Gaming - Page 1815

Steam is an oft-hacked platform for a number of reasons. The internal economy and lack of proper controls for trading the strangely valuable items makes it a very sweet target for scammers and hackers alike. Valve is committed to helping stop that from happening and is rolling out some new ways to help prevent you from outright losing your inventory.

On March 9th, a Steam update will add a number of new features to the trading mechanism to make it more difficult for scammers to steal from their intended victims. These changes are in response to the nearly 77,000 accounts that tend to be hacked or otherwise compromised in some fashion each month.

And for goodness sake, use Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, it's relatively easy to setup and it helps tremendously. 2FA is a very effective tool in preventing both hacking as well as enabling a safer and more effective trading environment.

Star Wars has been a very successful franchise for EA this year with Battlefront alone having shipped more than 13 million copies worldwide since it released. Star Wars: The Old Republic has seen a revival in its player base thanks, in part, to a return to the highly successful narrative driven gameplay they reintroduced with the Knights of the Fallen Empire. Galaxy of Heroes, too, has been a smashing success.

And now EA wants to start teasing what they're planning on doing next with the franchise. During the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco, the companies CFO, Blake Jorgensen, talked elusively about how they plan on moving forward. "We've got a couple of things up our sleeve that we haven't talked about yet but you'll probably see them teased over the next six months," Jorgensen said. We already have an idea about the direction they're headed, with an Amy Hennig directed open-world RPG and even potential sequels to Battlefront itself.

The strong sales of Battlefront, regardless of the actual numbers of people playing at any given time, has show EA just how strong a franchise it can be for them, hopefully something that'll resonate and help to invigorate the development of well thought-out games that are true to the spirit of Star Wars.

In a move that certainly surprises no one but disappoints everyone, EA has officially confirmed that Mass Effect: Andromeda won't be releasing in 2016. The "best and largest ever" Mass Effect game will instead be releasing in the first quarter of 2017, which is from January 1 through March 31, 2017.

During a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen detailed the company's roadmap for 2016 and beyond. "We've got a great year ahead... we've got our Battlefield first-person shooter game coming in the third quarter, and our third-party title that Respawn, our partner, built, it's called TItanfall, it's the second title that they brought into that brand. We have our Mirror's Edge runner game this first quarter, and then we have Mass Effect, which is a sci-fi action game, in our fourth quarter. So big year ahead and we're pretty excited."

As EA's fiscal year begins with Q1 on December 15 and ends in Q4 on March 31, we can surmise that ME: Andromeda will be out by March of next year. Not so long ago we predicted that Andromeda would be delayed due to the departure of key talent, including Senior Development Director Chris Wynn and lead writer Chris Schlerf.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End will be a cornerstone of Sony's massive PlayStation 4 dominance this year, but the game has been delayed... again. Uncharted 4 was delayed from 2015 into 2016, then it was delayed into April 2016, and now it has been delayed again - until May 10.

President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Shawn Layden, explained on the PlayStation Blog: "In an effort to meet the considerable worldwide demand, and to ensure that all gamers worldwide have the opportunity to play the game on day one, we have chosen to postpone the launch of the game by two weeks to allow for extra manufacturing time. We know this news might be disappointing, and we are sorry to have to make you wait a little longer to play Naughty Dog's latest. The good news is that the game is phenomenal - we are fully confident that it will be worth the wait and the team at Naughty Dog is eager as ever for you to experience Nathan Drake's final adventure".

There will also be an Uncharted 4 open beta multiplayer that kicks off this weekend, which will give Naughty Dog and Sony a chance to test out the game's servers for its launch, hopefully, on May 10.

If there's one huge area where consoles lose out to PCs, it would be that they're not upgradeable. Console owners and fans would disagree, saying that it creates an ecosystem that allows Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to develop, and let third-party studios develop games for hardware that is identical between consoles. So, if one person owns a PS4 - the other 25 million+ have the exact same hardware.

Well, according to Xbox boss Phil Spencer, this could all change in the future. Optional hardware purchases could happen, and they would be different to the "optional" microtransactions games have today, except you'd actually get value out of spending money. Speaking with Polygon, Spencer said: "When you look at the console space, I believe we will see more hardware innovation in the console space than we've ever seen".

He continued: "You'll actually see us come out with new hardware capability during a generation allowing the same games to run backward and forward compatible because we have a Universal Windows Application running on top of the Universal Windows Platform that allows us to focus more and more on hardware innovation without invalidating the games that run on that platform". So that makes sense, as we really do need hardware innovation in the console space, as it has been dead for 10 years now - we're still in the 720p-ish 30FPS-ish world, and that's shocking, as it's 2016 - not 1996.

