Gaming News - Page 1735

With two failed projects including THQ's inSANE and the cancelled Silent Hills partnership with Hideo Kojima, Guillermo del Toro has had bad luck with video game adaptations, and now he's pretty much done.

"I have proven to be the albatross of video games," the famed director of Pacific Rim and Pan's Labyrinth said to ShackNews at a Comic-Con panel. "I joined THQ, and THQ goes broke. I join Kojima, and Kojima leaves Konami. I have decided, in order not to destroy anyone else's life, I have decided I will never again get involved in video games. Otherwise, I'll join someone and his house will explode, or something."

It's been revealed that del Toro works extremely closely to the projects he's a part of, including the failed THQ game and Silent Hills. "I was in an apprenticeship. I learned a lot from Kojima-san, of course, and I learned a lot from my experience at THQ. I did. It changed the way I see narrative. We put two years of work in THQ. It was insane. We mapped it out, we did the viable, we did the outlines, we did the screenplay. We did a bunch of stuff. I know some of the tricks, or the stuff that I wanted to learn, I learned. Then I went to the side of Kojima-san, because he's a master, and I can gladly say that we are friends and I love his work and I will continue learning from him as a friend. But I am not... if I join another video game, World War III will start."

EA has made sure everyone knows that Star Wars: Battlefront is a multiplayer game at its core, but why isn't there any sort of singleplayer campaign? In an interview with Gamespot Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore revealed the real reason behind removing a singleplayer campaign from Star Wars: Battlefront--hardly anyone will actually play it.

"Surely yourself, and the rest of the EA executive team, must be kicking yourselves for not including a single-player campaign?" Gamespot writer Rob Crossley asked Moore in the interview. "Triple-A games with single-player traditionally sell better than those with multiplayer."

"Very few people actually play the single-player on these kinds of games," Moore answered, pretty much saying that since a huge portion of their target audience wouldn't play it anyway, it'd just be a waste of resources to add singleplayer. "That's what the data points to."

Codenamed the "Devolver Digital Publisher Weekend," expect to see a plethora of indie games at up to 90 percent off when purchased through Steam. With Hotline Miami being one of the games featured in this bonanza, Devolver Digital CFO Fork Parker is excited for this sale, stating "The corporate jet isn't going to gold plate itself so I encourage all gamers to go out and spend any and all disposable income on Devolver Digital video games."

In addition to Devolver published games themselves, also on offer will be titles from [Devolver's 'bestie'] Gambitious, which includes games such as Magnetic and Train Fever - a transportation simulator.

Available from August 13 - 17, Devolver invites you to "treat yourself, you deserve it."

Starting today Destiny's mysterious interstellar merchant is selling one of the best exotic-class items in the game--the highly covered Gjallarhorn.

From now until Sunday morning Destiny players can pick up the infamously powerful Gjallarhorn for a pittance of 17 Strange Coins from Xur. This week the Agent can be found in the upper rightmost section of the Tower, in the barroom corner between the Shipwright and the Future War Cult vendor.

Up until now the Gjallarhorn rocket launcher has been an item that's had a supremely mystical quality about it. Every Guardian wants one--it's even argued that every Guardian needs one when facing the atrociously difficult Level 35 Prison of Elders boss Qodron. After weeks and weeks of lackluster rolls and common exotics that everyone already has or doesn't need, Bungie decides to just give Destiny players an early Christmas present and finally cave in to the demands.

Some of the best games coming out in the next few months are going to be exclusive to the Xbox One, but with Microsoft behind the Xbox One, some gamers hope that these titles would transition over to the PC. Unfortunately, they won't be - at least for the foreseeable future.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has talked about it, where he said that these games might reach the PC, but we should expect them to be exclusive to the Xbox One. Spencer said: "In the case of things like Scalebound or Crackdown or Quantum Break, you know, just to be completely honest with you, we started those games before we really looked at expanding into Windows in the way that I wanted to bring as part of becoming head of Xbox".

