Gaming - Page 1155

EA has delayed a second game today, with the first being Battlefield: Hardline pushed back into sometime next year, but Dragon Age: Inquisition is also getting a little more time in the oven. Bioware's upcoming fantasy RPG has a new release date of November 18, 2014 - an extra month of waiting.

Executive Producer on the game, Mark Darrah, explains: "I'm writing to let you know that Dragon Age: Inquisition has a new release date of November 18, 2014 in North America (November 21st in EU). We appreciate the enormous support we've received from all of you to get to this point, and while this extra few weeks may not seem like a lot, I know the game you'll play will be all the better for it".

Darrah continued: "Since we began working on Dragon Age: Inquisition almost four years ago, our goal was to create the best Dragon Age experience ever. It was that goal that motivated many of our decisions: moving to Frostbite, bringing race choice and customisation back, improving tactical camera, building a team of characters whose relationships evolve based on your actions, and most importantly, crafting an epic, nation-spanning story that both draws upon past games and takes you to many new places in the realm of Thedas".

Electronic Arts has announced that it has delayed the release of the Visceral Games-developed Battlefield: Hardline until next year, citing that the development teams want more time to polish the game before it gets released to gamers across the world.

DICE's Vice President and Group GM, Karl Magnus Troedsson, explains: "Back at E3, we launched a beta for Hardline - we wanted to not only show you the game, but to let you play it for yourselves. Millions of you jumped in and had a great time. As a result, the Visceral Games team learned a lot from players about what they wanted in the game. We've been pouring over the data and feedback, and have already been putting a lot of it right into the game and sharing it directly with you".

He continued: "This feedback also spurred us to start thinking about other possibilities and ways we could push Hardline innovation further and make the game even better. The more we thought about these ideas, the more we knew we had to get them into the game you will all be playing. However, there was only one problem. We would need more time. Time that we didn't have if we decided to move forward with launching in just a couple of months". Troedsson said that the teams at DICE and Visceral Games wanted to spend more time on developing better innovation on the multiplayer side of things, as well as bake in "ideas direct from the community that will evolve the cops and criminals fantasy into a truly unique Battlefield Multiplayer experience".

We've all been there at birthdays or during the holiday season, someone gives you a gift card to a place you don't like and you silently think that gift card will sit in your sock drawer forever. GameStop has announced a new gift card exchange program that is powered by Cardpool that will let you trade those unwanted gift cards for credit for stuff you do want- games and accessories.

The new gift card exchange program allows users to exchange physical plastic gift cards and e-cards to get a digital GameStop gift card that can be spent online or in GameStop retail stores. The trade process is very easy with three steps to swapping unwanted cards for GameStop cards.

The page for the trade in program lets you check gift card balance, fill out your information to get a trade quote, and then get the GameStop card via email. It's unclear if this is a dollar for dollar exchange program; presumably, Cardpool is going to take a cut of the money in the trade.

One of the biggest issues Ubisoft had this year was gimping the PC version of Watch Dogs, something that a modder fixed in his spare time. Federico Rojas (or TheWorse) released a mod called 'TheWorse' that reverted the graphics on the PC version to what Ubisoft showed off at E3 2012, something that looked far better than the game did when it was officially released 2014.

Rojas explains in the release of TheWorse Mod version 1.0: "This is the last release of my modification. I did my best to improve graphics and performance as much as I could without degrading the quality". This release is split in two, the first includes the high resolution texture pack from another modded by the name of MaLDo, and the other does not include this high-res pack.

You can download version 1.0 of TheWorse mod for Watch Dogs right here.

We have been reporting on the still on-going issues over at Crytek, but things just got worse for the developer of Crysis. Tiago Sousa, Crytek's Lead R&D Graphics Engineer has left the company, joining the ranks of id Software.

Sousa is now working as the Lead Rendering Programmer on the new reboot of Doom and the engine that powers it: id Tech 6 game engine. Sousa was with Crytek for 11 years, so this is quite the loss for Crytek. According to Sousa's LinkedIn profile, he has contributed to work on CryENGINE 3, as well as all three Crysis games, Ryse: Son of Rome for the Xbox One, Warface and "undisclosed multiplatform projects".

Considering most of Crytek's UK-based staff have stopped going to work, and the studio isn't paying its staff on time, this is troubling times. This isn't considering that the studio has already lost key staff such as the game director for Homefront: The Revolution leaving, as well as its Development Manager, Ben Harris.

