Gaming - Page 1159

This morning Blizzard announced the console launch date of its Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - Ultimate Evil Edition title. The game will launch on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles later this year on August 19th, and is expected to retail in the $60 price range for next-gen consoles and $40 price range for the older consoles.

"The Ultimate Evil Edition brings Reaper of Souls to console gamers for the first time, and wraps all of the content, features, and updates we've released for Diablo III into one epic package," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Whether you're a veteran of the crusade against the forces of evil on PC or are just stepping foot into Sanctuary for the first time, there's never been a better time to experience Diablo III from the comfort of your couch."

As stated previously, GameSpy will be shutting down its operations, leaving many games' multiplayer support in the dark. While some publishers have presented alternate solutions, EA has listed the games that will be affected by GameSpy, and may use it as a reason to retire certain popular games.

While EA did provide the list of games that will be affected, which includes 24 PC titles, it isn't clear whether it already has a plan for an alternate solution. "Since GameSpy's announcement, our teams have been working to evaluate options to keep services up and running," posted on the EA blog. "Unfortunately, due to technical challenges and concerns about the player experience, we do not have a solution at this time. Online services for EA games on the GameSpy platform will be closed down at the end of June."

Regardless, EA acknowledged that there is a concern that the old fan favourites game will not have multiplayer support. They said ,"We know some of these games are still fan favorites, including Battlefield 2, Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Command & Conquer games. We are still investigating community-supported options to preserve online functionality for these titles, such as multiplayer. Significant technical hurdles remain, and at this time we don't have anything to announce."

There might be some of your reading this who might not even know who MacGyver is, but for those of you that do, you'll be surprised to hear that there's a MacGyver game coming out for iOS and Android.

MacGyver: Deadly Descent hits iOS and Android devices on May 21, developed by Fairplay Media. The game sees: "Mac return to his roots as a young problem solver". The game is set in a "modern environment" where a virus has infected a "top secret" laboratory. You're pitted as the hero that has to save the day using your smarts, most likely a paperclip and some chewing gum.

MacGyver's creator, Lee David Zlotoff was involved in development, where he said: "We're excited to be able to bring MacGyver up to date and into the mobile games market. Games are the perfect way for Mac to start new adventures with both the existing fans and an entirely new global audience as well. I'm looking forward to working with the team at Fairplay and seeing Mac back in action. What's more, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the game will go to support The MacGyver Foundation".

E3 is just weeks away, and with Microsoft seemingly lagging behind its competitor in the next-gen console wars, the Xbox maker wants to make a big splash at the biggest game expo, E3.

According to one blogger, Microsoft is set to make some huge announcements at its E3 press conference, which will include Ryse 2, Forza Horizon 2, Halo 5, an anniversary edition of Halo 2, and something most wouldn't expect - Battletoads and Perfect Dark reboots from Rare, Fallout 4, and more. The blogger, Robert MacRawley, says: "This info comes from the highest source and contains near full details of Microsoft E3 2014 conference".

When it comes to multi-platform games, Microsoft will not just be showing off Fallout 4, but the incredible looking The Division, the new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, an unnamed EA game, and more. We will also reportedly see Epic Games showing off an Xbox One exclusive based off of its beautiful "Samaritan" demo from back in 2012. Not only that, but we should see Gears of War: Lazarus, Fable Legends, Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive, and another surprise: a new Crackdown game.

Someone has given themselves quite the challenge, where a gamer has used nothing but a Logitech G25 steering wheel to play the first-person competitive shooter, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The video is below, but turn your speakers or headphones down before you click play.

He actually does quite well considering there's no mouse and keyboard, or even a gamepad being used. Nothing but an actual Logitech G25 steering wheel to turn, with the buttons on the wheel used for shooting. His gamer tag in the game is actually 'KILLED YOU WITH A WHEEL,' so you'd be pretty pissed if you actually got killed by someone using a steering wheel... in a first-person twitch shooter.

According to a summary of Watch Dogs on PlayStation.com, we can expect Ubisoft's open-world hacker game to run at 1080p and 60FPS on the PS4. This is a huge win for Sony's next-gen console, as Watch Dogs is set to be one of the biggest games of 2014.

