Black Ops 2 personalization packs 25% off, proceeds to help veterans

October 9th, 2013, 23:23 Posted By: wraggster

Activision, Treyarch and Microsoft have partnered to help veterans find jobs via the Call of Duty Endowment non-profit organization and a sale on Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 personalization packs. From October 8-14, players can download personalization packs, which offer a calling card, weapon skin and three targeting reticles, from the Xbox Marketplace for 25 percent off. All profits generated during this sale will go toward the Call of Duty Endowment.

"With this drive, we continue to pledge our support to the Call of Duty Endowment in support of veterans, and really appreciate everyone in our community who contributes to this great cause and gives back," Mark Lamia, Studio Head of Treyarch, said in a press release regarding the event.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/10/09/bl...-to-help-vete/

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Xbox One: not every Achievement will automatically be recorded

October 9th, 2013, 23:12 Posted By: wraggster

Xbox One won't automatically record footage of you unlocking an Achievement. Rather, it's a feature developers can enable, if they wish.Microsoft moved to correct reports that suggested the next-gen console would automatically record all Achievement unlocks. Director of product planning Albert Panello took to NeoGAF to clarify."It won't be automatic for every Achievement," he said. "It's a feature that Developers can unlock for achievements, OR, for instance, have hidden in the game for doing something cool or discovering something hidden. Basically we allow developers access to GameDVR and they can put conditions on an automatic recording."But not every Achievement will automatically be recorded."This is how it works: developers can mark "greatest clips" that happen within the game, such as when you unlock an Achievement. Alternatively, gamers can use their voice or the controller to capture moments they'd like to record.Either way, you should be covered when it comes to video capture: Xbox One automatically records the last five minutes of your gameplay. Using Upload Studio you can edit the footage, add titles, a voice-over or extra footage recorded using Kinect.Microsoft has confirmed that at launch Upload Studio will be limited to sharing video on Xbox Live, but the plan is to roll this out to the likes of YouTube next year.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ly-be-recorded

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Madden 25 'CoachGlass' feature exclusive to Xbox One

October 9th, 2013, 23:06 Posted By: wraggster

"CoachGlass allows players to see their opponent's offensive tendencies, personnel groupings and major weapons, and suggests defensive plays designed to counter the offense's biggest strengths," explains EA.


"CoachGlass uses the power of the crowd to pull data from tens of thousands of online matchups, with regular updates providing a fresh stream of content and recommendations to users," it adds.


The feature, which will be exclusive to Xbox One, can be used to "select plays based on offensive personnel groups, or to track tendencies at various downs and distances in order help players predict the opposition's tendencies, and call plays to defend the part of the field their opponent is likely to attack."

CoachGlass can be used at any point in a game, which EA says also opens a new opportunity for co-op play, with one player to use a tablet or smartphone as a 'defensive coordinator', while the other player controls the on-field action.

A gallery of CoachGlass screenshots is above, and a reveal trailer can be watched below for more details.

Publisher EA officially confirmed Madden NFL 25 as a launch day title for both Xbox One and PS4.

The means a PS4 release on November 15 in US and November 29 in UK, while the Xbox One version will arrive alongside the console at a still unspecified date in November.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...e-to-xbox-one/

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Castlevania Lords of Shadow Collection dated

October 9th, 2013, 22:57 Posted By: wraggster

Priced at £29.99, the compilation will include the original Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, DLC packs Reverie and Resurrection, plus download codes for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD and aCastlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 demo.

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Mouse and keyboard support possible for Xbox One in the future

October 9th, 2013, 22:00 Posted By: wraggster

Microsoft has said mouse and keyboard support remains a possibility for Xbox One.
However, having always been keen to keep a distinct dividing line between its console (Xbox) and PC (Windows) offerings, the company has said that it’s certainly not something for the immediate future.
"Certainly it's possible, but we don't have anything to announce at this time," Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hyrb said in a interview, as transcribed by Videogamer.
"We'll certainly have this great SDK for developers to do what they like. If that's something they're interested in doing, we'll certainly help them do that. You pointed out, as a lot of people forget, designing for a 2-foot gaming experience versus perhaps a nine or ten-foot experience is a little bit different. So they have to be really focused on what is that like and they're maximising for the largest possible audience.
"We kind of have this concept of when you're playing a PC game you're leaning forward. With an Xbox [controller], sometimes you lean back. You're just kinda having fun.
"And I don't want to incite the religious debate that will ensue, [but] we want to provide a gaming experience that people enjoy, certainly with Windows – that's our other large gaming platform at Microsoft. So there's something there, but right now we're really focussed on the console space."

