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Yesterday, Rockstar Games released a statement that their episodic cash cow, historically referred to as GTA Episodes From Liberty City will be delayed another two weeks before dropping for PS3 and PC owners. A “last minute game submission” has been identified as the reason behind the delay. While this is galling enough for PS3 fans, seeing as it was the PS2’s install base and popularity that helped make Rockstar what they are today, a perusal of the comments on Rockstar’s site show that it’s the PC owners who seem to be most vocal at this point. Many of the PC-centric views quite rightly question why there would be any delay on their version.
A GDC panel that included Valve’s Jason Holtman and Blizzard executive Rob Pardo delved into the PC vs. console debate from a developers’ point of view.
Both men spoke about the rigidness that consoles offer developers, especially when it comes to patching titles or editing them. Holtman referenced the recent Portal 2 easter egg that Valve pushed to the PC version of Portal, which he said is something “we can do on the PC” but not on a console.
Pardo expressed scepticism about bringing World of Warcraft to consoles because “you have to go through all sorts of [certification] processes” with Microsoft or Sony.
Talking to Negative Gamer at GDC, Sixense, the makers of the TrueMotion controller, have said that whilst they would like to see their controllers become “completely ubiquitous” they are going to remain PC exclusive for the time being.
In the interview (which you can read in full here), Sixense said that even though their controllers are USB they’re sticking with the PC because they “don’t know what the people at Sony and Microsoft are going to allow on there”. They also added that Razer, famed for their PC mice, will be making the consumer versions of the controller and are much more comfortable working with PCs.
The TrueMotion controllers aim to offer 1:1 motion control for the PC and have already got their development kits working with Source based games (like Left 4 Dead), as well as League of Legends.
Image: Gadgetell
[Editor's note: Dan's been getting his hands on all the cool toys at GDC this week. Earlier today he chatted to Josh Bays, Product Evangelist for Sixense and Scott Szyjewicz who is the Manager of their support group to talk about their PC TrueMotion controller]
Negative Gamer: Ok, so give me a rundown on this.
Josh Bays: So this is the Sixense TrueMotion dev kit. This is a wireless, magnetic tracking system motion controller. It is a magnetic base, plugged into the computer via USB, power and data. Generates a magnetic field six feet out, a twelve foot sphere, or “play area”. Anywhere within that area is where you’re going to get high fidelity, precise, motion controls.
So you can see on screen my movements of my hands on the controller are going to be reflected very precisely in the game. So my hand is now holding the crow-bar, instead of the Sixense controller. If I tilt it a little bit, or move it a little bit it’ll be reflected, it’s 1mm of position position precision and one degree of orientation. Read more →
I am of the belief that everyone in this world is born for something. Samuel Jackson was born to kill snakes and eat Royals with cheese. Clint Eastwood was born to make action movies until his 100th birthday. Grave Digger was born to make compact cars tremble in fear. And the PC was born to have keyboards, mice, and LEDs that light up and make all kinds of awesome colors. I mean seriously, have you seen when someone gets a G13 and the new Sidewinder together and they start flashing red and….my apologies, I digress. I’m here to celebrate the glory of Monster Truck Day the only way I know how: by being a PC elitist. Read more →
BioShock was a fantastic game. Atmosphere, plot and gameplay all worked together to create one of gaming’s all-time greats. When a sequel was announced that wasn’t being produced by the original team, many people became instant cynics. Lightning doesn’t strike twice after all.
BioShock 2 brings you back to Rapture as a Big Daddy, one of the lumbering and iconic enemies from the original. The setting continues from the first game, though the similarity stops there. With some subtle (and some not-so-subtle) improvements on the original mechanics, the game accepts what it follows and takes several logical steps in the right direction. The first-person shooting sees new toys and hacking gets itself an upgrade. The game also comes with a whole new multiplayer aspect, expanding both the fiction and your time in the city.
I bought myself the PS3 Special Edition which came with enough fan-service inside that even without the disc it might be worth it. (Though probably only to me; the original game is easily one of my favourites.) For this review I played Xbox 360 version of the game (that Chelsea bought).
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A few weeks ago I joined the Command & Conquer 4 beta with an eye to writing up some impressions. When I started playing, I encountered a version of C&C that’s profoundly different from any game in the franchise. In place of the traditional base-building, an entirely new, decentralised system has been created. Players begin with a single command unit capable of constructing any and all units available to the player. The command unit is mobile, capable of planting itself in the ground to send out an army. Aside from the in-game mechanics, other changes have been made to the game’s multiplayer mode. After every match, experience is earned which eventually unlocks different units in the matches. The character-building of MMO’s and online shooters has been mixed into the RTS genre.
