‘Battlefield’ TV show has an Oscar-winning executive producer
The Battlefield TV series is inching closer to fruition. Electronic Arts recently revealed that Michael Sugar, one of the producers behind last year’s Oscar-winner for Best Picture, Spotlight, will be working on the show. Along with production house Anonymous Content’s Ashley Zalta, Sugar will serve as executive producer. It’s also the first time Anonymous and Paramount TV have worked on a video game property. Previous projects include The Revenant, both seasons of True Detective and Mr. Robot. Suffice to say, there’s a lot of talent with the team that’s been announced so far.
The question is, will the program crib from the Mirror’s Edge TV show the way Battlefield 1 has from Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst? If you missed Spotlight last year during its theatrical run, it’s currently available to stream on Netflix.
Source: Electronic Arts
Nintendo’s ‘Miitomo’ app update reminds you it still exists
Nintendo’s debut smartphone game is making efforts to get you back into its weird and wonderful social world by offering more opportunities for wardrobe items and accessories without excessive in-app payments. According to an update teaser inside the Miitomo app itself, a new Candy Drop game will let you use all that accumulated candy (earned through in-game interactions and when you missed the good stuff in the original crane mini-games) for in-game upgrades. The greatly despised consolation prize finally has a use.
You could only use the candy currency to unlock extra answers from your buddies, while Game tickets, usually sparingly given out by the app as a bonus (and available as in-app purchases), are what’s needed to play for Nintendo-themed goods (or cat sweaters) for your avatar — until now. If you’ve built up quite the stockpile of candy, it’ll soon be time to go shopping.
Nintendo continues to add to the social game — its first for smartphones — but it didn’t sustain the boom in popularity after its launch. To be honest, it’s not really a typical game. The games maker’s association with smartphone hit Pokémon Go, meanwhile, is a little thinner, tied to its part ownership of both the Pokémon Company and Niantic. Truer Nintendo games (in the sense of what we’re used to playing) are expected later this year.
Source: Polygon
Oculus update preps Rift for room-scale VR, motion controls
When virtual reality fanatics argue about what headset is best, two arguments tend to prevail: “The Oculus Rift is more comfortable,” and “only the HTC Vive does roomscale VR.” Soon, that second argument won’t matter as much. Thanks to a recent update, the Rift’s Oculus Home software now boasts support for up to four tracking sensors — doubling one of the basic requirements the hardware needs to be used for accurate, room-scale virtual reality.
It’s great to see the support for room-scale VR show up in Oculus’ software suite, but it doesn’t mean a lot just yet. The Rift only shipped with a single tracking sensor, and there’s currently no way for consumers to purchase extra sensors directly from Oculus — at least not without buying another Rift headset, too. Still, developers who happen to have multiple sensors (and the unreleased Oculus Touch controllers) have already tested the new functionality out, and have confirmed that room-scale SteamVR games can now be played with Oculus hardware.
Still, it’s a good indicator that Oculus is getting closer to launching its long-awaited Touch controllers — the other half of the Rift’s room-scale puzzle. For Rift owners, that’s great news.
‘Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV’ gets its first English trailer
A new theatrical trailer is out for Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, the film companion to the upcoming video game. This is the first time audiences can hear the CG movie’s star-studded English-language voice talent.
Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul stars as Nyx, a member of a magic-wielding royal guard called Kingsglaive who has to protect an oracle named Lunafreya, voiced by Game of Thrones’ Lena Headey. Sean Bean, also of Game of Thrones fame, plays King Regis, the father of the game’s main character Noctis.
The film will be in limited theaters in North America on August 19th, and you can purchase it as a digital download on August 30th and on Blu-Ray and DVD on October 4th. Kingsglaive is also part of Final Fantasy XV’s Deluxe and Ultimate Collector’s Editions, which will be released on September 30th.
PhD student uses a robot to make VR feel more real
Between the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, we’ve come a long way towards being able to step in to virtual worlds — but touching those false realities is a different matter. Solving this means finding a haptic technology that can adapt to needs of a constantly changing virtual environment. One PhD student’s solution? Use a robot arm.
Rigging up a $25,000 Baxter robot to an HTC Vive may not be a practical haptic feedback setup, but it sure looks effective. Scott Devin, PhD candidate at Queen’s University Belfast, built the setup as a proof-of-concept ‘encounter haptic system’ that actively follows a VR user’s pushes against them at appropriate moments to simulate physical objects in a virtual space. In Devin’s demo, this served to provide force feedback and weight to users pushing virtual wooden blocks off of a VR shelf — gently pushing back against the player’s HTC Vive controller as it moved the digital blocks.
It’s a bit of a ridiculous setup for such a simple demo, but it wasn’t designed to be practical. “It’s definitely not for consumers,” Devin told Digital Trends, citing the price of the robot arm. “We’re showing what’s possible. It might give some people with more resources a few ideas. Imagine a robotic arm attached to the ceiling in each of the four corners of your VR room: you’d have force feedback for 360 degrees.” It’s a practically unreasonable idea for the time being, but such a system would provide excellent hapitc feedback — if someone were bold enough to build it. “I think you have to dream big,” Devin says. “Why not?”
Source: Digital Trends, YouTube
Nintendo loses billions in value after ‘Pokemon Go’ truth bomb
Pokemon Go is an unprecedented success, but Nintendo recently admitted it won’t directly profit from the augmented reality game, leading to a loss of $6.7 billion in Nintendo’s market value on Monday. Nintendo’s market value rose by $7.5 billion on July 11th, just after Pokemon Go went public and became an instant, massive hit across the globe. Since its launch, Pokemon Go has added nearly $12 billion to Nintendo’s market value, meaning today’s dip, while sizable, isn’t a total disaster for the company.
