Gamer's Outpost Press (Archived)

by Giuseppe Nelva

This morning Warner Bros. announced that Batman: Arkham Knight will be a PS4 exclusive in Japan, but didn’t mention if said exclusivity would be permanent or temporary.

Apparently, it’s a rather permanent affair, as Microsoft was forced to remove its official page dedicated to the game, which still scheduled the Xbox One version for 2015 for a few hours after the announcement. You can see it above for the posterity. Now it simply leads to a broken link.

But that’s not all: Ubisoft Japan also opened today the registrations for the Japanese beta of The Crew, and the publisher announced that the testing will be done exclusively on PS4 as well.

For the moment the game itself is still mentioned as multiplatform for PS4, Xbox One and PC locally, also confirmed by the official site, and hopefully for Japanese Xbox and PC fans it’ll stay that way.

The removal of Batman‘s Xbox One page several hours after the announcement certainly begs the question on what happened behind the scenes, especially since Microsoft publicized the game during the console’s presentation conferences just a couple months ago.

Did Warner Bros. fail to notify Microsoft about the exclusivity decision in time, or maybe the timing of the announcement was decided to avoid influencing the console’s local launch last week?

Most probably, we’ll never know.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by ‘Anders’

It seems like many new Xbox One owners are reporting a specific issue, since the console has launched in Tier 2 countries a few days ago. The problem occurs on Kinectless consoles, and it consists of a loud buzzing or rattling sound when the console is idle (for example, when it is in the dashboard).

Of course it is difficult to say how widespread the problem is, but is seems like quite a few are experiencing it, based on the 500+ posts in the Xbox Support forums on this problem. Other forums, including NeoGAF, report this issue as well. On Twitter, the hashtag #xboxnoise has been launched in order to draw attention to the problem.

It is unclear what exactly is causing the issue, with some saying the sound only occurred after installing the latest firmware update.

Microsoft‘s official reply in the Support forums is to try and replace your console at the retailer you purchased it from, and if this is not possible or if you already have, to send the console to Microsoft for repair.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Marco Bessey

Editor in Chief of TouchArcade, Eli Hodapp tweets during the unveiling of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus that the latter “will play games in higher resolution than next generation consoles.” The truth is, it really will. But can the iPhone 6 Plus also deliver the processing firepower to run triple A titles? Theoretically, yes it can.

While all the hype over the iPhone 6 and iOS8 is sizzling in Cupertino at the moment, let’s step back a bit and revisit WWDC. During that event, Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi introduced “iOS 8 Metal” which is meant to provide “near bare to the metal access to the power of A8.” What does this mean? Simple: Metal lets developers target the power of that GPU far more directly than ever before.

For example, Metal allows for 10x faster draw calls, used to render all the objects in a scene in a 3D game. That means much faster, more responsive games with incredibly detailed environments.

iOS 8 gets a bump in game load time performance thanks to support for precompiled shaders. Shaders affect how an environment is lit and colored; they’re an incredibly important part of rendering a realistic and immersive gaming experience. Precompiling them enables them to load faster.

Apple has already rendered the point and shoot camera near-obsolete. Are video game consoles next?

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Giuseppe Nelva

If you have the disc version of Destiny, or have completed its preload, you’re gonna have some more downloading to do, as Bungie released a day one (actually, day minus-two) patch that updates the game to version 1.02.

At the moment the changelog of the patch is not available, so we don’t know what it fixes or improves, but considering the online nature of the game we can expect more down the line.

The patch weighs 296 Mb on PS4, and no, if you’re wondering, it doesn’t allow access to the game. We’re going to have to wait a bit more for that.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Giuseppe Nelva

Console platforms are always evolving, and manufacturers often look into pushing the envelope by providing their developers with the best tools to create the best games, but also to make their life easier. Sony seems to be planning to do just that, as revealed by a career opportunity ad seeking a Senior Java Engineer.

“SCEA’s Tools and Technologies Group (TNT) provides tools, infrastructure services and run-time technology to a broad set of Sony Computer Entertainment divisions. We work closely with all of our Vita, PS3 and PS4 game teams, and with QA groups from all regions. We have an immediate need for an expert/lead Java/Web/Server software engineer. The successful candidate will be a key contributor in the creation of technologies used to improve PlayStation’s competitive advantage.”

“Job responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:
Design, specify and implement new features for mission critical crash-reporting systems
Work directly with the game teams, group tech leads, and group managers to define and implement optimized tools, system libraries and drivers, protocols, and more as needed
Lead a team of senior engineering staff
Work directly with SCEI in Japan (liaison services available, some travel required).”

