Gaming - Page 1606

Like DICE's original Battlefront game, Battlefront 2 will feature heaps of unlockables--weapons, skins, emotes, etc--to ensure players keep on playing months after launch. But will these unlockables be monetized with microtransactions and in-game currency?

We reported earlier that Battlefront 2 might have microtransactions to help fund new in-game content like maps, weapons, classes, heroes, etc. DICE's Bernd Diemer hinted that Battlefront 2 won't have a season pass and will instead opt for "something different" that won't "segment the community," which is usually code for suffusing a game with virtual currency and mTX (aka microtransactions). "I cannot talk about the specifics of this, but we have something different in mind that will allow you to play longer, be [more] invested in the game without having a fragmented community," Diemer said at the Star Wars celebration.

However, EA quickly jumped in to say that official live update plans for Battlefront 2 haven't been revealed yet. Now many saw this as EA trying to detract Diemer's bold statements, and that Battlefront 2 might have a season pass after all.

DICE is making an earnest effort to fold in player feedback into Battlefront 2 to create the Star Wars shooter we've always wanted. The first game missed tons of opportunities to really hit the mark, and blatantly ignored some of the major features the original Battlefronts offered, but DICE gives new details on Battlefront 2's multiplayer mechanics and what we can expect from the game this November.

Battlefront 2 will have many key changes to help improve overall multiplayer experience, including actual character classes that can be customized in specific ways. Players will unlock a slew of weapons and class-based gadgets and abilities tailor-made for their respective roles, facilitating more dynamic tight-knit team-based play. One of these gadgets will be a jetpack, which is not available to every class in the game (thank god). FPS elements have been overhauled dramatically, and players can even use ironsights aiming (ADS) to improve accuracy. Gunplay will be deeper, and the learning curve will be adjusted, too.

As the Star Wars Game Outpost reports, Battlefront 2 game designer Dennis Brannvall revealed quite a few details at a Q&A session at this year's Star Wars Celebration, confirming many of the changes and tweaks.

Just yesterday we reported on ABC's report "Nuts for Nintendo," which showed us the insane demand for NES games back in Christmas of 1988. In 2016, that age-old artificial demand spirit was resurrected with the NES Mini--and this year Nintendo is keen on doing the same with an SNES Mini.

Nintendo sources tell Eurogamer that the Japanese console-maker will release an SNES Mini this holiday season, and development on the microconsole is already underway. The SNES has a massive array of amazing games that herald an entire golden era of console gaming, and Nintendo absolutely has to get the games selection right this time. I fully expect them to do more of the same--limit to just 30 games, many of which probably won't be great, and go with cheaper hardware to boot. Sources indicate the SNES Mini is the major reason why the NES Mini was discontinued globally.

But the big question is will Nintendo undership the SNES Mini and create yet another holiday craze. I'd like to think Nintendo has learned, but history tells us otherwise. Expect these things to fly off shelves even faster than the NES Mini. Nintendo has yet to officially announce the SNES Mini, but we'll be sure to keep you updated once we hear more.

Turn 10's big tease of Forza running at 4K 60FPS on the upcoming Project Scorpio console from Microsoft was a massive deal for the upgraded Xbox, but how long did it take the team to get it working at the normally PC reserved resolution? Two days. One person. Yeah.

During a recent interview with Gamasutra, Turn 10's Software Architect, Chris Tector, said: "We didn't get to the right place with audio hardware. On all of Xbox One. And we were hoping that would improve, because that would really open up some CPU headroom for us. I don't know if I'm calling out something I'm not supposed to!"

He added: "But we do a lot of heavier-weight audio than some other games do, and it means we do a lot of real-time mixing of that. Because the way we generate an engine is more of a simulation based on a whole lot of loops. But it means that we're modeling the different subcomponents within the car. So not just the engine, it's actually transmission and an inner cooler and blah blah blah, all these little bits on the engine that we're building up, and then that's a final mix on one car. And then we've gotta go do it on the next one. So it's pretty heavyweight, and we have some heavy requirements around that. But we'll get there someday".

Zelda: Breath of the Wild players are some of the creative gamers in existence. We've seen so many different methods to turn Hyrule into a playground of fun, and players are constantly finding new ways to push the limits of its dynamic physics. Enter "turbosurfing," the fun way to exploit waterskimming by turning your raft into a rocket-powered blur.

So what is "turbosurfing," and how do you do it? Just grab a minecart--or a metal object that's biggish, a metal box should work too--and simply grab it with magnesis and jam it against a raft's sail. Voila! Now you're skimming in no time. This is a nice method to sail across the seas if you don't have a korok leaf.

