Next-Gen Console Wars Will Soon Begin In Earnest

February 3rd, 2013, 23:24 Posted By: wraggster

When the Wii U was released at the end of last year, Nintendo got a head-start on the long-awaited new generation of video game consoles. Now, Sony has announced a press conference for February 20th that is expected to unveil the PlayStation 4, codenamed 'Orbis.' This will precede the announcement of the Xbox 360's successor, codenamed 'Durango,' but that too will likely be announced by E3 in June. Specs for development kits of both systems have leaked widely. The two systems both use 8-core AMD chips clocked around 1.6 GHz. Durango has 8GB of DDR3 RAM, while Orbis has 4GB of GDDR5 RAM, though Sony is trying to push that up to 8GB for the console's final spec. Reports also suggest Sony is tinkering with its controller design, going so far as to add a "Share" button to let people exchange screenshots and recordings. Developers indicate the systems are very close in power, though Sony's system currently has an edge. With the upcoming announcement of the PS4, the big-three console makers will kick off a new round of direct competition. They'll maneuver to one-up each other with the most powerful hardware and the slickest software. However, they'll also hope the release of three major consoles in rapid succession will help to anchor a part of the games industry that no longer enjoys the dominance it once did, thanks to threats from mobile.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/0...gin-in-earnest

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Fight You Own Muscles To Create Force-Feedback On Smartphones

February 3rd, 2013, 23:23 Posted By: wraggster

"Researchers in Germany have developed a device that allows users of portable devices, such as smartphones, experience force-feedback from games using just their own muscles... and a small EMS device. When stimulated by a painless electric pulse, the player's arm moves the device in whichever direction the game commands. The player then fights the movement with their other muscles, creating a strong sensation that the device itself is bucking in their hands. According to the developers, users found the sensation much more realistic than traditional vibrotactile feedback. (Should make PvP more interesting too.)"

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/0...on-smartphones

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Easy web interface with GPIO access runs on Raspberry Pi

February 2nd, 2013, 21:55 Posted By: wraggster


Here’s a Raspberry Pi hack that adds web control using PHP and MySQL. As you can see in the image, it serves up a webpage (using the Apache2 server) which allows you to change the state of the GPIO pins. It’s not super-complicated, but it is nice to see a step-by-step guide for installing and configuring the package.
Web interface GPIO control is one of the features we loved about the Adafruit Web IDE. But this offering is loaded completely from the RPi (the Adafruit package uses cloud based code) and utilizes the tools most Linux network admins will be used to. A MySQL database manages the connection between GUI commands and GPIO modification. The webpage is served up by a PHP script which takes care of polling and changing database values. Configuration requires a new database, plus the username and password which has access to it.
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/02/easy-...-raspberry-pi/

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Guitar Hero controller built from toy guitar and keyboard

February 2nd, 2013, 21:55 Posted By: wraggster


[Heinrich Laue] was kind of a latecomer to the fake guitar playing video game phenomenon. He played Frets on Fire — an open source clone of the game — on PC and eventually bought a copy of Guitar Hero World Tour. But playing on the keyboard was a drag. Instead of buying a controller he built his own hacked Guitar Hero controller from a scrapped keyboard and a toy guitar.
The plastic toy he started with was screwed together. This is a really nice since it’s almost impossible to open toys that have been welded together. There was plenty of room inside for all his components and even some space to run the wires.
He started the electronic portion of the build by tracing out the keyboard matrix to figure out which solder pads he could tap into. The strum bar uses a door hinge with buttons on either side of it. When you move it back and forth it hits the buttons, with the spring mechanism in each returning it back to center. The fret buttons are keys from the keyboard, but the switches uses were pulled from a few computer mice. But the real innovation comes into play when he added the Star Power tilt sensor and whammy bar. Follow the link above to find out how he did it.
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/02/guita...-and-keyboard/

