‘Need for Speed’ becomes a little more social next week
Need for Speed‘s next Living Game update, dubbed “Showcase,” arrives next week, and with it comes a handful of improvements both paint-level and a bit deeper. Taking screenshots has always been pretty easy in the game (click the right stick), but developer Ghost Games is going one step further and adding something that should’ve been in the game at the outset: A real photo mode with focus, depth of field and other effects that’ve become all the rage since Infamous: Second Son busted the feature wide open in 2014.
And should someone online see that snazzy snapshot and want the livery you’ve tinkered with since November, now there’s sharing options for those as well. Oh, and if you want to keep your car looking fresh and clean as the moment you drove it out of the garage, just run through a gas station for some on-the-fly body work — much like previous NfS games and Burnout: Paradise.
A handful of cars are getting new customization items as well, including the Ford Focus RS, Ford Mustang GT and Subaru Impreza WRX. Last but not least, there are custom options for your license plate now too. But sadly, based on the way Ghost describes it, it doesn’t sound like text is up for changing like it was in the studio’s previous effort, NfS: Rivals. There are, however, backgrounds and frames inspired by the cities of previous NfS entries. Not much of a consolation prize, but hey, it’s better than nothing. The 100 percent free update launches February 3rd, in case the GIF up above didn’t give it away.
Source: Need for Speed
PlayStation sells well (again), but mobile is hurting Sony
Sony made money. Again! The company saw in tiny increase (0.5%) in sales compared to the same quarter last to 2,581 billion yen (or $21.5 billion), but income now stands at $1.69 billion. This quarter’s financial results was yet more balancing (and canceling) out of Sony’s many moving parts — profitable and not. Gaming and Motion Picture arms saw increases in sales, but these were cancelled out by woes in Mobile and Devices arms. Once a positive part of the company’s earnings sheets, Sony’s smartphone camera sensors saw a decrease in sales — reflecting the tough times that all companies are experiencing with phone sales. The company seems to be stabilizing its giant electronics ship.
Sony says operating income increases were apparently was due to refining and cutting across Sony’s various electronics arms. (Read: less smartphone models, less TV models, better products). The company’s restructuring costs have also started to tail off: this year charges cost $61 million — roughly a 50 percent drop.
Firstly, mobile: Sales decreased 14.7 percent compared to the same period last year — Sony says this is borne out from it’s decision not to pursue scale in mobile phones for profitability, and why operating income improved significantly for the section. A significant decrease in image sensor sales is where Sony felt the bite most this quarter. Camera sensor sales to other smartphone manufacturers dropped by 12.6 percent year on year. This resulted in a quarterly loss of $97 million, compared to a profit of $445 million the period before.
A significant decrease in image sensor sales is where Sony felt the bite most this quarter.
Cameras saw a sales decrease of 5 percent, yet operating income increased, thanks to what Sony says is a better mix of cameras and video cams. Cost reductions and a better selection of products was also heralded for $260 million income increase in Home Entertainment — despite a sales decrease of 4.3 percent.
In all things PlayStation, the company saw a 10.5 percent increase in sales, now reaching $4.9 billion. Compared to Q3 last year, income was also improved,as the arm didn’t have to pay for a write-off of Vita hardware which happened last year. How will the gaming arm fare now it has some degree of autonomy? Or was it all just a grand paper shuffle?
Source: Sony
USC will publish its student’s games on PlayStation and Xbox
The premise of college is that it’s going to prepare you with what you need to survive in a real-world work environment, but whether or not it fulfills that is another matter altogether. To that end, the University of Southern California has launched its own publishing label for video games in an effort to help students experience every aspect of making a game — all the way to getting it in the hands of people outside of academia and onto PCs, PlayStations and Xboxes. USC Games Publishing’s Tracy Fullerton tells Wired that the imprint is akin to the MIT Press. “These are not books that are going to necessarily be on The New York Times best-seller list, but these are the books that are important, that need to be out there in the zeitgeist.”
In fact, you’ve probably already played a few games that started out as student projects from the school: Journey predecessor Fl0w, The Unfinished Swan and The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (pictured above) all came out of USC’s lab. The school also counts Uncharted designer Richard Lemarchand as one of its professors.
