Claymation puzzler ‘Armikrog’ comes to the PS4 on August 23
There’s no rule that game animations must be done in a computer. The creators of Armikrog elected to use claymation, the painstaking stop-motion process beloved in such movies as Wallace and Grommit. The title raised $974,000 on Kickstarter and was released for PC, Mac and Linux last September, following several delays. The PS4 version was further held up, but we finally have a release date and price on the console: August 23rd for $9.99.
The delays are understandable, considering the painstaking process of creating the animations. “Every single level, every single character, and all of the things you will see in Armikrog actually existed in our tiny studio where we had to basically run through the game frame by frame — it was a major production,” wrote publisher Lance James. There’s still no release date for the Wii U and a physical version of the game, though the company said on Facebook that it’s “working away” on them.
When it first launched on the PC, reviewers loved how the game looked, but gave it tepid marks for the basic gameplay and lowbrow humor — and the $25 launch price probably didn’t help. However, the company has since issued numerous updates and created extra functionality for the PS4’s DualShock controllers. “You can use it as a standard pointer if you wish, allowing for a free range of motion, and you can also use it to solve some of our puzzles rather than using the joysticks or the d-pad,” said James. That, plus the $10 price, should make Armikrog interesting for PS4 owners.
Source: Sony
Microsoft says this might be the last console generation
Earlier today I sat down with Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft’s Head of Xbox Games Marketing, to talk about Xbox One, Project Scorpio and the future of console gaming. Here are Greenberg’s thoughts on three key topics.
On Project Scorpio-exclusive titles
At E3, Xbox head Phil Spencer said that all games and accessories will support all versions of the Xbox One, including Project Scorpio. I said at the time that this statement was not true, because only Project Scorpio will support a VR headset (an accessory), and there will definitely be VR-only games that only work with Project Scorpio. Greenberg shed some light on this, saying that the main reasoning behind Spencer making this point is that everything that works on Xbox One will work on Project Scorpio, rather than the other way around.
He added that while Microsoft is “not going to have console-exclusive games for Project Scorpio,” it doesn’t “think of [high-fidelity VR] as console gaming, and “VR experiences those will be new things that you will get on Project Scorpio.”
Here’s the full question and answer:
Q: Phil Spencer said that all accessories and all games work across all versions of the Xbox One. But he also said Project Scorpio is specifically the only Xbox that’s powerful enough to run VR. I don’t quite understand how those two statements can coexist.
Greenberg: “The idea was first, how can we innovate with hardware without sacrificing compatibility. Generally when you bring a new iteration of console hardware you lose compatibility with their games and accessories. So we’re saying, if you bought games and accessories for your Xbox One, or you buy an Xbox One S, those games and those accessories are going to work on Project Scorpio. When you think about backwards compatibility and our games lineup, we want gamers to know that when they’re ready to upgrade to Scorpio that content will go with them. That’s our promise and commitment around compatibility.
The next thing was ‘are you going to make games exclusively to Project Scorpio?’ And we said we’re not going to have console-exclusive games for Project Scorpio. It’s one ecosystem, whether you have an Xbox One S or Project Scorpio we don’t want anyone to be left behind, Now, with the power and capabilities we have we’ll be able to do high-fidelity VR. Now that space, we don’t think of that as console gaming ,we think of that as high-fidelity VR, and so with the VR experiences those will be new things that you will get on Project Scorpio.”
On the end of console generations
“The future of Xbox looks a lot like PC gaming.” That’s what Engadget editor Nathan Ingraham wrote after speaking with Phil Spencer earlier this year. Spencer spoke about wanting to see a steady stream of hardware innovation rather than seven-year gaps between consoles, citing the smartphone market as inspiration. Greenberg went one step further. In his opinion, this is the last console generation. “We think the future is without console generations,” he continued, explaining that Project Scorpio was a “big bet” that gamers will embrace that notion.
Q: The Xbox platform has moved forward to have such regular updates and new features coming all the time. It kind of seems like hardware is going the same way. There was a very short gap between the Xbox One and the Xbox One S, and we’re probably talking an even shorter gap before Project Scorpio. Do you see a future of console upgrades continually happening? Is this the last console generation?
