This is how ‘Shenmue 3’ raked in over $6 million on Kickstarter
Records, like rules, were made to be broken. Shenmue 3‘s Kickstarter campaign recently wrapped and upon doing so it set the bar for video-game projects on the crowdfunding platform by pulling in some $6.3 million in pledges. It’s pretty impressive when you consider that just last month the previous record-holder, the Castlevania spiritual successor Bloodstained, raised over $5.5 million in a similar span of time. Both games come from legendary game developers striking out on their own (thanks to risk-averse publishers) and both are more or less the sequels fans have been asking for for years.
There’s a big difference though: the side-scrolling action/role-playing game Bloodstained didn’t make its debut at E3, much less onstage at PlayStation’s media briefing ahead of the show. That gave Shenmue 3‘s open-world RPG a pretty significant head start, helping it reach its original $2 million funding goal in nine hours. And of course, it didn’t stop there. Along the way, an explanatory documentary about the series popped up and the development team took to Twitch to answer any questions you might’ve had.
The developers at Ys Net also revealed physical copies of the game for PlayStation 4, replicas of protagonist Ryo’s leather jacket and plenty of in-game content like additional quests and features as stretch goals. Of course, we got a brief glimpse of what the game looks like at the moment as well.
But how will Shenmue turn out, though? And further to that point, what about Bloodstained? The former isn’t anticipated to ship until December 2017 and the latter’s slated for March of the same year. If they follow the path of another Japan-developed, Kickstarter-funded game, Mighty No. 9, perhaps it won’t take nearly as long to find out — the latter was playable at E3 this year. For now we have to play the waiting game, though.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Kickstarter
This is how ‘Shenmue 3’ raked in over $6 million on Kickstarter
Records, like rules, were made to be broken. Shenmue 3‘s Kickstarter campaign recently wrapped and upon doing so it set the bar for video-game projects on the crowdfunding platform by pulling in some $6.3 million in pledges. It’s pretty impressive when you consider that just last month the previous record-holder, the Castlevania spiritual successor Bloodstained, raised over $5.5 million in a similar span of time. Both games come from legendary game developers striking out on their own (thanks to risk-averse publishers) and both are more or less the sequels fans have been asking for for years.
There’s a big difference though: the side-scrolling action/role-playing game Bloodstained didn’t make its debut at E3, much less onstage at PlayStation’s media briefing ahead of the show. That gave Shenmue 3‘s open-world RPG a pretty significant head start, helping it reach its original $2 million funding goal in nine hours. And of course, it didn’t stop there. Along the way, an explanatory documentary about the series popped up and the development team took to Twitch to answer any questions you might’ve had.
The developers at Ys Net also revealed physical copies of the game for PlayStation 4, replicas of protagonist Ryo’s leather jacket and plenty of in-game content like additional quests and features as stretch goals. Of course, we got a brief glimpse of what the game looks like at the moment as well.
But how will Shenmue turn out, though? And further to that point, what about Bloodstained? The former isn’t anticipated to ship until December 2017 and the latter’s slated for March of the same year. If they follow the path of another Japan-developed, Kickstarter-funded game, Mighty No. 9, perhaps it won’t take nearly as long to find out — the latter was playable at E3 this year. For now we have to play the waiting game, though.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Kickstarter
Watch the world’s biggest fighting game tournament right here
This weekend over 6,000 folks from 47 countries will descend into Las Vegas to kick the (virtual) snot out of each other. That’s because the 13th annual Evolution fighting game tournament, otherwise known as Evo 2015, starts today with world warriors competing across nine games including Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat X, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Ultra Street Fighter IV. They’re battling for over $300,000 in prize money and in case you couldn’t make it to Sin City for the show, we’ve got you covered. The competition starts at 12 pm Eastern / 9 am Pacific today and goes until the final street fighting man or woman is defeated Sunday night. As you might expect, the entire event’s being broadcast via Twitch and you can park it right here on Engadget to watch the whole thing!
