Call Of Duty Developer Responds To Fans’ Disgust With Space Theme

Posted: May 4, 2016 in Opinion Piece
0

45acdf42aea1c325d36b3dcf0bf1a28a

by William User via CinemaBlend

Activision and Infinity Ward’s latest entry in the Call of Duty series is called Infinite Warfare, and gamers are not too happy about it. Infinity Ward’s design director ran to the game’s defense following a less-than-stellar reception to the game’s announcement.

Speaking with Gamespot, design director Jacob Minkoff explained,
The approach that we’ve been taking with this game… the inspirations don’t come from sci-fi or space in any way, […] The inspirations come from war stories. This is Call of Duty. We are talking about warfare and in this case Infinite Warfare… what we feel is that classically told narratives can take place in any setting.

While Jacob Minkoff may be trying to run damage control for the poor reception of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s debut trailer, that doesn’t really change how gamers feel about it.

The YouTube announcement trailer has 4.6 million views after debuting yesterday, and it has a near equal amount of downvotes as it does upvotes; 132,000 upvotes versus 126,000 downvotes, as of the writing of this article.

The general sentiment is that a lot of gamers joke that they must have accidentally clicked on a Halo trailer instead of a Call of Duty trailer.

While Jacob Minkoff’s point is that this next entry in the long-running shooter series will be grounded in some kind of military drama and tension, the reality is that gamers are still seeing another derivative sci-fi shooter on the horizon. It’s also hard to deny that the inspirations don’t come from sci-fi when we get an entire third of the trailer dedicated to players flying around in space in a spaceship firing lasers and fighting robots big enough to flip over tanks.

If Jacob Minkoff was trying to convince gamers that there’s a serious story to be told in this upcoming outing of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, it was utterly lost in all of the actual sci-fi elements on display in the trailer itself. And really, when gamers have to go by what Minkoff is saying or what Activision is showing, it appears most people are reacting to what they’ve been shown.

Now this isn’t to say that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will be bad. Just because people aren’t keen on the trailer and have become fatigued on sci-fi shooters as of late – we’ve had Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Halo 5, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Destiny, Titanfall, Evolve, Ghost In The Shell and Star Wars: Battlefront all released in the last two years. This doesn’t necessarily mean that this upcoming game will be bad. In fact, it might be the opposite.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 really took me by surprise, having one of the most mature and thought-provoking stories in movies and games that I’ve seen in quite some time. The writers really knocked it out of the park with that one, in spite of the heavy reliance on a science fiction theme.

Ultimately Infinity Ward will have to prove that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare doesn’t deserve the ire its currently getting by showcasing some gameplay and some of those story elements to make gamers care. We’ll likely get to see some real-time footage at this year’s E3 during Sony’s press conference.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is due out on November 4th, 2016 later this year along with a remastered version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Visit our Official Website at http://www.gamersoutpost.net

Nintendo NX Games: Nintendo President Promises Strong Launch Lineup

Posted: May 1, 2016 in Announcements, Opinion Piece
0

nintendo-nx-rumors

by ‘Apolon’ via ‘iDigitalTimes’

As reported by Nintendolife, Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima recently spoke to Nintendo investors at one of the company’s periodic briefings and they grilled him pretty hard once he announced that the Nintendo NX and Zelda Wii U were both missing the holiday season this year. But he had an explanation (translation by Cheesemeister3k, again via Nintendolife): “Having a full software lineup when the hardware launches is one reason for the NX launch timing. Also, we must be in a state to release titles not just at launch, but continually afterwards. We are planning for it to be a platform that will be played for a long time.” What’s more, the console will be profitable from launch, and won’t be a loss leader the way the Wii U was.

If what Kimishima says is true, then Nintendo may not be in such trouble after all. If the system really does have a strong launch lineup, and a strong ramp-up after that, along with a respectable amount of third-party support, Nintendo may still be able to make the Nintendo NX into a success. Let’s just hope that new hardware from Sony and Microsoft isn’t too compelling.

