The DLC is included with the game’s $50 expansion pass, or can be purchased by itself for $15. Below is rundown of everything Havoc contains. Be sure to check out the image gallery at the bottom of this post for an even closer look at the add-on.
Four new multiplayer maps: Core, Urban, Sideshow, Drift.
Exo Zombies mode: This co-op mode sees player taking on the role of four Atlas Corporation employees played by celebrities John Malkovich, Bill Paxton, Rose McGowan, and John Bernthal as they fight against a “new breed” of zombies.
New weapons: the AE4 directed energy assault rifle and custom variant, the AE4 Widowmaker.
Havoc is the first of four planned expansions for Advanced Warfare. The other three are called Ascendance, Supremacy, and Reckoning. Activision has not yet announced details on these expansions, though you can be pretty sure they will add more maps, weapons, and zombies content.
During Tuesday’s earnings call from Take-Two Interactive, the publisher’s chief executive Strauss Zelnick fielded questions about Grand Theft Auto V’s 45 million sales, as well as the controversy surrounding the extensive DLC pipeline for upcoming monster-hunting game, Evolve.
Regarding GTA V sales, Zelnick was asked how many of the 10 million copies shipped on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are repeat buyers versus new players. Zelnick said it’s a tough number to pin down exactly, but explained that it’s probably a fair mix of the two.
He also said during the call that, even after 45 million units sold worldwide, GTA V still has an opportunity to grow further
“There are 45 million units sold, but there are billions of people on the face of the earth,” he said. “So we have plenty of room.”
GTA V sales are likely to balloon further in March when the PC edition is released. In addition, the GTA series has historically enjoyed a long sales tail, with back-catalog titles selling strong long after their original release.
“You’re right, there was some controversy stirred up by an online post,” Zelnick said to an analyst. “And I guess controversy generally speaking is a good thing. People can argue about the business model [but] I think we’re delivering a fantastic title that’s well worth what consumers will pay for it. All signs are extraordinarily positive. I never like to claim success before it’s occurred–this looks to be a good news event, I’m going to leave it at that, and hopefully during our next call we’ll have great news to report.”
Zelnick went on to point out that Evolve won Game of Show awards at both E3 and Gamescom in 2014.
“The buzz [for Evolve] is massive, so we’ll wait until consumers tell us what they think,” Zelnick said.
Sony sold 6.4 million PlayStation 4s, and 1.1 million PlayStation 3s, between October and December to help push its quarterly game profits to $228 million.
The robust home console sales helped Sony’s struggling electronics empire to record about $21 billion in revenue during the quarter, with profit coming in at about $1.5 billion. (Due to the Sony Pictures hack in December, its accounting teams were unable to complete the full report in time, which means these numbers are technically still forecasts).
Despite the game segment’s strong performance overall, sales of PlayStation TV and the PS Vita continued to miss targets, with combined sales reaching 1.4 million. As such, Sony has announced a writedown on the value of those assets, to the tune of $93 million.
“This write-down was recorded because the latest forecast of PS TV unit sales does not reach our original forecast as a result of lower than expected unit sales in the current quarter,” Sony said.
Overall, the game segment revenue came in at about $4.4 billion, which means the PlayStation business now accounts for about a fifth of Sony’s entire business.
A tranche of data and images leaked by a Destiny player has laid bare the next expansion for the game, called House of Wolves.
Through unknown methods, one anonymous Japanese player has managed to find a way to access vast portions of the new update via the existing game files, and has posted all the findings on a Reddit thread. Key details uncovered include thorough descriptions of missions, as well as images of new weapons, amour and the expansion’s scheduled release date.
Meanwhile, a Bungie community manager has addressed the leak, inferring that it is genuine while also urging caution that key details may change before the expansion’s release.
The House of Wolves release date, according to the leak, will fall on Tuesday, May 19. However, this date may change.
A picture (copied below) of the House of Wolves mission description reads: “The Queen’s Fallen have purchased their freedom with Awoken blood. Hunt down the traitors and your debt to the Queen will be paid.”
As per the pictured blurb, the expansion is said to offer:
A new Awoken storyline plus an exclusive Raid
3 new Crucible maps and a new Fallen Strike
Hundreds of new weapons, amour and gear
This storyline appears to take place on the Moon level, with another image showing the map and mission icons (below).
A range of image galleries, copied below, showcase the leaked data.
“Not Necessarily Accurate”
Meanwhile, Bungie’s community manager David Dague (known online as DeeJ), as responded to the leak on the official Destiny forums.
“Look at all that pretty armor! What could it all mean?” he wrote.
“I know that rampant speculation will burn for a while on this topic. As you enjoy a conversation about the pearls of information that can be lifted from this, please bear a few things in mind…”
“1. Aside from giving it a name, Bungie has yet to reveal the House of Wolves. That means that anything you know about it can change. We have a team working on the experience in their own fancy room, and they have some exciting surprises up their sleeves.”
“2. We reserve the right to overwrite anything you’re looking at right now. These placeholder items enable us to save room on your drive for actual future updates. You’ll all download them before it’s time to play.”
“3. Any stats or assumptions about power or impact or handsomeness are months old, and do not reflect the things that we’re doing to adapt to what you’ve taught us about Destiny. There is a process here, and you’re a part of it.”
He concluded that, while he understands the excitement and speculation surrounding the leaks, he hopes fans do not see the information as final plans.
“All we ask is that you leave your mind open to the evolutions that are inevitable. What you see here are very old ghosts from our pre-launch database. These are not necessarily the wolves you’re looking for.”
The successor to the OpenGL graphics application programming interface (API) will be revealed at a panel at the Game Developers Conference taking place on March 5 in San Francisco, PC Gamer has reported.
