EA has once again confirmed a new entry in the Battlefield series will ship in 2016.
During a recent investor call, chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen was asked about key future titles for the company.
“What we’ve said is that our intention over the next couple of years is to have a first-person shooter as one of the core titles,” he replied. “This year it’s Star Wars: Battlefront. Next year, it’s another Battlefield title.”
“As a result of the extended services and content updates that we provide, it’s clear that players want to experience the games we’re delivering for longer periods of time. Looking into next year, we will ensure that our players have enough time between releases to fully explore the depth and innovation in our shooter titles.”
The enduringly popular mobile game Angry Birds has gotten a sequel in the form of Angry Birds 2, which launched today across iOS and Android. The core gameplay remains unchanged–you still fling birds at dangerously unstable structures in order to destroy pigs and reclaim eggs–but in addition to a graphical upgrade, developer Rovio has introduced a few big changes as well.
For one, the game is now entirely free-to-play. Unlike previous versions of Angry Birds that offered either a premium game or an ad-supported version, there’s only one Angry Birds 2. Instead, your arsenal of birds takes the form of cards, and when you use them up, you lose a life. In typical free-to-play fashion, you can either wait for those lives to refill after using them up, or spend in-game currency to buy a few more chances.
Stages have a new, multi-area layout, and you start each stage with just a single card for each of the game’s birds. You can freely choose which bird you want to use at any given time, and you can earn a bird back by causing more destruction. That means that doing well in the game lets you play continuously and without interruption. But it also means that just doing OK and barely clearing a part of a level, but using all of your birds to do so, may leave you with and empty arsenal and a “game over” screen.
Angry Birds 2 also adds a new boss mechanic. These more resilient pig opponents take a lot more damage and require a little more strategy than the typical enemy, as shown in the gameplay video above.
There’s only one type of currency in the game, gems, which can be earned by completing daily challenges or by paying real-world cash. That currency allows you to buy a second chance in a stage you fail or to purchase consumable spell cards that cause a large amount of concentrated destruction in a stage.
Angry Birds 2 launches today across mobile and tablet devices. The game includes multiple worlds and hundreds of stages to complete; additional worlds will be added to the game over time.
Previous Angry Birds games have had console releases as well, and, while developer Rovio has not ruled that out as a possibility for this sequel, a representative for the company told GameSpot that the current focus is on mobile platforms with no immediate plans for release on other platforms yet.
“As the team owns the Resident Evil brand, we’re not certain how we feel about this approach, and would like to ask your honest and frank opinion about the ‘Resident Evil 2 Remake’ and what the brand identity is supposed to be about?” Capcom said.
The post was published earlier today and has already drawn more than 6,500 responses.
Capcom’s intent with this message was not explicitly stated. It would appear, however, that Capcom might be at least thinking about making a Resident Evil 2 HD remake of its own someday.
“Enthusiasm for a Resident Evil 2 Remake is something we’ve been hearing from you over the years, and has drawn some recent attention in the media,” Capcom said.
Dead Rising and Resident Evil publisher Capcom on Thursday announced sales results for the three-month quarter ended June 30, and the results were strong. Overall net sales rose to ¥14.5 billion ($116 million), up 51.9 percent compared to last year. Total net income, meanwhile, surged an even healthier 104.9 percent to ¥1.57 billion ($12.6 million).
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate has now sold more than 3.9 million units worldwide, Capcom said. Though sales figures for the other games were not announced, we already knew that the new Resident Evil HD remake had passed 1 million in sales so far.
It wasn’t all good news for Capcom in the quarter, however, as the company’s online games “remained soft,” while mobile titles also were “generally soft.” However, the company noted that its new mobile game Smurf’s Village and the Magical Meadow “made a good start.”
Capcom’s video game business, called Digital Contents, overall posted ¥6.3 billion ($50.7 million) net sales during the quarter, up from ¥5.5 billion ($44.3 million) this time last year. Operating income, meanwhile, was ¥1.1 billion ($8.8 million), down 2.2 percent from last year.
The publisher has a handful of other business units, including “Amusement Equipments”–this sector performed the best during the quarter. Sales jumped by more than 300 percent, thanks in part to the launch of the Resident Evil 6 Pachinko arcade game.
Yooka-Laylee, the Kickstarter funded spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, will be published by Team17, it has been revealed.
Team17 is known primarily for developing the Worms series, but has taken steps into the publishing world with titles including The Escapists. In addition to publishing, the company will assist with localisation, QA, marketing, certification and “other business matters.”
“Team17 has significant experience in making the most of releasing a game,” Gavin Price, Playtonic creative lead and studio head, told MCV.
