Twitch game streaming comes to Sony’s smartphones
Sony is launching a new app that’ll let you broadcast streams of your Android gaming to the internet, straight from your smartphone. Screen Recorder has been built to connect to both Twitch and YouTube’s Twitch-like live service, letting everyone across the world watch as you play mobile Minecraft. The app works with the company’s Xperia Z3+, Z4 and Z4v, as well as the Xperia Z4 tablet that we reviewed last week. It’s certainly a big coup for Sony as it continues to revive its formerly-flagging mobile division, since Twitch’s spectator-only mobile app has nearly 35 million installs. Tempting even a small proportion of mobile gamers to buy a Sony smartphone would do some impressive things to the bottom line. Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Software, Sony
Source: Screen Recorder (Google Play)
Special ‘Destiny’ PS4 is another expensive bundle option
If you’re a hardcore Destiny fan, it’s been a rough couple weeks. First, Bungie announced the game’s next big expansion, then it revealed some of its content would be exclusive to a pricey $80 collector’s edition — even if you already owned the base game. There was anger, rebellion, Red Bull product tie-ins (no, really) and, eventually, a mea culpa that made the exclusive content available to everyone as separate DLC. Huzzah! Now Destiny players can get everything without buying content twice. Well, unless they want the limited edition Destiny PlayStation 4 — then they’re screwed again.
Okay, technically the Destiny: The Taken King PS4 bundle is already the complete package — buyers get a copy of Destiny, both of its initial expansions (The Dark Below and House of Wolves) and The Taken King, plus a digital upgrade to the collector’s edition and its formerly-exclusive content. As far as the game is concerned, that’s everything — but completionist collectors are still missing out on the physical aspects of The Taken King Collector’s Edition, including the set’s steel-book case, replica Strange Coin, modified Treasure Island Book and physical relics and artifacts.
A nitpick? Absolutely. An outrage? Not at all. A problem for Destiny super-fans who want all the collectibles and a 500GB custom white and silver PS4 emblazoned with a golden guardian’s crest? Oh yeah. Still, if you have to have everything (or just want a special PS4) this bundle will be available on September 15th.
Source: PlayStation Blog
Plex’s Xbox One update brings music, playlists and more
There are a host of new features coming to Plex’s Xbox One app. In addition to the standard fare of navigation tweaks, added SmartGlass functionality and bug fixes, the media organizer/caster now allows users to play music through their Xbone. Plex also now offers playlist support for both songs and videos. Plus, there’s no longer need to convert videos either, the service can play back video in Xbox’s native MKV file format. But arguably the coolest new feature is that you’ll finally get real, honest-to-goodness trailers prior to watching your films. It’s as close to the theater experience you can get without having to pay for IMAX and stale popcorn.
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Microsoft
Source: Plex
Attacker who ruined your holiday gaming gets a slap on the wrist
If you were hoping that all of the Lizard Squad attackers who took down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live last holiday would get their comeuppance… well, you’ll be disappointed. A Finnish court has convicted Julius Kivimäki (aka “Ryan” and “Zeekill”) of a whopping 50,700 charges related to various computer crimes, including data breaches, telecommunication-based harassment and swiping credit card data. It sounds good, but his penalty is limited to a suspended 2-year prison sentence and an order to help fight cybercrime — a trivial penalty in light of his overall damage. Even if you limit Kivimäki’s culpability to the gaming network outage, he was still partly responsible for days of downtime at Microsoft and Sony that frustrated millions of players. While he’ll theoretically stay on the straight and narrow for at least a while, the verdict isn’t exactly going to scare Lizard Squad’s other members into becoming model citizens.
[Image credit: Jean-Jacques Boujot, Flickr]
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Sony, Microsoft
Via: Daily Dot, GameInformer
Source: Kaleva.fi (translated)
Capcom is making a light-up ‘Mega Man’ helmet
Want to up the ante on your costume for the next big comic convention? Capcom will soon have you covered. The game developer has teased plans for an official, wearable Mega Man helmet that lights up. It won’t grant you cybernetic powers, but it definitely looks the part — combine it with Think Geek’s Buster Gun and you’ll look like you’re ready to take on Dr. Wily. While Capcom hasn’t even mentioned a pre-order date, let alone a release date, it could be worth holding out if you’re determined to trump other would-be Blue Bombers.