One of the key points Wired‘s piece makes is that USC doesn’t want to futz with a creator’s vision. Fringe ideas are celebrated rather than scoffed at, and the label exists as an alternative to working with a bigger, profit-minded publisher. The more off-kilter the student projects are, the better. Wired says that even though the initial crop will be homegrown titles, the idea is to essentially give creators full creative control to “be innovative, artistic or just plain weird.”
Considering the new publisher’s already impressive pedigree, that seems to have worked out pretty well so far.
Source: Wired
I watched someone commit suicide in VR and it freaked me out
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I was standing on a junkyard hovercraft, pointing my revolver at the young lady floating on the adjacent skiff. She was my enemy, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. Her hand hovered between us, waving back and forth in the universal sign for “stop.” Her gun aimed away from me, its barrel touching her temple. I lowered my weapon. She pulled the trigger anyway. In the world of Hover Junkers, a virtual reality game where scavengers wage war over scrap metal and resources, I was a killer — that’s my role — but nobody ever said anything about suicide.
“That was not okay,” I yelled, perhaps a little too loudly for close-quarter demo rooms at Valve’s SteamVR Developer showcase. The incident left me a bit shaken. I was used to facing violent madness in online mulitplayer shooters, not moral quandaries. I heard Alex Knoll, the lead designer at Stress Level Zero and the director of Hover Junkers, laugh from a nearby VR cubical. The face behind the suicide avatar and the game itself was messing with me.
Suicide isn’t so much a feature in Hover Junkers as it is an option enabled by the game’s virtual reality motion controls. “There isn’t any real character animation in the game,” Knoll told me later. “It’s all driven by an IK (inverse kinematics) system that your body is controlling. You’re driving a puppet… but there’s still very clearly a human body controlling it,” he said. “It has a quote-unquote ‘soul.’”
That “soul” was palpable enough to get me to lower my gun and cry out in shock when I saw Knoll’s avatar shoot herself. In most games, an avatar is just an empty husk going through the motions of predefined animations. But in Hover Junkers, they mimic a real player’s movements. When Knoll pointed a gun at his head and motioned for me to stop, I saw through the game to the person behind it. It still looked like a video game, but it felt real. More real than any multiplayer game I’d ever played.
As I marveled at the power of body language in an online video game, Stress Level Zero’s Brandon Laatsch told me that, while the ability to graphically kill yourself in the game was somewhat problematic, keeping it in seemed like a good safety lesson. “We had this moral quandary. If you pull the trigger and nothing happens it sends the wrong message, but, if you pull the trigger and something happens it also sends the wrong message. It’s kind of lose / lose.” Ultimately, the team decided to stay consistent with the rules posted in the in-game firing range. Specifically, he said, don’t point your weapon at anything you don’t intend to destroy. Gutting this basic gun-safety rule “seemed like the wrong thing to do,” Laatsch explained.
Knoll doesn’t normally pull the “suicide trick” on other players, but he says I’m not the first player to be surprised by the game’s human element. “We’ve run into some people who have played it and said, ‘Wow, I was uncomfortable with that in, like, a powerful way.’ It quickly turns from a game to a real situation.” For me, seeing recognizable human body language come through the avatar conveyed a sense of life that fundamentally altered my perception of the game world. It doesn’t stop everybody from shooting a sympathetic opponent, but it sure stopped me. I’m not used to thinking about my opponents as human beings, but I think I could get used to it. If video games start feeling this real, I’ll happily embrace a little hesitation in my trigger finger.
No, ‘Fable’ designer Peter Molyneux isn’t retiring today
Peter Molyneux is not done making video games. Molyneux appeared to announce his retirement from the video game industry in a series of tweets today, but it turns out his account was hacked. The impersonator also claimed that Molyneux was shutting down his latest game, Godus, but that’s not true, either.
“Ahh my account has been hacked, ( you can tell cos they know how to spell) I am not retiring, not closing godus,” Molyneux’s account tweeted just minutes after a trio of messages claimed he was done with video games.
