Microsoft marks 25 years of Solitaire with a tournament
Microsoft Solitaire, aka Windows’ biggest productivity killer, is turning 25 this year — and the team in Redmond is going to mark the occasion in style. The company is starting with an internal tournament this month that will determine who rules the roost within its own ranks. You’ll get to participate in June, when the company releases the tournament’s challenges to the public through its Solitaire Collection. If you’ve spent years mastering the art of ordering cards, your finely-honed (if not exactly practical) skills are about to pay off.
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Microsoft
Source: Blogging Windows
‘Mass Effect’ director Casey Hudson joins Microsoft’s HoloLens team
Casey Hudson, the producer largely responsible for EA and BioWare’s Mass Effect trilogy, is now Creative Director at Microsoft Studios, where he’s working on HoloLens and Xbox games. Microsoft appears to be all-in on HoloLens development — Hudson now works alongside former Lionhead Studios boss John Needham and he reports directly to CVP of Next Gen Experiences Kudo Tsunoda, who previously led Microsoft’s Kinect Games initiative. Hudson relocated from Edmonton, Canada, to Redmond, Washington, for his new role.
Hudson says he’s passionate about augmented reality and its potential to shape the way people interact with computers in their daily lives:
My primary focus will be the creative direction of HoloLens Experiences…. I feel that the work being done at Microsoft on mixed reality and holographic computing will have a tremendous impact on how all of us interact with technology in the coming years.
He’ll also have a hand in developing “innovative new Xbox titles,” and driving the creative focus of Xbox and Windows gaming. We’ll see if Hudson can Shepard in a modern era of fresh, epic, augmented reality games at Microsoft Studios.
Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft
Source: Xbox Wire
Facebook wants to put games in Messenger after all
Contrary to previous reports, it appears Facebook is still toying with the idea of featuring games in Messenger. According to The Information, the social network plans to strengthen its instant messaging platform by adding games, as it looks to find a fresh, more lucrative source of revenue. Facebook’s already said to be working with developers to roll this out; Ilya Sukhar, an executive leading the project, confirmed the talks to the news outlet, though he didn’t specify when we could see the changes take place. While you wait for that to happen, keep enjoying your GIFs, emojis and all the other tidbits Facebook’s chat ecosystem has to offer at the moment.
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Software, Mobile, Facebook
Source: The Information
Curtain lifts on first ‘Rock Band 4’ songs
Not to be outdone by Guitar Hero Live, the folks over in the Rock Band 4 camp unveiled the first handful of tracks for this fall’s face-melting simulator. And they’re pretty diverse! As noted on IGN, the half-dozen ranges from Avenged Sevenfold to The Who. Developer Harmonix is debuting gameplay on Twitch with the IGN folks as well. Sadly there’s no word of Deftones, High on Fire, Katy Perry, Mastodon, or Taylor Swift yet, but we still have a long ways before this new tour kicks off. There’s that whole song request form in case there are any dream songs you’d want included, too. Prep your air guitar and jump past the break for the full list.
Songs announced so far:
Avenged Sevenfold – “Hail to the King”
Fleetwood Mac – “You Make Loving Fun”
Jack White – “Lazaretto”
The Killers – “Somebody Told Me”
The Spin Doctors – “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”
The Who – “The Seeker”
[Image credit: Vince Bucci/Invision/AP]
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: IGN
Seven times Kanye West dressed like a ‘Final Fantasy’ character
Apparently the Kanye West role-playing game, Kanye Quest 3030, contains an eerie hidden area involving a butterfly and a New Age cult called Ascensionism. We know, it’s hard to believe that Kanye has a video game. Anyway, this secret game-within-a-game is weird, but it’s certainly not surprising considering that, for years now, Kanye has been dressing like characters from one of the most nonsensical video game franchises of all time, Final Fantasy. We’ve collected a few of Kanye’s standout cosplay attempts in the gallery below. Happy Friday, folks.
See the ‘Batman: Arkham Knight’ Dual Play mode in action
And we do mean action. Dual Play in Batman: Arkham Knight allows one player to swap between Batman and a trusty sidekick during fights. For example, if you’re battling a room full of nasty baddies as Batman, the AI will be in control of Nightwing — until you switch characters, at which point the AI takes over Batman and you become Nightwing. There’s also a special called the “super-combo takedown” that builds up as you fight and instantly KOs enemies in a Batman-sidekick one-two punch. “If you’re building your combo with Batman and you see that there’s an enemy over by Nightwing you want to take out, you can switch to Nightwing, you keep your combo, and if you’ve got your special charged up you can instantly use your super-combo takedown on that foe,” Lead AI Programmer Tim Hanagan says in the Dual Play demo video embedded below.
