Yager Productions, a sub-division within Spec Ops: The Line studio Yager Developments, has filed for insolvency, following the dissolution of its partnership with Deep Silver for Dead Island 2.
In a statement made by managing director Timo Ullmann said the move was a necessary to reorganise the studio and to protect its staff.
“As single-purpose company, Yager Productions GmbH was assigned to the development of the Deep Silver title Dead Island 2,” he said. “The insolvency filing is a direct result from the early termination of the project and helps protecting our staff. In the course of the proceedings, we gain time to sort out the best options for reorganizing this entity.”
Ulmann’s statements indicate that Yager Development as a whole is safe, and the insolvency is specifically targeted at the part of the studio set up to develop Dead Island 2.
“With Dead Island 2, Deep Silver has always been dedicated to delivering the sequel that Dead Island fans deserve,” it said in a statement. “After careful consideration, today we announce the decision to part ways with development partner Yager.
“We will continue working towards bringing our vision of Dead Island 2 to life, and we will share further information at a later stage.”
“Our team is made of the best creative minds and tech specialists, who all share a common identity. The team worked with enthusiasm to take Dead Island 2 to a new level of quality,” he explained. “However, Yager and Deep Silver’s respective visions of the project fell out of alignment, which led to the decision that has been made.”
Yager is currently working on Dreadnought, a flight combat simulator with Grey Box attached as publisher. Ulmann previously said the studio will “focus current efforts on Dreadnought”, along with “new projects.”
Though it’s not something Microsoft has any official plans for yet, the company has again said that PC-to-Xbox One game streaming is something it hopes to introduce someday. If PC-to-Xbox One streaming does ever come to fruition, it would require keyboard and mouse support on Xbox One, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said in a new interview.
“In terms of where we want to go with our platform, those are absolutely in scope of things that we want to do,” the Head of Xbox told The Verge.
With Windows 10’s launch today, July 29, streaming from Xbox One to PC is now available. Spencer said this approach is much more predictable “because we know exactly what you have.” Streaming from PC to Xbox One, on the other hand, presents its own set of challenges.
“It’s actually a little more challenging doing the encoding on the PC side to the Xbox, but challenge is good,” Spencer said.
He did not provide a timetable, or even an estimate of a timetable, for when PC-to-Xbox One streaming may become available. But clearly, Microsoft is interested in this space.
Back in January, Spencer said PC-to-Xbox One streaming is something that Microsoft was “really looking at.”
“People ask about the streaming in the opposite direction–can I stream from my PC to my Xbox?–and I’ll just say it’s something that we’re really looking at,” Spencer said at the time. “If you think about that vision–my games are my games wherever I am, and I can play with whoever I want to play with–we want to be able to land solutions that are as native as the one we showed there. We just have to kind of work with the physics of time and work it through.”
Nintendo has reported an increase in sales and operating income for the three months between April and June 2015.
The company reported sales for the quarter were $730 million, which is an increase of 20 percent compared to the same period last year. Nintendo’s operating income, meanwhile, was $9.2 million, which is also up on the $76.5 million for the same period last year.
According to Nintendo, Splatoon, which it says “contributed to vitalizing the Wii U platform,” and “favourable sales” of its Amiibo figures contributed to the company’s improved performance.
For the Wii U, Nintendo is aiming to “maintain the performance of already-released titles with strong sales potential by introducing additional download content,” as well as relying on titles such as Super Mario Maker, Star Fox Zero and Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash.
The line of available Amiibo “will continue to expand,” and at the same time Nintendo is aiming to “stimulate demand from owners of the Nintendo 3DS by releasing the NFC Reader/Writer accessory.”
Smartphones applications were also mentioned as an expected new source of revenue.
Quirky team-based Wii U shooter Splatoon has sold 1.6 million unites worldwide, Nintendo has revealed.
In an earnings report for April to June 2015, the platform holder said the game “enjoyed a good start” and the Nintendo will “strive to further enhance the sales towards the year-end season.”
According to the information provided, sales of Splatoon in Japan reached 490,000 units, while the rest of the world accounted for 1.1 million units.