What’s more, if you’re feeling generous you can make a donation to the Evo Scholarship Fund. A $12 pledge gets you access to subscriber-only chat on the official broadcast channels and “unique” Evo Twitch emoticons that’re usable forever. And in case you were wondering, all of the proceeds from those dozen-dollar donations go to sending a competitor or fighting-game fan to college.
http://www.twitch.tv/widgets/live_embed_player.swfWatch live video from srkevo1 on www.twitch.tv
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Twitch (1), (2)
‘Goat Simulator’ headbutting its way to PS4 and PS3 August 11th
Your wildest caprine fantasies are about to come true, PlayStation owners. How’s that? On August 11th, Goat Simulator hits PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. From the sounds of it all the irreverence from the PC and Xbox One versions will be present (wild glitches, taking to the skies, head-butting all the things) as well as something developer Coffee Stain Studios calls GoatVR. It’s dubbed “the most authentic simulated GoatVR experience” and it apparently doesn’t require Project Morpheus. A post on the PlayStation Blog notes that the team “still needs to do that part where it connects to an actual headset” but it isn’t actually required for the version present in the game. We’ve reached out to Coffee Stain for some clarification and to see if it’s just another example of their absurdist humor; we’ll update this post should we hear back.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Source: PlayStation Blog
Sony’s PlayStation Now UK beta is now open to everyone
Until now, only a select few Brits have been invited to try out Sony’s PlayStation Now game streaming service. That changes today, however, as Sony has now opened up the beta trial to anyone wanting to take it for a spin. If you own either a PlayStation 4 or a compatible TV from Sony’s Bravia range (and at least one DualShock 3/4 controller), you can fire up PS Now and rent any of a selection of PS3 games for two- or 30-day periods. And since it’s a steaming service, you can play them immediately, no download required.
While that sounds great and all, you do have to pay for privilege, and the rental charges aren’t exactly forgettable. Old PlayStation Network games cost £3 for a two-day rental and £8 for a month, with proper PS3 titles priced at £5 and £10, respectively. For now, anyway, as Sony said previously it’ll be playing around with rental terms and pricing during the beta. Loading the PS Now app onto your PS4 or Bravia TV doesn’t cost a thing, though, so you could always have a look at the game selection and test how persuasive a force nostalgia can be.
Source: Sony
These are the Amazon UK ‘Prime Day’ deals you should know about
Ready for some deals? Today is Amazon’s so-called “Prime Day,” an exclusive 24-hour promotion for people that have signed up to Prime. Yes, it’s a marketing gimmick, but if you’re already paying for the service — or have been debating a subscription recently — there are some worthwhile gadgets being sold on the cheap. Some of the daily deals last until midnight, but in typical Amazon fashion there are also “lightning” discounts that will only be available for shorter periods. To take advantage of everything decent, you’ll probably need to drop in sporadically or keep an eye on social media.
Already, there are some deals that could be worth your hard-earned cash. Amazon’s Fire TV Stick has been dropped to £19, which is 46 percent off its regular price (£35). The beefier Fire TV has been reduced by £20 to £59 and the Fire HD 7 tablet is now half price — £59, rather than £119. Outside of Amazon’s hardware family, you might also be interested in a 1TB PlayStation 4, which is being sold with a PlayStation TV microconsole, Destiny, Ultra Street Fighter IV and three months of PlayStation Plus for £329. On the Microsoft side, you can pick up a 1TB Xbox One with an extra wireless controller and a copy of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the same price. If you’re looking for a fitness tracker with a difference, the Microsoft Band will also be sold later today for £118.99. To avoid disappointment, best keep your eyeballs locked on this page until midnight.
