With just two weeks until Sony’s E3 press conference the console manufacturer has announced the return of their Days of Play promotion, which will run from June 8th until June 18th. Over the ten days physical PlayStation first party titles, Console Bundles and PlayStation VR bundles will be discounted at participating retailers. A selection of digital games will also be discounted on the PlayStation Store as well.
Limited Edition PS4 Console
A special limited run blue PlayStation 4 Slim with a 1TB hard drive, shiny blue finish and Days of Play emblem will be available during the Days of Play promotion. It will come with a matching blue Dualshock 4 controller and will retail for $379.99 CDN.
Deals on VR
Waiting to enter the world of VR? It’s somewhat of a passion for me, and PSVR honestly is probably the cheapest and easiest VR solution out there. It might not have sold enough to meet Sony’s lofty expectations in the two years since release but with its plug and play nature and vast library of titles it’s hard to pass up.
PlayStation VR bundles (unspecified as of press time) will be discounted to $249.99 CDN, which is the lowest price I’ve seen for Sony’s VR offerings. Also on sale will be a selection of physical first party games including this year’s God of War and last year’s excellent Horizon Zero Dawn.
Hardware and peripheral discounts throughout the 11 days include (all prices MSRP):
Jet Black PS4 Pro – $349.99 USD / $449.99 CDN
PlayStation VR bundles – starting at $199.99 USD / $249.99 CDN
The 2018 edition of the Games Developer Conference has come to a close but there is still a lot more for us to show including gameplay videos, developer interviews and exclusive hands-on with several AAA and indie titles.
In this post I’d like to take a quick jaunt through some of the cooler booths on display at this year’s show. By “cooler” I don’t necessarily mean “elaborate” or “expensive” but visually impressive or booths that offered attendees a unique experience.
Epic Games Booth
A booth with a ride-able Fortnite llama in place of the traditional riding bull is a win in my book. This tough looking llama was a draw for the entire conference, sadly I didn’t get a chance to go for a ride.
Above said conquerable llama was a large screen that showcased the Fortnite live-stream that Epic had going during the entirety of show-floor hour.
Folks check out the PlayStation 4 Pro version of Fortnite Battle Royale.
Not to be left out, the mobile version of Fortnite was fully playable on a large TV.
Day of the Devs
Double Fine’s indie focused Day of the Devs event took place off-site as per usual but this elaborate skull themed display greeted attendees when taking the escalator down from the South Hall. In addition to playable demo stations you could also catch some of the developers behind featured games like Exo One, Minit and Knights & Bikes.
IGF Pavilion
The 2018 Independent Games Festival awards took place alongside the Game Developer Choice Awards on the Wednesday of GDC week. Throughout the show-floor days (Wednesday – Friday) all of the nominees could be played at a single station in this circular configuration. Games like Night in The Woods, Baba is You, Cuphead and Shenzen I/O were playable by attendees. In years past it wasn’t uncommon to actually meet the developers behind these games while playing them at the IGF booth – sadly I didn’t get to meet anyone from the excellent Night In The Woods team this year ☹.
Train Jam 2018 Booth
Over 80 independently created games & experiments were playable over at the Train Jam booth. I was lucky enough to take part in this year’s 52 hour game jam and our game Emotional Support Cat Girl was also playable at this booth as well. Creators from the Train Jam are also GDC Attendees for the most part so it wasn’t uncommon for creators to hang out at the booth and walk folks through their creations.
I didn’t have much time to go 1 on 1 with folks to show them Emotional Support Catgirl in person but I will have an exhaustive blog post outlining our amazing cross-America journey later on in the week.
Microsoft Azure Services Booth
A large Azure Services booth greeted attendees when taking one of the two main elevators down to the expo show-floor. Microsoft had a large floor presence this year aimed squarely at game developers and the cloud based development services that can help devs collaborate, test and deploy their upcoming projects.
Services like Azure Application Monitoring– which gives developers real-time reports on the use of their games and applications, Visual Studio Enterprise – Microsoft’s premium integrated development environment and the Xbox Live Creators program – which allows independent developers to publish on the Xbox One platform – were all on display.
