RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[Sarex]

All the games to come in the next year or two. (there are a lot of them!)

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/04/the-best-pc-games-of-2014/

 

 

Edit:For Pillars of Eternity - "Obsidian recently held a vote to determine whether combat would be turn-based or real-time-with-pause; it was a close contest, but turn-based won out in the end."

 

So yeah, at least they got the names of the games right, that is what counts. XD

Edited January 4, 2014 by Sarex

[Orogun01]

All the games to come in the next year or two. (there are a lot of them!)

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/04/the-best-pc-games-of-2014/

 

 

Edit:For Pillars of Eternity - "Obsidian recently held a vote to determine whether combat would be turn-based or real-time-with-pause; it was a close contest, but turn-based won out in the end."

 

So yeah, at least they got the names of the games right, that is what counts. XD

Apparently this will be a great year for publisher "In-House" funny that I never heard of them. I wonder how they can afford to publish so many games?

[Wolfenbarg]

Last time I checked, Valve is doing just fine.  They're making money hand over fist off Steam, DOTA 2 is a rousing success, and they're still suckering people into buying stuff with hats for Team Fortress 2.  STILL.  Face it, Valve doesn't need Half-Life 3.

 

But what do you use massive financial success to do as a game developer? Make bigger and better games, typically. Unless they've just continually scrapped builds for Half Life 3, it's hard to tell what they're actually working on. They have enough money to hire staff beyond the people who keep DotA 2 and Steam running.

[Keyrock]

 

Last time I checked, Valve is doing just fine.  They're making money hand over fist off Steam, DOTA 2 is a rousing success, and they're still suckering people into buying stuff with hats for Team Fortress 2.  STILL.  Face it, Valve doesn't need Half-Life 3.

 

But what do you use massive financial success to do as a game developer? Make bigger and better games, typically. Unless they've just continually scrapped builds for Half Life 3, it's hard to tell what they're actually working on. They have enough money to hire staff beyond the people who keep DotA 2 and Steam running.

 

It's not like Valve has just been sitting on their hands.  Beyond Steam and DOTA 2 recently there has been Portal 2 and Counter Strike: GO, oh, and that little thing of building their own operating system Linux distribution and gaming console/PC hybrid, a trivial matter, I'm sure.  Valve has their hands in a lot of different projects.  Would I like to see Half-Life 3?  Sure, but if it never happens then oh well, life goes on, Valve will go on (for at least the foreseeable future).

[Tale]

I'm a Valve fanboy on the wane. And I'm getting a little worried about them creatively. They've been doing fantastic work in microtransactions and multiplayer, but beyond that, I think they need to push something out. Talent is a perishable skill, you need to create and publish, take the feedback, and then improve. You need that entire process. They're stuck in the first step on Half-Life. And each year they don't release something, the talent they acquired from releasing even Portal 2 is going to spoil.

 

I used to be a big fan of "release it when it's done... if you can afford that." But I think they've crossed a line into it creating a concern about if they're even going to know how to make it relevant and appealing anymore.

[Oner]

It's not like Valve only has one team. They acquired several developers to make games for them. I doubt they wouldn't have available manpower for a HL game if they wanted to.

[Keyrock]

 And each year they don't release something

 

2008 - Left 4 Dead

2009 - Left 4 Dead 2

2010 - Alien Swarm

2011 - Portal 2

2012 - Counter Strike: Global Offensive

2013 - DOTA 2

 

Still waiting for that year they "don't release something".

[AwesomeOcelot]

 

And each year they don't release something

2008 - Left 4 Dead

2009 - Left 4 Dead 2

2010 - Alien Swarm

2011 - Portal 2

2012 - Counter Strike: Global Offensive

2013 - DOTA 2

 

Still waiting for that year they "don't release something".

 

Counter Strike: Global Offensive is not made by Valve. :D

[Zoraptor]

Are any of them made by people who weren't bought out by Valve? And a lot of those seem to have caught the delay disease once their buy out titles were released.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Are any of them made by people who weren't bought out by Valve?

Portal 2 had a lot of Valve developers, but also the 2 teams they bought, the ones who made Portal and the others that made Left 4 Dead. DOTA 2 isn't made by a team bought by Valve, although they did hire the most prominent developer of DOTA.