“With respect to Wii U, Splatoon, which was released globally in May and gathered attention, marked 1.62 million units in sales and contributed to vitalizing the Wii U platform,” Nintendo said in a statement.
“Since Splatoon launched on May 29, it has been great to see so many players competing in online matches,” said Nintendo of Europe president Satoru Shibata at the time.
“We are pleased this new Wii U exclusive game is capturing the imagination of so many fans across Europe, and look forward to bringing more exclusive titles to both Wii U and Nintendo 3DS this year.”
GameSpot’s Splatoon review described the game as “the antithesis to the modern shooter,” but added that it “primarily deserves recognition for what it is, not what it isn’t.”
“It’s a wonderful game with charm and inventive ideas that work and pave the way for new experiences in an otherwise stale category of games.”
A teaser image released on Twitter teases the location and time period for Mafia 3, though 2K has yet to confirm the information. We also see some people backlit by headlights in cars.
More information about Mafia will be announced during Gamescom in August. GameSpot will be on the ground at the German gaming event to bring you all the news as it happens.
Today’s official announcement of Mafia 3 comes after years of rumors and speculation about it. In March 2012, it was reported that Mafia 2 developer 2K Czech working on a third entry in the series. At the time, the studio had supposedly entered full development on Mafia 3 following a year of pre-production work.
“Might have some Mafia news very soon,” he said on Twitter at the time. To another, who bluntly said, “make Mafia 3,” Pasqualone replied: “Might have some exciting news very soon.”
2K Games parent company Take-Two Interactive said in March 2013 that it had an “extensive pipeline” of unannounced games in development.
What are you hoping to see from Mafia 3? Let us know in the comments below.
If you’ve played an XCOM game in the past, then you know the chryssalid, the most frightening-looking alien the games depict. In XCOM 2‘s multiplayer, you will get the chance to command one of these extraterrestrial meanies for yourself, but most of the time, you will face a chryssalid as an opponent. Developer Firaxis hopes to make this gruesome unit an even more intimidating force in the upcoming strategy sequel, and lead producer Garth DeAngelis recently divulged how the team is doing just that.
GAMESPOT: So the chryssalid returns, but outside of multiplayer, there’s no chance of somehow recruiting one to join the XCOM forces, I presume?
DEANGELIS: The chryssalid is very much still one of the alien occupiers of Earth. They are against XCOM. They will never become a part of your army.
We had to have them come back. They’ve been a staple of XCOM, harkening back to the original UFO defense. A couple of decades have taken place since you lost in Enemy Unknown. A lot of the enemies have evolved. Now, the chryssalid, they’re a little bit too crazy of a species to integrate human DNA into them, but they have evolved. They’ve received some upgrades. What they did in Enemy Unknown, is they implanted XCOM with something that would then breed another chryssalid out of them, if you remember. It was a pretty terrifying sequence. Design said, “How can we make this crazier?”
Now they’ve become even more poisonous. They can’t just poison you with the Chryssalid Kiss as they did with Enemy Unknown. Every time they strike you, the tips of their claws have a poison on them. You can receive a chryssalid poison effect with any attack. If you happen to die while that chryssalid poison attack is active, then the soldier that died, or the civilian, can then enter this gestation period, and they will become a cocoon. If that cocoon does not get destroyed by XCOM within a to-be-determined amount of turns, then three chryssalids can pop out. We now have chryssalids running more rampant than in Enemy Unknown. They found a way to breed faster, to multiply more. It is very terrifying to now see chryssalids on a mission. Certainly, if there are civilians nearby too, these things can multiply like crazy.
Of course, design-wise, we had to do a few tweaks that are happening now to make sure that it’s not unfair. I think if people hear three chryssalids at the same exact hit points that we had in Enemy Unknown, it was enough trouble dealing with them what they were. They’re a little bit more brittle in XCOM 2. They can be taken down a little bit easier, but it is overwhelming just to see the sheer number of volume that can come at you if you allow them to go through this cocoon process.
