GG Weekly Videogame News 
What a Ten Year Long Civ II Game Looks Like
If it's a sim, Earth is in trouble.
theatlantic.com news
aspro
Is the ‘Tomb Raider’ Reboot Sexist?
Remember when Lara had confidence?
vglounge.com editorial
Uncl3Fac3
The Press Room Episode #118
More games than E3 in this jumbo edition of The Press Room.
thepressroompodcast.com editorial impressions news
aspro
Iwata says Wii U may have a hard drive?
Confirms you can use external hard drives
andriasang.com
gamingeek
![[wordpress.com]](/cache/favicons/wordpress.com.ico "wordpress.com")
Retro's Wii U title facing rocky development?
Depressing Retro Studios rumours
wordpress.com
gamingeek
U Gamepad Almost Went Screenless
Iwata said they were considering dropping the screen due to cost.
telegraph.co.uk news
aspro
Minecraft 360 Patch incoming TODAY (6/15)
Various bug fixes. NOT Adventure mode and Gameplay improvements.
playxbla.com news
phantom_leo
MS Hosting Secretive Event on Tuesday
Some say it's XB related, some say tablets.
cmswire.com news
aspro
Combat Details For Dragon Quest X
Speed and character weight to be key factors
rpgamer.com news
robio
Gamers Allow Themselves to be Bullied
By the companies they love.
laserlemming.com editorial
isntchrisl
Ni No Kuni Preview
More in common with Dragon Quest 8 than you would think. THAT got my attention!
1up.com impressions
phantom_leo
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Many of the makers of Guardian Heroes ALSO worked on the Code of Princess game I posted the video of earlier. Watch the video, their influence is apparent.
I don't recall MS ever saying 360....I think its always just XBOX.
I agree they should just call it Xbox. Sony should call their machine just Playstation, and Nintendo should just be the Nintendo Entertainment System since now more than ever, isn't that what it is? An entertainment system? Certainly more than in 1985...back then it was simply a gaming system.
Why Do People Hate EA?Would you like a worm? The can is WIDE open now!
Its always seemed to me that the EA hate sprouted from them being too reliant on their semi-monopoly on the sports genre for so many years. The only time they ever got any serious competition was when SEGA hooked up with Visual Concepts for the 2K Brand, who did IMO surpass EA's titles in quality for awhile in nearly every sport. But then when EA got the NFL exclusive deal, that's when the hate really began. But yeah, just too reliant on Madden and their sports lineup, turning out nearly the same game year after year, to make money. LOTS of money. It made them the #1 Publisher in the world for awhile, money-wise.
Nowadays, I think the hate for EA is just a byproduct of that era from 5 or 6 years ago. For the most part, I don't think EA is much different than any of the other Gaming publishers out there at this point...and in fact EA has been one of the better publishers in this era of gaming. They've released some real gems in all categories. When they were being too reliant on sports in the early 2000's, it was unheard of for them to release a game like Dead Space, or Crysis, or Dragon Age.
They've become a better company over the past generation.
And they make video games... how cool is that?
I am having a hard time coming up with s feveloper I don't like though. Probably IO. I don't know how they keep getting funded.
Fallon on in minutes with live Wii U Demo and Reggie!
Cmon...IO? Hitman 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. And from what I've heard, Mini Ninjas was good too. The new Hitman looks great also...at the very least its still what its supposed to be.
LOL...Nintendoland and that Zombie U target video. That Zombie face mapping thing is seriously awesome though.
It is indeed! Great tip Leo. Another game I'm really looking forward to which I was completely unawares of
___
Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Obviously Nintendo had nothing to laugh about considering their E3, but this spoof by a games mag is still somewhat funny.
Pokemon Conquest (9.0) AMAZING! Review
Is there anything that Pokemon doesn't work with? It's an adaptable IP capable of great and marvelous evolutions!
Ni No Kuni Preview
Good call on posting this Leo. Now that it's being compared to DQ8 my interest has increased about a 100 times over. Now if only it were scheduled to come out in the next few months instead of 2013.
