|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Blue's News is a participant in Amazon Associates programs
and earns advertising fees by linking to Amazon.
|
|
|
EA announces that open beta testing of Battlefield 1 will begin on August
31st. They confirm
last week's report that Battlefield Insiders will get first crack at this:
"Battlefield Insider members get early access, and if you
sign up by August
21, you can join them as some of the first people in the world to play the
Battlefield 1 Open Beta. If you've already signed up, make sure you
go to the Battlefield
Insider Page and select your platform preference, otherwise you won’t get a
code to play early." The news is accompanied by the
Battlefield 1 Official
Gamescom trailer with gameplay footage from the World War I shooter.
Finally, there's
this new article with an outline of the game's three Elite Classes, the
Flame Trooper, the Sentry, and the Tank Hunter. Continue here to read the full story.
The Titanfall
website has details on plans to test Titanfall 2, saying a
multiplayer tech test is "around the corner." This will only be on consoles, so
Respawn explains why the PC edition is not included. Company cofounder Vince
Zampella explains the PC version isn't ready for this yet, but expresses
confidence in being ready for launch: So why not PC?
Two big issues from a development standpoint: hardware variety & “min spec”
optimization. We’re still making a lot of tweaks and changes to the renderer,
the game, and effects so we haven’t run the game through the hardware
compatibility lab yet to detect and handle a large variety of hardware - video
cards, CPUs etc. Quite frankly, we aren't ready to deal with that yet, we are
still making the game better. We also haven't done enough work to fully support
our 'Min Spec' on PC yet. So, currently the PC game isn’t as easy to throw out
for testing as the console is, because of the additional variables and
configurations that we need to support. Also, because the single player story
has some wonderful secrets that we really want to preserve for launch, we also
have to worry about leaks. Our wonderfully curious PC players have proven in the
past that they will dig out anything they can, and there's a risk that they
could spoil some of our single player.
We realize this is a big disappointment for our PC fans, but we feel this allows
us to concentrate on the real purpose of the tech test and focus on the server
stability and scalability. Rest assured we’re confident in our ability to
deliver a great PC experience for launch. We appreciate your understanding, and
we look forward to seeing everyone on The Frontier this October.
This video has
details on plans to change competitive play in Overwatch for Season 2. Jeff
Kaplan explains some of what's going down, saying more details will come closer
to launch. The most significant change he outlines is how skill rating will now
be 1-5000, replacing the 1-100 system of Season 1. They are also adding a seven
tier system that will go along with this. Another major change he mentions is
the elimination of the sudden death overtime system to resolve ties. They say
these changes will soon appear on the PTR for widespread testing. This
reddit post summarizes everything. Continue here to read the full story.
Blizzard announces
they are extending Ranked Season 1 in Heroes of the Storm by a few weeks.
This was to conclude on August 23rd, but will instead run until the week of
September 13th. They explain this is due to popular demand: As many of
you may remember, we originally announced that Ranked Season 1 would reach its
conclusion during the week of August 23. However, we’ve seen a lot of discussion
and feedback from the Heroes of the Storm community on the topic of season
length, and we’ve since decided to increase our target duration for each season
from ten weeks to around three months.
As a result, we’re going to extend Ranked Season 1 from the week of August 23,
to the week of September 13.
We’d like our ranked seasons to align with the general consensus within the
Heroes community, however there may be some variation from season to season if
we need to make adjustments or do some fine-tuning in the future. As always,
we’d like to thank everyone who has shared feedback on this topic so far. We’re
still hard at work on improvements for our Ranked Play systems every day, and
we’re excited to share details about a few of these upcoming changes with you
very soon!
Frozenbyte announces Nine Parchments, their upcoming "co-operative blast'em
up game of magic mayhem." They say the game will bring the studio back to its
fantasy roots when it comes out next year for Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation
4. The announcement
trailer offers a look at what to expect. Here's word: Finnish game
developer Frozenbyte is excited to announce Nine Parchments - A co-operative
blast'em up game of magic mayhem that takes the studio back to its fantasy
roots.
