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DCEmu.Com is a site that brings you the very latest in Gaming news that isnt console specific and the latest Current Gen news from around the world, Part of the
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December 20th, 2013, 00:30 Posted By: wraggster
GungHo’s console debut for its popular smartphone IP Puzzle & Dragons has enjoyed a tremendous first week in Japan.
The 3DS title debuted to week one sales of 543,630 units according to Media Create.
On the hardware front it was another week of growth for Wii U which seems to be making the most of the festive ‘gifting’ season in Japan and be doing all it can to take advantage of the prolonged next-gen wait being endured by Japanese consumers.
Its unit sales grew by over 25k week-on-week to 74,903 units, making it the second best-selling console after the 3DS XL (92k) and far ahead of the dwindling last-gen PS3 (24k).
The real test for Nintendo’s machine will be whether or not it can maintain any sort of momentum in the face of PS4 in the New Year.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/puzzl...-japan/0126090
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December 20th, 2013, 00:20 Posted By: wraggster
 Even without a proper commercial release, amateur developers have retooled favourite first-person games like Portal and Mirror’s Edge to work on the Oculus Rift.
The Oculus Rift booth treated GamesCom attendees to the strangest sight of the show this year. A dozen HD versions of the prototype headset were flown into Cologne to give visitors the chance to experience virtual reality. After enduring lengthy queues, testers sat back-to-back with controllers in their laps, headsets wired into pillars rising out of the floor. The games began and their visored faces stared blankly out into the watching crowds, twitching and turning in reaction to private stimuli.The scene wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a William Gibson novel, but that speaks to the huge appeal of the Rift. Virtual reality is one of science fiction’s most seductive concepts, but 2013 is the year that it finally became feasible, and even affordable, at a consumer level. Advances in miniaturisation pioneered by the mobile market now allow for lightweight, high-definition headsets, and the the $300 Oculus Rift prototype kit has opened up VR to both indie and big-budget developers.The results of their experimentation have only encouraged the growing hype around VR. This year, Valve released official updates to Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2 to add Oculus Rift compatibility. Modders have added VR support to Skyrim and Mirror’s Edge. Games like Slender: The Arrival and base-jumping sim AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome now have competent Oculus Rift support. The number of games with bespoke virtual reality modes continues to grow, even though the commercial unit is still some way from release.Developers are evidently undeterred by the fact that long-standing problems with virtual reality remain unsolved. The novelty of using the Oculus Rift doesn’t lessen the accompanying nausea that many users experience after extended use. Sudden head movement can create disorientating ‘image smear’, and first-person shooters – a natural fit for the Rift at first thought – struggle with allowing for separate arm and head movements.Contributing factors like the latency of the headset’s display, are problems that hardware iteration can solve, and they’re being tackled with encouraging optimism by some of the biggest brains in the industry. In November programming luminary John Carmack left id Software to focus on his role as Chief Technology Officer at Oculus VR. Carmack’s former colleague Michael Abrash is now part of Valve’s virtual reality team. His GDC 2013 presentation and posts on Ramblings in Valve Time provide an illuminating insight into the significant technical challenges that face VR hardware developers.
http://www.edge-online.com/features/...rtual-reality/
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December 20th, 2013, 00:11 Posted By: wraggster
The Virtuix Omni "is an omnidirectional treadmill video game peripheral for virtual reality games currently in development by Virtuix," says Wikipedia. With this device and an Oculus Rift, Razer Hydra or a similar "immersive" headset, you can play games equipped to use these devices with your whole body moving in any direction you choose. If you think you saw this product on the Shark Tank TV show or a pitch for it at Kickstarter.com, you're right. You did. The Virtuix Omni people have been pushing their product hard, everywhere they can. Tim ran into their product manager, Colton Jacobs, at the recent AppsWorld conference in London. This video is Tim's record of their conversation.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/1...y-gaming-video
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December 20th, 2013, 00:05 Posted By: wraggster
It's official: Grand Theft Auto V really is mum's worst nightmare.
It's the one video game that mothers do not want their children to receive this Christmas, according to data from babies.co.uk.
