Gaming - Page 990

Remember that Xbox streaming stick and set-top box that Microsoft was supposed to reveal at E3 2016 but didn't? New details have emerged about the duo, and they're actually pretty impressive.

According to Windows Central, the streaming stick was codenamed "Project Hobart," and was actually nixed at the last minute before E3. Internal sources at Microsoft say that Hobart basically would've been like Microsoft's very own $99 Chromecast-like dongle that offers basic video streaming (Netflix, Hulu, etc) with it's own secret weapon: Windows 10 UWP integration.

Armed with UWP functionality, Hobart would've tapped into the Windows 10 ecosystem and allowed gamers to wirelessly stream Xbox One gameplay over to Hobart, effectively transforming an HDTV into a remote-play station. Hobart apparently had lower computational power to support UWP apps and could even play lightweight games.

Contrary to our report, there won't be a new post-apocalyptic Metro game released in 2017.

Although the official Metro 2035 website previously listed a new Metro sequel for 2017, Deep Silver, the publisher for the series, has formally squashed the reports. In an official Facebook post, Deep Silver confirmed that there will indeed be more Metro games, just not any next year:

Mass Effect: Andromeda isn't the beginning of a new trilogy: once players complete the game, that'll be it. BioWare says they have no plans to kick off another series of sequels based on Andromeda.

Rather than tell a sprawling epic story with its new Mass Effect game, BioWare instead wants to launch a spin-off tale that explores the rich sci-fi universe. BioWare's creative director Mac Walters confirmed to GameInformer that Mass Effect: Andromeda will break the series' penchant for direct sequels in order to spin a unique and individual storyline.

"At the end of this, we want it to feel like a story has completed. Yes, for the universe, there's much more you could explore, and we want to tease that, but it feels like its own story. It's like, 'great. I had my Ryder sibling becoming-a-hero story. What's next? Is it going to be Ryder? Is it going to be something else? Who knows?," Walters told GameInformer.

Although BioWare still hasn't dropped an official release date for Mass Effect: Andromeda, and only delivered a small cinematic trailer on Ny Day, the developer opened up the floodgates to GameInformer with some exclusive coverage detailing a ton of new info.

ME: Andromeda makes some major changes this time around, scrapping the Renegade and Paragon system for "shades of grey," and the game also does away with classes as well as mixing combat up. Andromeda features a more fast-pace, action-oriented combat scheme; it's still a cover-based third-person shooter, but things down slow down while using powers, and powers are now hotkeyed and have their own individual cooldowns. The jetpack can be used in battle to add verticality to the battles, and you can also quick-dash with the jetpack to move around the battlefield.

Mass Effect: Andromeda actually takes place after the second Mass Effect game, and follows the Andromeda Initiative, a massive program that sends massive ark ships to the Andromeda galaxy to search out a new home. The game has a very distinct "new frontier" type of feel, and you play as a Pathfinder, which is a mix of scientist, explorer and soldier. Players are frozen in cryosleep for the 600 year long journey, and take the persona of one of the Ryder twins.

Ever since last month's massive DDoS hack attack there's been a huge influx of stolen PlayStation Network accounts, and it's only getting worse.

Within the past month or so, tons of PlayStation gamers have had their accounts stolen and hacked along with fraudulent charges being made on their PSN accounts. According to The Know, the rampant hacking is apparently worse in the UK: taking a quick look at the PlayStation UK support Twitter seems to show an awful lot of gamers reporting their accounts have been compromised.

Sony has yet to issue an official declaration, and if they did, they'd likely just tell everyone to use the new Two-Step Verification feature to add extra security to their PSN accounts instead of actually taking more security measures to shore up their network.

Microsoft could have something exciting in its hands for 2017 if the Xbox Scorpio can run UWP games from the PC on their new console at native 4K, meaning that games like Gears of War 4 (and let's not mention Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and the new one is bombing too) will run at 4K on the new Xbox.

Windows Central has reported from a source that any games made natively for UWP on Windows 10 will run at native 4K on the Xbox Scorpio, adding: "The Coalition has previously confirmed that Gears of War 4 is ready to run at a 4K resolution on Project Scorpio. This is because Project Scorpio can run 4K Windows 10 Store Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games natively. If you've played Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3 or Rise of the Tomb Raider at a 4K resolution on a high-end PC, you already have an idea of how gorgeous games will look on Project Scorpio".

They continued: "Our source told us that any game programmed natively for UWP on Windows 10 will run on Project Scorpio with a trivial amount of changes. This has always been Microsoft's vision for UWP".

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has been going through some serious issues with its launch, with Activision in its infinite wisdom intentionally locking the Windows Store version of the game into its own world, stopping gamers from playing with their friends on the Steam version of the game.

