Computer Sense

Massive holiday promotions kick off on Valve's store.
Steam has started its big Holiday Sale promotion, and you might as well tell everyone you know to stop calling you for the next few months.

There are more discounts than you could ever need in a lifetime, in addition rewards for completing tasks in games.
Steam will update with six challenges every day from now until January 1. Completing these challenges gets you either a gift - ranging from coupons to full games - or a piece of coal.

Coal can then be traded in for more gifts or saved up for entry into a giveaway on January 2 which will see one lucky winner get every game on Steam. All of them.

Hundreds more will win their top wish list entries and other freebies.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/330276/steam-holiday-gives-you-games-for-playing-games/

Dead Island has been well and truly banned in Germany.  Developers Techland join everyone else in expressing their lack of surprise at the decision. "This isn't unexpected," they told Eurogamer. "Germany has its unique regulations regarding video games and violence and the industry can only comply"

Turning the blood green won't help them with this one. Dead Island has been put on the "List B" by Germany's Federal Department of Media Harmful to Young Persons. It's a list reserved for media that contains extreme torture or Nazi content. It's probably best not to think about what gets onto "List A."

"Both Deep Silvers and Techland were aware of such a possibility from the very beginning," say the publisher. The reasons for the ban haven't been revealed publicly, but it's likely something to do with Dead Island's vast amounts of gore and dismemberment.

A place on List B makes it illegal for stores to sell the game in Germany and shipments heading into the country risk being seized at customs.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/30/dead-island-banned-in-germany/

Steve Jobs believed he'd "cracked the code" on how to build a TV as well as Apple makes phones.


Apple is likely to launch its own range of televisions next year or in early 2013, according to Gene Munster, managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray.


Munster, who's billed by Business Insider as the most widely trusted Apple analyst in the industry, says Steve Jobs revealed in Walter Isaacson's newly released biography that he finally "cracked the code" on how to build a TV as well as Apple makes phones.

"Our thesis is based on meetings with contacts close to Asian component suppliers, industry contacts, Apple's patent portfolio for television technology, and recent product launched (iCloud, Siri)," Munster said.

"Based on Jan-11 meetings in Asia (not with component suppliers), we believe Apple is investing in manufacturing facilities and securing supply for LCD displays. These displays could range from 3.5" mobile displays to 50" television displays.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/324062/apple-itv-probably-launching-next-year-report/

Reports suggest the PS3 has been opened up to piracy again via a new hack which takes the form of a successor to the original PSJailbreak.

Dubbed JB2, Digital Foundry says the device is a USB dongle that plugs directly into the PS3 and circumvents its security measures, giving users access to a number of features only available on developer consoles and allowing for the installation of illegal or copied code.

Newer games released after the PS3 firmware 3.60 update that locked out previous piracy methods reportedly can't be played from the hard drive using JB2. Instead, they have to come in the form of burned Blu-ray discs, which the machine reads as authorised.

With most of the evidence surrounding JB2 based on internet videos and unverified claims from sources, all talk of the device and its abilities remains speculative.

However, the report goes on to say that JB2 is believed to have undergone a small launch in Indonesia - witha  number of pirate games including PES 2012, God of War Collection Volume II and FIFA 12 made available - in preparation for a global rollout.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/323334/playstation-3-hacked-again/

How powerful does a laptop need to be? It's a pertinent question. Last week Razer unveiled a laptop it proclaimed the "saviour of PC gaming". But the big laptop news is that we're about to be deluged by 'ultrabooks' - thin and light Macbook Air clones which weigh just over a kilo, but pack powerful Core i5/i7 processors.

Earlier in the year, Intel demonstrated its commitment to ultrabooks by setting aside a $300m fund to support laptop manufacturers trying to build affordable lightweight laptops. The Macbook Air is very nice, but it isn't cheap. The chip maker is keen on the idea because it's hoping that potential tablet buyers will be tempted to get a real laptop that's very nearly as portable.

There's absolutely no reason to buy an Intel-based tablet right now, as they're power hungry, heavy and run Windows. The iPad and Android tablets are all doing much better with processors derived from ARM's architecture. As tablets eat into one of Intel's core markets - netbook shipments fell by over 50% in Europe last quarter - it's clear they have to do something.

