Startup Titanium Falcon Inc. announced this week that it has completed the design for its “smart ring,” a new video game controller that the company thinks “will change the way users play games forever.”
To make the ring a reality, Titanium–founded in 2014–is looking for support from fans. The company will launch a crowdfunding campaign through Indiegogo later this month with a goal of $300,000.
Titanium is hoping to sell the smart ring, which it’s calling “Talon,” for “no more than $100.”
But how does it all work?
“By using Bluetooth Low Energy technology and 9-axis motion control sensor, Talon smart ring could connect with any smart device (phone, tablet, smart TV, smart watch, PC/MAC, or VR headset), and the ring will convert users’ hand gestures to appropriate input for the game or application,” Titanium said.
The Talon, which is less than 3.8m thick, features two action buttons, and should be compatible with games across a variety of genres, including shooting, racing, and sports. Titanium CEO and founder Guo Juan said in a statement that the Talon controller could have major implications on gaming overall.
“Currently, in order to play motion-controlled games, consumers must purchase all the expensive hardware: TVs, Wii, Xbox, or Kinect are just a few of them,” Juan said. “We believe our touch-less and motion controlled smart ring will change the way users play games forever.”
What do you think of this new video game ring controller? Share your thoughts in the comments below. More information about Talon and Titanium is available on their website.
Microsoft has revealed the final box art for upcoming Xbox One action-shooter Quantum Break.
As you’ll notice, it’s somewhat different from what we saw before. There are a few changes, one of which is that there is now just one featured character instead of two. The final box art depicts X-Men‘s Shawn Ashmore, who plays Quantum Break’s protagonist, Jack Joyce.
Both covers feature neat graphics meant to highlight Quantum Break’s time-bending gameplay mechanic. Which do you like better? Let us know in the comments below.
PS4 Outsells Xbox One in July: The NPD Group this week announced its July report, revealing that Sony’s PlayStation 4 was yet again the top-selling console for the month. That’s not to say the Xbox One isn’t doing well, too, as system sales rose 44 percent in July 2014 compared to July 2013.
Leaked Fallout 4 Gameplay Emerges On…Pornhub: Really. Poor-quality gameplay footage captured during a Gamescom briefing, and without Bethesda’s consent, emerged this week on YouTube and other video sites but was quickly removed. But not from adult website Pornhub.
THE OTHER STUFF:
Is James Wan, the director of the latest Fast and Furious movie, going to sit behind the camera for the upcoming Street Fighter movie? Maybe! It certainly sounds that way, according to this report.
What do celebrities like the Giancarlo Espositio, who played Gus on Breaking Bad, think about Rainbow Six: Siege? Check out this new video from Ubisoft to find out.
Madden NFL 16 is nearly here. It launches on August 25, and if you’re a Gamers Club Unlocked member at Best Buy, you’ll be able to pick up the pro football game on the cheap. Get all the details here.
A new Dead or Alive 5: Last Round patch is out now on consoles. The good news? It adds new features and makes various improvements? The not-so-great news? It also takes some features away on select platforms. Get the full patch notes here.
Warhorse Studios has published a new gameplay trailer for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, showing off the no-fantasy RPG’s swordfighting and more. This is a deep-dive video that goes into a lot of depth about the mechanics and more.
Kick your weekend off by putting your feet up and enjoying this hour-long Mad Max gameplay video. The full game launches in just a few more weeks, on September 1.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s Photo Mode was only just recently released, but people are already putting it to good use. Take a look at these excellent shots here.
Here’s an extended interview with the developers behind Yakuza 5. Looking to learn more about the game, including its world and characters, this is a video you want to watch.
Ahead of the start of the 38 Studios court case this summer, an initial $12.5 million settlement has been reached. Get the full story here, at the Providence Journal.
Curious about the HTC Vive, an upcoming VR headset from HTC and Valve? If so, you may want to watch this in-depth, wide-ranging interview with an HTC executive about it.
Here’s some good news for people interested in HoloLens. Microsoft says in this new interview that the upcoming AR/VR tech will play better in a small living room than Kinect did. Nice!
Curse Inc. this week announced new statistics about its Curse Voice VoIP platform. In short, it’s been a runaway success, and the company has even published an in-depth whitepaper [PDF] on the subject. Below are some quick-hit stats, but be sure to read through the whitepaper linked above for lots more.