Filed under: Amazon
Source: Amazon Prime Day
‘Dead Island 2’ needs a new developer
Dead Island 2 is dead. For now at least. Publisher Deep Silver sent out an update today announcing that it’s no longer working with the open-world zombie-massacre/absurd-weapon-crafting simulator sequel’s developer, Yager, on the title. “With Dead Island 2, Deep Silver has always been dedicated to delivering the sequel that Dead Island fans deserve,” the statement reads. “After careful consideration, today we announce the decision to part ways with development partner Yager.” The email goes on to say that the publisher will “continue working towards bringing” its vision of the game to life and will have more info in the future. Deep Silver and Yager showed a very early version of the game off at E3 in 2014, but it wasn’t all that impressive and the game didn’t look anywhere close to the intentionally cheesy cinematic trailer that premiered during Sony’s media briefing, either.
Given what we know about zombies, the chances of this staying down for long aren’t likely. The first game sold incredibly well, but the subsequent spin-offs were pretty rough and didn’t do much to advance the series. This isn’t exactly the first time that Deep Silver has parted ways with a developer for Dead Island, either. Techland wasn’t called back to work on Dead Island 2 after finishing the first game, but did release an open-world undead game of its own earlier this year in Dying Light. Yager’s currently working on the big-budget, sci-fi, spaceship-to-spaceship combat game Dreadnought and before that the team worked on Spec-Ops: The Line. Should the studio shift gears and announce, say, a tie-in for the upcoming World War Z sequel, well you know when the work started.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
PlayStation Now is a tech miracle, but it’s no Netflix for games
Sony wants you to want PS Now, its Netflix-like game-streaming service. The problem is, the company doesn’t seem to know how to build that desire. Though the recent app relaunch has seen the service’s user interface improve considerably, the same can’t be said for the user experience. I used PS Now on the PlayStation 4 almost exclusively for a week and by the time my seven-day trial was set to expire, I still couldn’t find a compelling reason to pay for the service — let alone recommend it to a friend. With Netflix, the value is apparent: $8 per month for on-demand access to thousands of movies and TV shows. Sure the visual and audio quality of that streaming library might not be on par with its Blu-ray counterparts, but the convenience outweighs any cons. For PS Now, that same trade-off isn’t quite worth it.
I typically get between 50 Mbps and 80 Mbps download speeds (with 25 – 46 ms ping) through Comcast on my home internet connection. It’s more than enough to stream House of Cards in 4K. But getting a 720p stream of The Last of Us (with a wired connection to the modem) on my 65-inch plasma to look like it didn’t have a film of Vaseline over it? Well, in my week of testing, that just wasn’t possible. And, yes, I realize that even getting the streaming-game tech to function at the level it does now is nothing short of a miracle. It’s just baffling to me that Sony’s charging between $15 and $20 per month for what, in all fairness, is an incredibly long beta test.
As I mentioned before, the new PS Now interface is a lot easier on the eyes, but it hasn’t changed how some key elements of the service function. Both before and after the video-on-demand-service-styled refresh, the split between a game actually launching without a hitch and it erroring out on me was about even.
General maintenance (or nefarious hackers) taking the PlayStation Network offline is one thing, but should that happen, you can at least still play disc-based or downloaded games. It’s an inconvenience, but not a total loss. The same can’t be said for PS Now. For example, one afternoon I went to the PS Store to look for the new subscription app, but since PSN was down for maintenance, I couldn’t. “No biggie,” I thought. “I can still race a few laps in Grid 2 before work.” Nope. PSN being offline naturally meant I couldn’t play any of my previously streamed PS Now games at all.
When I fired up The Last of Us on PS Now the other night, I wasn’t expecting to have to start over from the very beginning. I’d hoped that since my friends list had carried over from my PSN account, so too would my cloud-saved progress from my PS3 play-through of the game. Wrong again. Sure, I could start playing the streamed version on the TV in my living room and then continue playing from my bedroom on another Now-compatible device (even a PS Vita); the saves would carry over. But the same doesn’t apply to anything I’d created before subscribing to Now.