According to the latest research from SuperData, there is some serious money being made from MMOs. The top five subscription-based MMOs in the world as it stands are: World of Warcraft, Lineage 1, TERA: Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Lord of the Rings Online.

World of Warcraft leads this effort when it comes to revenues, with $1.04 billion made last year, securing itself a 36% chunk of the subscription-based MMO market share for 2013. Lineage 1 comes in at second place with $253 million for NCsoft and a 9% share, TERA: Online generated $236 million for NHN Corporation in third spot with an 8% share. Star Wars: The Old Republic sits in fourth place with $165 million made for EA with 6% of the subscription-based MMO market share, and Lord of the Rings Online made $104 million for Turbine, Inc. and secured them 4%.

Revenue subscriptions have dropped every year from 2010, from 30.6 million subscribers to 23.4 million this year. MMO publishers see this decrease in subscribers due to the increased offerings of free content, more payment tiers and microtransactions.

At the height of his hacking career, Shane "Jason" Duffy was making a nice $1,000 per day from hacking League of Legends. The 21-year-old hacker had his room raided by police back in 2011 because of a League of Legends security incident, something that Riot Games addressed in 2012. Duffy's online activity while he was on bail saw police visit him again last year.

During an interview with The Daily Dot, Duffy said he was involved with the brute force hacking of League of Legends accounts, selling character skills from accounts for anywhere between $200 and $800. He also leaked League of Legends: Supremacy through a Riot Games employee's account, and created a service where players could pay to have other players knocked out of League games.

Duffy said that his group had access to millions of League accounts, something he claims he had access to through a senior Riot employee's account. Duffy said that even though Riot Games had noticed a breach, and told its staff to change their passwords, this one particular employee did not. This paved the way for Duffy to create a backdoor on Riot's servers, where he had access to the details of some 24.5 million accounts.

When everything calms down after the DOTA 2 'The International' this weekend, we're going to see a change in the perception of professional gaming. One of the driving reasons behind this is that the total prize pool for DOTA 2 is an astonishing $10,887,235.

This $10 million will be split to 14 teams, with five players on each team. The winning team of The International 2014 will take home $5,008,128 - meaning that every player in the team will secure themselves $1,001,625.60 each. Considering that the $10 million prize pool was funded by the sale of the game to its fans, this is an achievement beyond words.

But when its pitted against "proper" professional sports, such as the Open Championship (or as the British Open in the US), it trumps it. The Open Championship has $9.2 million in prize money, but splits it across 156 entrants. The winner of the last British Open was Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland. He took home $1,196,055 for himself. Considering that the British Open started in 1860, some 154 years ago, and The International started four years ago, we've come a very long way.

Sony made an announcement to remaster its renowned PlayStation 3 titles for PlayStation 4, starting off with The Last of Us. As we reported earlier, the game will run at 1080p resolution with variable framerate to up to 60 FPS. Despite many titles like The Last of US being a hit, many gamers who never owned a PS3 were hesitant to purchase it at the time when the release of next-generation gaming consoles was very close. According to Sony Computer Entertainment, this should help them make the jump, including the current Nintendo Wii owners.

During an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment's boss Andrew house, he said that many of the older PlayStation titles will be released for PlayStation 4 to attract a new audience who are currently using Nintendo Wii. He said,"Our big opportunity is to welcome back an audience much earlier in the lifecycle that possibly bought into the Wii previously".

According to SCE, many players have skipped the purchase of PlayStation 3 for Nintendo Wii, and therefore couldn't get their hands-on playing many exclusive titles. According to him, remastering PlayStation 3 titles for the current gen PlayStation 4 will encourage Wii owners to make a switch.

The Last of Us: Remastered is nearly upon us for the PlayStation 4, with more details on the spruced up next-gen version of the game. Sony has confirmed that there is an option to lock the framerate to 30FPS, as the PS4 version of the game will run at 1080p, and a variable framerate of up to 60FPS.

Sony's Sid Shuman has said that choosing between framerates will "boil down to personal preference". The biggest deciding factor will be having an absolute rock solid 30FPS versus the variable, sometimes 60FPS. It'll be great at 60FPS, but when it drops, you're going to feel it. More details have also surfaced on the PS4 remake of the game, where save games won't carry over from the PS3 version of The Last of Us to the PS4, and more.

DLC carries over, which should have some fans happy. There are three major DLC packs for The Last of Us: Abandoned Territories, Reclaimed Territories, and Left Behind. The new PS4 version of The Last of Us will also work with the new DualShock 4 controller, where the touchpad is capable of being used to open up Joel's backpack, audio recordings are played through the speaker on the DualShock 4 controller, and it changes color when you start losing health.

