Last winter we got a first look at Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks on the set of their the-untitled cold war thriller. Since then, we’ve learned that the title was Bridge of Spies and that John Williamswas composing the score. However, only one of those tidbits has proven to be true as a press release (with the first official still from the film you can see below) has revealed that American Beauty and Skyfall composer Thomas Newman will score the film instead. The release says, “John Williams’ schedule was interrupted and he was unavailable to score the film due to a minor health issue, now corrected.” And the good news is that Williams will still get back with Spielberg for another collaboration to compose the score The BFG next. ›››
The first glimpse at this summer’s 8-bit invasion in Pixels just debuted, and it’s a pretty cool trailer. But aside from the cool visuals and video game characters, there was also another little hint at something else we haven’t yet seen in any of the footage. In the film, there will be an arcade game called DojoQuest featuring a heroine named Lady Lisa fighting dragons, ninjas and whatnot. Within the trailer there was a quick frame with a link to the game’s website where you can watch the trailer for the game which can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store and Google Play. And it seems Lady Lisa comes to life. Look! ›››
Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell and business development lead Erik Johnson have revealed an insight into why the company decided to venture into the hardware space. Speaking on the GameSlice Podcast with Geoff Keighley, the duo’s discussion included topics such as Valve’s current state, Source 2, virtual reality, and the future of the company.
Newell described how Valve’s approach to branching out the experience of PC gaming led to the company looking to hardware.
“When you go back to the original Half-Life, we were all playing first-person action games… and it seemed like people were being kind of disrespectful toward gamers, that the attitude was that you could kind of trivialise what gamers would want in terms of how many barrels you put on a shotgun,” he said. “And we were like, well, that is fun, but it kind of misses the opportunity to think about the broader kinds of experiences that people could have. So we were gamers, we wanted more, the story, the narrative, and having the sense of it being part of the world. That’s what we were thinking about at the beginning of the company.”
The desire to create more for gamers led to the creation of digital distribution service Steam, Newell explained. “When we started working on Steam, it was kind of the same thing. Are there opportunities for us to provide, in that case services more than experiences, but can’t we be doing more that’s really trying to address what customers want,” he said. “We thought there were ways we could make the experience of being a PC gamer better by tackling those problems.”
“So in a sense, what we’re doing now with hardware really to us feels like an extension of that. Pick the problems that are of greatest significance to our customers in terms of continuing to improve that overall experience. We’d be happy to still be focused more narrowly just because it is a lot easier to continue to do the things you’ve done well, but we just reached a point where we thought we need to tackle some of these issues on the hardware side if we’re going to be able to continue to keep the PC gaming experience moving forward.”
A targeted DDoS attack on Xbox Live’s server infrastructure on Tuesday evening has disrupted Battlefield Hardline’s first day of release, with players reporting intermittent problems connecting to the game.
Publisher Electronic Arts says that the issue is, for now, limited to the Xbox One edition. At 8pm Pacific Time on Tuesday, the company wrote on Twitter that it was “aware of Battlefield Hardline connectivity issues” and hoped the matter would be resolved quickly.
Two hours later, however, it announced that the connection problems were the result of a targeted online attack and had not been resolved. It wrote: “We’ve identified the connectivity issues on Xbox One are due to DDoS attack and working to resolve. Apologies for the inconvenience.”
We’ve identified the connectivity issues on Xbox One are due to DDoS attack and working to resolve. Apologies for the inconvenience.
No further statements were made. While some users are still reporting connection problems, it appears this issue is not widespread.
Battlefield Hardline shipped on Tuesday on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. The response from critics has been mixed, with GameSpot’s Battlefield Hardline review highlighting many issues with the game’s AI, narrative, and challenge.
Bandai Namco’s fighting game Dragon Ball Xenoverse has shipped over 1.5 milllion copies worldwide, the publisher announced today. The figure makes sense, given that the game was the second most-sold PlayStation 4 title on the PlayStation Network last month, despite being released on February 24.
On the success of the game, producer Masayuki Hirano said, “I would like to thank everyone for their support on this new challenge. We decided to take a risk and create a completely new concept to entertain our fans and Dragon Ball lovers and we are quite proud of the successful result!”
The first downloadable content pack for Dragon Ball Xenoverse is now available on Steam and the Xbox Market Place, and will be available on the PlayStation Network on March 18. The game’s launch wasn’t all smooth sailing however, with servers woes causing multiplayer issues early on.
The first trailer for Sony’s upcoming video game movie Pixels–which stars Adam Sandler and Peter Dinklage–was released Tuesday.
The movie sees a variety of iconic gaming characters, including Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, attacking earth after misinterpreting arcade games as a declaration of war against them.
As you’d expect, it looks absolutely crazy.
Pixels, based on a popular short film, opens in theaters on May 15, 2015. The movie also features Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, and Josh Gad. Directing is Chris Columbus, who previously directed various Harry Potter films and the 1990 Christmas classic Home Alone.
Valve updated the Steam Subscriber Agreement today, adding a few mundane things and one particularly interesting clause (via Gamasutra). Users are now required to “clearly indicate the source” when they use any Steam service to “promote or endorse a product, service or event” in exchange for money, free games, or another inventive.
This mirrors a change Valve made back in October for Steam Curators and is the latest attempt to bring new digital services in line with existing Federal Trade Commission regulations about properly disclosing potential conflicts of interest.
The FTC is an arm of the federal government that fights for consumer protection. Their rules have always applied to traditional media outlets, but this is the first time Steam has required its users to disclose conflicts of interest–possibly because of Steam’s Greenlight voting platform and user reviews.
Last month, Valve publicly asked developers to stop offering free games to users in exchange for votes on Greenlight, adding that it puts Valve in a “really uncomfortable position.” A similar issue cropped up in the YouTube community, prompting investigations by Kotaku among others.
“Generally speaking, if an advertiser or a marketer is paying someone to write favorable reviews, the reviewer needs to disclose that,” Mary Engle, associate director for Advertising Practices at the FTC, said to Gamasutra, “and that disclosure should be clear and conspicuous, and should be upfront and easy to see where the viewer won’t miss it.”
You can see the full user agreement, and compare the changes to the previous version here.
The Halo series has always been a great source of ’30 seconds of fun’ shenanigans and still features incredible AI. To this day it’s my go-to for online multiplayer. But boy-oh-boy did its story get a bit weird.
If you can’t beat ’em, hit them in the face repeatedly with a pick axe while weeping and then build a giant wall to make sure they never get close to you ever, ever again.