Wasn't Pokemon Dash kinda bad? And the Ranger games have their ups & downs...
IO's always up & down with me. Sometimes I love their ideas (Kane & Lynch 2), but I fucking despise their games (EVER BLOODY HITMAN GAME).
I'd have to go with Turn 10. As good as their games are (NOTE: GOOD, NOT AMAZING, GOOD), their arrogance never ceases to astound me.
Shut your whore mouth with all that logic and stuff.
lol
A leaké document tells us that the next Xbox would support Blu - ray, 3D natively, the true 1080p.
According to the documents it is that this Kinect2.0 could involve 4 people in simultaneous g ^ race to an improved camera and a processor dedicated through the console it even.
Refers also to a facility to be Windows 8 applications on the platform.
According to The Verge
The documents in question refers to even the possibility of evolution of this Xbox. The image of a PC that you upgrade.
Microsoft has advantage with a second wind with its Xbox 360 Kinect. Goal? Repeat with the next.
Of course the 2.0 Kinect would be since the launch but another accessory would come to anchor, later in 2014.
Remember a patent of Microsoft on glasses to play a Xbox. And well, this project could result in 2014 under the name of code Fortaleza.
These goggles (wifi) could then fit with Kinect, to propose unpublished experiments.
Microsoft would go even further. By 2015, a version 4 G of these sunglasses intervene, history known Google Glass.
The Xbox and competition:
We finished with the specs of this unlikely new console:
There is no doubt that if these documents are true, heads will fall at Microsoft.
Xbox 720
Microsoft outlines a competitive differentiation for its next-generation Xbox, including support for Blu-ray, native 3D output and glasses, concurrent apps, and additional sensor and peripheral support. Alongside a promised 6x performance increase, there's also mention of true 1080p output with full 3D support and an "always on" state for the console. A slide on core hardware indicates that the next Xbox will be designed to be scalable in the number of CPU cores and their frequencies. Microsoft appears to have been debating whether to use six or eight ARM or x86 cores clocked at 2GHz each with 4GB of DDR4 memory alongside three PPC cores clocked at 3.2GHz each for backwards compatibility with existing Xbox 360 titles.
Microsoft positions its Xbox 720 as the only box needed for living room entertainment in the document, providing background recording functionality for TV content and a unified Windows 8 foundation to make it easier for application developers to build apps that target Xbox, PC, and Windows Phone. Illustrations of the Xbox 720 throughout the presentation make it comparable in looks to an old set-top box, but appear to be just a concept design used in 2010. Microsoft rounds off the document with a promised price point of $299 with its Kinect 2 hardware and a prediction of a 10 year lifecycle with more than 100 million units sold.
The next iteration of Microsoft's Kinect accessory appears to be an incremental improvement over the current hardware. Microsoft references higher accuracy, stereo imaging, improved voice recognition, support for four player tracking, improved RGB camera, and dedicated hardware processing. One particular aspect of the leaked slides is a focus on four player gaming and Kinect props. "In Kinect v2 we can continue to go beyond controllers and offer peripherals and accessories that heighten game immersion," reads a note section of one of the slides. The Kinect accessories idea appears to be one that is not designed to replace controllers, but will allow devices to interact with the sensor. Microsoft's plans for four player Kinect gaming reference carnival, darts, and basketball games as a broad way to use the new tracking.
Microsoft lays out a roadmap for its "Fortaleza" Kinect Glasses — which appears to be a research project the company is working on. There's little mention of the hardware involved, but the glasses appear to be Wi-Fi- or 4G-enabled and incorporate augmented reality in a way that's similar to Google's Project Glass augmented reality glasses. Described as a "breakthrough heads up and hands-free device," Kinect Glasses is marked as a 2014 product that won't launch alongside the Xbox 720 console. Microsoft doesn't provide any specifics about how the glasses will work on the Xbox, but they do appear to be designed to be mobile for use away from the console.
