Gaming - Page 1187

There's quite the gaming bundle available right now offering some amazing prices on a bunch of great games called the Humble THQ Bundle. Pay $1 or more for Steam keys for Company of Heroes (and its two full-blown expansions Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor), Darksiders, Metro 2033, and Red Faction: Armageddon.

If you pay over the average price ($5.75 will do) you'l receive all of those games, as well as Saints Row: The Third. The games bought will be available through Steam, and included in the bundle are a collection of DRM-free soundtracks! You really can't go wrong here, folks.

Buying all of these games separately would set you back $190, but THQ are letting you, the consumer, set the price. At the time of writing, there had been close to $1.7 million paid with the average price of $5.71. Nearly 295,000 purchases with the top contributor being "Jason Rubin" who contributed a very nice $1050. Turtle Rock Studios' contribution of $1024 is second and @WrapBootstrap is third with $1000.

The Nintendo Wii U's launch library probably isn't strong enough right now to sell like hot cakes as fans are most likely waiting for the next Mario, Legend of Zelda or Smash Bros. title in order to pick up the company's next-generation console. Games like New Super Mario Bros. U, ZombiU and Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition will probably do well on the console, but nothing garners excitement like a new Mario or Legend of Zelda title.

A new Mario or Legend of Zelda game for the Wii U was inevitable as there's no way Nintendo would launch a new console without thinking about new versions of their first-party AAA games. But during an interview with IGN, Nintendo's Global President Satoru Iwata confirmed a new "3D" Mario and Legend of Zelda game are currently under development for the Wii U.

The question was never if, but rather, when we would be hearing about the new Mario or Legend of Zelda titles. Iwata had the following to share during his interview:

The Grand Theft Auto series is one of the best selling series of all time, with numbers passing 125 million units life-to-date according to Take-Two Interactive's CEO, Strauss Zelnick. Zelnick revealed the amazing milestone during his presentation at the Credit Suisse 2012 Technology Conference.

In September 2011, GTA series units were sitting at 114 million - so we're looking at 11 million units selling in the last twelve months alone. Zelnick didn't break the figures down, but a Take-Two Interactive rep confirmed that the 2008 released GTA IV shipped 25 million units. Zelnick attributes the success of the Grand Theft Auto series to the James Bond film franchise, which doesn't get a release every two years. The release schedule keeps the series "special", says Zelnick.

Zelnick doesn't like the risks associated with a yearly release like Activision's Call of Duty series, with Zelnick stating that this business model has risks that his company doesn't want to take. He adds:

The holiday shopping season is in full swing and what would the season be like without major video game console manufacturers bundling their previously released systems with an extremely popular game? It wouldn't be a holiday season without it as many parents will be enticed at the prospect of getting a hot game console with a great game for a great price.

Nintendo is the king of bundling their hardware with software and this year is no different as they announced a new 3DS XL bundle will be made available at major retailers starting on Dec. 2nd. The 3DS XL bundle will come with a Blue/Black Nintendo 3DS XL and comes pre-loaded copy of Mario Kart 7 for $199.99. Without this special bundle, the 3DS XL system and Mario Kart 7 would retail for a total of $239.98, which makes this one sweet deal if you were already planning on picking up both the 3DS XL and Mario Kart 7.

I still remember the feeling of booting up my fresh Xbox console with Halo - it was the same feeling that Half-Life on the PC gave me, and it looks like Bungie, now separate from Microsoft, could have lightning strike twice with 'Destiny'.

Details on the new game from Bungie have been leaked out and provided to IGN by a reader, including story details and concept art. According to the document:

New Super Mario Bros. 2 was released this past August and Nintendo has announced fans of the game have collected a total of 300 billion gold coins in a little over 3 months. To celebrate the milestone, Nintendo is offering a new piece of DLC called the Gold Classics Pack for free for a limited time.

The Gold Classics Pack includes three new courses inspired by older Mario titles like Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3. Each course can be played through the game's Coin Rush mode and will allow players to share their records with other player's through the game's StreetPass feature.

As of now, the Gold Classics Pack is completely free to download until Feb. 1, 2013 where the Gold Classics Pack will be available to purchase for $2.50.

Nintendo has come out and confirmed the Wii Mini after a few leaks had made the device's launch not-so-secret anymore. The new Wii Mini will only play Wii games and will lack support for the older GameCube games and lack the ability to connect to the internet. This means no eShop or online features in games.

Sadly, the Wii Mini is currently only slated to show up in Canada and Nintendo has said they don't currently have any plans to bring it to other markets. "The system launches in Canada on December 7th with a suggested retail price of $99.99. No announcements have been made regarding other regions."

"There are games in the Wii library for every type of player," said Ron Bertram, Nintendo of Canada's vice president and general manager. "Wii Mini is a great gift for the holidays that brings everyone in the family together to play. Wii Mini has a mini price, but it's all about big fun."