That’s not the only thing they can do. They can do one other really cool thing. What else would make a chryssalid more terrifying? If they could disappear. Now they can actually burrow underground. When you’re walking through maps, you don’t know where they are, if they’ve burrowed underground. We will have counterplay that we’re not talking about now through items and gear to be able to get in front of that if you choose to, but at any moment, and this actually happened to me the other day, you’re walking along, and a chryssalid literally jumped out of the ground and took me down. I had no idea they were there. They are nightmarish. They are very terrifying. We wanted to push them further. We love them as an iconic alien in XCOM franchise, and those are the things that they can do.
You’re saying they’re terrifying and now obviously that they can burrow underground, and that just adds another element to that. But I think of something like a cliff racer, if you’ve ever played Morrowind, and there’s a fine line between, “Oh, my god, that’s horrifying. I want to avoid its attack,” and, “Wow, this is super annoying and I hate it. I’m pressing the off switch.” What are the lines do you think in creating the chryssalid in this way between “we want to challenge the player, but we don’t want to annoy the player?”
It’s also more challenging because everyone has different opinions with their personal play experience, and how they play, and how something felt to them psychologically. We think we did a fairly good job with the chryssalid overall. It was terrifying, that high move distance. It was deadly if it got close, but you had solid counterplay to take care of it. You generally had a chance to retreat. Overwatch was very effective against it. In Enemy Within, you had things like the proximity mine. You had ways to really counter against it. We need to push those things forward with X2. That’s what I was alluding to with the burrow. You will have counterplay for it.
We’ve done things like nerf the hit points a little bit on the baseline chryssalid to make sure that since they can now spawn into three instead of one it is not unreasonable. That all comes with playtesting and talking with design and hearing people’s experiences internally to make sure that we have that just right. You’re absolutely right. That’s paramount. You can’t push these things to a point where it’s a very fine precipice between challenging fun and, ‘You know what? I don’t want to go back into that game.’ We have to be super cognizant of that.
How will we be able to put these abilities to use in multiplayer?
It’s pretty straightforward. We’re pretty excited about giving the players the tools for everything they encounter in the game. Then you can make your dream team. They will have costs based on the units that you choose, and then you’ll have some chances with soldiers who select different abilities and items at different costs. Things like the chryssalid, you’ll be able to include that in your loadout, and then use burrow, and if you kill somebody with a chryssalid poison, you can then choose to multiply. You’ll have more chryssalids. That sort of stuff is intact.
I’m curious, in a multiplayer scenario, about that burrow and how that ends up being used against other soldiers. What is it like to play as the chryssalid and use that particular ability? What are the kinds of surprises you would spring upon an enemy in that case?
You kind of think about it like the seeker, how if you go invisible with the seeker using Ghost Armor, it’s just thematically now you’re going underground, and you can’t move while you’re invisible. You want to set it up as an anticipatory tactic where you see your opponent potentially move towards, and then you’ll get a free attack on them if they move within this radius. That’s a way to use it. You can unburrow anytime you want, but it’s a nice way to ambush the player with the enemy with that specific skill.
Come back to GameSpot tomorrow (5am PT, July 29 2015) for the next in our series of XCOM 2 exclusives, an interview with series creative director Jake Solomon.
2K’s upcoming professional wrestling game WWE 2K16 will let you play as Arnord Schwarzenegger’s Terminator from the original movies. No, really.
Everyone who preorders will receive two playable model T-800s. The first is based on the Terminator model from the 1984 original movie, while the second is from 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
We don’t have screenshots yet, but 2K has published a great little video that shows off Schwarzenegger recreating the bar scene from Terminator 2. Good stuff.
Blizzard Entertainment will hold a press conference at Gamescom next month in Germany, the World of Warcraft and Diablo developer has reportedly announced. French fansite Mamytwink (via Wowhead) has obtained an invitation to the presentation, which will supposedly be held on August 5.
According to the invitation, the briefing will kick off at 12 Noon Germany time, which comes out to 3 AM PDT / 6 AM EDT. May want to brew some strong coffee.
Unfortunately for fans, there is nothing else to go on at the moment. We also do not know yet if the briefing will be streamed live; we’ve followed up with Blizzard in an attempt to get more details.
If Blizzard were to make a big announcement at Gamescom, it wouldn’t be the first time the company had done so. During Blizzard’s 2013 Gamescom briefing, the developer announced Diablo III’s Reaper of Souls expansion.
