Gamer's Outpost Press (Archived)

by Eddie Makuch

Following last week’s news that the Xbox One had outsold the PlayStation 4 in the US and UK for November 2014, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg has spoken out to say “we’re just getting started.”

Greenberg’s official title is Senior Director of the Studios Marketing Group for all first- and third-party Xbox games, a position he took on in June after nearly three years in the role of chief of staff.

November 2014 was the first month since the Xbox One and PS4 launched in November 2013 that Microsoft’s console came out on top in the United States, according to NPD Group data.

Xbox One software sales were also strong in November. During the period, more Xbox One games were sold in the US than PS4 or Wii U. November 2014 was also Xbox Live’s biggest month in history, with more fans logged into the service across Xbox One and Xbox 360 than ever before.

What gives Microsoft confidence it can keep its Xbox One sales momentum going? For one thing, the company says it has so many holiday 2015 games in the works that it may need to delay some to make room. Do you think Microsoft can extend its winning streak? Let us know in the comments below!

by Ben Kuchera

The Xbox One had a rough first year, and no other console has had to change its failing strategy so rapidly after launch. One could argue that Nintendo is struggling a bit more in the current market, but Microsoft has shown a willingness to listen to its customers and adapt its product in a way Nintendo seems unwilling, or unable, to emulate.

The Xbox One was announced in May of last year, in what has to be one of the worst product reveals in electronics history. The message was muddled, simple questions from the press were met with conflicting information, and players began to revolt against Microsoft’s all-digital future almost immediately.

The Xbox One outsold the PlayStation 4 for the first time in the console’s history in the US and UK this November. The two events seem to have happened in two different industries, but that only proves how humble, not to mention nimble, Microsoft became in 2014 when it comes to the Xbox One.

Price, price, price

The problem with the Kinect was never the hardware itself, although it did suffer from false-positives and an inability to play nice with many accents, but the fact that its forced inclusion drove up the price of the Xbox One.

The hardware was more expensive than its immediate competition, and many players didn’t see the value of waving their arms at their television to change channels or play a game. You could talk to the Kinect, but it would often misunderstand you.

Microsoft failed to learn the importance of having a low initial price, and the Xbox One found itself in the uncomfortable situation of being the most expensive console due to a piece of hardware that only worked some of the time and was hard to describe to a mass audience.

The Kinect was removed from the system as a forced pack-in in May of this year, almost exactly a year from the console’s announcement. This allowed Microsoft to lower the price of the hardware, and sales improved. Microsoft’s dream of an always-on camera that listened to you and allowed you to play by waving your hands was gone, but the market itself didn’t care.

The result was that prices came down, the system was more immediately approachable and players weren’t being forced to pay for a peripheral with limited support that may or may not work in their home. Microsoft became a rare thing in technology: A company that poured a ton of money into a novel technology before putting the entirety of its marketing might behind it … then ditching it in short order when it was clear the audience was not interested.

Microsoft in 2014 was an amazing example of a company learning from its mistakes and adjusting its strategy. Titanfall was a great exclusive, and the publishing deal that will give the Xbox One what is likely to be timed exclusivity of the next Tomb Raider is a solid investment.

Microsoft failed to learn the importance of having a low initial price

The vision behind the Xbox One, from the digital push to the Kinect, is in ashes, but the company continues to learn, adjust and fight back.

The story of the Xbox One in 2014 is the story of a system getting rid of all its baggage and focusing on the games While many pundits, including myself in the past, have said that this generation of consoles may have sluggish sales while justifying their price with multimedia features, players have shown that they’re willing to pay for the consoles that bring the best value to power ratio and put the focus squarely on the games.

Sony has enjoyed its lead mostly due to the fact that it launched with fewer bells and whistles at a better price while providing more power, but to Microsoft’s credit the company saw it had made a number of missteps with the Xbox One and worked to fix them.

2015 will begin with three very interesting systems filled with great games, the Wii U included, but it was perhaps Microsoft that had the longest and hardest road to this point. The system now starts at $350, which is a $150 drop from its release price in under two years, and Microsoft has picked up a number of strong exclusives while working toward improving the operating system and giving the system a better sense of identity without the Kinect. The Xbox One is being rewarded for these efforts with the most important metric: Sales.

Welcome back, Xbox One. Let’s play some games.

by Eddie Makuch

Christmas comes early for some Assassin’s Creed Unity players, as Ubisoft will start handing out free games next week for owners of the game’s DLC pass, the publisher has announced.

