Gamer's Outpost Press (Archived)

by Pras Subramanian via Yahoo! Finance

In the 90s virtual reality was hailed as the next big thing, but the experience was far from perfect. The VR world was buggy and laggy, and the hardware was nowhere near where it needed to be to give viewers an immersive experience. And VR went away quietly, with little fanfare.

Now, as we approach 2017, virtual reality is back in a big way, with companies like Samsung, Facebook, Sony and Google betting big on the medium. In fact, analysts at Goldman Sachs see it as an $80 billion industry by 2025.

Just in the past couple weeks, ahead of the holiday shopping season, Sony released what could be the biggest game-changing product to hit the VR industry: PlayStation VR. Google, not to be outdone, launched its Daydream mobile VR software with its accompanying set of goggles and motion controllers. Samsung, meanwhile, ramped up its investment in mobile VR through its partnership with Oculus and its Gear VR headset.

But a big question still remains: Can the technology live up to its potential?

David Mullett, founder of virtual reality content agency Virtualize, says VR creators are just scratching the surface when it comes to the potential for the platform.

“If you really look deep into what this new phenomenon is all about, you can look back to the early days of human storytelling around the campfire,” he says, adding that like campfire storytellers, VR creators can build vivid worlds in viewers’ minds. But with VR, those images are created in near lifelike simulation in 3D with 360 binaural audio.

The technology isn’t just limited to storytelling, however. VR worlds can become a place where one can create an avatar and have virtual interactions with others in real time, and even conduct business. “It’s something of a digital parallel dimension,” Mullet says, “where commerce, communication, and entertainment take place.”

From a commerce perspective, a select number of advertisers and brands have been creating experiences for viewers, concepts that either tell a story about the brand (for example Patron’s “Virtual Hacienda Tour”) or put the viewer in the eyes of a dynamic performer (with Nike’s soccer’s “Neymar Jr. Effect”).

While brands look to capitalize on VR, it will be the companies behind the hardware, most notably the chip makers, who stand to benefit as VR matures. “The chip makers definitely have an incredible position in the VR ecosystem,” Mullett says.

Can VR live up to the hype?

Ahead of the holiday shopping period, reports on sales of VR hardware point to a slow start. But it’s still in the early days, and the big players behind VR – Sony, Facebook, and Samsung – are vowing to be in it for the long haul. And that could the big difference this time around for the future of VR.

“We’re talking about new hardware, new cloud-based computation systems. We’re talking about new delivery devices,” Mullett says.

And that is the bet – that improving software and hardware technology will keep pushing the VR experience further – making that global campfire that Mullett described bigger and brighter.

“VR is going to change everything,” Mullett concludes. “In a bigger way than anyone can even imagine.”

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by Gabe Gurwin via Digital Trends

Ubisoft is changing its approach to downloadable content based on the success it has experienced through the multiplayer shooter Rainbow Six Siege. Moving forward, the game publisher will no longer offer paid DLC that it feels is necessary for players to fully experience a game.

“The key is if it’s not adding something on top of the actual experience of the game, then it is no good,” said Ubisoft’s VP of live operations Anne Blondel-Jouin in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz. “Because you’ll be asking for more money for the wrong reasons. Also, if the content is compulsory for gamers, it’s no good as well.”

Blondel-Jouin cites Rainbow Six Siege’s DLC model as one the company will use for all of its games moving forward. New maps and modes are available completely free, while weapons skins — similarly to many free-to-play games — are available through microtransactions. Characters can be purchased for real money, but they’re also available to acquire through regular play.

“It is just an extra piece of revenue for us, which comes from gamers being happy. If gamers we not happy, we would not ask for that extra money,” Blondel-Jouin added.

This is an approach that Ubisoft seemed to lean into with several of the Assassin’s Creed games, already. Assassin’s Creed III featured a non-canonical Tyranny of King Washington add-on, while Assassin’s Creed IV’s Freedom Cry expansion starred a separate protagonist.