Batman: Arkham Knight is due to hit Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on June 23.
Oculus pauses Mac and Linux development, offers PC specs
The retail version of the Oculus Rift finally has a confirmed release window of early 2016, meaning virtual reality fans have just less than a year to create their ideal gaming environments. A crucial part of any VR setup is the rig powering the headset, and Oculus today released its recommended, minimum PC specs, including an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290 video card, an Intel i5-4590 processor, 8GB RAM and Windows 7. Check out the full PC recommendations below. Meanwhile, Oculus has “paused” development for OS X and Linux systems “in order to focus on delivering a high-quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software and content on Windows,” Chief Architect Atman Binstock writes. Oculus doesn’t have a timeline for jumping back into Mac and Linux development.
Regarding the PC specs, Binstock offers the following context: “Given the challenges around VR graphics performance, the Rift will have a recommended specification to ensure that developers can optimize for a known hardware configuration, which ensures a better player experience of comfortable sustained presence. … This configuration will be held for the lifetime of the Rift and should drop in price over time.”
Here is Oculus’ full PC recommendation:
- NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
- Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
- 8GB+ RAM
- Windows 7 SP1 or newer
- 2x USB 3.0 ports
- HDMI 1.3 video output supporting a 297MHz clock via a direct output architecture
Source: Oculus
New VR game lets you be the bullet
Remember Superhot? It let you dodge bullets by controlling time à la The Matrix, but a new VR game takes that premise even farther by making you the bullet. Drift is a game for Samsung’s Gear VR, developed by a pair of programmers during the course of Oculus’ Mobile VR Jam. The idea is pretty simple: after a bullet is fired from a gun, your viewpoint changes to its trajectory. Time is considerably slowed down and you can alter the bullet’s path by looking left or right. You move around the bizarre orange environment past the crash test dummy-like characters until you spot your target: the green guy.
It reminds us a bit of the iconic intro to Lord of War, which tracks a bullet from fabrication to kill. Drift is more of a gangster take on the idea, and lets you refine your search using red “trails” left behind from previous failed attempts. Players can also seek bonuses to unlock achievements and get improved slow motion control. The developers chose the orange and white LoFi look to suit the mobile constraints of the Gear VR, but told Polygon they’re considering an Oculus VR PC version with better quality. They plan to expand the idea with new environments “to make a more complete and challenging experience,” but if you happen to have a Gear VR, you can try out the beta right now.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/126716070?color=990000&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0
Filed under: Gaming, Wearables, Samsung
Via: Polygon
Source: Oculus Mobile VR Jam
‘Divinity: Original Sin’ casts its classic RPG spell on consoles
Lots of people thought that Diablo 3 wouldn’t have been possible on consoles and it proved the best version of the title. Now it’s time to see if the same holds true of last year’s breakout role-playing game Divinity: Original Sin in the form of an Enhanced Edition. The decidedly old-school RPG’s getting a revamped interface, split-screen couch co-op and full-on voice work throughout for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The tweaks don’t stop there either, as it’s also getting some new quests among others along with tweaks to the combat system (likely to accommodate gamepads) and story.
If you were worried about the Kickstarted fantasy game abandoning its PC roots for the console peasants, backers get access to Enhanced Edition as part of a free update across Linux, Mac, SteamOS and Windows. When it all happens isn’t immediately clear, but developer Larian Studios teases more info will come at next month’s Electronics Entertainment Expo.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
A few ‘GTA V’ mods are installing malware on PCs
While you’ve been busy enjoying guns that fire cars, piloting flying saucers or swimming ’round a flooded Los Santos thanks to mods for the PC version of GTA V something darker’s lurked beneath the surface. GTAForums user aboutseven noticed that a C# compiler was running in the background on his or her computer and traced it back to a file dubbed “Fade.exe.” Upon further inspection she or he spotted that it was using internet access. Turns out it was a keylogger. Process of elimination deduced that “Noclip,” which allows you to examine the insides of objects freely, and “Angry Planes,” which spawns incredibly, well, angry, planes that attack you with kamikaze-like fury, were the culprits behind the malware infection.
Sites that have hosted the mods have since pulled them down, and for a detailed breakdown for how to remove the nefarious files and programs, hit the source link below. It should go without saying that if you’ve installed these on your computer, changing all of your passwords is incredibly important at this point. In the meantime, enjoy a video that never gets old: blue whales falling from the sky and causing chaos in Los Santos.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: GTAForums
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