Gaming - Page 905

Microsoft introduced their Kinect sensor for the Xbox, if you can believe it... 7 years ago, selling 35 million units in a time when Nintendo was killing it with their super-popular Wii console.

After a few years, Kinect 2.0 was introduced as a central part of the Xbox One, until gamers completely rejected it. Back in 2014, Microsoft stopped bundling Kinect with the Xbox One, and then it slowly died, and is now officially over.

Microsoft's head of Xbox Devices Marketing, Matthew Lapsen, said: "When we introduced Xbox One, we designed it to have the best experience with the Kinect. That was our goal with the Xbox One launch, but like all product launches, you monitor over time, you learn and adjust".

According to NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella, who wades in the vast sea of video game sales data, there's no evidence that loot boxes are having adverse effects on game sales.

Following the big controversy surrounding Shadow of War's optional war chest microtransactions, enthusiast gamers have pushed back en masse against "exploitative anti-consumer practices" of loot boxes, which typically power gaming's biggest billion dollar titles, calling for boycotts of games that use them. But there appears to be a disconnect between enthusiast gamers and everyday consumers: there's no evidence that the inclusion of lootboxes are causing game sales to dive--but the reverse is also true.

In a recent interview with Games Industry.biz, NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella said that controversy hasn't affected sales potential of games with loot boxes. "I would not say that the presence of loot boxes causes games to sell at higher levels than games without loot boxes. What [this week's] release does suggest is that the loot box or microtransactions controversy has not yet resulted in clear noticeable limitations of the sales potential of the games with [those mechanics]."

Despite being embroiled in a huge lootbox controversy that kicked off tons of frustration in the gaming sphere, Middle-earth: Shadow of War is quite popular among consumers.

Shadow of War's online service-based hook appears to be working quite well: the game has over 1.5 million active users worldwide across all platforms. In an era where player count is extremely important for engagement monetization, this is a boon for WB Games and Monolith Productions. The developer also shared some other metrics, confirming that 3.46 million player forts have been sieged, which pretty much proves the huge online multiplayer mode was actually a good idea.

We're not sure how many copies Shadow of War has sold just yet, but I'm betting it's an extremely popular game that will accrue WB Games a nice bundle. While the game has been review bombed on Steam because of the lootbox issue, there's a big disconnect between enthusiast gamers and everyday consumers who buy video games--the latter of which are far more likely to buy a game simply because they're interested rather than boycotting it to take a stand.

Psyonix has teamed up with WB Interactive Entertainment to bring its huge breadwinner Rocket League to retail brick and mortar stores.

Rocket League is one of the most successful indie games ever made, and has become an engagement juggernaut for eSports while rocketing developer Psyonix to the big leagues (puns!). Now the game is coming to retail markets on PS4 and Xbox One thanks to a joint partnership with Warner Bros.

"The game is already available digitally on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, and the updated retail version will be available for purchase in stores on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One," reads the official press release.

As games become more and more expensive to make and gamers' tastes become more demanding for high-resolution experiences, games publishers and developers are having a harder time with the traditional one-off sale economics of offline singleplayer games.

The video games industry has been shifting away from the traditional closed-off singleplayer game experience and towards the online-based games-as-a-service model for years. But with the rise of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and EA's recent closure of Visceral Games, players are getting worried that singleplayer games might die off. After all, publishers like EA, Activision, Blizzard, Take-Two and Ubisoft are making billions every year on digital-based long-term games like Destiny, Overwatch, Rainbow Six: Siege and GTA Online, all of which last years after their initial release and use microtransactions to fund recurring updates and new content. Only Japanese publishers like Square Enix and Nintendo alongside Bethesda Softworks have really pushed offline singleplayer games. In other words: lootboxes are here to stay, and singleplayer games are going on the back burner.

Microsoft is among the key publishers and games-makers chasing after the lucrative service-based games model--in fact, most if not all of Microsoft's recent games not only are poised for monetization via microtransactions and online engagement, but they embrace the core framework of the company's new "Xbox as a service" model. Xbox exec Shannon Loftis recently discussed how the monetary situation of singleplayer games has become "complicated" as the industry's major players shift towards GaaS and engagement-driven earnings.

