Gamer's Outpost Press (archived)

by Ben Kuchera

Blizzard has canceled one of the largest, most ambitious games it ever tried to create. At least, it might have been. No one knew that much about it. And now it’s dead.

The quotes from the company about the decision are hard to read. The work and the budget that went into Titan have now been sunk, although it’s likely some of the ideas and technology behind the game will aid Blizzard in some way. It’s rare that these things are a total loss, although this means that there are likely people who have put the better part of a decade into a game that will never see the light of day.

But this move signals a new direction for the company, and the industry is bound to pay attention.

“I wouldn’t say no to ever doing an MMO again,” Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime told Polygon. “But I can say that right now, that’s not where we want to be spending our time.”

Why would anyone?

The changing of the guard

World of Warcraft has long been one of the most popular, and profitable, games in the business, but things are changing. It’s not just that it’s going to become harder to hang onto players. The fact is that there has yet to be an MMO that has remained profitable, or has kept its subscription fee, in quite some time.

It’s a space filled with battered wrecks of games that have been forced to move to a free-to-play model, and it’s unlikely that any of these titles will ever come close to World of Warcraft now from a business perspective, much less the numbers the game enjoyed at its height. Taking another run at that hill would require a huge investment, and a very special product. And Blizzard didn’t feel Titan would have been that game.

“We took a step back and realized that it had some cool hooks. It definitely had some merit as a big, broad idea, but it didn’t come together. It did not distill,” Chris Metzen, Blizzard’s senior vice president of story and franchise development, told Polygon. “The music did not flow. For all our good intentions and our experience and the pure craftsmanship that we brought together, we had to make that call.”

Blizzard didn’t feel Titan would have been that game

Being able to make that call at all is one of the most telling examples of Blizzard’s power in the video game world. In nearly every other situation, with this much time and money riding on the seven years the game had been in development, the publisher would likely have forced some kind of product to be released.

Blizzard was given the privilege of taking its own dog behind the shed to put it down, which is an odd way for a company to show its muscle. But make no mistake that this is a company flexing its ability to react to the market and only release the games it’s completely sure of.

It’s unlikely that we’ll see another company create the kind of MMO we’re used to seeing from companies like Blizzard, and instead the sort of “always-online but please don’t call it an MMO” class of games like Titanfall and Destiny are bound to take over. Blizzard is moving into other areas with the upcoming Heroes of the Storm, a clear shot at the monstrous MOBA market, and Hearthstone, a trading card game that has become a massive success.

The puck had disappeared

This is how Blizzard works: They follow the crowd, but the company is talented and clever enough that it has always been able to make the definitive version of the game they’re trying to emulate.

“Let’s take a game that we all love playing, do what we want to do to make it ours, just like we’ve done with every single game from the past. Vikings was Lemmings. Rock and Roll Racing, name any of those car games out there. Warcraft came from Dune, so it’s the same thing with Heroes of the Storm,” Sam Didier, a senior art director at Blizzard told me when discussing Heroes of the Storm.

“It’s like, we take a game that we like and then we make our version of it. If we like it, it turns out that people like it as well.”

During the course of Titan, it sounds like Blizzard lost that path, and even worse they were no longer skating towards where the puck would be in a few years. The puck had disappeared. Blizzard was chasing its own tail, and may have been inspired by its own success with a previous product rather than anything that ignited the company’s imagination.

Killing the game now, and still having two of the most promising titles in active development in Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, not to mention the still-popular World of Warcraft, shows the power and might of Blizzard, and it may be a situation where a failed project makes them one of the more admired developers in the business.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by William Usher

The resolution disparity continues on as the Xbox One and PS4 face off over the latest high-end eighth generation exclusive, Lords of the Fallen. The game is a Dark Souls-style hack-and-slash, action-adventure that focuses a lot on the strategy and skill of combat rather than just relying on rapid button mashing. It’s been revealed, however, that Lords of the Fallen won’t be running at native 1080p on the Xbox One.

Videogamer managed to get in word with Lords of the Fallen creative director Tomasz Gop, who talked to them about the spec performance of the upcoming game for the eighth generation home consoles.