The story of the game revolves around a group of drop-out wizard apprentices,
who've decided to skip their training for a quick path to the Nine Parchments.
As the wannabe wizards rapidly discover powerful new spells and ignore all
safety aspects, it's only natural that their hasty progress results in lots of
unwanted deaths.
Chaotic co-op gameplay can be seen in the announcement trailer.
Nine Parchments is currently under development for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, slated
for a 2017 release.
Frozenbyte will be showing a playable version of the game at the Indie Arena at
gamescom this year.
Continue here to read the full story.
Typoman: Revised is now available
on Steam or Windows and
OS X. In this platformer your character is formed from letters, as are parts of
the environment. This includes gameplay based on changing and forming words.
This trailer shows how
this works. Here's more: "It feels great to finally see Typoman: Revised
launching on PC and Mac today. We’ve been working hard with our QA team and beta
testers to ensure a successful release." says Bilal Chbib, founder of Brainseed
Factory. "It’s very rewarding to see a new community of players experience the
game and we look forward to the response."
Typoman: Revised is a unique 2D puzzle platformer where players slip into the
role of a character made of letters, struggling to make their way through a dark
and hostile world. Despite a small stature Typoman has a powerful gift: Players
can craft words to alter the environment. But players must choose their words
wisely - they can either be a blessing ...or a curse!
The game comes with a very distinct soundtrack crafted by Netherland based
award-winning audio studio SonicPicnic.
Continue here to read the full story.
CapCom Unity details plans to patch Street Fighter V tomorrow with an
August update for the fighting game. They also offer a preview of plans for a
September update to follow. One element of the new patch is enhanced penalties
for rage quitters. Here's word: Rage Quitting Penalty
We are aware of the Rage Quitting issue, and this update will continue our
efforts toward resolving it. We will make a second update to the existing Rage
Quitting system with stricter guidelines for players who disconnect before the
match is over. Players who are penalized will lose League Points and be locked
out of online matching for a set time. The update will be implemented after the
maintenance on 8/16.
Since the initial Rage Quitting system rollout, we have seen a rapid decrease in
rage quitting players, and we believe that this new update will reduce that
number even further. That being said, we’re still working on implementing a new,
more robust system that will address the issue more completely by early next
year.
Oculus announces Minecraft is now available for Oculus Rift. They say
this supports cross-platform play, but not for Windows, as the Windows 10
edition is the only one with official VR support.
Ars Technica notes that this is bringing unofficial support via Minecrift to
an end. The mod's author says this isn't about the official support, but because
competing mod Vivecraft is "better in
every way."
Major Hyperdrift League website
now offers a playable demo for this PC racing game. The demo features one race
track, several ships, customization, and online multiplayer. Belgian developer
Orbital Shark will be in Cologne this week at Gamescom shopping for a publisher.
Here's how they describe the game: "To sum it up, MHL is a spaceship racing game
mixing Mario kart and Wipeout, with ship customization, and our USP which is a
mobile app allowing you to bet on races for in-game money." They offer a
gameplay video and
a demo trailer showing
off how this works. Continue here to read the full story.
SQUARE ENIX announces a delay for Final Fantasy XV. The next installment
in the RPG series was due next month, but is now expected on November 29th. It's
not certain this impacts PC gamers, as the game was only announced for Xbox One
and PlayStation 4.
This
confusing video from game director Tabata spreads the news out over five
minutes. The subtitled Japanese clip explains they've completed a master
version, so the game is gold. He also says it needs a patch after explaining
what a patch is (he actually explains you may not be seeing the video the day he
recorded it). It then notes that a day one patch is not fair to those without
internet, so they are delaying the game to apply the patch first (so it's not
actually gold). Tabata also says he's contemplating additional content for
internet users in spite of the aforementioned unfairness. The accompanying
announcement is also a little confusing, so here it is in its entirety:
To deliver the iconic FINAL FANTASY experience to audiences around the
world, SQUARE ENIX® today announced that the global release date for FINAL
FANTASY® XV will be November 29, 2016.
This release date will allow the development teams time to further polish and
conduct quality testing so that the reality of the game can match the
expectations of both the fans and the creative teams.