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/mouse...future/0122306

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Get hands-on with Xbox One from October 14th in GAME's lock-ins

October 9th, 2013, 21:59 Posted By: wraggster

Consumers across the country will have the chance to try Xbox One at their local GAME store starting next week.
Kicking off with its Dundee event on October 14^th, over 60 lock-ins are planned running until November 20^th ahead of the Xbox One’s global release on November 22^nd.
Attendees will have the chance to try the likes of Forza Motorsport 5, Dead Rising 3, Ryse and Killer Instinct.
Each event has room for 70 people – to reserve a place either head into your local store in person or contact it via Twitter. Entry is limited to those aged 18 over.
Check out the full list of lock-ins here.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/get-h...ck-ins/0122309

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Xbox One's fight for independents

October 9th, 2013, 21:57 Posted By: wraggster

PlayStation has aggressively courted and attracted huge independent developer support in recent months, and even dedicated an entire Gamescom press conference to showcasing indie-made games.
But now Xbox is fighting back with its ID@Xbox initiative. MCV learns more from the programme’s director Chris Charla...
Why launch this independent developer programme? Is it in response to PlayStation?
The origins of this programme go all the way back to the architecture of the Xbox One. This is something we have been planning for a long time. If you go back to the Xbox 360, and you see what we did with Xbox Live Indie Games, you can see where this started. That was our self-publishing programme on Xbox 360, and I think we got a lot of things right with that. Every retail kit was a dev kit.
The community curation was an interesting experiment that I think was very successful for that programme. We brought a lot of great creators into the Xbox ecosystem. But the things that were challenging were that you couldn’t access the whole Live stack. You didn’t have access to Gamerscore or achievements. The indie games were sold in a separate section on the marketplace, which at some phases in the Dashboard’s history made them difficult to discover for casual players.
Talking to developers who came through that programme and those who worked on XBLA, and just thinking about what’s best for independent developers, was really the genesis of this programme.
Why do indie developers matter? Common consensus is that indie games aren’t system sellers.
Independent developers are hugely important for the entire games industry ecosystem. When I look at everything that is happening in game development as a player, I am massively excited by games such as Titanfall, Call of Duty and Halo. I love those games. But I am equally excited when I see games like Papers, Please, or Gone Home, or Limbo, or Castle Crashers.

"I would argue there has certainly been
system sellers that have been independent
games – Minecraft is a system seller. On
Xbox One, I think Killer Instinct is going
to sell systems. That is by an independent
developer in Double Helix."

Chris Charla – programme director, ID@Xbox

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GTAV’s split personalities, and why Trevor should have been Rockstar’s leading man in

October 9th, 2013, 21:49 Posted By: wraggster

Early-ish in my GTA V playthrough, Boy-In-The-Hood Franklin was sitting on a bench with tubby criminal fixer Lester. Not a lot had happened in the last hour – I’d been photographing a boat as Trevor in preparation for a heist, which inexplicably required me to drive a big forklift around the Los Santos dock three times (I kept running over oblivious dock workers), then shift some shipping containers with a crane. I was bored, and itching to blow something up. Lester obliged with a mission to take out a suit and his entourage in a hotel car park with a grenade launcher I’d just bought – much more like it.But during the conversation – on a park bench, eyes-front, just a couple of strangers making polite conversation – Franklin said something that threw me. Something along the lines of “I like shooting people in the head as much as the next guy, but…” I’m not attempting what he actually said, for fear of straying into some spectacular racism, but that was the gist. And it just made me think, ‘really?’ That didn’t sound like the Franklin I’d got to know in the past few hours – it sounded like an excuse for some extreme, out-of-character massacre.This is the problem I have with GTAV: the uneasy compromises it has to make between the character stories it wants to tell and the series’ stealing-cars-shooting-cops DNA. I like the stories – I feel for Michael, constantly maligned by his whinging, bitchy family and struggling to escape his bank-robbing criminal past. It’s just much harder to do that when, apropos of nothing, he stops his stolen car in the middle of a freeway and start firing grenades into passing motorists. It’s not dissonant, in the usual sense – my problem isn’t that Michael and Franklin step out of character whenever free-roaming controls are passed to me. It’s that the sort of thing I’m doing runs directly counter to their characters’ goals. Michael’s laying low, so shooting down LSPD choppers for a laugh makes no sense. Franklin’s trying to escape the hood, so wasting businessmen in broad daylight so Lester can make a quick buck betting on a competitor’s stock makes no sense.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...in-los-santos/