According to Gop…

[They’re] “pretty much similar,” [but] “probably the resolution [on Xbox One] is like 900p instead of 1080p on PlayStation 4. But apart from that there’s nothing different I would say.”

Lords of the Fallen hasn’t been spread across the gaming news-wire quite in the same way as other titles, but it’s one of the few games coming out this fall that I’m thoroughly excited for.

Even though the game is still within the Dark Souls-clone arena, it manages to separate itself by focusing heavily on how combat plays out. For instance, enemies using shields require weapons that hook around or deflect the shield in order to get an attack in on the body of the enemy. Additionally, weapon weight and swing/strike/slash attacks alter how the player-character or enemies react to said attacks, opening them up for more devastating blows, combos or counter-hits. It’s an extremely tactical game that slows the combat down so players will have to think about how they engage rather than just engaging for the sake of it. Hit-spam combos from games like Dynasty Warriors are no where to be found in Lords of the Fallen.

As for the resolution disparity… it’s to be expected and it’s an expectation that we’ll likely see grow as the generation wears on. Software optimization can’t fix hardware limitations.

It’s been brought up many times previously that the Xbox One had problems hitting 1080p, and unless a game is specifically designed around certain architectural designs of Microsoft’s console, it’s likely to continue to running into problems rendering games above 900p.

However, this doesn’t mean that gamers can’t have fun with the game. If you don’t mind a slightly lower resolution then you might be find with paying the same amount for a game that renders 633,000 pixels less than the competition.

Of course, let be known that even some games on PC have a tough time maintaining native 1920 x 1080 full HD resolutions with the graphics maxed out, as evidenced in the performance analysis of the Asus ROG GL551JM. You sometimes have to give and take with these things.

As for Lords of the Fallen… the game is scheduled to release soon, and Gop mentioned that the title has already been certified and they’re just brushing up some bug fixes and glitches before release…

“It’s really, really close [to completion],” … “Pretty much the only thing that we’re doing is last minute fixes, but we’ve already been certified. We’re already past the US certification for PlayStation.”

The game is due to drop on October 31st for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Sehran Shaikh

Holiday Season 2014 is just around the corner, and we have some great games lined up to arrive on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and last-gen consoles, but in this feature article I won’t be talking about what’s coming in next three to four months, rather I would take a look back and see what has really happened in the past eight months.

Few games released during this period performed better than our expectations, however there are few games which were expected to be “Next Big Thing” in that particular genre but failed to deliver on all the promises. This feature is about three Overhyped new AAA IPs of 2014 which failed to delivered.

Titanfall:

It came from the developers who gave gaming world the billion dollar franchise “Call of Duty”, Electronic Arts and Microsoft, in short all perfect ingredients to be ‘the next big thing’ in multiplayer gaming, it was marketed and overhyped like never before by the trio Respawn, EA and Microsoft: They called it “Call of Duty series killer, revive first person shooting genre and some other unrealistic things which never happened before”.

But the verdict of consumers was completely the opposite, Titanfall was not a great game it was a “GOOD” game, but not exactly an Innovative and Ground-breaking experience. Many gamers tag it as “It’s Call of Duty With Mechs”. Titanfall fell well short of its GOAL.

Watch Dogs:

Watch Dogs had a Show-Stopper reveal at E3 2012 and was followed by another astonishing showcasing at E3 2013. The hype among fans went beyond limits, and was awarded a tag “Top Competitor” of GTA V. However, just a week before its official launch, Ubisoft shocked the gaming community and announced a release delay of Watch Dogs to 2014 and cited the reason as “development team needs more time to deliver on the promises and polish”. The game was put under cover, and Ubisoft did not talk about it for months, this lead to numerous queries from fans: Did a game that looked astonishing at E3 2012/13 needed polishing?

After a long silence, Ubisoft finally re-revealed Watch Dogs in May 2014, but it was not the game which open world genre fans saw at E3 2012/13, instead of polishing, graphics received massive downgrades.

Watch Dogs showed lot of potential after its initial announcement but the dominance of GTA franchise in open world genre is so strong that other games need to do something really special to grab attention. A perfect addition to overhyped games and not delivering on huge promises.