“From the moment we joined this project, our vision was to create a level of
freedom and realism previously unseen in the series. Regrettably, we need a
little bit more time to deliver on this vision and are confident that this new
release date will help us achieve this,” said Hajime Tabata the game director.
“As the director and lead of this project, I wish to personally apologize for
the additional wait. As a team, we want FINAL FANTASY XV to achieve a level of
perfection that our fans deserve. We kindly ask for your understanding.”
Full comments from Tabata are available at:
https://youtu.be/Wepgwx_9kto.
We’ll notify whether the release dates for the disc version of both KINGSGLAIVE:
FINAL FANTASY XV™ and BROTHERHOOD FINAL FANTASY XV™ will be changed or unchanged
at a later time. The release date of KINGSGLAIVE: FINAL FANTASY XV digital
version is unchanged from August 30.
Continue here to read the full story.
Boss Key Productions announces the conclusion of the first round of alpha
testing of LawBreakers.
This video discusses the aftermath of testing the upcoming shooter, and
talks about its future. Word is, "Phase 1 of LawBreakers testing is now complete,
so now what happens? Cliff Bleszinski and Rohan Rivas from Boss Key Productions
sit down to share where we've been and the studio's vision of what's to come for
players." Continue here to read the full story.
No Man's Sky didn't come out for PCs in time to land on the
GFK Chart-Track top 30 chart of U.K. PC game sale for the week ending August
13th. This leave The Sims 4 undisturbed in their home at number one on a chart
that doesn't have any true new entries. Hello Games' new space game did land on
top of the
all platforms chart, pushing Grand Theft Auto to number two. Here's
the write-up: Taking
off on Wednesday 10th August, ‘No Man’s Sky’ shoots straight to No1.
It becomes Sony’s 2nd biggest ever PS4 launch (behind Uncharted 4) and Sony’s
biggest launch for a new IP on PS4. In terms of new IP across all publishers and
Sony formats it sits 5th behind Destiny (PS4), Watch Dogs (PS4), The Getaway
(PS2) and The Last of Us (PS3). Last week’s No1 ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ (-22%)
drops to No2 while the rest of the Top 10 shuffles amongst itself. ‘Mario &
Sonic: Rio 2016 Olympic Games’ (+12%) climbs 8 places to No15, its highest ever
chart position, as the Olympic Games itself gets underway.
There's an extensive article
on UbiBlog profiling Blue Byte's rich history of PC game development. They
describe how this will continue with For Honor and how they are collaborating
with Ubisoft Montreal to ensure "a true PC experience for players." Here's a bit
on their focus: Striking the right balance between performance and
accessibility is key to success, and Blue Byte has an edge when it comes to
understanding the expectations of PC gamers. They were one of the first teams at
Ubisoft to actively seek feedback from the community, and this practice was
further developed through free-to-play games like Settlers Online. “These games
allowed us to build strong relationships with players,” explains Sonnefeld. “We
learned a huge amount from their feedback.” Thanks in part to this attentiveness
to the needs of their audience, Blue Byte brings an expertise, care, and
attention to detail to their games that they hope will be felt by gamers around
the world when For Honor launches on Valentine’s Day 2017.
Around 90% of the team at Blue Byte’s two locations (in Dusseldorf and Mainz)
are dedicated to PC projects, ranging from AAA development, to improving
Ubisoft’s digital distribution platform, to creating in-house development tools.
In addition to taking on more cross-studio collaboration projects like For
Honor, Blue Byte’s established brands remain a top focus. The 300-strong team,
which has grown five-fold since 2010, continues to lead with PC titles such as
the upcoming Champions of Anteria, featured on the floor at Gamescom this week,
as well as franchises such as Settlers and Anno.
Finished my rewatch of Firefly last night. I have to say the show was
even better than I recalled. This makes no sense, considering how I already
loved it, but there you go. Now I get to conclude the experience by watching
Serenity again. I'm looking forward to the rest of Whedon's fantastic story,
though that movie can be a little rough on the emotions.
|
Twitter 