And sure, that stable of over 125 games available to PS Now subscribers sounds great on paper, but it seems that for every overlooked gem like El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron or Darksiders 2, there are duds like Dead Island Riptides. By and large, PS Now’s best games are those you’ve likely already played before, own or will be playing on PS4 very soon.
According to Sony, the PlayStation 4 and its 20 million-plus install base is where PS Now thrives at the moment. But remember when President of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida said that HD remasters were the perfect way to appeal to the half of the PS4 user-base that didn’t own a PS3? Well, it seems that messaging hasn’t carried over to the greater PS Now staff. When I spoke with Jack Buser, PS Now’s senior director, and Robert Stevenson, chief product officer at Gaikai (the company Sony acquired for PS Now’s streaming tech), both repeatedly mentioned first-party titles like The Last of Us, and the Uncharted and God of War series as PS Now’s main attractions. But all three of those franchises share one common characteristic: They’ve either already been remastered for the PlayStation 4, or will be by year’s end. Surely, that HD availability would detract from the appeal of streaming those same games at a lesser quality on PS Now, right?
PS Now’s best games are those you’ve likely already played before, own or will be playing on PS4.
Apparently not. Stevenson said that introducing a new title to Now’s subscription lineup creates conversation around a game that then drives people to check it out. Average play-times for the service are reportedly around 45 minutes — a result of the library of games on offer. That sampling behavior’s also complementary to the forthcoming re-releases. “[Subscribers are] saying, ‘Wow, this is so awesome and I want to play the HD remastered version of it on my PS4,’” said Stevenson. But while PS4 might be the most popular platform for the service, it isn’t Sony’s target audience.
No, the company’s after lapsed gamers playing through a Sony Bravia or Samsung smart TV, not the PS4 console. It’s a demo that’s likely not worried that a streamed version of Batman: Arkham City may not look as good as it did on PS3. Buser said he knows there’s room for improvement in terms of PS Now’s audio and visual fidelity, but added that current customers are “extremely satisfied” with the quality of what’s on tap at the moment.
There’s another plus in going after that demo: People playing through an internet-connected TV don’t see Now as a form of backward compatibility; it’s just on-demand gaming. “We’re servicing a different audience with PlayStation Now,” Stevenson said. “The service is largely designed around making sure that this audience [lapsed gamers] can be satisfied with the experience.” In other words, it’s not necessarily designed as a replacement for people that previously owned PS3s, but sold them off to finance a PS4.
“There is going to be a difference in fidelity, especially to those who play a lot of games,” he said. “There’s probably some point in the future — five years, 10 years away. I don’t know … when it might be exactly the same or very similar [to a disc-based experience], but we’re always going to be dealing with a compressed stream over the wires to you and taking your input back.”
PS Now’s target audience might not see it as a natural addition to Sony’s premium-level online-gaming service, PlayStation Plus, either. But a bundle with the PlayStation-Vue streaming TV service under the Plus umbrella would likely make a lot of sense. The problem is that Vue costs between $50 and $70 per month and Now is a minimum of $15 per month when bought in a three-month subscription block. PlayStation Plus is $18 for three months or $50 for a year. Subscribing to all three of these services separately would be incredibly expensive for the average PlayStation user.
“There is going to be a difference in fidelity, especially to those who play a lot of games,” Stevenson said.
Though it seems logical Sony would bundle PS Now, PS Plus and PS Vue all together for one convenient subscription price, so far the company hasn’t. Buser said PS Now has its own sort of packaged offering that is different from the aforementioned services, and that while there weren’t any current plans to offer all of the subscription services at one rate, that could happen in the future.
But let’s bring it back to the present reality of Now.
