Minecraft Windows 10 Edition headed to Oculus Rift VR headset

Palmer Luckey, the boy wonder co-founder of Oculus VR, surprised attendees at the company’s Connect 2 developer conference today with news that Minecraft is headed to the Rift. Though Oculus has yet to announce a release date for its virtual reality headset, it is expected to hit retail sometime next spring, at which point Minecraft will be made available on both the Windows Store and Oculus Store. It’s no surprise that Microsoft would extend the massively popular crafting game to the Rift platform as it’s recently demoed several augmented reality versions for its HoloLens headset, and pledged to support both Oculus and Vive’s brand of VR.

‘Roblox’ lets indie game devs publish across platforms — in a bubble

Roblox CEO David Baszucki has grand plans for his app’s launch on Xbox One. Roblox is a free game-creating program that already has 6 million monthly players across PC, iOS and Android, and Baszucki expects that number to climb when it hits Xbox One on November 12th. The app allows users to create their own games — action, simulators, shooters, capture the flag, basically anything — and then publish (and make money off of) those creations simultaneously on all Roblox platforms. “An indie game developer, really for the first time ever, is going to be able to create a game that pushes to phone, tablet, computer and console,” Baszucki says. “The exact same game.” This isn’t a simple feat.

Roblox offers a specific kind of multi-platform publishing. Games made and published within the system are hosted in the cloud and streamed to players’ mobile devices, PCs and (soon) Xbox Ones. If a game explodes in popularity and 10,000 people begin playing it concurrently, for example, Roblox automatically shards it so everyone has a smooth experience across all platforms, Baszucki says.

“We’re really trying to make it easy for first-time game developers to get their creations out there, to have a big audience — 6 million monthly people — who can consume and play their games,” Baszucki says. “And now we’re bringing that to console.”

Simultaneous development is a big issue for many developers. It takes extra time, resources and cash to create a game for more than one platform, since mechanics and user interfaces are often specialized for each system. Plus, most major companies — think Apple, Microsoft and Sony — impose unique regulations on every incoming game. It’s difficult enough for studios, especially small ones, to develop for one platform, let alone multiple at once.

Microsoft came under scrutiny for its launch-parity requirements in December 2013, at the height of next-gen mania. Alongside its announcement of the Xbox One, Microsoft had launched its independent-game outreach program, ID@Xbox, which offered developers two dev kits, a Unity license and the ability to self-publish their games on Xbox One. It also asked developers to release their games on Xbox One and other platforms at the same time, a move that drew criticism from many independent studios. Microsoft has since removed the requirement.

Games made in Roblox stay on the system and they can’t be published independently, since Roblox hosts their code. Plus, a game made for mobile devices doesn’t automatically translate to a living-room console environment, and vice versa. But that’s just fine, Baszucki says, since developers are learning valuable game-making skills and they can earn money directly through Roblox.

“They’re not just in Roblox,” he says. “They’re playing with Unity; they’re playing with Java dev stuff; they’re playing with XNA; they’re playing with other stuff. It’s not just like an isolated culture of Roblox-only people.”

Most Roblox developers are between the ages of 15 and 22, and the most successful earn six figures a year from their games, Baszucki says. Hundreds of developers bring in at least $250 a month, which is the threshold for the developer exchange system, or DevEx, that allows users to translate in-game currency to real cash.

When Roblox hits Xbox One in November, it’ll include about 25 games that have been optimized for the console. And Baszucki knows a bit about what makes Xbox One tick.

“We’ve had a relationship with Microsoft for a while,” he says. “It’s bigger than just Xbox — we use Azure for some of our cloud stuff. PC Windows is a very big platform for us as well.”

‘Halo 5: Guardians’ is good fun, but it’s better with friends

I’m a pretty huge video game fan, but I’ve never played a minute of the Halo series in my life; I’ve never even owned an Xbox console. As such, it’s somewhat appropriate that a preview of Halo 5: Guardians was my introduction to the series — it’s the first Halo game for the Xbox One, and it’s undoubtedly a title that Microsoft is looking at as a system seller. The game shouldn’t have a hard time getting long-time fans back into the fold, but what about someone like me?

As an outsider to the series, it doesn’t feel particularly welcoming. There’s a huge amount of story lore to know about Halo at this point — and, perhaps more importantly, the fifth game in a series probably assumes some gameplay and story knowledge on the part of participants. As someone without that knowledge, I was hoping developer 343 Industries managed to make the latest entry welcoming for noobs and veterans alike.

