Monthly Archives: January 2015

Developer Ready at Dawn has been testy with a lot of irate gamers in earlier weeks, the founder and CTO Andrea Pessino of the studio told Game’s princess and Italian source that it was the teams fault. She stated:

 "I just have to blame ourselves. In some way, it’s obvious that we’re not communicating our intentions…It may be a lack of our ability to communicate our vision. It seems like everyone is trying to find, not a problem but rather dishonesty, it seems like we’re trying to hide something. I thought we had been very clear since the very beginning, about what we were trying to do."

She went on to say that their game is "rather unique and specific" and that it was not just about the frame rates and "a couple polygons here and there." Hoping that the studio will do a better job in presenting their future projects, so that will have a "little faith that what we're saying is true." This was a very diplomatic way of approaching things, The Order: 1886 is a game that currently it seems that every one is loving to hate. There may be some truth to what Pessino said.

Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios earlier announced, Neverwinter will be available for the Xbox One on 31^st march as a free-to-play massively multiplayer game and will incorporate all the contents from the base game, as well as both the expansion, tyranny of Dragons and Scourge Warlock.

Those wanting to play will need an Xbox Live Gold subscription. The game is set in the Dragon and Dungeons Universe, which was first released in 2013 for PC. Last year the published announced that the game was "coming to consoles, starting with Xbox One," which suggest that a PS4 version can be expected at some point or the other.

The Ancient Labyrinth expansion for Lords of the Fallen which was originally set to release on January, has a new release date march 4. The content will be available on both the Xbox One and PS4 and the PC.

The DLC is set to introduce a new story set in a "long-forgotten library that exists somewhere between the human and demonic realms." New enemies, new secrets and new weapons and armor.

CI Games stated that players should not expect to breeze through the DLC as it will retain the challenging gameplay which was present in the main game. The content according to the developer will span a 2.5 hour of playtime. The price has yet to be disclosed.  CI games is also working on working on Lords of the Fallen 2  as well as a dark should style game for mobile.

The upcoming cops and robbers themed shooter and the latest edition the battlefield franchise Battlefield Hardline has officially “gone gold”, which means that then studio has completed the initial development and the game is now headed for mass production and to the respected digital shelves.

Tis came from the official Battlefield twitter account which was accompanied by an image showing a man with a golden gun. Though hardline is still weeks away from its official release up to 7 million people have already played the game through its recent open beta. The studio Visceral have seemed to have learned a lot from the beta and can be seen as a series of changes including weapon tweaks and lots more are being implemented.

“Going gold” is indeed an important milestone in any game development. But hardline is a very Online-heavy game, and its development will continue for a very long time after its initial release.

Battlefield Hardline is set to release on March 17 in the US and March 20 in the UK for all consoles including last gen and current gen and PC.

Not including the few months of holiday’s season where the Xbox one price dropped once again, PlayStation 4 has sold better so far this generation.

A recent report from GamesIndustry.biz citing a Strategy report that Sony will be the “unquestioned leader” over the first five years of this current generation of gaming.

The firm’s connected Home devices report that the PS4 "is on path to reproduce the success of the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii." They predict that Sony will enjoy a worldwide installed user base of 80 million by 2019. Further notes states that the PS4’s first-year sale is very close to the uber-dominant PS2, PS4 selling 18.5 million and PS2 selling 20.1 million whereas the PS3 sold only 10.6 million during its first year.

On the other hand Xbox One has sold 12.4 million on its first year out selling the Xbox 360 which sold 10.4 million, which faced similar challenges to the PS3. The lowest sale going to the Wii U which sold a low 5.9 million but is "staging a modest comeback" thanks to first-party software.

Eric Smith the senior strategy Analytics stated:

"Despite reports to the contrary, the game console market is not dead. Core gamers have moved faster to this current generation than in any previous generation. The main difference in this generation is that casual gamers who bought a Wii are remaining largely on the side lines as free-to-play casual games and midcore games on tablets and smartphones have captured this segment of consumers."

The last addition of DLC to Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, known as The Bright Lord is finally available across both PS4 and Xbox One and PC. The release date was announced earlier by Warner Bros. and the developer of the game Monolith, a new trailer was also released to build hype amongst the fans.

In this expansion the players take on the role of Celebrimbor, for fans of the lords of the rings series they will recognize this character, as Celebrimbor players get to utilize the power of the one ring to face off against Sauron and his orc army. The DLC includes a new story driven campaign featuring ten missions and introduces the new “elite” Nemesis enemies and warchiefs. A new character skin (Celebrimbor) was also added for the main campaign, as well as for challenge mode, where players who want to get level-30 runes will have to square off against high level enemies as Celebrimbor.