What’s curious, however, is that Ubisoft — in an interview with the same publication — seemed to hold a much more positive view on downloadable “day one” content just two years ago. At the time, VP of digital publishing Chris Early said that “there was no resistance” when Ubisoft put “time saver” microtransactions into Assassin’s Creed IV, effectively making the game easier for those willing to shell out some extra cash. Whatever the reason for the change of heart happens to be, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

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by  Christopher Groux via iDigitalTimes

No Man’s Sky has faced a tortured development cycle often compared to Star Citizen, and now the two controversial space projects are sharing employees. Longtime Hello Games designer Gareth Bourn signed on to Squadron 42 campaign developer Foundry 42 last month according to his LinkedIn page.

For No Man’s Sky followers, this news might come off as yet another sign of Hello Games’ inner turmoil. There had been rumors that the studio had been abandoned and talented coders were leaving, but now we know only half of those claims are true. While it’s not uncommon for developers to switch jobs after a project is complete, Bourn had been linked to Hello for nearly six years between Joe Danger and No Man’s Sky. A rocky procedurally generated universe seems like it wasn’t enough to keep that loyalty going.

Beyond No Man’s Sky’s lack of promised features, lawsuits and refund demands, the ironic truth is that the ongoing story of Star Citizen isn’t all that different. What began as a Kickstarter in 2012 has since raised over $100 million dollars spread over four studios with no release date in sight. The project has undergone a few closed alphas and betas for backers, but some donors still aren’t impressed. Questions remain over how the funds are being managed, refunds have been demanded and full game modes have yet to enter testing phases. It’s not a pretty picture.

As if those parallels weren’t enough, Star Citizen also promises many of the hallmark features that No Man’s Sky failed to deliver. There’s evidence of full-scale intergalactic trade, multiplayer and a truly robust single-player campaign with Hollywood talent. All of that stuff sounds great, but studio turmoils, engine difficulties and unwavering ambition have bogged down the title’s schedule. Throughout most of last year, some wondered if No Man’s Sky would ever see the light of day. Those same thoughts have surrounded Star Citizen for even longer.

Fellow indie developers have even commented on the new hire. Outspoken Line Of Defense designer Derek Smart joked that Bourn had “quit quietly from one sinking canoe to a sinking luxury cruise liner.” Bourn replied by saying “gee thanks man. Real nice of you.”

With these staff changes in mind, the curious nature of the No Man’s Sky predicament continues. It’s been nearly three months since the last substantial update on the title’s progress. Outside of a strange hacking dilemma a few weeks ago, we haven’t seen anything besides a few internal updates on Steam.

What do you think of this job change? Will Star Citizen meet the same unfortunate fate as No Man’s Sky?  Tell us in the comments section.

No Man’s Sky is available now on PS4 and PC.

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by Owen S. Good via Polygon

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has run two betas over the past two weekends, and developer Infinity Ward promises they weren’t just previews to advertise the game. The studio has posted a long list of changes to be made to the game based on feedback from the beta.

There are all sorts of buffs and nerfs described, but the most wide-ranging changes to Infinite Warfare appear to be in streamlining the matchmaking system. A number of issues had unnecessarily lengthened matchmaking times, and these will be resolved.

This includes player evaluation, geographic categorization and “dead lobby” cleanup, all of which had added to the time it took to join a match. Additionally, times to join a match in progress have been shortened thanks to some cleanup in the way the game’s servers track information about lobbies current in a gaming session.

In gameplay, the shotgun has gotten some damage and range bonuses, health regeneration time has been reduced, and sniper weapons won’t have any aim assist until their optics are fully drawn to the player’s eye. Aim assist also was reduced for some versions of this weapon class.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare launches Nov. 4 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.

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by Christopher Groux via iDigitalTimes

No Man’s Sky released in one of the rockiest ways possible. Hours after launch, angry players took to social media to discuss the game’s missing features and visuals dissimilar to its PS4 trailers. Amidst reports that Hello Games is under investigation for false advertising, one journalist has defended the developer.

Owen S. Good has been employed in games journalism for nearly a decade, and he’s currently a reporter for Polygon. Late last week he composed an editorial about No Man’s Sky that’s just now starting to get some attention. In roughly 500 words, he essentially slammed fans for not being happy with a vision that, in his mind, is true to what Hello Games had always promised.