Over at IFA in Berlin this week, quite a few manufacturers have been showing off ultrabooks. Toshiba's Portege Z830 (pictured above) looks fantastic , as does ASUS UX31, and Acer's Aspire S3 packs a (duel core) Core i7 chip into machine that's thinner, lighter and cheaper than an Air. Samsung's Series 9 and Sony's Vaio Z have both been out for a few weeks now, although they're a bit pricier.

As far as gaming goes, most of these ultrabooks feature the higher specced option from Intel's Sandy Bridge hybrid GPUs, the HD Graphics 3000. It's not great, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not entirely useless either. I've been playing aorund with an ultrabook - although I can't say which one - for a couple of days. It's obviously very limited for gaming, but Dues Ex: Human Revolution is just about playable at its lowest detail settings. Even there, it looks better than most Xbox games.

I wouldn't recommend buying an ultrabook for games just yet, but next year's models with better GPUs should be really interesting. With the Steam Cloud syncing save games between your desktop PC and an ultraportable laptop so you can fill in a few puzzles or levels while you're on the train, the convenience more than makes up for the temporary loss in resolution and details.

As much as I like the look of Razer's LED laptop touchpads, I'd be willing to bet that there'll be more ultrabooks figuring in the future of PC gaming than there will be Blades.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/02/are-ultrabooks-the-future-of-pc-gaming/

We met up with Diablo 3 game director, Jay Wilson at Gamescom to discuss Diablo 3′s always-online requirement and some of the issues that PC gamers can face when playing online-only games.

Some players might not have access to a stable internet connection. What should a player do if, say, the internet wiring in his house is flawed?

“Erm… upgrade the wiring in his house?” suggests Wilson. “I mean, in this day and age the notion that there’s this a whole vast majority of players out there that don’t have online connectivity – this doesn’t really fly any more.

“I mean, at our hotel, there’s nine wi-fi networks that I can access. Just from the hotel! And they’re all public – they’re all paid – but they’re pretty cheap, and they’re all publicly available. So the notion that there’s just tons and tons of people out there that aren’t connected – isn’t… I don’t think is really accurate.”

Wilson also told us some of the philosophical and practical reasons behind the decision not to include any sort of offline mode.

“There’s two basic problems with us doing that,” said Wilson. “One is players default immediately to that. So, they basically unintentionally opt out of all the cooperative experience, all the trading experience, and the core of Diablo is a circle-trading game. So for us we’ve always viewed it as an online game – the game’s not really being played right if it’s not online, so when we have that specific question of why are we allowing it? Because that’s the best experience, why would you want it any other way?”

Wilson admits that the decision will alienate some players, but also suggests that it’s impossible to please everyone.

“You’ve got to make choices about what you want to do, and sometimes those choices are going to make some people unhappy, but if you feel like it’s what is the right thing to do to making a better product then you have to do it,” he says.

“An online experience is what we want to provide for this game. Every choice you make is going to omit some part of the audience. Some people don’t like fantasy games, so should we have not made Diablo a fantasy game, because some people don’t like that? Some people don’t like barbarians. Should we not have put a barbarian in the game because some people don’t like it?”

From a practical angle, piracy was also a concern for Blizzard when they made the decision to make Diablo 3 require an internet connection.

“If we allow an Offline mode, it changes the structure of the data that we have to put on the user’s system. Essentially we would have to put our server architecture onto the client so that it can run its own personal server. Doing that essentially is one of the reasons why Diablo 2 was a much easier game to hack than obviously any other game you’d mention and so it’s what led to extensive cheating and item dupes and things like that.”

“I would never guarantee that we’re never going to have those things in Diablo 3, but it’s one of the things that our community has been the most vocal about, wanting this fixed, and if we essentially are putting the server out there…we’re not really going to be able to better than Diablo 2.”

So I came across this video on my Saturday morning and I thought this was hilarious!  Coming from one of my favorite shows xplay, it's always a good laugh, Enjoy!

That's the opinion of EA top dog John Riccitiello, who told IndustryGamers: "Consoles used to be 80 percent of the industry as recently as 2000. Consoles today are 40 percent of the game industry, so what do we really have?

"We have a new hardware platform and we're putting out software every 90 days. Our fastest growing platform is the iPad right now and that didn't exist 18 months ago."

