Gaming News - Page 1650

After years of flagging sales, Sony has officially discontinued it's PlayStation TV micro-console in the United States and Europe.

As someone who owns a PlayStation TV, I can honestly say I'm not impressed. The device has an audaciously high retail price of $79.99, and since it only has like 700mb of onboard memory, it requires the use of expensive PlayStation Vita memory cards. While you can play PS Vita, PSP, and PlayStation original classics on it, it lacks optimization. It's really more of a niche product, and requires a ton of extra hardware and games to actually enjoy.

Although the micro-console is officially kaput, Sony isn't abandoning PSTV owners. "PS Store for PlayStation TV will continue to be accessible, and PlayStation TV-related information will continue to be updated. In terms of applications/service for PlayStation TV, we will make further communications to users as necessary."

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, the remastered version of the first three of the series, has been released on the Windows Store today, but instead of being a shining example of the prowess and graphical potential of the PC and of DirectX 12, it falls well short of that for AMD GPU owners.

What you can expect if played on an AMD R9 Fury

In fact, it's being reported that it hardly runs well at all, stuttering and exhibiting high amounts of graphical corruption even when running at modest resolutions with only modest graphical settings turned on. The performance is particularly abysmal on AMD's Fiji powered cards where the proper implementation of async shaders should theoretically hold an advantage. But even when RAM isn't a limiting factor, they don't perform. The game is a stuttering, glitching mess at this point, at 4K, 1440P or even 1080P. My own testing confirms the findings, with a horrible mess on the base Fury, making it unbearable to actually play.

Combined with the might of the existing video platform juggernaut, the YouTube Gaming streaming-and-video service is crushing the competition.

According to gaming research firm NewZoo, YouTube "dominates around the globe" and is beating Twitch by 2-to-1. Out of the 500 million viewers that tune into gaming videos, most of them pick YouTube. The firm notes that 50% of gamers in the United States choose YouTube for their content, compared to Twitch's 21%. In overseas countries like France only see 9% of viewers watching Twitch.

"Online video is the biggest thing to hit the games market since the launch of the iPhone in 2007," said Newzoo CEO Peter Warman. "Games are evolving toward cross-screen transmedia franchises right now. A direct consequence is the increased focus on communities of both gamers and viewers. This is creating enormous new growth and marketing opportunities for game companies and will accelerate the disruption of traditional media."

The newest update to Rainbow Six Siege is getting serious about cheating, which is surprisingly common in the nearly newly released tactical FPS.

The game is entering the pro's, and as such it needed a stronger foundation to help better prevent cheating, exploitation of maps (and glitches) and even rampant examples of spawn-killing. So now there's a "report" button that lets you tell Ubisoft when you think someone is doing something untoward, who will review data and make a call on what to do.

They've also introduced a kill-cam, which not helps you make sure that your death was actually somewhat legitimate. Quite a bit of time has been spent ensuring that the netcode and networking backend work well enough that lag shouldn't even be the reason for funny kills. But, of course, they've added quite a bit more to the patch as well.

Thanks to a pesky error code, dozens upon dozens of gamers can't play Far Cry: Primal on PC. The game's Steam page are littered with negative reviews and complaints, but luckily, Ubisoft has delivered a fix.

There's nothing more frustrating than spending $59.99 on a brand new game, downloading the entire 20+ GB, starting it up, and being locked out due to something you can't control. Thanks to Error 88500014, tons of gamers aren't able to play Ubisoft's Stone Age adventure, causing a ton of alarm and frustration among the PC community.

It turns out that Error 88500014 is caused by a firewall that's blocking the connection between your PC to Ubisoft's online servers. Far Cry: Primal requires a "one-time activation" across the publisher's online service, and if players can't pass this authentication, then they're locked out. Check below for a walkthrough on how to fix it.

Backwards compatibility has opened up a lot of opportunity and different doors for the Xbox One. Even though the roll-out has been slow, yet steady, it also means there are more options available to the likes of EA Access now that older games can be made playable.

The first fully backwards compatible game for EA's subscription gaming service is Plants vs. Zombies, which has just now been added to the Vault, making the entire game playable as part of the subscription.

