Best driving and sports games of E3 2016: FIFA 17, Forza Horizon 3, Steep, GT Sport and more
If it’s quality sports games you’re after you are in for a real treat this coming year, whether that be ball, extreme or motorsports. The 2016 E3 videogames convention is jam packed with amazing looking titles that offer conclusive proof the industry has got the hang of this new-generation console malarkey.
From the traditional racers such as Gran Turismo Sport, to open-world online epics such as Forza Horizon 3, and proper rallying in all-new WRC6, there’s driving games catered for different tastes.
READ: E3 2016: All the launches, games and consoles at the show
Other sports titles range from the traditional, such as Madden NFL 17 and NBA 2K17, to the unconventional, such as Ubisoft’s new extreme sports title Steep.
Even FIFA this year has changed things up by adding a story mode, The Journey, to give the game some added extra for action on and off the pitch. The new game from EA is hotly contested by Konami’s PES 2017, which is tipped to be the best footie game of the pair.
We’ve selected our favourites from the show floor and also given our brief thoughts and release date of each game. So without further ado, here are the best sports and driving games from E3 so far: click on this gallery link (mirrored below) for a full-screen experience.
VIEW: The best sports and driving games from E3 2016 gallery
Alibaba founder: fake goods can be better than the real deal
If you use a contract factory in China to produce your goods, don’t be surprised if high-quality fakes pop up online. That’s the feeling of Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma, who stands accused of effectively endorsing counterfeit goods while speaking at an investor event. The Wall Street Journal quotes the executive as saying that “the fake products today are of better quality and better price than the real names.” It’s a big issue for Alibaba, since its consumer-facing retail portals have something of a reputation for being the place to go when you want a knock-off device.
The paper explains that Alibaba has been under pressure to do something about its piracy problem for a while. An anti-counterfeiting group attempted to include Alibaba amongst its membership, prompting luxury brands like Tiffany, Michael Kors and Gucci America to kick up a stink. The company even received censure from China’s industry regulator, which said that (retail portal) Taobao has “paid insufficient attention to the illegal business activities on Alibaba platforms.” The company derided the claim, saying that the report was “biased” and “malicious,” causing “serious damage” to Chinese businesses that operate online.
We’ve previously reported on the prevalence of Chinese companies that produce knock-off goods, especially in the technology space. Ma is, at least, correct that pirated devices are often made in the same factories and on the same lines, that the real gear uses. For instance, a third-party facility might have a contract to produce 30,000 sets of high-end headphones or microSD cards. But once the run is complete, it could be possible to rush out a further 10,000 with leftover parts and some cunning alterations to the name — Boots by Drew or SpanDisc.
At the same event, Ma said that Alibaba isn’t the villain here, describing his company as the “leading fighter of the counterfeits.” He added that “every fake product we sell, we are losing five customers,” but conceded that it was “human instinct” for people to look for cheaper products. Which means that the folks patrolling our borders for Fakebits and Fauxheisers won’t get any downtime in the near future.
Update: This story has been corrected to reflect that Jack Ma is the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, but is no longer acting CEO.
Source: WSJ
PlayStation didn’t need a new console at E3
Sony didn’t show a new, more powerful PlayStation because it didn’t have to. But it still had the best show at E3. PlayStation repeated its strategy from last year by focusing on the games. The event was filled with exciting trailers, relaunched classics, release dates for highly anticipated titles and a better look at what’s going to come to its VR headset, which arrives in mere months. (And it was refreshingly short on small talk.) Sony played a smarter game than Microsoft.
Neo, aka the PlayStation 4.5, definitely exists. After the information leaked months earlier, Sony’s Andrew House told the Financial Times that the console would eventually launch with the PS4 still in stores. The new hardware is “intended to sit alongside and complement the standard PS4.” He also warned that it wouldn’t be on display at E3.
The Neo will obviously be more powerful than the existing PlayStation, outputting games and video at 4K (if you have the television for it). The company also insists that all future games will still run on PS4 hardware. The Neo would be for the hard-core gamer while the original remains the (cheaper) console for everyone else.