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Microsoft accuses AdAge reports of misinterpretation

October 9th, 2013, 00:27 Posted By: wraggster

Having found itself once again at the heart of a PR maelstrom yesterday, Microsoft has distanced itself about reports regarding Xbox One’s advertising platform.
MCV reported yesterday that Xbox marketing boss Yusuf Mehdi told a marketing summit audience that Xbox One would offer advertising partners “a huge new trove of data about what's going on in living rooms”.
But now Microsoft has told AllThingsD that the AdvertisingAge report “was based on a misinterpretation” and that Mehdi was in fact discussing the potential SmartGlass offers to advertising partners.
“Just as Xbox SmartGlass allows companion mobile experiences that are synchronous to what is being watched on TV, advertisers could create new experiences unifying their content across devices,” Microsoft claims. “The quote from Yusuf in Ad Age is not in relation to Kinect.
“We have a long-standing commitment to your privacy and will not target ads to you based on any data Kinect collects unless you choose to allow us to do so.”
Microsoft added that it is “actively seeking a correction” to the original story.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/micro...tation/0122243

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Battlefield 4: Second Assault DLC available at launch on Xbox One

October 8th, 2013, 01:47 Posted By: wraggster

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Xbox One "brings marketers a huge trove of data about what's going on in living rooms

October 7th, 2013, 21:41 Posted By: wraggster

Xbox’s chief marketing and strategy officer this weekend told an audience of advertisers that the console could change the way they engage with consumers.
AdvertisingAge reports that Xbox’s chief marketing and strategy officer Yusuf Mehdi told to the Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing Conference that the Xbox One launch “could make or break one of Microsoft's most successful brands”.
Part of that, he argues, is how attractive a platform the new console becomes to advertisers. Its potential was sold to the event as “furthering the ‘gamification’ movement in advertising, and consolidating more attention now diffused among multiple devices for gaming, TV and web browsing onto the big screen”.
The site then added that “Xbox One can essentially work like [a] TV that watches you, bringing marketers a huge new trove of data about what's going on in living rooms, including, as one marketer put it after the speech, unprecedented information about how people engage with TV advertising”.
One exec who asked not to be attributed explained that “Xbox One's capacity for seeing whether people are paying attention or how their bodies respond to the ads could have a big impact on pricing” for advertising clients.
AdvertisingAge continued: “The new generation of Kinect technology in Xbox One can distinguish up to six voices in a room, respond to voice commands, read skeletal movement, muscle force, whether people are looking at or away from the TV and even their heart rates.
“Given that Xbox 360 has sold more than 78m units, if even a fraction of likely Xbox One users could be persuaded to share data, the technology could create the world's largest panel for measuring biometric responses to advertising.”
UPDATE: Microsoft's director of product planning has taken to NeoGaf to respond to the wave of hostility that greeted AdvertsingAge's report.
“NuAds by definition is simply interactive advertising done on the platform. Using the functions of the console and Kinect to interact vs. just watching a spot. There's nothing particularly interesting happening here unless you're in the advertising business, and we've done a few on Xbox 360 today.
“What I think you're asking about is an interview done earlier in the year where someone was talking about how some of the new Xbox One Kinect features *could* be used in advertising - since we can see expressions, engagement, etc. and how that might be used to target advertising. This is the point that seems to draw some controversy.
“First - nobody is working on that. We have a lot more interesting and pressing things to dedicate time towards. It was an interview done speculatively, and I'm not aware of any active work in this space.
“Second - if something like that ever happened, you can be sure it wouldn't happen without the user having control over it. Period.
“Two examples of how we deal with similar things today:
“First, Kinect can recognize your face and log you in automatically. There could be some cool features we could enable if we stored that data in the cloud, like being able to be auto-recognized at a friend's. I get asked for that feature a lot. But, for privacy reasons, your facial data doesn't leave the console.
“Second: You'll see us do some things around Skype that freezes the video when Skype is not in focus (meaning, it's not the primary app). If you go back to the home screen, or launch another app, we actually stop the video stream. We do this so the user can't even ACCIDENTALLY have the video stream going on in the background.
“I'll say this – we take a lot of heat around stuff we've done and I can roll with it. Some of it is deserved. But preventing Kinect from being used inappropriately is something the team takes very seriously.
“Hope that helps.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/xbox-...-rooms/0122201