Filed under: Gaming, Wearables
Via: Polygon
Source: Capcom
Palette’s modular controller is ready to steer your creative apps
Palette crowdfunded its unique modular controller in the hopes of giving you customizable, hands-on control over your creative apps, and it’s finally ready to make that technology available to everyone. As of today, you can pre-order Palette kits that scale up depending on just how much tactile fine-tuning you want. The base is a $199 kit with a dial, two buttons and a slider; the $299 Expert and $499 Professional kits throw in more gear, and you can even snag an $899 limited edition in cherry wood. Of course, you can also buy individual parts if you need more. The controller is mostly useful if you thrive in Adobe software like Photoshop and Premiere Pro, but it’s also helpful in MIDI music, gaming and most any other program where keyboard shortcuts just don’t feel right.
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
Via: PetaPixel
Source: Palette
Future ‘Dragon Age Inquisition’ add-ons are only for newer systems
You know that you need the latest game consoles (or a good PC) to get better graphics and special features, but it now looks like you’ll need them if you want to see a game’s extended storyline, too. BioWare has quietly posted word that “all future” downloadable content Dragon Age Inquisition will only be available for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. There’s a save importer arriving this month that will transfer your progress if you buy both a new system and a fresh copy of Inquisition, but you’re otherwise stuck if you’ve poured all your energy into the role-playing title on a PS3 or Xbox 360.
The reduced support isn’t entirely surprising. BioWare has already said that it was troublesome to build the latest Dragon Age for five platforms (two of which are nearly a decade old), and add-ons certainly don’t help. Also, there’s a question of whether or not it’s worth the effort. It’s no secret that last-gen systems are far from top sellers, and numerous major publishers (including BioWare’s parent EA) are devoting virtually all their energy to games for modern hardware. While there’s no doubt that consistently offering DLC for old platforms would be ideal, it may be tough to justify the investment in a shrinking group of players who are both holding on to aging consoles and willing to buy expansions.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: Dragon Age
‘Journey’ comes to PS4 on July 21st
With stunning visuals and gameplay to match, Journey quickly became a platform favorite on the PlayStation 3. Now, Sony is bringing that adventurous experience over to the PlayStation 4, as was announced last year. Better yet, if you already own a digital copy of the title, designed by thatgamecompany, you’ll be able to download and play the new version for free. Journey’s scheduled to hit the PS4 a couple weeks from today, on July 21st, so you may want to start clearing some space on that hard drive of yours.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Source: PlayStation
PlayStation Now’s streaming app wants to be Netflix for games
PlayStation Now’s all-you-can-play game subscription service launched back in January on PlayStation 4, but the method for actually playing those games has been kind of a nightmare. Today’s news of a dedicated subscription app might change that. Before this, every time you wanted to stream a new game, you had to go through the PlayStation Store, sift through a handful of menus, pick something (much like you would to purchase a game) and then hope that it even launched the first try. A streaming app that minimizes menu fatigue and works along the lines of a Netflix or Hulu actually makes a lot of sense here.
“The current experience is a little bit transactional, it feels like, ‘Okay, I’ve gotta pop in and [then] back out [to play],’” Robert Stevenson of Gaikai, the outfit Sony bought for its streaming infrastructure, says. “You might join the subscription for a marquee title — God of War or something that you’ve never played and you want to go back and play it. Then there’s probably a dozen or two other games that you might like,” Stevenson says. “But actually finding and locating that content is a little tricky.”
The new application hopes to streamline the process. And perhaps what’s doing the brunt of the heavy lifting then is the simultaneously familiar and new interface. Codenamed Apollo, it takes cues from other streaming services in an effort to make it easier to find what you want to play among the current 125 or so games available for streaming. It’s dominated by rows of big, splashy images for each game and a minimal amount of clutter surrounding them. Take a look at the Batman: Arkham City screenshot below for an example.
“We built a new categorization for the games; the actual navigational paradigms are different, the product detail scene is different,” Stevenson says. Pick what you want to play and the bare essentials appear: a large image, user ratings and reviews. It looks a lot like Netflix. Stevenson says this reduced information density comes from some extensive user tests to learn what customers care about when they’re browsing digital catalogs and trying to figure out what they want to play next.
As the number of games on the subscription service grows, that kind of design and organization becomes much more important. Not only to help allay paralysis of choice, but for Sony to keep customers on the hook for between $15 and $20 per month. There’s a free 7-day trial for new subscribers if you want to check out the shiny UI first hand, and the app should be live by the time you’ve finished reading this post.