Lost Planet 2 has apparently suffered “significant” content cuts at the hands of Xbox 360 DVD capacity. “We had to wrestle with disc space” said Jun Takeuchi, Lost Planet 2’s producer. Citing reasonably painless cross platform development, Takeuchi flagged console storage limitations as “way too much”, and suggested that attempting to overcome space problems “was more difficult than anything [else].” Gamers concerned with Microsoft’s antiquated choice of optical format spoiling the party for everyone can rest happy that the producer is at least considering DLC as means of “add[ing] that content at a later date”.
So, in analysis, it appears that through dubious circumstance, content has yet again been cut from a game’s development to be shilled later as downloadable content. Fanfare? Rapturous applause? No?!
Let’s just build a few rules for loud mouth team heads and production managers. Cut content is understandably a part of any game’s development cycle. We gamers understand and appreciate the pressures of deadlines and crunch periods. Ignorant of business or creative dilemmas in a game’s oft protracted creation, we appreciate and welcome with open arms, post-release DLC which furthers story or experience. However, we are collectively opposed to the concept of publicly removing something from a project alongside the open admittance that the “edited content” will later be forced back down our throats via micro-transaction.
..and is it really too much just to use an extra disc? Or optimised compression? Or hard disk storage?
Via: Kotaku
There are a lot of people finding technical problems with BioShock 2. The 2K forums are understandably getting overwhelmed. I’ve experienced first hand at least one of the major errors myself. As well as the standard PC related errors, texture pop-in (as found in the original) and random physics going crazy, there’s a couple of big ones.
The game is not in widescreen. What you see when looking at the widescreen view is actually a 4:3 view, just cropped. This is exactly the same problem the first game had, and was patched for. With around 40% of PC users playing on a widescreen display and being used to, well, real widescreen, this has understandably left a few feeling miffed. Quite how it was overlooked when it was such a big deal with the first game I can’t even begin to fathom. Thankfully, a patch is on the way.
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The January 2010 data from Steam shows that for the first month since its official release, Windows 7 is now more popular than Vista among Steam users. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Windows 7 is a much needed improvement from the resource hogging failure that was Vista. An interesting note is that there are twice as many 64-bit Windows 7 users than 32-bit. This would seem to indicate that 64-bit operating systems are beginning to make some actual leeway in the gaming community, no doubt thanks to the widespread availability of RAM and the price drop in DDR2 after the release of DDR3.
Of course, the percentages of 7 and Vista both pale to XP, which still manages to claim almost 43% of Steam users. It would appear Microsoft’s attempts to kill XP have been pretty unsuccessful. Read more →
The reasonably well reviewed, though financially dubious 360 “exclusive” Episodes From Liberty City have finally met with inevitable announcement of pending cross-platform release. Both the PlayStation 3 and Games for Windows editions of GTA IV will be receiving the expansions on March 30th after years of speculation as to the terms and dates of Microsoft’s rumoured $50 million exclusivity agreement. The episodes will be release individually as digital downloads for $19.99 each, or as a boxed, stand-alone compilation as seen on the Xbox 360 some months back.
In a press release, Sam Houser, president of Rockstar Games, appreciated the “patience” of Microsoft’s rival console holders. But it’s questionable whether releasing the DLC some two years after the core title this “patience” has lingered long enough for PS3 and PC gamers to welcome the additional content. Presumably the group who “finished GTA IV and wanted more story and gameplay” have satiated their open world urge with any number of titles in the proceeding years.
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Every morning I wake, walk to the nearest street corner, rip my clothes in despair and yell “HEY PC GAMERS, WAKE UP AND TAKE NOTICE”. And every morning, I realize my naked cries of anguish are heard by none.
Ubisoft, the company who little more than a year ago made the bold move of releasing Prince of Persia DRM-free, have announced they are implementing one of the most annoying DRM methods ever. All future Ubisoft games will now require you to log in before playing. That translates to your Ubisoft games being useless anywhere without internet. Which means no gaming on a train, no gaming on a plane, no gaming here nor there, no gaming anywhere.
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As I said in my Not Review of the game, Cities XL is vast. It has levels of detail I would struggle to understand even after spending hours with the game. With the added MMO aspect the game’s inner core of nerd-bliss becomes something almost unattainable by myself. It seems others felt the same way too and, citing a lack of subscribers, the game will soon be going completely single player.
In news announced on the official Cities XL site the game’s developers, Monte Cristo, have said that from February 1st you will be unable to subscribe and on March 8th the multiplayer aspect will completely shut down. The reason is sadly a simple one.
Three months after the launch we have to admit that the subscription rate is lower than what we expected and therefore the Planet Offer is no longer sustainable. Not enough players decided to subscribe.