A weak launch lineup killed the Wii U. The console had just a few games at launch, and no major titles for the better part of a year thereafter. By the time enough titles were out to drive some real sales momentum, third parties had given up on the console, and a lot of consumers had too. The Wii U GamePad itself never really got as exciting as it could have been either. Nintendo didn’t push its own innovation as hard as it should have. And it all stemmed from the weak launch lineup.

If Nintendo NX can avoid that, the future could be entirely different—even if the system is weaker than the upgraded hardware Sony and Microsoft have been hinting at lately. Let’s hope the lineup is really as strong as Kimishima is saying.

Visit our Official Website at http://www.gamersoutpost.net

If you use Microsoft’s free OneDrive cloud storage, we hope you’re sitting down

Posted: April 25, 2016 in Announcements
0

clouds

by Zach Epstein via BGR News

OneDrive users, we have some bad news and we think that you should probably be sitting down for it. Microsoft announced last year that it would be making some big changes to its cloud storage solution, OneDrive. Unfortunately, those changes were all bad news for users. For one, the company said that it intended to ditch its 100GB and 200GB plans and offer only a paid 50GB plan for $1.99 per month. Of note, that’s twice what Apple charges for the same amount of iCloud storage.

 

But that’s not even the really bad news. Microsoft also said that it planned to trim the amount of cloud storage available to free OneDrive users from 15GB to 5GB at some point in early 2016, and now we know exactly when the change will take place.

As cloud storage continues to get cheaper and cheaper for service providers, Microsoft has decided to remove much of the value from its own consumer offering. It’s a curious and aggravating move for many users, but there is some good news to be had… sort of.

If you saw earlier coverage of Microsoft’s announcement, you know that there was a way for free users to keep their 15GB of OneDrive storage after the switch is made. All you had to do was visit a special page on Microsoft’s website and click one button. Note the past tense in that last sentence — unfortunately, you had to click that button by January 31st, 2015 in order to keep your 15GB.

If you missed out and didn’t get a chance to visit Microsoft’s site by the end of January, there’s nothing you can do. Well, that’s not entirely true. There are two things you can do: pay for 50GB of OneDrive storage or switch to another cloud storage provider. You have until July 27th to decide, as Microsoft has confirmed that’s the date these changes will take effect.

Visit our Official Website at http://www.gamersoutpost.net

Gamers Will Buy Whatever Half-Consoles Sony And Microsoft Sell Them Because They Won’t Have A Choice

Posted: April 22, 2016 in Opinion Piece
0

ps4-xbox-one3-1200x815

by Paul Tassi via Forbes

There has been a lot of debate about the potential of upcoming “half-consoles” that Sony and Microsoft are rumored to be making. Sony’s PS4.5, or PS4K, or NEO, seems to be more tangible, as at this point leaks have spilled nearly every detail about the system, which may be coming this fall. And though Microsoft has cautiously backed away from talking about an “Xbox 1.5,” rumor has it they are indeed testing more powerful versions of the Xbox One behind the scenes.

Some view these consoles as inevitable, that technology is evolving in ways that require incremental upgrades rather than these big leaps every 6-7 years. The idea is that the original sin was releasing underpowered Xbox Ones and PS4s to begin with, and now these new consoles may be what they were supposed to be originally. The “death” of the console generation could be a good thing, as it may allow the industry to evolve along a smoother curve with smaller upgrades in time, and so long as there’s backward/forward compatibility, it shouldn’t disrupt players who own even older versions of the new consoles.

That’s all great in theory.

What I can tell you in practice is that no matter the logic here, if Sony releases a PS4.5 as an entirely new, more powerful console this fall, you are going to make a large percentage of ~40 million PS4 owners pretty damn angry. The same goes for the Xbox crowd if Microsoft does something similar.

 Though “industry experts” may be split on this development, from what I’ve seen, consumers are a lot less so, particularly if they already own one of the new-gen consoles. The idea that a new PS4 could be released this fall, and suddenly when Destiny 2 or Black Ops 4 comes out, they will see beautiful previews of the “NEO” version, but will only be able to make their game look like that after buying a new system, it’s going to be rage-inducing. PC players are looking at console players like they’re crazy, as to keep up with “maxed” PC games, you constantly have to be investing hundreds of dollars to upgrade your system.
perfect-dark-zero-1200x675

But that’s never been the case with consoles. Instead, gamers have been taught the opposite. If you buy a console at launch, and wait 6-7 years, the games at the end of its lifecycle will have evolved into something even more beautiful. Compare Xbox 360 launch era games like Perfect Dark Zero to end-of-life titles like Gears of War 3. They’re not even in the same universe, yet they were released on the same hardware, and consumers never had to upgrade anything at all. This is a major appeal of console gaming.

