The limitations of online-only DRM are, perhaps, in truth only hypothetical. It’s possible to imagine a DRM scheme that must be online all the time, yet handles outages gracefully and never limits your play. Unfortunately, that DRM is not the kind Blizzard is installing on Diablo 3, one of the most anticipated titles of the year. At a briefing given to a few gaming sites, it was revealed that the game will indeed require an active internet connection at all times in order to play at all.
Remember the last time a top-shelf game did this? Remember the outages, the errors, the frustration, the lack of communication? Blizzard says it has to be this way because otherwise they can’t be sure you haven’t cheated to create your character. What a brilliant solution to the problem! → Read More
Battlefield 3 is perhaps one of the most anticipated games of 2011. It arrives in October and will likely see hundreds of thousands of sales on day one. As a AAA title, it behooves BF3 to debut on the 360, PS3, and Windows at the same time. But the last several years have seen troubling compromises in PC versions, obviously being made because of console restraints. Just recently I panned Dungeon Siege 3, a major production if I’ve ever seen one, for this exact problem. But it looks like the shoe is on the other foot with BF3: maps are going to be more “compact” and player counts reduced to from 64 on the PC version to 24 on console.
As a PC gamer myself, I believe I have a valid right to be smug here. The shoddy console ports we’ve seen have been so blatant that for years we’ve wondered why they bother at all. And here we have (as they promised) a game actually made for the PC and then scaled down for the consoles. → Read More
We heard about the Playstation Vita’s online capabilities long before we even knew its name, but the official details are just now solidifying. We knew it would have a net-connected staging area for each game, and a proximity-based social tool (LiveArea and Near respectively), and although some of the functions there are intact, they’ve been tweaked a bit and the features have changed. → Read More
One thing most 30-something people in tech have in common is video gaming nostalgia. Generation X (and Generation i) can go on for hours discussing the merits of our favorite Nintendo games, our programming experience in school, and of course our beloved Ataris. Sure there were C64s and Amigas and such, but Atari’s 2600 and its successors were truly groundbreaking in the gaming world.
You can still find a few here and there, working even, but to be honest the machine is a little more humble-looking than my memory has it. But Urchin Associates had the brilliant idea to preserve this piece of computing history forever… in 24-karat gold. → Read More
It’s been a while since we’ve posted any interesting Kinect hacks. They were coming fast and furious for a while, but this is the first I’ve seen in a while that really makes me happy. Robotics students at Stanford put this “JediBot” together from an articulating arm and a Kinect (and of course a little robotics know-how). The Kinect tracks the location of both “lightsabers” and has the robot make an attack or defending move based on their positions. → Read More
Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan) is 15 years old, can you believe it? To commemorate the series’ 15th anniversary, Capcom announced [JP] the so-called Resident Evil 15th Anniversary Box for the Japanese market today. → Read More
Just a quick heads-up: that iPad version of Marathon (Bungie’s classic Mac FPS) is now available to be downloaded to your very own little iPad. And it’s free! Free, I tell you! If you haven’t ever played the game, I’d actually recommend playing it the way it’s meant to be played first (there are ports available and the game is free), but if you don’t mind the tablet controls, this should be a real treat. This is just Marathon 1 – I’d expect 2 and Infinity a little later. [via TUAW] → Read More
This is just too cool. Project Mimicry is a game/project in which a real-life sandbox is monitored for depth information, and the resulting virtual landscape is able to be played on, raced in, and explored in a separate game environment. → Read More
Some Skyrim developers have been answering questions in the Elder Scrolls forums, and have confirmed that Skyrim will indeed get true PC optimizations, and should be free of the kind of console holdovers that plagued Crysis 2. Not that every game doing it right needs a post here, but after playing what I could of Dungeon Siege 3, I’m really glad to see a developer making more than a token effort towards a PC version. → Read More
Taiwanese daily Digitimes is reporting that Sony is planning a PS4 launch for 2012, based on manufacturers’ claims. Foxconn and Pegatron are supposedly to assemble the systems in late 2011. Digitimes usually has its finger on the pulse when it comes to this sort of thing, but I can’t help feeling there may be some misinterpretation here. → Read More
It took them a while, but Sony today announced [JP] that they will fully restore all PlayStation Network services plus streaming media-on-demand service Qriocity in Japan this Wednesday. Sony’s home market is the last country in which the company is done picking up the pieces after that massive data breach from last April. → Read More
Last time I posted this deal, BC2 was on Impulse, and my colleagues were earnestly recommending it to me. Now, I’m earnestly recommending it to you. There’s lots of good stuff being sold at the Steam Summer Camp Sale, but this one’s at Amazon and totally worth every penny. Solid single-player, awesome multiplayer, just a fantastic game. Add to cart. → Read More
Last year, Sony unveiled PlayView, a service for the PS3 that makes it possible to view high-resolution images on your display, for example in manuals or guides for games. And yesterday, big S announced in Tokyo that PlayView will be able to produce pictures in 4K×2K (4,096×2,160) resolution, or, in other words, four times the resolution of full HD. → Read More
Steam’s big Summer Camp Sale starts today! Not that you can buy anything right now, since the store is buckling under the weight of the traffic. Reddit user Remmib has put together a nice little listing of most of the deals here, but you might want to wait an hour or two before trying to get in there. Some standouts: Valve Complete Pack (Portal 2 included) for $50, Borderlands for $5, a great id pack for $30, and the Rockstar Collection for $40. Ah, Summer! → Read More
Who said Japanese players don’t appreciate video games made outside their home country? I just went out to buy the newest issue of the Famitsu, Japan’s leading video game magazine (which came out about 3 hours ago/it’s currently 3am Thursday over here), and saw what you see above: L.A. Noire, one of the biggest game titles this year, missed the perfect review score by just one point. → Read More
Following the security breach in the PlayStation network in April (77 million PlayStation Network user accounts were compromised), Sony saw a radical management reshuffle in its gaming division, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI), today. As you could expect, big S denies a connection between both incidents, but today’s decision probably doesn’t surprise anyone. → Read More
This isn’t a knock on the 360, but it really demonstrates the differences between the US and Japanese markets, and shows how you can’t please all the people, all the time. Only six thousand Xbox 360s were moved in all of Japan in May, for a total of around 1.47 million. Compare that to over five million PS3s sold and over ten million Wiis. Yet here in the states, the 360 is selling like hotcakes. Well, what can you do? → Read More
The PS Vita is coming relatively soon, but Sony Japan today announced [JP] something nice for all users still in need of a PSP: a total of three new PSP value packs. The bundles will include a PSP in Piano Black, Vibrant Blue, or Blossom Pink – and they might be the last ones you can get, at least before the Vita goes on sale. → Read More
Marathon was the Mac answer to Doom, and when I was younger I preferred it infinitely (in my innocence), lauding its creative level design, intense multiplayer, and insanely well thought-out story. When it gave way to Halo I pretty much stopped caring about Bungie, but now they’ve gotten my attention again. Marathon is comin’ to the iPad. → Read More
While Sony hasn’t given a yea or nay on this rumor, industry people are making noise about a possible price cut coming this fall to the PS3. Developers and merchants say software sales are down and it’s up to one of the big guys to start the price wars up again. Will it be Sony? → Read More