Anyone who purchased Unity’s DLC pass or Gold Edition are eligible for the free game as part of Ubisoft’s apology over the game’s bugs and other technical issues.

As you’d expect, Unity’s DLC pass and Gold Edition have been removed from sale, meaning you can’t now buy the content as a means to score a free game. If you were one of the early adopters for Unity’s DLC pass or Gold Edition, however, you can choose from the following games to receive for free.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
The Crew
Far Cry 4
Just Dance 2015
Rayman Legends
Watch Dogs

Ubisoft cautions that the list of available titles may vary by country, though the publisher did not provide any further details. It also explains that your free game must be on the same platform you bought Unity for.

As for how you can go about claiming your free game, Ubisoft will launch a special website next week that users can access with their Uplay, PSN, or Xbox Live accounts. A step-by-step guide on how to claim your freebie is coming next week. We’ll post that information as soon as it’s available.

If you didn’t buy the Unity DLC pass or Gold Edition, you’re still getting free content in the form of the Dead Kings expansion, which will be given to all players. A release date has not been set.

Unity was released in November, suffering through some technical troubles out of the gate. Ubisoft has released a number of patches so far, the most recent of which–Patch 4–will arrive on Monday, December 15. This latest patch is a big one, and should clear up most of the game’s remaining issues.

by James Cook

Following the Sony hacking scandal, in which thousands of documents from the company’s movie studio were exposed, an IT worker employed by a firm that has access to Sony’s computer network has described the company’s security as a “mess.”

“The security team has no f—ing clue,” the employee told Business Insider, speaking about the team’s unpreparedness for a cyberattack.

Our source told us that Sony’s security was “outdated and ineffective.” The person described Sony’s security policies as “idiotic” and expected more from a company with more than 100,000 employees worldwide.

Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton sent a memo to staff in the days after the hack occurred. In the email, he quoted a security researcher from Mandiant who suggested that Sony couldn’t really have done anything to protect against the attack:

This attack is unprecedented in nature. The malware was undetectable by industry standard antivirus software and was damaging and unique enough to cause the FBI to release a flash alert to warn other organisations of this critical threat.

Our source described that letter as “pathetic,” a criticism that has been shared by many security researchers. Security researcher Adam Caudill told Mashable that Sony Pictures and Mandriant described the attack as “unprecedented” only to save face. Another expert, Adrian Sanabria, told Mashable that “you should definitely be able to detect somebody copying … data systematically.”

The employee who works with the Sony network said the company’s internal IT team was “terrible,” consisting of “incompetent people.”

We saw evidence of just how poor Sony’s security was in the files that hackers posted online. A series of documents stored in a folder named “Password” contained login information for administration accounts, social media accounts, and even SSL certificates. An SSL certificate digitally signs a web page to prove that it’s from that company.

Hackers used the passwords found in that folder to cause more damage, taking over Twitter accounts for Hollywood movies and using them to spread information about the hack.

The source close to Sony also said the company hadn’t learned from previous hacks.

In June 2011 the hacker group LulzSec, an offshoot from Anonymous, hacked into Sony Pictures. They said they obtained “usernames, passwords, email addresses, and dates of birth for thousands of people.” The group used a common tactic against Sony Pictures, using an SQL injection attack to gain access to the company’s computer network.

To our source’s knowledge, none of the security people in contact with the source were fired over previous hacks, and it’s unclear whether Sony terminated anyone for those security lapses. That could mean that the same people who were meant to defend the company’s servers in 2011 are still presiding over its security.

We reached out to Sony for this story and will update if we hear back from them.

by Chris Matyszczyk

We tend to believe that our values are the right ones for everybody.

Many people’s definition of “liberal” seems to be “say and do whatever you like, as long as I don’t find it repulsive.” Just as many people’s definition of “freedom” is, in fact, “free to think and do only those things of which I approve.”

And so it is that a great battle of values has emerged in Australia. The country’s Kmart and Target stores have decided to ban “Grand Theft Auto V.” I’m not sure why it took them five versions to get there, but it’s clear the stores were moved by a petition that was signed by 50,000 people.

It declared that the game “encourages players to murder women for entertainment.” It added: “The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get ‘health’ points.” It concluded: “Games like this are grooming yet another generation of boys to tolerate violence against women.”

Many will surely have sympathy with the petitioners. The issue of violence against women remains central to every society in the world.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, some GTA fans are deeply unamused. They’re now calling for Target and Kmart to ban the Bible.

