CVG News Roundup 02/19/2013 - 02/23/2013
The following is summarized news from articles we published between 02/19/2013 and 02/23/2013 on CVGames. The original links can be found at the bottom of the article.
On the eve of the biggest PlayStation news of the year, a few more details are starting to become more clear. The Streaming service Sony purchased last year, Gaikai, will be rebranded as PlayStation Cloud. This service will be how Sony handles backwards compatibility with PlayStation 3 titles on the new hardware and chipset within the PS4.
This means we probably will see voice chat and online gaming behind some sort of paywall like Microsoft has done with Xbox 360.
Other last minute rumors suggest Sony will release PlayStation 4 sometime in November 2013 at price points of $429 and $529.
Sony's PlayStation event starts tomorrow 6PM ET, live from New York, and stay tuned for all the details as they are revealed.
In 2010, Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart said Aliens: Crucible was basically a complete game when Sega pulled the plug and canceled the game. Below, you can view 13 minutes of the canceled Aliens: Crucible footage from an early alpha build from Obsidian Games.
In news that appears to get worse everyday, reports are suggesting Gearbox was dishonest to Sega and 2K games during the early development of Aliens: Colonial Marines and the original Borderlands.
Our team was getting smaller by the month, making it very difficult to get the game made. Ironically several of the team members were ex-3D Realms people who were saying [paraphrasing] 'Finally, we're going to Gearbox to make Aliens, and we're going to ship a @!
They caught wind of Gearbox shifting resources (despite still collecting milestone checks as if the team were full size) and lying to SEGA AND 2K about the number of people working on each project.
Sounds like Gearbox has some explaining to do but they are remaining quiet on the subject and pretending like everything is rosy.
2K Sports today revealed plans to pair up NBA 2K13 and MLB 2013 for a MSRP of $79.99 on March 5, 2013, for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
In the same way that fans don’t limit themselves to one sport, sports video gamers seek the level of variety and convenience offered in this package. Combining NBA 2K13 and MLB 2K13 will make it easy for fans to discover the latest entries to these popular franchises at an incredible value.”
Though Sony will steal the headlines tomorrow, NVIDIA revealed the next-generation of graphics cards in the NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan. Coming out in the next few weeks, NVIDIA claims this card will make the world's first Gaming Supercomputer.
Origin PC is already planning to include the new card in their computers.
"When NVIDIA first showed us TITAN, we were simply blown away by its single GPU performance on even the most demanding games and applications. Just wait until you see it running on an ORIGIN PC . With support of our CRYOGENIC Liquid Cooling Solution, Professional Overclocking and up to 4-WAY SLI, TITAN brings us the first true gaming supercomputer."
The NVIDIA Kepler architecture gives you 2,688 NVIDIA CUDA cores and 4.5 teraflops of gaming horsepower. Plus, GTX TITAN delivers a 384-bit memory interface running at a blazing fast 6 Gbps for an amazing 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth—enough power to handle even the most extreme high-resolution games.
With capability like this, you can play the most graphically intensive PC games with NVIDIA 3D Surround™ monitors at maxed-out settings.
This won't come cheap and will be the top of the line card in NVIDIA's lineup at a MSRP of $999.99. In addition, this card will be much more powerful than anything Sony or Microsoft will have in their next consoles. Unlike past hardware cycles where the console overpowers the PC early in their life--this means the PC should never leave as the most powerful platform on the market.
Gears of War: Judgment, not coming out until next month, is the latest high-profile game to be leaked early via the Internet. Microsoft has promised that any console seen playing the game early will have a lifetime ban from Xbox Live and face the legal arm of Microsoft.
This generation, the Xbox 360 has been the most hacked console and this may be more than enough for Microsoft to make the Xbox 720 tie games to user accounts and force games to only be played online.
In sad news, Harmonix has revealed that April 2, 2013, will be the last of their weekly Rock Band track updates. No word on how long Harmonix will continue to offer songs to users who choose to go back and purchase tracks.
DmC Devil May Cry players have another reason to keep playing as Capcom has revealed a pair of DLC for the rebooted franchise. Vergil's Downfall will be coming to PlayStation network, Xbox Live, and PC platforms on March 5, 2013, for 720 Microsoft Points or $8.99 on PSN and PC platforms. Vergil’s Downfall features the opportunity to play as Vergil with hours of new gameplay, four difficulty levels and an all new storyline, weapons, combos, enemies and locations.
Also, Capcom is releasing Bloody Palace Mode today as a free add-on to DmC on all three above mentioned platforms. Once you have downloaded the add-on, Bloody Palace Mode will be available to players after completion of the campaign and will give players access to over 100 bonus levels of demons and enemies, including five brutal bosses.
Square-Enix has officially acknowledged that Murdered: Soul Suspect is coming in early 2014 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. There was no mention of any upcoming consoles from Sony or Microsoft from Squeenix.
Google has revealed some real-world uses for the wearable computer and you can check out the video below! I for one can't wait to see what developers do with this product.
They will also be releasing a special 3DS XL themed Bundle with a downloaded copy of the game included on the device.
Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online are both alive and well in the Free to Play MMO space and have been far more successful in this form than with a monthly subscription. Turbine had some downtime making some changes to their servers and are asking players to come back to LOTRO and get 100% more EXP and a larger drop rate for "loot" from now until February 26.
Regardless if you get these bonuses, both titles are worth taking a look at.
Yesterday, I had a brain fart and forgot to mention Ubisoft and EA teaming up to sell digital PC games in both the Origin Store and Uplay Shop.