And yet, there’s really nothing that consumers can do about this if Sony and Microsoft decide to go down this path.

The problem with the current video game landscape is that if Microsoft and Sony both agree on something, in this case releasing “upgraded” versions of their consoles without jumping to a full generation, that’s pretty much the way it’s going to be. Why? Because in this market, consumers simply don’t have another choice.

You can say they do, but you’re wrong. For all this talk of Apple TV and other smart devices posing some threat to consoles, that has not come to pass. VR may take off, but in terms of replacing traditional console gaming? It’s still a solid decade or more away from approaching that sort of mass adoption. PC gaming is and has always been an alternative, but the PC model being brought to consoles is what these players are rejecting in the first place. And while Nintendo may end up being the only company releasing a full-on new-gen console in the next few years, it’s hard to believe that the NX is going to have rebuilt every single third party relationship that players take for granted on Sony and Microsoft systems.

gears-of-war-3-1200x675

So, if there’s a PS4.5 and an Xbox 1.5, and players want to continue on with the same kind of console experience they’ve enjoyed for twenty or thirty years, they will have to adapt. Players aren’t just going “quit gaming” and though they may choose to stick with their original PS4s or Xbox Ones for a while out of spite or financial necessity, if five years from now the incremental upgrade model is still in place, they’re going to cave eventually. It will simply be the new normal. It may not be “right” in the eyes of many gamers, but it will be reality, like it or not.

Sony and Microsoft are in a position to make this gospel, if they want, because there is no direct alternative to either console at this point. The Prisoner’s Dilemma play would be say, Sony trying this upgrade system out, and Microsoft acting like they were going to do the same, only backing out at the last minute, sinking more power into their unit and releasing a full-on Xbox Two in two years or so. Or Sony could pull a reversal and do the same. But the risk there is that if this mid-gen upgrade does work, do you really want to be the console that is demonstrably underpowered for a few years?

This is turning into a very weird console generation, but the fact is that if this is the direction that both Microsoft and Sony want to go, there’s really going to be nothing stopping them. Streaming boxes, Steam machines, VR, the NX and PC are all “alternate” forms of gaming, but right now, for the most traditional console experience that players have grown up with, there still isn’t anything else besides Xbox and PlayStation. If they change, their consumers will have to change as well, either by buying these new systems, or altering their gaming habits to fit one of the alternatives.

Visit our Official Website at http://www.gamersoutpost.net

Gamestop: New Consoles From Microsoft, Sony Or Nintendo Coming Real Soon

Posted: April 15, 2016 in Game Articles, Opinion Piece
0

zelda1-1200x675

by Dave Thier via Forbes

There are no doubt people that know all about whatever the plans are for a new Xbox, a PS4 4k, or the Nintendo NX. Some are at the companies responsible, of course. Others are developers, who receive dev kits in advance to make launch titles for these systems. Others are most definitely at Gamestop, which stands to profit immensely every time there’s a new round of hardware. It’s from them we heard just now, more specifically, from Gamestop COO Tony Bartel speaking at an investor/analyst day. He knows more than he’s saying, he says, but strongly hinted that new hardware was coming quite soon.

“Although we have not modeled extensive growth for new innovation in this presentation, we are very pleased to see the introduction of technology like virtual reality and rumored new console launches, some of which seem imminent,” he said when questioned about the rumors, according to Gamespot.

It’s really not hard to read into that statement. Investors and analysts would be very curious about any and all new hardware coming to Gamestop shelves, and that line is one giant wink saying that it’s happening soon, and my guess is most people in the audience would read that as a direct reference to the upcoming holiday season. That jives with some of the chatter we’ve heard before, and that’s what I’m hearing from Bartel.

