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Turn 10 Confirms Lack of Features, Leaves others Murky
Turn 10 just ran a quick livestream on Microsoft's Twitch.tv channel for Forza Motorsport 5, and for those serious racing fans that stuck with the Forza games through thick and thin, they didn't get a lot of great news. Open wheeled cars: in, but they're not announcing which ones, so I think that means only specific models - maybe the Ariel Atom or some Caterhams, and the like. And when the chat repeatedly pestered them about night racing or inclement weather? The answer was "no". Support for those expensive, existing Forza branded Fanatec wheels from less than two years ago? Nope. Let's dig into some of this, shall we?
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E3 on Twitch
There are a lot of places you can watch E3 livestreamed, but the best might be Twitch's own livestream on their own site. Scroll down on the page to see the full schedule, but there's more than just the press conferences - they'll be streaming a ton of game demos that in years past were only shown behind closed doors or to show-goers, with some "trailer" version of the presentation released weeks later. Things are changing as far as what the public can see of a game before release, and so far Twitch has started to become a big part of it.
But maybe go full-screen. The chat is full of stream monstering, trolling, spamming, and general awfulness.
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Tekken Revolution Goes Free-to-Play - On Tuesday!
Namco has just released a trailer announcing Tekken Revolution, a new free-to-play game in their long-running fighting franchise. It's coming to PS3 exclusively, and here's the big one: it will be released this Tuesday. Yep, it has been announced a mere three days before launch. The idea with a F2P fighting game is generally that a relative few characters are unlocked at the beginning, with the ability to fight against anyone on the roster, and then you can pay a few bucks to unlock new playable characters permanently, possibly with costumes also being a premium thing. Otherwise, some kind of League of Legends-style model of rotating the free playable characters in and out might apply.
We'll see if that actually pans out as something gamers gravitate towards, or whether they reject it and would rather go the full-price route. I think this will be fairly successful, but with this always-connected perspective, what will it mean for tournaments? After all, many fighting game players look to the top-level players that are constantly competing in the world's biggest online-streamed tournaments, and if this F2P model can't be adapted to work in a tourney scenario, it may not take off.
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Xbox One and Game Licensing
It seems that since a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft been quickly scrambling to bang out what was clearly an unfinished set of policies regarding how game licensing will work on the Xbox One, and now they have some answers. This post on Xbox.com has their rather complex, but what I think will be pretty fair policy: yes, games are linked to your account now when you buy them at a store (or online), and yes, you'll have to deal with Xbox servers to transfer it - whether to let someone else play it temporarily or to lend or sell it. Here's the thing: publishers are the ones that can choose (or refuse) to charge money for sale of the game license to a retailer - and yes, it's the license, not the disc. The disc only carries the data and does not confer ownership. Read on for more...
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Xbox One Controller Details
Xbox's Major Nelson has posted a good chunk of info on the changes going into the Xbox One controller. There are a ton of improvements, including an internal AA battery bay, better sound quality, infrared communication with Kinect that allows the game to do things like swap your split screens automatically if players move around or swap places, and either wired or wireless connectivity that is switchable by simply plugging in (or unplugging) the controller with a mini-USB cable. All of this seems to have been done with the Xbox 360 fanbase's love for that controller in mind. Even if the hype train is a little more on the PS4's side right now, this controller still looks like a solid piece of hardware.
Also, the Back and Start buttons have been renamed to View and Menu. Does this mean a new standard for putting camera-swapping on that button? Kind of seems like it, but I think I'd rather Microsoft not insist that that button only do that.
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Title and Concept Art of Respawn's Titanfall Revealed
As media gets more complex, more leaks wind up happening. This time, the Google Play store revealed the cover of an upcoming Game Informer magazine early, and in doing so, unveiled the name of Respawn Entertainment (made up of dozens of the people behind four of the first six Call of Duty games)'s first game: Titanfall. PC Gamer has a mirror of the cover image and we can see that the game's clearly pretty sci-fi and it's coming to PC and Xbox One. Also, it'll have multiplayer. Might even be multiplayer-only.
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New Deus Ex for.. Mobile?
Square Enix has unveiled Deus Ex: The Fall, and ... it's on mobile devices. iOS or iPad or whatever, I don't care. It'll be out later this summer for $7. It's obviously not a full-fledged Deus Ex sequel and will likely be at least somewhat compromised, if not in the activities and combat, at the very least it will almost surely be a rather short game. (Plus, personally, I can't stand touch-screen "thumbsticks".) This announcement has resulted in almost universal disappointment from everyone that's heard this news so far; it's clear people were looking for a true sequel and more full-fledged Deus Ex action, not a mobile game - even if the graphics do look good.