There will also be Blizzard-themed dance and costume competitions.
What are you hoping to see from Blizzard at Gamescom next month? Let us know in the comments below. The show itself runs August 5-9, and GameSpot will be reporting from the event all week long.
In the world of XCOM, much has changed by the time XCOM 2 begins. Most notably, the aliens won. XCOM is now an underground movement that wages guerrilla warfare against humanity’s not-so-benevolent oppressors, and with a new approach comes new kinds of soldiers, and new kinds of skills. A few weeks ago, I sat down with XCOM 2 lead producer Garth DeAngelis to uncover the details of the sharpshooter class, which functions as somewhat of a sniper–but with a twist.
GAMESPOT: First, give me a rundown of the basics. What is a sharpshooter’s role in battle?
DEANGELIS: The sharpshooter is an evolution of the sniper. The sniper was a very powerful unit in Enemy Unknown. As you know, it was the long-range, high damage dealing unit. They could become demigods by the end of the game, when you’re flying all over the place, and using [skills like] In The Zone and Double Tap and all that good stuff, where you’re chaining shots together. We said we still want the player to still be playing with a sniper rifle. They’re great. There’s a lot of fun there. You need that class there to balance across the different mechanics of each class. But now we have an appealing second perk tree that was not just purely, ‘let’s max out our sniper, and make them this long-range, high damage dealer.’
That’s why they’re not called a sniper. You can choose to specialize in the sniper rifle or you can actually specialize in pistols. Pistols now have become this very appealing weapon that the sharpshooter can use in new and interesting ways, unlike any ways that you used in Enemy Unknown. The perk tree is broken up in that way. There’s some pretty interesting decisions early game where it’s not a no-brainer to just go down the sniper path.
Is there a danger in spreading myself too thin? Could I find myself too weak by endgame to really deal with the things coming my way?
No. The designers do a great job of making sure that the classes are as flexible as possible, and that’s what I love about them so much. There isn’t a wrong choice, and it’s also not a binary choice. You don’t have to be a sniper or a gunslinger. You can mix and match the abilities similarly to Enemy Unknown, but each path now has a more discrete definition of what you can become. Mixing them, I personally love doing. Some people like going full sniper. Some people like going full gunslinger. I really do like mixing them and becoming this hybrid sharpshooter. It’s pretty cool to be able to wield both a sniper rifle and a pistol effectively, and then you can combo abilities from each tree together in these pretty unique ways.
There’s a new sniper ability called Death From Above, which allows you to get an extra action when you kill an enemy at a lower level than you. That’s on the sniper tree. Then if you have the pistol ability, Fan Fire, you can then use that free action to use Fan Fire with your pistol after using your sniper rifle. What Fan Fire does is it lets you shoot three times at a single target. Those are relatively early, mid-game abilities that you can already see how you can have these really powerful chain attacks, mixing and matching going down both trees.
As you mentioned, in the last game, if you were a sniper, you could became a demigod by the end of it. What have you guys done, if I continue to go down that path and just have my pure sniper, to alleviate that particular issue?
It’s funny. We’ve talked about that internally on the surface as an issue. When you purely talk about late-game balance and that victory lap, but it’s not as black-and-white as it seems. In XCOM, you want the player to feel like they have surpassed the enemy by the endgame. While design is doing a great job in making sure that that’s balanced and tighter by endgame, we don’t want the player to feel like they’re always step behind.
At some point in an XCOM campaign, we want you to feel like you are running wild. You are overrunning enemies. It can be debated that with some of the late-game sniper abilities that happened maybe a bit too easily by endgame for Enemy Unknown. At the same time, it was damn fun, and it’s a great reward for the player to build up to that point as well.
I’m curious about the cinematic camera aspect of mixing together these various abilities. Have you guys taken the opportunity to make things that sound really acrobatic when you talk about them actually look acrobatic on the screen?
You’re not going to have perfect line of sight relative to what you’re seeing in geometry, but the system is very accurate with respect to which unit should see which unit.
