Hello! This blog is dedicated to showing my regular explorations of anime, cartoons, video games and anything else I find of interest. This is also going to be used as an updater and archive for my Youtube video posts (link to the right side of the page). I hope you like my crazy mind and the mysterious stuff it comes up with XD
Fallout 4 will have no level cap and no hard finish
Andy Chalk 18 hours ago
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For many players, one of the gravest failings of Fallout 3 was that once it was over, it was over. Having saved the world from almost certain doom, players couldn't wander back into the wasteland to horse around at their leisure. Same deal with New Vegas: If you didn't do all your exploring before the grand finale, you were out of luck unless you loaded up a pre-endgame save. But Bethesda says that won't be the case with Fallout 4.
"To fans who’ve asked: Fallout 4 doesn’t end when the main story is and over and there is no level cap," Bethesda tweeted earlier today. "You can keep playing and leveling."
Being open-ended is cool, but the lack of a level cap is a surprise. Fallout 3 had a cap of 20, which could be boosted to 30 through the Broken Steel expansion. New Vegas peaked at 30 out of the box and could be pushed up as high as 50 via the four DLC releases, which increase the max by five levels each. Without that limit, I would think that Bethesda is opening the door to some potentially dicey balance issues. After all, scaling enemies will only go so far before they start to seem weird.
We'll see soon enough: Fallout 4 will be out on November 10.
The Xbox One's upcoming feature to record over-the-air-TV will not work unless an external hard drive is plugged into the console, a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed to GameSpot.
Speaking during a presentation of the Xbox One's upcoming Dashboard redesign, project lead Richard Irving explained that DVR functionality will not record TV footage to the console's internal hard drive.
"You need an external hard-drive specifically for DVR because we want to keep the [storage] paths optimized between playing games and watching TV," he said. "We don't want them to interact with each other."
A digital TV tuner, already available for Xbox One across Europe and North America, is also required to play over-the-air TV.
During Microsoft's Gamescom press conference on Tuesday, Xbox head Phil Spencer announced that the Xbox One's existing user interface will be completely redesigned with a new update, scheduled to arrive before the end of the year.
Known as "the New Xbox One Experience," the Dashboard will replace the existing Windows 8-themed layout in favour of a more straightforward panel system. Also included will be the option to look through the Xbox One's TV guide and schedule recordings of upcoming shows. These recordings can be activated remotely too, via the SmartGlass or Xbox on Windows 10 apps.
Microsoft has told GameSpot that the highest theoretical resolution of over-the-air-TV recordings will be 1080i, but dependent on ariel signal quality. [Update: Microsoft has since told GameSpot that "Xbox One Free-to-Air DVR will record TV at the same quality level of the broadcast, including shows that are broadcast at 1080p."]
Another feature coming with the system update will be the option to transfer TV show files onto a Windows 10 tablet within the same home network. This means that the tablet will store the downloaded shows, and will be able to play them offline and on the go.
However, Microsoft has confirmed that this feature will only work with Windows 10 devices, and not on those running Android or iOS.
Barring any massive surprises - a 2015 release is way too soon... right? - that means it will launch at some point in 2016.
Game director Hajime Tabata confirmed the news to Eurogamer, after apologising for an underwhelming gamescom in which the team released a cinematic trailer and a bit of gameplay footage.
"We came to gamescom this year with our plan," he said. "Having people who know the series and people who don't we wanted to introduce the information on a level playing field.
"We miscalculated the kind of expectations towards this event, especially for what people want to see at this show.
"There was a big gap between our perceptions of what people should be doing and what people expected. And we realised that very quickly after the reaction!
"We really wanted to say something else, so we've got something we'd like to say - you won't be waiting until 2017. We want to get that across. We want to reassure people that we are going to get it out."
When will this franchise ever end?! I'm not against Final Fantasy but blimey! Surely, this can't go on much longer. Are the games even good anymore? I stopped looking at them when 18 came out (or whatever one it was with the black guy with a chocobo chick in his afro). That game has waaay too many cut-scenes I think everyone can agree on that. Anyways, I hope it's a good game. Good luck is all I can say.
3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled
By Leo KelionTechnology desk editor
28 July 2015
Intel and Micron say 3D Xpoint is the first new "mainstream" type of memory since Nand flash in 1989
A new kind of memory technology is going into production, which is up to 1,000 times faster than the Nand flash storage used in memory cards and computers' solid state drives (SSDs).
