Quantic Dream CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere discusses the key differences between Heavy Rain and the team’s most ambitious project yet. He details how the two main characters of Beyond: Two Souls will offer vastly contrasting gameplay mechanics.
Celebrity chef cooking shows wouldn’t be anything without Bud, Director of Kitchen Sanitation. Of course, he wouldn’t be anything without his custom Clorox Disinfecting Wipe holders.
{video link marked “private”}
By Lauren Arevalo and Robert Workman
Sony has hinted about bringing the PlayStation experience to mobile before, but the specifics for this project were only recently released. Last week, Sony detailed plans for enabling “second screen” functions that will be available for free on iOS and Android devices, competing with Microsoft’s SmartGlass and of course, the Wii U.
Some functions that the PlayStation 4 mobile app will have is the ability to download and purchase content on mobile, send text and voice messages through the app, invite friends to games, and watch recorded or live-streamed gameplay.
Of special importance to Sony is enabling smaller developers to use the platform to create their own apps, too. Larger game companies with more resources have benefited from being able to build their apps from the bottom up. Developers for the system can also look into more extensive “second screen” functionality for their games, similar to what they’ve done with the SmartGlass technology on the Xbox 360.
“There are many big publishers creating their own apps for their games, like Watch Dogs or Battlefield, and that’s great,” said Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida. “But smaller developers can use PlayStation App to connect to PlayStation 4 and load an application, like drawing software for example, so that you don’t have to download and install a specific app on your smartphone. It’s open for all PS4 developers to use.”
Source: GamesIndustry International
Madden 25 will mark the franchise’s 25th Anniversary and most detailed graphics ever. Prepare to be amazed as this trailer shows you what to expect from the next gen of Madden 25 on Xbox One and PS4.
Ever since its official introduction at the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier this year, EA’s multiplayer shooter Titanfall has become one of the most anticipated games for 2014. Mad Catz, not one to turn away from such a hot property, has decided to get players more into the experience with its own line of Titanfall products.
The company has inked a deal with the game’s publisher, announcing that it will release a number of Titanfall-licensed products upon the game’s release next year. These include specially made Triton gaming headsets, R.A.T. mice, S.T.R.I.K.E. keyboards, F.R.E.Q. gaming headsets and G.L.I.D.E. gaming surfaces, among others.
“Titanfall has earned critical acclaim and won numerous awards, including Best of Show, Best Original Games, and Best Online Multiplayer at this year’s E3 conference. Mad Catz is excited to bring a range of cutting-edge, innovative, Titanfall-branded products to gamers in connection with one of the most anticipated game launches in recent history,” said Darren Richardson, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Mad Catz Interactive, Inc. “The Titanfall license builds on Mad Catz’ strategy to align our product portfolio with AAA content that appeals to passionate gamers.”
Titanfall is slated for release in early 2014 for Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.
Source: Mad Catz
SimCity arrived for PC earlier this year and gave publisher EA a few headaches at launch, mainly due to its online only interface which ran into a number of login issues. Many fans have since asked for the game to feature some sort of off-line mode. Now it looks like EA and developer Maxis might just be considering it.
Patrick Beuchner, general manager of Maxis, stated, “Right now we have a team specifically focused on exploring the possibility of an offline mode.”
He continued, “I can’t make any promises on when we will have more information, but we know this is something that many of our players have been asking for. While the server connectivity issues are behind us, we would like to give our players the ability to play even if they choose not to connect. An offline mode would have the additional benefit of providing room to the modding community to experiment without interfering or breaking the multiplayer experience.”
Unfortunately, another popular player request, bigger cities, won’t be happening in SimCity. “After months of testing, I confirm that we will not be providing bigger city sizes,” said Buechner. “The system performance challenges we encountered would mean that the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to load, much less play with bigger cities.”
SimCity is available now for PC.
Source: Computer and Video Games
Every month, Sony’s PlayStation Plus program offers up a number of games for both PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, with the PlayStation 4 set to get its own share when it launches in just a few weeks. This week, the company revealed just how it’s able to get a hold of some of these games for the program – through developer buyouts.
The company stated that it will provide money to select developers in order to give their games away as a PlayStation Plus bonus. PlayStation manager of developer relations Brian Silva explained during IndieCade in California this weekend that “buyouts” are being offered to specific developers to offer their games – and yes, that’s including some independent developers as well, which Sony specializes in when it comes to relationships.
One developer included in this program, Futurlab, says the program is a benefit, as its Velocity 2X was offered as a PlayStation Plus exclusive, allowing huge emphasis and draw into the forthcoming sequel.
The PlayStation Plus program already has some promising things lined up on the PlayStation 4, including a special version of the racing game DriveClub and the shooter Resogun.
The PlayStation 4 releases in the U.S. on November 15.
Source: Shacknews
When you’re surfing through your favorite web pages – like this one, perhaps – chances are you run into all sorts of ads, including pop-ups, side ads and more. Sometimes they can be really obtrusive and get in the way of your web viewing. For those seeking to get away from them, at least to some extent, there is hope with a little device called AdTrap.
This device manages to block ads from not only websites, but also videos, music streams and mobile apps that use a Wi-Fi connection. No software or configuration to your OS are required to use AdTrap, it’s just a device that plugs in between your router and your modem to block them. It also works on mobile devices, ad blocking on devices that utilize 3G and 4G.
The device, built by Chad Russell and Charles Butkus, could very well be the target of legal backlash from certain companies. The pair is ready, however, with not only a law firm from Silicon Valley to back them up, but also a special “whitelist” feature for AdTrap, which allows users to let certain ads in should they prefer them.
Following a successful KickStarter campaign, AdTrap is set to launch for $139. A release date hasn’t been given yet, but the creators are looking to sell it at major stores, including Best Buy and Costco.