One of Molyneux’s former employees at 22cans, Jack Attridge, also tried to get the message out about the hack, tweeting, “Peter’s account was hacked. That is not a real tweet1!!” He said he spoke with Molyneux on the phone to confirm the hoax.
Molyneux is known as the creator of the “god game” genre, which kicked off with his 1989 title, Populous. He’s also the mastermind behind such acclaimed games as Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and the Fable series (yes, including Fable III). He’s one of the gaming industry’s more eccentric characters and this isn’t his first brush with Twitter-based impersonators.
Godus is (unsurprisingly) a god game that Molyneux crowdfunded in 2012 under his independent studio, 22cans. The game raised $850,000 on Kickstarter and it was tied to an experimental app, Curiosity, that promised to turn one player into a legitimate “god” of Godus. That idea didn’t pan out as Molyneux promised.
Ahh my account has been hacked, ( you can tell cos they know how to spell) I am not retiring, not closing godus
— peter molyneux (@pmolyneux) January 28, 2016
@LaurakBuzz @pmolyneux Laura he’s been hacked. I just got off the phone with him 
— Jack Attridge (@JacksFlavour) January 28, 2016
Source: @pmolyneux
‘Song of the Deep’ is GameStop’s first published game
GameStop is making its debut as a gaming publisher with Song of the Deep. Created alongside none other than Insomniac Games, the studio behind acclaimed titles such as Ratchet & Clank, this 2D platformer promises an action-packed journey — and there are stunning visuals to boot. Song of the Deep’s story wraps around a girl’s search for her missing father, through an underwater adventure that will require you to explore and use discovery skills to accomplish your goal.
It’s not clear whether GameStop gave any creative input to the project , but we can’t imagine it was much, if any. The company’s CEO, Paul Raines, said couple of years ago that it wouldn’t interfere with game development. “We love to play games, and unlike our competitors all we do is gaming,” he told TIME in an interview about GameStop’s venture into publishing. “But we will not be involved in the artistic or creative process. That’s not really our domain.”
Song of the Deep will hit PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC later this summer for $15. Until then, enjoy the trailer released today.
Via: The Verge
Source: Insomniac Games
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet K1 review: It’s ‘game on’ with this tablet
For the past several weeks I have spent some time with the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet K1, NVIDIA’s latest entry into the tablet market. Part of the class of devices with 8-inch screens, NVIDIA positions the device as a gaming tablet thanks to the processor and graphics chip that help drive the high resolution screen and a variety of effects you likely will not see on other tablet devices.
In the past I have used 10-inch tablets and I have a 7-inch second generation Nexus 7. Like much of the market, I may be a microcosm of what is happening with tablets as I rarely use my tablets, opting for either my smartphone or just jumping on my laptop. One of the questions any tablet manufacturer, including NVIDIA, is faced with is “why bother?” with a tablet. NVIDIA hopes they have answered that question with NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet K1.
Design
When initially confronted with the SHIELD Tablet K1, the first thing noticeable is the heft of the device. The SHIELD Tablet K1 comes in at 9.2 mm thick and weighs 390 grams (13.76 oz). Compared to my Nexus 7 which is 8.7 mm thick and weighs 290 grams (10.2 oz), you would not think the differences are very noticeable. Nevertheless, the SHIELD Tablet K1 feels much heavier and thicker on initial use. Fortunately, that initial impression fades quickly and the SHIELD Tablet K1 did not present any problems for me in terms of getting tired of holding it.
The “left” edge of the SHIELD Tablet K1 has two small openings that are used to align the special cover accessory you can get for the tablet. The openings only align the cover as it is held on magnetically.
Along with the SHIELD Tablet K1, I also had access to NVIDIA’s universal charger kit that could be used in a variety of countries. NVIDIA also makes a flip cover for the SHIELD Tablet K1 that would probably be worth the investment. The cover has several seams that can be used to fold it in to different configurations to function as a stand. Magnets along the “open” edge also help keep it in place when it is closed. I also found that the tablet could detect when the cover was opened and would turn on the screen, which was a very nice feature.