If Square Enix's marketing department didn't predict this mild anger, disappointment and possible backlash, then they really have no idea what their fans want.
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Plants vs. Zombies 2 an iOS Exclusive on July 18th
Popcap has announced that Plants vs Zombies 2 is going to be launching exclusively on iOS (does Apple even give favorable deals for exclusives?) on July 18th. It'll also be free to play! That's amazing! After all, it's not like it'll be anything like EA's Real Racing 3, which instead of costing ten bucks like its predecessor, was "free" with hugely exploitative in-app purchases that cost vastly more. This is Popcap!
... *puts finger to ear, listening to message coming in on earpiece*
Oh, that's right. EA bought Popcap a couple of years ago. Guess we know how this is going to go. RIP Fun 2009, the year PvZ was released.
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Arkane Studios Working on Prey 2?
Jason Schreier at Kotaku has some pretty good evidence that Bethesda's woes with Prey 2, the FPS sequel originally being made by Human Head, are not over, as the game's apparently now being made over at Dishonored developer Arkane Studios. Seems silly, too, because it seems this "franchise" is just cursed. Prey has been around for more then a decade, originally started by 3D Realms back in the 1990s and developed by various teams until a half-decent game was finally released several years ago. Then Bethesda bought the rights to the franchise from 2K and Human Head started on a sequel. That went poorly, and according to Schreier's sources, Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas) worked on it for a few months and Rebellion (Rogue Warrior) refused entirely - and when the guys who made Rogue Warrior say no, that's pretty good proof that the whole idea might best be just thrown out entirely. Now, according to these sources, people at Arkane are unhappy about this assignment as well.
Arkane themselves have two studios, one in Austin and one in France, and what's happening between the two studios is still a bit of a myster. Rebooting Prey 2 entirely and turning it into a System Shock-like game does sound interesting, but generally it seems like good business for a publisher to work with their more creative developers and ensure they're making the game they want, not dictate to them what they're making.
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Mirror's Edge 2 Basically Confirmed
So, after multiple retailers have mistakenly put up pages for Mirror's Edge 2 and EA's own support site did much the same, basically confirming the game, now we start the waiting game to see what developer DICE has in store for us in this sequel. The first Mirror's Edge was still a bit of a niche game and not a blockbuster hit; will EA try to turn it into that with this sequel? Will EA try to pull in millions of sales and put it on current- and next-gen consoles? Because that kind of strategy - making a big and loud AAA-style action game, I mean - really didn't work out well for Dead Space 3. Let's hope that if EA is making Mirror's Edge 2 very ambitious, that they don't overshoot like they tend to do so often.
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Aww, What's In the Cube?
Over the last five months I haven't bothered covering the oddity of the first product that was made legendary game designer Peter Molyneux's (relatively) new company 22Cans, mostly because I didn't think his grandiose promise was going to be worth the effort. After all, he's made plenty of ambitious promises before, and they were all disappointing to me. But the thing that was at the center of the cube in his mobile game Curiosity is actually very interesting, risky, and really pretty innovative.
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Destiny Trailer
Bungie and Activision have released another trailer for their upcoming blockbuster game Destiny, mixing in live action story along with pre-rendered action. We also get word at the end that more is coming at Sony's press conference at this year's E3. (And yes, that's the guy from Breaking Bad. Pollos Hermanos!)
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Blocking Used Games Good? I Don't See It
Ben Kuchera at PA Report has an opinion piece up talking about the possibility of the next-gen blockage of used games, and the transferring to a system of software licensing, as possibly a good thing. I disagree. Jump into this with me and let me know if you agree.
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Fanatec's Existing Products An Unknown on Xbox One
We've already heard that Microsoft plans on changing their controller design as such that pretty much every headset currently compatible with the Xbox 360 will not work with Xbox One - you might get sound out of your console, but you won't be putting any sound in with the power of your voice. With the Forza 5 announcement, I am on a mission to find out whether Microsoft plans to remove all controller compatibility entirely, as I've got an Xbox 360-branded Fanatec CSR racing wheel (released less than two years ago) that cost a pretty penny. The first people I asked were Fanatec, and here's the answer I received:
Unfortunately we can't give you any information regarding the compatibility because there is no information besides Microsoft.Sigh - back to the drawing board. Microsoft will probably wait until E3 to even attempt to answer this question, then, but the words the Fanatec rep here used make it sound like compatibility is entirely up to MS. There's no reason products like the CSR can't be compatible with the new console, as the connection is wireless, so as long as they haven't completely redesigned the wireless system, we should be good to go.
