Respawn Entertainment’s first game was a big success. The developer has now announced that the Xbox and PC game has crossed the 10-million mark. Writing on Twitter, Respawn boss Vine Zampella announced the figure, though he didn’t say if it represents copies sold or total number of players.
Titanfall is available free on Xbox One through EA Access and on PC by way of Origin Game Time. Whatever the case, it’s a big number and it now seems only like a matter of time before Respawn officially announces Titanfall 2.
This figure is up from 7 million, which is the number of “unique users” that played the game by November 2014.
“Celebrating 10 million!” Zampella said on Twitter, accompanied by a picture of a party at the developer’s offices. “Thanks to everyone; we love you all!”
Sean Murray, co-founder of No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games, appeared Friday night on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to talk about and play the upcoming PlayStation 4 and PC game. Colbert starts off by asking for a release date, but Murray doesn’t budge. They then launch into a discussion about the size and scope of No Man’s Sky, about which Colbert jokes, “Do you have any worries that the game might get boring after visiting the first trillion planets?” Check out the full, eight-minute video below.
In No Man’s Sky, if you’re the first to encounter a creature on any of its planets, you can choose its name. This yields some excellent, Colbert-inspired names in this video, including “Colbertasauras” and “Molebert.” Murray even names an entire solar system after the late night host and comedian.
Colbert also cracks a joke about Murray taking over the role of God from actor Morgan Freeman, another guest during last night’s show. Freeman played God in Bruce Almighty, while Murray is doing the same, kind of, in his role as director of No Man’s Sky.
Microsoft has published a new TV commercial for Halo 5: Guardians that dives deeper into the Master Chief vs. Spartan Locke story for the upcoming sci-fi shooter. As we learned in the last TV commercial, the “official” story in Halo 5 is that Master Chief is dead. But that’s not exactly true. This new ad sees Spartan Locke and the rest of Fireteam Osiris setting out to hunt down Chief, who has apparently gone rogue.
“The only thing worse than losing a hero, is watching him turn against us,” the narrator says about Chief.
PS4 Boss Talks Holiday Lineup Comparisons to Xbox One: Who has the better lineup of exclusive games this holiday? It might be Microsoft, but Sony boss Shuhei Yoshida says, “People wouldn’t just look at the first party lineup when they’re making a purchase decision.”
1 TB Fallout 4 Xbox One Bundle Announced: Microsoft announced six new Xbox One bundles this week, the last of which was a 1 TB system that comes with copies of Fallout 4 and Fallout for $399.
Destiny, Halo, Call of Duty Physics Tech Company Now Owned by Microsoft: Microsoft bought Havok this week, the game-physics and middleware tech company previously owned by Intel. It sounds like business as usual, as Microsoft will continue to license the tech to competitors like Sony and Nintendo.
THE OTHER STUFF:
Square Enix’s new Hitman was recently delayed to 2016 (sad face), but now you can watch an extended, alternate gameplay clip from one of its missions. Among other things, we learn the game can support 300 NPCs on screen at once now, up from 50 in the last game, Absolution. Skip to about 5 minutes to see the gameplay.
Google announced a new ChromeCast device this week, and it appears to be making a play in the world of gaming. Get the story here.
Video game commercials aren’t limited to AAA games like Destiny and Call of Duty. No. Now there’s a Puzzle & Dragons TV commercial? No, really. Watch it here.
Indie developer Fishing Cactus has announced that their “atmospheric adventure typing game,” Epistory, will launch for PC, Mac, and Linux in Q1 2016. You don’t have to wait that long to play, however, as a Steam Early Access version is available now.
Need something to keep you busy until Fallout 4’s release in November? A group of modders have released a stunning mod for Fallout: New Vegas that adds new characters, quests, and more than 2,000 lines of voiced dialogue. My goodness, this looks good.
Bloodborne players in Europe are in for a treat. Beat the game and you’ll receive this nice-looking (static) PS4 theme. Right now this is available only in Europe.
The world of Neverwinter is growing. Perfect World Entertainment announced this week that the PC MMO will add a new expansion called “Underdark” this fall. It’s the game’s eighth expansion and will come to PC sometime after PC.