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RTS is a dying market

February 1st, 2013, 17:16 Posted By: wraggster

The director and co-owner of Sins of a Solar Empire studio Ironclad Games has revealed he believes that the real time strategy genre is on its way out.
"It's a dying market," Blair Fraser said in an interview with RockPaperShotgun
"RTSes, to my mind, are very niche now. And that's unfortunate, because that's what I love, and that's what I grew up playing, and that's what I make. Or made, anyway. I just think the demographics have changed. Company of Heroes may be profitable, and StarCraft II is an anomaly. But most of them aren't gonna get big numbers."
He was keen to point out that the Canadian Ironclad's big title Sins of a Solar Empire was still "thriving" but mainly because it had moved away from the traditional RTS model. The studio has also released multiplayer online battle arena Sins of a Dark Age.
"If genres don't keep evolving, they die, and I was seeing not a lot of evolving in the RTS, base-building genre. By extension, I think the MOBA genre has to continue evolving if it's gonna make it past two generations."
In the extensive interview Fraser also gave his opinions on the recent demise of Age Of Empires Online, which is no longer receiving new updates.
"I can tell you why Age of Empires Online went out of business," he revealed.
"They had to hit a certain price point that F2P players find valuable. The Team Fortress 2 high-five animation was the same price as an entire faction in Age of Empires Online. The return on investment there just doesn't make any sense. And that's why Age of Empires Online isn't generating anymore content, and that's why we're not charging for army-type units [in Sins Of A Dark Age]."
Ironclad was founded in 2003 and released its first title, Sins Of A Solar Empire, five years later in February 2008.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...a-dying-market

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Next-gen consoles will lose ground, says Roberts

January 31st, 2013, 22:19 Posted By: wraggster

Star Citizen developer Chris Roberts says Sony and Microsoft's next efforts will lose price and power advantages over PCs
The next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft won't enjoy the success of their predecessors, according to Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts. Speaking with NowGamer about his current project Star Citizen, Roberts dismissed concerns that the next wave of consoles would undermine enthusiasm for Kickstarter projects like his own.
"I think consoles will be there and they'll do decent business but I don't think that the next generation of consoles will be as big as the last generation," Roberts said. "Essentially, I can build a high-end PC now that's much more powerful than the new consoles that will be announced this year."
While that PC might cost a lot more than a standard console price point, the cost of PC power is always decreasing, and Roberts said the tools to stream content to a living room TV set is similarly coming down. At the same time, console makers are less likely to rack up the huge losses on hardware out of the gate that they did in the last generation.
"So they're going to be on an even footing with everyone else, whether it's Steam Box or whatever, and then what's the best platform," Roberts asked. "Is it a closed platform, which is controlled and curated like Microsoft, Apple and Sony, or is it an open platform that isn't controlled? There are good and bad things about both sides but that's basically the PC platform."
Roberts went on to say that despite the consoles' ability to run Star Citizen, he wouldn't bring the game to them in the next generation unless Sony and Microsoft made their platforms considerably more open. In particular, he said the lack of control over the update cycle and inability to push out new content whenever it suits the game would be two major obstacles.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...d-says-roberts

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How Videogames Help Fund the Arms Industry

January 31st, 2013, 22:00 Posted By: wraggster

Eurogamer has an expose of the shady world of games developers licensing guns. From the article: '"We must be paid a royalty fee — either a one-time payment or a percentage of sales, all negotiable. Typically, a licensee pays between 5 per cent to 10 per cent retail price for the agreement. [...] We want to know explicitly how the rifle is to be used, ensuring that we are shown in a positive light... Such as the 'good guys' using the rifle," says [Barett Rifles'] Vaughn

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/0...-arms-industry

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Riccitiello: Game violence about perceptions

January 31st, 2013, 21:55 Posted By: wraggster

EA can be 'part of that solution,' says CEO

As the nation's public and lawmakers alike take yet another look at the issue of violence in games, EA CEO John Riccitiello has voiced his opinion, saying it's not about games, but perceptions.
Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Bidenspoke with Riccitiello and other industry playmakers, warning them of the need to change public percetions of gaming.