According to a report from GitHyp on the amount of peak players during the launch of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which hit 15,280 - but when compared to the launch of Black Ops III last year and its 63,681 - that number is low, very low. This means Infinite Warfare has 316% less peak players than Black Ops III, not a small amount by any means.

If you haven't taken a look at the Steam store page recently, it's received an overhaul. Dubbed the "Steam Discovery Update 2.0", it's designed to help you find content easier, and we have to say it does the job wonderfully.

Between quick access links, more prominent personalization options, recently viewed section, and lots more, it's a big step up from the previous design (which was good but not great).

Other changes have been made to enhance Steam Curators and top sellers (which now show per region), among other items. Plus, a 'new on Steam' page lets you see all the new hotness with just a click.

You'd think coming into this news that it was Microsoft that screwed PC gamers with the Windows Store version of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, but in fact it was Activision - actively choosing to make the Windows Store version of the game suck, a lot.

We reported a couple of days ago that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare won't allow crossplay between the Windows Store and Steam versions, but according to an anonymous source of Windows Central and then together with a Microsoft spokesperson saying: "We support cross-play between devices and platforms for partners who want to enable it". Activision on the other hand, didn't want the Windows Store and Steam versions of COD: Infinite Warfare to work together.

Microsoft is actually being a good guy here, giving gamers refunds for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare because they're finding out they've got no one to play with - because most people are buying it on Steam. Activision - you're idiots, and there is no excuse for this. Deplorable.

Resident Evil 7 has had a bump marketing ride this year, making people sick on the PlayStation VR - but it's an interesting twist from the previous Resident Evil games, and Capcom has big plans for RE7.

During their recent earnings report, the company said it expects to sell around 4 million copies of Resident Evil 7 when it launches on January 24, 2017 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. GameSpot reports that Capcom considers Resident Evil 7 as a "foundation title", expecting it to have great lifetime sales thanks to the increased use of digital distribution, that is "producing revenue not limited to the next two fiscal years but into the long term as well".

Resident Evil 6 was released in 2012, and it sold 4.8 million copies at the end of 2012 after being released in October. Capcom expecting 4 million copies at launch is a lower number, and while that would normally be bad - at least they're not like other developers like Crystal Dynamics (the developers behind Rise of the Tomb Raider), where they require nearly 5 million copies to break even.

I still remember booting into Crysis for the first time, and being absolutely blown away by the graphics - immediately ordering two GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards so I could run it at higher resolutions, detail, and frame rate - but then it all stopped.

Now there's modder Damian Stempniewski has been playing around with the latest version of CRYENGINE, together with Megascans, and has teased an image from the map he's working on. He used the palm trees from the original Crysis, so that we can imagine what a new Crysis game could look like.

Damian said that the CRYENGINE-powered map was running in real-time, but it wasn't playable, and that would be thanks to tessellation being enabled on everything. Still, it looks amazing - and now it makes me want a next-gen Crysis game even more.

Overwatch's second post-launch hero Sombra is available to play now on the game's Public Test Realm (PTR). If you haven't gotten in on the PTR yet, simply boot Battle.net, change your region to PTR: Overwatch, and get to downloading. There is a queue, but you should be able to get in sometime today if you can't immediately.

As mentioned previously, she's a weird mix of stealth, DPS, and support. Packing a full auto machine pistol, all kinds of utility and crowd control, and a combination of invisibility and speed, she's kind of like Ana and Tracer combined. Many are speculating she's majorly overpowered, but as we've seen with Ana, it's one thing to see the abilities and another entirely to utilize them in game, so her launch is exciting as it will let the community see what's what firsthand.

Alongside Sombra arrives a new Mei-themed Antarctica map and an Arcade mode that includes all kinds of fun sub-modes like Mystery Duel and No Hero Limit Random, complete with prizes. In other words: tons of fun for everyone.

Sony is releasing their faster PS4 Pro next week at $399, but now Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter has said that if Microsoft prices its Xbox Scorpio console at more than $399, it would be suicide.

During an interview with Gaming Bolt, Pachter said: "Well, I think Microsoft would commit suicide if it was more than $399. And the problem they will face is if they launched it at $399, the PS4 Pro might discount to $349 in the same week. So I'd be really surprised if the Scorpio was more than $399".

Xbox boss Phil Spencer hsa said that Scorpio will be a "premium" console, and that gamers shouldn't be worried about the pricing. Pachter added that he hopes Microsoft won't make the same mistakes it did with the Xbox One, where it pushed its Kinect sensor as mandatory - and then ditched it in the end.

Blizzard's Overwatch was released in May this year and instantly gained many fans worldwide.

In their recent quarterly financial report, Blizzard announced that they had the biggest quarterly online player community in its history, with 482 million monthly active users in Q3 2016.

The release of World of Warcraft: Legion certainly contributed to this result, which sold-through 3.3 million copies on day one. But, Overwatch broke some records inside the company.