“The essential promise of No Man’s Sky was — to me anyway — a vast procedurally generated galaxy that a user could go explore as a camera, more or less, whether on alien soil or in orbit,” he said. “When the game turned out to be exactly that boring, a lot of people got mad and went to authorities over promises of ‘ship flying behaviour’ and the size of the creatures populating the worlds the user may explore, and other claims rooted in some kind of objective standard that the game has apparently failed.”

While he conceded that sometimes game developers release “bullshot” images that are impossible to replicate in any way on any hardware, Good equally expressed that “No Man’s Sky didn’t do anything close to that.” Titles like Aliens: Colonial Marines famously shook the trust of gamers three years ago with those kinds of tactics, but no comparison to it was made in this case.

The major point made by Godd is that the criticism against No Man’s Sky actually has nothing to do with its trailers or advertising but is instead a manifestation of frustration with a game that just wasn’t very good. The title was pre-ordered bountifully by devotees that felt sure Hello Games would deliver a quality product. In the eyes of many, that didn’t happen.

“It all feels like people are going to court over a refrigerator’s ice-making capacity, and getting a settlement there, when what’s really bothering them is the fact the appliance clashes with the countertop,” Good concluded.

From our perspective, it’s not so simple. No Man’s Sky did indeed release without many features its developers seemed to openly promise. Where’s the large-scale space combat? Why are factions so meaningless? Why aren’t there any hooks for multiplayer at all? While Good makes a solid case in saying that many detractors are focusing on tiny issues like creature size, it’s the bigger gaping holes that are certainly worthy of contempt. That being said, none of those elements were shown in actual ads, so it’s difficult to hold the studio legally accountable for them.

Do you agree with Good’s point of view? Did No Man’s Sky really release just as boring as advertised? Should Hello Games be facing legal trouble? Tell us in the comments section.

No Man’s Sky is available now on PS4 and PC.

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by Shawn Knight via TechSpot

Two movie franchises dominated the horror genre in the ‘80s and ‘90s – A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th starring Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, respectively. One would think that after more than three decades, audiences would have lost interest but a recent Kickstarter proves that’s not the case at all.

Gun Media last year managed to raise more than $800,000 to fund the creation of Friday the 13^th: The Game. The title was originally slated to arrive this month although a fresh campaign update reveals that won’t be the case.

Although the campaign did meet its primary funding goal of $700,000, it fell short of its $1.625 million stretch goal that would have added a single-player survival challenge mode. The development team has since decided to go ahead and create the single-player mode with offline play and AI bots after all.

Naturally, adding in a whole new experience takes time. As such, the game is being pushed back from its fall 2016 release window until the spring of next year. In the interim, you can always check out Mortal Kombat X where you can play as Jason courtesy of the Horror Pack DLC.

This won’t be the first video game based on the Crystal Lake terror. In 1989, developer Atlus put out Friday the 13^th for the Nintendo Entertainment System. To say the game was bad would be an understatement as many consider it one of the worst video games of all-time.

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by Paul Tassi via Forbes

Two months after the release of No Man’s Sky, Hello Games seems to be doing everything it possibly can to enshrine the fact that their game is going to be hated well into the future. Their total, eerie silence regarding both the issues with the released game, what it did and didn’t deliver, as well as no clear indication of future plans, is cementing the legacy of the troubled title in a way that’s simply a master class in how to not handle a post-launch crisis.

While No Man’s Sky is its own unique sort of problem, we see troubled video game launches all the time, from the Error 37 days of Diablo 3 to The Division’s garbage endgame to Pokémon GO’s server meltdowns. Fans were angry about a host of issues from missing features to in-game bugs, and each time, the developer in question has had to work to rebuild trust with their respective communities by 1) communicating and 2) actually fixing the problems.

No Man’s Sky has done neither of these things to point where it’s getting downright strange that Hello Games seems content to let the game and its angry fans fester.

Sean Murray, the man behind the curtain, has not tweeted since Aug. 18, doubly problematic given that his account also acts as the official No Man’s Sky Twitter account. Hello Games itself has only communicated in the form of a few brief updates, the last of which was Sept. 2, and the last addition to the game was a minor bug-squashing patch released Sept. 23.