It’s a big challenge with such an open ended game. It’s a similar problem with Fallout. We’re not a linear corridor shooter where you can have placed cameras and you know exactly where this thing is going to happen at this time. When you have those constraints, because the foundation of the game is driven by the mechanics and the design and wanting to give the player an open ended experience, you’re going to have to sacrifice a little bit with cameras.
I think the team did a fantastic job with those constraints to still make them feel very cinematic. There’s a lot of blending between our placed cinematic cameras and programmatic cameras because the game is so procedural. It’s a big challenge because XCOM 2 is even more procedural. We have procedural maps now, procedural objectives. We have no idea where the geometry is going to be in a map because you’ll never see the same layout twice. We did have to have a very flexible camera system. We have our cinematic artists paired with a few engineers to try to account for scenarios where there would be collision in the way or the camera does feel a little bit more dry, to still make it as impactful as possible. They did a really great job with that. We have now seamless cameras from over the shoulder targeting into this glorious final kill sequence. We have these awesome cuts similar to Enemy Unknown, but with even more variety.
We have way more ability cameras, so when the aliens do their terrifying things, in Enemy Unknown, they didn’t cut down that often. Now, we have art-placed cameras. If the Sectoid does a mind wipe, for instance, you will see the Sectoid in all of his glory up close, with an art-placed camera so it’s framed really well. Those sorts of things, we’re pretty excited about.
When I think about something like the sharpshooter, I think of line of sight, especially when you have procedurally generated maps. In the previous XCOMs, there seemed to be a little bit of disagreement about whether this was actually working, this true line of sight, or whether there was actually a little bit of clipping or cheating going on. What have you guys done to address any concerns that we might have regarding the true line of sight that a sharpshooter might be engaging with?
That’s a big can of worms with line of sight. That’s obviously a crazy complex system, and just very naively, the way it works is that there is a ray trace from the head of the unit that’s shooting at you. If that trace hits where the enemy unit can peek from out of cover, then you have line of sight to them. Mechanically, we need that because that allows the most targets when they’re within your fog of war.
However, sometimes that would lead to some visual collision issues where it doesn’t look like real line of sight because it looks like an enemy is behind a wall. In fact, when he steps out, he’s targetable. Again, it’s this fine line where when we toned back on that, it might have looked more realistic with respect to one-to-one for what is physically in the world, but then you would not have as many targets onscreen as once, and there wouldn’t be as many choices. We’re working on improving that for XCOM 2, again, because it’s such an open ended game with all these building interiors and all these different levels, and so much collision in the world. Some of it is cover. Some of it is [decorative]. You’re not going to have perfect line of sight relative to what you’re seeing in geometry, but the system is very accurate with respect to which unit should see which unit.
Can you share a moment when using the sharpshooter in particular where your plan came together in a memorable way?
That stuff happens all the time. We have a weapon upgrade system that we’ve just talked about super high level. Now, you can actually modify your weapons back at base with these specific attachments. You can find something on the battlefield. It’s a tangible item. Then you bring it back. You have to do some research with your scientists, just in pure XCOM fashion, to be able to have the capability to do this. Once you do, you can customize your weapons to your heart’s delight, not just how they look, but then also how they behave.
With the sharpshooter, you can use things like expanded magazines, which implies more ammo. You have more ammo capacity, and there’s other attachment points. I’ve used expanded magazines and autoloaders, which is basically free reload. Then when you combine that with something like Death From Above, and basically the equivalent of something like Double Tap from Enemy Unknown, where you’re chaining these abilities together, then you get a sense that you can get those moments of these awesome kill streaks closer to mid-game if you choose to focus on that rather than other tech. That sort of stuff, I wasn’t expecting with the weapon upgrade system, but it’s been pretty pleasing to play with.
Come back to GameSpot tomorrow (5amPT, July 28 2015) for another XCOM 2 exclusive class reveal.
Nearly two years after its initial release, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V continues to surprise and impress.
The latest example comes from Flickr user Berduu (via Kotaku), who used some skin mods to turn the psychopathic Trevor Philips into Joker from the Batman franchise. The results are astounding.
This was made possible using Ms7mido’s Joker and Play’n’Roll’s tuxedo skins for the PC edition of GTA V.
