Author: dpugh007

Some enterprising shoppers have taken advantage of Walmart’s new price-matching promise to buy PlayStation 4s for as low as $50. Under the terms of Walmart’s price-matching promotion, the company says, “If you find a lower advertised price on an identical product, tell us and we’ll match it.”

CNBC reports that people are setting up bogus Amazon selling accounts, and listing PS4s for just a fraction of what they normally cost. While Amazon is often quick to shut these pages down, users need only to take screenshots and show it to a Walmart cashier to request the price-match.

Some have successfully done this, with one Twitter user saying they were able to get a PS4 from Walmart for $50 (tweet since deleted, but captured by Kotaku) and other for around $100. People on the deals forum Slickdeals.net are also saying they were able to get PS4s on the cheap in this way.

It’s likely that Walmart has since wised up and will amend its price-matching policies and protocols.

if you’re looking to legitimately buy a PS4 in the near future, various retailers will offer a very nice Black Friday bundle that includes a console and copies of Grand Theft Auto V and The Last of Us for $400.

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The PlayStation 4 is getting a new MMO called Wander, and it varies from other games in the genre in one major way. The hook is that this game features no combat whatsoever. You can play from multiple perspectives, including a giant tree, a flying griffin, a sea creature, and more.

Writing on the PlayStation Blog, Wander writer and character designer Crystal Flinn said the game is the brainchild of developer Loki Davison, who wanted to make a game that didn’t focus on violence to tell its story. Wander draws from Davison’s experience traveling the world.

“I was somewhat of a nomad for a long time. I wandered around Central Asia, Siberia, the Arctic, and Himalayas,” he said in a statement. “Growing up I played a lot of MUDs (text based MMO games) and wanted to make a game that was atmospheric, relaxing, and multiplayer. Wander draws on a lot of that experience. I wanted to collaboratively explore in a game.”

Wander begins by putting players “deep in a forest you can’t remember,” and occupying a form you’re not familiar with. You can piece together clues by looking at your surroundings, and also by bumping into other players who might be able to share information with you.

“During your journey you may also hear the mysterious, siren-like tones of opera singers, and following these songs will lead you to even more exciting discoveries, like the ability to change your shape and acquire new ways of exploring the world,” Flinn writes.

Wander’s playable characters include:

• Oren — A walking, sentient tree (you begin the game as Oren)
• The Griffin — A flying creature
• The Azertash — A creature that can swim and breathe underwater
• Hira — A creature described only as “swift and agile”

Flinn explained that each form has “several unique and gorgeous variants,” each with their own culture and backstories for you to discover. Players will also uncover “lorestones” along their journey, which will clue you in on the world of Wander and its inhabitants.

Wander will be playable at the PlayStation Experience public gaming show next month in Las Vegas. The game is scheduled to launch in March 2015, and it’s also coming to PC.

Flinn also announced that there will be a Wander livestream today on Twitch starting at 4 PM Pacific.

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Assassin’s Creed Unity‘s “No Face” bug–which was never very widespread–should now be fixed, developer Ubisoft says. Writing on the game’s live updates page, Ubisoft said it was able to isolate the issue after “rigorous” testing, and found that it only occurs with “one or two specific graphics cards,” though these were not named outright.

In both cases, the No Face bug was fixed right away with Unity’s launch day patch (and its subsequent updates), Ubisoft explained. .

“This should not be affecting any players who are allowing their game to be automatically patched as recommended with updates as they are released,” the developer wrote. “If you believe you are seeing this issue under any other circumstance, contact our support team and let us know!”

Unity’s No Face bug was brought to our attention by Steam user Retro_Apocalypse, who posted images of the bug to his Steam page last week. Now we can only wonder if Ubisoft will take this in stride and release some “No Face” Halloween costumes next year.

For more on Unity, check out GameSpot’s review and what other critics are saying.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

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Three new media apps are now available on Xbox One, but HBO Go is not among them. The new streaming apps, as detailed in a post on the Xbox Wire, are Crunchyroll, Movieplex Play, and Encore Play, which you can now download and use on your Xbox One.

Crunchyroll features an array of anime titles, including Naruto, Sailor Moon, Sword Art Online, and One Piece. In all, the app features more than 20,000 episodes of (subtitled) anime, as well as Korean drama programming and live-action content. The app even supports voice and gesture control via Kinect.

The Movieplex Play and Encore Play apps, meanwhile, offer up movies such as Iron Man 3 and After Earth, among others. Shows including Magnum, P.I. and Murphy Brown are also among the more than 1,500 titles available in the app. These apps are free to download, though you’ll need a subscription through your TV provider to access the content.

The HBO Go app is scheduled to arrive on Xbox One before the end of the year. Some images of it even leaked not too long ago, suggesting its release might be imminent.

At the moment, you need to pay for a pricey subscription to a cable or satellite TV service in order to use HBO Go, but in October, HBO CEO Richard Plepler made the surprising announcement that HBO will launch as a stand-alone service in the United States next year.