When it came to PlayStation hardware announcements at E3, the company limited it to a release date for a very important incoming peripheral: The PlayStation VR lands on Oct. 13th. And the company spent plenty of time hyping up a whole raft of games for its new toy.
At its E3 presentation, PlayStation unveiled VR Star Wars, Batman and Resident Evil 7 — as well as a Final Fantasy XV “experience,” whatever that is. It’s an attempt to draw fans of those properties to PSVR, which is important for both Sony and for virtual reality in general.
With an install base of over 40 million PS4s (and a lower price than the sort of PC you’d need for an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift), PSVR has the biggest chance of bringing virtual reality to the masses. Meanwhile, Xbox’s VR strategy hasn’t been spelled out explicitly. Microsoft is working with Oculus (it even had John Carmack onstage during its showcase), and HoloLens remains a completely different kind of product. (That’s not to mention the confusing messaging surrounding its new Xbox consoles.) Where is Xbox VR or VR One? When is it coming? How much will it cost? PS VR starts at $400 and goes on sale in mere months. It’s all known, and it’s coming soon.
The company didn’t need to add more noise by unveiling additional hardware. It would be crazy for Sony to try to pitch an upgraded PS4 at the same time as an accessory that costs as much as one. So it didn’t. In the meantime, PlayStation owners get to play with PSVR and save up for this future console upgrade if they want it. All the while Sony will be watching and learning. Is virtual reality going to be the next big thing? Or will we all be content playing on our 4K TVs? All of that will help shape the PS4 Neo, when it does eventually show itself.
Correction: A previous version of this article marked PSVR’s release date as October 17th, rather than 13th. We apologize for the error.
The ‘Pokémon Go’ wearable costs $35
Next month, Nintendo is going to fulfill the childhood dreams of thousands of people who grew up in the 1990s: It’s releasing Pokémon Go, an app that lets you catch pocket monsters in the real world using your smartphone. That alone is pretty exciting for fans, but if you’ve been following the game you also know that the app is getting a companion wearable that lets you play it without looking at your phone. Today at E3, Nintendo gave us a price for the wearable: $34.99.
For an accessory to a smartphone game that’s a pretty steep price, matching the cost of a new 3DS title. For die hard players, however, the Pokémon Go Plus wearable might be worth it: it’s the only way to play the game without pulling out your smartphone. Using it sounds pretty easy — if the wearable is blinking blue, there’s a Pokémon near you. Players can press the button to try to catch it. A rainbow light pattern means success, while a blinking red light denotes failure. Simple. Effective. Casual. Still kind of expensive.
On the other hand, there’s no other way to casually catch Pokémon during your morning jog. Nintendo didn’t give a hard release date for the app itself, but said the wearable will be out at the end of July. If you’ve been waiting for this one, you won’t have to wait much longer.
Crunchyroll’s parent creates a streaming service for geeks
Ellation isn’t content to serve geek culture solely through the anime you find on Crunchyroll. It’s launching a new streaming service, VRV, that unites some of the biggest media producers in the field, including Geek & Sundry, Nerdist, Rooster Reeth and Crunchyroll itself. VRV will have a free ad-backed version, but there will also be an ad-free premium subscription. And no, it’s not just aggregating what you’d see on YouTube — there will be exclusives (such as all of Cartoon Hangover’s content), including some that are only available for subscribers.
The VRV team hasn’t nailed down pricing for the service, which gets started in the fall and will initially be available only in the US. However, the big question may be whether or not it’ll be unique enough to reel in viewers. It’s not as if the target audience is uncomfortable with visiting multiple channels or websites to get its fix, and having a handful of exclusives may not be enough. Remember Vessel and its emphasis on early access to big-name videos? We wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. VRV could help you wade through some of the online clutter, but it may need to generate a lot of must-watch content if it wants to keep you coming back.
Via: Wall Street Journal
Source: VRV, Crunchyroll
Nintendo’s ‘Ever Oasis’ is a dungeon crawler in the desert
Okay, Nintendo may have said it was only bringing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Sun and Moon to E3, but we all knew something else would show up during the show. Well, here it is — Ever Oasis, a brand-new action RPG for the Nintendo 3DS.