In just a single month of availability, Destiny 2 is now the best-selling game of 2017 in the United States, and surpassed the original game across physical and digital launches.

The NPD Group's Mat Piscatella recently announced the firm's September 2017 video game earnings report, highlighting the key trends for the five-week period in September. While the report has a ton of interesting information about gaming's biggest hardware and software earners, Activision will be quite happy to hear that Bungie's Destiny 2 is a huge success in the United States.

"Destiny 2 was the top selling game of September, driving more launch month consumer spend than any other 2017 release to date," The NPD Group's video game analyst Mat Piscatella said. "With one month of sales, Destiny 2 also becomes the best selling game of 2017 year to date, and the third best-selling game of the 12 month rolling period ending September 2017, trailing only call of Duty: Infinite and Battlefield 1."

With its new Animal Crossing mobile game, Nintendo sends a clear signal about doubling down on traditional free-to-play monetization business models.

Nintendo has announced Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, the games-maker's latest mobile game to join its existing slate of smartphone games. On the heels of Fire Emblem Heroes' success, Nintendo has chosen to embrace the traditional (and lucrative) free-to-play "gacha" business model to supplement its successful console gaming segment. The Japanese games-maker originally wanted to implement a "free-to-start" business model used with Super Mario Run, but this strategy, which allowed users to try the game and forced a $10 purchase to keep playing, ultimately failed to catch on and fizzled out. The company said that it would continue testing out monetization strategies, but with this latest mobile release, Nintendo shows it has embraced the F2P sector.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a direct result of Nintendo chasing the most popular--and most lucrative--mobile gaming trends. In its latest quarterly earnings, Nintendo earned $79 million from its smartphone gaming segment, largely bolstered by the success of Fire Emblem Heroes. The latest Animal Crossing game will follow a similar revenue model: while free to play, gamers can either spend time to build objects and decorate their personal interactive camp sites, or spend money for shortcut items like Leaf Tickets to unlock them right away. Tickets can be earned for free, but are capped on a day-to-day basis. Right now Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp's premium Leaf Tickets currency cost about $0.99 for 20 tickets.

If you're like me, you can't resist a good Steam sale. Nothing is more satisfying than purchasing a heavily discounted game to add to your backlog of games that you never intend to play. Valve is usually exceptionally good at preventing leaked sale dates, until now.

Reddit user DarkMio posted, and since deleted, dates for the upcoming sales for the remainder of the year. These dates have since been confirmed by EuroGamer so it appears as if DarkMio was correct, the sales are listed below.

Steam Halloween Sale- October 26 to November 1

After four years, Grand Theft Auto V still has a massive following thanks to its online component...but what about the story mode? Rockstar says that story DLC expansions currently aren't in the works, but the team could return and make them happen in the future.

GTA V's story mode is seen by Rockstar as a complete game, but in a perfect world the studio would come back and revisit Los Santos with unique adventures. Sadly, the games industry is far from perfect, and Rockstar is always suffering from the age old "bandwidth problem": too many projects, too few people, too little time. With GTA Online and the massively ambitious Red Dead Redemption II in the works, which required Rockstar build from scratch for current-gen consoles, to say Rockstar is busy is a severe understatement. But they're still not ready to give up on new GTA V singleplayer content.

The harsh reality most gamers believed was that Rockstar didn't really want to make new GTA V content because they didn't need to. After all, GTA Online has earned over $1 billion since 2013, and it's far more lucrative to just keep releasing free updates than invest tons of resources and manpower in singleplayer content that, in a Rockstar dev's own words, might "fracture the playerbase".

Remedy Entertainment is hiring a writer to help pen the story for P7, the developer's new action-based IP.

Remedy, the team that brought us Alan Wake, Max Payne, and Quantum Break, is working on a mysterious new multi-platform, third-person action game codenamed P7 that promises a new original story alongside a long-lasting experience, possibly hinting at a service-game hook. "Featuring an intriguing story and a game structure offering a long-lasting experience, P7 contains the deepest game mechanics yet in a Remedy game," Remedy wrote in an older press release.

