Gaming News - Page 1738

Nintendo has ambitious plans to make the new Zelda Wii U game the "best Zelda experience" yet--but to beat all the other entries in the series the Japanese gaming titan will need to really push the bar.

"We confirmed that a Zelda game, a new Zelda experience is in development for the Wii U and we have our team hard at work on that," Nintendo exec Scott Moffitt told iDigitalTimes in an E3 2015 interview. "We want that to be the best Zelda experience. Fans have been waiting for and deserve a game when it's ready, when it's fully featured and when it can live up to what we would like to deliver."

Originally slated for a release this year on the flagging Wii U console, Nintendo delayed Zelda Wii U for TBA 2016 leaving the possibility open for a cross-platform launch on Nintendo's mysterious new NX platform.

Doom is one of the most iconic video game series, with three games released since the first one launched in 1993 - but id Software is aware of the changing times. Gamers, many of whom have a rather shot attention-span, have focused on a number of other game titles.

"id hasn't made a game in the current pantheon of first-person shooters," said Pete Hines, VP of Marketing at Bethesda, in a statement to GameSpot. "It's not a part of that conversation. You can go to any sixteen-year-old at Quakecon and ask them what their favorite shooter is and they're going to say Call of Duty and Battlefield and Halo, but not Doom, because why would they?"

The studio previously discussed how it scrapped the "Doom 4" game title, saying it felt too much like Call of Duty - and not enough like Doom. It's reassuring to hear developers were willing to go back to the drawing board when it came to Doom, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

The closed alpha of Hitman is a huge resource hog, where even NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan X can't run the game at a stable 60FPS at 1080p on 'Ultra' settings. Now we are noting here many times: this is just an alpha, and not indicative of the final version of the game.

But, with the alpha build of Hitman already chewing up a serious video card like the Titan X and not even being able to spit out 60FPS at 1080p, is worrying. YouTuber 'polaric90' has posted a video using a Titan X, with an average frame rate of around 40FPS. With the performance on one of the best cards on the market not even hitting 60FPS at only 1080p, what will happen at 1440p? 4K?

The biggest thing to worry about here is the console versions of the game, which are much slower than a Titan X. It looks like the developer has quite a bit of work to do on optimization between now and December 8, when Hitman reaches the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

With this generation of consoles and their 'increased horsepower' over the previous generation consoles, we're not seeing that many AAA titles run at 1080p 60FPS. This will hopefully not be the case when it comes to Doom, with id Software saying that it's aiming for 1080p 60FPS.

During a talk with GameSpot, Marty Stratton, the Executive Producer of Doom said: "When you're developing, you make thousands of decisions that have an impact on performance or visual fidelity. We've always been at the forefront of saying we want our games to run as fast as possible at the highest resolution possible. So for us, that goal is 1080p and 60 FPS. Along with that goal, the mantra of our technology team is that we want to be the best-looking game out there at 60 FPS and 1080p. So you draw that line in the sand".

Stratton said that for the best Doom experience, 1080p 60FPS is where it's at, he elaborated: "For us it isn't just a lofty technical goal. We really do think it's important to the feel of the game, it's important to the way our combat feels and our movement feels. It's got to be fast, it's got to be fluid, and it's all based on that. It really is a gameplay goal first and foremost. You do make decisions here or there. Ultimately I don't think you can ever expect most consumers to really nitpick".

With the PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight being a huge mess, so much so that Warner Bros. pulled it from Steam, good guy NVIDIA is stepping up to the plate to help fix it out. NVIDIA's Tom Peterson talked about the game during his appearance on MMORPG.com yesterday, saying that some of NVIDIA's best are on the case.

Peterson said: "We're fixing a ton of things that are not necessarily related to us. Some of it may be related to our driver, some not. But at the end of the day the game is the focus and we're going to make it great". Peterson continued: "We have 200 to 300 engineers that are really visual scientists. They're the best out there. Artists, Ph.D.s. ... We've taken the approach that says let's capture what they've got in their minds, convert it to algorithms ... test it and QA it, and then provide it as middleware effectively to game developers".

Why is NVIDIA helping out? It feels like this is just NVIDIA being a helpful member of the PC community, especially when Peterson added: "I look at [Arkham Knight] as an example of where NVIDIA can help a developer get to market with a quality game. Warner Bros. ... made a few mistakes getting the game out. It wasn't fully performance optimized for PC. So now we're deploying our QA resources and our engineers to make that game as good as it possibly can be".

After 15 years of black-market gaming, China has opened up a new door to the bustling video games industry by scrapping its restrictive ban on games systems. The country's Ministry of Culture states that hardware titans like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo can not only sell but also manufacture video games consoles anywhere in the country.

This new legislature is a huge win for console-makers, as they have free reign to tap the Chinese market. Last year the Chinese government made a similar reversal with the launch of the Xbox One in the region, but console-makers were bound by unfavorable restrictive policies. To sell their consoles in China, console-makers had to agree to specific rules like being told where manufacturing facilities could be placed, gaining approval from regulation officials, and have every individual console inspected before being sold.

Now China has nixed all of these regulations and opened a new frontier of free-trade for video games consoles, completely overturning the decade-and-a-half ban.

Fallout Shelter will launch for Google Android mobile users on August 13, and will be available for free via the Google Play store. In its first two weeks of release for Apple iOS, the game became a top-downloaded game - and helped generate $5.1 million in revenue.

"Whether you're playing on Android or on iOS, Fallout Shelter will feature new game updates, including Mr. Handy as an all premium reward," according to a Bethesda blog post. "Have him collect resources inside your Vault, send him into the wasteland to collect loot, and defend your Vault from creatures and disasters, including all new Deathclaw invasions and Molerat infestations."

Expect Bethesda to support the game "for a long time," according to Bethesda - as the game studio is overwhelmed with support by iOS gamers.

The opening night of All Work All Play in Melbourne, Australia saw a few dozen of us nerds bustle with excitement at our 'full-time hobby' finally getting some mainstream screen time. Although the small turnout was a little disappointing, some familiar faces had woven themselves out of the wood work, these being the types of people you would have seen hunched over a CRT monitor in 2005, wearing baggy cargo shorts and sporting too much gel in their hair.

Although it kicked off with a rough start (technical difficulties), the end result was captivating for us enthusiasts. Following a few champions throughout the entire film, this ESL-led documentary honed in on the former director of pro gaming, Michal 'Carmac' Blicharz and Cloud 9, an underdog League of Legends team.

Following journeys both personal and on-stage, the production quality matched that Valve's 'Free to Play' and poised itself as a film that can educate and capture the imaginations of eSports enthusiasts experienced and new.

In what should come as a total surprise, Mortal Kombat X has topped NPD Group's sales rankings for video games at the retail level in the US for the first half of 2015. Considering the #2 title is Grand Theft Auto V, this is a huge scoop for Warner Bros., especially after the huge issues surrounding Batman: Arkham Knight.

Most of the games on the chart will be games you either own, or have heard of, but it's quite surprising to see Mortal Kombat X top the list. Here's the top 10 sales rankings for video games at retail for the first half of 2015, according to NPD Group:

343 Industries has revealed new info on the importance of teamwork in Halo 5: Guardians' campaign mode, underlining key mechanics and tweaks they've made along the way.

For the most part 343i has kept the standard Halo formula in tact for Halo 5, but this time around the game has a decidedly more strategic co-operative feel. Gone are the days of lone-wolfing it in Master Chief's boots: throughout the missions you'll be accompanied by three other Spartans all with their own attributes, Loadouts, and specialized HUD's.

"Your team is your weapon," reads the developers' new Halo Waypoint update.