Digital Foundry hands on Wii U in London
Strange article, they go hands on but they come away writing a tech focused article focusing on latency, frame rates and more. What's good though is that they say that the following games are 60 frames per second:
From what Eguchi said, Nintendo Land and Pikmin 3 are 60 frames per second too. Pretty interesting.
The article goes onto to describe some graphical effects, Pikmins Wii 1 origins and other stuff.
NG3 "appears to be running fully v-synced (unlike the PS3 and 360 versions"
They describe Batman AC as "woefully unoptimised." It looks like they haven't sorted out the level of detail properly "Unreal Engine 3 relies on streaming textures, where low-resolution tiles subtly fade out for the higher-quality ones as you draw closer. Unfortunately, no big switch is occurring in the build we tried for minutes at a time, if ever."
In general:
Above all, lighting is the area which has seen the greatest improvement in this generational leap. The bustling main hub area in Nintendo Land is filled with light sources, from the 3D particle effects that represent the fireworks and confetti, which each produce a vivid bloom, to the lights on the rotating carriages. Shadows move across the Mii's faces too as they wander around, adding subtle levels of depth.
Taken into the mini-games themselves, however, we see this effect being applied more practically. Streams of light can pour through windows to illuminate entire hallways in the Luigi's Ghost Mansion game, rendering the ghost player visible to the other players as they angle their own flashlights around.
Another favourite pick is Zelda Battle Quest, which lets one GamePad user take up virtual archery while four other Wii remote users wield swords. The aesthetic is very reminiscent of Kirby's Epic Yarn, where texturing for the characters and environments look like they've been knitted and stitched together, and all models benefit from a sharp jump in polygon counts. The same is true of New Super Mario Bros. U too; though many 2D elements are still used for the blocks, pipes, and rolling clouds and hills that form the parallax scroll. But here we also see Mario and the goombas are much more detailed, and coins and platforms are now rendered in full 3D.
We notice a pattern forming here, where many of the titles being made exclusively for the format seem nicely custom tailored to the capabilities of the hardware, not just in terms of using the dual-screen dynamic imposed by the GamePad, but also at a fundamental level where the console's CPU and graphics chip setup are concerned.
It remains worrying that direct ports of games currently optimised for the 360's architecture, which also boasts a tri-core IBM processor and AMD GPU, show only minor improvements or none at all.
I really like Shadow Complex but its Metroid without the awesome music, enemies, boss fights, interesting locations, and fast paced combat. Still really good.
That's their raison d'etre though, it's what makes Digital Foundry so credible.
Indeed. Welcome to the world of PS3.
I thought this was old, but saw it reported. Minecraft LEGO: (http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Minecraft-21102)
Weekend game deals courtesy PCGAMER:
STEAM
Play Napoleon: Total War for free this weekend, get some cheap Counter-Strike, and make Big & Tall cities for $10.
AMAZON
[US Only] Hi Amazon, do you have too many constantly-fluctuating sales to list? You do?! And you say they often change by just 1% off from week to week? That’s crazy, Amazon. There’s no way you could keep track of all that, never mind me. Well, here’s to trying our best:
ORIGIN
Surprise! Apparently it’s been a year since Origin originated, so check the store for 40% off special editions.
GAMEFLY
[US & Canada, some available in Mexico] The Summer Roadtrip sale is still going, and new sales are popping up at regular intervals, which probably means the list below will be outdated by the time you get to it. Thanks for messing with my list, GameFly. Check out the sale’s hub page for the latest deals.
GAMESTOP
Hey, where’d all this come from? Did I just miss it last week? GameStop has sales on FarCry, Mass Effect 3, Dead Island, Payday: The Heist, and is still selling cheap Assassin’s Creed and 2K bundles.
GOG
GOG’s 50% off weekend deal covers Ubisoft fun like Beyond Good & Evil, Assassin’s Creed, Rayman, and Splinter Cell.