Targeted campaigns working with publishers saw a 25% increase in Smite games played between friends and strangers every month.
After integrating Curse Voice, Robocraft immediately saw a 258% increase in active Robocraft players.
Curse Voice itself has in turn seen a population of 1.3 Million active accounts since launch — a number that continues to grow each day.
Ronaldo, what are you doing in GTA 5? Oh, this is great.
Violent video games have been linked to aggressive behavior, but there is no concrete link to criminal violence. That’s according to a new review from the American Psychological Association. As you might expect, the Entertainment Software Association has major issues with it. Get the full story here.
He hasn’t written it yet, but George R.R. Martin now says the secret to the ending of Game of Thrones is actually in The Lord of the Rings. Well, that’s interesting. Read Martin’s full interview here.
If The Legend of Zelda were a Western movie, with gun-toting characters and hand-to-hand combat, it might look like this.
Hearthstone’s next expansion is called Grand Tournament, and it’ll add a whole bunch of new cards to the game. We recently reported on the first group of new cards. Today, Blizzard showed off the final group of the 132 new cards coming with the expansion.
Developer Blizzard revealed the last 54 cards on its Facebook page today. You can all of the newly announced cards below.
Recently, GameSpot was able to talk to the game’s art director about the process of designing the cards for the expansion. You can read our interview here.
In addition, it was recently reported that Hearthstone makes around $20 million a month. With that sort of revenue, it’s a good bet that Grand Tournament won’t be the last expansion coming to Hearthstone.
What do you think of the new cards? Let us know in the comments below.
Update 2: We have confirmed internally that it’s possible to get into matches with other players. GameSpot editors in both San Francisco and London have been able to play games without too much trouble.
Update: Capcom has shared a statement with GameSpot which reads identically to the message displayed to beta testers who get online. “We are currently running an internal stress test on the SFV servers, which will help us get the first official public beta program re-launched as quickly as possible,” it says. “We appreciate your continued patience and we’ll share more information on the timing of the official beta tests soon.”
It didn’t clarify if there was a mix-up that resulted in members of the public being able to play. We’re trying to find out more and will report back with any additional details we receive.
Original Story:Street Fighter V‘s highly anticipated PS4-only beta had to be taken offline early last month after serious technical issues prevented most users from being able to play. The beta is now at least partially back online, though there’s no telling how long it’ll last.
Capcom hasn’t officially announced that the beta is back online, though numerous NeoGAF members are reporting that they’re having success playing, and one of us at GameSpot is able to square off against the computer. Only four characters are available; the two that were to be added partway through the beta aren’t currently playable.
We’ve followed up with Capcom to find out if it intended to bring the beta back this weekend and, if so, how long it will be online. It looks as if this may be an internal stress test, based on a message displayed when the beta first connects. If that’s the case, it’s unclear why people outside of Capcom and Sony have been able to get in.
Street Fighter V was intended to have three beta tests prior to its launch next year. Last month’s was to be the first, but given the issues, Capcom isn’t counting it as one of the three. Assuming its plans for future betas remain the same, we’ll be seeing one for PC and PS4 later this year, and another at some point after that.
Final Fantasy VII is currently being remade for PlayStation 4, but it’s still a long way off. For those fans who want to play a different version of the game before the remake is finished, there’s now a reimagining of Final Fantasy VII as a 2D brawler.
A dedicated group of fans have started a project to redo FFVII as a side-scrolling beat-em-up, complete with a lot of the features you’d expect in the game. You can play as either Cloud or Tifa, and you can play cooperatively with a friend. In addition, the game has support for the Materia and Guardian Forces systems, and you can call Barret in as fire support.
“We reimagined how the game would be like if it’s an action game,” developer PD Design Studio explained on its website. “Classic 2D side-scrollers, such as Dungeons and Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, Streets of Rage, etc., came to our minds. We thought about how we can incorporate some of the FFVII game play elements, such as Materia and summoning of Guardian Forces, into a Hack and Slash genre.”
Of course, since this isn’t a Square Enix-sanctioned project, the team may run into some problems in the future. As such, this is a free game “done purely for fun,” the studio states.
If you go to its website, you can play the game in your browser. Otherwise, you can download an executable to run it from your PC. There’s only one level completed at the moment, but so far the project looks very promising.
Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news about the official Final Fantasy VII remake in the coming months.
