$18 million up for grabs in this week’s ‘Dota 2’ championships
The International is back and bigger than ever. The 2015 championships for Dota 2, Valve’s massively popular MOBA, take off today in the “main event” stage, beginning with three matches between LGD Gaming and Team Empire. In total, 16 teams have a shot at winning The International when it comes to a close on Saturday, August 8th. There’s a total of $18 million up for grabs, with payouts ranging from $54,000 for 16th place and $6.5 million for first — and these figures should rise before the end of the tournament, since it’s funded via ongoing purchases of the Compendium, a package that offers players in-game goodies at $10 or $27 a pop. Twenty-five percent of all Compendium sales go straight to The International’s prize pool. Watch The International’s official, live coverage below (heads up, it autoplays).
Last year, the Dota 2 International championships doled out $11 million to winning teams and brought in more than 20 million viewers, with a peak concurrent audience of 2 million. Last year’s winning team, Newbee, took home more than $5 million. This year, the championship will be streamed on Twitch, YouTube and WatchESPN. Welcome to sports in the digital age.
Source:
Dota 2
Tags: championships, dota2, dota2championships, hdpostcross, TheInternational, TheInternational2015, TheInternationalDota2
PlayStation Now game streaming officially arrives on Vita and PS TV
If you’ve been itchin’ to give PlayStation Now’s streaming a go on your gaming handheld, the wait is over. The subscription service officially arrived on the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV, delivering access to over 125 games on those two devices. PlayStation Now had been available on the Vita and PlayStation TV in beta form for months, but now it’s making a proper debut after hitting the PS3 back in May. In addition to equipping two more gaming gadgets with the service, five new titles are being added this month. Joining the library of titles in August are Dynasty Warriors 8, MX vs. ATV Supercross, Bomberman Ultra, The Last Guy and, most importantly, God of War III. With new games being added on the regular and Sony offering newcomers a free one-week trial, there’s really now excuse for PlayStation owners to take the service for a test drive.
[Image credit: Getty Images]
Source:
PlayStation Blog
Tags: gamestreaming, gaming, hdpostcross, playstationnow, playstationtv, playstationvita, psnow, psvita, sony, streaming, subscription, vita
Buying ‘Gears of War: Ultimate Edition’ gets you past games, too
It’s all well and good that Gears of War: Ultimate Edition lets you relive the original game in the series, but what about the other three titles? Don’t worry — you’ll get those too. Microsoft and The Coalition have revealed that anyone who buys Ultimate Edition between its August 25th launch and the end of the year will also get access to all of the Xbox 360 Gears games through backward compatibility. They won’t look nearly as polished as the remaster, of course, but you also won’t have to dig out your old copies (or buy any games you don’t have) just to follow humanity’s fight against the Locust from start to finish. While it’d be nicer if this offer lasted so long as Ultimate Edition was available, this is still a big deal in an era when some studios are only interested in letting you replay one game from a much larger franchise.
Filed under:
Gaming, Microsoft
Source:
Xbox Wire
Tags: gaming, gearsofwar, gearsofwarultimateedition, microsoft, thecoalition, videogames, xbox360, xboxone
Autodesk targets small studios with its Stingray game engine
Autodesk finally has a game engine to go along with its design tools. The company has just launched Stingray, which it built around the Bitsquid engine it bought last year. Autodesk kept the basic guts of that program — which has already been used on titles like Gauntlet from Warner Bros — and revamped it with a new interface. The company told me the goal was to build an engine for smaller studios that can be customized without the need for a lot of programming. At the same time, it wanted Stingray to have all the bells and whistles of competing products like Unreal Engine 4 — physical shading, post-processing effects, a high-performance reflection system and more.
Stingray is going up against time-tested game engines like Unreal 4 and Unity 5. That’ll make it a hard sell to larger companies using those products, especially if they have established pipelines that took years to create. However, Autodesk is hoping to attract small- to mid-sized studios that don’t have a huge programming staff, so it’s equipped the engine with node-based scripting tools to make coding a drag-and-drop affair. At the same time, it’s also offering Stingray’s C++ source code (for a fee) to companies that want deeper customization.
One of Stingray’s more interesting tools is “Live Link” multi-platform testing. Level designers won’t need to wait for a time-consuming rendering “cycle” to see how gameplay and visuals work on different systems. For instance, an artist can tweak shader settings (lighting, color and materials) and instantly see the results on an iPhone, as shown in the video below. It works across a WiFi network, and covers iOS, Android, Windows, Oculus Rift DK2, Xbox One and PS4 platforms. In theory, quicker feedback should make games look and behave better, especially on platforms with less horsepower like iOS or Android.
