Nintendo has announced its quirky team-based shooter Splatoon has sold over one million copies worldwide.
According to official figures provided by the platform holder, more than 230,000 physical and digital copies were sold in Europe, while the Japanese market accounted for 360,000.
476,000 copies were sold in North America, while Australians purchased 20,000 units.
“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.
“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.”
Nintendo is continuing to release new content for Splatoon regularly. In early June, it made a new weapon available, and it more content is planned for Splatoon throughout the summer.
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.”
This fall you’ll be able to play Fallout 4, and you can have a real-world Pip-Boy device strapped to your arm while you play it. Currently, the Pip-Boy Edition of the game is available for preorder at Best Buy, Walmart, and GameStop.
Although the game is currently labeled as unavailable on Amazon, a Bethesda blog post also suggests that additional units will be made available on Amazon later this week. The stock is very limited, so preorder soon if you want this edition of the game.
The $120 special edition comes with a replica Pip-Boy that can hold your phone, allowing you to run the Fallout 4 companion app as you play. It also comes with the game, a metal case, a guide, a display stand for the Pip-Boy, and a poster.
The PC edition of Batman: Arkham Knight appears to be carrying noticeable bugs and glitches, especially for those using AMD graphics cards, with message boards lighting up as players report numerous problems.
Chief among the PC version’s technical issues are sporadic freezes, frame-rate stutters, and audio glitches. Some players had expected issues after Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment adjusted its system requirements, leaving with it a warning about AMD compatibility problems.
Gary Lake-Schall, the VP of game technology at Warner Bros Interactive, wrote on Steam that “there are some known issues with the performance of Batman: Arkham Knight for PC owners using AMD graphics cards.”
He added: “We are working closely with AMD to rectify these issues as quickly as possible and will provide updates here as they become available. We thank you for your patience in this matter.”
Technical discussions on the games forum NeoGAF offer some unofficial workarounds to various problems, including means to lift the 30-frames-per-second cap.
Batman: Arkham Knight shipped across North America and Europe on June 23.
PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has discussed the changes to ICO and Shadow of the Colossus developer Team ICO, and has provided insight into how development on The Last Guardian has changed over the years.
Speaking during a GameSpot x Kinda Funny interview at E3 2015, Yoshida was asked about the current status of Team ICO, and indicated that the developer had splintered into smaller, independent teams.
“It depends on how you define Team ICO,” he said. “Many members of Team ICO–which was originally a small team of around 20 plus–moved on to Shadow of the Colossus. After that [Fumito] Ueda-san became independent, but worked with creation team.
In 2011, it was reported that Ico and Shadow of the Colossus director Fumito Ueda had left both the development team for The Last Guardian and its parent company Sony.
According to Yoshida, this was a “rearrangement of the relationship.”
“Now Ueda-san has established his reputation, he [wanted] more freedom on how he spends his time. He may want to work on other concepts, so he chose to become independent, but also still work on The Last Guardian. [It’s] the main project he’s working on.
“So, Ueda-san was not fired,” he said, referring to previous rumours. “That was totally bogus. He chose to become independent.”
The Last Guardian was shown during Sony’s press conference, with a new studio called Gen Design attached to the project. Yoshida revealed this studio is comprised of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus developers, and it is working with Sony’s own Japan Studio.
“Gen Design’s president used to be the lead programmer on ICO and Shadow of the Colossus,” he explained. “Core members of the Shadow of the Colossus, under him, became independent, to do creative stuff. But the main development team is still in Japan Studio.”
“Ueda-san was not fired, that was totally bogus. It was a rearrangement of the relationship, he chose to become independent.”
As for the lengthy delay in re-introducing The Last Guardian, Yoshida confirmed that the shift from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4 required much of the game to be rebuilt.
“The project went on so many technical changes. We decided to move the project to PS4 in 2012, but because the PS3 code was so optimised for SPUs on that console lots of code had to be thrown away and rebuilt.
“It was a tough decision to move from PS3 to PS4 because it was running on PS3. But not at the performance [level] we needed … We knew [we had to decide] whether to continue the game on PS3 with a compromised vision, or move to PS4.”
“During that time Ueda-san and the core creatives were continuing to work, but without the game up and running, they had a long time to wait.”
“The setup was very good, in that they had a little bit of their own space, and could work on some new other concepts, but main development is [being done] in Japan Studio and Gen Design providing lots of creative contributions to the project. Ueda-san is directing the overall creatives.”
Asked if ever there was a point where Sony considered abandoning The Last Guardian, the PlayStation exec said the response from fans and questions from journalists helped reinforce Sony’s commitment to the project.