Over 30 per cent of mums' agreed that GTA V was the game they would least like their child to receive. Killzone: Shadow Fall claimed 21 per cent of the votes, followed by Dead Rising 3 with 20 per cent of the votes. Fourth on the site’s poll of parents' most unwanted games was Call of Duty: Ghosts with 17 per cent.
James Macfarlane, managing director of Babies.co.uk, said: “It became apparent that our users were very scared of the level of realism found in a game like Grand Theft Auto V. While it is hard to see a child relating with a zombie first person shooter, as is the case in some of the other games in the poll, parents are clearly concerned that a game which rewards murder, arson, torture and theft in the way that GTA V does, might make the same actions in real life more acceptable.”
Despite this, 80 per cent of parents felt that gaming was a part of the ‘balanced blend’ of their child’s education.
Macfarlane added: "It is clear that parents in the UK have accepted that gaming is now an integral part of our childrens' lives. It might just be worth asking the parent in question before buying their child a game that is on this list."
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...ristmas/032793
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December 20th, 2013, 00:03 Posted By: wraggster
The Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery has set up a project on crowd funding site Indiegogo for No More Woof – a device that can translate animal thoughts into human language.
Powered by a Raspberry Pi mini PC, the small gadget uses EEG to analyse animal thought patterns and spell them out in human language using a loudspeaker.
Patterns found so far include ‘I’m tired’, ‘I’m hungry’ and ‘Who are you?’
At the moment the device can translate into English, but the inventors are planning to introduce Mandarin, French and Spanish.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...ppening/032796
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December 19th, 2013, 01:16 Posted By: wraggster
Sure, you've read The Wall Street Journal, but can you really say you've experienced it until you've experienced it #throughglass? The Dow Jones-published paper is among the latest batch of Glassware apps coming to Google's wearable, letting you keep up on breaking news, politics, business and, of course, technology. Weather Alerts, meanwhile, offers 120 different warning categories, including tornadoes and air quality alerts. Also on the docket is Winkfeed, which brings RSS to the device, letting you read news and save stories to your Pocket account. All of those join the recently announced ability to upload videos to YouTube and take part in Google Hangouts through Glass.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/18/google-glass/
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December 18th, 2013, 23:25 Posted By: wraggster
<section style="font: 14px/18px Proxima, sans-serif; text-align: left; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; display: block; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">The business of second-hand video games - pre-owned, trade-ins, used games, whatever you want to call it - is mysterious. Shops make millions while developers and publishers shake their fists in rage. Or do they?
Ben Grant and Matt Precious are "magicians that have come out of the magic circle", they tell me. They ran GAME and Gamestation's colossal, thousand-store trade-in and pre-owned business for more than a decade. They know their stuff. Now they're ready to share it.
Not for nothing, mind you. They're plugging their new business, Trade In Detectives, at the same time. But it's worth a look. It's a website that compares trade-in game prices - the kind of index Precious used to employ someone full-time at GAME to produce, and even then he could only keep up with a top 20. "We scrape and obtain around 110,000 prices per day," says Grant. "I wish it existed when I was at bloody GAME!" adds Precious.
Grant continues: "People don't necessarily know the true value of what their games and consoles are worth."
This article aims to bust a few myths about the trade-in and pre-owned business while providing you with some savvy shopping tips at the same time. 'Tis the season after all.
</section><section style="font: 14px/18px Proxima, sans-serif; text-align: left; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; display: block; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">[h=2]Do publishers really hate trade-ins?[/h]Publishers fund trade-ins. When Precious and Grant worked in Australia trying to improve GAME's standing, every single trade-in deal was funded by publishers. It's not trade-ins that publishers hate - it's the subsequent sale of pre-owned games.
"There was this myth about how much money was being dragged out and taken," says Precious, "but you've got to look at it two ways. When we talk about pre-owned we always split it. There's two sides to it: there's trade-ins and there's pre-owned.
"You'll find it difficult to find a publisher who has an issue with trade-ins, because trade-ins drive the market."
Non-trade-in customers would buy an average of 2.9 new games a year, recalls Precious, citing statistics collected from GAME Reward Card users. Trade-in customers, meanwhile, would buy an average of 6.4 new games every year.