Nintendo published a letter to investors on July 22nd offering a reality check on the company’s involvement in Pokemon Go: Namely, it didn’t develop or publish the game. Instead, Nintendo has a 32 percent stake in The Pokemon Company, the business that markets and licenses the Pokemon franchise to outside developers. The Pokemon Company will receive licensing fees and compensation for collaborating with developer Niantic on Pokemon Go, and Nintendo will see just a sliver of that revenue.
“Because of this accounting scheme, the income reflected on [Nintendo]’s consolidated business results is limited,” the company wrote. Nintendo said it would not modify its financial forecast.
On Monday, the first trading day after its letter went public, Nintendo’s stock fell as much as 18 percent. It’s the steepest hit to the company’s shares since 1990, Bloomberg reports.
Many people associate Pokemon with Nintendo, and for good reason: The company has published the games since their inception in the 1990s and it owns a third of The Pokemon Company itself. However, Nintendo simply didn’t have a hand in developing or publishing Pokemon Go, as we noted in our previous reports on the company’s stock boosts. Nintendo and Google did invest roughly $30 million in Niantic as it worked on Pokemon Go.
Nintendo will produce and distribute the Pokemon Go Plus accessory, a plastic wearable that connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth, and then lights up and vibrates when players encounter PokeStops or Pokemon in the wild. Pokemon Go Plus will cost $35 and Nintendo had already rolled any potential revenue from the peripheral into its financial forecast ending March 31st, 2017.
Via: Reuters
Source: Bloomberg
PokeMatch is the ‘Pokémon Go’ dating app you’ve been dreading
If you’re one of the millions of Pokémon Go addicts, you know that waking life carries a new, unrelenting question: what Pokémon are around me right now? The need to keep trying to catch them all has probably soured a few dates since the game launched three weeks ago, but fear not, amorous players: the PokeMatch app has arrived to set you up with the similarly poké-obsessed.
The app is pretty straightforward and prefaces date hunting with the important questions: Are you looking for men, women, both, other or just a friend? Want to meet someone from team Valor, Mystic or those other guys? Then you swipe left or right as is standard for dating apps, and when you match with your poké-destined, lets you designate a PokéStop to meet at.
It is, miraculously, not the first service to match Pokémon Go gamers: ProjectFixup made a special version of its dating service called PokéDates, which ditches the swiping and messaging to let a specialist match compatible folks. PokeMatch is live on iOS and Android, and since it uses photos from your Facebook login, make sure it’s loaded with your best trainer pics before you go try to catch ’em all.
Source: TheNextWeb
Hillary Clinton’s mobile game lets you run your own campaign
The Democratic National Convention opens today in Philadelphia and there has been some serious inner-DNC turmoil the past few days involving a ton of leaked emails. WikiLeaks published messages that show party officials rallying up against Bernie Sanders, and even making fake Craigslist ads to to target Donald Trump. But the Hillary Clinton campaign is moving full-steam ahead the only way it knows how: by releasing a mobile game.
It’s blatantly inspired by popular social-based games, like the crazy successful Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Called Hillary 2016, the app is currently only available on iOS. Each user is provided with a new barebones campaign headquarters. You can build your HQ by completing “fun” challenges and earning credits (stars) that you can use to buy stuff in the virtual shop. There’s some real-life swag for grabs, like a Hillary Clinton autograph.
The more challenges you complete, which include Trump or False quizzes, the more a challenge meter fills up. Oh, and you also have to water a lovely plant because you never know when Hillary might stop by.
Source: iTunes
What’s next for ‘Pokémon Go’? Custom locations and more monsters
As Pokémon Go continues its global assault, Niantic Labs founder John Hanke took to a panel discussion at Comic-Con to tease at what’s coming next to the app — and how the team hopes maintain this insane momentum. To start, more Pokémon critters will eventually make their way to Go, although Hanke’s wording makes it sound like not all of them will make the cut. “Beyond first generation [the original 150], there are some others that may make their way into our universe. We’re looking forward to finding interesting ways to make that happen in the coming months and years.” The CEO went on to elaborate on developments for the in-game world too — and that’s where it got interesting.
As you’d hope from a Pokémon title (even if it’s not quite a full-fat game), trading and training features are still a work in progress. (Niantic Labs are also looking into the Pokémon breeding inside the smartphone title.)
While discussing the game’s future direction, Hanke said that he was interested in further customizing the in-game pokéstop. At the moment you can attach a lure that ensures more Pokemon will pop up at that location — something which benefits all players in there area. Hanke suggested that other customizations could be setup at these stops, with the Niantic Labs boss citing a monster-healing pokécenter as a possible new function. “That’s a pretty cool idea that you can acquire an object that changes the function of a pokéstop and give it a new ability.”
There are currently no pokécenters — and no Nurse Joy — in Pokémon Go. This needs to be remedied immediately.
Source: The Verge
Watch ‘South Park’ creators explain why their next game is better
Now that the long-in-development South Park: The Fractured But Whole is close at hand, Ubisoft and South Park Studios are finally opening up about its creation. To start, they’ve posted a behind-the-scenes video that isn’t quite the usual puff piece. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone not only why the game exists, how it was made and what’s new, but how they got some of their feedback on The Stick of Truth. They apparently got plenty of helpful input by watching PewDiePie’s playthrough — after all, the YouTube star is telling you what he thinks at any given moment.
Also, you might not want to count on downloadable content reaching Fractured But Whole any time soon. Parker and Stone explain to IGN that they fought against including DLC in Stick of Truth for a reason — they didn’t think that anything they cut was worth playing. That might change with the newer release (there are a couple of ideas), but the creative duo isn’t going to produce DLC strictly for its own sake. In short, it shouldn’t feel like the developers are purposefully holding back to wring out some extra cash.
Source: Ubiblog, IGN
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