Up until now certain features of Nintendo's new NES Classic Edition (aka NES Mini) have been rather vague, especially in regards to how save states work. Now we can clear all that up and provide some extra info on the console and give you a better idea of what to expect from the tiny box.

We've already covered that the NES Mini is basically a cheaper Raspberry Pi 2 in a stylish box, and the controllers have audaciouisly short cords. Now we can report that the retro emulator console features four save states for every game. That means each of the 30 classic NES games will have their own set of four save states (aka suspend points) to allow players a nice bit of flexibility with their playthroughs.

Read Also: NES Mini has Pixel Perfect retro display modes for HDTVs

Activision in its infinite wisdom has completely neutered the PC version of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, where the game will not work between Windows Store and Steam - yeah, so if you buy it on the Windows Store you cannot play with your friends who purchased it through Steam.

The official Activision Support website details it well, with both Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered not having any support for crossplay, with not just the Xbox One version of the game through the Play Anywhere program, but the Windows Store and Steam versions of the game.

Is Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered an Xbox Play Anywhere title?

Diablo 1 will be "reborn" in Diablo 3, but instead of featuring revamped remastered graphics, the experience will be old-school with pixellated graphics and locked movement schemes just like the original.

Blizzard didn't announce Diablo IV at Blizzcon, nor did it announce the anticipated Diablo I and Diablo II HD remasters that we were expecting. Instead, Blizzard decided to take us back to Tristram. The original Diablo is actually getting "Reborn" into Diablo 3, but don't expect the full game: this is just a seasonal annual event that will last a week or so, and it'll basically be Diablo 3 through the lens of nostalgia. The update comes with a special pixellated graphics filter, authentic Cathedral and Tristram zones, revamped music, and more.

"We're going to take you back to the original Diablo. We are recreating the original Diablo in Diablo III," Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce announced at Blizzcon 2016. "Our upcoming anniversary patch The Darkening of Tristram will send you back into the depths of the Cathedral. You'll explore a monster-filled dungeon 16 levels deep, and you'll come face-to-face with the four main bosses from the first game including Big Red at the bottom."

Nintendo's new Switch handheld console hybrid may utilize 4GB of unified system memory, somewhat like both the PS4 and Xbox One's shared video and system RAM.

According to well-known Nintendo insider Emily Rogers, the new Switch portable-and-console will tap a 4GB pool of RAM that's shared across the system's highly customized Pascal Tegra chip.

Shared system RAM typically allocates and carves up the total memory across different sectors, including operating system, games, and specific GPU and CPU-specific tasks. NVIDIA's new custom Pascal Tegra SoC will likely have speedy GPU and CPU bandwidth, possibly up to 25.6GB/s, effectively alleviating some of the drawbacks of a unified memory pool. If the Switch has 4GB of unified memory, that'll effectively be double the Wii U's rather pathetic 2GB memory interface.

After months and months of ARG teasing, Overwatch's Sombra hero has finally been revealed. As expected, she's a stealthy hacker: equipped with a short-range full-auto machine pistol, she hacks enemies at short range preventing them from using abilities or hacks first aid kits rendering them useless, and with her ultimate she throws out an EMP to destroy barriers, shields, and hack everyone (finally, a Reinhardt counter that isn't Junkrat!).

Her other abilities are evasive: Thermoptic Camo means she can turn invisible and gain a speed boost (both are disabled if he she uses offensive abilities or takes damage), and her Translocator lets her set down a place to instantly escape to when things get hairy.

In other words, she's kind of like Ana and Tracer combined, boasting powerful utility and a lethal pairing of DPS and evasion. Cooldowns and ability conditions remain to be seen, but it's tough to not see her as a high pick hero, at least among medium and high skill players.

Everyone wants an NES Mini, but I remained skeptical, and until now, I haven't seen anyone answer the most important question of all: how long are the controller cords? Well, it turns out that Nintendo didn't just cheap out on hardware, but they packed in an ultra-short controller cord to boot.

Polygon has finally written up something actually worthwhile about the NES Classic Edition; instead of just praising it at every turn, the publication is now scrutinizing one of the system's most annoying aspects: ultra-short controller cables. The NES Mini's controllers resemble a normal NES controller in almost every way--it's shaped the same, just as big as the golden oldie, but the cord length has been severed by half. We're talking Famicom-length short.

Nintendo shipping out NES Mini controllers with tiny cords just reeks of cost-cutting, and if it wasn't for the system's scaled resolution and video modes in 1080p, I'd call the tiny box just another shameless nostalgic cash grab. Considering how light the system is--it's literally just a Raspberry Pi-sized PCB in a really thin plastic box--this is a big problem. I see the system slinging all over the place, sliding every which way on coffee tables, stands, entertainment centers, etc.