"It was a phenomenal difference," he says. "It's not rocket science why, because they can afford it, because they were using their old games as currency to buy new."
Think of the world's best selling video game, Grand Theft Auto 5, the pair instruct me - do I think that would have sold anywhere near what it did had people not traded in their old games to afford it?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...game-trade-ins
</section>
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December 18th, 2013, 21:49 Posted By: wraggster
The Smithsonian has added two new games to its “The Art of Video Games” exhibition: Flower by thatgamecompany and Ed Fries's Halo 2600.
The exhibition opened in 2011 to massive fanfare from the game industry and fans alike, but there are a few questions about how exactly the Smithsonian plans to preserve digital games like Flower to be played in its original form by future generations.
Gamasutra spoke with the Smithsonian's curator of film and media art Michael Mansfield, who explained how the institution plans to rise to the challenge.
"The Smithsonian American Art Museum worked directly with Jenova and Kellee to receive and acquire Flower on a Blu-ray disc. In terms of preservation, the disc provides a physical and verifiable data set which will act as a preservation format," said Mansfield.
The museum also picked up a few PS3s to be used only for playing Flower, which will become exhibit pieces “along with the museum's other electronic artworks.”
Even former Microsoft game publishing vice president Ed Fries's rather unique Halo 2600 – a version of Halo for the Atari 2600 – will get the same treatment.
"Halo 2600 stakes out some very interesting ground identifying the video game as a democratic mode of expression," said Mansfield.
"As a home-brew game – albeit by a recognized brewmaster – authored in the margins, Halo 2600 offers a kind of haiku-like virtual essay on the reach and potential of video game culture, and on the character of human imagination with technology."
The exhibition has been touring for over a year now, and will still be roaming cross-country into 2016.
http://www.develop-online.net/news/f...sonian/0187456
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December 18th, 2013, 20:40 Posted By: wraggster
Using one of the £890 worth of gadgets in the average UK living room.
28 per cent of the UK have admitted to using instant messaging to contact people in the same house, reports Skype and YouGov.
If you think that’s bad, 23 per cent said that they have used the services to message their partner whilst in the same room.
The average UK living room contains around £890 worth of gadgets such as laptops, tablets, smartphones and games consoles, with those aged between 25 and 34 owning the most expensive gadgets, priced at about £983.
The research also found that devices owned by men tend to worth over £100 more than those owned by women.
The prime position to take when using messaging to contact the person sitting next to you by 48 per cent of the UK is while they are lazing around in front of the TV.
Phillip Snalune, GM of consumer product marketing at Skype, said: “British households are investing a large amount of money in connected devices and there have never been more ways to keep in touch with friends and family from the comfort of our living rooms.”
Apparently there has never been more ways to avoid talking to them face to face either.
Snalune continued: “The world has become a smaller place and so, it seems, have our houses. The revolution in second and third screens that has happened in the last five years means it is now as easy to video call some in Australia as it is to ask someone upstairs if they would like a cup of tea.”
With so many messaging services available such as Line – who sees more than 41 billion instant messages sent daily - and BBM – who boasts over 60 million monthly active users – it is no surprise that we find it more appealing to shoot across a quick text, than go through the hassle of craning our necks around and straining our vocal chords to make annoying noises.
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/industry/m...me-room/042552
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December 18th, 2013, 01:59 Posted By: wraggster
MyGlass for iOS isn't the only big news to come out of Google's Glass camp today. Turns out, the company's issuing a major update, dubbed XE 12, for the intelligent eyewear that not only makes the complete Glass-to-iOS bridge possible, but also bundles in a few other bells, whistles and, yes, winks.
Let's start there, shall we? Before today, the only way to take a photo with a wink was by way of a third-party app. But now, Google's baked that functionality directly into the Explorer Edition of Glass, making those sly creepster shots even easier. Glassware's also getting a major boost with the addition of Hangouts, for those of you that want to send SMS, chats or even video calls from your head, and YouTube for simple Glass video uploads. Apart from that significant feature boost, the Glassware for Google Play Music now offers explorers the ability to navigate by playlists or, if they're All Access subscribers, radio stations.