For those who don't know, there's $10 million up for grabs at the DOTA 2 "The International" tournament, with some of the biggest names in e-Sports clicking and tapping away at the biggest e-Sports tournament yet.

Gamefy, a Chinese e-Sports company, is at the tournament, with the crew walking into the off-limits player's room of Team DK before they played their match, and started filming. The crew then recorded, and broadcasted, Team DK's "core strategy" for not just that match being played, but for the entire $10 million competition.

Team DK ended up winning the match, but their entire strategy has now been leaked out to the world - and worse, their competitors at The International. This has put their chances of winning the competition on much tighter, near impossible odds, as their competitors know their strategy. Gamefy has apologized on their official site, claiming that the footage was uploaded "accidentally".

Woah! Old PlayStation staple and Naughty Dog retiree Crash Bandicoot could well make a comeback, Sony Computer Entertainment's CEO Andrew House has said.

Speaking with Britain's Telegraph newspaper, House remarked that not only is it too soon to be closing the door on old friends like Bandicoot, but that the company has actively been thinking about the possibilities of bringing the character back, along with other franchises such as Spyro. "In concept, it is something we've been thinking about and discussing, and this is a shift for us," House said. "We've started to say that maybe there isn't anything wrong with going back and looking at characters that people still talk about, that were a big part of either their childhood or their youth. I definitely wouldn't close the door on that."

When Crash Bandicoot made his debut on the original PlayStation he was touted as Sony's answer to Nintendo's iconic Mario. And although he may not be quite that level of legendary - Bandicoot spurred platformer after popular platformer along with some well received spinoffs, like karting game Crash Tag Team Racing. As House says, it's certainly a bit of a shift for Sony to be considering such a resurgence, but we're sure fans new and old would welcome back the marsupial.

What may come as a surprise with few gamers, free porn video website YouPorn is interested to sponsor an e-sports team who are playing either League of Legends, DOTA 2 or Hearthstone.

League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Hearthstone are few of the games that are played on the professional level in many countries, with a large userbase of players, spectators, fans and even sponsors. The prize pool is also equally large. Hearthstone Blizzcon Tournament had a prize pool of $250,000. Valve's 'The International' DOTA 2 tournament reached a prize pool of a jaw-dropping $10.5 million. Many smaller events were held in many countries, both as either a city-wide or a national tournament held every year.

YouPorn recently posted a Twitter message (NSFW Warning) asking opinion about the website sponsoring an e-sports team. As one would expect, this attracted a lot of comments, including those who have been asking if YouPorn would be interested in sponsored an E-sports team for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and even for Starcraft 2 team.

Battlefield 4 fans, get your trigger fingers ready for the month-long event that is Battlefest. This event is geared for all BF4 gamers, getting them read for the launch of Battlefield 4's new DLC coming this week, Dragon's Teeth.

The new Dragon's Teeth expansion rolls out this week with five new weapons, a new unlockable gadget in the form of a Ballistic shield, a new game mode, 10 new assignments, and a new Battle pickup. Gamers can now also submit their in-game screenshots for a daily contest known as Battleshots. Battleshots will see a daily winner taking home an AMD Radeon GPU (!), a $50 gift card to the DICE store, and a Battlefield 4 Premium membership for the platform of their choice.

The goodies continue, with the daily contest not the only thing that BF4 gamers have access to, but gamers will also receive a free camo in-game unlock each week, and another double XP weekend early next month. Battlefest also includes weekly community missions and a stunt video competition where the top 12 submissions get selected by DICE for some truly great prizes. These prizes include the nine finalists receiving an AMD video card valued at $300, while the top three winners get voted by fans, each receiving an AMD-powered PC worth over $3,000.

PDXLAN 24 - TweakTown is on the ground in Portland, OR, for PDXLAN, one of the largest LAN parties on the west coast. A little background: PDXLAN started back when CRTs were still in vogue and the whole LAN was run off of a 1.5 DSL connection. Since then, the LAN has grown in size, and they have added more and more events throughout the year. PDXLAN 24 is currently taking place and runs from 6pm on July 11 to 6pm on July 14. We've been taking video during the event, but my MacBook Air isn't the most capable video editing machine, so video will be coming later this weekend.

We're going to take you through the start of the event until around midnight using pictures as pictures are worth a thousand words. So, with that introduction out of the way, let's get on to the fun stuff.

