Gaming - Page 1193

Well, who'd have thunk it? Valve have just announced Steam for Ubuntu. Yes, Steam is on a Linux distribution. Valve have used a new blog exclusive to its Linux-based goodness, where they've introduced the team, and talked about the future of the project.

The blog talks of Gabe's interest in moving Steam, and the Source engine over to Linux. But, at the time, Valve were supporting Linux by using Linux-based servers for Source-based games, as well as maintaining several internal servers for various projects, the OS on these servers? A 64-bit version of Ubuntu.

So, last year, Valve decided to take the next logical step, and form a new team. This team consisted of people who had the sole purpose of investigating the possibility of moving the Steam client, as well as Left 4 Dead 2 over to Ubuntu. After successfully getting it to work, interest grew within Valve, and the results of this interest were the expansion of the team, and projects they were working on. Their main focus is now the following projects:

During a recent Q&A session, Rockstar have claimed that the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series will be the "biggest open world game to date". Grand Theft Auto IV's open world was already impressive, so how much bigger than GTA V get?

Well, how about Rockstar go vertical? Lots of flying, missions involving flying, etc could work. Rockstar have claimed that it was not possible for them to integrate an interactive high definition airspace that matched the ground because it took too much work. Rockstar stated:

A single image from Comic Con has just injected a very tasty amount of goodness into the rumors and talk of Metal Gear Solid 5, now revealed as Project Ogre. The image is simply a logo, but OGRE stands for Open Ground Reconnaissance Endeavors.

OGRE is the sub-title for Metal Gear Solid 5, with the text under it reading "The moment we were cast out of heaven, we became monsters". MGS mastermind Hideo Kojima has previous talked of the game, and stated that Project Ogre "is some game that has a very wide entrance, a very wide entrance". Kojima adds "rather than making something very cinematic, [I plan to] make something very free".

When the first screenshot for Project Ogre was shown, Kojima said that the title is:

The University of New South Wales housed competitive gamers and PC enthusiasts over the second weekend of July 2012. Nearly 300 gamers were competing against their friends to win a share of $20,000 AUD of cash and prizes. ESGN Winter had arrived!

Games that were featured at this event;

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (XBOX360 & PS3)

Those great Steam Summer Sales are on right now, where you can pick up some seriously cheap games, either individually, or in packs. But, a Reddit user has revealed what looks to be the full list of the Summer Sales for this year.

The list is unconfirmed, but it looks like 55 games will be up on offer over a period of 11 days, but we have no idea of pricing or any other details. The data reportedly comes from the team behind the Open Steamworks Database, which is a site that provides a description record database for every Steam game and subscription offered by Valve.

If you want a look at the unconfirmed list, take a look below:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 may have been cancelled, but it seems from survival MMOFPS, Survarium, will definitely suffice. Considering Survarium is from the same developers, Vostok Games, and the fact that it's destined to be a free-to-play, massively multiplayer first-person shooter that's all about, er, surviving, it should be the goods.

Of course, it all takes place in a post-apocalyptic environment (what else, it is 2012 after all), the developers have teased the world with a bunch of screenshots, and a developer's diary video talking about the game. The video goes for a nice eight minutes, but unfortunately doesn't feature any in-game footage.

So, what is Survarium, what do you do? Well, players in the game have to complete missions for different factions in order to earn money and status, pretty much how S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was played. Players can also work together for co-op missions, form teams for player-versus-player action, or play in "free play mode", where they'll be able to enjoy the freedom of interacting with human counterparts in the game. RPG elements will also be at play, such as leveling up and skill specialization.

[UPDATE: They've just hit $2 million!] If there's anything we know about the world, and technology, and everything around it, is that its in a constant state of change. Kickstarter is here to help that, and so are the guys and girls behind Ouya. What is Ouya?

Ouya is a kickstarter project, and a "new kind of video game console". Ouya love gaming on a bigger TV screen, they know that smart devices like smart phones and tablets are the current in-thing, but they also know that some of the best are abandoning the traditional platforms and moving toward where "it" is, and "it" is in smart devices. Ouya want to change this.

Ouya have raised (at the time of writing) $1,772,876 of their $950,000 goal. They have 14,144 backers, and 29 days of Kickstarting to go. Kickstarter has confirmed that Ouya has achieved the biggest first day ever for one of their hosted projects, and it's the eighth project ever to crack the $1 million mark.

Valve are a company that don't like to stay the same, and I love them for it. The company that are known for Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and many, many more amazing games, have announced a new feature that will see users voting for what titles appear on Steam.