One issue I did have with the tablet was the power button and to some extent the volume rocker. The power button on the unit I’ve been using barely extends out of the case, making it very difficult to locate and then to press it in enough to power on the unit. The volume rockers suffer the same problem, though not quite as badly. I have seen this similar issue happen with tablets from other manufacturers, so I suspect this is a production issue and not a design issue. Nevertheless, it was quite annoying to deal with the power button. If NVIDIA continues to produce tablets, they should investigate improvements to the production process and possibly design the buttons to be a bit larger. Even if they did extend appropriately, they are rather small.
Hardware
The SHIELD Tablet K1 features an 8-inch Full HD (1920×1080) IPS LCD display, NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 processor, GeForce Kepler GPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot for up to 128GB, a 5MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera, a 5200mAh battery, front-facing speakers, a stylus, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, and Bluetooth 4.0 LE.
Performance
With the hardware packed into the SHIELD Tablet K1, it should be no surprise that performance was top notch. In addition to the processors, NVIDIA includes the Unreal Engine 4 to drive graphics delivery. Although I am not much into games these days, I did fire up Need for Speed: No Limits on the tablet for some testing and noted the device had no problem displaying the full range of special effects like specular lighting, reflections, shadows and other graphs effects. Speed of play was excellent with no pauses or skipping and the game easily transitioned between the game and the story screens.
Although the screen is not a Quad HD display like so many higher end smartphones are getting, it is still very crisp and bright. Netflix and Google Play movies looked great when I was testing them out and with the front-facing speakers the experience is very nice.
One issue that I did have with the tablet was responsiveness of the screen to taps. This seemed to manifest itself when using the Chrome browser, although I detected a few other instances when trying to launch apps.
Battery
The battery in the SHIELD Tablet K1 seemed to be adequate for the tablet. When testing with video playback, I could generally run Netflix for about 1.5 hours on full screen brightness and drawn down around a third of the battery capacity. I also tried streaming some music one day and got about 6 hours of use while streaming TuneIn with the screen off except for the occasional check of email. Of course, the biggest hit will come with gaming where I was lucky to get a couple hours of use off of the battery. In a world where so many devices are starting to get quick charge capabilities, I had to adjust my expectations to the “normal” charging speed of the device. You will need to plan on about 5-6 hours of charging time if you drain the battery.
Software
The SHIELD Tablet K1 came with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, but during the time I was testing NVIDIA rolled out their Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for the device. The update process went smoothly. NVIDIA does not run an additional interface on top of Android, so it is close to a pure Android experience. If a user wanted to go in a different direction with a custom ROM, NVIDIA does not block unlocking of the bootloader, although it will void the warranty.
One tweak that I noticed NVIDIA did make involves the process for taking screenshots. This can be triggered by a button on the settings shade, which was handy given the problems I had with the power button making the power + volume down combo for taking screenshots a problem. One issue with the software method was that I could not capture pop-ups and other dialog boxes as they disappear as soon as you access the notification bar.
As far as NVIDIA specific software and apps, NVIDIA does include their NVIDIA Hub application for accessing NVIDIA optimized games and content. This also enables users to access PC gaming titles that can be played on the SHIELD Tablet K1 using their GameStream technology. Users can also access the GeForce cloud gaming platform. NVIDIA includes a drawing program called NVIDIA Dabbler that is supposed to take advantage of the graphics capabilities of the device, although I think your digital graphics skills would need to be fairly robust for this to be of use to you. Finally, NVIDIA does include software to make it easy to use a second screen, like a large screen TV, to either mirror the tablet or to function as the main display while the tablet is used for controls.
Camera
The SHIELD Tablet K1 does come equipped with a pair of 5 MP cameras on both the front and back. NVIDIA did build in HDR capabilitiy to both cameras. In a selfie test of the front-facing camera, you can see it did a good job of handling the bright light coming in from a window behind me. The rear-facing camera did fine on well lit shots. However, indoors in lower light the camera produced a lot of graininess.
Closing
NVIDIA decided to position their entry into the tablet market with a unique selling point by targeting gamers. That meant packing their tablet full of stout hardware in an effort to drive the latest graphics engines and fully exploit a range of special effects. The good news is that even non-gamers get to enjoy the benefits of the strong processor and graphics chip as everything runs smooth and snappy on the tablet. About the only shortfalls from a spec point of view is that it “only” has a full 1080p HD screen and in only has 2 GB of RAM instead of say 3 or 4 GB. I am not sure there would really be any benefit to upgrades in those areas though as the screen looks great and performance was excellent.