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Grand Theft Auto Online is fixed! Although Rockstar still investigating missing items

October 7th, 2013, 21:40 Posted By: wraggster

The good news is that Grand Theft Auto Online is now working. The bad news is that there are still issues with players losing their items.
A patch released late last week for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto V seems to have largely resolved the connection issues that had been dogging the title, with widespread reports of easy access appearing online over the weekend.
However, Rockstar has confirmed that some users are still experiencing problems with their online items and characters vanishing from their inventories.
“We are continuing to investigate the causes of the lost progress and what can be done to minimize the impact until a permanent fix is in place,” it stated. “Also, we have not forgotten about the requests for restoration. We are in the process of determining the options for addressing the issues for those players who have been affected.”
Rockstar also explained that users who continue to play on after seeing the “Rockstar Cloud Services are unavailable” message multiplayer progress in that session will not be saved.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/grand...-items/0122205

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What Games Are: the optimal zone

October 7th, 2013, 20:15 Posted By: wraggster

Former Microsoft chief experience officer J Allard once enthused about playing Halo on your phone. The notion was one of those mega-ecosystem things that Microsoft likes to dream up: play on your Xbox, go out into the world with your Zune and play some more. Maybe level up your Chief on the road so that when you get home, you’ve got new weapon choices. Such ideas are ambitious, but tend to be impractical.Games are often said to consist of loops. For some this means games are recursive (small loops nested to build bigger loops), but I tend to think of loops as ‘mechanics’ and the bigger outcomes as ‘dynamics’. They have a different shape. The outcome of a mechanic tends to be predicable, but the net build-up of many mechanics leads to something much more interesting: dynamic, disordered, slightly mad chaos.As I wrote in this column last year, games are inherently chaotic in the mathematical sense. They’re weird and beautiful, fascinating, un-yet-semi-predictable, and the overall excitement of playing them lives somewhere between order and disorder. That’s what I mean when I define fun as “the joy of winning while mastering fair game dynamics”. But what does any of this have to do with J Allard? Allard was talking about mixing several game dynamics together (mobile RPG, firstperson shooter, etc), and that usually leads to big headaches. Breaks emerge. Players either discover easy exploits that remove the challenge of the game, or the game has so many inputs and outputs that it becomes incomprehensible.The same is true of many singleplayer games. While there are numerous enormous videogames out there, the successful ones tend to have one core dynamic to which the entire game defaults. You, as the player, tend to stay in control of a certain kind of doll that performs a certain kind of task, and everything in the game’s universe revolves around that task. That’s how the game manages to convey its enormity in a way that makes sense. There are some games that maintain a couple of dynamics (it’s rarely successfully more than two), but they do so by bridging them.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...-optimal-zone/

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Xbox One Video Game Day One Edition Pre-orders List

October 6th, 2013, 00:32 Posted By: wraggster

Many of the announced E3 2013 Xbox One video games are available for day one pre-order this including:

• Watch Dogs
• Forza Motorsport 5
• Dead Rising 3
• Ryse
• Call of Duty Ghosts
• Battlefield 4
• Many More

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State of Decay sells one million copies

October 6th, 2013, 00:20 Posted By: wraggster

State of Decay developer Undead Labs just announced that its open-world zombie game has sold over one million copies.This is taking into account both XBLA sales as well as those who've purchased the incomplete Steam version on Early Access. By triple A accounts, one million may not sound like much, but for a smallish Seattle startup, that's a very healthy number.The developer noted that its first DLC, Breakdown, will be available shortly, though no date was given. It then said it will give away five copies of it to random users who share a fond State of Decay related memory on the bottom of this blog post. The Breakdown add-on will contain a story-less Sandbox mode, new weapons, and new "Hero" NPCs that can carry items and do a better job of protecting players."Your encouragement drives us to keep working and keep improving," said Undead Labs' Sanya Weathers. "You got us here with your energy, your feedback, and your telling your friends about us. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and brains."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...million-copies

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Battlefield 4 beta open to all today

October 6th, 2013, 00:18 Posted By: wraggster

DICE is in the process of opening up the Battlefield 4 beta to all PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 players.
Offering an early taste of the game's Siege of Shanghai map in Conquest and Domination modes, the Battlefield 4 beta kicked off on October 1 for Battlefield 3 Premium members, customers who pre-ordered the Battlefield 4 Digital Deluxe Edition on Origin.com, and registered owners of Medal of Honor Warfighter Limited or Digital Deluxe editions.

