RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS!

[Hurlshort]

In other news: The Secret World drops subscription fee

 

That's good, it was a pretty interesting game. Although I imagine the lifetime sub folks are a bit upset about dropping a couple hundred on it.

[Drowsy Emperor]

In other news: The Secret World drops subscription fee

 

That's good, it was a pretty interesting game. Although I imagine the lifetime sub folks are a bit upset about dropping a couple hundred on it.

 

lol @ "a bit upset"

[Oner]

Honestly, if you buy a lifetime subscription during the twilight of the monthly fee MMOs, you only have yourself to blame.

[Morgoth]

I'm glad I was able to sell my lifetime sub with minimal losses shortly after I bought it, otherwise I'd feel very butthurt about this right now.

 

Still, this game is highly recommended. I'm sure you guys will like it more than SWTOR.

[Nordicus]

Remember that old rumor about Bethesda getting rights to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise?

 

Well forget all about that for now, because bitComposer Games gained the license (at least to the film and book, not 100% sure about the computer games)

 

"What is this bitComposer Games?" A publishing company founded in 2009, they're so niche they don't even have their own Wikipedia article.

 

I'm both surprised and intrigued by this

Edited December 12, 2012 by Nordicus

[Hurlshort]

I'm glad I was able to sell my lifetime sub with minimal losses shortly after I bought it, otherwise I'd feel very butthurt about this right now.

 

Still, this game is highly recommended. I'm sure you guys will like it more than SWTOR.

 

While it has some of the best quests I've ever seen, and the skill deck building is fantastic, it has a major lack of content. I hope they've been able to add more since it was released. Just the fact that there is almost no content differences between the 3 factions is a major ding in today's MMO's.

[Katphood]

I've been really itching to try The Secret World, will buy it on the next steam sale

[Zoraptor]

Remember that old rumor about Bethesda getting rights to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise?

 

Well forget all about that for now, because bitComposer Games gained the license (at least to the film and book, not 100% sure about the computer games)

bitComposter made the new Jagged Alliance game which was not very good, apparently.

 

They haven't bought the Stalker game licence and really ought to know that given they published CoP exCIS. From the RPS comments someone who contacted the actual owner says that bitComposter hasn't paid him royalties for 8 months either.

[alanschu]

At first I thought you had a typo. Then I realized it was probably intentional. Hahaha.

[Nordicus]

From the RPS comments someone who contacted the actual owner says that bitComposter hasn't paid him royalties for 8 months either.

Yeah well, about that...

 

bitComposer Games website brings up the game series in particular, so I don't know if that's misleading information or just a rather major goof on their part

 

"The acquisition of the S.T.AL.K.E.R. license serves as an important cornerstone for the further international orientation of bitComposer Entertainment AG," says Stefan Weyl, member of the bitComposer Entertainment AG executive board. "For us, this brand represents a bridge to an important segment of triple-A products and a milestone in the history of the company. We would like to express our gratitude to Boris Natanovich Strygatsky."

 

"S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a reputable brand with a long history of success. To date, the series has sold many millions of units worldwide," says Wolfgang Duhr, member of the bitComposer Entertainment AG executive board. "Naturally, we'd like to tap into the success of this series, and we see a great deal of potential for the future."

 

Since the 2007 release of the first part, "Shadow of Chernobyl," the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series has received numerous national and international awards. "Shadow of Chernobyl" has sold over 300,000 copies in the German-speaking countries alone. The series has received exceptional overall reviews worldwide, with average ratings of 82% (Metacritic) for Shadow of Chernobyl and 80% (Metacritic) for Call of Pripyat. So far, the three titles in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series have been released exclusively for Windows PC.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Nordicus

[Zoraptor]

Yep, rather difficult to see what they're thinking. It sounds like their eyes lit up when they saw 'Stalker' and didn't do their homework wrt the movie/ roadside picnic vs the games, in a sort of "buy London Bridge thinking it's Tower Bridge" type scenario.

[Gorth]

So far, the three titles in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series have been released exclusively for Windows PC.

 

Sounds like they plan to change that... Quest compasses? Regenerating health? Auto-aim? Couch Co-op?

[Lexx]

bitComposter made the new Jagged Alliance game which was not very good, apparently.

 

It is ok-ish. Not a bad game for what it is. You just have to ignore that it's titled "Jagged Alliance" and it is very playable. Especially with the latest patches.

[Gizmo]

But the only failsafe way is to copy the directory of the game you want to preserve elsewhere on your HD, and copy it back over again when you're done doing other stuff online/have gone back offline.

