A new PS4 update is coming to fix the bugs 2.0 introduced
Unfortunately, the PS4 2.0 software update came packing more than just SharePlay and a better-organized home screen. For a number of users it introduced some annoying bugs, like the inability to come back from rest mode without unplugging the system. Sony just announced that version 2.01 of the software is on the way “soon,” specifically to address those rest mode issues. There’s no word on whether it will fix any of the other problems that have been reported, but this might be one of the most-anticipated stability updates so far.
PS4 software update v2.01 is coming soon, and will address issues some users have encountered when powering on the system from Rest Mode
– PlayStation (@PlayStation) November 5, 2014
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Source: PlayStation (Twitter)
‘Destiny’ and the 9.5 million ‘registered users’ number
Activision is the most profitable game publisher in existence. The company’s behind the Call of Duty franchise, the Skylanders franchise and many more. You know World of Warcraft? Activision owns the company that makes it, Blizzard Entertainment. The company’s latest big release is Destiny — a $500 million bet that Activision’s making on the studio that previously created the Halo franchise (Bungie Studios). The game launched on September 9th across four platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg says the game was “profitable from day one,” but the company’s yet to release up-to-date sales numbers. Instead, it’s offering a “registered user” statistic: 9.5 million. But what does that actually mean? That’s a good question. Hirshberg offered the following clarification during a quarterly financial call this evening:
“To date we have over 9.5 million registered users — of course there’s a relationship to sell through, it’s not exact. Because some people have more than one identity, but obviously that’s directional.”
Okay, what?
There are two ways to interpret Hirshberg’s explanation, and those interpretations hang on one particular bit of language in the statement. “Some people have more than one identity” is the problematic bit — is Hirshberg referencing folks who have more than one Xbox Live/Sony Entertainment Network login? Or is he referencing how many player characters have been created within Destiny?
These two interpretations come with starkly different outcomes. Should he mean the former, the correlation between 9.5 million “registered users” and sales of the game aren’t completely divorced. After all, there are only so many folks who purchase the same game on multiple platforms. We can pretty safely assume the actual unit sales of Destiny wouldn’t be very different from the “registered users” number if this is what Hirshberg is referencing.
But if he means the latter, that 9.5 million number could shrink pretty dramatically in terms of unit sales. Each copy of Destiny enables three character creation slots. It doesn’t cost anything extra to create extra characters (other than time, of course), and part of the appeal of Destiny is trying out different character builds. It also doesn’t help that there’s a relatively low level cap in the game thus far, meaning multiple characters is the way that many are extending their gameplay experience.
Thus, if “registered users” means “all created characters,” the correlation between that 9.5 million number and actual copies of the game sold to human beings is pretty weak. To the extent that the number could be divided by a factor of three, in fact. That’s a huge difference!
We’ve asked Activision for clarification and will update this should we hear more. That said, Activision not outright stating Destiny sales (for the second month in a row) says a lot unto itself.
‘Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’ is having a rocky launch on Xbox One and PlayStation 4
Call of Duty continues to be a pretty big deal. Despite annualized releases and the occasional stinker (we’re looking at you, Modern Warfare 3!), people still love to wage virtual war on Activision’s battlefields. Hey, we hear this year’s game is pretty good! And when you’ve got a new Xbox One or PlayStation 4 this holiday, there’s a strong possibility you’ll want to check out this year’s entry, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare — statistically speaking, anyway. Should you be one of those folks: beware! Both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of CoD are having issues. The kind of issues that make the game outright unplayable.
Somewhere in Los Angeles, Kevin Spacey is shedding a single tear and he doesn’t know why.
So, what’s going on with Call of Duty? It’s down to platform. First up:
PlayStation 4
If you pre-loaded the game on PlayStation 4, Sony suggests deleting the file (nearly 40GBs) and pulling down the whole shebang once more. More specifically, it looks like Advanced Warfare issues on PS4 are strictly limited to folks who pre-loaded the game before launch (today). If you took advantage of said functionality, that may be why you’re experiencing issues starting the game.
Here’s what Sony suggest you do, in full:
- “Restore PS4 licences. [Settings] > [PSN] > [Restore License].
If this doesn’t solve the issue continue to [following steps]:
- Go to Library, highlight Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and press Options.
- Delete Game Content.
- While still in the Library highlight Call of Duty: AW and press X to re-download the content.
Please ensure you download all available updates for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and your system is running the latest system software.”
Activision has yet to acknowledge the issues publicly, and we’ve not heard back from reps.
