Gaming - Page 1887

If you're running a previous generation console and are looking for a few cheap titles to place in your collection before the new year rolls around, Xbox are offering up a plethora of deals running right until the clock hits 12:00 am on the 1st of January.

Whether you're interested in FIFA 15 for only $29.99 or Game of Thrones for $2.49, this comprehensive list has games on offer for almost any console fan.

There are a few 'filler' titles on the list, however Microsoft have done a fairly good job of offering up some solid gaming offerings at reasonable prices. If full games aren't you thing however, you can purchase things like the World of Tanks Currency Mega Pack and other similar items.

Fan-made mods are simply breathtaking in this age of gaming. We've recently seen things such as the Skyrim Enderal mod adding a whole new game within a game, another Skyrim fan-update offering 4K resolution textures, bug fixes and more and various community made Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competitive maps and add-on's. All of these additions are what help keeps a title active, strong and relevant for months, or years, to come.

Thanks to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes coming out on PC, some modders have taken to the model of developer Hideo Kojima that is on offer - adding him as the main playable character of the campaign. Thanks to the game engines capabilities, multiple models can be implemented as the main character on offer.

Stay tuned for more game modding news. It seems that we can only go up from here.

Known globally for their massive $78,000 season 17 incorporating American and European teams, ESEA have decided to further expand to the Asia-Pacific. This inclusion will see the prize pot increase to a sum of $100,000.

European teams being included in ESEA's online league and finals is still a rather new addition, seeing this competition gain massive global respect as many of the top CS:GO teams are located in European nations. It seems that the inclusion of Asia-Pacific is helping ESEA solidify their place as one of the world's largest tournament providers.

Along with this new region inclusion, ESEA are offering up a new recruitment section to assist teams and players in joining together for tournaments in preparation for their season 18 signup closure, set to happen on January the 5th next year. Over the next few weeks ESEA will be announcing further rule sets, map rotations and other essential tournament information. If you're interested in competing in this event, you'll have to head to their registration page before the cut-off date.

If you're not already aware, the Steam Sales Tracker is a brilliant tool, offering up an easy-to-see list of the current sales on offer, their time left of sale, the communities verdict on the game and also a handy extension to help link it to your personal steam account.

Steam are doing what they do best, churning out yet another sale period and drying up many other-enthusiastic gamers wallets. We've had a quick browse and consolidated some of the coolest game specials on offer right now.

As according to the Steam Sale tracker 'Community's Choice' section, the hottest titles available today include a 66 percent saving on Mercenary Kings, the indie side-scrolling puzzle game Gunpoint for only $4.99 USD and the addictive and simply designed LUFTRAUSERS game for half price.

Boyd Multerer, the engineer who was responsible on leading development for Xbox Live and the XNA game development tools for Xbox, has left Microsoft after working with the Redmond-based giant for 17 years. Multerer announced he was leaving the Xbox team on Twitter, where he said "Goodbye Microsoft. It was a good run. Xbox was Great! Time to do something new."

Multerer joined the company in 1997, where in 2000 he was hired to lead development on the online side of the original Xbox console, which was called Xbox Online at the time. Multerer then hired the Xbox Live development team, leading the design of what would soon become Xbox Live. He not only lead the design, but the direction and implementation of Xbox Live, too. Multerer was the very first person to use Xbox Live, where he emphasized security and anti-cheating measures to be installed.

The engineer would later turn into the product manager on XNA, in order to meet "the pent-up demand of independent game developers" and build "the first open marketplace on a console." The all-rounder engineer eventually becvame the director of development for Xbox, where he was part of the Xbox One team and overlooked technical design and development of Microsoft's then next-gen Xbox. During a technical roundtable discussion, Multerer said "The last one, the box was fixed," explaining that the Xbox One can access "a growing number of transistors that are not that far away" that will allow the console push out "bigger world's, and take some of the things that are normally done locally and push them out."

Sony can't catch a break lately, with their internal servers being breached by North Korea - well, at least the United States government and FBI is claiming they did - while their PlayStation Network was slammed down on Christmas Day by hacking group The Lizard Squad.

Sony's PSN service still experiencing "intermittent connectivity issues," something the company has taken to its PlayStation Knowledge Center to talk about. Some are able to sign onto their PS3, PS4 and PS Vita devices, but aren't able to sign into, or access the PlayStation Store, or get their Friends list to display.

The company is now asking gamers to attempt tweaking their MTU settings in their console's network configuration options, which could fix the problems they're having accessing the PlayStation Network.

Are you able to log onto Microsoft's Xbox Live service? Days after being dropped by the Lizard Squad on Christmas morning, it appears problems are surfacing again. On Saturday afternoon, the Microsoft service website saying Xbox Live is down once again, with Xbox One and Xbox 360 gamers confirming the news.

Although the Xbox Live Status website reports the core services, purchase and content usage, website, TV music and video, and social gaming aspects are reported to be working again - many users are reporting they are unable to game and access content.

Multiplayer titles such as Destiny and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare require active Internet service, but titles such as Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age: Inquisition - which are largely played in single-player - still access third-party server connections.

Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network are clawing their way back to full functionality, a couple of days after crippling distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by the Lizard Squad hacking group.

The Xbox Live service, which has almost 50 million global users, was working significantly better by Friday evening - but the PlayStation Network, supporting almost 110 million users, still had significant problems, preventing users from logging on.

In a tweet issued Saturday morning, Sony had this to say: "Update: PS4, PS3, and Vita network services are gradually coming back online - thanks for your patience." A follow-up statement noted: "We are seeing reduced reports of network issues. We'll continue to monitor."

The misery for console gamers stretched into a second day, following a suspected distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack launched by the Lizard Squad hacking group. Microsoft Xbox Live is working, sort of, with some gaming functionality still limited - and Sony PlayStation's online service is still reportedly down.

As frustration continues to mount, especially towards Sony, it would appear the Lizard Squad's efforts to disrupt Christmas - with millions of console gamers expected to boot up their Xbox One or PS4 consoles for the first time, or load new games - was a success for the hacker group.

Despite Kim Dotcom providing lifetime vouchers to his MegaPrivacy cloud storage service to Lizard Squad members, Microsoft and Sony still struggled to resolve network problems following the DDoS attacks.

Techland was aiming for 1080p 60FPS for their upcoming zombie survival shooter 'Dying Light' but the developer has locked things in at 30FPS instead, something that the developer says will provide a "perfectly smooth, gameplay-tailored performance."

The developer has said that a stable 30FPS is better than a varying frame rate, especially for a game where you jump between rooftops, climb buildings and more. Techland has said that the development team considers a consistent frame rate is better for the in-game environments of Dying Light. When talking with GamingBolt, the Lead Game Designer of Dying Light, Maciej Binkowski, would be 1080p 30FPS for both the PS4 and Xbox One.

He reiterated the fact that Dying Light is 30FPS on both consoles, saying "Yes. They're both locked at 30 FPS. We did so much testing and optimizing and eventually came to the conclusion that we needed to lock at 30 FPS to ensure a smooth, fluid experience." Binkowski also mentioned that Dying Light will feature a Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing (SMAA) T2X solution, something that will smooth out the graphics in the game, which should hide the various jaggies. He added "We're using SMAA T2X according to our super brainy hardware guys. That's all I know."