By visiting four of the available demo stations developers were able to score both $2500 USD worth of Azure Credits for virtual machine testing and a free Xbox One controller. Disclosure: as a member of the Microsoft Developer Network and Bizspark Program I was not the intended audience for these workshops, I already have access to all of these services. The free controller will definitely be useful for my development work, however.
Google Booth
Google uses its presence in the mobile space with Android and its real-world presence in Silicon Valley to attract Android developers to GDC. Not only do they host a keynote focused on the future of their mobile platform but also full day workshops for developers on pre-launch and post-launch support of their mobile games.
Aside from the giant G logo and familiar Google Employees in blue shirts there wasn’t much on display at their booth to speak of. At GDC Google did announce the interesting “instant app” addition to the Play Store which allows customers to download a small 10MB trial version of a game and play it within seconds without needing to install anything on their device. Given the size of some Android Games 10MB could be as small as a 30 second sample of the gameplay, while other smaller games have the chance to offer players a much more feature complete experience within those confines.
PlayStation Booth
Sony always has a huge display at conventions like PAX East, E3 and PAX West but did the development focus of GDC stop them from bringing some of the latest creation on their platform? Of course not!
Playable games at the PlayStation Booth included the recently released Shadow of the Colossus remake, Monster Hunter: World, Gran Turismo Sport and Ni No Kuni: Revenant Kingdom.
Sony also held a number of developer talks and workshops across the five days of GDC focusing on the visual arts achievements that Sony has made on the PlayStation 4, how devs can help fight fraud in an online gaming space and a Final Fantasy Collaboration focused workshop.
Unity
Unity has quickly become the darling of indie creators and the engine that powers some of the most notable AAA releases as well. Upcoming titles like Escape From Tarkov, In the Valley of the Gods, Praey For the Gods and Hollow Knight all use the suite of tools made available for free by Unity Technologies.
While Unity might not offer the complete beginner friendly experience of something like Game Maker or Clickteam Fusion but it does offer a great gateway to full fledged game development. Alongside a whole range of professional grade 3D, 2D and lighting tools – developers also get access to some of the most exhaustive documentation systems around. Also the Unity community has probably answered almost every question asked about the engine at this point.
I’m not trying to come off as a paid Unity shill or that this section of the post is an advertisement – it’s not. But I’ve been personally making games in Unity for the past 2 years as my full time gig and it has been such a rewarding experience. What you lose in easy prototype-ability you gain in coding experience, game making fundamentals and probably the most beneficial to me personally – learning how to properly debug a game from conception through to post launch support.
In terms of what was on offer for newly budding developers and experienced veterans – Unity offered a quiet lounge space for Unity devs to hang out, grab a coke and just relax from the high stress environment. This space wasn’t entirely ultrisitic however – staffers from the engine developer were also on hand to inform visitors about upcoming Unity focused events like their Rendering Bootcamp, Keynote, Work Flow workshop and also to recruit for Unity Europe. Also on the floor of the West Hall (where most GDC panels take place) was a large “Made With Unity 3D” booth which gave folks the chance to check out multiple games made in Unity 5.
Ark: Survival Evolved Mobile
Lastly I’d like to highlight something I spotted at Unreal’s massive booth. Sandwiched in-between all of the Fortnite chaos, live engine demonstrations and AAA games was the mobile version of ARK Survival Evolved that had just been announced days prior. I didn’t get a chance to snag any off-screen video of the game running (tho I wish I had) but I did manage to snag a few interesting stills that I’ll post in the coming days. Suffice to say that the upcoming mobile conversion for ARK looks and plays rather faithful to the original – oh and there’s also the upcoming Nintendo Switch port of ARK, which was not on the show floor.
Obsidian Entertainment has just announced that Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire will be coming to consoles later this year. It was first just announced as PC only title. With the original game having been ported to the consoles as well – we figured it was just a matter of time before the sequel confirmation would be announced for consoles.