At the moment, Valve has an internal group that decides on what launches on Steam, but since Valve don't really employ psychics, it can be very hard to please the entire community. Valve wants to stop this, so in late-August, the company will launch "Steam Greenlight". Steam Greenlight will use the system introduced by the Steam Workshop from last October.

The Workshop lets players rate and comment on content, such as Team Fortress 2 items, Skyrim mods. Valve have said:

What I imagine is probably the coolest person ever, has just sold their insane catalog of video games for Nintendo home systems from the NES/Famicom through to the GameCube, as well as the full lineup of every game released on any Sega system.

All of this comes in their boxes, with original instructions. It amounts to more than 5,000 games, with the collection mounting up cartridges for the NES, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, GameCube and Virtual Boy, as well as anything published (!) for the Sega Master System, MegaDrive/Genesis, Game Gear, Saturn and Dreamcast. The Dreamcast collection is a stand out, funnily enough, which includes 550 games, and is advertised as factory sealed, all of it.

The seller also states "all games ever released on NEC systems, all factory sealed!" and included a buy-it-now price os just 999,999.99 Euro, or at the current exchange rates, US$1,238,099.99. Not bad, considering the seller would need to have some very exclusive industry access, or the ability to walk through walls in order to build this type of a one-of-a-kind library. The seller does state "you can email me asking the presence of a specific title in a fullset, but you can be 99.9% sure it is present".

Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios, Phil Spencer, has some words to say against his competitors Nintendo and Sony. First off he has stated that the Wii U is graphically equivalent to the current-generation Xbox 360, and he's got some even nicer words for Sony, saying that Microsoft's top 4 franchises outsell the top 11 franchises from Sony.

He told GamesIndustry:

The PlayStation 3 is quite old now, and was refreshed for the first time back in 2009 as a slimmed down version of the popular console, and right now, it's the only model that is in production. But, according to some documents that were filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), we could expect a "super-slim" version to be announced at next months Gamescom in Germany.

When Sony announced the current slim model, they did so at Gamescom three years ago. The above FCC sketches don't really show much, but they do show a different FCC label position as well as confirming that Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR and 802.11 g/n have become standard once again.

Eurogamer took some time at E3 to speak to Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida, where they asked him if Sony had any plans to release a super-slim PS3. Yoshida told Eurogamer to never say never, which is a strong hint toward the move to a super-slim PS3. Considering that the PlayStation 4 could be out within the next 1-2 years, this would be the perfect time to cash in on the ageing console. What could its name be?

Ever wondered what the interior of a ship from the super-famous first-person shooter Halo would look like, if rendered using Crytek's CryENGINE 3? Well, a DICE artist currently working on Battlefield 3 has put together a mockup, and what a mockup it is!

See that? That to me, is amazing. That to me, is next-gen gaming. The lighting, the detail, the anti-aliased everything, is just perfect. If this could be done with next-gen physics, particle effects, A.I. and a flat 60fps minimum, I'd be excited for gaming again.

Halo 4 will end up looking good, but it won't look anywhere near this good. 343 Industries should be able to squeeze a few extra goodies out of the now aged Xbox 360, but if it were to look like this, it'd have to debut on the next-gen Xbox.

According to an ex-SCEA R&D director's LinkedIn profile, the next generation PlayStation has been in development since August 2010. His profile has a listing citing his work on the "Next Generation PlayStation" from August 2010 to April 2012. His work on the PS Vita is listed separately which implies that the "Next Generation PlayStation" he is referring to is the PS4.

"In 1998 I started as the first engineer in the Playstation US R&D," reads Vass' profile. "I worked on graphics ( COLLADA, PSGL ) and a lot of network related technologies ( advertising, telemetry, PVRs ) for the Playstation2-x, PSP, Vita and Next Generation platforms. Platform security was occupying most of my time at the last years... "

SCEA boss Jack Tretton also recently let loose some information on the next generation system when he said that "we've never been first, we've never been cheapest, it's about being the best. If you can build a better machine and it's going to come out a little bit later that's better than rushing something to market that's going to run out of gas for the long term."

As most of you would know, we post tonnes of rumors about the next-gen consoles, as they will most likely shape the future of gaming, and therefore, the future of PC hardware. As we get closer to the release of the next-gen consoles, more and more information surfaces. Whether this information is true or not, or just the company's way of throwing out so much information, you can't find the truth from the ocean of rumors.