XE 12 brings some much needed security along with it, too, giving Explorers the option to set a screen lock that turns on when you take Glass off or deactivate it. And because shooting off messages with the obnoxious "Sent Through Glass" was a little too... obnoxious, Google's cut that outgoing signature from SMS, though it'll still be present on all outgoing emails. Know what else is getting the axe? Guest Mode. According to Google, the feature was just too much of a strain for its devs to maintain, so if you want to impress with Glass, just hand'em over freely or take Google's advice and create a demo account.
And finally, because Google likes to be cute, you can now ask Glass for helpful caloric counts or even "How far to Brooklyn?" (the answer: ) -- because everyone, even Google, loves the Beastie Boys.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/17/g...-xe-12-update/
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December 18th, 2013, 00:57 Posted By: wraggster
Kickstarter game projects currently make up $200.4m of the $919m total raised since the crowdfunding site launched in 2009.
The figure is split among 7,922 successfully funded game projects, along with the 4,933 projects failed to meet their goals – with the majority of the latter group unable to raise beyond the 20 per cent funded milestone. Games Industryreports that successful game projects alone total $178.15m lifetime.
29 game projects have raised in excess of $1m, out of 54 total projects. While, on the more realistic side of things, there have been just over 1,000 game projects to successfully raise between $1,000 and $9,999.
The overall success rate for games stands at 35.08 per cent – significantly lower than Kickstarter's music category, which currently boasts more successes than failures at 55.24 per cent of the 26,462 projects submitted.
The games portion of the site has shown significant growth as well for the year. Coming in at around $112m raised, versus $83m in 2012, with still a couple weeks left.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/kicks...s-200m/0125975
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December 18th, 2013, 00:52 Posted By: wraggster
For years, the reaction of the big entertainment companies to digital disruption has been to try and restrict and control, a wrong-headed approach that was bound to backfire. But the entertainment companies were never known for being forward thinking whether it was radio in the 20s or cassette tapes in the 70s or VCRs in the 80s or Napster in the 90s. The reaction was the always the same. Take a defensive position and try to battle the disruptive force. And it never worked. And DRM was perhaps the worst reaction of all, place restrictions on your content that punish the very people who were willing to pay for it, while others were free to use it without restriction. It was an approach that never made much sense, and it's good to know that mounting evidence proves that's the case.
http://slashdot.org/story/13/12/16/2...-horrible-idea
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December 18th, 2013, 00:41 Posted By: wraggster
Kaspersky Lab security firm says Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto have been popular targets, attacks only increasing with launch of PS4 and Xbox One
Gamers are a frequent and favored target of illegal attacks, according to security firm Kaspersky Lab. The security firm has estimated a global average of 34,000 attacks a day, with 4.6 million malware programs targeting gamers combining for 11.7 million attacks in 2013. The firm did not say whether an "attack" had to be successful to count.
As for what shape the attacks took, some were pursuits of users' names and passwords for popular services like Steam. Others were malware posing as add-ons for Minecraft or a free copy of Grand Theft Auto V. Beyond that, criminals also used e-mail phishing attempts and even direct attacks on the makers of massively multiplayer online games to collect valuable information.
According to Kaspersky, Spanish gamers were the most popular European target of these attacks, with 138,786 from January through November. Filling out the top five for the year were Poland (127,509), Italy (75,080), France (47,065), and Germany (29,049).
"As computer games continue to become an increasingly prominent and important part of our lives, and our culture, expect malicious actors to up the sophistication and the volume of their attacks on gamers," Kaspersky Lab senior security officer David Emm said. "If people want to enjoy their new toys this Christmas, they have to be careful, as it's clear they are facing a greater threat than ever."
To protect themselves, Emm suggested players avoid clicking on offers that appear too good to be true, use complex and varied passwords for all their accounts, be careful about sharing personal details, only play legally purchases copies of games, and, naturally, invest in a good anti-virus program.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-attacks-a-day
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December 18th, 2013, 00:39 Posted By: wraggster
Video hosting site tells content creators to consider turning off background music to avoid claims
YouTube's crackdown on copyrighted material is entering its second week, and the online video site is sticking to its automated "Content ID" system of managing copyright claims despite widespread criticism from the video creating community. As reported byKotaku, YouTube sent an e-mail explaining its current program to affected users, but offering no changes in how the system will be applied or enforced.