The game is coming out on PC this April, while the tentative date for the console versions is expected Holiday 2018. It is being ported to consoles by developer Red Cerberus. Here is an older video showing off some of the gameplay for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire:
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire will release on PC in April. The Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch version will be available Holiday 2018. We will keep you updated as more information comes to light.
Ubisoft has revealed that Far Cry 3 Classic Edition will be headed to Xbox One and PS4 Far Cry 5 Season Pass holders later this summer. While pricing has not been confirmed yet for the Season Pass, you will get the following DLC’s when purchased:
Dead Living Zombies
Hours of Darkness
Lost On Mars
As well as the aforementioned Far Cry 3 Classic Edition.
The Season Pass holder will be able to download the Far Cry 3 Classic Edition four weeks earlier than when it’s released as a standalone download.
Here is the announcement trailer for Far Cry 3 Classic Edition:
Far Cry 5 will launch on Xbox One & PS4 on March 27th, 2018.
I’ve had a bit of a non-committal history with Capcom’s Street Fighter V. Despite owning the game for nearly two years, I’ve found very little reason to pick up the controller and play beyond some basic exploration of characters and training, that is until recently. The Character specific prologue stories – while welcomed – didn’t really do it for me and getting absolutely DESTROYED online isn’t my cup of tea, so I’ve shied away from the game. With the beginning of Street Fighter V: Season 3, Capcom has added someone that I feel was sorely missing from the roster – my favorite fighter, Sakura.
Sporting 2 brand new outfits and one retro throwback as part of her complete character package, Sakura brings her Ryu inspired move-set to Capcom’s latest with a lot of flash. Her upbeat attitude and optimism remain in-tact in her SFV incarnation along with a little bit of maturity that comes with growing up. Sakura is no longer the highschool girl lusting after Ryu, and has instead moved on to college (complete with a part-time job). Her new costumes reflect this change in character – Her college outfit is complete with the requisite varsity jacket. Perhaps my favorite of the 3 options is her part time job outfit, which is modeled after the get-up that Capcom Staffers wear while occupying the pop-up Capcom Stores at major convention. It’s a little wink to fans, and it works well!
I’ve been excited about her return to the franchise and even saved up 90,000 fight money (thanks easy mode Character Stories) so I could buy her right away. She is available as part of the Season 3 character pack ($39.99 CDN), part of the SFV + S3 Character Bundle ($53.99 CDN) or can be purchased individually for $6.99 CDN. Buying Sakura for cash does not provide her 2 alternate costumes (Capcom Store Worker and Classic). Those are purchased separately or as part of the above packs.
Rebellion Developments the U.K based development house behind the Sniper Elite series has confirmed that the latest entry in the franchise, Sniper Elite 4, will support additional features on the PlayStation 4 Pro. PS4 pro owners will not only have the option to play the game in 4K if they have the set for it but also able to enjoy higher frame rates, increased load times and additional levels of detail not possible on a standard PS4.
Speaking about the enhancements that the PS4 PRO and Microsoft Direct X12 is able to bring to the game, Rebellion CTO Chris Kingsley said:
“The power of PlayStation®4 Pro, and DirectX 12 on PC, means we can take things even further for our fans who want the best sniper experience in the world. We’re turning everything up to 12!”
Here is a full list of additional PC / PS4 Pro featuring coming to Sniper Elite 4 on launch day: SNIPER ELITE®4 FEATURES ON PLAYSTATION®4 PRO INCLUDE:
• Enhanced frame rate
• Increased draw distances
• Increased geometry level of detail
• Improved lighting and shadows fidelity
• Increased image quality of reflections
• Faster loading times
Sniper Elite 4 will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One on February 14th. We got the chance to preview the game back in June at E3, go check out what we thought of the game back then.
Rez Infinite is immensely difficult to review. It’s a daunting task, really. That’s not because the game’s bad, it’s not because I don’t have anything to say about it, to the contrary. It’s because I could talk about Rez for a lifetime and still not have said enough.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Tetsuya Mizuguchi is responsible for what may be the defining VR title of our time. In addition to Rez, he’s responsible for landmark games like Lumines and Space Channel 5, in addition to producing classics like Meteos and Every Extend Extra. Rez Infinite will define the best of PlayStation VR the way Child of Eden did for the Kinect.
