by William Usher Two of gaming’s biggest websites have decided to alter their policies about how writers and journalists are allowed to interact with developers within the gaming industry field. The change follows from a very strong outburst from the gaming community for more transparency. A Reddit moderator in the /r/Games section was contacted and asked if a very neutral, informative piece could be published regarding what the gaming community felt was a conflict of interests being exhibited by Kotaku and Polygon. The moderator, going by the handle of Piemonkey, acquiesced after a back and forth discussion with user F1renze. Eventually, this thread was allowed to go up, causing a lot of gamers to react very strongly to the information, […]

by Ashley King Earlier this week we told you that Edge Magazine would have a big feature on Miyamoto in next month’s issue, discussing several of the franchises he helped create, as well as his opinions on the current game industry. It’s not surprising to see a few of these quotes leak from the magazine and one that is particularly fascinating is one in which Miyamoto says that he finds the passive attitude of casual gamers as “pathetic.” Here’s the full quote: “[These are] the sort of people who, for example, might want to watch a movie. They might want to go to Disneyland Their attitude is, ‘okay, I am the customer. You are supposed to entertain me.’ It’s kind […]

by Glenn Brock Zoe Quinn just wanted to help. Now, Quinn’s a target. Quinn, independent developer of the game Depression Quest, became the target of retaliation by many gamers, turned hackers, reports Bright Side Of News. The situation began when Quinn’s former boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, had posted a lengthy diatribe detailing Quinn’s alleged multiple affairs, including one with gaming journalist Nathan Grayson, who has written for Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun. The backlash was due to Quinn, a developer, sleeping with a games journalist tended to show that gaming journalism, and perhaps the gaming industry itself, lacked a moral code. Gamers then took to Reddit, 4Chan and Twitter to discuss the matter. It became such a hot point of contention. […]

by Giuseppe Nelva A demo of the upcoming Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break was showcased at Gamescom, but fans did not get a chance to actually play it. There are, though, a few lucky individuals that can already play parts of the game, and between them there’s Microsoft Studios Global Marketing honcho Aaron Greenberg, who apparently has a running code at home and tweeted about it. “Playing Quantum Break after work tonight, so much fun!! Thanks @remedygames #LoveMyJob” Answering the inevitable questions from the fans, greenberg gave his impressions: “So much fun to play, fans are going to love the game. Looking and playing great already.” Asked by another fan if the graphics are “insane” he indeed confirmed that they […]

by ‘Nick’ It appears that the Xbox One’s Kinect sensor may have been worth more than the $100 we all thought, making the $499 price tag of the Xbox One with Kinect a pretty good deal. Microsoft has now confirmed it will begin selling the standalone Kinect sensor on October 7th and it will come with a new Dance Central Spotlight game, and retail for $149.99. This would actually end up costing users who bought a Kinect-less version of the Xbox One $50 more when buying the Kinect Sensor separately. It’s worth mentioning that this is the same price the original Kinect came in at as well when it first launched. Availability will initially be for US only since there […]

by Marc Graser Hackers “overwhelmed” Sony’s PlayStation Network on Sunday, making the service unavailable to its tens of millions of users. The move brought back painful memories for Sony of a serious 2011 breach that exposed the names and passwords of millions of customers on the PlayStation Network. While the latest attack wasn’t a significant security flaw in its service, Sunday’s event raises questions whether Sony’s system — which the company sees as a major distribution platform, and thus revenue stream, for video games, movies, TV shows, web series and music — is vulnerable to future hacks. Sony wasn’t alone with Microsoft’s Xbox Live also hit by hackers. “Gaming and social” features were limited Monday with owners of the Xbox […]

by Will Holden There’s no doubting that Destiny is one of the most anticipated games of the year. Bungie’s brand new sci-fi world has already captured the imaginations of the millions of gamers who participated in its alpha and beta versions. We recently had a chance to sit down with Eric Hirshberg, the CEO of Activision, to discuss why he feels delaying the game a while back was the right decision. “It was the right decision to delay it because you never get a second chance to launch [a new game] and make that first impression. Obviously we wanted to prioritize getting the game right and setup for the 10 year vision that we have for ‘Destiny’.” As for the […]

by Rashid Sayed Housemarque are currently working on Alienation, a PlayStation 4 exclusive which was revealed during last week’s Sony Gamescom presentation. For those of you who don’t know, Housemarque is the developer behind last year’s critical hit Resogun which was praised not only for its gameplay but also for its slick visuals running at 1080p and 60fps. Given that Alienation is their second major project on the PlayStation 4, does it make them comfortable that they are working on a machine that has allowed achieving those targets without any major development challenges? “I would argue on the “without major development challenges” part. PS4 is powerful, but it really depends on what you have on screen,” Tommaso De Benetti from […]

by Gunther Barbosa PC vs Consoles is always a popular topic among gamers. With the release of the next-gen gaming consoles PS4 and Xbox One and recent announcement of Valve’s Steam Machines, it looks like the PC vs Console debate will grow more and won’t die down any time soon. In a report by Cinema Blend, The CyberpowerPC Steam Machine looks like it will be a threat to living-room gaming supremacy held by Sony and Microsoft as, by looking at its specs, it is significantly more powerful than the next-gen consoles at almost the same price. Here’s a comparison between the next-gen consoles and the CyberpowerPC Steam Machine: CPU The Xbox One and PS4 both have Jaguar APU technology provided […]

by Dave Scarborough The Silent Hills teaser is packed with mysteries that fans are still having trouble wrapping their petrified little heads around, but at least there’s one enigma that has been cleared up. Speaking about the game during a Japanese language Konami video (while also scaring the crap out of several people volunteering to play the demo), Hideo Kojima went on to shed light on the meaning behind 7780s – the name of the fake developer originally thought to be making the game. It turns out that 7780 translates into a postcode, the location of which is the Shizuoka region of Japan. The name roughly translates as Quiet Hills and the region’s name has become a nickname for Silent […]

by Dean Howard During PS4’s announcement at E3 last year, Sony talked of a ground breaking concept that will radically change the way we play video games forever. At the time so many information and rumors were in circulation that it wasn’t very clear which direction Sony was going with its next generation powerhouse. Since then a lot has come to light with one particular announcement at this years Gamescom14 having the potential of putting money in your pocket for a change. Buying video games can be an expensive habit with most AAA games costing as much as $60 dollars. Sony have been working with developers and publishers to make games much more affordable by providing top notch digital services […]

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 […]