Greenberg: “I think it is … For us, we think the future is without console generations, we think that the ability to build a library, a community, to be able to iterate with the hardware, we’re making a pretty big bet on that with Project Scorpio. We’re basically saying ‘this isn’t a new generation, everything you have continues forward and it works.’ We think of this as a family of devices.
But we’ll see, we’re going to learn from this, we’re going to see how that goes. So far I’d say based on the reaction there appears to be a lot of demand and interest around Project Scorpio, and we think it’s going to be a pretty big success. If the games and the content deliver, which I think they will do, I think it will change the way we think about the future of console gaming.”
On closing the gap between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Sony is “winning” this console generation, at least in sales. Microsoft hasn’t released any data in an age, but Sony passed 40 million sold months back while current estimates put Xbox One at around the 22 million mark. I asked Greenberg how Microsoft fixed that, and if it’s actually trying. He said that console sales were “really healthy,” and that more people were using Xbox One now than last year. A large focus for the company is in bringing the games to a bigger audience through Xbox Play Anywhere (a feature that lets you buy a game once and play on Xbox and PC), rather than just trying to sell new consoles.
Q: I was in [a company’s] briefing last week and they said by the end of the year you’d sell 29 million Xbox Ones versus 52 million PlayStation 4s. Obviously those are estimates, but the gap is there. How do you close that gap, and how focused are you on closing it versus just trying to make the 29 million Xbox gamers you do have happy?
Greenberg: “We’re focused on a few things. I’d say first we’re focused on growing the userbase of our games, bringing our games to as many gamers as possible, that’s why you see a lot of our big franchises on Windows 10. That allows more gamers than ever before to play titles like Gears of War, Forza Horizon, etc. From a console ecosystem standpoint, we’re seeing really healthy console sales really healthy engagement. Year-over-year for the month of July we saw Xbox One usage up 18 percent, so also really healthy.
Sony’s had a lot of success as well. I think what you’re seeing is that the console market is really healthy, console sales are doing really well in general, software sales are strong. It’s been a good industry for both of us, and we’re innovating in different ways. We’re innovating in a way where we know a lot of gamers are multi-device gamers, they don’t just buy one system, and so we want to be able to have the same types of experiences on Xbox Live, the same games, the same friends, both in the living room on their console or at work, on vacation or at school on their PC. You should be able to stay connected, and play the same games through things like Play Anywhere. That’s really been where we’ve been focused on.”
We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany for Gamescom 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
‘Destiny’ to add private matches and user-hosted tournaments
The reasons for Destiny splitting paths between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions and their current-gen counterparts are becoming a lot clearer. With the “Rise of Iron” expansion, the team is adding private Crucible matches, support for clans and user-hosted tournaments with cash prizes.
The first is pretty self explanatory, and there are tons of granular options for ensuring your private matches are just the way you like them. Gametype, map, score limit, light level restrictions and even time of day for the selected map are customizable. The clan roster system essentially gives you a bird’s eye view of who in your clan is playing at a given moment, check out their gear and join in a Fireteam with them.
Where the update gets interesting is with what Bungie calls the “Destiny Competition License.” It’s a set of rules that outline what you can and cannot do when hosting your own Destiny tournament. From Bungie.net:
- The value of the total compensation including prizes, prize money, salaries, travel and accommodation stipends or reimbursements, and appearance fees paid by organizers and sponsors to the players, teams and team owners, for participating in the competition (“Compensation”), must:
- Not exceed Five Thousand US Dollars ($5,000 USD) or the equivalent for a single competition
- Not exceed Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000 USD) or the equivalent for all of the events organized or hosted by you during the last 12 months pursuant to this Destiny Competition License
- Provided you comply with all applicable laws (including residency eligibility requirements), you may charge players and/or teams entry fees to compete in your community competitions under the following guidelines:
- Your local laws allow organizers to charge entry fees for participants to compete in the competition
- The value of the Compensation must be at least equal to the combined value of the entrance fees paid by players
Pretty cut and dried, right? Aside from that, you’re welcome to stream on any platform of your choosing, so long as the chat is moderated and doesn’t turn into a cesspool. Streams can earn up to $50,000 “in conjunction with the broadcast of your competition” which includes things like a sponsored stream. But you absolutely cannot charge admission for the event be it to watch online or in person. Donations and subscriptions on Twitch are totally okay, though. Oh, and you can’t broadcast your stream on TV.