Just this past August, EA expressed their interest in adding their historic backwards compatible games to the list as they became available, and it seems that it's finally now becoming a reality. There's, of course, a chance that the Mass Effect series could also make it's way into the Vault sometime soon, though there's no word on EA about that. They seem to be working their way from more modern games, back, which isn't a poor way to go about it either.

Activision has already confirmed a new "innovative" Call of Duty game for 2016, but it looks like this year's entry into the annual franchise will be another sequel. Sadly, it may not be another Modern Warfare.

According to FragHero, the new Call of Duty will be a sequel to CoD: Ghosts. The news was apparently leaked by a UK game magazine called Games TM, which showcased Call of Duty: Ghosts 2 with a screenshot (probably from the first game) and a November 2016 release date.

The article itself is focused on the most-wanted games of 2016. Here's an excerpt: "When creative strategist Robert Bowling exited Infinity Ward in 2012, he put the departure down to doing too much 'pew pew and not enough new new'. We got a look at what he meant with the release of Call of Duty: Ghosts--a solid, yet unspectacular next-gen debut for the franchise. Infinity Ward will have had three years to work on a follow-up, and it needs to showcase the same creative spark that once put on the map with Modern Warfare back in '08 if it wants any chance of standing shoulder to shoulder with Sledgehammer and Treyarch."

Just yesterday we surmised that it were possible that Microsoft could potentially bring their fun and competitive racing series, Forza Motorsport, over to the PC in the near future, and it appears that that might very well be true.

Microsoft held a small Xbox and Windows 10 focused event last week where this information was supposedly revealed, along with other otherwise previously unknown information regarding the shift in focus for Microsoft and PC gaming. The embargo for the event lifts at 9AM ET today, but a certain site decided to post the information before then, perhaps by mistake.

The information they had up, which was quickly taken down, showed Forza Motorsport 6 Apex on the Windows Store for Windows 10. It appears to be a cut-down version of the original, however. There's also nothing in the article about what else we can expect. But ultimately, it seems that Microsoft is definitely committed to bringing back gaming to the PC, and in a big way.

PlayStation owners will soon be able to play PS4 games on PC and Mac...after a fashion.

In a recent PlayStation Blog post, Sony revealed that the PS4's next v 3.50 firmware update will allow Remote Play streaming of PS4 games to PC and Mac. Beta testing on the new update, codenamed Mushashi, begins tomorrow, so if you signed up be sure to check your email.

Microsoft recently made waves by revealing that it'll be folding key Xbox One games into its Windows 10 PC platform, starting with Quantum Break. Not content with watching from the sidelines, Japanese console-maker Sony is now ready to step outside its console comfort zone and embrace the PC as well. Essentially the PS4's Remote Play on PC will be like the Xbox One's cross-streaming capability on Windows 10 PCs, and since its all powered by the PS4, we won't be seeing any performance gains on higher-end PC hardware.

Another day, another game with problems because of consoles. This time, it's Kingdom Come: Deliverance, from Warhorse Studios - which is expected to hit the PC in the summer.

Well, the developer is talks with publishers, and it looks like the PC version of the game might be held back to accommodate the release of the console version of the game. Warhorse Studios' PR manager, Tobias Stolz-Zwiling talked with Eurogamer, where he said: "The idea was to release the game in the summer and then to follow up with the console versions. Right now we are still indie developers but we are in negotiations with publishers to, well, we need someone to bring the games into the shops, so we need a distributor, and he kind of wants us to synch it with the console versions. We are still in negotiations, we will see".

Tobias continued, adding: "Best case for you will be summer this year for the PC version and then with the follow-up for consoles; or if the publisher wants us to synch it we will release everything let's say by the end of the year, so we will see about that". So it looks like the PC version could be held back - but it's up to the publisher. With publishers standing in front of the developer, they're going to want to make as much money as possible -as that's their job. Now, if this happens, it means Kingdom Come: Deliverance will be delayed - so that the PC version (which will look way better) won't be released before the console version (which won't look as good). Marketing, yeah.