Destiny:

Destiny was in making at Bungie for many many years, and like many other games, initial announcement was very well received by both fans and critics. After cutting their ties with Microsoft, Bungie made few press statements that caught gaming community’s attention, “we don’t want to make Halo anymore” and “we want to do our own things and not be tied down to large company”.

But for Destiny, they broke both these promises, fans termed Destiny as “Halo Clone” with few differences/upgrades and signed 10 yrs deal with Activision. Destiny received “Mediocre” game reviews because it failed to deliver on big promises from Sony/Activision and Bungie: “story/plot was almost non-existent, no memorable characters, no social interaction whatsoever between you and other online players, missions were repetitive, ridiculous and unbalanced PVP.”

The main reason for Destiny’s downfall was Overhype, it was all time high. I’ve almost never seen a new IP get this kind of hype. Right from the start, Sony hitched their wagon completely to this game, and was super hyped mostly for PlayStation 4, like if it was a new Messiah.

Conclusion:

Why we should not lambaste publishers/developers for creating a over-hype, this is their job. These companies market their titles, create hype amongst fans etc and sell millions of units worldwide. We can’t expect an employee of Bungie/Ubisoft/Respawn/Sony/Microsoft or many others to take center stage and announce that “we’ve got a new game, it’s not best game or going to revamp/re-define the genre, but I think you’ll probably enjoy it”? That’s not going to happen.

Just keep your HOPES and HYPE level in check. Titanfall, Watch Dogs and Destiny all sold millions of copies worldwide, and these companies have made $$$. Definitely, in a couple of years we will be seeing sequels to these games, and you people will again so on blasting it as a terrible decision as previous installment/original title didn’t perform as expected and everyone hates it, but still the sequel will sell millions of copies worldwide. Once again we will discuss among us the same old thing “HYPE, HYPE, OverHYPE” and other non-sense things. FULL CYCLE will continue. So, keep your HOPES and HYPE level in check.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Saad Dada

Sony has had unbelievable success with the PlayStation 4 since it launched back in November of 2013. Microsoft launched the Xbox One a week later, and has been playing catch-up ever since. In order to keep up with the competition they knocked $100 off the cost, making a Kinect-free model to match the PS4’s price. And while the Microsoft exclusive ‘Titanfall’ did good business, it didn’t have enough of a major impact in taking down the Japanese juggernaut.

But now the Seattle-based software giant has paid $2.5 billion to acquire Swedish company Mojang, the creators behind the popular videogame ‘Minecraft’. Could this be an attempt to one-up their Japanese rivals?

‘Minecraft’ is a hugely popular game but it doesn’t quite match-up with the likes of ‘Grand Theft Auto’, ‘FIFA’, or even the‘Call of Duty’ series. However, its popularity has allowed for it to be released on all consoles. It’s a fun game that appeals to all ages and requires creativity because one is able to create structures out of 3D cubes.

According to The Street, ‘Minecraft’ is “a kind of digital Lego without an instruction book – a building game where players construct their own world out of blocks, making anything from a forest to the Eiffel Tower”. For now, the game will continue to be available on all major platforms including Microsoft’s arch rival the Sony PlayStation.

However if Microsoft does decide to make Minecraft an exclusive title, it could possibly gain momentum over Sony. According to Eurogamer, the title has sold a staggering 54 million copies on all platforms (as of 25th June) and a landmark 100 million users were registered as of February this year. The fan base will no doubt want to get their fix, and if it’s not available on the PlayStation that could give Microsoft the upper hand. But even with the exclusivity, Sony has some major franchises to turn to. ‘God of War’, ‘Uncharted’ and upcoming exclusives like ‘Driveclub’ and ‘The Order: 1886’ offer limitless potential.

This generation consoles look to be more focused on hardcore gamers considering the PS4 was made to be a dedicated gaming machine. Xbox on the other hand went the ‘all-in-one entertainment system’ route with their Xbox One. And while Minecraft may prove to be a worthy purchase, it still may not be enough for them to match Sony’s lead.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/