The full text on PlayStation.com says: "The world of Watch_Dogs comes alive on PS4 with the best graphics on any console and exclusive missions found only on PlayStation. Hack everything as you make your way through Chicago's underground as you experience Watch_Dogs in a way that only PS4 can provide, at 60 Frames Per Second in 1080p".

This could be one of the reasons Ubisoft delayed the game for six months, getting its performance up. The last time we saw it was in Montreal last year for the NVIDIA Editors' Day, where we noticed some inconsistant performance. Watch Dogs launches on multiple platforms, including the PS4 and PC on May 27.

To better compete with the Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft might decide to unbundle the Kinect from its Xbox One game console, according to research firm IDC. The Xbox One is struggling to try and keep up with global PS4 sales, and has already cut prices on its game console.

"If Microsoft unbundles the Kinect sensor from the Xbox One console as we expect in 2015, this should lead to rough price parity with the PS4 and reset the sales dynamic at retail," said Lewis Ward, IDC Research Director of Gaming, in a press statement. "We project this change will lead to enough of a console sales bump that Xbox One will emerge with the largest installed base of any console in North America by the end of 2016."

Meanwhile, IDC believes the PS4 should still outpace the Xbox One worldwide, with continued popularity in Japan and Europe.

Russia rated The Sims 4 for adults only due to the country's controversial law which prohibits the promotions of same-sex relationships to children. As a result, the law prohibits any retailer from selling this game to a minor.

The news broke out when the Russian Sims twitter account contained information about the game rating in the country. According to Google Translate, it said,"18 + has been assigned in accordance with the law number 436-FZ 'On the protection of children from information harmful to their health and development".

Russia's 435-FZ law effectively bans the promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights within the country. It is also known that the law encourages violence against the country's LGBT community, which also raised some concerns for some athletes who participated in Sochi Winter Olympics.

Bethesda has just announced that it has delayed The Elder Scrolls Online for "about six months" for the next-gen consoles, with the game originally planned for a June release.

The studio explains: "We continue to work on the console versions of ESO, and game development has been progressing steadily, but we are still working to solve a series of unique problems specific to those platforms. Integrating our systems with each console manufacturer's networks - which are both different from the PC/Mac system as well as different from each other - has been a challenging process. It has become clear that our planned June release of the console versions isn't going to be possible. Though we have made great progress, we have concluded that we'll need about six months to ensure we deliver the experience our fans expect and deserve".

It's not all doom and gloom, as Bethesda has worked out an arrangement with Microsoft and Sony, where it continues: "Via a special offer, anyone who purchases and plays the PC/Mac version of The Elder Scrolls Online by the end of June will have the opportunity to transfer their character(s) to either console version when they are released. The offer will allow you to begin playing immediately on the PC/Mac, and then add the PS4 or Xbox One version and transfer the character(s) you have created and developed. And, you don't have to pay full price for the game twice. For $US20, eligible PC and Mac players will have the option to add a full, digital version of ESO on either the PS4 or the Xbox One with your character transfer(s), and another 30 days of included game time".

If you were waiting for Techland's Dying Light, you'll be waiting a while longer as the developer just announced that it has delayed the game until February 2015.

Techland is using this time to better develop the game, to live up to gamers' expectations. Techland explains on its site: "When we started the development of Dying Light, we were committed to innovation. We wanted to give you a freedom of movement unprecedented in open world games. After many improvements and months of hard work, we have now come so close to realizing our initial vision we feel we cannot stop before it is ready".

The developer of Dead Island continues: "We believe the Natural Movement element of our game will change what you expect from the genre, and we don't want to sacrifice any of its potential by releasing too early. This quality-focused thinking underlines all our development choices and we hope you share our belief that the gameplay must always come first. The new date ensures that we can fully realize our vision of an innovative open world game. We won't need to make compromises or trade-offs on any of the five platforms we're working on. For you, it means an outstanding, original game that makes the wait more than worthwhile".