Xbox One
We’ve got firsthand experience with this one, and the issue is a little more prevalent than PlayStation’s equivalent. If you buy Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on disc, beware not to allow the game’s update to download when you first insert the disc into your Xbox One. We said yes, and the game was unable to install from the disc. It ends up looping between “Installing” and “Queued,” occasionally spinning up the disc, then quitting, then spinning again, then quitting again, ad infinitum. In the business, we call that “pretty whack.” If you end up in this situation, we’ve got a tested solution — and it works, at least on my Xbox One — care of Crave Online:
- Remove the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare from the Xbox One disc tray.
- Navigate to My Games & Apps, then select the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and hit the Xbox One gamepad’s Menu button.
- Select “Uninstall game” and hit A
- Re-insert your Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare game disc
- When asked whether you want to install the game’s update, select “Update later”
- The game will install like normal! Hooray!
Again, Activision has yet to acknowledge the issues publicly. We’ve asked. The company has forum threads set up to address issues with digital versions of the game, and an overall setup/installation page (which warns against playing the game before it completely installs, despite current-gen consoles allowing you to start before installation is finished). There’s even a page dedicated to Xbox One installation issues, but nothing regarding the installing/queued loop that some folks are experiencing with disc versions of the game on Xbox One.
We’ll update this piece as we hear more, but for now: Beware!
Conan O’Brien thinks the new ‘Call of Duty’ is ridiculous too
There’s something cathartic about watching Conan O’Brien stumble his way around video-game trade shows, and, naturally, games themselves. He isn’t immune to the bullshit that many of us just kind of put up with in our favorite pastime and puts it front-and-center pretty regularly, albeit comically, in his Clueless Gamer segments. Which is what makes watching him play through Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare so satisfying — spectacle is the mortar that holds the whole game together, and you’d need a crane to properly suspend your disbelief when playing. Naturally, he calls out the absolute absurdity of attending an in-game funeral and being forced to “interact” with the coffin to pay your respects (“this is a real emotional moment for me”).
Better than that is when he loses it after seeing the lifeless rendition of Kevin Spacey’s face appear onscreen: “They hire one of the greatest actors in the world, and then they give him the eyes of a carp that’s been in the refrigerator for three days!” It’s all pretty great, and we’ve embedded the video just after the break. If you want to watch Engadget’s own clueless gamer (that’d be me, of course) play through a bit of Advanced Warfare you can do that right here.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Internet, HD
Source: Team Coco
Touching virtual reality with Nimble VR’s Sense camera
Every time I use virtual reality headsets, I find new limitations. Now that I’m finally “inside” a virtual world, I want to explore. I want to touch things and feel them respond. I want to speak and have my voice heard inside the virtual world. I want to see my hands represented virtually, and I want to be able to use them as I do in real life. I very much doubt I’m alone in this — the latest Oculus Rift dev kit has a dedicated USB port on top of the headset explicitly for peripherals that intend to solve these issues. I spent an hour last week with one such device: the Nimble Sense camera from Nimble VR.
The Nimble Sense camera is a skeletal-tracking camera/laser combination from PMD — it both picks up and tracks human skeletal movement, as well as creating a point cloud of the world around you. It’s not quite pass through vision (seeing “through” the VR headset into reality), but it enables a blurry version of your own body and the world around you. Enough so that you could, say, drink from a cup.
http://www.engadget.com/embed-5min/?sid=577&playList=518495711&responsive=false
You know Microsoft’s Kinect? It’s kind of like Kinect, except much smaller. The device attaches directly to the top of the latest Oculus Rift dev kit (DK2) via a 3D-printed mount. It points down at an angle, intentionally aimed at your hands while you look straight ahead.
I was shown several demos and able to try out several myself. In one, three enemies approach and I’m able to raise my hand to aim; when I open my hand, lightning fires out. It’s crude, but the tech demo shows how games are able to use Nimble Sense’s data to bring my arms into the game without perceptible lag. In another, Nimble VR co-founder Robert Wang picks up individual dice cubes on a table. He spins them around before placing each in a cup, then picks up the cup and spills them back onto a table in front of him.
This of course begets a new issue: feedback. If you pick up virtual dice with your virtual hand, you don’t feel the dice. Your brain approximates that action using spatial perception, but you’re still broken from any intended immersion in the process. Wang and his team aren’t against some form of glove that would approximate feedback, but he (rightly) points out that a glove is yet another peripheral to put on. As if putting on a virtual reality headset wasn’t enough?
If you think this sounds like Leap Motion, that’s because it’s very similar to Leap Motion. Nimble actually created a video explicitly showing the difference, right here:
Convinced? Don’t get too excited just yet — Nimble VR’s Sense camera is still a prototype, and the only way to reserve one is chipping in $99 on Kickstarter. The group’s already surpassed their goal, so you don’t have to worry about whether the crowdfunding round will succeed, and Nimble VR has seed funding to (hopefully) ensure the product arrives as promised in June 2015.