“Personally I feel it would be a great shame if after our great Kickstarter success, we delivered on our promise of a great game and then it underperformed sales-wise because we didn’t have the knowledge, or made a mistake in the way we released or marketed the game.
Team17 has also indicated it has a desire to make a physical version of Yooka-Laylee available.
“There is a large demand for a physical game,” said Debbie Bestwick, Team17’s managing director. “Playtonic took the decision not to include this in the Kickstarter for the very reason that it could impact on development and at the time of their Kickstarter it would have been a big risk.
“Team17 has lots of experience in physical and will share ideas and opportunities with Playtonic – so absolutely we will be looking into it.”
The game was first unveiled at the end of April, when Playtonic asked for about $260,000 in crowdfunding. That target was surpassed in less than an hour, and it went on to become one of the most highly funded games in Kickstarter history.
Stretch goals allowed the game’s scope expand with the inclusion of multiplayer modes, an orchestral score, and free DLC for backers. The game is expected to be released in October 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Wii U.
Sony sold three million PlayStation 4 units during the financial quarter spanning April to June 2015, outperforming the 1.4 million Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles sold during the same period.
The figures were provided in recent financial reports issued by both companies.
According to Sony’s report, the performance of the PS4 and software sales for the console contributed a “significant” increase overall for the Game & Network Services division.
PS4 sales were listed as 3 million for the quarter, which is an increase from the 2.7 it sold during the same period in the previous financial year. The performance of the PlayStation Vita was noticeably absent from the reports.
Sony has said it expects to sell 16.5 million PS4 consoles during the financial year spanning April 2015 to March 2016. This is slightly higher then its previous forecast of 16 million.
Microsoft, meanwhile, revealed Xbox Platform revenue increased $86 million, which translates to a 10 percent growth. According to the company, this was driven by “higher volumes of consoles sold, offset in part by lower prices of Xbox Ones sold.”
Microsoft said it moved 1.4 million consoles in the fourth quarter compared to the previous year’s 1.1 million. It did not clarify the exact contribution Xbox One made to this figure, opting instead to combine sales of the console with its predecessor, the Xbox 360.
Total Xbox revenue showed a growth of 27 percent compared to the same period last year. This increase was attributed to console sales, Xbox Live transactions, and first party game sales.
Looking at the performance of each company as a whole, Sony reported revenue was $14.8 billion, with an operating income of $794 million. This is a year-on-year increase of a 38 percent. Microsoft’s revenue, meanwhile, was $22.2 billion, down five percent year-over-year, which was in-part attributed to “an unfavourable foreign currency.”
“And we’ve sold a ton of Xbox Ones globally, more than we’ve sold 360s [in the same period]. We’re both doing really well, and I think Nintendo has a plan for the future–I don’t know what the NX is, but it’s great just to see the business being done.”
The final weekend of the Summer Split has come to an end, as has Team Gravity’s brief streak at the top of the standings. Although they’re still contenders for World Championships, they’ll have to run through the gauntlet of Liquid, Impulse, and CLG in order to make it. Still, Gravity have a glimmer of hope. They’re currently tied with Team Impulse, who’s looking stronger than ever. Both teams have secured a quarterfinal spot in playoffs.
And despite all odds–despite all the jaded expectations, Counter Logic Gaming has avoided their annual fate of faltering right before playoffs, securing a semifinal spot alongside Team Liquid. Will Doublelift finally see himself play on the world stage this time? Or will he find himself on the analyst desk again?
And, of course, the biggest surprise is the dismantling of Team SoloMid in the final race before playoffs. Plagued by drama and lack of cohesion, the team has fallen apart at the seams. They’ve lost to a lackluster Cloud9 and they’ve found themselves struggling against bottom of the barrel teams like Enemy Esports and Team Dragon Knights.
Traditionally, TSM has excelled in a Best of 5. But will they be able to return to form and earn their spot at Worlds Championships?
Update: According to the Xbox Live status page, the service should be working properly for users. I’ve also been able to log on fine. There’s still no word on what caused the outage, although it’s possible that today’s launch of Windows 10 contributed to Xbox Live’s problems.
Original Story:
Xbox Live is currently unavailable for some users, and Microsoft has confirmed that the service is experiencing issues.
Right now, if you try to connect to the Internet on your Xbox, you’ll probably be greeted with a message saying that Xbox Live is currently unaccessible. Reports have been coming in about sign-in problems affecting the service, meaning that people cannot see their friends lists, send messages, or play online games. I’ve personally been experiencing the Xbox Live log-in problems.
The issues affect Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Xbox apps on PC and mobile devices. Microsoft hasn’t said anything about when we can expect the problems to be fixed.
We’ll update this story with the status of the services throughout the day. Are you having trouble getting onto Xbox Live? Let us know in the comments.