They grow up so fast! Marvel Puzzle Quest has now celebrated its second anniversary. To mark the milestone, Marvel has shared some big stats for the game throughout its first two years. See below.
The man who co-created Rick & Morty is making a virtual reality game–and it sounds rad. Read all about it over here at PC Gamer.
Snickers + Twitch = this new video. The candy company Snickers recent pranked thousands of gamers live on Twitch by asking the question “What happens to the best gamers when they get hungry?” Just like everyone else, they get spacey, cranky, and confused. Check out the funny video below.
It seems like all major video games/entertainment properties are accompanied by toy lines these days. That’s no different for Metal Gear Solid V, which is getting this range of awesome-looking figures. See them all here.
Six weeks later, Twitch Plays Dark Souls is complete. It got off to a slow, poor start, but the community never gave up and now they can celebrate.
Someone has remade Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask in HD by way of an impressive Unreal Engine mod. Check it out below.
343 announced this week that it’s reviving its video series “The Sprint,” which will provide a behind-the-scenes look at Halo 5’s development. You can watch a teaser for the show below.
According to Oculus engineer John Carmack, who probably knows a thing or two, Minecraft will be the single most important application to help virtual reality get off the ground. Read his full comments here.
This video might make the wait for Halo 5 all the more painful–but it’s too good not to share. Check out this extended footage of the game’s new 24-player Warzone mode.
Slightly Mad’s racing game Project Cars received new DLC this week in the form of the Aston Martin DLC Track Expansion, which adds three new Aston Martin cars and one new location where you can drive them.
Whether or not you’re doing well in the early part of a Heroes of the Storm match, things can get frustrating for one reason or another. Blizzard is now testing out some changes to the early part of matches that may help to alleviate that frustration for everyone involved.
First up, Blizzard is adjusting death timers, albeit only for the first ten levels. Some of these changes are subtle–dying at level 10 will now see you wait 24 seconds rather than 23–while others are more dramatic, such as the 15-second wait at level 1 (as opposed to the existing nine seconds). The chart below outlines the timers for all 20 levels.
In a blog post, Blizzard says it’s doing this because it’s “identified that there may be a difficulty in achieving objectives in the early game due to our death timers and how quickly players can get back into a fight.” These changes should “help set up teams and players to make important strides in the games, while also increasing the importance of not dying in the early game.”
At the same time, the penalty for falling behind in the early match is also being addressed–what Blizzard refers to as “snowball prevention.”
“In the current version of Heroes, game levels 1-14 had a very large stat difference from one level to the next,” Blizzard explains. “We identified later levels had less of a stat difference and power levels are more noticeable with talent picks instead of level gains. In an attempt to mirror the late game, we are flattening out the earlier levels to be more in line with how heroes operates towards the late game.”
Now, the stat differences between players at level 7 and 9 will be similar to the difference between players at level 17 and 19.
According to Blizzard, “This change means that even if you have lost mercenaries, tributes, or towns, you can still afford to try to team fight early in the game when you and your team find yourself behind.”
This sounds like a positive change, as falling behind on experience often means you have to run away from all potential encounters until you can find a way to catch up. However, one thing that won’t change is the advantage a team gets for reaching one of the levels where they’re allowed to select a new talent (thus empowering them over their opponents until they also reach that level).
“Alongside the overall stat changes, we’ve taken the additional stats you’d earn from leveling and directly ingrained the numbers straight into the heroes themselves,” Blizzard continues. “These changes will go a long way in helping heroes feel more appropriate in the roles they were designed for. Assassins, for example, output much more damage but are easier to pick off with their low health pools.”
These changes have not yet been made, as they first need to be tested. This will happen on a test map, listed in the game as Cursed Hollow – Scaling Test. You can test these out on the public test realm now or in the live game’s Custom Games section for a limited time beginning on October 6.
You can buy pretty much anything through online retail behemoth Amazon, but now, the company has announced plans to stop selling certain streaming devices that compete with its own. Specifically, Amazon will drop Apple TV and Google Chromecast devices because they don’t “interact well” with Amazon’s own Prime Video, the company said in an email to marketplace sellers (via Bloomberg).