The innovation is called 3D XPoint, and is the invention of Intel and Micron.
The two US companies predict a wide range of benefits, from speeding up scientific research to making more elaborate video games.
One expert described it as a "huge step forward".
"There are other companies who have talked about new types of memory technology, but this is about being able to manufacture the stuff - that's why they are making such a big deal out of it," says Bob O'Donnell, from the consultancy Technalysis.
The 3D Xpoint chips will be manufactured at Intel and Micron's joint venture in Utah If all goes to plan, the first products to feature 3D XPoint (pronounced cross-point) will go on sale next year. Its price has yet to be announced.
Intel is marketing it as the first new class of "mainstream memory" since 1989. 3D XPoint retains data when the power is switched off - one of its key advantages over RAM (random access memory), which remains faster.
Rather than pitch it as a replacement for either flash storage or RAM, the company suggests it will be used alongside them to hold certain data "closer" to a processor so that it can be accessed more quickly than before. Until now, Intel and Micron have focused on the production and development of flash memory chips
Why do we need faster storage? The flash storage in my smartphone and PC seems more than fast enough to view and record the photos and videos I want.
Because there are other situations where using today's storage slows things down or introduces constraints.
So-called "big data" tasks are a particular issue.
For example, efforts to sequence and analyse our genes/DNA hold the potential for new and personalised medical treatments.
But copying the huge amounts of information involved backwards and forwards makes this an extremely time-intensive activity at present.
Faster storage would also help cloud services better handle big files.
That could be helpful in the future, for example, if we wanted to stream 8K ultra-high definition video clips without experiencing lags at their start. Modern consoles have 8GB of RAM, helping games developers create large levels, but 3D Xpoint could give them further freedom And it would also prove a boon to video game-makers.
At present, level designs are limited by how much data can be stored in the RAM - or, strictly, a type of RAM chip called dynamic RAM (DRAM).
That's why players sometimes have to halt their play while they wait for the machine to load a new section.
But if the data can be loaded more quickly from 3D XPoint, the developers should, in theory, be able to deliver them bigger, open worlds and a more seamless experience. 3D Xpoint is a type of "persistent memory" - meaning it retains data stored on it when the power is switched off, unlike RAM
OK. Let's go back to basics - why does it have that weird name?
It refers to the fact the technology is made up of a 3D structure featuring layers of wires.
On each layer, the wires run in parallel to each other, but at right-angles to those on the layer below.
In between each layer are vertical sub-microscopic columns, which connect the points at which the wires criss-cross.
Each of these columns contains:
a "memory cell", which can store a single bit of data. This represents either a one or a zero in binary code
a "selector", which allows a specific memory cell to be read or rewritten. Access is controlled by varying the amount of voltage it receives via the wires
So, what's the big advantage over flash memory?
3D XPoint does away with the need to use the transistors at the heart of Nand chips.
Nand works by moving electrons back and forth to an isolated part of the transistors known as their "floating gates" to represent the ones and zeros of binary code.
An issue with this technique is that it cannot rewrite single bits of data at a time. Instead, larger blocks of information have to be wiped and then rewritten to incorporate the changes.
"It's kind of like a parking lot where you want to move one of the cars, but they are all jammed in,"
Intel executive Rob Crooke says.
"So, you have to shuffle them all around to get one new one in there."
By contrast, 3D XPoint works by changing the properties of the material that makes up its memory cells to either having a high resistance to electricity to represent a one or a low resistance to represent a zero.
The advantage is that each memory cell can be addressed individually, radically speeding things up.
An added benefit is that it should last hundreds of times longer than Nand before becoming unreliable. Solid state drives are up to 1,000 slower than 3D Xpoint, but are cheaper to buy
Sounds great, so is flash storage going to become obsolete?
Intel suggests not.
Solid state drives - and even slower hard disks - will remain significantly cheaper than 3D XPoint for some time to come, so it makes sense to continue using them to store most files.
The suggestion is the new technology will normally be used instead as an intermediary step.
Rather than copy data directly from the slower types of storage into RAM, programs will anticipate what data is likely to be needed and then transfer it in advance to the 3D XPoint.
As a metaphor, imagine a furniture retailer keeps most of its goods in a distant hub that is cheap to run but has slow road links.
