Batten down the hatches! The eShop will be down for 12 hours today.
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Via PlayStation Blog
As expected, Sony announced their own virtual reality headset at GDC last night. From the PlayStation Blog:
Our current prototype for Project Morpheus features a head mounted display with 1080p resolution and a 90 degree field of view. Accelerometer and gyroscope sensors built into the head mounted unit as well as PlayStation Camera accurately tracks head orientation and movement, so as your head rotates, the image of the virtual world rotates intuitively in real-time. Project Morpheus also features our new 3D audio technology that re-creates stereoscopic sounds in all directions and changes in real-time depending on your head orientation. In addition to PlayStation Camera, Project Morpheus works with DUALSHOCK 4 Wireless Controller and PlayStation Move to deliver an easy-to-use, plug-and-play VR experience.
Via The Daily What
People in Turkey are really worried that “Minecraft” is going to turn their kids into hardened criminals.
The country’s Family and Social Policies Ministry has launched an investigation into the game after receiving numerous complaints from parents that the game encourages violence (particularly towards women), according to Hurriyet Daily News.
Apparently Turkey hasn’t heard of GTA V.
“In the higher levels of the game the player may need to kill women, allies and even friends for survival reasons,” the article says.
Minecraft is probably one of the least violent games in existence right now, with a majority of the game devoted to hours of mining, farming and building a life in a blocky, pixelated sandbox where anything is possible.
According to the report:
If the ministry’s investigation decides that the game encourages violence, the ministry will proceed by opening a law suit against the game for a country-wide ban.
This isn’t the first time “Minecraft” has been accused of promoting violence.
Last year PETA launched a HQ in “Minecraft” as a sort of animal sanctuary where no one was allowed to harm the digital creatures.
Via WB Games
An interim patch for Batman: Arkham Knight on PC has finally been released, allowing PC players to get their hands on the game without crippling framerates. User feedback suggests all is going well with the new patch, which fixes the following:
Reduced frame rate hitches
Optimizations for system memory and VRAM usage
Improved performance on all GPUs (requires the latest drivers)
More Comprehensive In-Game Settings
Fixed low resolution texture bugs
Fixed hitches when running on mechanical hard drives (HDD)
More optimization is planned for the future, which will add more support and optimize the game for Windows 10. You can read the full patch notes here.
By jupiterninja
The Day of the Doctor will not only be simulcast, but also commercial free! So don't rely on commercials for bathroom breaks.
They posted the following series of announcements to their Facebook page on what we can expect as potential developments for Nostalrius server over upcoming days:
Dear community,
The last few weeks have been full of exciting events that we did not anticipate. We saw the first official answer from J. Allen Brack on the topic of legacy servers, the petition reached 250.000 signatures, and we are currently scheduling a meeting at Blizzard campus!
We are very excited to be able to help Blizzard understand the part of their community asking for legacy servers and many other related topics, in the hope that they will eventually make it possible to legally play previous game expansions.
Since these events are major changes regarding the legacy server scene, completely changing our former strategy, we have several announcements today:
A. Ambassadors of Legacy servers
After the answer from Blizzard and the amazing support we received, we feel we are now not only the admins of a private server: We are also the ambassadors of a larger movement for the entire World of Warcraft community that wants to see game history restored. It is a major responsibility. Our top-priority and only focus now is to fulfill the needs of this community, by carrying your voice to Blizzard directly.
B. Nostalrius source code and database won’t be releasedWe acknowledge the help that the emulation community provided to us by creating MaNGOS and our initial objective was to release part of these sources to help improve the current emulators - without our special anti-cheat and some other critical features.
Our custom anticheat had unique functionalities that allowed us to detect and track any kind of hack / bot in a generic way. We believe the anticheat that we made was able to detect and was able to block all of the known threats, and releasing our code would allow the development of more powerful cheating tools that would be more difficult, if not impossible, to detect. We have spent countless hours to fight people making money from exploits, cheats and traffics: the last thing we want to see now is people getting more money from wow hacks because of us.
Some voices in the emulation scene wanted to legally force us to release the complete source code if we chose to only publish a part of it. As explained above, the anticheat is not something we would reveal in any case.
A second important point is that keeping the sources private could be useful at some point during the discussion with Blizzard. They proposed to discuss together and we want to have all the chances on our side, for the community we represent now.
Furthermore, if official legacy servers were to be released at some point in the future, the emulation would become, in essence, obsolete for our community.
C. A special gift for you
On a side note, the development team has prepared a gift for you. One of the hidden Nostalrius features was the ability to "replay" sequences of the game. This is something that was mainly used to create our videos, but never released to players. We accumulated a few replays of different events that occurred on our PvP and PvE servers, and we are willing to let you replay these magic moments. We are glad to inform you that Nostalrius team is releasing the first "replay" feature for World of Warcraft, and will be available to anyone: a powerful tool for future e-sport event maybe ?