Rez’s history is rich with talent on Mizuguchi’s level. After the development of Panzer Dragoon Saga in 1998, SEGA broke up the super talented Team Andromeda, whose members splintered off to Smilebit (Jet Set Radio), Polyphony Digital (Gran Turismo 2, 3, 4, Sport, etc), Artoon (Blue Dragon), and United Game Artists, the team ultimately responsible for the first Rez. Rez picked up where Panzer Dragoon left off – a gorgeous on-rails shooter with brilliant mechanics and sometimes blistering gameplay. What Rez did different was melding that style with pulsing EDM, seeking to inspire synesthesia within its players.
The pursuit of pure synesthesia is what’s driven Mizuguchi’s return to the series. Rez always pulled some fantastic tricks to make that feeling stick – packing a USB vibrator in the box, allowing users to connect multiple controllers to simulate a vibration experience – and Infinite pulls all the stops with fully redone models, 3D audio support, and crucially, virtual reality integration. Because of these changes, Rez has always been a uniquely engrossing experience, and the changes in the PS4 remake only amplify that immersion.
Rez’s original campaign, the story of a hacker diving into a super-advanced AI named Eden to save it from a viral invasion, returns with the same remastered music which accompanied it in Rez HD, along with gorgeous new graphics and VR support for the whole beast. VR support totally changes the way Rez plays. For the first time, players can aim quickly by looking at a virus, or even turn around to see what’s coming from behind.
These new mechanics means bosses like Area 4’s Uranus feel totally different – it’s suddenly possible to turn around and see the gargantuan running body of Uranus behind you and take it down before it can get an advantage. Being surrounded by the digital machinations of Rez is at once overwhelming and a totally natural extension of the game’s original vision.
The original campaign isn’t alone, however. Mizuguchi has planted the seeds for a future with Infinite’s new Area X. Designed to take advantage of the PS4’s hardware, Area X is glittering, gorgeous, and designed first and foremost for VR. Area X is a beautifully rendered free-roaming journey through a world of cyber dragons, giant robots, floating cubes, and digital women.
Combining the scope of the level’s design with the immersion of virtual reality and an array of buzzing controllers pulsing with the music (or an entire suit) is an experience unlike any other. There’s a sense of scale inside the headset that video simply can’t portray. The necessity of looking around to examine every corner of your surroundings pulls you into the experience. It left me emotional, breathless, and ready for more.
The experience offered by Rez Infinite is nearly indescribable. Mizuguchi has said that the promise of VR is what pulled him back into games. Rez in virtual reality is a masterpiece. It rips you out of your reality and places you firmly inside a screaming machine, overwhelming your senses with thumping music and gorgeous visuals. It’s one of a handful of PSVR launch titles that will likely shape the medium of virtual reality for years to come. It’s stunning how different a 15-year-old game can feel in virtual reality, and if Area X is a taste of what the future of Rez – indeed, the future of all VR – might look like, I’m all in.
Sony officially unveiled the much-rumored PS4 Pro at today’s PlayStation Meeting. The PS4 Neo improves performance and offers higher resolution graphics. A new, slimmer base model will accompany the PS4 Pro’s launch in November.
Sony’s Mark Cerny demoed the console’s 4K graphics with games such as Horizon: Zero Dawn and Mass Effect Andromeda. Because the console features enhanced hardware, games will be able to employ higher resolutions and greater detail. In addition, HDR lighting is coming to all PS4 models via a software update.
PS4 Pro will make its debut on November 10th for $399.
Sony officially unveiled the new PlayStation 4 model, a sleeker, slimmer model that will represent the new standard PlayStation 4 model going forward. At this morning’s PlayStation Meeting, Sony’s Andrew House announced that 40 million units of the original model had been sold, with this new model being targeted at those who had yet to “join the PlayStation ecosystem.”
The new model launches in all markets on September 15th, following a leak of the product as reported by Eurogamer and others. The new PlayStation 4 carries an MSRP of $299.