It would make sense for it to build a second smaller depot on land that is more expensive but has motorway access, where it could store a selection of its most in-demand items. As a result, it should take less time to restock stores with bestselling goods. DRAM chips are still faster than 3D Xpoint, but the difference is much smaller than when compared with flash
If the 3D Xpoint is so fast, why not just use it to replace RAM altogether?
RAM's speed advantage over traditional storage has long made it the chip of choice to funnel data directly into processors.
However, because it is relatively expensive to produce, computer makers tend to restrict how much they include.
Each megabyte of 3D Xpoint will certainly be significantly cheaper than the equivalent amount of RAM. And the new technology has the added advantage of being non-volatile, meaning it does not "forget" information when the power is switched off.
But, unfortunately it is still not quite as fast as RAM, and some - but not all - applications need the extra speed the older tech provides. Online video game companies may wish to substitute 3D Xpoint for Ram in their computer servers
So, is there ever an advantage to using 3D Xpoint instead of, rather than in addition to, RAM or flash?
Online gaming companies might want to substitute 3D Xpoint for RAM.
At present, the amount of players that can be hosted on a single server is limited by the amount of RAM it contains.
Switching to 3D Xpoint would cause only a small - and possibly unnoticeable - difference to the performance of many of the simpler titles. But it would radically increase the number of people that could be supported for the same price.
One instance when you might want to use the new chips instead of flash would be to store operating system files that are required every time you boot up your machine. Intel and Micron spent more than a decade researching 3D Xpoint before it was ready to go into production Many users have already experienced faster switch-on times on new computers thanks to such files being kept on SSDs rather than disk drives. A similar performance leap would be experienced by adopting 3D Xpoint.
"It would make for an instant-on experience," says Intel's marketing director Greg Matson.
Whether that proves tempting will depend on exactly what 3D Xpoint costs and just how precious your time is.
About time! Reminds me of that massive space game with real size galaxies from Sony. Can't wait to get more games that size. Not all of them but having that potential would be amazing. We would have never though this possible 10 years ago but look at us now! I just hope they don't try to make every game the size of an actual country now coz that would be stupid 0_0
We recently visited Bungie for an in-depth look at Destiny: The Taken King, coming away with all sorts of details about the upcoming release. One of the most surprising changes is coming to what is arguably Destiny’s most central-voiced character: the Ghost. The tiny floating robotic being is the de facto narrator throughout the base game, and he assumes an even more important role in The Taken King. Playing that role moving forward is Nolan North, replacing Peter Dinklage in the name of a unified character voice throughout the entire game.
Players who are used to North’s work on games like Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed are likely to be surprised the first time they hear his latest role. In taking over the role of the Ghost, North echoes some of the cadences and quirks established by the character’s original voice actor, but his line delivery is hard to immediately connect to his familiar heroic tone. “I was really excited to do this role,” Nolan North tells us. “You want to give him as much personality as the world will allow, without making it unbelievable. There’s a fine line to walk there, and I think we found it.”
When asked about his understanding of Ghost, North offered his take on one of the most interesting aspects of the artificial intelligence. “It’s interesting, because at one point they find another Ghost that’s been killed,” North says. “A Ghost is not just something that can be turned back on. It has an idea of ending. It understands mortality. It has a vested interest in helping you succeed.”
Not only does Nolan North play Ghost in the new content in The Taken King, but Bungie also had North re-record all of the original dialogue to create a consistent storytelling experience from beginning to end. “We wanted Nolan North’s version of the Ghost to wake you up at the start of the journey at level one and follow you all the way to level forty,” says creative director Luke Smith. With this change, the Ghost’s script will remain the same, but Peter Dinklage’s voicing of those lines will not be present in the game.
“They really wanted me to put my stamp on it,” North says. “They let me bring what I wanted to the role. You have to give it your own spin. For that reason, I specifically said I didn’t want to hear anything that someone else had done, so that I didn’t have some preconceived notion of what it has to be. Instead, I just gave it my stamp, and let them direct me accordingly.”
As for the future, North told us of his enthusiasm for the ongoing role, and his hopes for how to continue to bring life to the character over time. “I’m hoping we’re doing this for years. If I get a chance to continue with the role, I think we can evolve Ghost as we move forward over the years. In the same way that the player learns about the game and the world, maybe the Ghost grows with them.”