Artists who use Maya, 3DS Max or other Autodesk 3D creation tools will also benefit from some extra integration over tools like Unity. In fact, Maya LT will be bundled with each Stingray license to give artists a basic modeling and animation app. With Live Link, you can tweak a model inside Maya LT and see the changes in Stingray on a given platform in real time. You can also see live camera level fly-throughs, animations and other content. On top of gaming, the company sees the tech as being useful for architectural and design visualization as well, either on a screen or via an AR or VR device like the Oculus Rift. Stingray also supports NVIDIA’s PhysX physics system, and works with Autodesk gameware tools like HumanIK, Scaleform, and FBX.
There are some folks that think that Autodesk is already too dominant in gaming, however. The company makes many of the most commonly used creation products in gaming (Maya and 3DS Max) on top of gameware like Scaleform. (Competing products like Blender are available and free, however, so the company doesn’t have a complete monopoly.) Without a lot of other competition, some find Autodesk’s subscription prices to be a bit rich.
It’ll be interesting, then, to see how Autodesk’s pricing for Singray goes over: it’s selling licenses for $30 per month, with a copy of Maya LT thrown in. By contrast, the Unreal 4 engine is free, but designers have to pay a 5 percent royalty on game sales after the first $5,000. Unity’s engine is also free (and royalty-free) but the pro version — with a lot of useful features — starts at $75 per month. Given the hook between Autodesk’s already widely-used products, a more dev-friendly interface and real-time feedback, the pricing might tempt certain companies. Stingray arrives to Windows via subscription starting on August 19th.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: Autodesk
A look at the evolution of modern video game controllers
If anything’s kept pace with how video games have changed over the years, it’s how we interact with them. Our biggest touchpoint with virtual worlds is the gamepad and — akin to how games themselves have evolved from simple 2D affairs into 100-hour-long labyrinths in three dimensions — controllers have changed to accommodate that. What you’ll find in the gallery below is a comprehensive look at gamepads from the past 30-plus years of gaming, including high points and missteps alike.
[Image: Adafruit Industries/Flickr]
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo
This is what happens when Facebook hacks Nintendo
When I entered the doors of the building, an approximately 7-foot Piranha Plant greeted me. Inside, I saw large question block cushions scattered throughout and 25 Wii U stations. Off in the corner was a Mario mascot, posing for photos in front of a big green pipe. If you thought I was in Nintendo Land, you’d be wrong. I was in Facebook’s Menlo Park, California, offices. It was the second day of a two-day hackathon collaboration with Nintendo, where employees had the opportunity to create levels with the upcoming game Super Mario Maker. And the ultimate prize? The winning level design would be available to download when the game launches.Slideshow-308689
Of course, the event isn’t quite a traditional hackathon — you don’t need special coding skills in order to create levels in Super Mario Maker. But it was a chance for Nintendo to open up the game to at least a small sampling of the public ahead of launch.
Over 100 Facebook employees participated in the event and by the end, over 40 levels were created. When I arrived, much of the hackathon had already concluded, but I could see that employees took level creation seriously. Many of the teams storyboarded their levels on whiteboards, even going so far as to draw up blueprints of bricks and coins and plot out jump points with Post-it notes. The only real rule — and this is true for the consumer version of Super Mario Maker as well — is that you need to be able to beat the level in order to submit it. In the regular game, the user-created levels are also vetted by Nintendo moderators to determine level difficulty before it’s available for anyone to download. You can also share specific levels with friends by giving them a code.
That, however, doesn’t mean the levels were easy. “Some are so mean!” said Corey Olcsvary, a Nintendo product expert who was one of the hackathon judges. He was telling me this as he was maneuvering Mario through what seemed like a hellscape of rotating fire bars and falling Thwomps [the large, spiky cinder blocks]. “I’ve seen a really crazy combination of enemies. There was one squid level that was just Bloopers everywhere!” he said. So what are the judges looking for in a winning level? “We’re looking for a representation of Nintendo’s core values — creativity, fun and surprise — as well as Facebook’s core values, which is: Move fast; be open; and break things,” said AJ Glasser, a manager for Facebook’s games partnership program.