Considering that, at least for what PS4 is concerned, PlayStation’s competitive advantage seems to be pretty deep, it’s interesting to see that Sony isn’t resting on its laurels. Unfortunately we’re probably never going to know the actual impact this will make on PlayStation consoles, as low level improvements aren’t normally publicly announced.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Chris Pereira

Activision is offering an enticing offer for Destiny that will be of particular interest to anyone who hasn’t yet invested in an Xbox One or PlayStation 4. For a limited time, buying a digital copy of Destiny on Xbox 360 or PS3 will entitle you to a free digital copy on Xbox One or PS4.

The deal has very few catches–you simply need to buy the game (or season pass) by no later than January 15, 2015. Because it’s a digital copy you have to buy, there won’t be any way to then give your old game to a friend, which is likely why Activision is willing to offer this.

The last-gen version you buy dictates which current-gen version you can upgrade to. In other words, if you buy the PS3 version, you’ll only be able to get the PS4 version, while the same holds true for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Either way, upgrading to a current-gen version won’t prevent you from continuing to play your last-gen copy. And because your progress transfers between platforms (within the same console family), you won’t leave to start over when you move from PS3 to PS4 or Xbox 360 to Xbox One.

Should you choose to buy the Limited Edition or Ghost Edition, both of which include the game’s season pass, you’ll be able to download the DLC content for free on PS4 or Xbox One after upgrading. The same holds true for buying the season pass on its own.

The process for downloading your free Xbox One or PS4 content is straightforward, and simply involves browsing to the game’s page on either console’s store while logged into the same account that made the purchase in the first place. The exact process is explained here.

Destiny launches this coming Tuesday, September 9.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Sam Machkovech

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced the first-ever free trial of a full, unlocked retail game on an Xbox platform. The first game to receive the “Gold Weekend” treatment will be Forza Motorsport 5, which will become free to download and play for all Xbox Live Gold members on Xbox One beginning Thursday, September 4 and lasting until the following Sunday.

While nearly all games on Xbox 360, and many games on Xbox One, can be downloaded as free trials, this offer has the distinction of unlocking the full, start-to-finish experience of a game that hasn’t been purchased. It also seems to split the difference between limited trials and the free games doled out to Gold members by way of the Games With Gold promotion.

Adding to the confusion, this differs from Xbox Live’s occasional “free weekends,” which had mostly opened up online play to users who had yet to pony up for a Gold subscription. We’ve asked Microsoft to confirm technical details of this promotion—whether it requires an uninterrupted online connection to play the game in question, what happens mid-game when the trial period ends at midnight PST on Sunday, and whether we may ever see the promotion reach Xbox 360—and we’ll update this post with any clarifications.

It has been years since Steam began offering free, limited-time trials of full games, usually on a weekend to encourage players to buy into the full version once their free few days are up. Strangely, gaming consoles had yet to follow suit before this announcement, in spite of being equipped to download games and authenticate online memberships. Neither last-gen console ever supported such a timed full-game trial feature, and Sony’s PlayStation 4 has yet to receive an equivalent (perhaps because its PlayStation Plus service has already doled out so many free games without time restrictions).

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Dragos Dobre

Sony’s PlayStation 4 has just received another update, that once again promises to add a tad more stability to some features available on the consoles. This time the update is a bit heavy, having almost 200 MB — so we can expect for some real improvements.

If we got a penny every time a console manufacturer released an update under the tag “improves system stability”, we would currently have our pockets full of money. But that’s a common practice, and we can’t do much about it.

However, if it’s mandatory, we should know what it contains. You will have to update your console to 1.76 in order to play online from now on, enjoy!

We will update this post if Sony releases any information about this system update!

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Giuseppe Nelva

During the press conference held today in Tokyo by Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida announced officially that The Last of Us Remastered is now a million seller, having overtaken the one million copies mark in sales.

The game joins Knack, inFAMOUS: Second Son and Killzone: Shadow Fall just one month after its release on July 29th.

Yoshida-san also explained that not only retail sales are going strong, but digital downloads are increasing as well.

Considering The Last of Us Remastered‘s quality, it’s definitely a fully deserved achievement. On to the next, Naughty Dog!

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Giuseppe Nelva

Final Fantasy XV has always been a bit of a mystery in the gaming industry. First announced eons ago as the PS3 exclusive Final Fantasy Versus XIII, then repurposed as current generation multiplatform for PS4 and Xbox One after ages of silence, followed by another year of silence.

Tomorrow Sony Japan will held it’s pre-Tokyo Game Show press conference, and something just moved that could indicate an appearance of Square Enix’s late blooming JRPG.

The publisher just shifted the official website from its original domain http://www.na.square-enix.com/FFXV to http://www.finalfantasyxv.com/. The new domain has been owned by Square Enix for a long while, but has never been used until now.

This may or may not mean an appearance of the game at the press conference, or at least at Tokyo Game Show, but of course it can’t be considered a confirmation until we’ll see it with our own eyes.

Is it really happening? We’ll probably know by tomorrow.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net