It's been more than a year since the Supreme Court's decision granting games full first amendment protections, but still some lawmakers insist that something must be done to protect American children from what they call the threat of violent media.
Riccitiello thinks its about time the industry - which he called "mature" and "responsible" - did more to change their minds.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...ut-perceptions

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DCEmu Status Update Jan 31st

January 31st, 2013, 15:56 Posted By: wraggster

Hi all, for the last few hours ive been taking the Gaming news out of the discussion forums and back into the news forums for each respective thread. This now means that the discussion forums will look a lot less populated, but also means news will stay in the news forums only.

Now comes the fun part, my task in between trying to stay on top of the news is to start work on the console sites and moving static pages across add to that all the downloads, so it means a lot of work

More updates to come.

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DCEmu Status Update

January 31st, 2013, 02:22 Posted By: wraggster

Hi all,

Been progressing on the site changes more today, i have redirected all the old subdomains to the new dcemu.com address, theres still around 10 to do that need to be reactivated but once they are all online it will help massively.

Today DCEmu Reviews has been reduced to one forum with over 500 reviews and the site is now at http://www.dcemu.com/dcemu-reviews.php, also today DCEmu Interviews has been done --> http://www.dcemu.com/dcemu-interviews.php, DCEmu Tutorials --> http://www.dcemu.com/dcemu-tutorials.php, DCEmu Console History --> http://www.dcemu.com/dcemu-console-history.php, JoyPad News --> http://www.dcemu.com/joypad-news.php and finally for today, our DCEmu Gadgets and Import Gaming Site --> http://www.dcemu.com/dcemu-gadgets-importgaming.php

Theres a heck of a lot more to do but in the end we will have a lean site and forums to take us into the future of Homebrew and Gaming

Thanks for your time and Keep visiting DCEmu and if you feel like it chat on the forums

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China's complicated history with video games

January 30th, 2013, 23:39 Posted By: wraggster

<header style="font: 300 13px/20.79px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; width: 620px; height: auto; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; overflow: hidden; clear: both; text-decoration: none; word-spacing: 0px; display: block; white-space: normal; position: relative; background-color: rgb(242, 242, 242); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="post-header"></header>Earlier this week, China Daily quoted an anonymous government source -- allegedly straight from the Ministry of Culture -- saying China is considering lifting a 12-year-old "ban" on game consoles soon. While it's was unclear how reliable the source was at the time, the Tokyo stock market sucked it up anyway, with Bloomberg observing a significant rise for Sony and Nintendo after the rumor was published. Then today we learned from Tech In Asia that Dongfang Dailyfollowed up with two representatives from the Ministry of Culture, one of which said the department have never looked into lifting the ban, while the other person was more vague about the matter. But here's the thing: game consoles were never really banned in China. Allow us to set the record straight for you.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/30/china-console-ban/

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Animal Crossing still Japan's #1

January 30th, 2013, 23:35 Posted By: wraggster

And 3DS is still topping the country's hardware charts
It seems Japan just can't get enough of paying off mortgages and hunting for bugs, because Animal Crossing: New Leaf is yet again the country's biggest seller. It's now hit lifetime sales of over 2.3 million.

1. [3DS] Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 82,370 (Lifetime sale - 2,366,126)
2. [PS3] DmC Devil May Cry - 31,627 (142,056)
3. [PSP] Gintama no Sugoroku - 27,011 (New)
4. [PSV] Demon Gaze - 25,316 (New)
5. [3DS] Fantasy Life - 25,042 (187,772)

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US Senator: Games affect people, guns don't

January 30th, 2013, 23:33 Posted By: wraggster

Tennessee's Lamar Alexander explains why he thinks games are a bigger problem than firearms
Gun control opponents in the US are continuing to shift blame for mass shootings away from firearms and toward violent video games. In an appearance onMSNBC's The Daily Rundown today, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander brought up games when asked if there was any chance he could support a bill for universal background checks on gun purchases.
"I'm going to wait and see on all of these bills," Alexander said. "I think video games is a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people. But the First Amendment limits what we can do about video games and the Second Amendment to the Constitution limits what we can do about guns. So the details matter to me. I'm going to be skeptical of any of these proposals and examine them in light of the Second Amendment to the Constitution."
The appearance came on the same day as a Senate hearing on what can be done about the problem of gun violence in the US. At that hearing, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre reiterated his call for armed security guards in every school, as well as the enforcement of gun laws already on the books. Last month, LaPierre put the blame for the Newtown, CT elementary school shooting on games, calling the gaming business "a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against own people..."
Former Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords also appeared at the panel, telling legislators that "too many children are dying," and something must be done to curb gun violence now. Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with voters in a January 2011 event.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ople-guns-dont