Back in the 1980s, Nintendo captured an entire generation. Every household just had to have one, and every kid dreamed of the 8-bit splendor that only games like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 3 could deliver. But even back then Nintendo had massive problems keeping up with the demand...and fast-forwarding to today with the NES Mini and the Nintendo Switch, we see just how little things have changed.

Thanks to ABC new's 20/20 special "Nuts for Nintendo," we have a perfectly preserved time capsule of what it was like for shoppers (mostly disgruntled parents) trying to find two ultra-rare NES games of 1988's Christmas season: The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and Super Mario Bros. 2. The short answer? It was hell. Pure hell. There were just too few copies of the games shipped overseas, and the demand was insanely high.

"All this makes me wonder...is the supply shortage real? Or is Nintendo holding back supply to create a mystique?" ABC's John Stossel wondered during the report--a sentiment that millions of fans can relate to even today (just look at the NES Mini's discontinuation). Nintendo is infamous for limiting supply of specific games and hardware, leading many to believe Nintendo is using tricks to create artificial demand--not unlike Coleco did with its Cabbage Patch dolls during the 1980s.

Bandai Namco proudly emblazoned its namesake icon onto its debut slot machine, the West's favorite gambling tradition.

Japanese people love gambling on pachislot and pachinko machines: pachinko is a massive billion-dollar industry for Japanese game companies like Bandai Namco, SEGA, and Konami. In fact, SEGA made $1 billion on pachinko alone in a nine-month period. But in the West, especially in the United States, slot machines reign supreme. Keen on tapping this rich vein of ever-flowing cash, Bandai Namco is bringing slot machines to casinos in Las Vegas starting with the PacMan Wild Edition cabinet.

"PacMan once took the arcade world by storm and was recognized by Guinness World Records as the "Most Successful Coin-Operated Arcade Game", and now the series is back to take to the world as a casino cabinet," the publisher said in a press release.

Since Quantic Dream's new game Detroit: Become Human is slated to release this year, the studio could already be working on its next game.

Two specific LinkedIn profiles hint that David Cage's French studio Quantic Dream has begun preliminary work on an unannounced title. The profiles belong to Joel Janisse, scriptwriter of "Detroit and unannounced Quantic Dream projects," and Zachary Parris, screenwriter for Detroit and unannounced projects. Projects as in plural.

In fact, Parris' LinkedIn hints that the unannounced projects will be PlayStation 4 exclusive...which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Now it's worth noting that developers typically work on multiple projects at a time, but Quantic Dream is a smaller studio with some 160 employees, and their interactive video games typically take quite a bit of time to develop thanks to the sophisticated motion capture. This suggests Detroit: Become Human could be almost finished--at least its script and screenplay are.

Bandai Namco's new secret Prepare To Dine project has been leaked ahead of schedule: the game is called "Code Vein," and features a new kind of dungeon crawling with action RPG elements and a creepy, hallowed storyline with revenants and vampires.

According to Japanese blog Esuteru, Bandai Namco revealed Code Vein in a recent issue of Famitsu. The action RPG is being developed by God Eater's team, with devs like Keita Iizuka and Yusuke Tomizawa working on the project, and is built on Unreal Engine 4.

Code Vein is described as a "dramatic dungeon-exploring action RPG." and takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. Players take on the role of revenants--traditional vampires--with supernatural abilities involving blood magic and attacks. When players run out of blood, they transform into devil-like creatures called Lost--the monsters we see in the teaser. Code Vein has a unique co-op mechanic that allows players to take a "buddy" with them when exploring dungeons. Buddies are AI, but players will have to work together to survive the "tense and dangerous" dungeons.

Thanks to its impressive hardware and software synergy, Microsoft's new Project Scorpio console is able to hit amazing performance like native 4K 60FPS Ultra PC settings in games like Forza 6: Apex. But the system isn't just about 6TFLOPs of brute power--it has an optimized intelligence that automatically scales performance to ensure no power is wasted during non-demanding activities.

Most consoles scale their hardware with specific power states that reserve CPU and GPU perf for specific activities, dialing back resources while watching a Blu-ray or steaming Netflix. This keeps power draw down and reduces heat. Project Scorpio takes this dynamic performance scaling to a new level thanks to these optimizations: highly customized hardware that's specifically designed to compliment one another, a tailor-made cooling solution with a vapor chamber heat sink and a blower-style fan, fine-tuned voltage scaling via the Hovis Method, and the Scorpio Engine's built-in power states.

"The number of power states we have in the SoC - the Scorpio Engine itself - is eight CPU states, five GPU states, three for the memory," Leo Del Castillo, General Manager of the Xbox Hardware team, told Digital Foundry in a recent interview. "Naturally all of those will be maxed out if you're playing a high performance game, but for other modes of operation you want to minimise the amount of power the system is consuming."