As of now, Grand Theft Auto 5 has only been announced to be releasing on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in Spring 2013. If you're a PC gamer, you may have noticed Rockstar Games has left your gaming platform of choice without GTA V which is why fans are petitioning in favor of a PC version of the game be made available.

The petition, which has over 50,000 signatures as of this posting, hopes to receive 100,000 signatures in hopes their voices are heard by Rockstar to release a PC version of GTA V.

A portion of the petition reads:

The Wii U has yet to be sold around the world, but Nintendo is already gloating about its sales numbers of units sold in North America since its launch on November 18th.

According to internal data at Nintendo, 400,000 units of the Wii U have been sold in the U.S. and, according to Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, is "essentially sold out of retail."

Not only did Fils-Aime disclose how many Wii U units have been sold in the U.S., but he also said 300,000 Wii units, 275,000 Nintendo DS units and 250,000 3DS units were sold in the U.S. just within a week. Altogether, Nintendo has sold over 1.2 million units of all of its hardware combined.

Before Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, one of my favorite aspects of the Grand Theft Auto series was its radio stations, primarily all of the fake music stations, their jocks and their hilarious commercials. After Vice City, Rockstar Games decided to supply real music along with their witty humor, which added a layer of realism to the series' radio stations.

Up until now, it was only possible to listen to the radio stations by popping in whatever GTA game into the console it was made for, and pretty much play through the game. But now, you can listen to every radio station from every Grand Theft Auto game right on your phone.

The Grand Theft Auto Radio application is currently available on the Google Play Store and contains radio stations from Grand Theft Auto III all the way up to Grand Theft Auto 4, although some radio stations are currently missing from GTA 4. The app developer promises to have all of the GTA 4 radio stations available in a future update.

The Nintendo Wii U launched in the U.S. nearly a week ago, but others around the world are still waiting for their official release dates for Nintendo's console to release in their neck of the woods. The Wii U is set to release in Europe on November 30th, and it seems like their official launch event is going to blow the U.S. launch event out of the water in terms of goodies attendees will walk away with.

If you're in Europe and plan on attending Nintendo's launch event at the HMV Oxford Street store, you might want to get there quick as there will be a number of freebies available for those who are one of the first to purchase the Nintendo Wii U.

When the doors open at 11 P.M., the first 100 Wii U purchasers will be given two free games with their purchase from a pre-determined selection of games, one of which being New Super Mario Bros U, which we know you were planning on getting anyway.

Users of the Nintendo DS are likely to know what an R4 cartridge is. For those who don't, it's a device that allows gamers to get around the security measures implemented on the DS so that they can run homebrew or illegally downloaded games. It basically allows users to play ROMs on their system, much like you can do on a computer.

In the UK, these have actually been illegal to import, advertise, or sell since July 2010. However, in Japan, the country where Nintendo hails from, it has been illegal to sell them for three years. Only this Spring, though, did an actual arrest take place because of someone breaking that law.

Of course, Nintendo is against these cartridges because they allow people to illegally download games, which cuts into their revenue. Japan has now made it illegal for the devices to even be imported into the country, though this seems a bit late. The 3DS is taking over and the DS is falling by the wayside. Currently, no device exists that does the same thing for the 3DS.

Last year, Grand Theft Auto III: Anniversary Edition was released onto iOS and Android devices and brought back a ton of great memories I had with the game 11 years ago. Now, it's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's turn as Rockstar Games has announced it will also be releasing an anniversary edition of the game onto mobile devices.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 10th Anniversary Edition will be making its way onto iOS and Android devices on December 6th for $4.99, nearly one year after the released of Grand Theft Auto III: Anniversary Edition.

Just like Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City will have a number of enhancements over the original game such as native high-resolution graphics, updated character models and improvements to the game's targeting system. Controls will also be fully customizable allowing you to move its layout to however you like.

You might remember a little game called Wing Commander, and if you're like me, you'll remember it quite fondly as one of the best games of its time in the 90s. Well, the man behind that, Chris Roberts, has another game coming out under his company Cloud Imperium Games Corporation called Star Citizen. Star Citizen is powered by a modified version of CryEngine 3.

Star Citizen is a crowd funded game which has just finished its round of funding, closing at an astonishing $6.4 million. This breaks all previous crowd funding records, with its original goal of $2 million being blown out of the water. The crowdfunding took place on Kickstarter, as well as the game's home page at Roberts Space Industries (RSI).

$4,290,962 was raised on RSI, with the remaining $2,134,374 being raised on Kickstarter. This gave Star Citizen a total of $6,425,336 in funding - quite the achievement indeed. The minimum pledge in order to get a copy of the finished game is $37, with the game set to be completed and distributed in two years' time, in November 2014. The game is explained as "a rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person".