“I believed in the concept,” he said. “Ueda-san and the core members always wanted to it to be realised. But what made us continue to work was the encouragement from people. Journalists always asked us every year [about it]. We knew lots of people were intrigued by the game and were waiting for it to arrive. Because of that I felt it was my responsibility to get it completed.
Sony’s decision to re-reveal The Last Guardian was based on its confidence in the project and the 2016 release window, according to Yoshida.
“The project is in a really good state,” he said.
“We moved the project to PS4, and we could have said that the project was now on PS4, but I didn’t want to do it until the time when we were confident about our [release] window and we can show it running on PS4.
“My thing was, when we re-announced The Last Guardian, we had to have it totally running on PS4 at the right performance and be confident about the release window that we announced. In our mind, we have the tech, vision, and design down. Lots of levels have already been made, so we are confident about 2016, so we [announced] it.”
The Last Guardian launches in 2016 exclusively for PS4.
CD Projekt Red has detailed the latest free DLC content update for its critically acclaimed open-world RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
The latest content includes the Skellige armor set, as well as a new Skellige’s Most Wanted contract.
CD Projekt Red previously detailed plans to release sixteen free expansions for The Witcher 3. The first two, The Temerian Armor Set (for your horse) and the Beard and Hairstyle Set (for Geralt), were released when the game launched on May 19.
The remaining ten will be released on a weekly basis throughout June and July.
CD Projekt Red co-CEO Marcin Iwinski previously explained why the studio is giving away content for free. He said that free content is a means of saying thank you to fans.
“As gamers, we nowadays have to hold on tight to our wallets, as surprisingly right after release, lots of tiny pieces of tempting content materialize with a steep price tag attached. Haven’t we just paid a lot of cash for a brand new game?” he said. “At CD Projekt Red, we strongly believe this is not the way it should work and, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we have decided to do it differently. This is our way of saying thank you for buying our game.”
Looking further ahead, CD Projekt Red plans to release multiple paid expansions for The Witcher 3. The first of these, Hearts of Stone, will launch in October.
Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, has provided provided a little more information on Dreams, the next game from LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule.
The PlayStation 4 title shown during Sony’s E3 press conference and pitched as a connected world of user creations. For many, however, the short-and-sweet gameplay demo created a number of unanswered questions.
Speaking during the GameSpot x Kinda Funny E3 stream, Yoshida provided a little more clarity on what Dreams is, describing as “a next-gen creation platform” that is “much more flexible” than LittleBigPlanet.
“In LittleBigPlanet you pretty much made new levels of an action game,” he explained. “With Dreams, you don’t have to make a game. You can make a game, but if you’re a painter, you can just create beautiful, painterly looking drawings. Or you can just animate the character. Or you can [remix] other people’s creations.”
Yoshida indicated that Media Molecule’s goal with Dreams is to empower people to create and express themselves using easy-to-use tools.
“The basic concept is to make creation more intuitive, and putting that in the hands of people who aren’t trained to use the complex 3D packages. But make the artistic person feel like they’re creating art as if they’re doing it in real life.
“We are envisioning artists or musicians will contribute something they’re really good at, and share it with lots of people. It’s a community of creators where anyone can take anyone’s creations and mash-ups to create even grander projects, including games.”
According to the Sony exec, Dreams’ appearance during the PlayStation conference was a tease to get people thinking about the project ahead of more thorough demo at Paris Games Week.
“It’s a huge project,” he said. “You can slice and dice the project in many different angles. It’s huge in terms of potential for what it can do.”
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“For people to understand what it is, it’s going to take time to digest. We decided we can’t throw everything in at the same time. So we strategised to use this E3 to pique interest in people; to show pretty graphics, real-time creation, flexibility to animate, add music, and get people thinking about what it is.
“At Paris Game Show we’re going to show a lot more of its scope.”
Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans appeared on stage at Sony’s E3 press conference to reveal the Dreams, presenting it as a canvas for expression which attempts to recreate the sensation of lucid dreaming.
Evans said the feeling of moving through surreal, wonderful worlds built by other players would be the main focus of the game. Players will be able to create, share, and explore a huge connected network of dreams. The studio calls this web of user-created surreal worlds the “Dreamverse.”
Warner Bros. Interactive’s Lego Jurassic World has taken the top spot on the UK all formats chart for the week ending June 20.
According to UK chart monitor Chart Track, it is the first Lego title to reach No.1 since The Lego Movie Videogame in 2014, and the seventh Lego title from Traveller’s Tales to reach the position since Lego Star Wars in March 2005.
The Elder Scrolls Online, meanwhile, drops down to No.2, with sales falling by 71 percent in its second week on the chart.
