Gaming News - Page 1778

We're not hearing much about Aliens: Colonial Marines other than its abysmal reviews - but there are some out there voicing their opinions on Gearbox Software's latest flop.

I purchased the game after watching videos months ago, getting just a little excited that we might have another cool game to play - but after the first few minutes of playing it, I felt like I had been robbed of my $50. The demos shown off months ago were of much better quality in terms of graphics and physics within the game, with the final version feeling like it has gone back in development time.

The video above does a very good job of walking you through some of the different parts that have been changed - from the dynamic lighting to the explosions and pre-scripted scenes. I ran the game on my EyeFinity setup and it is so poor with its field of view it's unplayable.

Sony have said we'll see the future on February 20, but before that we're seeing leaks of a purported PlayStation 4 prototype controller. The photo comes courtesy of an unknown source who sent it in to Destructoid.

As you can see, it looks quite familiar to the current controllers, but the directional pad buttons are placed further apart - with what seems like a touchscreen slapped in between. If you can see that glowing part on top of the controller, this could be a Move-related part of the new controller.

There's also a small button to the left of the touchscreen, in the upper right hand corner of the d-pad. This could be the rumored share button, or something associated with the Move part on top of the controller, or the touchscreen. Just above the PlayStation button in the bottom center, looks to be a speaker and underneath the PlayStation button is an audio jack for some headphone connectivity.

Next-gen consoles are nearly here, not including the Nintendo Wii U, and we're hearing that the next-gen Xbox might not be capable of playing used games. Just how much does this piss off gamers? Well, according to the GameStop CFO, a lot.

Rob Lloyd, CFO of GameSpot during his recent speech at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference said that 60% of customers said they would not buy the next-gen consoles if they meant they couldn't play used, or second hand games. Lloyd told those at the event that consumers like the ability to play pre-owned games, as well as having the portability and physicality in games.

Not having these abilities, such as buying a pre-owned game, would stop consumers - nearly 60% of them - from buying a next-gen console that isn't capable of playing used games. Lloyd noted that around 4% of GameStop's used game sales are for games that had been released in the last 60 days - this is a huge fact for used games.

If you've been waiting around for the Skyrim DLC to come to PlayStation 3, your wait can finally come to an end. Over the next three weeks, Sony will be releasing one DLC pack per week. First up for release is Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC which is available for only $9.99 for the first week. After which, it will set you back $19.99.

Users will be able to pick up Hearthfire next week, so stay tuned for news about when that is released. The PlayStation blog has more details on the Dragonborn DLC, since it has been a while since it originally released on other platforms:

Crytek, the developer behind Crysis are no stranger to wanting to push free-to-play (F2P) titles, but it looks like we should expect the entire company to shift over to F2P titles in the next 3-5 years. Company CEO, Cevat Yerli told VentureBeat last week:

We decided five or six years ago that we want to marry the quality of triple-A games with the business model of free-to-play, and out of that position, Gface and Warface were born. And at that time, we decided some other games, in some of our other studios, would head in this direction.

At the moment, F2P titles aren't anything to really write home about - sure, there are some great ones - but they don't compete with the likes of the big AAA games. Crytek on the other hand, is willing to throw big money at F2P titles, with production budgets of between $10 million and $30 million in order to help them actually compete on the AAA playing field.

EA's Origin game management software (a competitor against Valve's Steam) features some of the biggest titles in PC gaming and up until now, it has been limited to Windows PC users only. That all changed today as EA officially announced Origin for Mac (Alpha).

In a release this morning, Origin said "With Origin for Mac we'll be able to offer the same Origin experience and features that define our PC app - cloud storage, auto-patching, friends list, and more". While the alpha testing is open to the public, don't expect to download Battlefield 3 just yet. The game store is blocked until the official launch.

You may notice that the Origin Store tab is not yet live in this alpha trial; rest assured, the store will be live-with a great catalog of EA and partner titles-when we formally release the client. Additionally, we're not yet able to provide the same one-click streaming live to Twitch in Origin for Mac (we'll be adding this as soon as possible).

I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but I believe we've seen the recent delay of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V so it can be released on next-gen consoles. Yes, that's what I think and I'm sticking with it. I talked about it happening all the way back in April of last year, where I said

I'd be impressed if Rockstar pushed it back and unleashed next-gen GTA upon us with next-gen consoles, and showed us a ported version for current-gen consoles. Now that, would be very, very cool.

I said this because Grand Theft Auto is one of the, if not the biggest franchise on consoles today. The franchise has grown out of control, and is so big that it is truly a system seller. Why release one of the biggest games ever on current-gen consoles if next-gen consoles are only months away? So you read it here, we think Rockstar and Take-Two are pushing back GTA V to release it on next-gen consoles.

J.J. Abrams already has his finger in a bunch of franchises, Mission Impossible, Star Wars, Star Trek and countless TV shows, but what about gaming? Well, Polygon have the scoop on the director and TV guru reportedly working with Valve, yes - that Valve.

The news comes from the 2013 DICE Summit, where Abrams announced with co-founder of Valve, Gabe Newell, that they two gods of media were in discussions together about making a video game together. Abrams said "there's an idea we have for a game that we'd like to work with Valve on". Newell adds "We're super excited about that and we also want to talk about making movies, either a Portal movie or a Half-Life movie."

At the end of the on-stage talk, Newell said that the DICE lecture was just a public rehash of discussions behind closed doors with Abrams, where he added "what we are actually doing here, we are recapitulating a series of conversations going on."

Markus 'Notch' Persson, the guy behind Minecraft made approximately $100 million last year, not bad for what most people consider an "indie" game. Making $100 million pits him directly against mode huge games, and even nipping on the heels of AAA titles.

Notch was answering some questions through a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), where readers unearthed (geddit?) some information on him, and how he was able to acquire so much cash, so quickly. Notch isn't too sure what to do with it all, as would most people that aren't born into money, but he'd like to provide for his family and finally get his drivers license and maybe buy a car, but he's still a bit uneasy about it all, he wrote:

I grew up in a relatively poor family, but once I got a decent job, I never really had to worry about money. My hobbies were playing games and programming, so there wasn't any real drain. I could eat out when I wanted to, and go to the movies without having to save up for it. I still had to save up for trips and to be able to buy computers or consoles, but that just felt normal.

It would appear that detailed specifications of the Xbox 720's GPU have been leaked online. While there is no guarantee that these specifications are authentic, they are along the lines of what we would expect from the next-generation console. Couple that with the fact we are only a few months away from the expected announcement and these specifications get a bit more credence.

As you can see in the picture above, the GPU is said to have an 800MHz clock speed. The GPU reportedly features 32MB of embedded ESRAM, similar to the EDSRAM on the 360. However, this ESRAM is said to be free of some of the many restrictions placed on the 360's ESDRAM.

The GPU is also reportedly able to do 2x, 4s, and 8x MSAA antaliasing, which means picture quality should be vastly improved in games. The Xbox 720 is widely expected to be announced by Microsoft in June at E3, which is a couple of months after Sony is expected to announce the PlayStation 4.