Something that Epic Games teased earlier in the week has now come true - Unreal Tournament is back, and is completely free. Unreal Tournament 2014 is a sequel to the famous first-person shooter, and is not just free-to-play, but is completely free. It is being built for PC and Mac only, with Linux support also making it in. This ain't no console dumbed down first-person shooter, folks!

Epic Games will be making money from the user-driven mod marketplace, similar to Valve's Team Fortress 2. Better yet, the game is in a very early stage, with the developer taking on fan comments and suggestions on how to make the game. Epic Games has "a small team of UT veterans that are beginning work on the project starting today," and "from the very first line of code, the very first art created and design decision made, development will happen in the open, as a collaboration between Epic, UT fans and UE4 developers. We'll be using forums for discussion, and Twitch streams for regular updates". More details on how it'll work below:

Here's the plan:

When it comes to entertainment budgets, video games reign king in development cost with budgets routinely surpassing $100 million. In the last few years we have seen that trend skyrocket with some games costing upwards of 1/4 of a billion dollars to develop. GTA V was a prime example of this, with development and marketing costing Rockstar $256 million.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V may not hold the title of most expensive video game ever for much longer though. During a conference last week, Activisions CEO, Bobby Kotick, said that his company will be investing $500 million into Bungie's upcoming title, Destiny. While Bungie has already sunk $140 million into Destiny, this $500 million infusion will be used to set-forth a massive marketing push which could accelerate Destiny to more than $1 billion in sales after its launch on September 9th.

Unfortunately, for Activision to see a return on this investment, Destiny will have to sell just over 16 million copies. Activision and Bungie have entered into a 10-year publishing deal which will help Activision get a return on this investment in the long run, but will it come fast enough to make up for dwindling Call of Duty revenue? If Destiny is anywhere close to the popularity Call of Duty and Halo saw over the past decade, then it could keep both companies around for the next decade or two.

Leave it to griefers to ruin a good thing in Minecraft. Last week Denmark proudly announced the unveiling of a 1:1 scale replica of its country that was built-in Minecraft by a Danish geodata firm. The model was truly a thing of beauty and was built out of more than 4,000,000,000,000,000 blocks which equated to a file size of 1TB. Unfortunately, the firm failed to disable certain features on the server, and griefers soon began blowing up the remarkable digital replica.

"We consider that as a nature of playing Minecraft - elements are broken down and new are being created," the firm said in a statement. "Therefore we will not reboot the demonstration of Denmark in Minecraft. But occasionally we will rebuild minor areas if buildings are removed and nothing new is being created. We are very happy to see so many players around the world creating fancy nice things and have fun."

While many of you are face-palming right now, and stating obvious responses, one of the more hilarious aspects of this griefing is the fact that the destruction of Denmark was made to look like an invasion from the united states. Blocky flags were raised and some tanks even made an appearance.

It is now reported that Electronic Arts is very close to signing a game streaming agreement with a U.S. base cable company Comcast. Once this agreement is signed, this would allow EA to stream many of its games via Comcast's X1 set-top box.

It is also being said that both the companies have been working on a way to stream games via EA's cloud for the past two years. This new joint business venture should be beneficial for both. Comcast wanted to provide a system were its subscribers can buy new games just like ordering a movie. Comcast is also trying to stay ahead of its competition such as Apple TV and Amazon's FireTV. Comcast X1 is a set-top box with apps interface that's deemed to the most sophisticated unit in the cable industry business. With games streaming, Comcast could most likely get an edge over its competitors.

This is Comcast's way to entice customers so that it would discourage them not to cut its services and switching to other providers or streaming service. As of now, Comcast has over 22 million subscribers in the US. If this is implemented properly, the company's set-top box will double up as a game streaming console.

Unreal Tournament was one of the biggest first-person shooters before the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises began taking over, but now we're hearing rumblings of Epic Games' first-person shooter making a comeback.

Paul Meegan, VP of Product Development for Epic Games suggested fans of the franchise should tune in to the UnrealEngine channel on Twitch on Thursday, May 8 at 2PM ET. Epic Games' Marketing Manager, Dana Cowley, teased us even more, posting a link to a YouTube sound clip of the iconic UT phrase "first blood".