Posting their own petition in the same place as the anti-GTA V one — Change.org — these petitioners declare: “Withdraw The Holy Bible — this sickening book encourages readers to commit sexual violence and kill women.”

Its wording tries to mirror that of the original petition. For example: “This book means that after various sex acts, readers are given options to kill women by stoning her unconscious, Setting them on fire, cutting off their hands, and killing their children!”

And then there’s: “One of many fan passages on In The Holy Bible depicts woman being set alight for having sex. “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.” (Leviticus 21:9).”

Many will surely have sympathy with the petitioners. The issue of violence against women remains central to every society in the world.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, some GTA fans are deeply unamused. They’re now calling for Target and Kmart to ban the Bible.

Posting their own petition in the same place as the anti-GTA V one — Change.org — these petitioners declare: “Withdraw The Holy Bible — this sickening book encourages readers to commit sexual violence and kill women.”

Its wording tries to mirror that of the original petition. For example: “This book means that after various sex acts, readers are given options to kill women by stoning her unconscious, Setting them on fire, cutting off their hands, and killing their children!”

And then there’s: “One of many fan passages on In The Holy Bible depicts woman being set alight for having sex. “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.” (Leviticus 21:9).”

Clearly this is more of a sardonic statement than a real attempt to get the Bible banned. However, GTA V has begun to incite even more heightened reactions than the previous versions.

As Gamespot’s Danny O’Dwyer pointed out, the addition of the first-person mode in GTA V means that the player no longer had the excuse of third-person objectivity.

“I felt guilt,” said O’Dwyer, as he performed shootings himself in the game.

There’s no universal agreement about whether violence in games motivates violence in real life. But, as O’Dwyer explained, Grand Theft Auto occurs in a world less of fantasy and more like our own.

He believes that GTA V allows us “to censor ourselves.” But how many will? And how many will find a more extreme pleasure in truly feeling like the brutal agent of destruction?

Banning the game from Kmart and Target is symbolic more than effective. It’s not as if it isn’t available in many other outlets. It’s not as if the game hasn’t been available for a long time. Its sales are somewhere near the $2 billion mark. The current furor surrounds the fact that it was re-released in November to be played on newer consoles.

by Louise Dewast

The American mother of a 14-year-old boy killed by an online gaming partner in Britain says she did everything she could to protect her son: She limited his access to electronics, installed parental controls and forbade him from using the same server as a boy she had grown suspicious of.

However, though Lorin LaFave, 47, said she warned both British police and her son, the boy, Breck Bednar was murdered by someone he met online on Feb 17.

Computer engineer Lewis Daynes, 19, pleaded guilty last month to Breck’s stabbing murder that day in Daynes’ house in Grays, Essex, England. The teenagers had been playing games online for several months, despite LaFave’s efforts to put an end to their relationship.

Police discovered Breck at the house with knife wounds. They gave first aid but the Christian school student was declared dead by medical staff a short time later.

Daynes was arrested at the scene and charged with murder. Last month, in an unexpected turn of events, he pleaded guilty of stabbing Breck.

Now, LaFave originally from Waterford, Michigan, but now living in England, is behind an effort to raise awareness about what she says are dangers of online gaming.

“I want Breck’s tragedy to help open the eyes of everyone to recognize the dangers of online predators,” she said in a statement. “It is a very real danger today.”

“People think it only happens to anti-social kids, but it’s just not true,” she told ABC News.

LaFave described Breck, a member of the British air cadets, as a relaxed and warm-hearted boy who had plenty of friends.

He was passionate about computing and played online games with his friends after school, according to his mother. He also played online with Daynes.

At the time, LaFave thought Breck was growing out of the gaming world, that we would finally be interested in girls and go back to enjoying time with his family.

Nevertheless, LaFave was aware of Daynes’ existence and had been suspicious of him for months.

One day, LaFave got a text message from her ex-husband saying Breck had not showed up, although he was supposed to stay with his dad for the weekend. Breck evidently had gone to meet Lewis Daynes, instead.

A few hours after the text message, Breck’s siblings started receiving messages from friends saying their brother had been killed. According to LaFave, Daynes took photos of Breck and posted them on social media.

The reports were soon confirmed by police, and LaFave said she broke down and will “never be the same.”

Daynes will face sentencing on Jan. 12.

In March, LaFave created The Breck Bednar Memorial Fund to promote online awareness for teenagers and their parents. Her slogan: “Play virtual, live real.”

The LaFave family is filing a legal action against Essex and Surrey Police over the handling of the case.