At glance, Ever Oasis looks kind of like a cross between Animal Crossing, The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy — tasking players with assembling parties of adventurers, exploring dungeons, solving puzzles and building up a town in the heat of a desert oasis. Believe it or not, that odd combination of game elements actually makes sense: Grezzo, the studio behind Over Oasis, is also the company Nintendo used to port Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask to the 3DS. And its director? Koichi Ishii, a man famous for working on Final Fantasy and the Seiken Densetsu (Legend of Mana) games.
Nintendo hasn’t given us a release date for the new game, but if town-management team-based dungeon crawling sounds like your bag, keep tabs on this one.
Use Microsoft Outlook to schedule a meeting at Starbucks
At March’s Build developer conference, Microsoft gave the full rundown on a number of Office extensions for Mac. Part of that announcement was a Starbucks add-in that allows you to send gift cards and book meetings inside Outlook. Well, that extension, er “add-in,” is ready for prime time. This means that you can easily send a “thank you” cup of coffee or schedule a meeting at your nearby Starbucks location while you’re looking at a related email. And if you need to place an order, the add-in will boot you out to the coffee company’s mobile app to input all the details for your Grand Soy Latte or Iced Americano.
Source: Microsoft
Molecules in space may show how life formed on Earth
Scientists have known for a while that the molecular ingredients of life can be found in nearby comets and meteorites, but it’s now clear that those building blocks exist much, much further away from home. A research team has used spectral analysis to discover evidence of organic chiral molecules, the “mirror-image” molecules that are key to biology as we know it, in the Sagittarius B2 cloud near the heart of the Milky Way. This doesn’t meant that life is forming in space, but it does suggest that the necessary molecular properties can appear in space first and transfer to planets through meteorite impacts.
The data is still fuzzy. It’ll take a long while before scientists can tell which of the mirror-image molecules they’re looking at. Also, it’s not certain just how widespread those molecules might be. Are they everywhere, or found only in pockets? Even so, the findings support the theory that life on Earth (and likely elsewhere) didn’t start completely from scratch — it may well have had a celestial nudge.
Via: Reuters, Popular Science
Source: NRAO
’Mario Party: Star Rush’ doesn’t make you wait your turn
The mini-game mayhem of Mario Party can be a lot of fun, but the franchise has always suffered from its board game origins: when it’s not your turn, there’s nothing to do but wait. With Mario Party: Star Rush, that changes — Nintendo’s next entry in the series does away with individual player turns in favor of a more hectic group “scramble” turn. In other words, Mario Party is getting a fast-paced upgrade, and that’s a good thing.
Nintendo kind of snuck the announcement of the new 3DS game in under the rug, hiding it at the end of a press release for the new Zelda game — but the game looks like a fresh take on a old idea. The group mini-games are still the main focus, but the game board no longer has set paths. Instead, characters can move across at tiled landscape at will, and every player moves simultaneously. This opens the game up to more robust strategies, like choosing to start the ‘boss fight’ minigame right away.
If you’re not a Toad fan however, there is a trade-off: Star Rush’s main mode is called Toad Scramble, and everybody plays as the anthropomorphic mushroom man. The other Mario characters still play a major role as recruitable Ally characters, but aren’t technically playable themselves. I guess that settles the argument of who gets to be Luigi.
Mario Party: Star Rush will be available on 3DS on November 4th.
The first gravitational wave discovery wasn’t a fluke
If you were worried that the first confirmed detection of gravitational waves was just a one-off result… don’t be. Researchers analyzing LIGO data have verified a second instance (recorded in December 2015) where two black holes merged and produced the hard-to-spot behavior. The circumstances are decidedly different this time around, though. Ars Technica observes that the black holes were much smaller than those in the first instance, and spent more time on their collision course. While that offered more data to collect, the reduced intensity also introduced more errors — it was harder to determine the masses of these holes.
This kind of cosmic behavior is likely more prevalent than what you’ve seen here. Just don’t expect to hear more about it any time soon. This is the only other event from LIGO’s first run to pass muster, so you’ll have to wait for subsequent tests to hear about more discoveries. Nonetheless, this is enough to show that gravitational waves can emerge in a wide range of conditions.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Physical Review Letters
AIVAnet 