Gaming - Page 1773

Over the last week or so, some gamers have been enjoying the alpha test of The Division, Ubisoft's ambitious new open-world title. NeoGAF user 'Theorry' has posted some screenshots from The Division alpha, which was exclusive to the Xbox One. The surprising thing is, even on the Xbox One, the game looks great.

Some of the 'reviews' of The Division alpha on Reddit tease that "just about everything. Graphics, combat, animations, immersion, sound... its all perfect". This user continued: "I especially love the combat. Me and my buddy just patrolled for hours because the small firefights we got into were so much fun. Doing the one mission over and over again never got old and always looking forward to that reward in the end was the topping on the cake". The user continued, with one of the more exciting teases from the game: "The simple animations of how they walk and vault over objects is so smooth. It feels like I AM this person and that is hard to do in a 3rd person game. I feel like an actual soldier where just how they hold the gun to when they slouch down when combat is near..you just feel like a freakinmarine in a real firefight (not that Ive been in one but I have seen some movies)".

Even though there were downsides, with the omission of flashlights in an overall darkly-themed game is weird. Not only that, but crouching is something you can't do in The Division just yet. We are only talking about an alpha, so we know it'll be in better form when it launches in 2016. The Reddit user also added that The Division is "a 10/10 in my book", adding that it was "probably the most fun I've had in a LONG time. It has potential toe be the greatest game I've ever played", which is a gigantic claim from the alpha. Other users said "I hope that I wont break any NDA by just saying that this game is just incredible. Also I am stunned that it looks that good on Xbox one, pc version will melt my face".

Just to remind gamers that hardware makers really aren't interested in anything but money, Sony has just been caught red-handed in a shameless price gouging maneuver. The Japanese console-maker magically raised the prices of select games offered in a new holiday promotion sale on the European PS Store, with price boosts up to £10 or more.

Sony's PlayStation Store platform is notorious for its flash sales and offers, but a recent promotion reveals Sony takes part in the age-old tactic of bumping up sale items to recoup losses. Sony's new holiday sale on the PlayStation European digital storefront lists specific titles as buy one get one free, however a good portion of these games--including The Order 1886 and Until Dawn--had their base price adjusted right before the sale went live.

A quick glance at PS Prices, a site that tracks price data across the PlayStation Store, reveals the bad news. Before the holiday BOGO sale went live, The Order 1886 was sitting at a comfortable £34.99, but quickly jumped by 10 quid to £44.99, or €62 Euros. The Order 1886 is listed for only $19.99 in the U.S., which translates to a paltry £13 (€18).

Aptly named 'Any Mod Any Weapon', this new master PC mod for Fallout 4 allows users to throw any combination of modifications onto any Fallout 4 weapon they please.

While mods are limited in Fallout 4, this special 'update' removes any previous limitations, with a strong warning from the developer stating that "it's really fun!" While this mod doesn't pretend to add extra gameplay depth, there's no storytelling and its certainly not going to hit you right in the feels, it's going to allow you to blow things up like you've never done before.

Available now on Nexusmods, this particular beauty already had 5,568 unique downloads at the time of writing this article, with users urged to make the most ridiculous weapons possible, as seen in the video above.

The NPD Group has put out their latest November 2015 report, highlighting that it was a good month for consoles. November was the best month for hardware sales on the Xbox One and PS4, with hardware sales growing 11% to $1.12 billion. This contributed a 2% rise in the overall industry, which hit $2.47 billion for the month.

NPD's Liam Callahan explains: "Growth was driven by console hardware, up 14 percent, which offset a 31 percent decline in portable hardware. November 2015 marked the best month ever in total unit sales for 8th generation consoles (Xbox One, PS4, and Wii U), surpassing sales of December 2014 (now second-highest), and November 2014 (now third-highest). Within console hardware sales there were dramatic differences by console generation as 8th generation console sales rose by 22 percent in dollars, 7th generation sales dropped by 76 percent in dollars, which is sharper than the year-to-date decline of 57 percent. In November 2015, 8th generation sales had 93 percent share of overall hardware sales, a 9 percentage point increase from last November".

Callahan also said that the PS4 and Xbox One sales are selling quicker than the Xbox 360 and PS3, where he added: "After 25 months, the combined sales for the PS4 and the XBO are 47 percent higher than the combined sales for 25 months of PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware sales".

Studio Wildcard has begun talking more and more about the Xbox One version of its CryEngine-powered ARK: Survival Evolved, which will be released into the Game Preview mode (the Early Access equivalent on the Xbox) next week.

Jesse Rapczak, co-founder of Studio Wildcard, has said that the studio is currently hitting 30-45FPS on the Xbox One. This isn't too bad, considering that even the enthusiast GPUs on the PC struggle with the game on high detail. Rapczak took to Twitter, where he said "depends on lots of things but usually between 30-45 FPS at launch" when pressed about the performance on the Xbox One.