Riccitiello also said the notion of five-year platform cycles is completely outdated and that future hardware is likely to be driven by social experiences and cross-platform play rather than supercharged graphics.

"I would argue that one of the least interesting things about the games industry was that every five years you'd see a new console or platform from everybody at about the same time with about the same or similar upgrades or services... But it's not a particularly smart way to run an industry... bulges in technology investment followed by harvest."

He said of Wii U: "Nintendo is bringing out a new platform that brings together some of what we're learning from new media and new platforms like the iPad and then integrating that with a console. It's the perfect time for that in the industry."

Riccitiello added: "I would argue that there's more to be provided in terms of value for the consumer in micro-transactions and social experiences and driving those better in cross-platform gameplay between a console and a PC and a handheld device and a social network than there is supercharging graphics... I always liked the power, but I don't know if it's the story 
anymore."
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/312269/ea-ceo-consoles-now-just-40-of-the-games-industry/

Tim Schafer has pitched to a lot of executives in his time, but this one looks like a really tough cookie. He’s dealt with Activision and EA, but now he’s in the big leagues, meeting with the Cookie Monster. “Zombies kinda 2007?” Hasn’t Mr Monster seen Dead Island? Still, Tim comes out on top in the end with a characteristically unusual idea. He works hard too, he’s already got a tech demo running.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/13/and-in-other-pc-gaming-news-115/

The list, which EA has now pulled from the internet and replaced with a fetching all white 404 error page, is said to have included the likes of Direct2Drive and GamersGate with EA's own Origin topping the list.

There has been some perceived conflict between the well established Steam platform and EA's new kid on the block, since Crysis 2 was removed from Valve's digital distributor last month.

EA's David DeMartini clarified the position saying that it was Steam's decision to remove Crysis 2 from its library, not EA's.

He also said that there had been some jarring between the two companies but dismissed it by saying that was normal in any relationship and EA intended to make its games available on as many platforms as possible.

It's not clear whether that approach will apply to Battlefield 3.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/311095/news/battlefield-3-not-coming-to-steam/

In an interview with Develop, iPhone game developer Quinn Dunki claimed peer pressure at a young age is steering talented females away from jobs which are typically thought of as male roles.

"The only difference between me and my maths-inclined, game-loving friend - who does advanced needlepoint instead of engineering - is that she succumbed to the peer pressure," Dunki told Develop.

She argued that gender imbalance is a problem that is too big for the industry to solve all by itself: "The outreach needs to go down to the [early] school levels. That's where the research shows girls stop studying maths and science due to pressures from peers and other sources."

Develop reports that 42 percent of all game players are women, according to recent ESA data, but it's believed that only one tenth of game developers are female. 

If efforts are made in schools now, Dunki thinks we will see results in the industry in a couple of generations. "In the meantime, the best thing we can do is provide role models. If you're a female engineer or scientist, put yourself out there," she added.

Dunki's words echo those of LucasArts' creative director Chris Hocking, who said on Wednesday that the industry needs to attract more women and become a little less obsessed with fart jokes.


http://www.computerandvideogames.com/310898/news/female-developers-need-to-put-themselves-out-there/

So it seems that something rather unfortunate has come up.  During a casual game of Team Fortress 2 my computer suddenly froze up and then all of a sudden my power supply exploded.  It seems the PSU couldn't take on the intensity of TF2.  Smoke filled my computer and left several burn marks all over, thus ending the life cycle of my power supply which was said to last me 7 years rather lasting me 2 years.  Anyways this kind of sucks, it will probably be about $100 for a new one.  Anyway just thought I'd share another one my downfalls, this also brings up something I should mention, when it comes to purchasing hardware it's probably best to check which company your buying from.  Some companies receive a lot of positive feedback and others don't.  Oh well story of my life.

If you have a hard time putting that kind of figure in to context, think of 74 billion one dollar notes piled high. There you go.

Software sales are forecast to account for $44.7 billion of 2011's total spend, hardware for $17.8 billion and online gaming for $11.9 billion.

In 2015, software will account for $56.5 billion of the $112 billion total, hardware for $27.4 billion, and online gaming - the fastest growing sector - for $28.3 billion.

