Gaming News - Page 1797

The online PC gaming industry will grow from $24.4 billion this year up to an estimated $30.7 billion in 2017, the performance marketing agency Ad2Games and analyst firm Newzoo recently reported. The PC and MMO game market will account for 31 percent of international video game revenue, with Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America expected to see 95 percent of growth over the next three years.

Trying to expand to attract - and retain - new gamers proves to be extremely expensive, with costs as low as 37 cents up to $5.63 per user, the report indicates.

The sector will see 7.9 percent year-over-year growth over the next three years, while free-to-play video games continue to woo new gamers. These types of games

Maniac Mansion is one of those games I will forever cherish, with the point-and-click adventure game being one of the big Lucasfilm Games of their time. Well, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick are now making something they're calling "the true spiritual successor" to Maniac Mansion, called Thimbleweed Park.

The developing duo are taking Thimbleweed Park to Kickstarter, hoping to hit $375,000 in required funds to get the point-and-click adventure off the ground. When explaining the game, they say it "cuts to the core of what made classic point-and-click adventure games so special ... It's deep, it's challenging, it's funny, it's everything you loved about adventure games". On Kickstarter, it says: "It's like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you've never played before".

Thimbleweed Park will tell the tale of a pair of "washed-up detectives" who are in charge of an investigation into a death in Thimbleweed Park that "once boasted an opulent hotel, a vibrant business district and the state's largest pillow factory, but now teeters on the edge of oblivion and continues to exist for no real reason".

Electronic Arts will give gamers a break from the traditional warfare featured in the Battlefield franchise next year, but already is excited about the next title in 2016. The new game was announced last month and will be a military-focused game that is reportedly a "fun, new Battlefield," according to an Electronic Arts executive.

"That will be a return to a Battlefield military-style game; more to come on that," said Blake Jorgensen, EA CFO, in a recent statement.

Meanwhile, EA CEO Andrew Wilson wants to "give Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline players more time to enjoy these games and immerse themselves in a game, the live service, and the community," when explaining EA's decision to release Battlefield games as they are finished.

SCEA head Shawn Layden recently said online harassment in gaming is "completely unacceptable," and is one of the highest profile executives to speak out against cyber harassment. Layden also complemented his own company's stance on women in gaming, saying Sony is "best in class," in its efforts to get women more involved in the gaming industry.

"Over the past couple of months, there's been a small group of people who have been doing really awful things," Layden recently noted. "They have been making some people's lives miserable, and they are tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It's not right."

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo offered public statements, published by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), speaking out against harassment in the gaming world.

Bungie is currently pushing out a new patch for Destiny, bringing the open-world title up to version 1.0.3. The new patch has the developer baking in fan-requested features, such as a beta for voice chat when in the matchmaking screen. The full patch notes are available on Bungie's website.

The problem is, if you're playing Destiny, you're going to need to leave your game in order to download, and install the patch - something that weighs in at a very connection-straining 2.44GB. Bungie has released this patch, as the start of a series of updates that will end in the first DLC for Destiny, The Dark Below, being released on December 9.

Bungie has also doubled the number of bounty slots, upping the number from five to 10, provided gamers with the ability to preview emblems, and armor shaders, too. The new update also makes some slight changes to Destiny's Iron Banner: Fireteam leaders, which now need to be at level 10. Players will also need to be within three levels of their opponents in order to be competitive. Players below level 20 will also need to be with a Fireteam leader in order to enter. There's also a 10-15% increase in the incidence of public events, descriptions for skull modifiers, as well as the usual slew of fixes, bugs and other bits and pieces.

While many gamers across the world are looking forward of their copy of Dragon Age: Inquisition, those in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will not. EA has cancelled pre-orders from these countries and started refunded money to those who placed an order for physical and digital copies.

EA said in its EA Help website: "In order to avoid a breach of local content laws, EA has withdrawn Dragon Age: Inquisition from sale in India and the game is no longer available for pre-order. Customers who pre-ordered the game will be contacted directly and will be fully refunded."