No new content or patches for the current game will be released, however it will still be supported by the company. A sequel, Cities XL 2011, will be released soon as a purely single-player version and the pricing for that will be released in the next few weeks.
Via: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
There’s been a lot of grumbling lately in the PC community over dedicated servers for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Mainly, the complaints are that dedicated severs must be rented from DICE, with the ability to mod them completely removed. Isolating Bad Company 2 by itself, it certainly seems like they are pulling another Modern Warfare 2 and using this system as a way to force PC gamers to buy DLC. But this isn’t the first time a Battlefield game has featured this.
Still frothing at the mouth from the destruction of all things PC sacred that was Modern Warfare 2, I was looking forward to 2010 as a bit of a redeeming year for PC gaming. Bioshock 2 in particular had my attention. I was looking forward to the multiplayer aspect of it; the simultaneous use of plasmids and weapons in sounded like a refreshing experience after the binge of mediocre shooters that was 2009. That was, of course, until I heard that BioShock 2 was to make use of Games for Windows Live and SecuROM.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Those familiar with the Divine Comedy will recognize this as the last line of the famous inscription on the entrance to hell. PC gamers will recognize this as the inscription on the back of every “Games for Windows” box. Read more →
As computing becomes increasingly portable and accessible to all, the demand for cheap, easily accessible games has grown exponentially. Netbook capable games like Plants Vs. Zombies, Facebook games like Farmville, and the huge game catalog of the iPhone continue to prod mobile gaming forward. There were an estimated 33.3 million netbooks and 168 million smartphones sold in 2009. To say there is a market in mobile gaming is an understatement.
iPhone games were a huge hit in 2009, and with the release of the Droid and the Nexus One, expect some Android games to start popping up soon. And if CES is any indication of things to come, the market will soon be flooded with ARM powered tablet PCs and smartbooks. If these smartbooks and tablet PCs live up to the claims of all day battery life, smooth HD video playback, and even half decent gaming with chipsets like the Tegra 2, then expect smartbooks and tablets to become the new netbooks.
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Aside from MMOs, Team Fortress 2 is one of the most updated PC games in existence. From bug fixes to new weapons and even a crafting system, the game has had over 100 updates since its release two years ago. This consistent addition of new content has created a dedicated community of players, myself included. Little more than a month after the hugely popular War update, Community Fortress has posted an interview with TF2 designer Robin Walker, wherein he discusses the future of TF2 updates.
Today Nvidia announced the specs for the new GF100, their “all-in-one” card designed for both gaming and GPGPU processes. As expected, the GF100 outperformed the GTX285 in the demonstration Nvidia provided, but is this card enough to make up for half a year of ATI DX11 cards? ATI’s Evergreen series of DX11 capable cards has been available since September of 2009, while the GF100 isn’t available for another two months.
Nvidia essentially built this card from the ground up to do everything from intense gaming to calculating massive algorithms. Indeed, some of the tech demos of tessellation and sheer performance compared to the HD 5870 were impressive. But who is this card marketed at? Games can’t make use of CUDA yet, and conversely those who use a GPU for molecular modeling and quantum calculations probably aren’t playing Crysis as well. Surely a card that is designed to excel at both gaming and GPGPU processes is going to be more expensive than a card designed simply for gaming. Read more →
This was a tough one gang. There were some great visual entries, some clever haiku, and some frankly very disturbing images I won’t soon forget. Apparently Tribbles are alive and well in the consciousness of the Negative Gamer community, and you guys really are very clever.
Unfortunately there were only twelve codes to give out and, as cliché as it sounds, I really do wish we had enough for all who entered. I’d even like to give one to Gandy who has hatefully wished AIDS upon me and my family. But alas, he did not reference Tribbles in his curse against my auto immune system. So, sorry Gandy. I tried. For anyone who would like to review the entries here is the link to the original post for the competition.
If you could just pretend that there is a drum roll playing in the background, I give you in no particular order…THE WINNERS! Read more →
Hey there Negative Gamers, we’ve got codes. Codes I say! Thanks to GameTrailers we have a limited number of Star Trek Online Closed Beta codes for the community. So, seeing as we’re manipulative pricks with control issues over here we’d like to see the Negative Gamer community get its “Tribble” on.
In the comments below you can post a picture displaying a Tribble, write a haiku in tribute to Tribbles, or produce an original sketch or video of or about Tribbles (if you’re confused, this is what Tribbles are). Also, if you’re following me on Twitter feel free to direct entries there as well.
The contest will last for 24 hours so the winners will be sent codes tomorrow evening, Sunday January 10th.
If any of you are worried that Gandy will have an unfair advantage due to his disturbing involvement in the Furry community, he won’t. Apparently he likes his furry things, somewhat…larger shall we say?
All right, get going Negative Gamers!
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