Microsoft’s new Xbox One console will not differentiate between indie, arcade, or big-budget games. According to an Eurogamer interview with Phil Harrison, there will be no special channels for indie games on the new console.
Eurogamer: So no Xbox Live Arcade, no Xbox Live Indie Games – just games?
Phil Harrison: Just games, right. Search, recommendation, what your friends are playing, game DVR – these all go to helping you discover the games you want to play, so I think we solve fantastically some of the challenges that independent developers face, particularly around discovery and connecting their game to an audience, by some of the platform features we have in the machine itself.
Eurogamer: It does sound more elegant, but I think one of the functions of Xbox Live Arcade and the Indie Games channel was to give undue prominence to those things within the 360 ecosystem; for a game like Geometry Wars to be front and centre when actually, most of your install base would be more interested in Call of Duty day to day – isn’t that something you’re losing?
Phil Harrison: No, no, not at all. We don’t give that up – we don’t give up the ability to put a spotlight on the products that we think are going to be exciting to our user base, but in addition to that, what your friends are playing, what other people think is hot in your area, your country, your continent, will propagate up the most interesting and exciting games.
Additionally, ShackNews reports that self-published Arcade games will not be happening on the new console. In contrast, Sony’s PS4 will have a self-publishing program that will allow smaller developers to get their games on the system without going through a known publisher. The Nintendo Wii U already has a program running through their eShop.
The Xbox Live Indie Games and Arcade programs have been the targets of some well-deserved complaints amongst developers lately because of bureaucratic hoops, patch expenses, and discoverability issues in the Xbox menu. The issues have been egregious enough to make some studios swear off the service entirely opting for more friendly venues like Steam. The Xbox One appears to make the situation worse for smaller budget games.
Microsoft has a problem. I talked about this before. They seem to have a heck of a time controlling their messaging when it comes to their next-gen console.
The most repeated questions for gamers concerning the just revealed Xbox One have been fairly consistent. Can you play used games on the new console? Does the console require internet connectivity to function? Neither of these requirements were touched on in the livestreamed Xbox Reveal Event that ended this morning, so various members of the media asked the Microsoft representatives. Surprisingly, it seems the answers varied depending on who or when you asked.
Wired was told by Microsoft in a pre-event visit that the console would require a fee to play used games, but that the console would not require an online connection to play singleplayer games.
Microsoft vice president Phil Harrision confirmed to Kotaku that the console would require a fee to transfer a game license from one player to another, but he clarified that the Xbox One would need to connect to Microsoft’s servers at least once per day.
Kotaku: If I’m playing a single player game, do I have to be online at least once per hour or something like that? Or can I go weeks and weeks?
Harrison: I believe it’s 24 hours.
Kotaku: I’d have to connect online once every day.
Harrison: Correct.
A Microsoft representative emailed Polygon to refute Phil Harrison’s statements.
“While Phil discussed many potential scenarios around games on Xbox One, today we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail. There have been reports of a specific time period – those were discussions of potential scenarios, but we have not confirmed any details today, nor will we be.”
Finally, Phil Harrison talked to Eurogamer to try to reclarify what he meant. This time, Harrison said that the used game issue isn’t settled and the Xbox One does not require the internet to function… Sort of.
“Some bits of the system will work offline,” he said. “I think the key point to make is that Xbox One requires an internet connection, but it does not need to be connected all the time. We think that most of the biggest games on Xbox One and most of the games and experiences and services you want to use will be internet-connected.”
Microsoft’s own Q&A site is oddly unclear about the whole thing.
I don’t get paid to consult for Microsoft, but I’ll give them a freebie. They should probably get together and agree on basic responses to questions that will get asked. Questions that gamers have been asking for weeks. That would probably improve the stories they get out of the media when they launch a new console.
Now that the post-show glow has faded, we know a lot more about Microsoft’s new Xbox One console. We still don’t know the price or the exact launch date, but we can talk about which pre-show rumors turned out to be true and which were complete crap.