The only complaints I had with the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet K1 involve the buttons, the power button in particular, and the responsiveness of the screen to tap inputs. Each of those items is more of an annoyance than anything, but the irritation level could vary by user and even for me I found some days I was really annoyed and other days I was just “meh” about it.
One thing that the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet K1 has going for it is the current retail price of $199. For only a couple hundred dollars buyers can get a tablet loaded up with a cutting edge processor and graphics chip and decent hardware otherwise. Overall the build quality is quite good outside of the apparent quality control issues with a couple items. The NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet K1 represents a much better bang for the buck than say the Nexus 7 did at the time it was for sale. Even with the problems I had with the unit, I would still recommend the tablet if you are in the market for one to be used for gaming or general use.
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Chrome extension makes quick clips from Twitch broadcasts
In the words of Harlan Ellison, “Pay the writer.” Or, in this case, attribute and pay the streamer. Plays.tv is launching a a Chrome app that enables Twitch casters to recieve full attribution for clips that fans make from watching their broadcast sessions. It’s a solution to a problem many streamers face: They’re spending five or more hours streaming per day and afterward, should they do something pretty crazy in-game, if they want to make a shareable clip of it that means more time spent editing and sitting in front of his or her computer. It’s a vicious, time-consuming cycle when some Twitch partners are already spending seven days per week on camera and in front of their gaming rigs.
With the Plays.tv Chrome extension, all someone in chat has to do it type in “!plays” into the chat of a given Twitch broadcast and then they can make the 30-second source-quality clip themselves. From there you can send it to your social network of choice and it’ll appear alongside other creator-made-content on a streamer’s Plays.tv profile. Plays’ parent company, Raptr, says that compensation for streamers for these isn’t far off, either. Really, this builds on empowering the community in a way that Twitch has from the outset, all while making sure the streamer gets the recognition for the work they’re doing. That’s pretty easy for me to get behind.
Source: Plays.TV
ICYMI: Smart sweat detector, AI for gaming and more
Today on In Case You Missed It: Berkeley researchers developed a wearable sensor that can track the chemicals inside your sweat. The idea is that it can help identify dehydration, muscle fatigue and stress, though it could also help spot disease flare-ups for the diabetic.
Google’s artificial intelligence lab built an algorithm that beat a champion Go player at the game– the first time that’s ever been done by a machine, since it’s one of the most complicated board games.
The gene that triggers schizophrenia has been discovered by a team of scientists with the Broad Institute. It is a gene that regulates immune system functions, just unfortunately has a habit of killing connections to brain cells in some cases. That loss of connection is what leads to the disease.
And finally, we loved the video of a paraglider seemingly moving through a breathtaking Aurora Borealis display in Norway.
Please share any interesting science or tech videos, anytime! Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag to @mskerryd.
Good Old Games is selling still-in-development titles, too
Who says only Steam users get to have all the fun with Early Access games? Well, not Good Old Games anymore. Today the PC-gaming seller is announcing its curated take on vending still-in-development software. Purchases are refundable within 14 days, no questions asked. More than that, if an update breaks one of these games or changes in a way you don’t like, you can roll back to a previous version via the service’s Galaxy desktop client. And this version of access to non-final games wouldn’t truly be a GOG endeavor if any of them were locked behind digital-rights management, so they aren’t. Basically, it’s treating these builds like any other type of game it’d sell.
Rather than Valve’s approach (which has backfired more than a few times) of letting practically anything go up under the Early Access banner, GOG is taking a more deliberate measure here. There are a quintet of titles available now (Ashes of the Singularity, Curious Expeditions, Project Zomboid, Starbound, TerraTech) and GOG says only the “most promising games” and the ones topping the outfit’s Community Wishlist will make the cut for early release. If you’re looking to test your luck, there are launch discounts running up to 40 percent off and the price breaks last through February 2nd.
[Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]
AIVAnet 