The Xbox One specific optimization will bleed over to the PC in the near future, where Rapczak said that the Xbox One version of the game has more optimizations than the PC version right now. Someone asked Rapczak when the PC version of ARK would receive the optimizations, to which he said the Xbox One optimizations were "coming back to PC soon" and that "we'll keep you posted".

It's not like we didn't already know this, but there will be another generation of consoles - with reports of the Xbox Two and PS5 featuring 5x the performance per watt, we didn't need the boss of Xbox to tell us there's another console coming - but he did anyway.

During an interview with The Verge, Phil Spencer said: "No, I fully expect that you'll see another console from us [...] Our best customers are Xbox console customers, and I want to keep those people engaged both on the Xbox One and anything we might do in the future. I'm 100 percent committed to that". Spencer added: "I don't want to dilute what the Xbox console customer feels. I want to expand what we're able to do for more customers. I love that console experience. It's obviously the core of what Xbox is about, and Xbox One is our most important gaming device inside the company. There's no doubt about that".

It was his talk about the Halo franchise on Windows 10 that has my attention, with Spencer saying: "It's being deliberate. So yes. We will, of course, play a critical role [on Windows 10], as I think that we're an important IP for the company. It's doing the right thing at the right time".

Even though the next-gen consoles, currently teased as the Xbox Two and PS5, aren't expected for a few more years - we're now finding out how long this generation will last for. AMD has said that it will continue to supply APUs for the Xbox One and PS4, with a life cycle til 2019.

AMD also expects that 2016 will see increased console sales over 2015, which will help their bottom line. Considering that APU sales to Microsoft and Sony are a large chunk of their revenue, investors are interested to see where AMD will be taking it in the future. It wasn't long ago that we reported that the next-gen consoles would feature 5x the performance per watt over this generation, with an increased focus on VR.

AMD expects to see a 7-year cycle for the current-gen consoles, with the Xbox One and PS4 going on sale in 2013, it should work out that 2019 is when they'll die - personally, I'd like to see them in the ground in 2016 with next-gen units released and replacing them with full 1080p 60FPS power and VR support. But, we all know that won't happen.

Steam trading is an extremely lucrative business for hackers. If you know what you're doing, you can make a pretty penny off peddling digital Team Fortress 2 or CS:GO gear across Steam. In an effort to thwart hackers, the digital distribution giant has introduced a new security system that changes Steam trading altogether.

Steam is inundated with scammers. Valve notes that some 77,000 accounts become compromised every month. The promise of ill-gotten gains attracts hackers and digital miscreants the same way that the gold rush pulled in thousands of greedy miners. In a recent blog post, Valve announced a controversial new measure that will slow down the trading system in an attempt to improve security.

The measure is called "Steam trade hold system", also known as trading escrows, which sees Valve act as a middleman between each individual trade. With the new system, digital items are no longer instantly transferred when a trade is complete, but instead are verified through Valve. Users can get around the waiting period by using the Steam Guard mobile app, which instantly verifies identities via two-step authentication.

CCP Games has announced that it has hired Electronic Arts veteran Maria Sayans into a newly created position, with Sayans now CCP Games' chief customer office. The company recently secured a $30 million investment to boost its 'leadership position' in the VR market.

In her role, Sayans will oversee every aspect of CCP Games' relationship with its customers, but she'll also be in control of their marketing, web development and customer service teams in Reykjavik, Shanghai, Atlanta, and Newcastle. Sayans will spearhead a new CCP office in London, will be reporting directly to company CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson.

Pétursson talked about securing Sayans, where he said: "As we embark on this new chapter in CCP's story, it's really important to us to further build on the fantastic relationship we've built with our customers. Maria will help us unify our communications across teams and studios so we can better enable our players to realize their wildest dreams".

We said it broke our hearts, but it's better than getting our hopes up - Half-Life 3 rumors begin to fly, but Valve said that the entry in the Steam Database had nothing to do with the company that can't count to three.

An eager fan reached out to Valve's Marc Laidlaw, asking if he could clarify a few things. Laidlaw responded, saying that the entry for Half-Life 3 had nothing to do with Valve, so another developer or publisher has most likely created it. Conspiracy theories have started, saying that Laidlaw is in damage control, fanning the flames that Half-Life 3 is coming soon.

While some people say that Half-Life 3 isn't coming out ever, I think Valve is waiting until the HTC Vive is here, and then they're going to unveil it as the perfect system seller for their VR headset - as well as Steam Machines, SteamOS, Steam Box, and the rest of the hardware they've got coming out in 2016.