To ensure P7 can tick all those boxes--especially the story department--Remedy is currently hiring a writer that will help manifest and lay the groundwork for the game's ambitious scope. This isn't a senior writing position, however, hinting the studio already has an idea of P7's story; instead this candidate will work alongside the team to do a number of tasks--in other words this listing isn't calling for someone to dream up the entirety of P7's storyline.

Microsoft delivers on its promise at E3 2017 to take backward compatibility one step farther.

As of today, Xbox One owners can now play a selection of 13 original Xbox games on their systems including Fusion Frenzy, Dead to Rights, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and one of my favorite games ever made, Star Wars: Knights of The old Republic.

The games will be playable on the full family of Xbox One consoles including the original (now discontinued) launch 2013 Xbox One, the newer Xbox One S, and the high-end 4K-ready $499 Xbox One X when the console launches next month. But not only will the games be playable, but optional multiplayer modes like system link are compatible with Xbox Ones as well. While Microsoft appears to be going all-in on the backward compatibility feature, there's some games that just won't show up due to licensing rights (I'm very surprised Halo: Combat Evolved isn't on this list, along with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind). The list isn't exactly full of gems, but this program has only just started.

Following the sexual harassment claims by two women against Tyler "EviLore" Malka, the owner of popular gaming forum NeoGAF, users started leaving en masse and the site went down. Now the site is back up, and Malka has delivered a statement. His response: "it's not true."

NeoGAF is a widely-used gaming forum site where gamers, industry insiders, and key influencers come together to discuss gaming--among other things. Following the Harvey Weinstein incident, thousands of women and men have come forward to reveal sexual harassment claims, and even NeoGAF's site owner EviLore was accused by an ex-girlfriend. This caused a huge exodus from the site's moderator team as well as users, who made dozens of posts mocking and calling the owner out, and the event pretty much fractured the community and the website.

Now NeoGAF is back up for good, and EviLore states that the site will be run by the remaining moderators--and any existing and future moderators will remain anonymous. In an official post the site owner claims the allegations "aren't credible" and he's confident that "there's plenty of evidence and witnesses to corroborate".

Gears of War 4 is being enhanced specifically for the Xbox One X, with an update being pushed out on November 7 that will provide 4K and HDR support, as well as many other Xbox One X specific features and enhancements to the game. Check out the trailer below for more details.

The updated Gears of War 4 for the Xbox One X launches on November 7, the same day the Xbox One X goes on sale. If you own Gears of War 4, it'll be a free upgrade for you - you'll just need to buy Xbox One X.

True 4K Experience

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is about to launch, and it should be quite the stunner on the PC with some Vulkan-based optimizations ready to stretch out those hard-to-find Radeon RX Vega graphics cards.

Developer MachineGames has put in some serious work into the PC version of Wolfenstein II, with an uncapped framerate that all id Software games feature as id Software has a "very strong PC DNA". We have 4:3, 16:9, 16:10 and 21:9 UltraWide aspect ratio support, right through to 4K - and I'm sure 8K, something I'll be testing next week on my fleet of GPUs.

Wolfenstein II will have support for the Vulkan API, with DOOM already putting the API to good use on high-end graphics cards. But now Wolfenstein II will have Vulkan in a new way, with the developer wanting to "take it to the next level". MachineGames explain: "Using Vulkan when developing has allowed us to utilize the power of AMD's VEGA graphics chips in ways that were not possible before, giving us fine grained control over the performance and feature set of the GPU without having to sacrifice artistic intent. Combined with the flexibility of AMD's hardware, Vulkan gives us the artistic freedom to deliver Wolfenstein without compromise".

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is one of the biggest games of all time now, but we now know there will not be a sequel. PUBG creator Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene was recently interviewed by IGN, where he talked about a physical copy of Battlegrounds for the Xbox One. During this interview, we found out some more about the game, and news that there will indeed be no "Battlegrounds 2".

Greene said that the 5-year plan for Battlegrounds is to push it onto consoles, as he's always asked about when Battlegrounds will come to consoles. Greene seems to be happy with the release on Xbox, and so would I with the untold millions of dollars Microsoft would've paid him.

He also said that there will be no sequel to Battlegrounds, as Bluehole is "building the game as a service".