The latest Compile Heart title headed on PlayStation Vita received a new trailer today giving some insight into MeiQ’s story. This dungeon crawling RPG features first person exploration, sort of like Etrian Odyssey but with actual triggered event style turn based combat. It looks to be quite the adventure and if anything, those of us who aren’t Vita owners can probably look forward to this title eventually making it’s way onto Steam like most Idea Factory titles in recent memory.
MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death will be released on September 13th in North America and on the 16th in Europe.
Back in the late 1980s Nintendo of Japan announced a partnership with Sony Corporation to build a CD-based add-on for the then-upcoming Super Famicom (Super Nintendo). After years of development one of the most public schisms between the then fledgling video games industry giants occurred during the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show. Though, this dissolution may have ultimately favoured Sony as any list of top-selling games these days will inevitably feature Playstation games, but back then, Sony was humiliated at that 1991 show. In the span of two days not only did Sony announce a CD-based add-on for the SNES, called the ‘Nintendo PlayStation, but Nintendo of America also announced a partnership with Phillips to produce officially licensed games.z
After Engadget went hands-on with an early prototype ‘Super Nintendo PlayStation’ decades of speculation roared to life within the gaming enthusiast community. For more than 20 years this add-on was a phantom, the only tangible evidence was thought to be a single controller (that we now know looks nothing like this prototype’s controller) that appeared online in 2007, some concept drawings and Sony’s original 1991 CES press release. For years fans had wondered – Did the SNES CD add the capabilities of the PlayStation 1 (called the PSX in early marketing materials)? Or was it an entirely new beast?
Thankfully well known hardware tinkerer Ben Heck was able to negotiate a deal with the owners of the SNES PlayStation system, allowing Ben to take a crack at restoring some of the functionality. After two painful weeks of waiting for Ben’s entire video series to be complete – from tear-down to repair of this once mythical prototype – we now have some tangible details about the ill-fated add-on.
The SNES PlayStation did not contain any of the hardware that would later be found in the PSX, instead it appears to be very similar in design to a Japanese SNES with a CD-tray under carriage, extra memory and control chips designed to run unreleased CD based games. Now that the full specs of the SNES PlayStation prototype have been published by Ben we know that the unit would have used the stock 3 MHz processor from the SNES for most of its number crunching. Also we know that the SNES PlayStation had an additional 2mhz co-processor and added 256K of Working Memory to allow for smooth playback from the 2X CD-ROM drive.
Ben Heck is actually able to restore a lot of function to this patch-work prototype – replacing a number of the aging capacitors and cleaning up some of the internal components. Once this was done he was able to restore function to both the under carriage CD-ROM drive, view the CD-ROM self test, play SNES / Super Famicom Games and even get the CD-ROM drive to open and close. Sadly, without any proto-type CD-ROM software to test the unit with, we’ll never get to see the SNES PlayStation reach its unrealized potential.
So there you have it, one of the longest standing mysteries that plagued young Nintendo fans in the early 90s finally solved. Check out the pair of videos below if you’re interested in the entire restoration process that the SNES PlayStation underwent.
We brought you news of the Xbox and PC officially getting hitched right from the Xbox Media Conference. Now Microsoft have decided to send out official invitations. Polygon confirmed today that the feature will go live September 13. Early titles that we know are going to be a part of this program include Halo Wars 2, Forza Horizon 3, and Gears of War 4. I am sure there will also be many, many other titles to come, but that’s what we know so far.
The feature lets you buy a game on Xbox One and get the PC version free or vice versa. GAMING WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. (ok well maybe it wont change at all), Microsoft also says that game saves and achievements are available across devices.Play Anywhere requires Windows 10’s new Anniversary update, which lands on August 2. Additionally, Xbox One users will need the new summer update, which is coming soon.
It seems that what we did miss at the Xbox Presser was that ReCore which launches September 13th. Other supported games will include Forza Horizon 3 (September 27), Gears of War 4 (October 11) and Halo Wars 2 (February 17, 2017). Thats all we got so far, but I think its pretty safe to assume that all Microsoft developed products will now include Xbox Play Anywhere.