Unfortunately, at this point, the verdict is still out. At a media-only event in San Francisco last week, I played through two single-player missions of Halo 5, but they weren’t consecutive, nor were they the missions at the start of the game. I jumped right in with Master Chief and Blue Team in mission two, and then followed that up by getting my first look at Jameson Locke and his team in the game’s tenth mission.

The Master Chief mission was set deep in a cold, dark, and generally unfriendly space station, complete with the obligatory (but beautiful) views out the windows of the desolation and emptiness of space. Your mission is to try and reclaim the station, but things go awry and instead you’re forced to activate a nuclear reactor and blow the place to smithereens. The Locke mission takes place in an entirely different environment; the goal being to take out a massive spaceship called the Kraken that’s laying siege to the rocky, sun-baked canyons and mountains of the planet you’ve landed on. But beyond each mission’s immediate goals, I had no sense of how these events were of importance to the overall narrative. The Halo universe is complicated, almost byzantine, and I had no real sense of what each character’s motivations were at any point aside from “don’t die.”

That said, it doesn’t seem fair to judge a game’s story elements when you’re not playing from the beginning. Fortunately, the jumbled story didn’t detract from Halo 5‘s other delights. Yes, it might be hard to jump right into the universe if you’re new to the series, but from a gameplay perspective, Halo remains as tight a first-person shooter experience as you can get. It’s an extremely polished affair, with controls that are easily grasped. If you’ve ever played any console-based FPS game before, you’ll be right at home here. The game runs smoothly at 60fps, and exudes a level of polish that makes you confident about what you’re getting into. It’s the definition of a “AAA” title. Overall, though, the missions weren’t exactly memorable — even a day later, I had a hard time trying to remember exactly what I was trying to accomplish.

The gameplay was refreshingly varied, though: Both episodes featured plenty of first-person shooting, but there was also some fun (and challenging) vehicle-based sections that did a great job of breaking up wave after wave of enemies. The Locke mission had a particularly thrilling section where you needed to fly into the heart of Kraken, land on the ship after dispatching a number of turrets, and then fight your way into its depths to blow up the core. It’s the kind of well-executed action set piece that could set the game apart from the many other titles like it.

Even the alien-killing didn’t get tired due to continually-changing environments. In particular, each mission had a lot of depth. There’s a lot of action happening above and below you, making it extra-challenging to know where to train your attention while clearing out a part of the map. But even though the majority of the missions involved mowing down hordes of Covenant Grunts, Elites, Jackals and Hunters, they felt significantly less repetitive than those in Destiny, which is perhaps the most obvious point of comparison.

Still, I wouldn’t characterize the single-player experience as anything unexpected, nor was it particularly engaging or all that difficult. But that all changed when I got to try the co-op missions with three fellow human players. When you’re playing by yourself, Halo 5‘s AI controls the other three members of your team; at no point did I ever really feel those companions were much of a help or a hinderance. They were just there.

In co-op, that’s entirely different. The game ramps up the difficulty to account for your human-controlled companions. Fortunately, this made the whole experience a lot more fun. There were at least two sections where our team battled several massive Hunters as well as hordes of more standard enemies, and we had to be far more cautious and deliberate than in the single-player campaign. Case in point: If more than two of your teammates are down and waiting for assistance, chances are you’re going to have to start over from scratch. The relief and feeling of success after getting past these tough sections was palpable — something that didn’t come across while playing solo.

Would Halo 5: Guardians be enough to get me to buy an Xbox One? Based on the what I saw of the single-player preview, probably not — this title will most likely appeal to the (large) group of hardcore fans out there, and will probably sell a bunch of Xbox Ones to those who haven’t come on board yet. As for a noob like me, playing with friends made me realize that multiplayer — and in particular, this new co-op mode — is the way to best enjoy Halo. It’s been the series’ strength since the very beginning, and Halo 5 seems poised to succeed again on the strength of that shared experience.

Microsoft’s Xbox Beta app hits the Windows 10 store

A few days ago, Microsoft revealed that Windows 10 users could soon help it shape its Xbox app for the new OS. And well, that’s happening today. The Xbox Beta app is based on the popular Xbox One Preview Program, which gives people access to features before they’re released to the public and lets them provide feedback based on their experience with those. Similarly, Microsoft says the goal with this new application is to have fans provide early input on features and enhancements that are intended to come to the Xbox app for Windows 10. If you’re interested in checking it out and being a part of the program, you can download Xbox Beta now from the Windows Store.

Xbox Beta app now available in W10 Store – includes real-time activity feed in friends list. https://t.co/XY8lhqhq87 pic.twitter.com/Ts5RonejWD

— Larry Hryb (@majornelson) September 22, 2015

Source: Xbox Beta (Windows Store)