I think if Epic Games could release a new Unreal Tournament game powered by its Unreal Engine 4 could be a real big hit, especially if it stays close to the UT roots, while changing it up at the same time. If we had some true, ground level support for Oculus Rift, we could be in for a very, very big treat. Especially now that Epic Games don't have to worry about making anymore Gears of War games since it sold the rights to Microsoft.

We knew it was coming, with a tease yesterday that the next Call of Duty would be centered around a private military corporation (PMC), but now Activision has officially announced Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare takes the first-person shooter in a new direction, with the PMC that has turned on the United States government. This organization is led by Frank Underwood Kevin Spacey, who plays the villian of COD: Advanced Warfare. The new game allows players to use an exoskeleton, and much more.

The trailer above also shows off some hoverbikes, weaponized mech suits - something similar to Titanfall - funnily enough, from ex-Infinity Ward co-founders who formed Respawn Entertainment. Sledgehammer Games has said that it has concentrated on next-gen consoles and PC for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, with the game coming out on November 4, 2014 for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Eve: Valkyrie is set to become one of the biggest games of the year, especially since it will launch alongside the Oculus Rift when it arrives to consumers (hopefully) before the year is out.

CCP, the developer behind the game, has just announced that the game has moved from the Unity engine, over to Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. CCP has ditched everything it had from the Unity engine, building the game from the ground up on Unreal Engine 4. Eve: Valkyrie's Lead Game Designer, Chris Smith, explains: "It gives us familiarity. It gives us a great engine, I've worked in Unreal before. It gives us ready made accessibility into the market".

He continued: "I'm not a business person, so for me it's just a great engine that renders a great game. It allows me to express what I need to express on a tool I'm familiar with. On the code side, everyone seems to be adapting very quick. What you're seeing today is from nothing in January to now. We had a great demo before, but turning it into a real boy? Something that you want to play a thousand times that has systems that can be expanded upon... this is the game now".

When GameSpy announced the plan to shut down its multiplayer client service, many game developers were looking to find an alternative solution to replace the now defunct multiplayer client. Many of the older games were still being played, so it became a necessity to get a replacement.

Today, sources point out that Halo: Combat Evolved whose multiplayer action was powered by GameSpy is now replaced by GameRanger.

It is also now known that Electronic Arts, 2K, Activision, Epic Games and Bohemia interactive will be migrating its game's multiplayer client to GameRanger once GameSpy shuts down on May 31st.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is going to be one hefty first-person shooter, with it requiring a massive 50GB of HDD space. Not only that, but you're going to require 64-bit Windows 7 or Windows 8, and a very up-to-date CPU.

The game requires an Intel Core i7 processor, or AMD equivalent, with GPU requirements being much more relaxed: just an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460, or AMD Radeon HD 6850. Next-gen consoles don't escape the huge storage requirements, with around 47GB being used by Wolfenstein: The New Order on the PS4 and Xbox One consoles.

Wolfenstein: The New Order joins a growing list of games that require a serious amount of HDD space, with Titanfall using around 50GB, Battlefield 4 using countless 1s and 0s, too.

Over the last year or so, we have heard companies like NVIDIA and Valve both brag about how local game streaming is the future of home PC gaming, but very few of us has had the chance to experience it first hand. That is about to change though as Valve has just announced that it has opened up its Steam in-home game streaming beta to the public.

In-home game streaming works by linking up two PCs on the same home network, and using the Steam Client to stream the game from one PC to another. While this may sound novel to some, it is actually quite cool. This would allow a steam user to play a game on their big screen TV without having to lug their gaming PC into the family room. Valve says that users wishing to try out the feature need to pay close attention to the recommended hardware for things to work properly.

Valve recommends at minimum, a quad-core CPU, h.264 compatible GPU, and 4GB of RAM on the host PC, while the client PC needs to at minimum feature a h.264 compatible GPU. Wired Gigabit Ethernet is a must, and a direct connection to the router by both PCs is optimum, meaning several switch hops could induce unwanted latency into the system. To try out in-home game streaming for yourself, head over to the In-Home Streaming group on Steam that has been linked below.