Games Archive

"As mentioned earlier, many developers understand the principles behind modular level design, but we hope to offer insights gained from our extensive exploration of this topic. To do this, we'll go over the various benefits and drawbacks we've found over the years, with an emphasis on how to get the most out of the workflow." A glimpse of just how complex one of the best games of this generation really is.

More and more evidence is pointing towards the next Xbox requiring an always-on internet connection in order to play any games - i.e., once you lose your connection, you can't play any game at all. Three minutes after losing your connection, "your" game will suspend itself and stop playing. Microsoft's Adam Orth took to Twitter to defend this anti-consumer practice, but he did so in the most ungraceful of ways.

"To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order on launch, depresses me to my core. This self-flagellation-as-skincare notion, where gamers loudly and proudly defend the destruction of their own rights as consumers, is an Orwellian perversity. That it might be considered in any way controversial to call them out on their crap, to point out that no, always-on DRM is not an advantage to anyone, is bewildering. It's a sign of just how far the gaming world has fallen into the rabbit hole of the publisher's burrowing." As usual, RPS hits the nail on the head so hard it shoots through the board.

Late last night, Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 - sort of. It's got a custom 8-core AMD x86-64 processor, 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, and a custom Radeon-based graphics chip. It's also got additional chips to offload specific tasks like video (de)compression (livestreaming is built-in!), and there's a large focus on streaming games, but most of it is "an ultimate goal" instead of a definitive feature. It won't play PS3 discs (but will eventually stream many PS3 games), and, while there's some weaselwording involved, second hand games are safe. The biggest surprise? The console itself wasn't shown because it's not done yet. No joke. No price, no release date (other than somewhere before the holidays).

"Sources with first-hand experience of Microsoft's next generation console have told us that although the next Xbox will be absolutely committed to online functionality, games will still be made available to purchase in physical form. Next Xbox games will be manufactured on 50GB-capacity Blu-ray discs, Microsoft having conceded defeat to Sony following its ill-fated backing of the HD-DVD format. It is believed that games purchased on disc will ship with activation codes, and will have no value beyond the initial user." Crap like this should be illegal. If I can't buy second-hand games at my local favourite game store, Microsoft can shove this new Xbox where the sun don't shine. Which it obviously doesn't do in Redmond if they can come up with this kind of user-hostile bullshit. You can pretty much guarantee that they have made a silent agreement with Sony to implement similar anti-user feature on the next Playstation.

It seems to have so far escaped OSNews' notice (if the top few hits for a site-search for 'Steam' is any indication) that Steam for Linux is now in Open Beta; you can get the Linux steam client from steampowered.com. So far, they appear to only be making an Ubuntu .deb available, and the client will require closed-source GPU drivers in order to work.