Displaying items by tag: Console Gaming

Speaking at a recent press conference held in London, Microsoft's Phil Harrison explained that the future of their Xbox brand lies in the clouds, and explained that it is precisely this vision with which he came to Microsoft.

Although the Wii U was announced as a console that will be able to brag with not only hardware but also a collection of popular games it looks like that won’t be the thing. Even though they expected to present a decent match to natives on the console market, like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, things do not look so good.

Android is becoming more and more recognized as an independent platform for gaming every day. We first read about the console Ouya, whose authors managed to raise the required  $500,000 via Kickstarter and promised to bring the console in December to stores, and today on IndieGoGo, another service for public financing, eSfere appeared.

If you are a fan of Sony and their gamepads, there is some good news coming for you. With their Move controller that is becoming more and more popular as similar technologies are used across all other platforms too (Wii, Xbox kinect), they plan to introduce a new controller that will be the best of both. Sony has apparently successfully merged their standard DualShock gamepad with the somewhat newer Move and came up with a whole new controller.

After last week one of the main developers for 4A Games Oles Shishkovtsov "shocked" the public by saying that the Wii U has a "desperate, slow processor", the media filled many columns with his reckless words. Obviously Nintendo did not like that, appears to have sent a letter of protest to THQ or threatened them in some way because the spokesman of the mentioned publishing house, and also of 4A Games Huw Beynon immediately responded in a much more passive tone.

343 Industries says that on Monday we can expect news for Halo 4. It is a modification of the existing multiplayer modes. 343 Industries continues to work on the fourth Halo and they have announced that they are preparing new options for the multiplayer game modes called Oddball and King of the Hill for next week. Of course, there are also new maps called Haven Complex, Adrift, Solace and Abandon. Actually it is a modification of the existing playlists for Halo 4. Specifically, mods Oddball and King of the Hill will be accessible next week without pre-prepared team.

Large developers like Crytek and CCP believe that Sony's support for free-to-play games will ultimately lead to the PlayStation's comeback to the top of the console market. Sony has recently released a free version of SingStar, in which users pay only music and the PS3 will soon have the first big Free2Play (f2p) title from CCP - Dust 514th. “If Sony embraces free-to-play as a major way for PlayStation, that could be the key console” Crytek's Cevat Yerli said. Crytek has also seriously dedicated themselves to the free-to-play model, and are currently working on an interesting FPS named Warface.

Halo 4 will be released worldwide on November 6, 2012 but a pirated version of the game has already leaked to the web and can be found on popular torrent sites. We are not surprised that Halo 4 has already been pirated as this is one of Microsoft’s most popular games especially if you consider the multiplayer side. Users are eager to try it and they will, in most cases download the pirated version, at least to try it. This really pissed Microsoft off; they decided to permanently ban all Xbox Live users that are caught playing a pirated version of the game while their console is connected to the Internet.

Today was a busy day at Sony; they announced new models of their old PS3 console. However, since no new console will be coming out soon they decided to boost the old model. Just to be clear, old doesn’t mean that it's bad. So users now will have a 250GB model bundled with Uncharted 3 for $270, and a 500GB model that comes with Assassin's Creed III later in October. The 250GB model will be available on September 25th. Besides the GOTY edition of Uncharted 3, buyers will also get a $30 voucher to spend on title Dust 514. The PAL version of the new PS3 will be a little bit different while 500GB model remains the same the 250GB will come as a 12GB flash memory model. Users that buy the 250GB model will be able to upgrade the console to HDD, but at the expense of losing 12GB of internal storage along the way.

Nintendo has disproved speculation that games for their new console, Nintendo Wii U, will cost $100. Right now the price should be $59.99 which is a $10 increase from games that were made for the first generation Wii console. Nintedno director of product marketing Bill Trinen said that they will have prices on par with games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The $100 prices could be found on Amazon and GameStop for various Wii U games, such as Pikmin 3, New Super Mario Bros. U, Just Dance 4 and Lego City Undercover. But Nintendo said that those are mere speculation.