"Whether gaming, music or comedy is your passion, know that we love what you do," YouTube said. "We've worked hard to design Content ID and other tools to give everyone - from individual creators to media companies - the opportunity to make great videos and earn money. As YouTube grows, we want to make sure we're providing the right product features to ensure that everyone continues to thrive."
When the Content ID system identifies a video that uses images or audio matching YouTube's database of copyrighted material, it flags that content and follows the copyright holder's chosen course of action for such scenarios, which include blocking the content outright or taking the monetization rights from the user and attaching their own ads. However, false positives have been a problem, as game developers and musicians have been receiving claims on videos for which they hold all the rights.
YouTube's e-mail to content creators makes no acknowledgement of such problems, though it does link users to a page detailing options for disputing a Content ID match. The site also suggests that users creating video game content turn off background music for gameplay footage, as that may have been licensed by the publisher, and according to YouTube, the music license-holder is within its rights to block or monetize such videos.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...tent-id-system
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December 18th, 2013, 00:30 Posted By: wraggster
Call of Duty: Ghosts is displaying a 'troubling' decline in sales versus its predecessors, according to an industry analyst.
Activision has said previously that it expects Ghosts sales to be down on last year's Black Ops 2 due to the upset of the console transition and they were; November sales showed a drop of 19 per cent year-on-year. But Cowen analyst Doug Creutz has warned investors that the declines could be notably worse than the reported 19 per cent dip would suggest.
<figure style='font: 14px/23.79px "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; outline: 0px; border: 0px currentColor; width: 460px; color: rgb(38, 38, 38); text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; word-spacing: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: block; white-space: normal; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;' class="responsive single-article__canvas single-article__canvas--full zoomhover" title="" data-media992="http://cdn.medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/dir_3087/image_308703_460.jpg" data-media768="http://cdn.medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/dir_3087/image_308703_700.jpg" data-media480="http://cdn.medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/dir_3087/image_308703_480.jpg" data-media="http://cdn.medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/dir_3087/image_308703_320.jpg"> </figure>"Upon further reflection, we think the [Call of Duty] numbers are a bit more troubling than they first appeared," said Creutz, reportsVentureBeat.
He went on to note that the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Ghosts released almost two weeks earlier in November than Black Ops 2 (November 3 versus November 12 respectively), offsetting a portion of the sales drop which would have otherwise been far worse.
"While the year-over-year gap is only 19 percent thus far, that includes two extra weeks of sales for the 360 and PS3 versions [versus Black Ops II]. Against 2011′s [Modern Warfare 3], where the difference is only one week, the title is down 32 percent life-to-date," said Creutz.
The PS4 and Xbox One versions arrived later in the month, but failed to make up the sales deficit.
"We don't think it is out of the question that the title could wind up comparing down 20 percent to 25 percent year-over-year [to Black Ops II], which is appreciably worse than the down 10 to 15 percent that we think is baked in to guidance," predicted Creutz.
Despite its declines, Activision's FPS series is still in good health; Call of Duty: Ghosts was still the top-selling game in North America in November, according to NPD Figures. It's main rival, EA's Battlefield 4, came in second in the all-format software charts. Full report through that link.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-says-analyst/
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December 16th, 2013, 23:50 Posted By: wraggster
I introduced a rather annoying bug in the previous version, so I decided to release this new version today. However, I have also made some architectural changes to this version, so it is possible that I again introduced some new bugs. This is why I decided to still have the old 0.11 version available for download as the "previous" version. It should not have any major bugs, so you may revert to it if you have problems with this version.
Here are the changes in this version:
- Fixed arrow (cursor) key handling, which got broken in 0.12 version when I added the Curses library header. I had not noticed that both the Curses library and the Linux input headers define the same key macros (like KEY_LEFT). I fixed this by moving the Curses header file include after the normal console keyboard input routine, so that the header file affects only the console key emulation routines. This small change seemed to fix that problem, so that I did not need to move the routine to a separate source file (which would have been the other possible fix).