NVIDIA has released their new GeForce 388.00 drivers, which rock Game Ready optimizations for Destiny 2 and Assassin's Creed: Origins. Destiny 2, is available tomorrow on the PC while AC: Origins will be available on October 27. Download the new GeForce 388.00 drivers here.

NVIDIA recommends their enthusiast-level GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for 4K gaming in Destiny 2, while the GTX 1070 is recommended for 1440p gamers on the Highest visual settings, while the GTX 1060 is all good for 1080p.

As for Assassin's Creed: Origins, it will begin pre-loading at 16:00 UTC on both Steam and Uplay on the PC, PS4 owners have to wait until October 25, while Xbox One owners can already pre-load the game. Of course, there will be a day one update of 1.2GB for the PC, 1.3GB on the PS4, and 1.4GB on the Xbox One. This day one update will concentrate on balancing the game, performance improvements, stability (shocking, this is an Assassin's Creed game... they're all rock solid), and some tuning to the Photo Mode controls.

The Xbox One version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds will be one of the biggest console releases of the year, after its record breaking success with $450 million in sales from 15 million copies, and a record breaking 2 million concurrent gamers on Steam - beating out heavily established eSports champions like CS:GO and Dota 2.

Battlegrounds is headed to the Xbox One family of consoles as a timed exclusive before the rumored launch of PUBG on the PS4. Recently, Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene said that there will indeed be a physical version for the Xbox, but not the PC at this stage.

Greene continued, saying that the Xbox One version of PUBG will see its fate on consoles in the hands of gamers. Greene said that he thinks the Xbox community will drive the "competitive edge" of the game. He added: "If a competitive scene wants to develop it, it will if the community wants it".

In the spirit of Halloween, Gears of War 4 is the latest to get in the holiday spirit and announce that its October Update will include the final two maps for Gears of War 4, along with Xbox One X enhancements. The Halloween event is also set to include new themed characters, weapon skins and special events.

The two new maps are Fuel Depot and Lift Apex. Fuel Depot is a cult-classic from the original Gears of War and Gears of War 2 and is a snipers dream with vasly-open design. "The small windows of visibility offered by the warehouse shutters are still great for harassing your opponents with a Lancer - provided the enemy Sniper doesn't take your head off first!"

Lift Apex will also be somewhat similar to veteran players as Lift Apex is a re-work of a previous map that features timed shutters instead of the previous moving lift. "Set in an Imulsion Extraction Facility right in the middle of the Serano ocean, this ocean-bound elevator introduces a faster and more tactical experience than its original inspiration."

Microsoft is quickly ramping up to its release of its new Xbox One X console, with a new trailer hitting the US called 'Feel True Power'. There are a few games you might spot, with PC gaming phenomenon PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds used in the latest Xbox One X teaser video.

The commercial aired on October 22, on the Xbox YouTube channel, and will be shown during the huge Season 8 premiere of The Walking Dead, and then during the Super Bowl 51 rematch between New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons during NBC's Sunday Night Football.

Microsoft explained in a post on Xbox Wire: "The global campaign is designed to appeal to all gamers, taking the audience on an emotional roller coaster to elicit emotions like awe, excitement, fear, and passion. A call for gamers to feel the emotions of gaming in a way they may never have felt before. 'Feel True Power' represents that the experience isn't just about what you see, but also what you feel".

Following the widely criticized closure of Visceral Games, and the rise of the games-as-a-service business model prompting doom for singleplayer games, ex-BioWare developer Manveer Heir gives a candid look at EA's thought process in the latest episode of VICE's Waypoint Radio.

Manveer Heir has a storied career in the games industry, and has worked on a number of high-profile games such as 2009's Wolfenstein, Singularity, and is most known for his work at BioWare on Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect: Andromeda. Heir recently sat down with Waypoint's Austin Walker and Danielle Riendeau to discuss EA, the closure of Visceral, and Mass Effect: Andromeda, leading to some interesting tidbits about the inner workings of the video games industry.

Heir's take on Visceral's shutdown aligns with our own reports that EA is pretty much putting traditional linear singleplayer-only games on the back burner in an effort to bolster its billions with more open-world monetized experiences like Battlefront II, and BioWare's upcoming Anthem.