The design director Micheal de Plater also stated that the DLC was a lot tougher than the main campaign. The Bright lord DLC is available along with the 25$ season pass for the game or can be purchased separately.

The Last of Us is a gem of a game. Even though there are some out there who didn’t enjoy it as much, majority of the gamers loved it and the game has gotten 10/10 across numerous game critics.

So it is only expected that a sequel to this game will be expected; especially considering the DLC for the game also was critically acclaimed.  However we may have to be patient for a sequel, if it is ever to happen.

Seems till Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is completed and shipped, Naughty Dog is not even considering the possibility of The Last of Us 2. This is what Naughty Dog bosses Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley said about TLoU 2 in a recent interview with Game Informer:

"That's all a big if. We're 110 percent in Uncharted 4 territory now. Blinders on, make this awesome."

Of course many of might not even want a sequel to TLoU. Just like how fans of Quantic Dream love that company because of how they just move on to new IPs. In response to this Druckmann said:

"We totally get it, because we have those same feelings as well. We have brainstormed sequel ideas for The Last of Us, and we've brainstormed ideas for new games, but all of that is put on ice right now while we work on Uncharted 4."

For now Druckmann wanted to drive home the idea that right now they are not even in the brainstorming phase of TLoU2. As such that game might never be made. But in a way I am glad they are so focused on Uncharted 4. Everyone is expecting great things from this franchise’s initial steps on the current generation consoles.

Those who said the console era was dead are eating their words every day now. PlayStation 4 has now sold over 18.5 million units worldwide.

Seems like the impossible is happening and even Sony is surprised. PS4 is currently is selling faster than any PlayStation in history, yes even faster than the PS2. Here is what a Sony Computer Entertainment America spokesperson said:

"We are humbled by this success and want to thank gamers worldwide for helping us achieve holiday sales of more than 4.1 million across 123 countries and regions. We are looking forward to another momentous year in 2015 and bringing an epic line up of titles to PlayStation fans around the world."

Overall the Xbox One was the highest sold console in the US recently after the price drop but the PS4 has again climbed back to the top. No matter which console is being sold the most it is obvious that gamers love consoles and so we all win here. 

Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain will be the most open Metal Gear Solid game till date. In a recent interview on Kinda Funny Games, Troy Baker (voice actor for Ocelot in MGSV) revealed what seems to be the expected scale of the game.

He opened up with the fact that he was interested in seeing how old school fans of the franchise would react to the game. Mainly even though the game fits well with the franchise it is still quite different from its predecessors. As for the scale of the game he said,

"It may be the biggest game I’ve ever seen. Just in terms of everything that you can do. Skyrim looks like an afternoon playpen next to it. It’s massive. It’s absolutely massive in what you can do."

He also addressed the issue with Kiefer Sutherland, who is now going to be voice acting for Snake. Baker said that although he himself along countless fans wanted David Hayter back as Snake, Sutherland actually handled the situation admirably:

"...if you watched his feature at The Game Awards, I wanted to stand up and applaud the guy. Because the way he came out, the heart that he came out with, it’s just very contrite and gracious to all the fans.

There was like this understanding underneath: 'Look, I get it. You don’t want me to be snake. That’s fine. Neither did I, but let me tell you what made me fall in love with it, and how I told my other friends about how important this story means to the world and to entertainment period.'"

Well big changes indeed. Guess we have to wait till the game finally comes out to see the actual scale of the game and how Sutherland performs in this iconic role.

So the trend right now shows that gamers care about two things when it comes to a new game. Whether it will be in 1080p and whether it will run at 60FPS.

Although admittedly developers and critics have come out to say these don’t really determine whether a game will look or play great, right now it is definitely held as the standard expectation from current gen consoles.

But Naughty Dog doesn’t want to just follow the numbers trend. They are planning on achieving 60FPS for Uncharted 4 but they will are not willing to compromise on the gaming experience for it.

In an interview with Edge, game director Bruce Straley said that they had actually locked the gameplay demo (shown at PlayStation Experience) at 30 FPS. Here is what he said:

"We're actually above 30, but we locked it [for the demo]. We're going to do whatever it takes to make the game we want to make. If it means we could go for 60 but lose something that would really impact the player's experience, then it's our choice as developers to say, 'Well, we're going to go for the experience [instead of] the 60 frames.'"

As reference just remember that all the Uncharted games till now have been set to run at 30 FPS. However last year Eric Monacelli of Naughty Dog said they were planning on making the next Uncharted run at 60 FPS on the PlayStation 4. The fact that The Last of Us Remastered ran at 60FPS shows that the team is definitely capable of it. It is whether to choose to stick to that decision or not just remains to be seen.