- Changed the interrupt handling system to use Linux asynchronous signals instead of separate threads. I had emulated the timer IRQ by launching a new thread which only wakes up at the current emulated timer IRQ speed interval, and sets a variable that tells the main thread to start handling an IRQ. Since the Linux thread context switch runs at 1000 times a second, the highest IRQ speed that this system can handle (in theory) is around 1000Hz. However, some games play Sound Blaster Direct DAC audio, meaning that they only generate one audio sample during each IRQ timer tick. This type of audio sets the timer IRQ to run at over 10kHz, and it obviously was not possible to emulate such a system using a separate thread.
The new system sets up a Linux interval timer (alarm) to run at the requested timer IRQ frequency. The main thread gets interrupted at the speed of the interval timer, and this signal handlers sets the same variable that the separate thread used to set. To avoid race conditions I also changed all my other IRQ routines (like the Sound Blaster, keyboard, mouse and serial IRQs) to use async signals. I originally created this system for my zerox86 emulator, as the Linux kernel on that platform only ran the context switch at 250Hz, which was not sufficient for many games.
- Improved SB Direct DAC handling and SB detection routine emulation for Ishar: Legend of the Fortress. Major part of this improvement was due to the new interrupt handling system, but I also noticed that the game occasionally fails to detect Sound Blaster and attempts to play digitized music using the PC Speaker. This is not supported in rpix86 at all yet, so the result was just some horrible screeching sounds. The game uses a hardcoded loop to wait for SB IRQ to happen, and at times this loop ran completely before the thread context switch had a chance to run the SB audio emulation. I made rpix86 detect this type of SB detection system, and have it spend 8 milliseconds simply waiting for the SB thread to run before continuing. This made the SB detection work more reliably in Ishar.
The Direct DAC audio quality is still pretty horrible, but there is not all that much that can be done about that. There will always be a bad audio glitch during the screen blitting, as the main thread that should generate the audio will not run during that time. So, expect heavy glitching at least 60 times per second in this type of audio.
- Fixed screen resolution of the BC Racers game. This game first goes to normal MCGA 320x200 256-color mode, and then programs the CRTC registers to resize the screen to 288x224 pixels. I improved my MCGA mode screen blitting to recognize this nonstandard screen size and adjust the OpenGL ES texture handling accordingly.
- Implemented some more special keys for the experimental terminal emulation. Some Alt and Ctrl key combinations should now work, same as most function keys. This code still needs work and many keys are still not correctly supported.
I will continue working on the other problematic games that you have reported to me either directly or via the Raspberry Pi forum rpix86 thread. Hopefully I will get a few more problems fixed again in the next version. Let me know of any problems you encounter in this version, and thanks again for your interest in rpix86!
http://rpix86.patrickaalto.com/rblog.html
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December 16th, 2013, 21:58 Posted By: wraggster
Just beats FIFA 14 on UK software charts
With the new releases spent for 2013 it's a third week at the top of the UK software charts for Call Of Duty: Ghosts, with the lion's share of sales going to Xbox 360 copies.
In fact 38 per cent of buyers went for the old school Microsoft format, with 26 per cent going to PS3, 18 per cent on Xbox One and just 16 per cent on PlayStation 4.
FIFA 14 was forced to take second place again, but it was a close with just 600 sales denying it a number one this week.
The only real movement in the top 20 came from a handful of re-entries, with Forza Motorsport 5, Angry Birds Star Wars and Dead Rising 3 all making a return.