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Controlling a Raspberry Pi with real life redstone

January 30th, 2013, 23:32 Posted By: wraggster


We’ve seen computers built in Minecraft out of redstone, the game’s version of electricity, circuits, and digital logic. We’ve even seen a few redstone contraptions controlling real-world devices. [Angus]‘ build, though, takes things to a whole new level. He’s created a bridge between Minecraft circuits and their real life counterparts using a Raspberry Pi.
[Angus]‘ build relies on a mod for Minecraft servers running as a Bukkit plugin. Blocks powered by redstone are labeled with an in-game sign, and messages regarding the state of a block are passed over the network using the MQTT protocol.
The hardware side of the build is a Raspberry Pi with a PiFace expansion board. With this setup, [Angus] can control LEDs on the PiFace by toggling Minecraft levers, or light up redstone lamps using the PiFace’s buttons.
If you’d like to try this out for yourself, you can grab the Bukkit plugin over on [Angus]‘s git. Check out the video of the real life redstone in action after the break.

http://hackaday.com/2013/01/30/contr...-raspberry-pi/

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New Metal Gear game is 2013's 'first blockbuster'

January 30th, 2013, 23:27 Posted By: wraggster

EA and Sega may say otherwise, but Konami reckons Metal Gear Rising is the first blockbuster of 2013.
The action game launches after Dead Space 3 and Aliens: Colonial Marines. But Konami has huge faith in the title. It’s even backing the game with its biggest campaign for a “long time”.
“It’s the first blockbuster in terms of presentation, content and gameplay,” said Brain Ayers, UK PR and marketing manager. “Legions of fans are keen to see how the collaboration between Kojima’s studio and Platinum Games work out.”
Marketing activity includes an extensive PR and print push, TV ads, London Underground posters and retail billboards.
There will also be a major online campaign, plus extensive activity on XBLA, PSN, Amazon, Ticketmaster, IMDB, and LiveNation.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/new-m...buster/0110106

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The DCEmu Change - Its Starting

January 30th, 2013, 02:18 Posted By: wraggster

Since my first announcement that there will be vast changes to DCEmu its took me a while to get everything working, battling with Htaccess files has been fun.

From now on you will start to notice changes, first off subdomains will disapear and be redirected to dcemu.com but fear not, if say your looking for PSP/PsVita news and so on we will have feeds for each area on dcemu.com, and if there was downloads etc for sites they will continue at dcemu.com.

The last year google has punished us for having duplicate content but its not just about google its about having a modern compact site and forums and thats whats going to happen, im hoping to have it all done before our birthday.

Today ive merged and got rid of forums for our Ebay Auction and Daily Deals sites, they now are redirected to this page http://www.dcemu.com/ebay-auctions.php, also our Amazon site that gathers the latest in releases from the UK and USA is now redirected to http://www.dcemu.com/videogames-news.php, once ive finished we will have something like 25% of the forums we have now and the News forums (ie the ones i spam with news) will be seperate from the Discussion forums, of course in both you can reply to all but im hoping to kickstart the forums back to life.

