by Chris Morris Wave goodbye to motion controls. Microsoft’s motion-tracking Kinect 2.0 sensor was supposed to be what differentiated the Xbox One from the competition. It was more than just a way to talk directly to your console: it was a tool designed to transform the game machine into a social and media hub, the tip of the spear in Microsoft’s fight to take over your living room. More than anything, it was supposed to be way, way better than the first Kinect. Today, though, it seems little more than an afterthought. The decision to decouple Kinect from the Xbox One in May was surprising only in that it took the company a good year to do so. We certainly […]

by Giuseppe Nelva The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the most anticipated titles for the beginning of next year, and many are wondering how it’ll hold up on consoles compared to PC. We had a chance to chat with Viausl Effects Artists Jose Teixeira at Gamescom, and he gave us some more color on the issue. Teixeira explained that the screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) will be slightly different, the water in the ocean won’t have the same advanced tassellation, and there are other “tiny little sacrifices” that “hopefully won’t make a huge visual impact” but will give a big performance advantage. He also mentioned that optimization on consoles is going a lot better than expected from the […]

by Grace Huang Nintendo Co. rose the most in almost five months after its new Mario Kart 8 video game surpassed 1 million units in sales in the U.S. Nintendo’s affiliate The Pokemon Co. also will make an online trading card game available as an application for Apple Inc’s iPad later this year, Engadget reported, citing the company without identifying anyone. Nintendo rose as much as 6.5 percent, the most since March 24 on an intraday basis, before trading 5.9 percent higher at 11,950 yen at 10:25 a.m. in Tokyo. Mario Kart 8 and a lineup of figurines that interact with games are part of the company’s strategy to revive flagging sales of its Wii U console and retain players […]

by Rashid Sayed Popular middleware provider Geomerics have worked on AAA cross generation games like Battlefield 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition. But in the coming months they will be working exclusively on new generation hardware with games like Star Wars Battlefront and Mirrors Edge. This will have a big impact on how Geomerics works going forward. Speaking to Chris Doran who is the founder of Geomerics, GamingBolt asked how they plan to use utilize the full potential of the new consoles and modern gaming PCs, given that they are freed from the shackles of old hardware. “The big difference with the new consoles is where the power is located. Pretty much across the board the new consoles are a factor […]

by L.W. Barker The team at Creative Assembly are hard at work on their latest game, ‘Alien: Isolation’. The game’s graphics, and music score have already gone through various changes—an effort by the team to please fans of the hugely popular Alien franchise. Now they are focusing their skills on the design of the in-game Alien character’s legs. As Lead Audio Designer, Mark Angus explained, “We’ve tried out many different varieties of design to see which one works best for the game,”  “if we had produced an alien that looked 100% like the original film’s and walked like a mummy, there’d be just as many complaints…we want you to have long, meaningful encounters with our Alien, and so the design […]