Better still, I use Winrar to copy the game folder to a compressed archive.

 

Has anyone (in the US) noticed that Walmart is selling Kotor & Kotor2 on the shelves lately? (bundled)

Edited December 13, 2012 by Gizmo

[Bos_hybrid]

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/12/most-of-early-2013s-biggest-games-seem-to-be-skipping-wii-u/

 

Sad to see the cycle starting to be repeated.

[sorophx]

bitComposer Games website brings up the game series in particular, so I don't know if that's misleading information or just a rather major goof on their part

they bought the rights to the original book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic, AFAIK

[alanschu]

Is it a shock that Metal Gear isn't going to it??

[Serrano]

Nevermind, I just remember that the Wii-U is a handheld and not the equivalent of a Wii 360

Edited December 13, 2012 by Serrano

[Apatia]

Nevermind, I just remember that the Wii-U is a handheld and not the equivalent of a Wii 360

 

What?

[Serrano]

Nevermind, I just remember that the Wii-U is a handheld and not the equivalent of a Wii 360

 

What?

 

I haven't been keeping up to date. I was thinking that the Wii-U was like an upgraded wii with nunchuck and that it would be a good control setup for the Metal Gear with Raiden. Then I remembered a picture of the Wii-U gamepad and assumed it was a handheld console. Looking it up I can see now that this is not the case.

[AwesomeOcelot]

http://www.kotaku.co...skipping-wii-u/

 

Sad to see the cycle starting to be repeated.

 

It was probably a mistake to not have a more powerful CPU, and again Nintendo focus on gimmicky peripherals for core gameplay, pressuring developers to support them. With that install base, with that amount of pain in porting to the Wii U, this isn't surprising.

[Nightshape]

Nintendo have never been one to push the hardware angle, with the exception of the SNES and NES. They've actively released under-powered machines (when compared to the competition) since the era of 3D console began. It's clear they have a strategy of using first party titles and gimmick peripherals to push sale, this is combined with a "child safe" image of the console.

 

I would be shocked if they actually did something so extreme as to release a console which blew the hardcore competition out of the water, in a way Nintendo are being smart, they're hitting a child-safe casual market that Microsoft and Sony (try as they may) can't really break into.

 

For those that thought this would be a leapfrog of existing hardware - I never expected it to be - that stuff will probably be coming in the future and if it does it'll be Microsoft and Sony who are pushing those buttons.

 

I don't know much about the Wii-U as a user experience, but I'll likely pick one up, it'll be in addition to my existing Wii (which I actually loved, due to the VC/Gamecube compatibility which really worked well for me).

[Drowsy Emperor]

http://www.kotaku.co...skipping-wii-u/

 

Sad to see the cycle starting to be repeated.

 

It was probably a mistake to not have a more powerful CPU, and again Nintendo focus on gimmicky peripherals for core gameplay, pressuring developers to support them. With that install base, with that amount of pain in porting to the Wii U, this isn't surprising.

 

Hardware is not the issue, the CPU has been proven capable by the Wii hacker dude. You only need to look at Pikmin 3's gameplay videos and its pretty obvious that anything that works on XB and PS3 should easily work on WiiU. The issue is the install base which needs time to grow so that the cost of development and the risks undertaken are deemed worthwhile by dev studios.

 

The numbers are looking good so far, but we'll be well into 2013 when they're as good as they need to be for major publishers.

 

That's basically what Reggie Fils-Aime said himself.

Edited December 14, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[AwesomeOcelot]

I wouldn't even say the SNES was noticeably better than the Sega Mega Drive, they both had their strengths. The N64 was better than the PS in terms of performance, the GameCube certainly wasn't worse than the PS2, I think it was slightly better. The Xbox was way better than the PS2. The GameCube was much easier to develop for than the PS2. Nintendo was already struggling when they had hardware that was faster, easier to develop for, and didn't have gimmicky peripherals as standard.

 

It's been 7 years since the Xbox 360 launched, that's a huge difference from releasing the GameCube a year later that's close to the PS2, the Wii is the only comparable launch. Nintendo stated they would try to encourage more 3rd party developers, they are publishing Bayonetta 2 to this end. Most Wii U ports look better than the PS3 and Xbox360, but not by much, and there's frame drop issues, it's only a 30fps target to begin with. The GPU is similar to a DirectX 10 low-mid range GPU, that's to say it should be way better than a PS3 or Xbox360. The GPU, plus over double the RAM, support for 2TB HDD (way faster loading times than the PS3 or Xbox360) could have made the Wii U a contender.