The LAN takes place in the Holiday Inn convention center next to Portland's airport (PDX), hence the name PDXLAN. As you can see, the LAN has yet to open to the general public, but setup has already been completed. Shortly, this cavernous room will be filled with heat-producing PCs and gamers hungry to frag and win prizes.

Christopher Butler has taken to Kickstarter to fund his own version of Half-Life 3, as "Valve seems set on not re-creating a Half-Life 3" but then he adds that he and his fellow developers are "looking to steal the market for this ourselves".

Butler was asking for just $2500 or so for the development of the game, as he has "a small team of 6 people including myself". Butler said on the Kickstarter page for Half-Life 3 that "we all have our own funds in order to keep ourselves paid for the duration of the project, the main ask for pledges is literally just to keep up to date with the latest software and maintenance in a project such as this".

Butler claimed to have worked for both EA and Valve in the last ten years, admitting that he hadn't approached Valve about making the game. He added that he hoped to have a playable alpha build of the game for backers to play within 10 months. Butler was quick to pull the project from Kickstarter, with it now all but gone.

Microsoft hasn't even had its Xbox One on the market for over 12 months yet, but that shouldn't stop you from thinking the company isn't thinking ahead for its true, proper next-gen console. The company is looking for a new Industrial Designer for its Xbox team.

The company has posted an ad looking for a new Industrial Designer, with their responsibility being: "The Xbox Industrial Design studio is building a world class in house team. We love entertainment. We live for building transformative entertainment experiences that resonate with consumers. We are looking for passionate designers who want to help us create next generation entertainment hardware for Microsoft".

I think we're going to see a new console from Microsoft much quicker than previously thought, something I hope replaces the Xbox One as a proper next-gen console capable of at a bare minimum, 4K at 60FPS. This will pave the way for Microsoft to allow VR headsets like the Oculus Rift to work with it, as VR requires serious horsepower. The Xbox One has seen most of its games rendered at 720p, with most of the frame rates on 'next-gen' games locked at, or around 30FPS. This isn't really any better than the Xbox 360, and if the Xbox One is going to be here for another five years or so, it's simply not good enough.

A young Chinese couple has sold their two sons to child traffickers, all so they could fund their gaming habits. The couple sold their two sons on two separate occasions, to fund the purchase of in-game items such as armor, and weapons.

During an interview with Guangdong TV from a local detention center, the couple said that their first child wasn't planned. The father, A Hui, said that he had no intention of financially supporting the child, so they sold him to Fujian-based child traffickers. His partner, A Mei, fell pregnant again, where he explained: "[A Hui] likes buying items in online games, and he likes staying out all night at internet cafes".

This meant that most of their finances were being funneled into A Hui's gaming life, so it meant the second child couldn't be supported. They then sold him to traffickers. The traffickers in China sell children to couples who want to be parents, street gangs and street peddlers, and even to orphanages where they put them up for adoption overseas. A Hui's father was aware of what was going on, and in the end reported the couple to the police. The two were arrested, and are now awaiting trial and sentencing for the crime of selling children.

During Nintendo's annual investors Q&A, one investor admitted that he did not understand video games. Considering he owns shares in one of the most beloved video game companies in the world, it's quite strange to hear.

Here's what the investor said: "I do not understand video games and I even feel angry because, at Nintendo's shareholders' meetings, the shareholders always discuss things relating to video games or such childish topics as "what the future of video games should be," while I, for one, was flabbergasted that Mr. Iwata continues to hold his position although he had said that he would resign if the company's performance were bad".

"I hope that Nintendo's shareholders' meeting will become an opportunity where the shareholders discuss the company's business operations from the viewpoints of capital gain and dividends", the investor added. But don't worry, Nintendo executives were quick to fire back, with Genyo Takeda and Tatsumi Kimishima replying.

CliffyB, of Epic Games fame, has just announced he has formed a new game studio, Boss Key Productions. CliffyB has teamed up with Arjan Brussee, a former EA employee and Guerrilla Games co-founder.

Boss Key Productions' CEO is CliffyB, while the Brussee sits in the position of COO. Before Brussee founded Guerrilla Games, he was helping Bleszinski on co-developing the infamous Jazz Jackrabbit series. At the moment, Brussee's LinkedIn says he's working as an Executive Producer at Visceral Games, the studio that is working on Battlefield: Hardline.

Just what will Boss Key Productions be offering gamers? Well, according to a document filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Boss Key's goods and services will be "downloadable multi-player interactive computer game programs; computer and video game software; downloadable computer and video game software; downloadable electronic games via the Internet and wireless devices; downloadable computer application software in the field of games; interactive computer and video game programs".