Source: Mashable
Former Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski is speaking on two panels this weekend at the Escapist Expo in North Carolina. The game developer has been laying low since his keynote speech at the East Coast Games Conference in March. Speaking with [a]list daily he explains why he’s more excited about Valve’s Steam Box and Oculus VR’s Oculus Rift than Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One in this exclusive interview.
[a]list daily: A big topic at the Escapist Expo will be next gen consoles PS4 and Xbox One. What do you feel will define next gen gaming?
Cliff Blezinski: Things like the Steam Box and the Oculus Rift, honestly. I’m friends with a lot of folks in Microsoft. Microsoft has been very good to me throughout my career. I’m friends with the folks at Sony. But when I think about my gamer instincts and where I’m going to see a lot of the most disruptive and innovative gaming I don’t see it in the $250 million budgeted game that cost $100 million to market. Because when you have that high of a budget the amount of risk being taken decreases exponentially. I was more excited about playing games like Gone Home than any console release. I am thoroughly excited to dive into Grand Theft Auto V, but it’s sitting on my desk looking like War and Peace to me right now. I’m going to have to clear out a good two weeks of doing nothing in order to just deep dive into it. In the meantime I’m on my Nintendo DS and I’m on my laptop playing Steam games. I got to fire up Two Brothers and I finished Thomas Was Alone and Gone Home. I don’t know if it’s because I’m rubber banding and rebelling against my AAA background, but I will buy a Playstation 4 and an Xbox One. Am I more excited for that than the Rift and Steam I think Sony and Microsoft are going to do just fine and it’s a known entity. A known entity is not that exciting to me. It’s the disruptive things that are exciting to me.
[a]list daily: I was able to check out the Oculus Rift in HD at Gamescom.
Cliff Blezinski: The thing is, it’s not perfect yet. There are so many things that need to be solved with VR in order to truly make it work. And with each issue that they solve, whether it’s latency or the angle at which it rotates, it gets better. The amount of people who can’t experience VR and get in reduces it quite a bit. They know what they’re doing over there (at Oculus) and I think Rift could eventually be its own platform. Putting Team Fortress 2 and Half Life on it is a mistake. The experiences that are going to be the best ones are the ones that are custom made for the pacing of that kind of experience. I got more excited by the trailer for EVE Valkyrie on the Rift than anything I saw at E3 this year.
[a]list daily: That’s a cool game to play. Have you had a chance to play Valkyrie?
Cliff Blezinski: No. I don’t just tweet just to build the community and to talk sh*t. I also hope that somebody will contact me and say, “Hey, we saw your tweet, you want to come in and see us.”
[a]list daily: What do you think of the Virtuix Omni full body accessory for the Oculus that you checked out at San Diego Comic Con?
Cliff Blezinski: It’s not the experience I want right now. I think VR is new enough that just a straight VR experience like sitting in a cockpit needs to be solved first. They’re somewhat putting the cart a little bit before the horse. It’s comfortable if you’re walking and when you’re turning. To their credit, it largely works. But I think showing Half-Life 2 is a mistake because the pacing means that you can clear two rooms and you’re exhausted and you can’t even go on because you had to run so much. The kind of experience that you want for that, and for the Rift in general, is something more like Myst or Dear Esther, where you’re just exploring and where the gameplay isn’t very intense. I know it’s sacrilegious to say, but even a deer hunter game where you’re creeping through the woods and slowly turning around and trying to find your prey, will make a lot more sense for something like the Omni. It largely works, but I believe it’s still a ways off for really being viable for the majority of the population.
[a]list daily: What has crowd funding opened up for game developers today?
Cliff Blezinski: What Chris Roberts is doing with Star Citizen is amazing to me. That’s him bucking the system in not going to a traditional publisher. He wants to make his game and publisher say traditionally that genre hasn’t sold for years, therefore it’s not going to sell, therefore we’re not going to market it, therefore you have a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are thousands of PC gamers that are so hungry for that kind of experience that they’re throwing money at the idea that they can run around in their hanger and see multiple ships before the game’s even released. That’s the new order. No offense to my friends at Game Informer, but the old model of be quiet with your game for two years and then boom! the game is on the cover is over. You should build your community while you build your game now. That way from Day One they feel like they’ve had a hand in the development and you’re building almost a religion, you’re building zealots and an evangelizer experience. That’s the new world order.
Editor’s note: This article is a reprint of one that appears on NewZoo’s web site.
This Saturday will see 15,000 spectators descend on the Staples Center in Los Angeles to watch the League of Legends World Championship Final Event. Gaming as a professional sport has been around for a long time and has enjoyed mass popularity in Asia for years. Now the phenomenon is breaking out of niche status, attracting millions of game enthusiasts as followers in the West. Sudden mass uptake of eSports over the past year has also made game video streams the fastest growing content on the web, including YouTube and specialized destinations like Twitch.tv, who raised $20 million this week to support its explosive growth and global expansion.
While Western press focus their attention on the next-gen console battle between Xbox One and PlayStation 4, PC Gaming is leading the industry in eSports and video content as well as in number of gamers on a global scale with around 900 million players. From a screen perspective, games played on the computer screen also gross more revenues than games played on TV: $27.6 billion or 39 percent versus $25.4 billion or 36 percent. Worldwide that is. The PC platform continues to shape trends and lead innovation in the industry in terms of game genres, free-to-play business models and now… eSports and video content. The new consoles Xbox One and PS4 will provide integrated functionalities allowing console gamers to follow the path originally carved out by PC gaming. Console-based eSports leagues do exist but not on the same scale as the PC franchises such as Starcraft, Dota2, World of Tanks and League of Legends.
Source: Newzoo