While I wasn’t able to watch or play all of them, I walked with some of the judges as they played through the different submissions. Several of the levels I saw recreated the Facebook logo or spelled out “facebook” in coins and blocks, while others took the “Move Fast” motto to heart, forcing the player to speed through conveyor belts and avoid getting smashed by flying cannons.
“I think it’s great,” said Brandon Dillon, an Oculus software engineer who also participated in the hackathon. “Especially as a game developer, it’s interesting to look at how Nintendo thinks about constructing levels.” In many ways, he says that Super Mario Maker‘s dead-simple controls — you only need to drag and drop different elements to create a scene — is an idealized way of doing game design. “But more than that, it’s got so much polish and love and charm,” he said. Dillon was part of a team of three people from Oculus, and their level was called “Bowser’s Timeline.” The idea is that you would play through Bowser’s Facebook page, navigating through his minions wishing him happy birthday and whether you want to accept Bowser’s friend request.
When asked if he played other levels, Dillon admitted that some of them were more than a little hard. “There are people who made some pretty sadistic levels!” he laughed. “I consider myself a competent Mario player and I couldn’t even get past the first screen of some of them.”
After two days and several hours of judging, a winner was crowned. Created by Doug Strait and Roy McElmurry, both Facebook software engineers, the level was called “Ship Love.” It takes place on a pirate ship, with coins shaped into hearts; Yoshi as your trusty companion and Bowser as your final obstacle at the end. Curious to see what they whipped up? You can either check out the video below or try it for yourself when Super Mario Maker arrives in North America on September 11th.
Filed under:
Gaming, Facebook, Nintendo
Tags: facebook, nintendo, nintendowiiu, supermariomaker
PlayStation Plus members will soon vote on what games go free
Sure, PlayStation Plus subscribers are used to getting “free” games every month, but they haven’t had any say about what the gratis titles would be. Until now. With Vote to Play, you’ll have a chance to make your voice heard. PlayStation VP of platforms marketing John Koller writes on the PlayStation Blog that the game with the most votes will automatically be added to the upcoming month’s offerings, and that in the first round of voting the runner-up will be available at a discount. Pretty cool, huh? Exactly how the voting process will work (if there will be videos or whatnot to help make informed choices) isn’t clear just yet, but Koller writes that more info is coming soon enough. The real question though is if you would’ve voted for Rocket League, the dark horse from last month’s promo that’s absolutely dominating the gaming conversation right now.
Filed under:
Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Source:
PlayStation Blog
Tags: free, games, gaming, hd, hdpostcross, playstation, playstation4, playstationplus, ps4, sony, vote, votetoplay
FDA tells hospitals to ditch IV pumps that can be hacked remotely
The Food and Drug Administration “strongly encourages” hospitals to stop using Hospira’s Symbiq Infusion System, because it’s vulnerable to cyberattacks that would allow a third party to remotely control dosages delivered via the computerized pumps. Unauthorized users are able to access the Symbiq system through connected hospital networks, according to the FDA and the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team. ICS-CERT reported the vulnerability on July 21st and the FDA released its own safety alert on Friday, July 31st. Thankfully, there are no reported incidences of the Symbiq system being hacked.
Hospira does not sell the Symbiq system anymore, but it’s still available for purchase from some third-party retailers and the FDA warns against buying it. The network vulnerability would “allow an unauthorized user to control the device and change the dosage the pump delivers, which could lead to over- or under-infusion of critical patient therapies,” the organization says.
This safety alert marks the FDA’s entrance into cybersecurity territory. Recently, corporate giants GM, Fiat Chrysler, Anthem insurance and United Airlines (to name a few) have faced reported hacks. Last month, the US Office of Personnel Management was the subject of a cyberattack that put the social security information of 21.5 million Americans at risk. Welcome to the digital age.
Via:
Reuters (via Yahoo Finance)
Source:
FDA
Tags: CyberAttack, fda, hack, hdpostcross, Hospira, hospital, InfusionPump, symbiq, us-cert
‘Super Smash Bros.’ gets tournament modes and YouTube replays
Nintendo isn’t done with the 3DS and Wii U versions of Super Smash Bros. just yet. The company has released an update today which adds tournament modes and the ability to post video replays to YouTube. Both features were teased just before E3, but we weren’t expecting a slew of new character outfits and stages to go along with them. Nintendo is offering the Hyrule Castle and Peach’s Castle arenas from the original Super Smash Bros. on N64, priced at $1.99 per platform or $2.99 across both. They’re joined by a deluge of Mii fighter costumes, including King K. Rool from Donkey Kong, Chrom from Fire Emblem: Awakening and Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia. All eight are available for $0.75 or $1.15 across both 3DS and Wii U. Alternatively, you can get everything as a bundle for $9.98 or $15.18 on both Nintendo systems. One last thing: there’s a K.K. Slider Mii Fighter costume from Animal Crossing too. It’s free to download and looks darn cute.
