing is we've launched 2.01, which has fixed the Rest Mode, and has fixed the YouTube app. It was very unfortunate. We hate that. The network was down during the 2.0 release. It's very unfortunate. Those things are gonna happen over time. We're not bulletproof on those things."

Sony and BioWare have worked to fix a serious bug that hit Dragon Age: Inquisition gamers, with the PSN blamed for the problem.

It is a great time to be a PC gamer, as there isn't constant grumbling about FPS limitations, and computer hardware continues to move forward at a rapid pace. San Francisco East Bay boutique gaming company Digital Storm has a lot to be happy about, at a time when gamers have more money to spend, hardware is reaching new limits, and PC gaming is enjoying a resurgence when compared to game consoles.

It wasn't long ago when many tried to argue that PC gaming is dead, but that hasn't proven to be true at all.

"It's definitely growing," said Harjit Chana, Digital Storm Chief Brand Officer, in a recent conversation with TweakTown. "That's evidenced by an increase in year-over-year demand of high-performance gaming PCs. Gamers demand the best experience possible game on PCs. PC gaming delivers a superior visual experience (4K graphics, NVIDIA G-SYNC technology, etc.) and the customization a gamer craves. It is a level of gaming that cannot be achieved on any other platform."

The Sony PlayStation 4 outsold the Microsoft Xbox One in October, with sales growing 59 percent year-over-year, racking up $273.6 million, according to the NPD Group. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have all declined to release sales figures of their respective consoles in October, indicating it was a rather lackluster 31 days of sales.

"Overall sales across hardware, new physical software, and accessories were essentially flat in 2014 compared to October 2013," according to the NPD Group's Liam Callahan.

However, the Xbox One price cut has helped the console's sales triple, as it approaches 10 million units sold since launch, and looks poised to better compete against the PS4.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has barely been out a week and it's already breaking records on Twitch, with it becoming the most-streamed console game of the year on the Amazon-owned streaming site.

Starting on November 4, there have been over 75,000 unique broadcasters sharing their gameplay footage from the new Call of Duty, with total content views over 26 million. Ernest Le, Director, Publisher & Developer Partnerships with Twitch, said: "Since the Call of Duty community on Twitch is extremely passionate, we are not surprised that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare set a milestone for most streamed console game of the year based on launch week comparisons. Our community spent over an hour a day watching and engaging with people playing the game, illustrating the incredibly strong appeal of live interactive video".

When it comes to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's gameplay, we have 6 million unique viewers last week alone, with over 327 million minutes in total watched. Co-Founder and Studio Head of Sledgehammer Games, Michael Condrey, chimed in: "The response from the global community to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has been incredible, with millions of fans playing the new era of Call of Duty and even more watching the action unfold live on Twitch in its first week in the wild. The team at the studio is thrilled to see that players think the game we've poured our heart and soul into making these last three years is not only be fun to play, but very exciting to watch".

After teasing it for so long, Sony has finally unveiled PlayStation Vue, its cloud-based TV service. PlayStation Vue is locked to the PS3 and PS4, but it has no contracts, and no pesky hidden fees - all without Sony giving out any pricing on it.

PlayStation Vue will allow people to save their favorite TV shows to the cloud, where it stays there for 28 days. You can receive on-demand access to the last three dasy of TV programming. The company will be holding an invite-only beta sometime later this month, where 75 channels will be made available. Sony is currently offering up CBS, Discovery, Fox, NBC Universal, Scripss Networks Interactive and Viacom, with the promise if more network partners being announced soon.

Sony is poised to fully release PlayStation Vue sometime in the first quarter of 2015, where it should eventually find a home on non-Sony devices like tablets and smartphones.

We've been all over the poor performance of Asssassin's Creed: Unity, but while most would lay the blame with its developer, the developer is blaming AMD. An Ubisoft PR manager has blamed AMD-based GPU and CPU configurations for some reason, even though I'm running Intel and NVIDIA and experiencing mass performance issues.

The Ubisoft PR rep said: "We are aware that the graphics performance of Assassin's Creed Unity on PC may be adversely affected by certain AMD CPU and GPU configurations. This should not affect the vast majority of PC players, but rest assured that AMD and Ubisoft are continuing to work together closely to resolve the issue, and will provide more information as soon as it is available".

AMD has fired back in a way, and we will have our talk with AMD up in a few days, but the company talked with WCCFTech, where they said: "The game (in its current state) is issuing approximately 50,000 draw calls on the DirectX 11 API. Problem is, DX11 is only equipped to handle ~10,000 peak draw calls. What happens after that is a severe bottleneck with most draw calls culled or incorrectly rendered, resulting in texture/NPCs popping all over the place. On the other hand, consoles have to-the-metal access and almost non-existent API Overhead but significantly underpowered hardware which is not able to cope with the stress of the multitude of polygons. Simply put, its a very very bad port for the PC Platform and an unoptimized (some would even go as far as saying, unfinished) title on the consoles".

Ubisoft is working on performance problems related to PC gamers of Assassin's Creed Unity, which affects a small number of users. The gaming problem is related to AMD CPU and GPU configurations, with some Steam users saying poor frame rates, audio problems, and occasional freezing and crashing taking place.

"We are aware that the graphics performance of Assassin's Creed Unity on PC may be adversely affected by certain AMD CPU and GPU configurations," Ubisoft said in a statement. "This should not affect the vast majority of PC players, but rest assured that AMD and Ubisoft ware continuing to work together to closely resolve the issue, and will provide more information as soon as it is available."

Meanwhile, console versions of the game are struggling to maintain frame rates, as Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 gamers also have complained.

This holiday season the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, two of the most powerful consoles in gaming history, will compete for gamers' attention. Microsoft has been trailing in sales throughout the last year-according to BetaNews, 3.3 million PlayStation 4s have shipped in the last quarter , whereas Microsoft has only shipped 2.4 million combined Xbox 360 and One units. This holiday season, both console giants will offer bundles in an attempt to climb to the top of the hill. Here are some of the upcoming holiday deals for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

While both consoles will be offering great bundles this holiday, Microsoft isn't wasting any time offering a discount on their console. IDigitalTimes reports that Microsoft is offering a $50 discount on the Xbox One from now until Jan. 3. This price drop effects all Xbox One bundles as well, meaning that you can already pick up an Xbox One bundle for between $349 and $449.

Sony hasn't reacted to this price cut yet with its own console price cut, though it is possible that something may be announced in the next few weeks. With their console outselling the Xbox One worldwide, it seems unlikely that Sony will decrease the base cost of the PS4 this year.

Last night, I played a couple of hours of the just-released Assassin's Creed: Unity, and was absolutely disgusted at the performance of the game, even on my powerful PC.

I'm running a Core i7-4930K, 16GB of Corsair 2400MHz DDR3 RAM, SSDs galore from Sandisk, and two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980s in SLI - yes, GTX 980s, two of them. All of this is sprinkled over the awesome ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q monitor, which has a native resolution of 2560x1440 and 144Hz refresh rate. I went into the game at 1440p, at its highest possible settings (with anti-aliasing disabled) and was getting an abysmal frame rate.

Quitting out of it, it crashed - and then I couldn't get back into it. Disabling SLI and rebooting, it still didn't work - so I downloaded and installed the new GeForce 344.65 Game Ready drivers, which helped. Back into the game, I reduced the resolution all the way down to 1280x720 and medium detail, which provided around 40-45FPS... which is way, way under what I should be getting. I quit out, jumped into Alien: Isolation which is running at 2560x1440 with everything cranked (again, sans AA) and I was getting 100FPS+. Battlefield 4? Same thing.