[Keyrock]

 

Counter Strike: Global Offensive is not made by Valve. :D

 

It's co-developed by Valve and Hidden Path.  As for who did the bulk of the development, I don't know.

[AwesomeOcelot]

 

Counter Strike: Global Offensive is not made by Valve. :D

It's co-developed by Valve and Hidden Path.  As for who did the bulk of the development, I don't know.

 

Valve supplied the updated source engine and a lot of the assets came from Valve's Counter-strike: Source. The game started out as a port of CS:S to the Xbox360 by Hidden Path. Valve aren't interested in developing CS, they gave CS:S to Hidden Path to maintain.

[Wolfenbarg]

 

2008 - Left 4 Dead

2009 - Left 4 Dead 2

2010 - Alien Swarm

2011 - Portal 2

2012 - Counter Strike: Global Offensive

2013 - DOTA 2

 

Still waiting for that year they "don't release something".

 

 

There are only 3 games on that list that people were really clamoring for, and only one of them really required the resources of a triple-A developer. They play like a small timer in games despite arguably being the PC's answer to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. MOBAs and Source shooters are the realm of startups right now. Even if they do it well, it seems like the boatloads of money are going into projects that aren't seeing the light of day.

[BruceVC]

All the games to come in the next year or two. (there are a lot of them!)

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/04/the-best-pc-games-of-2014/

 

 

Edit:For Pillars of Eternity - "Obsidian recently held a vote to determine whether combat would be turn-based or real-time-with-pause; it was a close contest, but turn-based won out in the end."

 

So yeah, at least they got the names of the games right, that is what counts. XD

That's a good list. I like the forthcoming RPG

[melkathi]

According to the latest update, Age of Wonders III will apparently be out end of March.

[ShadySands]

Dunno if this has been posted already but..

 

Valve Already Has 12 Partners For Its Steam Machine Production

 

Valve has announced a total of 12 hardware manufacturers who will produce Steam Machine console in the near future.

 

So far, I’ve seen Steam Machine project becoming increasingly viral and reaching the beta mode where 300 testers are working at the moment with the received console. Recently, Valve has announced that they already have 12 partners implicated on the production of the new console. It is quite clear that, since the major hardware manufacturers aligns to produce the Steam Machine, this console/PC already has a secure future. iBuyPower, Digital Storm, Piixl are some names from the same niche, but Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Origin PC, Gygabyte, CyberPowerPC, Zotac, Next, Webhallen, Alternate, Materiel.net and Scan Computers are more known ones which will take this device to the top.

[Malcador]

Next Gen Hitman game cancelled

 

They're still making one for phones though, hmm.

[BruceVC]

Next Gen Hitman game cancelled

 

They're still making one for phones though, hmm.

 

That's not great news and who really cares about games for phones ?

 

Oh well the last Hitman wasn't that well received so I suppose this was inevitable

[Humanoid]

Reads to me that the next 'proper' Hitman is still business as usual, just that the pseudo-spinoff (in the manner of CoD) one that was to be up next is no longer.

[BruceVC]

Reads to me that the next 'proper' Hitman is still business as usual, just that the pseudo-spinoff (in the manner of CoD) one that was to be up next is no longer.

 

I hope you right, that's what it could mean

[Keyrock]

That's not great news and who really cares about games for phones ?

People with phones.

[ShadySands]

I just want a good RPG I can play on my phone

[Keyrock]

Speaking of gaming on phones/tablets/mobile:

 

nVidia introduces Tegra K1

 

 

NVIDIA has taken to using CES as its platform for launching members of its Tegra mobile SoC family. This year was no different as it shifted branding a bit in its announcement of the Tegra K1, formerly known as Project Logan.

 

With Tegra 2 NVIDIA’s big selling point was being first to dual-core in Android. Tegra 3 attempted to do the same with being first to quad-core. Tegra 4 just made things faster. Tegra K1 on the other hand does away with the gimmicks and instead focuses on fundamentals.

 

The SoC will come in two versions, one version with a quad-core (4+1) Cortex-A15, and one that leverages two of NVIDIA’s own 64-bit ARMv8 Denver CPUs. More importantly, they both ship with a full implementation of NVIDIA’s Kepler GPU architecture. In fact, Tegra K1 marks a substantial change in the way NVIDIA approaches mobile GPU design. From this point forward, all mobile GPUs will leverage the same architectures as NVIDIA’s desktop parts. As if that wasn’t enough, starting now, all future NVIDIA GeForce designs will begin first and foremost as mobile designs. NVIDIA just went from playing with mobile to dead serious in a heartbeat.