The source code is available here (based on BunnyEmu, credit to their developers) :
Via prnewswire
Lionsgate Entertainment has made a "significant" investment into Telltale Games as part of their previously announced move to expand beyond television and film. The investment means that Lionsgate's CEO will be joining Telltale's board of directors, and according to their press release, the "collaboration will also enable the two companies to explore opportunities to co-develop existing and original IP into episodic games and television."
Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer had this to say about the investment: "Telltale is one of the premier storytellers in the gaming world today. Their leadership in narrative-driven episodic games, together with our investment and the potential opportunities created by our premium content expertise, will continue to strengthen their ability to offer exciting new avenues of storytelling to their next generation audiences across a broad range of platforms."
UPDATE: Telltale's CEO has spoken to EW, and announced that part of this investment includes work on a "Super Show," which is a concept that combines "one part of interactive playable content with one part of scripted television style content. Both pieces, when combined together, are what make an actual Super Show 'episode.'" Whatever that means.
Via scmp
While most people wait in eager anticipation for the Pokémon Sun and Moon release, while potentially keeping themselves busy by photoshopping the sh*t out of the world's seemingly least favorite Pokémon starter of all time, Popplio...other folks in Hong Kong marched in protest over Nintendo's plan to use the Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) translation for 100+ Pokémon characters in the Hong Kong version of Pokémon Sun and Moon.
The core of the fans' unrest is with the Pikachu name change. Previously known as "Beikaaciu" but now set to be referred to as Pikaqiu in future games.
6,000 people banded together to sign off on a petition in March asking Nintendo to reverse the changes, but the request went on to be ignored.
Via GOG
No dates as of yet, but GOG plans to add support for Ubuntu and Mint, with at least 100 games to start.
Via Oculus
The Oculus Rift is finally coming to consumers early next year, and included with it comes an Xbox One controller. If that doesn't tickle your fancy, you may want to get your hands on their newly announced "Oculus Touch," a set of motion tracking controllers designed for 360-degrees of motion tracking equipped with a thumbstick, two buttons, a hand trigger, and an analog trigger.
The Oculus Touch can detect input from all of your fingers, and features shaking haptic technology to let you "feel" the objects you're touching. If you thought you looked like a huge nerd using the Oculus Rift before, just wait until you see yourself using these things too.
Attendees of E3 next week will get to try these controllers out in person, while the rest of us will have to wait to get our mitts on them until Q1 of next year.
Gearbox wants to hire you for Borderlands 3 (you know, assuming you're an "industry badass"). During a panel at PAX South, the development company revealed that they haven't started on Borderlands 3, but are hiring so that they can do so. So if you're qualified and happen to be in the market for a new job, do us all a favor and send in your resume.
Via Konami
Rumors have been floating around that Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is leaving Konami, after he said he's done with the series, and the brand is attempting to minimalize the appearance of his name on the latest Metal Gear Solid game:
Kojima's games typically feature heavy branding as "A Hideo Kojima Game," but advertisements of The Phantom Pain have recently been changed to remove that branding. Additionally, news has surfaced that Kojima will no longer be an executive at Konami as of April 1st. Though they haven't explicitly stated he's leaving the company, Konami released the following statement that all but confims it:
To Customers,
Thank you for your continued patronage of KONAMI products and services.
The latest title in the METAL GEAR series,“METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN” (below, “MGSV: TPP”), will be released as planned starting on Tuesday, September 1st, 2015 in North America, Latin America, and Europe, followed by Japan and Asia on Wednesday, September 2nd. Hideo Kojima will remain involved throughout.
Hideo Kojima stated, "I want to reassure fans that I am 100% involved and will continue working on METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN; I’m determined to make it the greatest game I’ve directed to date. Don’t miss it!"
In addition, KONAMI will continue to develop and distribute top-quality content in the METAL GEAR series following “MGSV: TPP.” We greatly anticipate and deeply appreciate your ongoing support for METAL GEAR.
As the next step in the series, KONAMI has already resolved to develop new “METAL GEAR”.
We will be conducting interviews for main staff to lead the development.
Via Nintendo
You may remember that Iwata has been out of commission for a while as he's recovered from surgery to remove a tumor in his bile duct, but he's officially back in business just in time to deliver another good piece of news: Nintendo saw a profit of $224 million/24.2 billion yen in the last quarter. 1.27 million 3DS units and 610,000 Wii Us were sold last quarter bringing their lifetime totals to 45.4 million and 7.29 million respectively.