Source: Nintendo
The business of eSports in numbers
It takes about 50 years for a “game” to become a “sport,” according to Andrew Paradise’s calculations. He’s an entrepreneur who recently joined the wave of investors getting in on the eSports game: His app, Skillz, allows mobile-gaming fans to win real money while playing some of their favorite titles. That’s right, mobile eSports. From smartphones to dedicated eSports arenas, Paradise knows why professional gaming is a booming market and he explains it all in a straightforward, money-focused manner. If you’ve ever looked at eSports and wondered, “Why?” Paradise might have your answer.
“Just like video games, basketball and football weren’t initially considered sports and certainly weren’t mainstream for the early years of their existence,” Paradise says. “We are now hitting the 50-year milestone in eSports history as people who grew up playing Pong have children playing League of Legends and Call of Duty. In many respects, eSports have already gone mainstream.”
Hear that, eSports haters? According to Paradise, dismissing eSports only demonstrates how out of touch someone is with an emerging new reality — kind of like a musician deciding to abandon streaming services or tech companies opposing net neutrality.
A number of recent, high-profile acquisitions support the idea that eSports are an accepted, legitimate sport, at least on the investment side of things: On July 1st, Swedish entertainment company MTG acquired the Electronic Sports League, the largest eSports organization in the world, spending $86.4 million for a majority stake in the company. In September 2014, Amazon bought video game-streaming site Twitch for just under $1 billion. Even CaptainSparklez, a popular YouTube personality, has entered the mobile eSports market in a partnership with Activision co-founder Howard Marks.
A screenshot from Valve’s eSports documentary, Free to Play
It’s easy to see why investors are excited about the future of eSports. The industry is valued at $612 million in revenue worldwide, with 134 million total viewers, according to SuperData Research. Paradise says analysts expect these numbers to grow by roughly 30 percent over the next five years. Investors today look at the direct revenue generated by professional gaming, including competitions, sponsorships, online ads, paid viewership, merchandise, licensing, tickets, game sales and fantasy sports, to name a few pipelines, Paradise says.
Additionally, investors have to consider the fans “as an important metric for the future of the industry and for potential revenue,” he adds.
“ESports are well on their way not just to legitimacy, but to true sports supremacy.”
— Andrew Paradise
One of today’s most popular eSports games demonstrates the industry’s ability to rack up a lot of cash quickly: In October of last year, SuperData calculated that League of Legends was poised to generate $1 billion in revenue in 2014 alone, and that’s just via in-game transactions. It’s worth noting that League of Legends is a free game. The $1 billion comes from voluntary player investment in new characters, fresh outfits, aesthetically customized items and boosts, and it doesn’t include revenue from major, sold-out tournaments, streams or merchandise.
League of Legends is one of the top eSports at the moment, alongside Dota 2, StarCraft II, Counter-Strike and StarCraft: Brood War, Paradise says.
“Measured by the number of participants or by minutes played, video games are already a bigger industry than all offline sports,” he says. “Additionally, video games are much younger in their evolutionary history than offline sports and are growing at a much faster rate.”
Some serious eSports bling
A new, booming industry means big bucks for investors. Paradise says that his company, Skillz, facilitates eSports competitions across games from more than 1,100 studios. “While many of the games we power are not household names, the combined prizes paid in these games represent 30 percent of all eSports prizes paid so far this year,” he says.
Paradise sees eSports as a rapidly evolving, lucrative industry that will soon compete directly with — and perhaps surpass — traditional sports.
“Looking at physical spectators, Game [8] of Major League Baseball’s first World Series drew 7,455 spectators in 1903 — 64 years after the game was invented,” Paradise says. “By comparison, last year’s League of Legends Championship — which came just 42 years after the release of Pong [in 1972] — drew over 40,000 spectators. ESports are well on their way not just to legitimacy, but to true sports supremacy.”
[Images: ESL (lead image); Valve (teams at computer terminals); ESL (trophy)]