The Microsoft Xbox Reveal Event just ended and the new console is going to be called XBOX One. No laughing! It’s got a new Kinect sensor, a redesigned controller, and a revamp of Xbox Live. Stop laughing! It’s got a lot of TV features. I’d say 45 minutes of the presentation was various people telling the audience how awesome watching TV will be on the XBOX One. Seriously, you have to stop laughing.
For all you tech heads, the next-gen console has 8GB of RAM and 5 bajillion thingamajigs inside it, so you can go from gaming to a TV show (and vice versa) a lot quicker. Go from a movie to live TV to a game in seconds! You can control your console using universal gestures, like swooping your hands to get to the home screen. Your laughter is really distracting, by the way.
Steven Spielberg is apparently producing a Halo TV show. XBOX One and the NFL are partnering up for some kind of new transmedia way to watch football games. Okay, look. I’m not going to continue if you’re just going to laugh like a loon the whole time.
Is it always online? What’s the price? Are there any good games coming? Good questions that had no answers in the presentation.
Microsoft officially unveiled the Xbox One with a release date of “later this year” and a price of “uh, what?”. Nick has a more detailed breakdown above, but for my money, the only standout was a few glimpses of Infinity Ward’s upcoming Call of Duty: Ghost, in which you get a cool SEAL Team dog. Move over, Dead to Rights! You can watch the presentation at xbox.com, but I don’t necessarily recommend it unless you’re in the market for a voice-activated cable box.
Perfect World and Cryptic had to deal with a critical economic issue in the Neverwinter MMO over the weekend that allowed exploiters to make off with millions of Astral Diamonds. These diamonds function as the in-game currency for the game. Rather than allow the perpetrators to benefit from their ill-gotten gains and completely upend the economy, the developers chose to shut down the servers and reset time. Seven hours of server progress were turned back and rendered invalid.
Thanks in no small part to the efforts of our continually amazing Beta community, we were able to quickly identify the exploit and the perpetrators. Once identified, we took immediate action, calling in the entire development and publishing teams to lock down the Neverwinter OBT as we sought out a solution.
Rest assured, the issue has been corrected and we have taken appropriate action against all players who took advantage of the bug, including but not limited to enforcing permanent bans.
Sadly, the damage to the economy was done.
Rather than let the malicious efforts of a few unsavory players linger and continually impact the game’s economy and balance as we progress through these later stages of Open Beta, we have made the extremely difficult decision to rollback Neverwinter to a time shortly before the abuse and exploitation began.
It’s a drastic step, but as we saw with Diablo III, correcting a monetary exploit is paramount to any game that balances gameplay with its economy. An imbalance in the auction house can have a ripple effect throughout the game even if it’s not a free-to-play title. All it takes is an exploit that inflates pricing to ruin the balance.
Neverwinter is currently in beta and should officially launch later this year.
Microsoft is holding their Xbox event tomorrow at 10AM Pacfic time. The event venue (pictured) is in the Redmond, Washington campus of Microsoft. During a recent Major Nelson podcast, Microsoft’s interactive entertainment chief of staff Aaron Greenberg, confirmed that that the May 21st event would be “about revealing the next Xbox platform and our vision for the future of games.” For months, we’ve been hearing rumors about the console, internally codenamed Durango, that have set people buzzing.
Denis Dyack posted the above video in response to a Kotaku article that accused Silicon Knights of mismanagement during the development of X-Men: Destiny. In the video, Dyack refutes the charge that Activision was kept in the dark on the budget expenditures and progress of the project. He does admit that “there were some mistakes made” but offers no explanation beyond that for the dire reviews of the game.
Dyack is currently working on Shadow of the Eternals with his new company, Precursor Games.
Nintendo’s Wii U may not be getting any EA games in the near future, but they will be getting exclusive dibs on Sonic! Nintendo and SEGA announced a partnership for three exclusive Sonic games for the Wii U and 3DS systems.