XCOM 2 is wearing its PC pride on its sleeve. The upcoming strategy game is a confirmed PC exclusive, with creative director Jake Solomon previously stating that the game couldn’t have been made in the same way on the current generation of consoles. We recently spoke to Solomon about why PC was the natural home for XCOM 2, as well as finding out more about how developer Firaxis is planning to support mods and the modding community.
GameSpot: You’ve previously stated that XCOM 2 is a PC exclusive because it was the only platform that could help you realise your goals for the game. Can you give us more detail on what those goals are, and in what ways consoles couldn’t achieve them?
Jake Solomon: Our first goal is to make a great XCOM game. A game about loss and overcoming obstacles, with intense combat and a strategic component that feeds cleanly into that. We looked at what people were asking for in terms of making XCOM: Enemy Unknown more replayable along with the new elements we wanted, including procedural levels, new skills, new enemies, more customization and modding. When we saw what it meant to implement all of these elements into the game, we knew we had our work cut out for us. Our studio has its most experience building strategy games on PC, and we needed to take advantage of that core expertise and focus on making the very best XCOM we could on the platform we knew the best.
How early in the development process did you realise PC-only was the way to go?
We came to that realization early in development. It’s something we feel strongly about and have stuck with since
Having said that, what are the chances that we see XCOM 2 on Xbox One and PS4 someday, perhaps in a modified form? Or even mobile platforms?
Right now we’re really focused on the PC version. We’re enthusiastic about the possibility of other platform versions, but making the best XCOM for PC is what we’re working on right now.
Given that maps are procedurally generated, how is XCOM 2 telling its story? Will “story missions” have their own pre-made maps? What kind of events can we expect to encounter that will escalate that story?
We do have some story beats within the game, in that you have milestones to guide your progress. Some of those story moments have specific level assets, but they can appear within the context of a procedurally-generated level, which means you’re never going to see the same key items in the same map from game to game. We’ll have more to say about the story; I just don’t want to be the spoiler, yet.
We saw the concept of personal, physical sacrifice for mechanical or genetic upgrades in Enemy Within. Will that carry over into XCOM 2 at all? Perhaps in the option to upgrade soldiers with the DNA and genes of your alien oppressors to create hybrids?
In our story, the XCOM project never really got off the ground, and never so much as slowed the alien invasion. This is true for most people’s games of XCOM: Enemy Unknown–they resulted in a loss, especially the first time around. Narratively, this lets us have players start out as the ultimate underdog. But it also means XCOM never got around to messing with genes and giving people mechanical limbs.
How is Firaxis planning to support the game post release? Does it plan to support the community and promote mods to highlight the better creation?
Improved support for modding was one of the pillars of the design of XCOM 2. And a lot of the changes we’ve made to the game are designed to open up more systems to modders. We also plan to offer modding tools and Steam workshop support.
Civilization has benefited immensely from a talented and long-standing mod community, and the Long War mod team has done incredible things with our game despite it not being super mod-friendly. I’m confident giving the community proper modding tools is going to result in some fantastic mods.
If we do release content after launch, I hope players would be interested in what we were offering.
Is there a worry that the availability of mods may impact any DLC plans?
I don’t think that mods or post-release content are an either-or proposition. If we do release content after launch, I hope players would be interested in what we were offering. Again, Civilization has had both mods and DLC, and players seem happy with those options.
Will the more popular tweaks and changes made by community be rolled back into the main experience, if they’re deemed as beneficial?
When we make changes to our game, we generally look at it in the context of the unmodified game. It’s possible that we’d come across the same solution as a modder, but we usually don’t start with a mod and then look at how we would incorporate that into the game.
Valve allows mods to be monetised, and this is an area publishers and developers are exploring. Are there any plans to allow people to sell mods?
Like I mentioned above, modding is a big pillar for XCOM 2 and we’re excited to be supporting Steam Workshop and offering more tools, but we can’t confirm any plans for paid mods at this time.
The day has arrived. Windows 10, Microsoft’s latest operating system and the follow-up to the controversial Windows 8 (there was no Windows 9), launched on Wednesday–and you can probably get it for free.
“Windows 10 delivers a refined, vastly improved vision for the future of computing with an operating system that’s equally at home on tablets and traditional PCs,” he said.
Check out this page for detailed instructions on how to upgrade to Windows 10.
Windows 10 features an all-new Xbox gaming app, Cortana integration, and a new browser called Edge. These are just some of the changes; be sure to read CNET’s full review for everything you need to know.
Windows 8, released in October 2012, was controversial in part because of its touch-focused tile design that was dramatically different to Windows 7. Microsoft addressed these criticisms with frequent–and substantial updates–including Windows 8.1. The company isn’t starting over with Windows 10, but Microsoft appears to be taking a more measured approach with its latest OS.