The latest news on the next-gen Xbox is that Microsoft Corporation won two disputes they filed in May with the National Arbitration Forum in regards to numerous Xbox-related domains owned by a resident of China who goes by the name "Cheng Juan". These domains are XboxPhone.com, XboxTablet.com, XboxLiveTV.com, XboxCompanion.com, Xbox8.us and Xbox8.org. As you can imagine, this opens our eyes to the next-gen console, and the future of Microsoft.

At the moment, no one knows what the next-gen Xbox will be called, so anyone trying to say it will be a certain name (Xbox Next, Xbox 720) is just guessing, or reporting the news as they see it. The name isn't in concrete, and we're seeing Microsoft change things up lately with Windows, making hardware for tablets, and just their general way of doing things is morphing into something completely different.

The Canadian studio that were behind games such as The Darkness II and the multiplayer side of BioShock 2, Digital Extremes, has unveiled and released the first look at their upcoming free-to-play co-op first-person shooter, Warframe.

Warframe is said to provide fast-paced PvE (player versus environment) co-op action, where it lets you bash through the game with up to three friends. There's also an endless tree of improvements to build upon your abilities and character in Warframe, an ancient exo-skeletal technology, as well as other weapons while raiding new areas of space seeking exotic Warframe augmentations and other gear.

Warframe continuously randomizes raids, so it should offer some pretty killer replay value and grinding. Digital Extremes CEO James Schmalz, has said:

The third outing in the Far Cry universe, Far Cry 3, was due out on September 4, but Ubisoft have just announced that the release date for Far Cry 3 has been pushed back by three months, until December 4.

The official release date for Far Cry 3 on PC, Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3 is now early-December. Ubisoft does state that the game will reach Europe, the Middle East and Africa a few days earlier on November 29.

There's been no explanation for the delay, as the last time we saw the game was in a five-minute video which highlighted some of the multiplayer side of things. It was very Call of Duty, featuring experience points, levels, kill cams, and carpet-bombing air support. More news on Far Cry 3 as it comes.

It looks as though Valve believes there is some value to using games in education. It's been occasionally supported by studies that doing something fun helps kids learn and keeps them engaged, so the reasoning behind 'Steam for Schools' is solid. This summer, educators can apply to be included in the beta which provides a copy of Portal 2, its level editor and its workshop for hosting those levels.

"We have a limited version of Steam, which is called 'Steam for Schools.' And what we're doing is asking for teachers, after school programs, organizations - anywhere where there's a student relationship, which includes homeschooling - for them to submit a form to be part of it. It's still in beta," Valve's Leslie Redd told attendees of the Games for Change festival in New York City.

Valve has received no outside funding or grants to help pay for this program. They are a pretty successful commercial venture, so they do have a bit of extra cash laying around. Besides, doing things for children is probably the best PR a company can get, and it can't be costing that much to give away a copy or two of Portal 2.

The next generation consoles are at least a year from announcement, so unless a company decides to pull a fast one and release earlier, they are still a good distance out. We've reported several rumors over the past months about the specs of the upcoming next generation consoles. Of course, these could be completely off base.

And, that's what it sounds like as John Carmack is saying to not expect much improvement out of the next generation consoles. About the only feature he expects to be present in the next generation is the horse power to render games at 1080p and 60fps. Currently, games are rendered at 720p and 30fps, so it is a bit of improvement.

After a reported eight-year development, Max Payne 3 has not done so well. According to last month's NPD numbers, actual sales figures of Rockstar's slow-mo, kill-lotsa-dudes game, Max Payne 3, has only sold 440,000 copies.

Considering that new IP from Rockstar from last year, LA Noire, pushed over 900,000 copies, one would think an already-established IP like Max Payne would do better. But it has fallen short of industry expectations with Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter calling the game "a flop".

Pachter cites the eight-year development, and claiming "Rockstar put off releasing GTA" to work on Max Payne 3. Have you picked up the game yet? I've only played through around 20 minutes of it and have enjoyed it so far, but it's hard to play the game with a broken wrist and cast! 4 more weeks until I can thrash through it!

Bethesda Softworks have announced that the Doom 3 enhanced re-release of Doom 3 is coming out just before Halloween, on October 16. Doom 3 "BFG Edition" hits PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and will retail for $40 on the consoles, and $30 for the PC.

Doom 3 BFG Edition includes Resurrection of Evil and "The Lost Mission", all in glorious 3D, 5.1 surround sound, achievements, improved rendering and lighting as well as a new checkpoint save system. The improvements don't end there, also included is an armor-mounted flashlight "allowing players to illuminate dark corners and blast enemies at the same time".

Doom 3 BFG Edition also comes with the original Doom and Doom 3, making the BFG Edition the "definitive collection" for the series.