 

Tegra K1 will also be NVIDIA's launch vehicle for Project Denver, it's first fully custom ARMv8 CPU core. More on that in a bit.

 

CPU Option 1: Quad-Core ARM Cortex A15

 

Tegra K1 will ship in two configurations. The first went into production at the end of December 2013, is shipping to OEMs this quarter and will be in devices, allegedly, in the first half of 2014. This first configuration is based on ARM’s Cortex A15 CPU core.

 

Much like Tegra 4, the A15 version of Tegra K1 features four Cortex A15s synthesized for high frequencies and a fifth Cortex A15 that’s optimized for low power/frequency operation. The fifth core, what NVIDIA likes to call a shadow or companion core, is swapped in during periods of very low CPU usage (e.g. idle, screen off in your pocket updating new tweets/emails). As CPU demands grow the companion core is switched out for one of the four high performance cores, then two, then three and finally all four can be plugged in at once (but never five).

 

 

Tegra K1 ships with a newer revision of the Cortex A15 (r3p3) than what was in Tegra 4 (r2p1). ARM continuously updates its processor IP, with each revision bringing bug fixes and sometimes performance improvements. In the case of Tegra K1’s A15s, the main improvements here have to do with increasing power efficiency. With r3p0 (which r3p3 inherits) ARM added more fine grained clock gating, which should directly impact power efficiency.

 

The combination of the newer Cortex A15 revision and the move to 28nm HPM give Tegra K1 better performance at the same power consumption or lower power consumption at the same performance level. The reality tends to be that mobile OEMs will pursue max performance and not optimize for a good performance/power balance, but it’s at least possible to do better with Tegra K1 than with Tegra 4.

 

The max CPU clock goes up from 1.9GHz to 2.3GHz, a direct result of the move to 28nm HPM; 2.3GHz is the max CPU clock regardless of the number of active cores. The max performance increase over Tegra 4 running at max clocks will be just over 20%.

 

NVIDIA hasn’t made any changes to the L1/L2 cache configuration with Tegra K1. We’re still dealing with a shared 2MB L2 and 32KB/32KB L1s (I$+D$) per core.

 

The companion core can scale up to 1GHz, but tends to run at around 500MHz.

 

Feeding the CPU (and GPU) cores is a 64-bit wide LPDDR3 memory interface. NVIDIA will offer Tegra K1 in PoP, discrete and another package revision for standard clamshell notebook use.

/whistles

 

Dang, 192 full fledged Kepler CUDA cores?  That's a ridiculously powerful mobile chip.  I still think one day Tegra will be powering a Steam Machine.  It could probably do it now if you slapped like 2 or 3 of these together, though I doubt Steam has the necessary ARM support in place (yet?).

 

 

I just want a good RPG I can play on my phone

Well, there's already Final Fantasy 1-5, with 6 coming soon.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Keyrock

[alanschu]

I used to be a big fan of "release it when it's done... if you can afford that." But I think they've crossed a line into it creating a concern about if they're even going to know how to make it relevant and appealing anymore.

 

I'm not sure Valve releasing Half-Life 3 is even a good idea for them, given that at this point I think it's all but assured that it will not live up to expectations that many seem to have manufactured.

[Zoraptor]

 

Dunno if this has been posted already but..

 

Valve Already Has 12 Partners For Its Steam Machine Production

It is quite clear that, since the major hardware manufacturers aligns to produce the Steam Machine, this console/PC already has a secure future. iBuyPower, Digital Storm, Piixl are some names from the same niche, but Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Origin PC, Gygabyte, CyberPowerPC, Zotac, Next, Webhallen, Alternate, Materiel.net and Scan Computers are more known ones which will take this device to the top.

 

That article is just a tad over positive. The ones announced at the CES so far are a more expensive approx PS4 equivalent from CyberPowerPC (minus optical drive, doubleplus ugliness) and something that costs ~1800USD. Neither is particularly competitive either with consoles or with the pre-existing PC paradigm which can at least in theory be converted to a steam machine without buying a set option. When they come up with both a compelling reason to buy the hardware at all and a competitively priced offering then it will have earned the positivity.