So there you have it: Destiny year two is priming itself for eSports and wants you to be a part of it on September 20th. Are you coming along for the ride?
Source: Bungie
‘Overwatch’ season two takes cues from ‘League of Legends’
Overwatch’s 15 million-plus players are going to see some pretty big changes come the game’s second season. First up is how rankings work. The current 1 – 100 skill ranking is going away in favor of a 1 – 5,000 rating that breaks down into seven tiers like bronze, silver, gold and, at the highest level, master and grandmaster — similar to League of Legends and, most recently, Halo 5: Guardians. Game director Jeff Kaplan says that the idea behind this overhaul is to make it feel less like you’re performing poorly overall just because you had a bad night. “We want skill rating to be a gauge of where you are as a player,” he says in the video below. “We don’t want that number to be the thing you associate with you as a competitive player.”
It’s because someone with a 60 skill ranking was actually in the top six percent of Overwatch players — they weren’t a D-level player, as our school-focused minds might lead them to believe.
“We want you to realize that the skill rating is naturally going to go up and down as you’re playing competitive matches; it’s a very normal thing,” he says. Once you meet the requirements for a given tier, you won’t drop out of it if you’re having a bad night. That’s unless you’re playing in the high-level master and grandmaster skill levels.
Jeff Kaplan reveals upcoming changes to Season 2 of Competitive Play—coming soon to PTR! | 📽 https://t.co/hRXq8UU4vK pic.twitter.com/2Rn2URbb0l
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) August 15, 2016
The coin toss is going away as well, in addition to sudden death. Teams will earn competitive points for tied games, even though instances of teams scoring the same overall should be pretty rare. And speaking of competitive points, those are going to be multiplied by ten (even those you have banked), but loot like golden guns will cost ten times as much too.
In the 15-minute video, one thing is incredibly clear: Developer Blizzard is taking community feedback very seriously. Pretty much every tweak to season two is the result of player suggestions and concerns. So, if bits of season two don’t gel for you, or if you have any gripes with how it’s playing, make sure to hit the Overwatch forums and let the team know. Just remember to be polite, okay?
Via: Overwatch (Twitter)
Source: Overwatch (YouTube)
Capcom plans harsher punishments for ‘Street Fighter’ quitters
Capcom has been combating quitters in Street Fighter V since the game’s debut. And tomorrow, the publisher/developer is apparently making the penalties for disconnecting before a match ends even more harsh. Like before, cowards will have League Points docked, and will also be locked out of matchmaking for an ambiguous period of time, according to a post on Capcom Unity. It sound exactly like what’s in place currently, but that’s supposedly working pretty well. There’s more comprehensive update coming, too.
“Since the initial Rage Quitting system rollout, we have seen a rapid decrease in quitting players and we believe that this new update will reduce that number even further,” the post reads. “That being said, we’re still working on implementing a new, more robust system that will address the issue more completely by early next year.”
Hopefully the current countermeasures are effective enough to keep existing players from abandoning the game wholesale before then.
Source: Capcom Unity
‘Destiny: Rise of Iron’ PS4 exclusives include a new map
Sony has landed more than a few Destiny exclusives in hopes of selling more PlayStation 4 consoles, and it’s stopping as Bungie’s shooter/MMO hybrid celebrates its second birthday. When Rise of Iron arrives on September 20th, it’ll have a handful of PS4-only extras in a bid to help undecided console buyers. There’s a special Crucible map (Languid Sea, on Mercury) for multiplayer fans, a whole quest line (“Show of Strength,” a look into the Devil Splicers) and a ship (the appropriately blue Timeless Tereshkova). These perks probably won’t tip the balance if you’re only thinking about getting Destiny as one of your new console’s first games, but they’re worth considering if you’re dead set on the title and aren’t otherwise leaning toward a particular platform.
Bungie is also keeping up a more recent tradition: all-inclusive upgrades. Destiny — The Collection will launch with absolutely everything in the Destiny universe, including Rise of Iron, and will give you a consumable to accelerate progress if you’re not willing to reach Rise of Iron Light levels the hard way. The all-in-one pack will cost you $40 if you already have The Taken King (comparable to what TTK cost last year), so it’s not too great an outlay if you’re hooked on the franchise.