“The onetime rivalry between Mario and Sonic has grown into a friendship that has never been closer,” said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. “These announcements in conjunction with SEGA demonstrate the commitment we have to bringing great games to the Wii U platform, and set the stage for our upcoming announcements at E3.”
Two of the exclusive SEGA games announced for the Wii U are Sonic Lost World (pictured) and Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games. More SEGA Game Gear games will be coming to the Virtual Console service for Nintendo 3DS.
Additionally, Nintendo announced during their Nintendo Direct video stream that in lieu of holding an E3 press event this year, they will be showcasing some upcoming Wii U titles at participating Best Buy stores for the public to try out. Details about which games will be shown and which store locations will have hands-on demos are forthcoming.
Dracogen. You’ve probably never heard of it, but you should remember that name if you’re interested in indie games. Dracogen is the company started by Steven Dengler “committed to helping fun and awesome things happen.” Dengler’s funding helped Hidden Path Entertainment meet their Defense Grid 2 goal when it fell short on Kickstarter. Dracogen has invested money in The Banner Saga, Double Fine Adventure, Torment: Tides of Numenara, the Child’s Play charity, various fan films, and many other independent projects.
GamesBeat profiled Steven Dengler and Dracogen, revealing the mystery donor for the first time. Dengler spoke about why he took an interest in Defense Grid 2 and other indie efforts.
“I don’t have rights, and I am not a publisher,” Dengler told GamesBeat. “I did smaller financings for fun. But I see that the thing that is broken in the industry is that publishers want your soul. Self-publishing has to become a better option. Jeff didn’t have to twist my arm.”
“I’m not in this to make my fortune,” he said. “This gets a game out there that people want to play. I don’t want to own part of the company. I want to help make a game.”
We’ve known for quite some time that Electronic Arts wasn’t going to port their upcoming Frostbite engine games to Nintendo’s Wii U console, but this is a different beast altogether. EA has officially confirmed to Kotaku that they have absolutely nothing in development for the Wii U.
That means no casual games, no family games, and no licensed games using any engine at all from EA. Nada. Zip. Zilch. While EA didn’t rule out future development, they’ve obviously cooled on the console since E3 2011 when then-CEO John Riccitiello said “We look forward to seeing great EA content on this new platform.” Insert sad trombone sound here.
Happy Birthday Diablo III! Blizzard’s hack & slash economic simulator has turned a year old! Blizzard is celebrating by giving all players a 25% boost to their Magic Find and +EXP stats until May 21st. Get in there and start grinding for loot to sell on the Auction House before it goes down again!
Diablo III is also on sale until the the 21st for 33% off, so you’ll only have to sell a few Legendary items to make your money back.
The battle between YouTube, video game creators, and content uploaders took an interesting turn with Nintendo. GameFront reports that Nintendo has begun issuing “Content ID Match” claims to YouTube for users’ Let’s Play videos. The filing allows Nintendo to essentially take over the ad revenue of the video, denying the user any income for that upload. Nintendo issued the following statement regarding the claims.
“As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a YouTube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the YouTube database. For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”
As the statement points out, other companies like Activision/Blizzard and EA, have issued copyright claims to YouTube for Let’s Play uploads that resulted in the videos being completely taken down.
Prolific YouTube Let’s Play producers have protested the move saying that Nintendo’s actions denies them the ad revenue they deserve for their creations. They claim that they add commentary, reviews, and even help to sell the games they showcase. The YouTube FAQ points out that purchasing or hosting media content does not give the user the right to upload it.
Electronic Arts is discontinuing the Online Pass program. GamesBeat reports that EA is doing away with the program entirely due to negative feedback.
“Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.”
“Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format,” Reseburg said. “We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.”
The Online Pass system was controversial because it required gamers pay an extra fee to access multiplayer features of games previously owned by another consumer.
In their neverending quest to destroy gamers’ lives and wallets, Valve has introduced Steam Trading Cards. Cards are gained by playing games, or trading with fellow players. Once earned, cards can be crafted into badges. Badges can earn XP, contributing to your overall Steam Level, and be turned in for in-game rewards.