UKIE Games Charts courtesy of GfK Chart-Track
| Last Week |
This Week |
Title |
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| 1 |
1 |
Call Of Duty: Ghosts |
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| 2 |
2 |
FIFA 14 |
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| 6 |
3 |
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes |
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| 3 |
4 |
Battlefield 4 |
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| 4 |
5 |
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag |
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| 7 |
6 |
Just Dance 2014 |
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| 11 |
7 |
Need For Speed: Rivals |
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| 5 |
8 |
Grand Theft Auto V |
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| 14 |
9 |
WWE 2K14 |
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| 8 |
10 |
Gran Turismo 6 |
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| 9 |
11 |
Killzone: Shadow Fall |
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| 13 |
12 |
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition |
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| 12 |
13 |
Skylanders Swap Force |
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| 10 |
14 |
Batman: Arkham Origins |
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| Re-entry |
15 |
Forza Motorsport 5 |
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| 15 |
16 |
Disney Infinity |
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| Re-entry |
17 |
Angry Birds Star Wars |
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| Re-entry |
18 |
Dead Rising 3 |
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| 17 |
19 |
Football Manager 2014 |
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| 16 |
20 |
Tomb Raider |
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December 16th, 2013, 21:57 Posted By: wraggster
"We have our strategy focused on the PC and mobile" says Iribe
A recent interview with the Oculus VR chief executive has revealed just how the company is putting its team of experienced engineers to work and why it welcomes competition in the virtual reality space.
"At this point there's more than 50 of us in the company, and the majority of us are engineers. We have a team of real senior, rock star engineers. Of course, Carmack is at the top," Brendan Iribe told GamesBeat.
"He's been spearheading a lot of the mobile effort, working with a group of talented engineers on that. He largely works out of the Dallas office. Most of the engineers, though, are in Irvine here, working remotely with John. There's a handful of other developers in Dallas that John is working with."
He added that the team was trying to respect Carmack's working style, which is based around extreme focus and problem solving.
The company has just received $75 million in funding in a series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz, and will spend the money developing the consumer unit of the Oculus Rift. In the interview Iribe joked he would naturally like to see that unit sell two million units in its first few days on sale, and said the company was confident when it came to fulfilling consumer demand.
He also spoke about competition, something Palmer Luckey also mentioned in his interview with GamesIndustry International in August. Iribe, like Luckey, welcomes it.
"There will be a handful of big companies, we hope, that get into this. We hope their technology pushes the ball forward. Competition makes for better products for the consumer, usually. As long as nobody does anything too crazy and everyone just tries to deliver the best product possible, it's going to be a lot of fun to see what other companies come up with."
"We have a few partners we've been working closely with. We have our strategy focused on the PC and mobile. In our vision, that's where VR needs to be. It's going to be an exciting time. All we hope is that, much like Valve-What we all hope is that the VR of the future is really good. What we don't want to see is bad experiences. We want comfortable breakthrough experiences."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ulus-on-mobile
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December 16th, 2013, 21:57 Posted By: wraggster
"Everyone recognizes how important content is in device adoption. It can be an incentive to buy something or not to buy something"
[h=3]Microsoft[/h]microsoft.com
Microsoft's plan to bring original TV programming to Xbox Live will start in the first half of 2014.
According to a report in Variety, Nancy Tellem, Microsoft's president of digital entertainment, pledged the launch of the new initiative by the end of the first quarter, "at minimum second quarter."
Tellem joined Microsoft to spearhead the TV strategy for Xbox in 2012. The first run of programming will feature an original series based on the Halo IP, with Steven Spielberg attached as a producer.
"I was always looking for the next thing," Tellem said of her time at the U.S. network CBS. "Technology and the transition that was taking place was incredibly interesting to me. It's very exciting for me to be in this position right now and see how the business model evolves and how content evolves."
"We aren't Netflix, we aren't Amazon, we're a different animal"
However, Tellem admitted that there is still a great deal to be worked out in terms of making television fit into the context of a console online service - which formats and business models will appeal to the audience, for example, and how much interactivity will be expected and tolerated.
The decision to move towards television was prompted by the way Xbox owners were spending more and more time consuming video content, but Tellem believes that there is no precedent for what Microsoft is attempting.
"We aren't Netflix, we aren't Amazon, we're a different animal," she continued. "We're neither or we're a little like them. It all depends. The lack of black and white and this is the template and this is what we're following is very difficult. As we continue to do deals everyone's going to get more comfortable.
"We're in this amazing time where these two worlds are coming together. It's only now that we're getting comfortable with each other. Everyone recognizes how important content is in device adoption. There's always talk about what apps are available on your phone or what apps you can get. It can be an incentive to buy something or not to buy something."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...art-by-q2-2014
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