The Limited Edition version of Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Knight has been delayed across multiple retailers.
The Limited Edition, which includes a steelbook case, an artbook, a comic book, a character skin pack, and a statue, is now listed as unavailable on Amazon. According to Eurogamer, GameStop Finland has also delayed delivery of the bundle.
Both retailers will reportedly send download codes for the game to those affected.
“We regret to inform you that we are not able to release the Batmobile Collector’s Edition of Batman: Arkham Knight due to unforeseen circumstances that greatly compromised the quality of this extremely limited run of product,” Rocksteady said in a statement.
“We are deeply apologetic for this unfortunate outcome.”
In GameSpot’s Batman: Arkham Knight review we said “Arkham Knight is another slick and enjoyable Batman adventure. But what it brings to the series’ table is not always for the best.”
Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, has explained how Xbox 360 game emulation is being achieved on the Xbox One, as well as the ethos behind the company’s decision to support legacy content.
Speaking on Giant Bomb’s E3 Day One podcast, Spencer said the decision to support Xbox 360 games was made to “make 360 owners look at Xbox One as a safe place to play.”
“Millions of people made investments in 360 content,” he said. “We thought the right thing to do was to make that content go forward, but we didn’t know [how difficult it would be].”
“[Emulation] is hard,” admitted Spencer, explaining that the company was dealing with having to harmonise PowerPC architecture with x86.
“The approach that we’ve taken is to actually emulate the full Xbox 360 hardware layer. So the [operating system] for the 360 is actually running when you run the game,” Spencer explained.
“If you watch the game’s boot you’ll see the Xbox 360 boot animation come up. From a performance standpoint it allows [emulation] to work. We’re able to get frame by frame performance equivalents.”
“[Xbox Live] thinks you’re on a 360, so people have been asking ‘hey, why are you playing Mass Effect on the 360?,’ I was actually playing on the Xbox One.”
Spencer continued to explain that, since the Xbox One thinks it’s playing a normal game, features such as streaming and screenshots are supported.
“The 360 games think they’re running on the 360 OS, which they are. And the 360 OS thinks its running on the hardware, which it’s not, it’s running on an emulated VM. On the other side, the Xbox One thinks it’s a game. That’s why things like streaming, game DVR, and screenshots all work, because it thinks there’s just one big game called 360.”
Delving deeper, Spencer explained exactly how the emulator packages the Xbox 360 games, and how it compares to Xbox 360’s emulation of original Xbox games.
“You download a kind of manifest of wrapper for the 360 game, so we can say ‘hey, this is actually Banjo, or this is Mass Effect. The emulator runs exactly the same for all the games.
“I was around when we did the original Xbox [backwards compatibility] for Xbox 360 where we had a shim for every game and it just didn’t scale very well. This is actually the same emulator running for all of the games. Different games do different things, as we’re rolling them out we’ll say ‘oh maybe we have to tweak the emulator.’ But in the end, the emulator is emulating the 360, so it’s for everybody.”
Asked about whether Microsoft would require permission from game publishers to adjust game code, Spencer clarified it would not be interfering with code.
“The bits are not touched,” he said. “There’s some caveats, and as always I like to be as transparent as I can be on this: Kinect games won’t work from the 360, because translating between the Kinect sensors is almost impossible.”
Finally, the subject of multi-disc games was also addressed. According to Spencer, it’s an issue engineers are looking into.
“We’re still working on multi-disc,” he said. “Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon are some of my favourites from the 360. There’s actually work in packing a multi-disc into single that requires us to go back and look at the original package on the multiple discs and reconfigure that.”
Microsoft announced Xbox One backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games at its E3 press conference. According to the platform holder digital Xbox 360 titles already purchased via XBLA, as well as retail discs of last-gen titles, will eventually be “natively” playable on Xbox One.
Sony has released an update for its iOS and Android PlayStation App to make code redemption much easier.
The update, which is available now on iTunes and Google Play, allows “PlayStation Network Card numbers and promotion codes to be entered within the PlayStation App.”
Furthermore, codes can now be redeemed either by entering them manually using a keyboard, or scanning it using the device’s camera.
Another addition introduced in the update shows “comments that you receive while broadcasting from your PS4 system can now be displayed on the second screen.”
The new model is also ten percent lighter, weighing a total of 2.5 kg, and uses eight percent less energy. The new model’s hard drive bay cover now also has a matte finish.
At E3 2015, Sony made a number of big announcements, including the Final Fantasy 7 remake featured in the video above. Microsoft, meanwhile, revealed backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games, and Nintendo showed of Star Fox.