We have additional details about the Ghost in this month’s cover story, including ways in which the character now presents a new optional avenue into learning about Destiny’s lore.
The head of Xbox has told Newsbeat more game franchises are likely to cross over into film and television in the future.
Phil Spencer was speaking at Gamescom in Cologne, where the company announced its forthcoming exclusives including time-bending third person shooter Quantum Break.
It's being made by the developers behind Max Payne and will include a live action TV show following the game's plot.
Famous faces like X-Men star Shawn Ashmore and Aiden Gillen from Game of Thrones are involved with the project and according to Phil Spencer there could be more tie-ins like this on the way on Xbox.
Image caption Aiden Gillen, who plays Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones, appears in Quantum Break
"There are certain franchises that we have that lend themselves to video, TV and even potentially movies… so I do think you'll see more."
With Microsoft's console trying to gain ground on its main rivals PlayStation, European gamers have become a key target for the company.
Phil Spencer said that the UK is an important part of that strategy, both for gamers and developers.
"Outside the US we have more of our team in the UK than in any other place.
"We have a studio up in the Midlands, we have a studio in downtown London and Guildford.
"We build quite a few games in that market and going back (it is) probably rivalling Japan in some ways," he said.
"It's an area that has just such a rich history in building games and having creative talent on the ground helping us craft what our product is is very important."
At the Gamescom press conference (and at E3 earlier this year) Xbox made a big effort to promote its exclusive games - the ones only available on the Xbox - Like Halo 5, Scalebound and Crackdown.
Phil Spencer told Newsbeat: "We know that people choose the console on what games are exclusively available there.
"When we do our research it's the thing that pops to the top.
"I want to make sure that Xbox fans have games that they want to play and that they know are coming to their console."
He acknowledged Sony's success after the company's PlayStation 4 outsold the Xbox One after both consoles launched in 2013.
I really focus on us growing our Xbox user base. My job is to make it grow year after year. That's what it's all about
Phil Spencer
Head of Xbox
"Sony has had great success with the PlayStation and they've done it... over decades.
We asked Phil if their new approach to exclusive games for Xbox would help close the gap.
"I really focus on us growing our Xbox user base," he said. "My job is to make it grow year after year. That's what it's all about."
Keeping up our theme of asking the most powerful men in gaming (read our interview with PlayStation's Andy House) what their secret gaming guilty pleasures is. We asked Phil to find out and his answer caught us by surprise.
"It's Solitaire," he said.
"I sit sometimes, not in the most exciting meetings [playing solitaire], I'm having a really good time with it.
"I don't necessarily wear the solitaire T-shirt - but maybe should?"
Criticism of Dinklage's performance first began last year when players were invited to test an "alpha" version of the PS4 game. His delivery was widely mocked, with testers drawing particular attention to one line of dialogue: "That wizard came from the moon".
Developers Bungie have now hired gaming veteran North to re-record the dialogue on the game and all previous content.
North's previous credits include Assassin's Creed and The Last of Us. Most famously, he plays treasure-hunter Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, which has sold over 21 million copies worldwide. Dinklage plays Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones He told the GameInformer website: "I was really excited to do this role.
"You want to give him as much personality as the world will allow, without making it unbelievable. There's a fine line to walk there, and I think we found it."
Dinklage has played Tyrion Lannister in HBO series Game of Thrones since 2011 and has won an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award for the role, as well as consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations from 2012 to 2015.
Today at Gamescom, Microsoft announced that all future Xbox 360 titles included with the Games With Gold program will work on Xbox One by way of backwards compatibility. Games With Gold is Microsoft's loyalty program for Xbox Live Gold subscribers. As part of it, subscribers get free games (on Xbox One and Xbox 360) every month.
Xbox One backwards compatibility is currently available only to Xbox Preview Program members, but will launch for everyone in November, Microsoft also announced today.
There will be more than one hundred games available at launch, with "hundreds" more coming later.
You can see the initial lineup of supported games here.
Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, has indicated he is confident major publishers will support backwards compatibility for Xbox One as it offers a "valuable" way to keep people engaged in franchises.
During Microsoft's Gamescom media briefing, the corporation revealed a list of publishers that have already pledged support for backwards compatibility. This is a crucial issue, because for Xbox 360 games to work on Xbox One, publishers will need to give Microsoft approval to emulate each individual title.
Speaking in an interview with GameSpot at Gamescom, Spencer was asked if he anticipates support from the noticeably absent publishers.