See, there was a brief moment when I was testing the streaming version of Uncharted 3 where I thought to myself, “Hey, this is surprisingly pretty solid.” The game-engine cutscene had some compression here and there, sure, but like when it appears in most Netflix movies, the artifacting wasn’t enough to bother me. “It’s actually working,” I thought. Then the action kicked into gear. I had to start syncing button presses with onscreen prompts to defend myself from a crowd of British thugs and the game started to perform poorly. The lag wasn’t so bad as to make the game unplayable, but the experience wasn’t nearly as smooth as it would’ve been with the disc-based game on my PS3. In its PS Now incarnation, Uncharted had been robbed of some of its trademark cinematic flair. The streaming illusion had fallen to pieces. I was reminded that this was very much still a beta — and just when PS Now was starting to win me over.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Your favorite pigeon-dating simulator hits PS4, Vita in July
Hatoful Boyfriend, the best game about a human dating birds in a creepy post-apocalyptic world, is coming to PlayStation 4 and Vita on July 21st. The PC version launched on Steam in September to critical acclaim and public bewilderment — and then some public acclaim, too. Hatoful Boyfriend literally is a video game about a human girl navigating high school life in a world run by birds, though after the dating aspect of the game fizzles out, the story gets dense and fairly dark.
Hatoful Boyfriend on PS4 and Vita includes a brand new romance option with Tohri, a character (see: bird) that appears in the coming sequel, Holiday Star. “This new content means there is a whole new story path for longtime fans and new players to the series as well as a brand new ending,” Devolver Digital’s Nigel Lowrie writes on the PlayStation Blog. “Explore questionable stalkers, bitter rivalries and even doomsday devices in this exclusive new Hatoful Boyfriend content.” Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star is also due out this year, simultaneously on PC, PS4 and Vita.
Source: PlayStation Blog
Shuhei Yoshida on China and why PlayStation can never go Home again
One does not simply get enough of Shuhei Yoshida, the head of Sony PlayStation’s Worldwide Studios. So following our nice, long chat with him at E3 (seriously, go read it), we managed to get hold of him again in Hong Kong and picked his brain with more questions about Project Morpheus. These include the VR headset’s final form (you’re looking at it), its compatibility with other devices and whether it’ll revive the now-defunct PlayStation Home. We also took the opportunity to ask about the challenges of bringing PlayStation games into China.
As to whether users can expect Project Morpheus to work with our smartphones and various video sources, Yoshida said that’s a firm “no.” Morpheus’ display has to run at a speedy 120Hz to deliver a smooth visual experience, and this means it has to be connected directly to the PS4. But of course, given that the PS4 is also a multimedia hub, you can expect to enjoy 3D movies and other types of entertainment content with the headset. “Things that come to the PS4, there’s a chance that [they] can be enjoyed on Project Morpheus,” he said. While the company plans to talk more about Project Morpheus’ non-gaming functionality and its user interface in the future, Yoshida said the focus for now is on its gaming applications.
Although Morpheus and PlayStation Home may seem like a match made in VR heaven, Yoshida indicated there’s no plan to resurrect the virtual community. Nor is any company currently developing a similar service for the headset. Should something pop up later in this category, however, Yoshida believes it’d mesh very well with Project Morpheus.
Since Yoshida was in Hong Kong to meet both the local media and those from mainland China, I asked him about what it takes to bring PlayStation games into the Middle Kingdom where censorship is the norm. The exec wasn’t afraid to admit that “it’s a big challenge,” partly because it takes a long time to get games approved. But his team is trying to work very closely with the authorities to better understand their requirements. “It’s a learning experience as of now,” he said.
So far, the general rule is to keep the games family friendly, which is why the likes of LittleBigPlanet 3, Final Fantasy X | X-2 HD, Driveclub, Knack, Rayman Legends, Dynasty Warriors 8 and more have made the short list of 12 games. It’s been an even bigger struggle for the PS Vita, which only has eight approved games right now, of which Farming Simulator 14 is one. But as we all know, there’s no stopping Chinese gamers from obtaining their favorite titles through other means.
AIVAnet 