Filed under: Cameras, Gaming, Peripherals, Software
Microsoft is slowly prepping OneDrive for music storage
You know all that OneDrive storage Microsoft’s been giving away lately? Turns out there could be a new way to put it to use soon: music storage. A tipster to Windows Central points out that going to this link will automatically create a folder for your tunes in Redmond’s cloud ecosystem, and when the feature officially hits it’ll apparently bring an additional 20GB of free storage with it too. A few graphics indicate that there’ll be a web version, as well. We’ve embedded one from Windows Central after the break. Oh, the service supposedly won’t cost anything (much like Google’s music locker) and your music will be accessible across a range of devices including Windows 8.1 computers, phones and tablets; browsers and, of course, Xboxes. Not that the Xbox One actually needs any extra media options mind you, but more are always welcome.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile, Microsoft
Via: Neowin
Source: Windows Central
HP’s slim ‘Omen’ gaming laptop conjures up Voodoo memories
Remember that gaming laptop HP was rumored to be building, the one @evleaks said would rival Alienware’s rigs? Well, it’s here — and it’s not quite what the retired leaker expected. Instead of a thick, meaty machine to match the Alienware 14 and 17, HP is putting out the Omen, a 15-inch gaming notebook that measures only 0.78-inches at its thickest point. Don’t let it’s svelte chassis fool you, though, there’s more than enough under the Omen’s hood to compete in today’s laptop market.
Like the Razer Blade before it, HP’s Omen seems bent on packing as much power as possible into its tiny frame. The $1,500 notebook comes with a 15.6-inch touchscreen, 8GB DDR3 RAM, NVIDIA GTX 860M graphics with 2GB of video memory and a 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-4710HQ CPU at it’s heart. The base configuration has a 128GB SSD, but HP will double that for an additional $100. The storage space is expandable up to 512GB, and particularly power-hungry users can double the the RAM and video memory as well.
The Omen is available for order right now, and should ship this month. Oh, and don’t worry if that name sounds a little /too/ familiar to you: it’s a reference to Voodoo — a gaming-focused subsidiary the company acquired way back in 2006. Curious about that history? Feel free to click right here.
Now you can play ‘Defender’ and 900 other arcade classics in your browser
It seems like the Internet Archive was just getting started when it resurrected WordStar and The Hobbit from floppy-disk purgatory. Now, the latest additions to the Javascript MESS emulator are of the arcade variety. Specifically, games including Defender, Mr. Do!, Zaxxon and Joust are now playable in your browser. The IA’s website says that most of the Internet Arcade’s games should work, although some better act as a “verification of behavior programming” than anything else. Jason Scott, who runs the collection, has a blog post detailing what browsers perform best (a 64-bit version of Firefox is tops, apparently) and how to setup a gamepad for the whole shebang. You know, if digging through gaming’s origins is your thing. Be careful, though. Playing Millipede as a kid may have cost you a few quarters, but if you get caught playing it at work it could be a whole lot more expensive now.
[Image credit: Rob Boudon/Flickr]
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Internet, HD
Source: Jason Scott, Internet Archive
Amazon’s latest Fire TV update lets you play a wider range of games
If your Fire TV box regularly doubles as a game console, today’s your lucky day. Amazon has released an update that lets you play a wide range of “tablet-style” games so long as you have the media hub’s official game controller; you don’t have to worry about tracking down gamepad-friendly titles. It’s a worthy upgrade if you aren’t an avid gamer, too. You can now mirror the screen of any Android device, not just those linked to your Amazon account. Also, you can bring your set-top with you from the US to the UK, or vice versa — if you move across the Atlantic, you won’t run into trouble. The Fire TV upgrade should be live right now, so have at it if you’re an owner.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Amazon
Via: Android Police
Source: Amazon
Playdate: We’re livestreaming ‘Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’ on PS4!
Another year, another Call of Duty. That’s the sentiment, right? It’s a series that’s become as staid and expected as the turning of the seasons, and is consistently a “safe” bet if you’re looking for a few hours of mindless fun in a tightly-scripted shooting gallery masked as an interactive narrative. And then of course you have adversarial multiplayer that’s left an indelible mark on gaming as a whole. Does it carry over to freshman studio Sledgehammer Games’ turn at the franchise with Advanced Warfare? Well, that’s a complex question. For starters, there are lasers in this one. And jump-packs. And robotic exoskeletons. And a whole lot of Kevin Spacey. So there are quite a few new aspects to the franchise. And naturally, we’re going to give you a grand tour starting at 7 p.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. Pacific, via Twitch on PlayStation 4.
[For the record, I’m playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warefare on a PlayStation 4, using a retail copy (disc) provided by Activision. I’m streaming the game over wired internet using the PlayStation 4 Twitch app. All that to say, “This game will likely look prettier and run more smoothly on your home equipment. Streaming conditions vary!”]
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Twitch
AIVAnet 