 

Playing a game that's being rendered from the console on a tablet with Wi-Fi video at 480p is a really cool idea, as an optional extra. Having a touch screen to navigate menus on a console, beautiful, as an extra. Still pulling the same **** with motion controllers like in Darksiders 2, when will it end.

 

Also, an update, we now know that the Wii U 1080p promises were not met. Arkham City, Assassins Creed, Darksiders 2, and Mass Effect 3 are all 720p on the Wii U.

 

Oles Shishkovtsov told NowGamer: “[The] Wii U has a horrible, slow CPU” by way of explaining why a Wii U version of Metro wasn't in the works.

 

"For games in the Warriors series, including Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi, when you have a lot of enemies coming at you at once, the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU,” he said.

 

Based on rough calculations, the Wii U CPU occupies the same amount of silicon - and so has a roughly similar amount number of transistors - as a single Xbox 360 core (update: plus the L2 cache) in the Xenon tri-core processor.

 

http://www.eurogamer...concern-remains

 

"1.243125GHz, exactly. 3 PowerPC 750 type cores (similar to Wii's Broadway, but more cache). GPU core at 549.999755MHz."

 

On clock speed alone, it's a whitewash: Xbox 360 operates at 3.2GHz with six hardware threads over three cores, equivalent to 1.6GHz per thread.

 

Clock speed alone doesn't determine performance obviously, my 3.9##GHz i5 2500K isn't a bit slower than a 4Ghz P4 or PS3 4Ghz Cell. Clock speed, transistors, RISC, in order/out of order, power consumption, the more similarities in the CPU specs, the more closely the clock matches the performance difference. These clock speeds aren't evidence for different performance, but using developer's experience with both systems, they're having problems with the Wii U CPU, it's undeniable that if the clock was higher on the Wii U CPU there wouldn't be these problems.

 

It's interesting, both are IBM processors, the Xenon I believe is the newer architecture, a similar processor to one Xenon core is in the PS3. The Xenon is in order so it has to be programmed with that in mind, the Wii U CPU is out of order. The Wii U has 3 threads, but the OS runs on a separate ARM processor, the PS3 has a PowerPC core plus 6 SPEs, and the Xbox 360 has 3 PowerPC cores with 6 hardware threads.

 

http://www.eurogamer...i-u-cpu-secrets

 

 

For comparisons, reports of issues with the Wii U ports: http://www.eurogamer...U&type=face-off

 

 

http://www.kotaku.co...skipping-wii-u/

 

Sad to see the cycle starting to be repeated.

 

It was probably a mistake to not have a more powerful CPU, and again Nintendo focus on gimmicky peripherals for core gameplay, pressuring developers to support them. With that install base, with that amount of pain in porting to the Wii U, this isn't surprising.

 

Hardware is not the issue,

...the CPU has been proven capable by the Wii hacker dude...

 

You only need to look at Pikmin 3's gameplay videos and its pretty obvious that anything that works on XB and PS3 should easily work on WiiU. The issue is the install base which needs time to grow so that the cost of development and the risks undertaken are deemed worthwhile by dev studios.

 

The numbers are looking good so far, but we'll be well into 2013 when they're as good as they need to be for major publishers.

 

That's basically what Reggie Fils-Aime said himself.

 

@Hector Martin

 

I don't know how it compares at the actual clock speeds, but at the same clock the 750 wins hands down except on pure SIMD.

 

He says he doesn't know. I don't think he's developed any games or run any benchmarks on the Wii U CPU.

Edited December 14, 2012 by AwesomeOcelot

[pmp10]

http://www.kotaku.co...skipping-wii-u/

 

Sad to see the cycle starting to be repeated.

 

It was probably a mistake to not have a more powerful CPU, and again Nintendo focus on gimmicky peripherals for core gameplay, pressuring developers to support them. With that install base, with that amount of pain in porting to the Wii U, this isn't surprising.

 

Hardware is not the issue, the CPU has been proven capable by the Wii hacker dude. You only need to look at Pikmin 3's gameplay videos and its pretty obvious that anything that works on XB and PS3 should easily work on WiiU. The issue is the install base which needs time to grow so that the cost of development and the risks undertaken are deemed worthwhile by dev studios.

 

The numbers are looking good so far, but we'll be well into 2013 when they're as good as they need to be for major publishers.

 

That's basically what Reggie Fils-Aime said himself.

The install-base may not be an issue for WiiU but the game sales are.

Wii might have had an enormous install base but the games sales were never really impressive (except for casual titles like Wii fit).