EA regional marketing director Simon Smith-Wright said, "The current action we've taken only affects Dragon Age Inquisition." It should be noted that EA did not give any proper reasons for refusing pre-orders from these countries. Later, nation-wide distributor Milestone Interactive confirmed speculation made by many gamers that it was due to the options of engaging in same-sex and bi-sexual relationships. For those who don't know, India has a law under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1861 declares that having sex between two consenting adults of the same gender punishable by law.

It looks like myself, and countless other gamers aren't the only ones pissed off with Ubisoft right now, with a former Minister and Presidential Candidate in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, denouncing Assassin's Creed: Unity as "propaganda" that favors the "favors the narrative of France's ruling elite over the revolutionaries" reports Polygon.

Mélenchon spoke on French radio, with the Daily Telegraph translating him, where he said: "[Unity] presents an image of hatred of the Revolution, hatred of the people, hatred of the republic which is rampant in the far-right milieu". He added a description of Marie-Antoinette as "that cretin, who is celebrated as a poor little rich girl" in AC:U.

He also said: "The man who was our liberator at a certain moment of the Revolution, because the Revolution lasted a long time, Robespierre, is presented as a monster. It is propaganda against the people, the people who are [portrayed as] barbarians, bloodthirsty savages. In 1789 there were the poor aristocrats, and they are presented as fine upstanding people".

Far Cry 4 has launched in the last 24 hours, with Ubisoft already patching up the first-person shooter on the PC to version 1.2. The patch includes some things that should've made the launch version, such as support for NVIDIA's SLI technology. The day one patch on the PS4 brings it up to version 1.01, and a 600MB download for PlayStation owners. The PC version on the other hand, had two patches to bring it up to version 1.2.

What I don't understand is, Ubisoft worked closely with NVIDIA on Far Cry 4 (and Assassin's Creed: Unity) but SLI support was missing from the game as it says right there in the patch notes that the patch "added SLI support". For one of the biggest releases of the year, and a game NVIDIA had invested heavily into, one would think SLI testing would've been done very early on and baked into earlier code of the game - not having to provide SLI support after the game was released.

The patch notes are quite lengthy, but we have them listed below (or in the for you:

Nintendo continues to take shots at the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4, as all three console giants prepare for a 2014 Christmas holiday shopping season slugfest.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Nintendo continues to speak out against rival consoles, trying to promote the cheaper device.

"The good news, for us, is that we're presenting the best value right now in new home consoles," said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America president. "$299, includes two games; it's a compelling proposition for consumers this holiday. For us the message is simple; you want to play these great games, you want to have these fantastic experiences, you have to upgrade to the Wii U."

Ubisoft has had a hard week, with the troubled launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity causing some serious headaches, but now Ubisoft North American President, Laurent Detoc, has sat down with IGN to have a chat, with some interesting things being said. The thing is, this chat happened nearly a year ago, so don't be fooled that this was a recent chat.

Detoc told IGN that the company would break its annualized schedule for Assassin's Creed "if it's not good enough". Detoc continued: "If we think we've ended up with a 70 percent Assassin's Creed game, we're not going to ship it. That damages the brand. I'm not going to give you the names of products, because you know them as well as I do, but if you start to make games at 70 percent, even with a big brand, eventually people are going to change their mind about that brand. They won't want it anymore. That's what saves the recurrence. There are 30 million people or so who have been playing Grand Theft Auto. Last year, to pick a round number, we had about 10 million people playing Assassin's Creed. When we come up with an Assassin's Creed the next year, there's another 10 million brand new people who might be interested in the new setting, because of the new history, or the new naval battles and the pirates. It's a variation on gameplay from even last year".

"You bring something fresh, but you have to bring quality too," he added. "There's a lot of people who can play your game. We have fans who come back to the franchise and we're very thankful for them, because we think we're giving them a good game to play, and they give back to us when they buy it. But there's a lot more people out there who we can sell games to. I like to think that we don't delay everything. It's the reason for the delay that really matters. It's a lot easier to predict the release of an Assassin's Creed, because we understand what it takes. It's a lot easier to predict a franchise that has more recurrence, for sure, than a new IP".