 He’s not specific about which one is coming out of course, but I think that both the NX and a PS4 4K are solid bets. The NX has long been rumored to be launching in holiday 2016, and there have been reports about the next iteration of PS4 as well. That would time the launch to coincide with the release of Playstation VR, and I tend to think that those two developments are inextricably linked. Microsoft remains a big question mark, but my guess is that we’re going to know more about that very soon: likely at the E3 press conference.

All of which is information that Gamestop would clearly want their investors to know about in as much detail as possible without violating NDA agreements. So my guess is that’s why we’re hearing this quite so cryptically. As far as cryptic statements go, however, this one is pretty reliable.

Visit our Official Website at http://www.gamersoutpost.net

 

After hackers ran up a bill on my PlayStation account, Sony held it ransom

Posted: April 14, 2016 in Opinion Piece
0

sony-ps4-controller-0001-1200x0

by Brad Bourque  via Digital Trends

Getting my PlayStation account hacked was terrible, but Sony made it a whole lot worse.

Instead of helping me, Sony decided that I had to pay for the games that my hacker purchased, or face a permanent ban on my account.

It all started Saturday afternoon. I was scrolling through my inbox and noticed some odd emails from PlayStation, all of them at 3:01 AM. There were three $25 payments to my PlayStation wallet, and a purchase for NBA 2K16 and some credits. After checking to make sure my roommate hadn’t drunkenly purchased the game, thinking he’d pay me back later, I noticed even more concerning emails.

The first asked me to confirm a change to my PlayStation account’s email. The email wasn’t opened, nor had any odd devices accessed my email account, but another message less than a minute later confirmed the email change. Yep. While I was sleeping, someone locked me out of my own account.

But PlayStation requires you to confirm an email change by clicking a link in an email sent to the old account first, right? Wrong.

As it turns out, hackers have an easy way around this problem. Payment info, or at least a portion of it, is visible in the web interface for a PlayStation account. Once an attacker has your password, they can chat with Sony tech support, explain that they don’t have access to that email anymore, and use the visible info in the account to verify their identity, changing the email on the account to prevent recovery by its rightful owner — in this case, me.

In the meantime, they added a device to my account, a PS Vita. Unlike a PS3 or PS4, a PS Vita can’t be removed from the account by Web, it can only be deactivated from the device itself.

Fortunately, social hacking your way through tech support tends to be a double-edged sword, and I knew I would be able to wrestle my account back by providing the right info. Both consoles that regularly access the account are in my home, so that’s a form of proof, and because Sony doesn’t let users change their user names, no email changes could alter my gamertag.

Following the paper trail

This all happened on a Sunday, so Sony’s phone support wasn’t open, and I was forced to use the text chat. This actually ended up working to my benefit, as we’ll see shortly, but it also raises some problems of its own.

I wasn’t at home when I noticed the hacker’s activities, but I needed to stop the intruder from making any more purchases. I called PayPal support, and an agent there was quick to de-authorize my PlayStation account from making any more pre-approved purchases. Then, I filed a dispute on all three $25 charges.

sony-login-0001-1024x707

Once I got home, I sat down at a computer and fired up Sony’s chat support. At first, the agent was helpful. The intrusion and email changing were a separate issue from the disputed purchases, so we would deal with them one at a time.

The agent rolled back the account’s email to the previous address (mine), and forced a password reset when I confirmed the change. Then I was a little bewildered as the agent asked: “Now what do you want to do about the purchases?”

“I don’t want NBA 2K16, and I don’t want to add $75 to my PlayStation account,” I said. It sounded simple enough, or so I thought.

The agent passed the buck. They explained that in order to issue a refund, I needed to cancel the dispute with PayPal. Essentially, PayPal had taken the money back from Sony, and I needed to have PayPal release it so Sony could hand it back to me.

So I contacted PayPal. This turned out to be a process in and of itself. Because the dispute was security related, I had to call PayPal support, verify my identity, and then say in no uncertain terms that I was closing the case permanently, and get a guarantee that PayPal wouldn’t reopen it.