NVIDIA has just swooped in before the huge holiday rush with a new set of beta GeForce drivers in the form of the 310.61 beta. They're only a slight update on the last 310.54 before release, offering up improved support for PlanetSide 2 and Hitman: Absolution.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II gamers running on multi-GPU setups will also enjoy the new GeForce 310.61 beta drivers, as there's a new SLI profile included. 310.61 offers up all of the tweaks that were baked into the 310.54 drivers, including performance improvements such as 26% more performance for COD: Black Ops II, and 18% in Assassin's Creed III when compared to the 306.97 WHQL driver.

There's the usual blanket of performance improvements for other games such as Battlefield 3, MoH: Warfighter, Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, StarCraft II and Dragon Age II. New or updated SLI profiles are also here, with Dirt: Showdown, Dota 2, Dou Zhan Shen, F1 2012, FIFA 13, Hawken, Hitman: Absolution, Natural Selection 2, Primal Carnage and Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad getting some lovin'.

One of the PS Vita's biggest updates has officially been rolled out and is now available for you to download at your leisure, but you may want to update it fast as the sooner you update to version 2.00, the sooner you'll be able to access PS Plus on your Vita.

As we reported last week, PS Plus is coming to the Vita and if you're a member, then you know exactly why all Vita owners are excited about this news. Unfortunately, Sony hasn't flipped the switch to allow for PS Plus to be accessible on the Vita right now, but have promised the feature will go live sometime later today when the PlayStation Store updates. For now, let's take a look at what you can expect in the Vita's 2.00 update.

Sony has improved the Vita's browser as the system's GPU now helps in rendering web pages and have changed to support HTML5 and Javascript. A "Tweet" button has also been included if you feel the need to tweet within the browser.

Rockstar Games has suggested that Grand Theft Auto V could be the first-ever Grand Theft Auto game to make it onto a Nintendo console, with co-founder Dan Houser saying that "everything else is up for consideration." He explains how they are a third-party publisher and have no alliance to any one console.

"Everything else is up for consideration. That's all I can give you," Houser told IGN, "The main thing is...we are a third-party publisher. We're not Nintendo, we're not Sony, we're not Microsoft. We love all of them in different ways. But we can do what we want whenever there's the appropriate business opportunity and chance to find a market. If that's on Apple we put something on Apple. Wherever it might be. I think that's the fun in what we do. We see ourselves as a content company that uses technology. We don't make it; we use it to make the most fun stuff."

The Wii U is already seeing more support from third-party gamers than previous consoles. It has launched with a good number of games from a variety of different publishers. The tablet controller definitely gives the Wii U a possibility to employ unique gameplay and Rockstar Games would have to make sure to make use of it if they bring GTA V to the console.

If there are two things I enjoy than life itself, it's singing karaoke and never leaving my home. Thanks to a new collaboration between Microsoft and The Karaoke Channel, I won't have to as the company will release a Karaoke application for the Xbox 360 this holiday season.

Karaoke will allow users to rock out by the hour as they'll need to purchase blocks of time, which are said to be two, six and 24-hours of time, although I'm sure the 24-hour block of time won't need to be used all at once or you could end up with no voice for days after your marathon performance. Players will also be given the opportunity to select a number of free karaoke tracks to sing through.

Once you picked an amount of time, you'll be given access to Karaoke's complete song library of over 8,000 tracks to sing to that selections from Pop, Rock, Country, R&B/Hip-Hop and more. If it was a popular tune at one point in time, we're sure you'll be able to find it in the Karaoke app.

One of the biggest selling points for Black Ops 2 fans to pre-order their game, aside from playing the latest and great Call of Duty game, had to have been the return of one of the most popular multiplayer maps in Call of Duty: Black Ops, Nuketown 2025. The pre-order bonus had its own playlist where players could play Nuketown to their heart's content with other Nuketown fans, but it looks like the plug has been pulled on the map's dedicated playlist as it no longer is available to play through matchmaking.

Confirmation of the playlist's removal came from the Twitter account of Treyarch's game design director, David Vonderhaar.

It's been nearly 36 hours since Nintendo's Wii U launched, which means users are bound to report issues as soon as they happen via social networks like Twitter and Facebook. One such complaint that is currently making the rounds is the extremely high possibility of Wii U owners bricking their console.

When new Wii U owners connect their console for the first time, they're going to be met with a rather large 5GB update, which enables the Wii U's online functionality, that can take nearly an hour to complete depending on your connection.

Users who have mistakingly interrupted the update process through a number of possibilities such as their power or Internet going down during the update, have been met with a "bricked" console, meaning it's completely unusable. As of now, it isn't known just how widespread this issue is as Nintendo has yet to comment on it, but seeing how users will need to have a constant stream of energy and Internet flowing into their Wii U could translate into a disaster this holiday season if a user decides to hook up their console during a storm.