He added: "Going to those teams mid-cycle and saying: 'Hey, by the way, I want to add a platform,' didn't really feel like necessarily the best way to end up with the best result for the game. They had a path that they were on. It's not to say those games could never come to Windows, but right now we're on the path to finish the great games that they've started, and I want that to be the case. These games are on a path, whereas with, like, Halo Wars 2 I had the opportunity from the beginning, when we're sitting down with the studio, to say, 'Here's the target. Here's what we wanna go do".

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has nothing but praise for Nintendo it seems, where he recently talked with Eurogamer at Gamescom 2015 saying that Nintendo has "the best first-party on the planet".

Spencer was asked if console-exclusive games can still be system sellers, where he said that the Wii U has the best exclusive games. But, the Wii U sales haven't been too strong, even with those kick ass first-party games, where Spencer deflected criticism over Wii U sales. He reiterated that publishers still can't beat "the strength of IP that Nintendo has". He added: "On the Wii U, I think people downplay how many units they've sold".

He continued: "I've got a Wii U, I think there's some great games on there. I think Splatoon's a really nice game and I don't think there's a first-party out there that has the strength of IP that Nintendo has. They're always a beacon to me when I look at what it means to build a first-party portfolio of products, they've done a great job".

The Sony PlayStation 4 has sold more than 25 million units across the world since launch, and the Microsoft Xbox One is still looking for ways to close the sales gap. However, Xbox chief Phil Spencer understands what it will take to try and close the gap, even if the Xbox One can't topple the PS4.

"Honestly, I think it's about growing Xbox. Sony's had great success with PlayStation, they've earned that success over multiple decades of building a great product. Kudos to them for their market position. All I can do is focus on Xbox, and I love that," Spencer told Eurogamer.

The PS4 has a healthy sales lead over the Xbox One, but Spencer is looking at the entire Xbox gaming ecosystem instead of Xbox One vs. PS4 sales.

Twitch may be the king of eSports live streams, but YouTube is proving to be a popular outlet to watch previously recorded gaming matches. The No. 1 video website has billions of hours of eSports and video game footage viewed by users every month, despite increasing popularity of livestreaming sites.

League of Legends, Counter-Strike, FIFA, and Call of Duty - four popular eSports titles - make up the top 10 list of all-time game videos viewed on YouTube. Some viewers prefer to watch events live, but there is plenty of previously-aired eSports footage available on YouTube and other video sharing websites.

"Twitch clearly has the lead in video game livestreaming and eSports, but if all game-related YouTubers start using YouTube to do livestreaming, they could be back in the game soon," said Peter Warman, CEO of the Newzoo global market research firm, in a statement to Fortune. "Often gamers can choose between Twitch or YouTube streams when it comes to eSports events."

With the rise of professional eSports, games like League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive would not have taken off, at least not to the point where they are today. These games have tens of millions of very, very dedicated gamers with tournaments that have tens of millions of dollars being thrown at gamers.

This means it shouldn't come as a surprise to most that some Swedish high schools are now introducing eSports into their curriculum, just like some physical sports are. The eSports subjects will be handled just like physical education subjects, with rooms dedicated to practicing games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends, with guest lectures being given by professional gamers and personalities from within the eSports community.

Magnus Alehed, a principal at one of the high schools offering eSports as a subject said that the idea behind it was to get rid of the negative stigma behind video games and mainstream society. You know, how they think gamers all sit around with a controller in their hands blasting expletives at their TV. Alehed said: "We're looking to dispel the myth that this would be a bad thing and it is about respect for this group of students".

It looks like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will have watered down graphics, with the producer on the game, Oliver Proulx, talking with Eurogamer explaining that the final build of the game should look close to the suped up graphics we saw from E3 2015 earlier this year.

Proulx explained: "In terms of the graphical fidelity we're very mindful of what we wanted to show at E3 that we don't show something that's impossible to achieve later down the road, and it was really discussed with the team". He continued, talking about the smaller changes that the studio will make to Mankind Divided, with improvements and compromises, but the quality we see should be mostly the same.

"We're confident what we showed, what you'll see when the game comes out, is going to be very consistent in terms of graphical quality", he continued. "Obviously the game goes through iteration and the debugging phase, so you can pick up some differences there - some improvements, maybe some other compromises - but it's going to be pretty much what we've got".