UFC fighter Fabricio Werdum, a big fan of the Halo series, will play a voice-only role in Halo 5: Guardians, Microsoft has confirmed.
Werdum’s part in Halo 5 was not immediately made clear, but Microsoft did say you’ll have to do some hunting to discover where the 38-year-old heavyweight champion shows up.
“Fabricio Werdum makes a small, voice-only cameo appearance in Halo 5: Guardians,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “He’s a big fan of Halo and we’re big fans of his, so it’s always fun when these kinds of things work out. It’s a bit of an Easter egg though, so you’ll have to really be looking for it.”
Blizzard has unveiled several of the new set items and legendaries coming in Diablo III‘s next big patch, as well as some of the revised sets that are also on the way.
In total, patch 2.3.0 brings with it three new sets and updates two existing ones. Each of these is featured in the video below–the Crusader, Monk, and Witch Doctor each get a new one, plus there are improved versions of sets for the Witch Doctor and Wizard.
Click for a full-size view of either gallery.
The new Spirit of Arachyr looks particularly interesting, as equipping two pieces summons a permanent Spider Queen, while equipping more offers some nice healing and damage buffs.
You can see all of the pieces and bonuses in the image gallery above alongside images of some of the new legendary items. Three of those pictured (Bane of the Stricken, Fazula’s Improbably Chain, and Henri’s Perquisition) are all seasonal legendaries, meaning that during the upcoming season 4, only seasonal characters can find them. Once the season ends, they’ll be added to the regular rotation of items that can be found in the standard game.
It’s been five years since the last Predator movie graced our screens, but it seems that the franchise is far from dead. Last year it was reported that Iron Man 3 director Shane Black had been hired to co-write and direct a new entry in Fox’s sci-fi action series, but there has been virtually no news since then. However, in an interview with Collider, producer John Davis has confirmed that the project is still very much happening.
“I’ve read a lot of his script and I think it’s genius,” Davis said. “It’s entertaining, and what it did is recreate a famous franchise in a different, interesting way; looking at it from a different light. He’s got a way of looking at this that makes you excited again.
“The writing is so fresh, the perspective is so fresh. I’m telling you, you’re going to get something you don’t expect and you’re going to say, ‘This is the most entertaining way to reinvent a franchise.’”
This certainly chimes with Black’s comments, made last year when the film was first announced. He stated that his approach, written with cult Monster Squad director Fred Dekker, wouldn’t be to reboot the series, but to make an “inventive sequel”. “Why start over, when you’ve all this rich mythology yet to mine?” he asked.
Black himself appeared in the original Predator, the 1987 smash starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and directed by John McTiernan. To date there have been four further films, including a direct sequel, 1990’s Predator 2, two Alien vs. Predator movies, and 2010’s Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators.
The Predator was recently added as DLC to the latest release in the Mortal Kombat game series, Mortal Kombat X. The character is part of a Kombat Pack alongside Jason Voorhees, Tanya, and Tremor, and is also available as an individual purchase.
After his video game projects with THQ and Konami fell apart, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Pacific Rim) is not interested trying again. He says in an interview with Shacknews that he has no interest in attempting to make another game.
“I have proven to be the albatross of video games,” he said. “I joined THQ, and THQ goes broke. I join Kojima, and Kojima leaves Konami. I have decided, in order not to destroy anyone else’s life, I will never again get involved in video games. Otherwise, I’ll join someone and his house will explode, or something.”
Del Toro said he “learned a lot” from Kojima and THQ, so much that it “changed the way” he sees being able to tell a story. In the case of his project for THQ, a game called Insane, del Toro said he did two years of work on that project before it was eventually canceled. Though that game never materialized, he took the learnings to Silent Hills, his horror game with Konami and Hideo Kojima. But this project, too, was not meant to be.
“Then I went to the side of Kojima, because he’s a master, and I can gladly say that we are friends and I love his work and I will continue learning from him as a friend,” he said. “But I am not… if I join another video game, World War III will start.”
Del Toro may not be entirely done with video games, however. He said he would consider allowing other developers to make games based on his franchises. If this were to happen, the extent of his involvement would be top-level guidance, not the kind of deep involvement he had with Silent Hills and Insane.
“I can be creative about it, and I can be educated about it, and talk about it in a way that helps them make the video game. But no – I can’t,” he said.
Back in July, del Toro said he and Kojima are still friends and might even be collaborating on project–but it won’t be Silent Hills.
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