Unless MS just doesn't want to. Then we can't. (You know what? I bet Gran Turismo 6 will probably support the Fanatec CSR...)
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EA Details More of its Next-Gen Future
We'll be putting up an article on the Xbox One reveal later today, but for now, EA has announced a couple more things that are coming to next-gen consoles. There'll be a new Need for Speed, and apparently they'll be announcing their "plans" for Star Wars since they made that exclusive agreement with new LucasArts owner Disney to make Star Wars games. I doubt they actually have a game in development far enough to show anything but a logo, but at least Need for Speed should be in full display. Of course, EA will be going up against both a new Forza AND a new Gran Turismo this fall, and that duo is something EA's never had to contend with in the same season, so we'll see how that goes.
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Mclaren Outs Forza for Tomorrow's Xbox Reveal
McLaren's Facebook page talks about a game being revealed tomorrow, and I very, very seriously doubt that Microsoft will make the same mistake that Sony did by cannibalizing their own racing-game hype by unveiling Driveclub for the PS4 and (at least initially) relegating the much bigger Gran Turismo 6 on PS3.
Nope, McLaren is basically telling us that Forza Motorsport 5 is going to be shown for the first time tomorrow. This is probably my most anticipated game for next-gen reveals this year, even considering the possibility that the secret game Respawn Entertainment's been working on for years will be shown tomorrow. Or Alan Wake 2.
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Metro: Last Light Made In Third-World Conditions
Former THQ executive Jason Rubin - the guy brought in way too late in the company's life to try and get things back on track and then to get THQ's affairs in order during its sale - told Games Industry International about Metro: Last Light developer, Ukrainian studio 4A Games and the awful conditions that they made that game in. They had a budget that was a tenth of what comparable AAA games get, suffered through days-long power outages, the need for bribing border officials, a lack of space, overall discomfort, being snowed in at home and being unable to even get to the studio on some days, freezing temperatures in the building when Kiev's government-run building heating would fail, and a meddling THQ who tried to make them include multiplayer modes. Click "Read More" to see my thoughts on all of this.
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Gran Turismo 6 Announced ... for... PS3.
Please be excited: Sony has announced Gran Turismo 6 for release later this year on ... PS3. It'll have 1200 cars, apparently more customization options, new tracks, and a more aggressive DLC schedule. Thing is, if Microsoft announces a next-gen Forza 5 next week and it looks truly next-gen, then I feel Sony and Polyphony Digital might be getting trumped this year. Especially since I haven't found a single person yet that's excited about Driveclub on the PS4.
Update: This underwhelming trailer was released. Let's hope that something that actually shows the game's new features is on the way today?
Update 2: IGN reports that GT6 might be heading to the PS4 sometime after the November-ish PS3 release, but he seems rather non-committal about it. I'm not sure he really has any serious motivation to do so.
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Japanese Developer Raking it In on Mobile
GI.biz has a story up about Japanese developer GungHo and how they're making millions of dollars per day on their iOS/Android puzzle RPG Puzzle & Dragons. One in ten people in Japan are playing this game - that's insane. While games media rarely talks about the success of mobile games in Asia, this one should be getting people's attention. Think about it like this: their current rate of revenue means they'll be making over a billion dollars in a year. I'm a little doubtful this one game will last that long as most mobile gamers move along quickly, but decently-made sequels often do well on mobile platforms. I'd be interested to find out how much GungHo spent advertising and promoting the game, as their operating costs weren't astoundingly low...
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Serious TES Online Exploit Before Beta Even Starts?
Blue's News has a story up talking about Joe from Joe's Security blog finding an exploit in Skyrim that turns out to exist in Bethesda Game Studios-developed games all the way back to Morrowind. It's not really a big problem in these games since they're single player, but Joe makes the assumption that it could exist in the upcoming The Elder Scrolls online as well. The problem with his assumption is that Austin-based Zenimax Online Studios is making TES Online (not BGS), the GameBryo/Creation engines would need significant reworking to make online play work (ask how that went for the guys trying to mod multiplayer into Skyrim), and Zenimax Online's Matt Firor has has already confirmed that they went with a different engine called the Hero Engine, and then ditched it for their own technology anyway. The Elder Scrolls Online might not be living up to expectations based on some leaks from beta, but this is not part of those possible disappointments.
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