This change will take place on October 29, at which time no new listings for Apple TV and Chromecast devices will be allowed and existing product pages will be taken down.
Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, along with Roku’s devices, are not affected by this change. Whatever the case, this move is sure to cause some criticism.
“The real reason is more likely to do with Amazon wanting to sell its own Fire TV hardware,” he said. “That’s understandable, of course, but it’s short-sighted. Amazon would likely say otherwise since it will still sell streaming devices that do support Amazon Instant Video such as Roku, the Xbox, and Sony PlayStation.”
Below is Amazon’s full statement on the matter.
“Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime,” Amazon said. “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.”
What do you make of Amazon’s decision? Let us know in the comments below.
With just over a month to go before the release of Fallout 4, Bethesda has now published a pair of videos that dive deep into the development process behind the highly anticipated role-playing game. These new videos, taped at E3 but only just released this week, feature insight from game director Todd Howard, lead designer Emil Pagliarulo, artist Istvan Pely, and other Bethesda Game Studios developers.
The first video (above) includes discussions around the topics of game length (reportedly 400+ hours), the look of the world, why Boston was chosen as the game’s location, and a lot, lot more.
Part 2, meanwhile, focuses on Bethesda’s decision to give a voice to the game’s protagonists, who are performed by Brian T. Delaney and Courtenay Taylor. Bethesda designers talk about why fully voiced characters will let you connect emotionally with the characters like no other Fallout game before.
“The emotional depth that we got by having the voiced protagonists was way more intense than I expected,” Pagliarulo says.
Delaney and Taylor, who recorded more than 13,000 lines for the game, also talk about keeping their involvement with the project secret for years. Check out the video below.
NBA 2K16 has broken franchise sales records. 2K Sports on Friday announced that the pro basketball game sold-in (i.e. shipped) more than 4 million copies around the world within its first week. The game was officially released on September 29, though people who preordered could start playing on September 25.
“NBA 2K fans around the world are buying this title faster and in greater numbers than ever before,” 2K’s basketball operations SVP, Jason Argent, said in a statement.
NBA 2K16 also set a new record for digital copies sold, doubling sales from last year’s game, NBA 2K15, during its first week. In addition, gamers have played nearly triple the number of online games so far compared to NBA 2K15.
“Few sports games come close to providing a more authentic and fun virtual representation of the real thing, and even if this is the least user-friendly entry in years, I can’t stop playing it,” reviewer Josiah Renaudin said.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 racing game Driveclub has sold 2 million copies and the company is reportedly planning Gran Turismo 7 for before 2017, but the publisher still believes the driving genre overall is not an easy one to find success in right now. That’s according to PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida, who outlined his thoughts on the subject in a new interview.
“The driving genre’s a very difficult market right now,” he told Eurogamer when asked if the Driveclub series had a future. “The team, we need to find a great angle for the racing to continue, to come up with a new racing game, if we’re to look at another racing title. Creative ideas come when things are tough, so that lightbulb moment, I’m looking forward to.”
Also in the interview, Yoshida discussed Driveclub’s troubled launch, which he said was attributable in part to the massive success of the PS4 platform. In short, Sony didn’t expect the PS4 to sell as well as it did, meaning the game’s servers were strained beyond what Sony had anticipated. But with the launch issues worked out, Sony is happy with where the game stands now.
“Driveclub has sustained its momentum,” Yoshida said. “They needed to spend time to really rewrite the server-side of the game. We weren’t expecting this many people would buy a PlayStation 4, and have PlayStation Plus membership. Because the title was originally titled for the launch of the system, the number of potential people to download for free for the PS Plus version would be much smaller than two years after the launch. We realised the daunting task of supporting potentially millions and millions of people to download and play. The team needed to go back to the drawing board and re-engineer the server-side.”
He added: “While they were doing this, they kept releasing new content and people continued to play the game and enjoy it. I’m really happy with how things went forward.”
Developer Ghost Games said previously that the purpose of the closed beta, which isn’t being held on PC, is to help the studio “perform a number of technical tests that will help the team” get ready for launch. People who get into the beta are not allowed to capture or share gameplay.
The full terms of the agreement you must sign are available here. According to a NeoGAF member, the beta’s file size is 19 GB.