Sony has said they do not plan on introducing a similar program anytime soon. Recall PlayStation president Andrew House’s words just a short month ago:”I always hesitate to be drawn into discussions of someone else’s strategy. I’m more than happy to talk about our own strategy. Yes, there was a big emphasis from the folks at Microsoft on Xbox and PC cross-play. It remains to be seen whether there is latent large consumer demand for that.”
So there you go. Will this change what you think about Xbox vs Playstation? will it finally convince you Console hold-outs that a PC is a good idea? Tell us what you think on Facebook and Twitter.
15 years ago, long before the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises really took off and brought the music game genre to the gaming mainstream, when everyone thought of music games, people brought up games like Dance Dance Revolution and its ilk, such as Bust a Groove, one of my personal favorites, back then, and Parappa the Rapper. Harmonix’s Frequency gave us the same kind of game presented in a different way: you had a catalogue of American artists from across many genres, you were presented a kind of shoot-’em-up rail shooter approach to following along with music, you were given the ability to freestyle remix your song at certain points.What you saw were the foundations of what turned Guitar Hero into the hit franchise it still is, today. I was on the line with this series – with Frequency and Amplitude on the PlayStation 2 – for the unique approach and music selection. Most of the music games I went for, those days, were heavy with underground EDM and J-POP hits that I couldn’t always get into and Frequency hit a nerve with me because it had more of the kinds of artists I know I’d get into. It’s actually responsible, single-handedly, for my love for the band Fear Factory, if that gives you an idea of how much I liked the soundtrack.
Fast forward until 2014 where Harmonix starts a Kickstarter fundraiser for a new title and while it didn’t attract the attention some other Kickstarter video game projects get, these days, it still got some big name support from names like Greg Miller and others in the gaming press. Everybody, thanks to the approach of the project, who backed the project had a good idea of what to expect from the newest entry in the series, titled like the second entry: Amplitude. This game offered, more or less, the same game as others in the series but introducing some new gameplay elements, a new soundtrack, and some more straightforward approaches to the campaign. Follow the jump for more!
As a kid having grown up during the 90s, I got to experience the height of the console wars in full swing: Nintendo vs Sega. Both of those companies duked it out for the dominance of the console market, with several other competitors such as Atari with their Jaguar and NEC’s TurboGrafix-16 lagging severely behind. Unfortunately, with growing up in the US, gamers such as myself missed numerous releases. Some of those were either not localized from Japan, or the translations of various games that did make it over were severely butchered by such things as Nintendo’s no-religious imagery/text policy, or had copious amounts of Engrish. Possibly one of the more famous examples of Engrish was the localization of the Sega MegaDrive game Zero Wing, which spawned one of the earlier memes of 2000/2001.
It’s about five or six days short of two months owning the game and I’ve still been playing it, off and on, to pass the time when I’m bored with other games. There’s always downtime with Final Fantasy XIV, too, as my server has some pretty well defined times when it’s better off you just log off if you don’t want to solo quest. I’ve found that in playing it for as long as I have, I’ve pretty much done all that I can do, short of starting again or waiting until Bethesda patches the multitude of issues the game has, so I really have to prioritize what I do with my first playthrough character if I don’t want to play the waiting game with Bethesda: I’ve turned my attention to the fact that I really am only 11 trophies away from getting my very first platinum trophy and that will be my next goal for this game before I can dedicate to a new playthrough when Bethesda decides to really fix this game.
You have to understand, though, that wanting to go platinum for a game is kind of an unusual thing for me: I play for the fun of it and trophies, to me, are just a way to show off. I’m not interested in showing off my accomplishments in that way and if I want to show you how good I am, what I have in-game, or how far I’ve gotten, I’d rather just stream and show everyone, first-hand. Getting a platinum trophy, to me, in this game, would be like getting all the items in the game, bringing them to life, and showing them on a shelf – it’s not a point of arrogance but rather a kind of collector’s pride; a measure of how much I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the game. I love playing Fallout 4 but there’s been some serious thorns in my side and they’ll continue to be so long as I’m playing with this one character.Read More