The panel is titled, “glNext: The Future of High Performance Graphics (Presented by Valve)” and will include developers and engineers from Valve, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, and Unity Technologies. It will unveil an “upcoming cross-platform graphics API designed for modern programming techniques and processors” which is Khronos Group’s successor to OpenGL.
Not sure what all the graphics settings in PC games are for? We put together a guide to help you out.
The panel will present a technical breakdown of the new API as well as show off live demos with real-world applications running on glNext drivers and hardware. GameSpot will be present at this year’s GDC, so be sure to stay tuned to the site for breaking news as it rolls out.
In response to a reddit thread on the CLG subreddit speculating on organization owner George “HotshotGG” Georgallidis’ recent absence from streaming and possible increased workload within the company, Counter Logic Gaming’s director of finance and operations, Bryan Chen posted a statement providing context for what is happening behind the scenes.
“Much of what is going on right now involves corporate restructuring in all aspects of the organization, all on top of regular business operations (now substantially greater having expanded from 1-4 teams). We have not yet hired the proper support staff to ideally handle these new teams, neither are we yet in a position to do so as of now. But we have plans for that, and for now we have the resources to get by,” he said.
Chen also confirmed Georgallidis’ increased involvement and estimates the return of the frequently requested CLG merchandise store to be “within a month.”
CLG recently expanded from their single League of Legends team to include a Halo, CS:GO, and LoL Challenger team. Their LCS team is currently tied for first place.
One of my most requested articles is a return of my quick guide series named Spellsy’s Support Cards. This is a return of the series but instead of using my previous expertise I will be using statistics from high level games (Platinum-Diamond) across all regions (NA, EUW, EUNE, and KR) to find the optimal builds, good counterpicks and common runes.
This infographic is in partnership with champion.gg who assisted me in collecting the data for this graphic. As well, the Win rate, Play rate, Ban rate, and Matchups are straight from champion.gg. The rest of the information (runes, masteries, items, skills, etc.) is based on a 20,000 game sample with 5,000 from each of the 4 major regions listed above.
For our first edition of the cards we selected the three most popular AD Carries on the new patch (5.2). This data is mostly from February 1st.
Few additional interesting stats:
While starting with your first 3 points as Q-E-Q is the most popular, almost 40% of players go Q-E-W, which has 1.5% less win rate than Q-E-Q. So, make sure to put that second point in Q!
IE->PD->BT is the highest win rate build, which is the same for each of the 3 selected champions. Bloodthirster always has a higher win rate than Last Whisperer.
Few additional interesting stats:
The standard runepage listed above is actually 2nd in popularity among Caitlyn players, with the most popular using Attack Damage quints instead of Attack Speed quints. However, this AD page has 3% less win rate than the Attack Speed page shown above, so make sure you use your attack speed quints!
Similar to Graves, Caitlyn’s most popular first 3 skills are actually Q-E-W, with 37.3% of the population choosing that route. However, that build only has a 50.5% win rate, significantly lower than Q-E-Q’s 52.1% win rate!
Few additional interesting stats:
After the Tristana update her play rate over doubled from 11.14% in 5.1 to 23.09% in 5.2.
Meanwhile, her win rate dipped going from 47.5% to 46.1%
Similar to Cait and Graves, Tristana’s most popular first-3 skills were E-W-Q, which was played 36% of the time but only had a 45.2% win rate, compared to E-W-E which was played 33.3% of the time and had 47.9% win rate.
Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series, will be receiving a lifetime achievement award at the 15th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards. The awards ceremony will take place on the evening of March 4 at the Moscone Convention Center during the 2015 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.
Sakaguchi was the director of planning and development at Square Company, Ltd. (now Square Enix) where he created Final Fantasy, a role-playing game that would go on to spawn numerous sequels, spinoffs, films, and television series. The game was named Final Fantasy in reference to his plan to leave the industry if the project was not successful, and with the intention of being the studio’s final project before it went bankrupt. Final Fantasy went on to be a success, establishing a legacy that has carried on until today.
“Final Fantasy helped pave the way for game stories that dealt with death, regret and character development in a mature and significant way, and we’re proud to honor Sakaguchi-san as a true leader in the space, and an inspired game developer,” GDC events general manager Meggan Scavio said.
This year’s Choice Awards will be hosted by Double Fine Productions founder Tim Schafer. GameSpot will be hosting the awards’ live stream on site, so be sure to tune in for live coverage on March 4.
Japanese developer Platinum Games has released an 8-bit Bayonetta game, and you can play it right now in your browser. It’s a fairly straightforward game, but it’s actually is kind of really tough.
No, my high score is not zero. This is a screencap of the start-screen. All you do is jump and shoot, but as more and more enemies come on-screen, it can get pretty challenging. Post your high score in the comments below to see how you stack up against other readers.
Only 12,300 20th Anniversary Edition PS4s were made; this is for unique console number 11,016.
“The pictures don’t do this much justice,” the seller writes. “It’s STUNNING to look at, very sleek, and would be an amazing show piece as well as useable and totally functional console unit for anyone looking for a completely unique piece of PlayStation history or an amazing gift!”
The crystals, which are apparently “genuine Swarovski crystals,” were applied by hand, using professional glue. Krystal Boutique notes that the system features “very hard wearing,” though also cautions that “obviously care must be taken as to keep it in pristine condition.”
Krystal Boutique will even throw in a 1994 Swarovski beanie. 1994, of course, was the year the original PlayStation arrived in Japan. You can take a closer look at the console through the Instagram video below.
I am pretty amazed/horrified that someone would do this to a PS4, let alone an incredibly rare system like the 20th Anniversary model. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!