What we have not heard from Hello Games or Murray is a substantive response to the deafening criticism of the game, which many believe did not deliver what it promised, at best, or was deliberately misleading, at worst.

While it’s true that No Man’s Sky was this mutated, twisted bubble of hype where fans, the press, and Sony all helped fan the flames, Hello Games is really now the only one that can answer for the final product. And their decision is to provide exactly no answers at all.

The type of screenshot that got us where we are today (Phto: Hello Games)

In all these other examples, we see developers specifically seeking out channels to communicate with fans. I remember Blizzard trying to explain the logic behind Diablo 3’s auction house, or more recently, Niantic has learned that radio silence is a bad thing, and has now started telegraphing future Pokémon GO plans and updates regularly. Destiny and The Division have essentially crowdsourced feedback from fans to try and improve their games, explaining themselves in weekly updates and showing future content in livestreams.

Perhaps two months post-launch is a bit early to hope for some of this stuff, but with no explanation about why the game didn’t meet expectations, and no indication of what exactly is being added to the game in the future in order to fix fan complaints, the hope for a possible resurgence of No Man’s Sky is quickly waning. I remember when the game first launched and everyone believed that a year later, it would be totally transformed with all the missing features Hello Games just didn’t have time to put in. But the longer this goes on, the less I think that’s possible.

What exactly is happening right now? Two theories:

1. Hello Games has their heads down and is working on a giant update for the game that will drop at some unspecified point before the holiday. Given how much their day one patch added to the game, this seems possible. They’re not talking because they know how much trouble talking got them in ahead of the game’s launch.
2. The team is working on stuff, but the silence and lack of updates signifies significant demoralization after the release of the game and the excruciatingly harsh feedback from critics and fans (review bombing has now made No Man’s Sky one of the worst rated games on Steam).

While Hello Games does have some explaining to do, I hope they can come back from this. The problem is that each day they remain completely silent, that plays into the idea that they just “took the money and ran” with big upfront No Man’s Sky sales, and no explanations about the failings of the product, or their plans for it thereafter.

You just really don’t see this in gaming that often other than with unknown Steam Greenlight publishers. Many, many developers and games have suffered through rough launches and bad first impressions, but the difference being that nearly all of them at least tried to explain what was going on, and attempted to continue supporting the game for a while after. But No Man’s Sky fans have literally nothing to go on. No reasons for why the game was a let-down, and no real indication that things might get better in the future, other than vague, months-ago promises about things like base-building.

Yes, No Man’s Sky is one of the most controversial releases of the year, but Hello Games’ response to the crisis after launch is only making things worse, and what exactly the company is thinking or doing now is anyone’s guess. If they want a second chance, they have to earn it, but so far they don’t seem like they even care.

As of this writing, Hello Games has not returned our request for comment.

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by Michael Andronico via Tom’s Guide

Nintendo has been oddly quiet about its upcoming NX console that’s slated to arrive next March, but that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening behind the scenes. The highly anticipated game console has reportedly entered trial production, which hopefully means we’re one step closer to getting an official reveal from the Big N.

Citing “industry sources,” DigiTimes reports that Taiwanese manufacturing company Foxconn is preparing to produce the NX, which is expected to be a handheld console with removable controllers that can also work with your TV. The same report claims that Sony’s 4K-enabled PS4 Pro has entered production ahead of its Nov. 10 release date.

While the NX is slated to launch in just a few months, Nintendo has yet to officially reveal what its new console looks like or how exactly it works. A variety of leaks and rumors have suggested that Nintendo’s new system will double as both a handheld device and home console, with detachable gamepad controls and a special dock that will let you beam your games to your TV.

A Foxconn sketch artist reportedly came forward with the NX’s full specs, in a report that was translated by a NEOGaf user. The system is rumored to have a 6-inch, 720p display, with a detachable “performance module” that will allow for better graphics. The NX may use cartridges (like the Nintendo 3DS handheld), and will support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and wired connections.

In terms of games, the NX is already confirmed to be getting The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, and the team behind Pokemon has promised to deliver titles for Nintendo’s new system. Other upcoming NX titles include Sega’s next Sonic game (currently codenamed Project Sonic 2017), as well as Square Enix’s Dragon Quest XI.