The Xbox One announcement gave us some technical specs for Microsoft's next console, but it did leave some unanswered questions. They've been dripping in ever since, and today we have another bit of information. The console will be region-locked.
Read more: 'Games must meet country-specific regulatory guidelines' »
From a hardware standpoint, Xbox One is shaping up to be weaker than PlayStation 4, with slower memory and three operating systems that eat up a large part of the console's 8GB of RAM. But Microsoft doesn't believe it's outgunned. In fact, it claims that Xbox One can become massively more powerful due to the power of the cloud.
"We're provisioning for developers for every physical Xbox One we build, we're provisioning the CPU and storage equivalent of three Xbox Ones on the cloud," Jeff Henshaw told OXM. "We're doing that flat out so that any game developer can assume that there's roughly three times the resources immediately available to their game, so they can build bigger, persistent levels that are more inclusive for players. They can do that out of the gate."
Console gamers will be able to wave their hands in front of the next-generation Kinect when Xbox One launches later this year. However, PC users will have to wait a bit longer to play around with Microsoft's newly updated 3D camera tech. The next-gen Kinect for Windows will be available in 2014, Microsoft has confirmed.
When Microsoft announced the name of the Xbox One last week, it hadn't yet gotten all the angles settled. For one thing, it was missing domain names for the new console. With the reveal out of the way, it can tie up some loose ends.
Wolfenstein: The New Order brings back B.J. Blazkowicz for another round of Nazi killing. Developer MachineGames tries to modernize the franchise by adding depth to its characters and writing, but it doesn't quite fit with the campy, arcade-style tenants that are core to the series. While the attempt is admirable, Wolfenstein fans will be more interested in the energetic action the series is known for, and the demo we saw has that down quite nicely.
In this incarnation, B.J. Blazkowicz faces an alternate reality in the 1960s where the Germans won World War 2 with some new, mysterious technology. He has come out of a coma after 14 years and must come to grips with this new world order. Creative director Jens Matthies said one of the goals for the game was to develop some drama within the story and give the player a reason to care about the characters.
Shinji Mikami has quite a background in survival horror games, having created the Resident Evil series, then turning the genre on its ear with RE4 in 2005. So when he said he wanted his newest title, The Evil Within, to bring the survival horror genre back to its heyday with a solid blend of action and horror, we were curious to see how he would do it. After seeing the first 15 minutes of gameplay from Mikami's Tango Gameworks studio, the game as it stands is a bit more ho-hum than scary.
Call of Duty: Ghosts was the biggest (and one of the only) gaming pitches Microsoft made at its Xbox One announcement. Activision has once again thrown its lot in with Microsoft for exclusive content, and Activision Publishing head Eric Hirshberg has talked about how it plans to leverage some of the console's features.
Read more: 'You're going to see voice integration, voice commands via Kinect' »
"...and how exactly is that? It's probably still all scripted."
- Mad Brahmin Disease
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Oh, live-action trailers! They're how publishers try to convince us that their games have deep, meaningful stories, and that our parents will definitely respect us now because look, these are actual human beings shooting men in the face and the face-shooting isn't the part we enjoy, honest! So here's a new trailer for Bungie's FPS-RPG Destiny, directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man; Iron Man 2), which mixes live-action footage with that other hollow trailer medium, CG.
Like the rest of the gaming world, the eyes of the Shacknews community was on Tuesday's Xbox One reveal event. Some enjoyed the hardware and entertainment features, others are taking a wait-and-see approach until E3, but many others left the event disappointed. To help gauge our community's reaction, I reached out to some of the longer-tenured members of the Shacknews Chatty community for their thoughts.
Microsoft's Xbox One presentation lasted just under an hour, and a significant chunk of that time was spent on entertainment, including a video highlighting its partnership with the NFL. So why so much time devoted to football? Well, if you had committed to a multimillion dollar contract, you'd probably want to show it off too.
Electronic Arts has announced Need for Speed Rivals, coming from Criterion Games and EA's newest studio Ghost Games. The popular racing franchise is set to come to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 19, as well as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this year. EA had hinted mentioned a new game in the series was coming earlier this month.
Zombies are still in vogue, but it's surprising to see Dead Island developer Techland move onto an entirely different first-person zombie game. While Dead Island could be described as an undead take on The Elder Scrolls, their new game, Dying Light, could be quickly summed as Mirror's Edge with walkers.
Like in DICE's first-person running game, you'll very quickly run through the environment, leaping and vaulting over obstacles, and jumping onto poles, quite easily. However, you'll have a greater repertoire of moves than Faith ever did. While we didn't see any gunplay, we did see quite an impressive array of martial arts moves, with your character able to kick, jump kick, dodge to the side, and even perform a sweeping circular kick--all while remaining in first-person.
Battlefield 4 looks to continue leading the charge on Electronic Arts' FPS offerings, and producer Patrick Bach has opened up a bit about the single-player campaign. Most significantly, he talked about the desire to give players more agency instead of relying on scripted events--one of the common criticisms of the series' chief competitor, Call of Duty.
Read more: 'Picking your tactics, much like you do in multiplayer' »
A chunk of the indie gaming sector observed the Xbox One presentation (either live or secondhand, via channels like Twitter) with a sense of disappointment. Given that Sony's PlayStation 4 unveiling put game development at the forefront to the point that indie darling Jonathan Blow was given a forum to speak, some indie developers had hoped for more from the Xbox One event.
With a new console generation came hopes that Microsoft would relax their strict standards for indie developers, who currently must have a publisher in order to see their product on a Microsoft console. That does not appear to be the case.
Infinity Ward has been working on an all new engine for Call of Duty: Ghosts, and while we discussed it our our first preview of the game, a picture--or trailer--is worth a thousand words. Activision has released a new video comparing the current graphics to Modern Warfare 3.
"This. If anything, region locking has been investigated by Australia, New Zealand, and the EU as ..."
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