Ubisoft wants you to come try their store out and is offering a free copy of Driver San Francisco Deluxe Edition, From Dust, Might & Magic Heroes VI Deluxe Edition, Rayman Origins, The Settlers 7™ Gold Edition or World in Conflict: Complete Edition, with the purchase of any PC digital game priced $19.90 or higher, from today through March 4. In addition, Uplay members can redeem all Assassin’s Creed 3 and Far Cry 3 Uplay rewards for free during the promotion.
Chris Early, VP of Digital Publishing at Ubisoft said this about Uplay:
“Ubisoft is committed to continually improving Uplay and making it the most rewarding set of services available to our customers. Interactive Entertainment and many other top developers to Uplay shop means that players now have more choice in where and how they purchase games online.”
EA's VP at Origin, Michael Blank, also spoke about the deal with Ubisoft:
“We’re thrilled to be bringing EA titles to Uplay and Ubisoft titles to Origin – the more choice for consumers, the better in today’s gaming world. Offering games like Dead Space 3, Need for Speed Most Wanted and more on Uplay is a great opportunity to reach even more PC gamers worldwide.”
So I guess bringing more choice for consumers doesn't include the world's most popular Digital Store.
Wrestling fans worried about the future of WWE, after THQ dissolved, can breathe a sigh of relief as Take-Two and WWE have signed a five year deal for development of games based on the World Wrestling Entertainment.
Yuke's will be continuing to develop WWE titles and Take-Two will release the first game, of this new deal, this fall with WWE 2K14.
"We've been very happy with what [Yuke's] has done in the past. What we're going to do moving forward is meld [Yuke's] with the team at Visual Concepts, so we can have the best of both worlds. Having [Yuke's] experience and then getting the Visual Concepts guys on board with them, we think this is going to be a dynamic duo. As we look at the next-gen systems coming out, we want to make sure we align our property with who we thought would be a leader going forward on these next-gen systems."
Though Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition still does not have a clear release date for the Android platform, the title is coming to Mac this friday--February 22. Mac users accustomed to purchasing software on the Mac App Store will have to wait as the title will be released there in the future. Instead, you will need to purchase it directly from Beamdog for $19.99.
"The development of the Mac version of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition has been a longer process than we had planned. We strove to create a high quality release for the Mac fans of the series and we feel proud of the current version and feel the extra development time was effort well spent."
Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida confirmed that the PlayStation 4 will be able to play used games and the anti-used game block patent had nothing to do with the PS4 at all.
Yoshida also confirmed that you can play the PlayStation 4 offline but they are trying to add enough features and content that you will want to keep it online all the time.
Yoshida also spoke about The Last Guardian saying now was not the right time to show off the game. He had no comment when pressed to answer if it was now a PlayStation 4 title.
Finally, Yoshida said he would be "heart-broken" if all PlayStation 4 games don't use Remote Play at launch. It really appears that Sony may make this a requirement during the certification process of new PS4 titles.
Jack Tretton, head of Sony Computer Entertainment America also has talked about the upcoming Gaikai functionality of the PS4. He doesn't expect many of these features to be available for the launch but it will be there in the future for PS4. We aren't quite sure if this means we can expect streaming of older games within 6 months, a year, or more.
Tretton also let us know that games for the PlayStation 4 will run between ninety-nine cents and sixty dollars. While many big games won't be priced at under a dollar, this is good news to see that Sony is planning for all price-points and that new, disc based, game won't cost more than sixty dollars.
"I can't speak freely about PS4, but now that some specs have been made public, I can say that Sony made wise engineering choices."
I've seen numerous prototypes from when it was still codenamed 'Jedai', and I heard that an onboard touch pad was in the final specs."
An "unnamed senior Sony official" has said that "the PlayStation 4 unveiling this week at first caught Microsoft off-guard.
Microsoft's PR mouthpiece Larry Hryb, also known as Major Nelson, said this about Sony's event: "Well then.
Microsoft is said to now first reveal the Xbox 720 at an event in April--after GDC.
Crystal Dynamics has revealed the PC requirements and some of them will look much better than the console versions.
• Crystal care about TR fans being able to run on older systems, unlike many other games they
Look for Tomb Raider on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 on March 5.
After the sites, including IGN and AskMen, were sold to Ziff Davis and J2 Global, 1UP and Gamespy have been shut down, the staff let go, and several layoffs have also occurred at IGN and AskMen.
Razer has shown off an intern playing Crysis 3, sitting on a beanbag, and running it on the Razer Edge Gaming Tablet. While it is hard to see just how well it is running, the fact that the upcoming tablet can run games like Crysis 3 is an amazing accomplishment for the power of the platform.
If you haven't already picked up a copy of Guild Wars 2, what is wrong with you? The sequel to Guild Wars is a lot of fun and has a lot of new content coming up in the next few months. To help remedy your lack of Guild Wars 2, AreaNet has a special sale going on until February 25. You can pick up the digital edition for $39.99 (normally $59.99) or the digital deluxe edition for $54.99 (normally $79.99).
Guild Wars 2 is available for both Mac and PC Platforms.
But that doesn't stop Nintendo from offering you a "discount" for buying all episodes now.
The Lost Bloodlines 1, the latest, is available for $3 or $6 for all three parts.
The PC Digital Download version of Bioshock Infinite is currently on special at Amazon. If you preorder the PC digital download version, Amazon will immediately send a $15 voucher for use on any other released 2K Game, from Amazon, and a second $15 voucher, again for any released 2K Game from Amazon, once the game comes out.
Amazon also has a ton of other games on sale in their "Farewell to February" special.
The original articles, with full text can be read here:
http://www.cvgames.com/news/n3-nightly-news-narration-more-ps4-details-a...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-dmc-dlc-google-glasses...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-so-much-ps4-news-so-li...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-crysis-razer-digital-s...