(see link for video)
"We're having great conversations with all the publishers about backward compatibility," he replied.
"It's really been a good time for something like backwards compatibility to come around, because so many of the publishers have built more service-based games where they're able to find a business opportunity in the longevity of games."
According to Spencer, backwards compatibility offers publishers an ideal way to maintain or reinvigorate interest in their properties.
"[Longevity] can be through paid DLC or smaller transactions in some cases on PC and tablet. But engagement in franchises has become a critical measure for any publisher. So when you think about it, there's this opportunity to take franchise and get people re-engaged in it.
"One of the things that's really exciting for me, and we announced this with Gears of War, Just Cause, and Rainbow Six, is that when franchises are releasing an Xbox One version, [publishers] have an opportunity to give them the Xbox 360 version at the same time."
He continued: "I'll be honest, I didn't really have that in mind when we started thinking about backwards compatibility, but the studios have got the games, they realise they're not really selling them anymore, and can use them to introduce people who maybe didn't play the earlier entries in the franchises while growing engagement in the property itself. That's very valuable for a publisher."
Currently, members of the Xbox One preview program have been able to test the backwards compatibility features with titles including Super Meat Boy, Geometry Wars Evolved, and Kameo.
What a load of jerks. They are not going to make it properly backwards compatible. They are just not. Please stop fussing people. You will only be disappointed in the end. There is no way they are going to recover the Xbox One. Just give up now while you have the chance.
Eating disorder support group Bulimia.com has re-imagined a variety of female video game characters--including Lara Croft and Cortana--in an effort to bring awareness to body image issues. In a blog post (via Motherboard), Bulimia points out that graphics in video games has gotten better and better over time, with developers able to create more life-like worlds and characters. But video games too often perpetuate unrealistic body imagery, the group says--and this can be dangerous.
"If video game creators are going to pride themselves on accurate digital representations, then it's time for them to get real about women," Bulimia said.
"One could argue that the social pressures to obtain perfection are reinforced even through the depiction of video game characters," the group added. "Girl gamers--especially young ones--could develop a skewed image of how the female body should look. This might mark the beginning of obsessive thoughts about their own bodies, and self-questioning as to why they don't align with their perceived ideal. When dangerous, compulsive eating behaviors develop alongside of these negative obsessions, young women can quickly find themselves struggling with an eating disorder."
Crackdown 3 has been demonstrated for the first time today at Microsoft’s Gamescom 2015 Media Briefing. The long awaited sequel in the open world series is powered by special cloud tech (Cloudgine), and it has been announced that the game will have “revolutionary multiplayer” with 100% destructible environments. Microsoft is definitely trying to deliver on its original promise – they also added that by connecting to the cloud, Crackdown 3 will harness 20 times the computational power of the Xbox One hardware.
It seems that the game will retain both its signature graphics style (cel-shading) and the classic gameplay, which looks very familiar to what we’ve seen and played in the first two Crackdown games. In terms of pure detail, there’s still a lot of room for improvement with many graphical aspects looking quite rough at the moment.
According to the narrating voice of the trailer, the developers of Crackdown 3 are striving to create the “ultimate sandbox” game, with players taking once again control of an Agent fighting crime syndicates all over the city.
The very last frames of the video hint that the multiplayer mode will begin (likely with a beta) in Summer 2016, obviously as an Xbox One exclusive.
World of Warcraft is still the undisputed champ of subscription MMOs, but its numbers continue to slide. Activision Blizzard's second-quarter financial results have revealed that it is now down to 5.6 million subscribers. That figure represents a loss of 1.5 million monthly grinders since May, when it dropped dramatically from roughly ten million users to 7.1 million.
That's obviously not good—according to VentureBeat, it represents the lowest number since 2005—but having 5.6 million subscribers is still the kind of problem literally every other MMO maker on the planet would love to worry about. Blizzard also said that the release of Fury of Hellfire, "one of the largest non-expansion updates to date," helped stabilize the subscriber count near the end of the quarter. More importantly (to Activision, anyway), Blizzard's revenues for the quarter actually increased year-over-year, thanks to "strong performance on the expanding Blizzard portfolio."
Not surprised. Went downhill ages ago. Now its just ripping off everything in a desperate attempt to get money back but its the end of an era to some gamers. Oh well, life moves on.