Source: PlayStation Blog
Next PS4 update won’t interrupt your gameplay with UI
If Monday’s are a struggle for you, console yourself with the fact that Sony’s teasing a few of tomorrow’s big PS4 firmware beta update features, which includes a significant UI refresh. Pop-up notifications, new system icons and backgrounds, and a few other tweaks promise to bring the dashboard up to date, and the Quick Menu system has also been overhauled to, well, actually be of use. It also won’t cover the whole screen any more, which was never very convenient.
Hitting the Share button on your controller is also a bit less of a time-suck too — it’ll remember the last network you shared to and has support for clips of a little over two minutes. 140 seconds versus the previous 10 seconds.
Version 4 is a significant across-the-board upgrade that puts more emphasis on Trophies and achievements, as well as aiming at making frequently accessed options that little bit more useful.
Perhaps the best update also sounds like one of the most boring, though: you’ll be able to create folders on the content launcher and in your library, so you can keep better track of what you own. There’s also a new tab called Purchased Content, aimed at decluttering your library.
Of course, to get these features from the beta rollout date tomorrow, you need to be registered for the public program and selected as a tester — and it’s too late to apply now. Everyone else just has to wait.
Source: Sony Playstation Blog
The Engadget Podcast returns!
In 2014 we said the Engadget Podcast was going on hiatus to “retool.” Well, we haven’t been sitting on our laurels. Over the last two years we’ve rethought our editorial mission, completely redesigned the website and, now, we’re launching a new and improved podcast.
If you’re looking for the Engadget podcast – we’re currently taking a break to re-tool it and make it more awesome for you. Stay tuned!
— Engadget (@engadget) June 27, 2014
This isn’t simply the old Engadget Podcast with a shiny new logo, no. We’re approaching it in a whole new way, and it will continue to evolve as we hear from you, our loyal listeners, readers and viewers. At its heart this is still a show about tech news, but one that is fast paced, informative and, most importantly, fun. You’ll hear editors debate the news of the week, get a peek inside the machine that is Engadget and enjoy deep dives on the stories that have changed our world (for better or worse).
We’re also making sure that you can enjoy the show in as many ways as possible. We’ve got a beautiful landing page where you’ll find every episode in audio or video format, plus a text transcription for the hearing impaired. You can watch us on YouTube, Facebook Live, listen on SoundCloud or subscribe through your podcast service of choice. You’ll currently find the show on iTunes, Google Play Music, Stitcher and Pocket Casts.
In Episode One: Your Racist Friend, editors Cherlynn Low, Devindra Hardawar and Nathan Ingraham join host Terrence O’Brien to debate iPhone rumors, explore the perks of renting gadgets, and express their utter exasperation at Snapchat’s racist filters.
Relevant links:
- Bloomberg: iPhone 7 gets new home button, drops headphone port
- HP Chromebook 13 review: a great laptop that doesn’t come cheap
- Why the Olympics need GIFs
- Yes, ‘No Man’s Sky’ has a few issues
- Snapchat’s racist yellowface filter lands it in hot water
- Snapchat’s 420 Bob Marley filter is just digital blackface
You can check out every episode on The Engadget Podcast page in audio, video and text form for the hearing impaired.
Watch on YouTube
Subscribe on Google Play Music
Subscribe on iTunes
Subscribe on Stitcher
Subscribe on Pocket Casts
Crafting the algorithmic soundtrack of ‘No Man’s Sky’
While you’ve no doubt heard of No Man’s Sky, the game, chances are you can’t say the same of the band that scored its soundtrack. That’s fair. UK noise/drone rock group 65Daysofstatic (65DOS) has quietly been releasing records since 2001. Its songs regularly stretch past seven minutes, and if they feature vocals, the singing is buried so deep in the mix that it’s almost indistinguishable from the maelstrom surrounding it. All that is to say, the band doesn’t write the type of music that gets stuck in your head. Which makes multi-instrumentalist Paul Wolinski’s hopes for the score all the more surprising. “We wanted it to be hummable,” he told Engadget.
A good video game soundtrack isn’t just a handful of licensed songs thrown into a playlist — it has to ebb and flow with what’s happening onscreen. That means a lot of looped phrases and effects for a particular area, which may change at a moment’s notice if you jump into your starship and leave a planet.