Rise of the Tomb Raider has been enjoying huge sales on the PC, where it has smashed the sales of the Xbox One version - but what about the rumored DX12 patch for the game?

Well, it looks like it could be closer than we thought, with Microsoft teasing that Rise of the Tomb Raider was running in DX12 at its Xbox Showcase Media Event. Microsoft confirmed: "DirectX 12 Showcase: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Ashes of the Singularity, King of Wushu - Square Enix, Snail, and Stardock showcased their latest DirectX 12 enhancements for Rise of the Tomb Raider, King of Wushu, and Ashes of the Singularity on Origin PCs, iBUYPOWER Revolt 2, and Maingear PCs".

They continued: "Ashes of the Singularity is taking advantage the DirectX 12 multi-adapter technology, allowing PCs to use multiple GPUs, even from different manufacturers. Rise of the Tomb Raider was playable for the first time at the Xbox Spring Showcase running DirectX 12".

Killer Instinct is coming over to the PC through Windows 10, with Microsoft confirming the news earlier today. The game will launch on March 29, and thanks to a new FAQ posted on the official website, we know that if you buy the Xbox One version of Killer Instinct, you won't lose all of the content you've purchased.

If you want to keep your existing Killer Instinct content when you shift over from the Xbox One to Windows 10, you must "receive the Season 3 game update, available starting March 29, 2016. Simply login to your Xbox One console and launch Killer Instinct. Ensure you're connected to Xbox Live and follow the prompts to receive the update. Once the update is complete, launch Killer Instinct fully. Once the update is complete and you have launched Killer Instinct again, you will be able to login into Windows 10 to access your owned and earned content".

As for the minimum and recommended requirements, this is what you'll need:

The Xbox One Preview Program is getting a pretty substantial update pushed out tomorrow. This update is finally giving you the ability to buy those Xbox 360 backwards compatible games straight through the Xbox One store itself.

If you're lucky enough to have signed up and been chosen for the honor of this program, then you'll also be able to enjoy much larger Party Chat rooms, with up to 16 people able to tell you how much you such at one time. You'll also have the ability to include each person individually into your Twitch broadcast, though each person has the ability to decline should they want to. The party leader can also mute the voice of anyone who opted-in to being part of the broadcast, just in case.

And in case you want to show off the things you've accomplished with the nearly 30 million hours of Xbox 360 in Xbox One gaming time, then you'll also be able to share your Xbox 360 achievements in your Xbox One activity feed, which is only natural given that you can play those games on the console now. So why not celebrate all of your achievements properly.

Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness is being developed primarily for the PlayStation 3, but that doesn't mean that the PlayStation 4 version, which is the only version that'll be available outside the US, has to suffer because of that. Some of the differences between the two versions have been outlined by Square Enix and tri-Ace.

On the latest Star Ocean Program broadcast, they talked about the fact that the framerate would be targeting 60FPS in most cases at 1080P on the PS4, though some of the more challenging scenes might push it more towards 30FPS. The resolution won't scale, though and will remain the same regardless. The PS3 is limited to 720P, 30FPS and far less visual fidelity compared to the big brother port.

Although it's a port, tri-Ace is working hard on ensuring that the graphics are actually taking advantage of the 1152 GCN cores available. It won't be a direct port, with higher resolution textures, more fluid animations, and a higher LOD. The full list of differences is below. At least initially it sounds like they're taking care to not make the mistakes of many ports that have preceded this one.

Well, not it's actually official. After the Seattle Times jumped the gun by just a few hours, Microsoft has announced that Forza Motorsport 6: Apex will be available this Spring absolutely for free.

The game will more than take advantage of the kind of power inherit in PC's. Under the hood the engine will be flying on top of DirectX 12 to help maximize performance. That means we won't be limited to only 1080p and 30FPS. Turn 10 studios does promise the ability to scale very well with different hardware so everyone can still have a good experience. The Xbox One version ran pretty well given its limited hardware.

Just what exactly is this new Forza game supposed to be? Well, Turn 10 says that it's a sort of "curated" version of the original that includes only 60 cars and six different courses to race about on. That's not much, but the price is right and it'll help introduce new, PC only players into the franchise. I'm curious if they'll take advantage of the extra horse-power and improve the graphics and physics even more than they likely already have.