I informed the Sony tech support agent once the dispute was canceled. I didn’t get a human response. Instead, I got a copied and pasted statement explaining that Sony doesn’t offer refunds, and the funds would only be returned to my wallet. I asked what would happen if I issued a chargeback at the debit card level, and the agent explained matter-of-factly that my account would be banned until I paid the $75 in fraudulent charges.

After six years as a paying PlayStation customer, my account was now being held hostage, not by a hacker, but by Sony. I had to cover the cost of the metaphorical broken window, or my account was going to be locked. Basically, I had to apologize and pay for a thief.

Why hasn’t Sony learned?

You would think Sony would know how to handle hacking, especially after its multiple massive breaches (this one and this one) in the last five years, but it hasn’t learned. The PlayStation network has been around since 2006, but there’s no two-factor authentication, and visible payment info on the web front-end. This leaves a wide enough security hole for an elephant to walk through. The customer service agent suggested that I only use prepaid cards, but that’s more of a workaround than a real solution.

Sony has a history of poor responses to hacking. Back in 2011 when PlayStation Network went down for almost a month, the gaming brand offered affected players one month of PlayStation Plus, which meant you got a few games that were disabled after the month ended if you didn’t become a paying subscriber.

You could argue that the way it treated me is to avoid refunding purchases that people made accidentally (or drunkenly), but even if a few people take advantage of the system for an ill-gotten refund, at least they’ll stick with PlayStation.

As for me, I now have to decide whether I buy FIFA 16 on PS4 or PC. Right now, I’m not a big fan of Sony’s attitude or policies. It’s bad enough to be hacked, but it’s even worse to have to pay for the digital damage.

Visit our Official Website at http://www.gamersoutpost.net

Xbox 1.5 Isn’t Happening, says Microsoft’s Phil Spencer

Posted: April 3, 2016 in Announcements, Opinion Piece
0

a669ff7dbc2efd7b3ac34004a24a19c5

by William Usher by CinemaBlend

The internet nearly went up in flames within the gaming sectors over the big rumors spreading about the PlayStation 4.5, also referred to as the PS4K. All the rumors surrounding the half-step console has put eyes on Microsoft to see if they might follow suit. According to Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer, Microsoft will not follow suit with an Xbox 1.5.

Gamespot quoted Phil Spencer from a recent Microsoft Build 2016 event, where he explained that they won’t be making any incremental upgrades to the Xbox One in the point-five sectors. If they upgrade it will be significant. Spencer stated the following:

I’m not a big fan of Xbox One and a half. If we’re going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers, […] For us, our box is doing well. It performs, it’s reliable, the servers are doing well. If we’re going to go forward with anything, like I said, I want it to be a really substantial change for people–an upgrade

Completely agreed.

I think most of all of Phil Spencer’s changes and directions for the Xbox brand have been for the better. He had to right a very wronged ship during the Mattrick-era Xbox One where it was known as the DRM Box. Don Mattrick was condescending toward the Xbox fans and specifically turned off a lot of potential customers with the heavy DRM-laden policies that they originally had planned for the Xbox One.

After Don Mattrick departed the company and Phil Spencer stepped in, he was able to turn around the sales, turn around the brand image and actually get people excited about Xbox again.

One of the system’s main features that now receives a lot of positive feedback is the backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games, as well as the universally praised Games With Gold program for Xbox Live subscribers.

All of these upgrades and feature implementations have helped completely alter how people see Xbox. Well, for the most part. Most savvy gamers still recognize that the Xbox One is the weaker console between it and the PS4 and that there’s no way it can last a decade like the Xbox 360 did.

In a way, a lot of people expected Microsoft to introduce an Xbox 1.5 or some sort of upgrade system due to how weak the hardware is, but the reality is that Microsoft is probably putting resources aside to make a real big step up for a system that will hopefully make trends the way the Xbox 360 did when it first launched back in 2005.

Also, a lot of people across the web are not keen about the PS4.5 or PS4K. Savvy gamers recognize that the system cannot run games at native 4K for anything under $1,500 and most gamers recognize that it seems inconsequential to make a PS4.5 with a barely incremental upgrade over the standard PS4.

