Gaming News - Page 1675

With the Game Developers Conference right around the corner, Quantum Break developer Remedy Entertainment will talk about how they were able to get through performance and efficiency issues on the Xbox One.

Remedy used their in-house Northlight engine for Quantum Break, with the developer explaining: "Northlight is Remedy Entertainment's in-house game engine which powers Quantum Break. In this presentation we discuss how various rendering performance and efficiency issues were solved with DirectX, and suggest design guidelines for modern graphics API usage".

We will also learn about the impressive AI used in Quantum Break, with Remedy Entertainment's Head of PR, Thomas Puha, saying that some of the big issues with Quantum Break was the weak AI. At the time, the AI wasn't fully baked, so the gameplay footage we saw wasn't indicative of the final game. He said: "So a lot of the footage you have seen is from summer 2015 for Gamescom. AI really was not done at that point, hence the enemies in the trailers don't seem to give you much fight".

Ubisoft Massive has released a treasure trove of hardcore details on the PC version of The Division, where we're learning that the developer has put lots of time into making sure the PC version of The Division doesn't suck.

We can expect multi-GPU support, multi-monitor support, and resolutions of up to 4K where The Division will "automatically adapt the resolution to fit multi-screen configurations with FOV correction". Not only that, but the frame rate is completely uncapped, and The Division has 'optimized graphic settings & customized GPU effects" on the PC. Awww yeah. Here's a full list of what to expect for the PC version of The Division:

Thanks to a chat with Rock, Paper, Shotgun - we're learning that Ubisoft seems to at least state that it cares about the PC. Creative Director on The Division, Magnus Jansén, said during the interview: "PC is incredibly important to us. There are plenty of incentives to do a good PC version".

He continued: "Personally it's important - a I play on PC whenever I can and I want the thing they play at home to be the best possible version. That is not to be underestimated as a driving force. Secondly, both of the studios, Massive and Red Storm started out on PC so it's a matter of pride, or heritage and pedigree if you will. We feel kind of ashamed if we don't do the PC version really well. It really is something that we care about".

"We're a very technical studio as well. Sweden is a very technical country - we're good at infrastructure and design, and a lot of our staff come from the old demoscene as well", he added. Continuing, Jansén said: "We're a very technical studio as well. Sweden is a very technical country - we're good at infrastructure and design, and a lot of our staff come from the old demoscene as well. There's a lot of that heritage in the Swedish dev community and that is true here at Massive as well. It comes very natural to us. The engine, Snowdrop, enables the artists to do all of that great UI work and makes it relatively easy to expose all of those options on PC".

Saints Row Undercover was going to be a hand-held exclusive on Sony's PSP, until the project was cancelled, but Volition is more than happy to show-off the progress they made.

Originally Volition wanted to just port over Saints Row 2 onto the PSP, but that idea evolved into a full-blown PSP exclusive that could better take advantage of the handheld form-factor and to scale down to the PSP's horsepower level.

Strangely it seems that the majority of the staff at Volition didn't even know it existed until an associate video editor, Josh Stinson, found it by accident while rummaging through a storage room. Thankfully, the senior staff have no problem letting the public know about this would-be project of yesteryear.

A very interesting themed hotel seems to have sprung up in Amsterdam recently, being dedicated to providing a gaming friendly atmosphere and experience.

This so called Arcade Hotel has 36 different rooms in the heart of De Pijp area of Amsterdam, that include consoles of various types in your room. Room service also includes game rental for those consoles, and any console you happen to bring along with. And if you somehow get bored of playing games, there's always the comic library you can visit as well.

But more than just allowing gamers a place to unwind, it's also a place to get together with like-minded individuals. This is a gamer paradise. And if you're hungry, never fear, for this special hotel also pretty nice restaurant with food from local farms. They'r especially excited about their cheese products.

Fallout fans agree: New Vegas is one of the best games in the franchise. But where's the sequel? Surely Bethesda couldn't lose by betting on Obsidian again, and according to lead writer Eric Fenstermaker, the studio would love to make another Fallout game.

In a recent Twitter post, Eric Fenstermaker was asked if Obsidian would consider making another Fallout game, maybe something like Fallout: New Orleans. "I'm always up for working on a Fallout. I think most of us generally are. Really fun property to work with," he said.

While this isn't a confirmation, it's great to see that Obsidian still wants to tackle the series. Fallout gamers have been clamoring for the devs to spin their magic on a sequel for years now, and Obsidian even drew up ideas and plans for Fallout New Vegas 2 back in 2013.

You won't be able to race against yourself in ghost mode in the newly re-released Mario Kart 64 on the Wii U. Just as it was missing in the Wii version, so too is it here.

The ghost feature lets you race solo against your best time, sometimes being a pretty good motivator. But the Wii U Mario Kart 64 version can't actually save any of your ghost data, because normally it would save that to the N64 controller pak memory card. The same problem was present with the original Wii re-release.

Nintendo has been unwilling so far to provide a work-around, and it might mean that any N64 game that absolutely requires the memory pak might not be able to work properly unless Nintendo modifies the game. Until then, you'll have to remember your time and race against an imaginary ghost instead.

Announced in November, backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One was almost like the holy grail for some. Despite being a newer console, there're still just so many fantastic games on the 360 that bear replaying, since a lot still had a plethora of games for the older console.

The library has expanded to well over 100 games, but performance issues might make some of them nearly unplayable. Digital Foundry did a test of every major Xbox 360 game that's available right now and found some surprising results. In general, performance is much improved since it was first available, but some games still perform much more poorly than they do naively on the 360.

Halo: Reach is the biggest disappointment with framerate that sometimes dip well below 15FPS. An unacceptable experience. But the underlying emulation might not be optimized for every game yet. Gears of War: Judgement also suffers a similar problem, suffering from horrible framerates that make it unplayable.

While Microsoft's Xbox One continues to move sizable volume in North America, other regions like Japan are completely disinterested in the all-in-one. Case in point: out of the nation's 127 million strong population, only 99 bought an Xbox One last week.

According to Japanese site 4Gamer, Microsoft only sold a measly 99 Xbox Ones in Japan from Jan. 11 to Jan. 17. For the sake of comparison, over 30,000 New 3DS handhelds were sold during the same period, along with 25,592 PlayStation 4 consoles. That's a pretty serious thrashing, but remember that Japan has traditionally been dominated by mobile and handheld gaming, with Sony's native PlayStation consoles for living room gaming.

This news isn't really surprising considering the Xbox One was pretty much DOA when it launched in the region. During its launch, Microsoft's all-in-one only moved some 25,000 units in its first four days of availability. The PlayStation 4, on the other hand, utterly smashed that number with over 300,000 sales during its launch.

Atari is launching a new compilation of classic games on Steam sometime this Spring. The Atari Vault will include a lot of the great classics you may love or hate, with Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Tempest and even Warlords making the cut.

The new Atari Vault is supposed to have full support for the Steam Controller so you can blast your enemies on a 2D plane with better precision. Atari is also adding in multiplayer support with a Steam leaderboard to help you compete.

This version of the Atari Vault is being developed by Code Mystics who has a lot of experience with bringing old-school Atari games to life again. This compilation will be playable at PAX South which is happening later this month in San Antonia Texas.