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Microsoft Exec Says Xbox One Kinect Is Not Built For Advertising

October 6th, 2013, 00:00 Posted By: wraggster

Among the various SNAFUs and PR misfires related to the Xbox One release earlier this year, one item that had people upset was that Kinect would be used for advertising--or worse, that the Xbox One Kinect was actually designed with advertising in mind. The source was a UI designer who was expounding the capabilities of the Kinect and how it could be used to deliver interactive ads and used for native advertising. However, Microsoft Director of Product Planning Albert Penello threw cold water on much of it. 'First--nobody is working on that,' he said. 'We have a lot more interesting and pressing things to dedicate time towards.' He also stated that if Microsoft were to engage in something along those lines, users would definitely have control over it, meaning that Kinect would not be spying on you; you would have to engage with Kinect for anything to happen

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/1...or-advertising

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Konami vows to fix PES 2014 multiplayer on Xbox 360

October 5th, 2013, 11:34 Posted By: wraggster

Two weeks after the game was released in the UK owners of PES 2014 on Xbox 360 are still unable to access the game’s multiplayer modes.
Users are presented with the error message ‘Download File is Broken’ when trying to install the required day one Data Pack. Konami promises that it is “working closely” with Microsoft to fix the problem.
“We would like to apologise to any users who have been unable to enjoy PES 2014 online and would like to reassure fans we’ll be fixing the issue as quickly as possible” Konami Digital Entertainment president Shinji Hirano asserted.
“In the meantime we’re setting up a special section on the PES 2014 site to keep users up to date on issues, feedback and general help with the product. Our customer support team is also providing as much personal support as possible.”
It really is a terrible situation for Konami which, truth be told, cannot afford to be without one of the game’s key bits of functionality for such a long period when the game itself faces such severe competition on the market.
PES 2014 users on all formats are also awaiting an upcoming patch that will unlock additional features such as 11v11 multiplayer.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/konam...ox-360/0122132

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All Assassin's Creed games get bundled Heritage Collection

October 5th, 2013, 11:32 Posted By: wraggster

Ubisoft in gathering together all of its Assassin’s Creed games in a single SKU.
It’s called the Assassin’s Creed Heritage Collection and will be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC and arrive in the UK on November 8^th.
Included in the SKU are Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed II (Game of the Year Edition), Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Assassin’s Creed Revelations and Assassin’s Creed III.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/all-a...ection/0122136

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Rockstar rolls out second GTA Online patch

October 5th, 2013, 11:19 Posted By: wraggster

Update 1.02 hopes to resolve connections issues for PS3 and 360 players

Rockstar has rolled out a second patch to solve ongoing issues with GTA Online in the opening week of its release.

The patch has been rolled out for both PS3 and Xbox 360 users.

Earlier this week, Rockstar disabled microtransactions as server issues prevented some players from connecting to GTA Online.

In statement, Rockstar Games said: “Thank you everyone for continuing to bear with us since Tuesday’s initial roll out of Grand Theft Auto Online – we’re aware that a variety of technical difficulties have made it difficult to get access and that the experience has been a bit less than smooth for many of you who jumped in straight away.”

In patch 1.02, Rockstar said it hopes to resolve the following issues:

For PlayStation 3 users, a PlayStation Network server issue was detected that was limiting the amount of possible concurrent users. This was preventing most players from accessing GTA Online altogether and as of this morning, that problem was resolved

There is an issue that is preventing some players from getting through the first tutorial mission across both platforms. Many players have been able to get through this with repeated retries, and we are working on unblocking this for everyone as soon as possible

This morning, we experienced some instability across the GTA Online services, which is affecting even people who have progressed beyond the tutorial mission. We are identifying these issues now and are working to restore stability for users as soon as possible

For the time being and until we have been able to get everybody access to GTA Online and things are running smoothly, we have disabled the option of purchasable GTA$ cash packs. Players can however keep on earning GTA$ by pulling off Jobs and other profitable gameplay activities rather than purchasing cash packs.
Rockstar added that it hopes to ironed out these initial technical issues quickly, and said it has its entire team “working around the clock to get the experience to be as smooth as possible, as soon as possible”.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/r...-patch/0184092

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