If Sony is serious about releasing this half-generation upgrade for the PlayStation 4 they could lose a lot of sales momentum and even confuse potential buyers. Microsoft seems to be playing it right by riding out the generation and looking to make a serious step up when the time comes to unveil their next bit of hardware.

Phil Spencer has played it straight and played it well with the Xbox brand since taking over, and he seems to be on the right path by avoiding a potentially install-base-splitting decision that Sony could be pursuing with the PS4K.

Visit our Official Website at http://www.blackdollindustries.com

It Looks Like Game Over for GameStop Corp.

Posted: April 2, 2016 in Game Articles
0

The specialty retailer is rolling the dice in a game of chance as the landscape shifts in its industry.

10215631583_6b842cd514_z_large

by Rich Duprey via The Motley Fool

The rationale behind GameStop (NYSE:GME) existing as a business, let alone as an investment, is over. With gaming transitioning to a digital download format, the need for an expansive specialty retailer selling hard copies of gaming titles is quickly fading. While an innovative company might be able to figure out a way to evolve into a business that grows with the times, GameStop has instead chosen a path that ensures it will only exist as a much smaller, wholly irrelevant entity.

Downloads taking it down
New game software revenue tumbled more than 10% in the fiscal fourth quarter ending Jan. 30, accelerating a decline that saw sales fall 6% across all of 2015. And the outlook isn’t much better, with total sales expected to drop as much as 7% in the first quarter, though GameStop says they will eventually even out as the year progresses. Heck, they could also end up 3% higher, too!

Of course, it thought 2015’s total sales could be as much as 4% higher, and we see how that worked out, but the reason for GameStop’s optimism is what should have investors worried.

GameStop finds itself at a juncture much like the one that faced Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) several years ago: It’s once-thriving DVD movie rental business was increasingly transitioning to a digital streaming model, so it could either evolve with it, or find itself in a position like Blockbuster. Netflix chose evolution, making the jump not only to providing streaming movies, but also creating its own content.

GameStop seems more like Redbox parent Outerwall (NASDAQ:OUTR), which remains doggedly wedded to the DVD rental model, even as it makes a late, second foray into streaming video.

Dialing up failure
The game retailer’s strategy for coming to grips with the changing landscape of the industry is…selling AT&T mobile phones. What?!

GameStop’s Technology Brands division, which, in addition to its Spring Mobile division (the AT&T wireless retailer it bought in 2013) also runs 76 Simply Mac stores selling Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) laptops, tablets, and smartphones, saw revenues rise 26% last year. It plans on building upon that success.

Last year, as it was slashing the total number of retail video game stores by closing a net of 156 locations, it vastly expanded the footprint of its Technology Brands division by adding 552 stores. Sure, it still has almost 6,100 video game stores, compared to a little more than 1,000 mobile phone and Mac stores (and three dozen collectibles outlets), but it will be the Technology Brands outlets that see the lion’s share of future growth, with as many as 550 new stores planed to open this year.

Still, that muscular growth brought division revenues to just $653 million, or 7% of the specialty retailer’s $9.4 billion in total sales. It’s worrisome that management sees that as being its growth driver for the future, and that it thinks it can supplant the bulk of its gaming revenue.

Mobile phone sales are the dying gasp of an ailing, failing businesses. Circuit City and RadioShack turned from being specialty electronics retailers into cell phone sellers because it looks like easy money. The problem is, consumers can buy a cell phone anywhere, so it gives GameStop absolutely no competitive edge.

Hey Mac, can you spare a dime?
And don’t expect anything out of the Simply Mac business, either. Consumers have a choice of shopping at an actual Apple store, or at the many Mac boutique shops that litter the landscape. Even office supplies retailer Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS) once believed selling more Mac products would help its business. It didn’t, and now it’s fighting the government for its survival.

The Apple store experience isn’t easy to replicate: The salespeople are generally more knowledgeable about the products, the latest products are broadly available, and the environment is aesthetically pleasing. More likely than not, if someone’s going to go to a bricks-and-mortar location to buy a Mac, it will be an Apple store.

Still, GameStop thinks this is its future. Investors should realize that by making a big bet on a game already saturated with too many players, it’s game over for GameStop.

