Facebook is buying Oculus VR Inc. Let that sink in for a minute. The indie darling for virtual reality technology is being purchased by the company that puts ads between your friends’ posts and hopes you won’t know the difference. Facebook announced the deal comes down to about $2 billion in cash and stocks. The company says they want to extend the reach of Oculus into “new verticals” including education and entertainment. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the purchase is part of his strategy to stay ahead of the technology curve.
“Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow. Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”
Imagine how immersive those in-game gift requests will be when viewed through the Oculus Rift headset! Oculus will remain in their Irvine, CA headquarters.
Good news, Peter Moore! You don’t have to spend sleepless night worrying about your company’s standing in Consumerist’s annual Worst Company in America bracket. Electronic Arts lost in the first round of voting to the infamous consumer service and business practices of Time Warner Cable. Congratulations EA! You are not the worst this year! I’m not even sure that the wins in the 2012 and 2013 brackets can be called a “streak” so you’ve got that going for you as well.
More importantly, detractors of EA can no longer rely on the Worst Company in America crown to fall back on as a lazy argument. EA didn’t even make it past the first round! Comcast, Verizon, Monsanto, Walmart, Ticketmaster, Chase, American Airlines, and McDonald’s are all much worse. Good luck coming up with an argument that makes any company seem worse than McDonald’s. Have you tried the BBQ ranch burger? Yuck. That thing is a crime against humanity.
In other news, the PC version of the Naval Strike DLC for Battlefield 4 has been indefinitely delayed due to technical issues. Keep it up EA. There’s always next year’s vote.
Insurgency is getting its first free content update. Molotov Spring will add two new maps, more game modes, additional weapons and equipment, and adjustments to the bot AI. The developers at New World Interactive say that instead of releasing paid DLC, they’d rather provide content for free to owners of the game to avoid splitting the multiplayer community. The first new map they’ve revealed is Buhriz, a remake of a classic Insurgency map from its days as a mod.
The Molotov Spring update will be released this week through Steam.
When Atari announced RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 would be coming to mobile platforms in the Spring, there wasn’t much of a positive reaction from fans of the franchise. The mobile game will have in-app purchases of coins that will hurry the wait timer, and everything else that most gamers dread in a mobile title. Atari let fans know via Twitter that a PC version was also in the works, but people weren’t thrilled with the news largely because they assumed it would just be a port of the mobile game.
Atari now tells DigitalSpy that the PC version of RollerCoaster Tycoon will be a “completely different game.” How different? Atari’s director of marketing Anthony Chien had no details, but he acknowledged that they are aware of the demand for a new RollerCoaster Tycoon PC game.
“There’s a lot of diehard RC fans that want a PC experience, they want all different sorts of things.”
“It’s trying to deliver as much as we can. First is the mobile version, then it’s the PC experience. I think a lot of people are vocal about wanting to see the PC version first before the mobile, but our strategy is mobile first.”
Pshaw to your fears! They’re totally going to deliver an awesome PC experience, right?
Looking for a PlayStation 4 camera accessory? You’re not alone. Sony’s president of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida told Polygon that the console’s built-in Twitch streaming feature is the cause of the shortage. People love to use it. They broadcast themselves playing games, or they create call-in shows set in their living rooms, or they stream questionable material. Yoshida said that Sony’s marketing folks underestimated how popular streaming would be.
“They came up with the initial demand in that conventional way and it was very, very low,” he said. “Using the camera to broadcast yourself is much, much more fun they they thought and they didn’t quite get it.”
Sony said the peripheral has a 15% attach rate, putting the its total sales figure at around 900,000 units. Due to the camera’s constrained supply, many sellers have marked it up above the $59 suggested retail price.
The internet seems to be in love with Goat Simulator, but is there room in people’s hearts for Bear Simulator? Farjay Studios hopes so. They’re making a Bear Simulator game. Right now, it’s just a Kickstarter project, but if people are willing to play a digital goat surely they will want to be a virtual bear! Rawrrr! Bears have claws!