To accomplish this, the band built its own logic system for the Ableton Live and Max for Live recording software. More than that, 65DOS created custom applications for software development tools like the Unity game engine and FMOD for sound effects. It was all part of an effort to approximate the algorithms No Man’s Sky uses to assemble not only the environments you’ll explore but the music accompanying those as well. Handing songwriting duties over to a piece of software and letting it assemble a soundscape from a bank of audio files is virgin territory for the band and, quite possibly, the industry in general.
No Man’s Sky’s creative mastermind Sean Murray is intimately familiar with the band’s work, which is why he contacted Wolinski and his bandmates in 2013 to license their song “Debutante” for the game’s debut trailer. The initial pitch was for 65DOS to make a new album and, from there, the development team would tear the songs down to their base pieces, remixing and rearranging them in-house.
The band wanted to be involved with the deconstruction part of the process too. “I think [Hello Games] kind of underestimated how geeky we are in terms of the computer side of things,” Wolinsky said. At its outset, the custom software was more humble than you might think — especially compared with how the game itself randomly assembles the 18 quintillion planets in its galaxy.
“On one level, it’s a glorified random audio file player,” Wolinski admitted. “It’s just pulling from different things. But we slowly re-created the logic that can make rules, so it would approximate what would, in theory, be happening in the final game.”
It was a long process that made songwriting into a sort of assembly line procedure. “We might need to record 50 guitar drones in E minor, but because of the kind of band we are, it wasn’t just hitting ‘render’ 50 times in some software. It was us in a room with lots of mics pointing at amps (below) turned up as loud as they could go, and wearing ear defenders eight hours a day.”
That might sound unpleasant, but not for Wolinski. “It was so much fun!” he said.
During previous writing sessions for other records, there were snippets of songs that’d be thrown out because of how a track evolved over time. Those would typically be scrapped — not because the band didn’t like them, but because what might have started as a piano ballad ended up being a “big kind of mess of beats and layers.” With the No Man’s Sky project, what ended up on the cutting room floor still had a purpose.
“Usually all the stuff that gets left out disappears forever,” he noted. Because the band was writing with an eye toward logic-assembled soundscapes, that wasn’t the case here: Everything had a use. “That all kind of came from working with [Hello Games audio lead] Paul Weir, and Hello Games being so supportive of us just getting more involved.”
The amps used to record all those drones.
The band then sent Weir a bunch of audio files and “reams of text” with notes on how to re-pitch and arrange certain musical phrases. But the ultimate goal for 65DOS was to not overstep their boundaries as musicians; they couldn’t tell Weir how to do his job. While the band handled the vast majority of the arrangement and deconstruction, Weir and Hello Games put the finishing touches on everything. Toward the end of the writing process, Weir had “friendly suggestions” for more music, but it was things like additional synthesizer arpeggios for when you’re flying around — not wholesale changes to songs.
No Man’s Sky had a profound impact on the band, not just for this album but for its plans to write music going forward. Prior to this, 65DOS created music for a sound installation that had 20 speakers in a room that could each play a specific sound at a given time. “That was really exciting for us, because, as a band, we’d been wanting to push into new forms. Not just albums, not just touring, but different ways of presenting music.”
Instead of simply writing another record and then going on the road to promote it, 65DOS was able to do something completely different. “The sound installation was more about writing for a specific place, rather than just chunks of time,” Wolinski said.
No Man’s Sky was the way to bring those ambitions for presentation and performance under one banner. Combined with the algorithmic approach to song-crafting, the game fundamentally altered how the band thinks about music. “Games are such a ripe vehicle to hang that kind of creativity on, so FMOD and Unity — us getting to grips with that — I think is going to be really useful in whatever we do next.”
Images: Amplifiers by Joe Balloons; Screenshots courtesy of Hello Games
Sony is holding a PlayStation event on September 7th
It looks like we could finally see what Sony has up its sleeve for the future of PlayStation next month. Members of the press have begun receiving invites to a “PlayStation Meeting” scheduled for September 7th at 3pm Eastern. Where? The PlayStation Theater in New York, of course. This confirms reports that began floating around yesterday that Sony would finally show off the revamped PlayStation 4, codenamed “Neo.”
How powerful will it be? Will it pack in an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive like the Xbox One S? As of now, there’s less than a month until we find out. A PlayStation spokesperson tells us that there will be an update on the PlayStation business (the newly formed Sony Interactive Entertainment, most likely) and the PS4 itself.
AIVAnet 