Visit our Official Website at http://www.blackdollindustries.com

Microsoft Finally Reveals Long-Awaited Xbox One Feature

Posted: March 30, 2016 in Announcements
0

Xbox-One-Console-Wallpaper-HD

by Dave Thier via Forbes

Three years ago, Microsoft made a tantalizing remark about the future of the Xbox One. It was a game console designed to foster creativity and development, the company said, and to that end any retail unit could be converted into a development kit. Microsoft will finally be making good on that promise, it announced at its annual build conference in San Francisco.

“Windows is the best platform for the vast community of game developers,” said Xbox boss Phil Spencer, via The Verge. “Windows is and will continue to be an open development ecosystem where anyone can build, deploy, and service their games and applications.” And those games will run on the whole ecosystem of Windows devices, from smartphones to desktop PCs and the Xbox console.

In order to take advantage, you need to join the Windows 10 insider program, run Windows 10 on a PC that has a wired connection to your Xbox One and have the latest versions of Visual Studio and Windows (via polygon). The feature is available as  preview today, with the major caveat that it wont be fully ready for primetime until sometime in the summer. This doesn’t mean that the Xbox One all of a sudden became as open as Windows: people can make whatever games they want, but anything they do make is subject to the same approval process that games go through now.

 People were excited when Microsoft first talked about this feature,for good reason: democratizing development is a great idea for all involved, allowing all sorts of new, strange projects from unexpected places. Still, it’s going to be hard to know how this will actually impact the software landscape of the Xbox One until the program has been live for a year or so — in an ideal world, the Xbox One could become at least as open as Steam is today. In a less than ideal world, people are making all sorts of games that won’t be able to make it onto Xbox Live and the whole thing skews hobbyist. Microsoft has made big strides in the way it treats indie games since the beginning of this console generation, and so I’m cautiously optimistic for the former.
Visit our Official Website at http://www.blackdollindustries.com

Metal Gear Solid Actor David Hayter — “I’ve Got No Particular Love for Kojima”

Posted: March 27, 2016 in Game Articles
0

3027667-hayter

by Eddie Makuch via GameSpot

The voice of Snake in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was performed by 24 actor Kiefer Sutherland, not series veteran David Hayter. Now, Hayter has spoken up about why he was not involved with the project and explained that he has no intention to ever work with series creator Hideo Kojima again.

Regarding why he wasn’t involved with The Phantom Pain, Hayter told Game Informer that he bumped into a producer for the game at a recording studio and was told Konami was going in a different direction. “That was basically it,” Hayter said. He then spoke with Metal Gear English casting director Kris Zimmerman, who reportedly told him, “‘We’re going forward, but it looks like they are going to try and replace you.’ They tried to do that before, and it never worked. They tried to get voice matches, and it never happened.”

Hayter further explained that the writing had been on the wall. There was apparently some amount of friction brewing between Hayter and Kojima, with the game designer hoping to find a different actor to perform the lead role, though it’s unclear why.

“I had to re-audition for Metal Gear 3 to play Naked Snake,” Hayter said. “They made me re-audition to play Old Snake, and the whole time, they were trying to find somebody else to do it. I heard that Kojima asked one of the producers on Metal Gear 3 to ask Kurt Russell if he would take over for that game. He didn’t want to do it.”

Hayter goes on to say that he cherishes the time he spent working on the Metal Gear Solid series, though he wishes his professional involvement with the series could have ended better.

“I don’t have any ill will toward Kiefer Sutherland or anything like that,” he said. “The whole thing could have been handled better and a little more respectfully, but I’m not going to cry about it.”

Finally, he says he hasn’t played The Phantom Pain (“that’ll be 60 hours of humiliation”) and that a future partnership with Kojima is unlikely to happen. “I’ve got no particular love for Kojima. I don’t feel any need to go back and work with him again.”

In 2013, before the launch of The Phantom Pain, Hayter said Konami never asked him to work on the game and never told him why he was passed over.

“If it were my choice, I would do this role forever,” Hayter said at the time about Snake. “To hear anyone else’s voice coming from Snake’s battered throat, makes me a little ill, to be honest.”

Visit our Official Website at http://www.gamersoutpost.net

Older Entries
Newer Entries