The title gives you all you need to know as it’s pretty much a bear simulator. You play in FPB (First Person Bear) and do bear things which include exploring, eating fish and plants, striking down anything that dare stand before your might, increasing your stats, sleeping and discovering mysteries of your forest home.
Kickstarter pledge rewards include collectible rocks, a “mystic bear” skin, and an in-game virtual art museum that will be located on a separate Kickstarter Island to keep immersion-breaking features out of the main game. Also, the game will have mountian goats. Boom! That’s for you Goat Simulator fans!
ArenaNet has announced a major change to the way traits work in Guild Wars 2. Currently, characters receive their first point to put into the trait system when they advance to 11th level and gain an additional point per level. Every five points in a line unlocks a major or minor trait that confers various effects. By the time a character reaches the level cap of 80, she should have 70 points invested in the system. The new trait system reduces the number of points to 14 total, and characters won’t start earning them until level 30. Basically, ArenaNet is doing away with the incremental points and condensing things down to the points that actually resulted in a major or minor trait.
Another change to the system is that characters won’t just get traits by leveling up. They’ll have to seek out adventures and complete tasks via a trait guide. Alternately, characters will be able to just purchase them from profession trainers in the game. Each profession will also gain a grandmaster trait that is designed to help define characters. For example, the engineer will get access to fortified turrets (pictured above) that have a protective shield.
According to game designer Roy Cronacher’s latest news post the changes are meant to make the system more approachable and to make each advancement more meaningful for the player.
This new system for acquiring traits in the game brings back an aspect of the original Guild Wars that we really liked, which was exploring the world as a major component of character progression. Acquiring traits will be a horizontal progression system which will give us new ways to add new traits to the game and promote interesting content!
The trait changes will roll out with the April Feature Pack.
Like any industry gathering, the Games Developers Conference has its share of cool announcements. Sony is making their own virtual reality headset called Project Morpheus! Epic is switching to a subscription model for the Unreal Engine 4 development kit! Unity 5 was previewed with all sorts of nifty new capabilities! But buried amid the headlines was this head-scratcher: Obsidian Entertainment, the developers behind Pillars of Eternity, is working on a free-to-play tank MMO. Armored Warfare was announced and it looks very familiar.
We’re thrilled to announce Armored Warfare, a new free-to-play massively multiplayer online tactical military video game that puts you in control of some of the most incredible, modern destructive machines to grace a battlefield. Drive modern tanks, armored vehicles and more.
Eurogamer tried to break down the puzzling news, but most of it is speculation because details haven’t been announced.
Sorry, Xbox 360 owners. You won’t be enjoying giant mech vs parkour pilots until later than expected. Titanfall is launching two weeks later than originally announced.
Now, I want to update everyone on Titanfall for Xbox 360 in development with Bluepoint Games. I’ve been playing the game a lot, and it is fantastic. But we see a few things that can be made even better, so we’re giving Bluepoint a little more time to do just that and deliver an epic Titanfall experience for Xbox 360 players. Titanfall for Xbox 360 will now be releasing on April 8 in North America, and beginning on April 11 in Europe. The game will feature the same 6v6 gameplay, maps, modes, weapons and Burn Cards as the Xbox One and PC versions of the game.
While the Xbox One and PC versions of Titanfall were made by Respawn, the 360 version is a port being done by Bluepoint Games. The original launch date of Titanfall on the 360 was March 25th.
Diablo III’s auction house system shut down today. The controversial real-money trading floor and the in-game gold auction systems are gone. According to the recently updated auction house FAQ, players have until the 24th of June to retrieve their items and gold. Anything not claimed by then will disappear into the void.
Doing away with the auction house is seen by many as the final step to rebalancing the PC version of Diablo III before the Reaper of Souls expansion launches. In September, Blizzard’s John Hight admitted that the auction house had caused unintended balance issues to the game. Loot drops and gameplay had to be adjusted to account for the ability that any player could just use the auction house to kit their character. With the February release of the Loot 2.0 update, Blizzard re-tuned the game so the auction house could be shut down.
The Reaper of Souls expansion launches next week.
Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare is getting free DLC tomorrow. The Garden Variety pack includes a new map, a new game mode, and each character class gets three new powers. The new Chomptown map is built around the Gnome Bomb mode which tasks each side with detonating an explosive garden gnome in the opposing team’s base. The Garden Variety DLC is a mandatory patch download on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
Read Tom’s review of Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare here.
Julian Gollop, the creator of the original 1994 X-COM: UFO Defense, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Chaos Reborn. It’s a re-imagining of his 1985 strategy game Chaos: The Battle of Wizards. Chaos Reborn retains the turn-based strategy format as well as the basic gameplay which features enemy wizards hurling spells and creatures at one another on a hex-based battlefield. The new game will add an updated 3D presentation, proceduarally generated battle maps, online multiplayer, and a singleplayer campaign. Backers of the project at the $50 level or above also get an exclusive game mode that allows for the AI to take over their wizards when they’re not playing.
If you select the Wizard Lord tier or above, you have important status within the wizardly realms, and an extra play mode that allows your wizard to act as an NPC for other players to encounter in their realm exploration. In order to do this you have to go online and configure your wizard by choosing equipment, spells and battle tactics. While you are offline your wizard will be controlled by AI and may be involved in multiple battles. When you go online you may review these battles, which can then help you refine your wizard configuration. Your wizard will earn experience points and gold by using this mode.
The Kickstarter for Chaos Reborn ends on April 17th and has a $180,000 goal.
Twinbeard Studios has launched a Kickstarter to make a sequel to Frog Fractions, their irreverent free “edutainment” game. (If you haven’t played Frog Fractions yet, please do so. It’s free and it’s quite the experience.) In keeping with the style of the original game, the proposed sequel will not actually be named Frog Fractions 2, and Kickstarter backers will not be directly told when it first releases. Designer Jim Crawford explained his strategy is meant to maintain the surprise for players.
Most Kickstarters are very detailed about what you’re paying for, but the nature of this one is that you’re paying for a surprise. I created Frog Fractions explicitly to evoke the air of mystery that all video games held in the 1980s, before the era of endless preview coverage and official strategy guides took that feeling away from us, seemingly permanently.
Backers will get their download codes and other rewards “once the jig is up,” meaning when articles begin appearing in the press about a new game that subverts expectations and destroys sanity through its gameplay. The Kickstarter currently stands at about halfway funded to its $60k goal.
All hail the conquering hero! Raymond Cox, known as Stallion83 on Xbox Live, has officially become the first person to rack up 1,000,000 Gamerscore points. Cox broke the record during a live Twitch broadcast, cementing his reputation as “that one guy that’s like played a million games or something.” Captured for prosperity is the moment Cox broke a million with the 50G “I like a challenge” achievement for playing Titanfall on the Xbox One. Bravo, sir! Now go outside!
Andy Schatz, creator of Monaco: What’s Mine is Yours, is working on a real-time strategy game built around analog controller use. In his blog post, Schatz revealed that his goal for Armada (work-in-progress pictured above) is to simplify RTS commands to work with a controller, but keep the feel of traditional RTS rock/scissors/paper gameplay and high-level competition. Armada will give direct control of a character to the player who will build structures and raise armies. Troops will follow AI orders per their class. Defenders will stay around the base, while attackers will seek out enemies to fight. Schatz contends that previous efforts to translate RTS gameplay to analog controllers haven’t fulfilled their promise.
“Maybe it’s just nostalgia speaking, but I want to play an RTS game that feels like a battle of wits, not a battle of clicks. I want to compete at a high level, but I also want to be able to introduce the RTS genre to my friends at a party. I want an RTS where the strategy is creative and complex and the micro is accessible and fun.
With Monaco, we took an old school genre (Stealth), we simplified the controls, and then we built an incredibly complex game that could be played at high and low skill levels alike. I want to do the same with the RTS genre.”
Armada is only a month into development, but Schatz said his team already has a working networking system, a replay system, and an editor developed. As for when it will be done, he reminded fans that Monaco started as a six-week Xbox Live Indie Game project that grew into a three year development process.