What Xbox One apps do you use most regularly? For me, Netflix is number one. What about you?

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

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Boston-based independent developer Disruptor Beam announced today that it has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding, with some of the money contributed by Rock Band developer Harmonix’s founders.

Disruptor Beam says the funds will go towards continued support of its upcoming game, Star Trek Timelines, in addition to the studio’s upcoming cross-platform gaming platform.

On top of that, the money will help Disruptor obtain the rights to more IPs for future games, and to beef up the team across all disciplines, the company said. Currently, the developer has two open positions listed on its website, one for a marketing artist and another for a performance engineer.

New contributors to the $3.2 million Series A round of funding were Midverse Studios, GrandBanks Capital, and “a number of technology-oriented angel investors.” Prior investors such as CommonAngels, Romulus Capital, and Harmonix founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy also contributed to the new round of funding.

“These latest investments will help us to further deliver on our vision of creating the most community-centric game company in the world,” Disruptor Beam CEO and founder Jon Radoff said in a statement. “We build games based on entertainment brands that have the most engaged fan communities. And, we see these communities as just as important as the games themselves. For these reasons, we’re in the process of developing a community platform that will allow cross-game social capabilities and one that will enable players to connect with one another in new, innovative ways.”

Disruptor Beam’s most recent release was Game of Thrones: Ascent, a free-to-play mobile and browser game based on the popular fiction. Its latest expansion, The Long Night, was released earlier this year. As for Star Trek Timelines, it is a strategy-based role-playing game for mobile devices. You can read more about the game through our previous coverage.

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Bungie has released a free trial/demo for its first-person shooter Destiny across all platforms. On Xbox One and PS4 it’s called a Trial, and on Xbox 360 and PS3 it’s labeled a Demo.

Whatever you call it, the trial/demo lets players sample Destiny’s character creation process and progression, as well as some story mission content, and cooperative and social activities.

On Xbox One and PS4, the Destiny trial will require 20 GB of disk space, while the Destiny demo on Xbox 360 and PS3 will mandate that you have 6 GB of free disk space. As a result, the following Xbox last-generation consoles won’t support the demo.

• Xbox 360 Arcade Console
• Xbox 360 4 GB Console
• Xbox 360 Core System
• PlayStation 3 12 GB System

Bungie also explains that an internal hard drive is required for the Destiny demo; external storage devices such as USB flash drives are not supported.

All of your character progression will transfer to the full Destiny game, so long as you purchase a copy on the same platform family you played the demo on. That means Xbox 360 to Xbox One transfers are supported, but not Xbox 360 to PS3 or PS4.

Destiny launched in September, and has 9.5 million registered users by publisher Activision’s latest count. Bungie will support the game with two expansions, the first of which–The Dark Below–will be released next month. Bungie is also now working on a full-on Destiny sequel.

For more on the title, check out GameSpot’s review.

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Most Far Cry 4 players are having a “smooth experience” with Ubisoft’s recently released open-world game, but the title’s launch hasn’t gone swimmingly for everyone, the publisher says in a post on its website.

A launch day patch for Far Cry 4 released yesterday fixes a number of gameplay, performance, and connectivity problems, but more issues with the game have been brought to Ubisoft’s attention. Courtesy of Ubisoft, these are listed below.

1. PC Crashes: Some players have been reporting problems loading the game that result in a crash that manifests as a black screen. We have been able to reproduce this internally. While we are just starting to investigate this, our initial findings suggest that this may be the result of the presence of certain peripherals that are causing conflicts.

2. PlayStation 3 Corruption: We have seen reports from PS3 players that they are receiving a message reading “Game Data is corrupt. Please delete FC3 game data.” While the message suggests this would be limited to players who had also played Far Cry 3 on the same console, we are receiving similar reports from players who have not played FC3. If you are submitting reports about this issue, please clarify if you’ve played Far Cry 3 or Blood Dragon on the same console.

3. Preorder Code Redemption: Players who preordered the game were told that they would receive an email with a redemption code for the “Blood Ruby” bonus mission in advance of the game’s release. Some players have reported that they did not yet receive this email, and some players have reported that they did receive the email but it was missing a valid code.

Ubisoft advises that anyone encountering other issues should submit a ticket on the publisher’s support site. In addition, the company says the launch-day patch should have been applied automatically, so if you’re still encountering problems, you should double-check to make sure it’s installed.

For more on Far Cry 4, check out GameSpot’s review.

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Massive MOBA League of Legends is currently offline in North America for maintenance, and it will remain that way for many more hours. Riot Games writes on its website that the “extended downtime” began this morning at 12:01 AM Pacific and will run for 12 hours.

“For about 12 hours, you won’t be able to log into the client or play League on the NA sever,” Riot explained. “During this downtime, you also won’t be able to refer a friend, sign up for a new account, change your password, update your email address, or modify your account.”

Maintenance periods for major online games are nothing new, though Riot didn’t explain exactly what it’s hoping to fix or change with the maintenance.

How are you going to spend the downtime? There are tons of new games you could play…

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