Gamer's Outpost Press (Archived)

by Britton Peele

Amazon.com, Inc. just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Twitch Interactive, Inc. for “approximately $970 million in cash, as adjusted for the assumption of options and other items,” according to a press release.

After launching three years ago, Twitch has become the definitive source for live-streaming of video game content, both from amateur players as well as major companies, including Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, who all streamed content through Twitch during the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier this year. The service (and the live-streaming practice in general) has become so popular that its functionality was included and touted as a major factor of the newest game consoles, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

Before today’s announcement, there was more than three months of speculation that Twitch would be acquired by Google, where it would compliment YouTube as a video service.

“Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month – from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3. And, amazingly, Twitch is only three years old,” Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com said in a press release. “Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear published a public letter to Twitch users, saying, “We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We’re keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch.”

The deal is expected to close later this year.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Owen S. Good

The hacker group claiming responsibility for today’s PlayStation Network outage sent a bomb threat, via Twitter, about an American Airlines flight carrying Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley. Smedley has confirmed he is on the flight and that it was diverted for security reasons.

“Something about security and our cargo. Sitting on Tarmac,” Smedley tweeted. Polygon has reached out to representatives of Sony Computer Entertainment America, SOE and the Phoenix office of the FBI for additional comment.

An American Airlines spokesperson confirmed to The Arizona Republic that Flight 362 was diverted for security reasons.

Earlier this afternoon, the hacker group that says it brought down PSN tweeted this threat to American Airlines’ account. A tweet since taken down also contained an image appearing to show an e-Ticket for Smedley’s flight, with a confirmation number, asking Smedley and Sony if this was indeed his flight. The hackers continued to tweet threats about the flight.

Both American’s flight tracker and FlightAware.com (screenshot above) show American Airlines Flight 362 being diverted from its path to San Diego into Phoenix. The flight is carrying 179 passengers and six crew. It departed Phoenix for San Diego at 1 pm ET, according to American Airlines.

Smedley earlier today mentioned he was flying from Dallas back to San Diego; SOE has significant operations in both areas.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Giuseppe Nelva

After the confirmation in 2010 that Rockstar’s PS3 exclusive cold war stealth action game Agent was still in development, not much has been heard about the game, besides a pair of trademarks registered last year.

Apparently, though, it may have been canceled, at least according to a mail that retailer Gamefly is sending to its customers who had Agent in their GameQ, as reported by NeoGAF user Fine Ham Abounds.

“Dear *,

We have removed Agent (PS3) from your GameQ. There are two possible reasons for this removal:
1. For released titles, we no longer carry the game and do not know if or when we will acquire new copies.
2. For unreleased titles, the game has been cancelled by its publisher. We apologize for any disappointment this may cause. If you have any questions, please contact us.

Thank you,

The GameFly Team”

Of course this can’t be considered a full confirmation, as it comes from a retailer source and not from Take-Two itself, so we should consider it a rumor and take it with a sizable grain of salt.

Incidentally, the “cancellation” could also mean that the game may have been re-purposed for PS4 (effectively canceling the PS3 version), but there’s no confirmation on this one way or the other.

We reached out to Take-Two and GameFly with a request for further information, and we’ll keep you posted if we receive anything relevant.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Giuseppe Nelva

Apparently a few wires were crossed at Sony, and the company is now sending e-mail messages to customers that pre-ordered inFAMOUS: First Light mentioning that their pre-order has been canceled due to a “technical error.”

While we don’t know the magnitude of the issue, at the moment, it definitely seems quite widespread, as shown by multiple reports springing up on Twitter, NeoGAF and Reddit.

The problem seems to be limited to European customers for now, and Sony Computer Entertainment promised in the cancellation notices that they would still receive Fetch’s costume offered as a pre-order bonus regardless of their pre-order’s status.

Those affected haven’t been charged, and strangely, in multiple cases, they are reporting that they still see the game in their download list, and the release count-down is still working.

For now, if you pre-ordered the game, you may want to check your mail for possible cancellation notices.

For those that did not pre-order the title, it’s still available as usual on the PSN marketplace both for North America and Europe, so this seems to be affecting only past pre-orders. In any case, we’ll keep you posted if Sony gives more relevant information about the nature of the issue.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Saqib Mansoor

Kentaro Yasui, the lead programmer for the upcoming Final Fantasy XV title is being reported to have had left Square Enix.

There has been no official announcement made by the studio yet. Hence, it’s unknown as to why Yasui left and if his departure will have any major impact on the game’s development.

Earlier today Kentaro Yasui’s name was spotted on a listing for an outside project called Chaos Centurions. The upcoming mobile game is being produced by Oriflamme, a new developer led by another Final Fantasy alumni Ryuji Ikeda. Additionally a trailer for the title mentions Kentaro Yasui as part of the team, suggesting his departure from Square Enix.

Nova Crystallis, who broke the story first, claims that a “private source close to Square Enix Japan has confirmed that Kentaro Yasui has indeed left.”

Yasui is also known for his contributions to the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and no doubt the Final Fantasy XV team will miss his expertise. However, for such a AAA title, it’s seldom that the exit of a single developer leaves a scar on the game’s development.

Final Fantasy XV is expected to release in late 2015 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game was announced last year but have yet to be showcased in any major gaming event since then.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Jason Schreier

Sony tells Kotaku they’ve “made progress” toward solving a PS4 glitch that has prevented some users from buying or playing games on their new PlayStation consoles.

The “CE-33945-4” glitch, which was reported by PS4 owners on NeoGAF and the PlayStation forums, prevents users from playing games or accessing any other services on the PlayStation Network, including Netflix. Though the exact causes of the glitch are murky, some users determined that it may be triggered by pre-ordering a digital game on the PlayStation Network and then canceling it through Sony customer support, which leads to some sort of database error.

This one’s brutal: people getting CE-33945-4 say they can’t play anything.

I reached out to Sony earlier this week to ask about the error. Here’s a Sony rep:

“We are aware of this account issue that has affected a very small number of users. We are currently investigating the cause of the issue and have made progress toward a possible solution.

In the meantime, if you do run into this glitch, try rebuilding the database on your PS4, which some users say fixes the problem.

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