I won’t be playing ‘Halo 5: Guardians’ and here’s why
In the early 2000s, four-player, split-screen Halo was a revelation for my then-girlfriend Jenn (who would later become my wife), her two sisters and me. It was amazing, frantic, swear-filled fun. Controllers were thrown; tempers flared. But that’s all sadly in the past. Last week, Halo‘s current custodian, 343 Industries, revealed that it’s abandoning local split-screen multiplayer and native LAN support for this fall’s Halo 5: Guardians. We knew from earlier reports that local campaign co-op was out of the question, at least at launch, but the Ars Technica report confirms we won’t see any split-screen multiplayer modes or native LAN support. Allow me to repeat: No local multiplayer. None. In a Halo game. For me, and likely many other longtime Halo fans, the news is a bitter pill to swallow.
Look, I get it. I spent a year and a half as a game tester — working alongside some great folks who are actually now part of the hard-working team at 343. Incorporating something like split-screen mode isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. Everything needs to be tested to make sure no single aspect brings the whole game down. It would require an intense amount of resources from engine optimization to level design to tweaking the UI to testing. It’s a big investment to make for something comparatively few Halo players likely utilize these days; for something so niche. And if any studio knows the danger of promising the moon and failing to fully deliver, it’s 343 — the launch of four full games under the umbrella of Halo: The Master Chief Collection proved to be a bit too ambitious and the studio spent months post-launch addressing issues. To successfully launch Halo 5: Guardians, it needs to focus on delivering the most popular and most lucrative aspects of the franchise. And in this day and age of widespread broadband access, split-screen local multiplayer just doesn’t make the cut.
With 343’s goal of fluid, 60fps gameplay, it’s unlikely two-player, let alone four-player split-screen would have been possible without some serious compromises — compromises the studio is evidently unwilling to make. And reports of uneven split-screen performance in Halo: The Master Chief Collection likely made 343’s decision to forgo it a bit easier.
In one Halo 3 match, I brought a sniper rifle to a Brute Chopper/Warthog fight and immediately regretted it.
Beyond all that, I understand the notion that local, offline multiplayer doesn’t give developers the sort of real-time stats and telemetry that online matches provide — data that can be used to improve the existing game and provide insight for future titles. Split-screen multiplayer, in some ways, is a vestige, a throwback to a simpler time when we played games with our friends in person because we didn’t have much of a choice. In my gaming heyday, we didn’t have broadband access. We had to invite our friends over to our house to play Halo… and we liked it. A lot.
Split-screen multiplayer is a throwback to a simpler time when we played games with our friends in person because we didn’t have much of a choice.
2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved was more than a game for me; it was a bonding experience like no game I had played to that point. During one typically intense 2v2 local match, I calmly explained to Jenn that perhaps she should switch from the shotgun during a long-range shootout since it’s a close-range weapon. I considered it a sensible suggestion. Her reply? “Fuck you!” It was a visceral, in-the-moment reaction to a logical, practical suggestion — the kind of impassioned reaction split-screen Halo reliably provided. And it was the kind of interaction that worked so much better in person.
When Jenn’s youngest sister eventually bought her own Xbox, we dabbled in two-screen/multi-room LAN play, a cumbersome setup that amped up the excitement even more (it’s amazing how much more intense Team Slayer gets when you can’t screencheat!) As the years rolled on, we still enjoyed the occasional split-screen and LAN multiplayer session with each successive Halo release. But the Halo of today is a much different beast than the one we grew up with. It’s now a multibillion-dollar machine and 343 Industries is understandably more concerned with a return on investment rather than nice-to-have, but ultimately expendable features.
Using local split-screen co-op and Xbox Live, my wife (right, with rocket launcher) and her sister ride in to save the day.
For the first time in 14 years, Jenn and I are sitting this Halo out.
It’s a decision, however, not without consequences. Case in point: I still don’t have an Xbox One, but I was planning to pick one up in time for Halo 5. It seemed like good timing considering the many, many, many kinks 343 Industries had to work out after Halo: The Master Chief Collection‘s troubled release. I would be jumping back aboard Master Chief’s bandwagon in time to enjoy a mostly functioning collection of all-time favorites and the latest entry in the series. Jenn and I could explore co-op together and occasionally invite friends and family over to pile up on the couch and enjoy some good, ol’ split-screen fun. But last week’s news threw a UNSC Infinity-sized wrench into those plans.
I’m sure Halo 5: Guardians will be a polished, highly acclaimed entry in this long-running series with enough content and features to lure in new fans and keep most longtime disciples happy. But I’ll likely just have to read about it. For the first time in 14 years, Jenn and I are sitting this Halo out.
[Image credits: Microsoft/343 Industries (Halo 5 teaser video)]
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