Thanks for your time, changes will be happening all the time and because its going so well for me im getting the buzz back i felt years ago for homebrew and with projects such as the GCW Zero its gonna be an interesting ride

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Block 'n' Load: Activision explains why games are region locked

January 29th, 2013, 23:56 Posted By: wraggster

These days it's much easier to import a game from a different territory and get it to work without modifying hardware or using dodgy third-party add-ons.
<figure style="font: 14px/21px sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px currentColor; width: 300px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; clear: both; word-spacing: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; float: right; display: block; white-space: normal; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="article-image article-image-alt article-image-300"></figure>Sony's open-border policy make its systems the most import-friendly, while Microsoft seems to take a case-by-case approach to region locking (we're still waiting for Persona 4 Arena).However, if you've got your heart set on an obscure Japanese title for your 3DS, Wii or Wii U, you're going to have it broken as Nintendo still region locks its games and systems.
Region locking sucks, but there's a good reason for it. In fact, there's quite a few.
Activision's community manager Dan Amrich, also known as 'OneOfSwords', has taken to YouTube to explain the business and complicated license agreements that influence the decision to region lock certain games.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...region-locked/

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Google to donate 15,000 Raspberry Pis to UK schools

January 29th, 2013, 23:16 Posted By: wraggster

The foundation behind the Raspberry Pi has partnered with Google, which will see the firm give 15,000 of the devices to schools across the UK.
It is hoped that the initiative will encourage a new generation of computer scientists, as the availability of free devices is designed to boost the number of children taking up an education in programming.
The limited number of young people pursuing an education in programming has long been an issue in the UK as fears surrounding a potential future shortage of qualified individuals continue to mount.
Throughout the last decade, the number of individuals studying computer science in the UK has fallen by 23 per cent at undergraduate level and 34 per cent at graduate level.
The Raspberry Pi has already proved a hit with developers, hackers and hobbyists, as specialist distributor Premier Farnell announced back in January that it had sold 500,000 units of the device.
With another official distributor on hand and a number of unofficial ones unaccounted for, the foundation behind the devices estimates that over one million devices have been sold to date.
Whilst the shortage of students showing an interest in programming within the UK continues, those already working with the device in other countries have showcased its potential.
Earlier in the year, computer science Ph.D. student Lingxiang Xiang used the Raspberry Pi to fix a broken R2-D2 replica toy.
Using the device, Xiang upgraded the R2 unit with additional features including facial recognition, motion and distance detection, and even the ability to understand voice commands in both English and Chinese.

http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...schools/030114

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Disney prepared to look at game violence

January 28th, 2013, 19:41 Posted By: wraggster

At a Q&A during HRTS Newsmakers Luncheon, Disney chairman and chief executive officer Robert Iger said that his company would be looking into video game violence in its titles.
"At Disney there's very little [violent content], but I still want to make sure we're asking ourselves the right questions in terms of that standard and also [ensure] we're willing to be a part of a dialogue in today's world that I think is pretty necessary in terms of what our role is and what our role should be," said Iger, according to a report by Deadline.
Iger vowed to "take stock in everything we've got that can be considered near the line or over the line", but did not bring up any specific measures that Disney would implement.
The renewed discussion on violence in video games follows from United States President Obama's proposal for more research into the effects of violent games on children. The proposal was one of many aimed at curbing gun violence in the US following the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...lence-says-ceo

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Raspberry Pi becomes a guitar effects processor

January 28th, 2013, 19:41 Posted By: wraggster


One of the more interesting use cases for the Raspberry Pi is exploiting its DSP capabilities in interesting ways. There’s a lot of horsepower inside the Raspberry Pi, more than enough to do some very interesting things with audio, all while being powered by a small wall wart adapter. [Pierre] over on the Pure Data mailing list has a proof-of-concept working that uses the Raspi as a guitar effects processor. The results are very encouraging – [Pierre] is able to use his Raspi as a delay, pitch shifter, and of course a classic flanger, phaser, and chorus with a latency of about 16 ms.
There are a few steps necessary to get low latency with the Raspi’s audio interface. [Pierre] is running his Pi headless, and allocated more RAM to the CPU.
If you’d like to try this out for yourself, [Pierre] has a tutorial for setting up Pure Data with the Raspberry Pi. He’ll be updating his blog soon with more tutorials and verified USB audio interfaces later.
Check out the processor in action after the break.

http://hackaday.com/2013/01/28/raspb...cts-processor/

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