Gartner research director Brian Blau said: "We find that subscription fees are giving way to 'freemium' models, in which the game is provided for free to gamers but is monetised through advertising (both in-game advertising and display advertising) and in-game microtransactions, such as the sale of value-added services or virtual-good purchases.

"This trend is prevailing given the rise of social gaming, in which online gaming is connected to social networking sites and social networking platforms."


http://www.computerandvideogames.com/310549/news/gamers-will-spend-74-billion-this-year-report/

That's according to a new Digi Times Report, which even more surprisingly claims Sony's to have Taiwan-based partners begin production of PS4 complete with body movement-based controls, similar to Microsoft's Kinect.

Taiwan-based component manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron Technology, assemblers of PS3, will undertake assembly of PS4, according to the site's sources.

The planned shipment volume of PS4 in 2012 is at least 20 million units, they indicated.

The report follows another from reliable US news site IndustryGamers, which claimed last month that it's heard from "industry sources at a top developer" that the Playstation 4 will become a real thing in the next 18 months.

Prior to that, a similar story pointed to an Xbox 720 reveal next year, with developer Crytek cited as the source of the rumour.

The PS4 2012 claim, which is looking more and more likely as the rumour reports pile up, would be quite a surprise considering only a few weeks ago Sony reaffirmed it's 10-year cycle strategy for the PlayStation 3.

Newly-promoted CEO of PlayStation worldwide, Andrew House told CVG at E3 he "still characterised this as the early period" for PS3, and noted that Sony had "only really just begun to explore what the potential is for 3D".

But it's the first we've heard of Sony jumping on the motion-sensing camera bandwagon. Are Sony and Microsoft about to go head-to-head in the 'no controller' stakes? Will the PlayStation firm do a better job? What does it mean for Move? 

It looks like we're in for an exciting 12 months. We'll be the first to remind you of the old phrase, 'There's no smoke without fire.'


http://www.computerandvideogames.com/310125/playstation-4-release-date-2012/

When we asked Wilson whether he thought gamers were growing tired of Call of Duty he said that yearly updates were risky when it comes to story-driven games. 

"Possibly. That's the danger when you get into yearly updates," he said. 

"I've never really been a fan of it - I don't think you do yourself any favours by getting into a cycle that's not a sports licence. 

"With something like F1 of course you do a yearly update - I'm a massive F1 fan and I would buy an F1 game every year just to get new cars and drivers. That for me is a valid thing. 

"When you're doing it with a story-driven action franchise, you can tire people out really quickly I think, and you just get to the point where it's like, 'What are we going to do next?' because we've seen it all before."

Wilson continued by suggesting that the integrity of the FPS genre as a whole seems to rest on whether or not the COD franchise can maintain its quality:

"I don't know with Call of Duty. I think we'll see by how well the next one does. It's always 'how well the next one does'. If it continues to be all the way up there, then fine. 

"I think the year it slips below, the year it doesn't do quite as well as it did last time, is when you're going to start to see people panicking a little bit about the FPS genre having the bottom fall out of it.


http://www.computerandvideogames.com/309724/news/call-of-duty-sales-slip-could-cause-fps-panic-bodycount-dev/

Between the update nearing release and the free to play announcement, it’s TF2 mania on Steam! The servers are currently getting hammered, so watch this while you wait.

Google looks to be moving into the games industry with a brand new division called Games at Google.The search giant has put out a job ad for a product manager in the new business. The responsibilities of the role include driving feature requirements for "Google's gaming platform."

Back in October last year it was suggested that Google TV could eventually be set to take on WII and Kinect as the family game platform of choice in living rooms across the UK.

Google said that it "makes sense" for its new platform to offer video game apps to the family consumer in future.

Here's the full product manager job description for Google Games: "Rare opportunity to grow a brand-new business - Games at Google! We are looking for a strategic, technical and game-loving Product Manager to drive Google's gaming strategy." 

"You will design strategies for game distribution and discovery, player identity, game mechanics, and more. In addition to designing a great user experience and building out key partnerships, you will be significantly influencing Google's social platform as you work directly with a critical set of early adopters, game developers." 

"Interesting and impactful decisions involving social gaming, privacy, virality, business, and technical APIs await you and the strong, passionate team of gamers you will work with."