News::Third-person MOBA 'Smite' finally exits beta, launches on Xbox One

If you couldn't get into the beta for Hi-Rez Studios' Xbox One port of Smite, today's your lucky day: you never will. Today, the free-to-play third-person MOBA finally left beta for a full launch on Xbox Live. The game was originally slated for an early 2015 launch, but hit delays that extended the beta to summer. Waiting for a launch is always a drag, but at least we got some cool stats out of it -- according to Hi-Rez studios, players defeated more than 300,000 Gods (other players) and killed more than 3 million NPC minions during the beta. Yeesh. Want to join in on the number-crunching slaughter? Head over to Xbox Live -- the game is free.

Filed under: Misc, Gaming

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Source: Xbox Live, Smite

Tags: hi-rez-studios, hirez, hirezstudios, smite, xbox, xboxone

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News::'Hearthstone's' tournament-themed expansion lands August 24th

If you're aching for more variety in your Hearthstone cards, you don't have too much longer to wait. Blizzard has revealed that the game's latest expansion, The Grand Tournament, will arrive on August 24th for both desktop and mobile players. As mentioned earlier, how much it costs depends on both your in-game experience and how many of those 132 new, championship-themed cards you're determined to own. You can buy packs using 100 gold if you're willing to grind through enough matches, while you can spend between $3 to $50 to get two to 40 packs all at once. Just remember to act quickly if you want the pre-purchase set, which offers 50 packs for $50 -- that disappears the moment The Grand Tournament is available.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

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Via: Talk Android

Source: Battle.net

Tags: activision, Activision-Blizzard, android, Blizzard, expansion, gaming, hearthstone, ios, mac, TheGrandTournament, video, windows

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News::Valve and JJ Abrams' Bad Robot made 'Team Fortress 2' football

Back when Valve and JJ Abrams' Bad Robot production company announced a partnership involving games and film projects it came as a complete surprise. That theme continues with the duo's first collaboration: a mode for Team Fortress 2 combining soccer, hockey and basketball dubbed "PASS Time." It's only in beta as of now (a concept that Bad Robot found immensely intriguing, apparently) though. The official game description is as follows:

"RED and BLU face off in an epic battle to score more goals than their opponents. Coordinated passing, aerial shots, interceptions, team-based formations and plays, defensive lines and the like make for strategically chaotic play."

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Team Fortress

Tags: badrobot, basketball, beta, football, gaming, hd, hdpostcross, jjabrams, mod, passtime, pcgaming, soccer, teamfortress, teamfortress2, valve

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News::'Final Fantasy VII' lands on iOS with built-in cheat codes

If you can't find your old PSOne discs, don't want the PC version and don't have a PS4, there's now one more way to play Final Fantasy VII: on your iPhone. Today Square Enix launched the classic jRPG for devices running iOS 8.0 and up. At its core, this release is a simple port of the PC version of the game, but developers have made a few minor tweaks to the title palatable on the small screen.

Filed under: Gaming, Mobile

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Source: YouTube, iTunes (1), (2)

Tags: finalfantasy, finalfantasyvii, gaming, ios, iPhone, mobilepostcross, Square-Enix, squareenix, videogames

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News::'80s game designers had to cheat their way to color graphics

We take powerful computer graphics for granted nowadays, to the point where we complain when 4K games won't play at 60fps. But YouTube's iBookGuy showed how tough designers had it back in the 80s just to make color graphics work, period, on 16K machines of the day. They had to use a variety of workarounds just to get 16 colors on a 320 x 200 screen, as that would normally eat up your entire 16K of RAM right there. Developers for machines like the NES and Commodore 64 resorted to dividing the screen into "cells" that could each hold only two colors, a trick that used up just 9K of memory.

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

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Via: Boing Boing

Source: The iBook Guy

Tags: 16K, 8-bit, 80s, ComputerGraphics, TheiBookGuy, video

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News::Sony's 'Metal Gear Solid V' devices flaunt your stealth action fandom

Are you a Metal Gear Solid fan? So much so that you bought an MGS edition PS4, and have no trouble making sense of the series' frequently intricate plots? You'll want to hit up your favorite Japanese exporter, then. Sony has unveiled a legion of limited edition Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain devices, all of which come with game-themed cases, engravings, sounds and wallpaper. Some are more extravagant than others, though. The Xperia J1 Compact phone, Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact and Xperia Z4 Tablet we can understand, but there are also Phantom Pain versions of the Walkman A16 and audiophile-oriented Walkman ZX2. Yes, you too can demonstrate your fondness for stealth action by buying a soon-to-be-obsolete MP3 player -- something tells us that these models won't be wildly popular.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Portable Audio/Video, Tablets, HD, Mobile, Sony

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Via: G for Games

Source: Sony (translated)

Tags: gaming, hdpostcross, metalgearsolid, metalgearsolidv, MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain, mobilepostcross, smartphone, sony, thephantompain, videogames, walkman, xperia, xperiaj1, xperiaz4tablet

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News::For $200, Samsung's latest Gear VR headset is a no-brainer

If you're the owner of a new Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge, an extra $200 will get you Samsung's Gear VR Innovator Edition, one of the first virtual reality headsets available to the public. Like others following the Oculus Rift story, I assumed that all VR headsets still presented issues like nausea and lag and weren't yet consumer-friendly. But I wanted to see for myself what the fuss was all about, and since I already have an S6 Edge, I decided to splurge on one. In a few short days, my prejudices have melted away: The Gear VR isn't perfect, but it already does plenty of things, and does them well.

Filed under: Gaming, Wearables, Samsung

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Tags: CurvedScreen, engadgetIRL, GalaxyS6Edge, GearVR, irl, Oculus, OculusCinema, samsung, uk-feature, VirtualReality

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News::Amazon UK is ending book and video game trade-ins

Did you know that Amazon UK accepts book and video game trade-ins? Nope, me neither. It seems plenty of other customers were oblivious, or at least haven't been using it, because the company has announced that the option is soon disappearing. The section of Amazon's site which lets you specify your trade-ins will go dark on August 31st, after which you'll have seven days to mail out your physical media. Of course, if you're still prepared to thin your library in order to accrue extra cash, you can still set up shop and sell directly through Amazon Marketplace. Otherwise, there's always GAME, CeX and eBay.

Filed under: Gaming, Amazon

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Via: Metro

Source: Amazon

Tags: amazon, games, preowned, preownedgames, TradeIn, TradeIns, videogames

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News::Microsoft studio wants you to choose and shape its next game

Press Play, the Danish developer behind Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Kalimba is opening up its doors to seek advice on its next game. The Microsoft-owned studio is entering what it calls "open development." For now that means the public can choose which of its game concepts gets greenlit, but it'll soon mean a lot more.

Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft

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Source: Microsoft

Tags: microsoft, PressPlay

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News::'Duke Nukem' franchise ownership finally settled

A dispute that left ownership of the Duke Nukem franchise in limbo has officially been settled. In a statement, Gearbox Software affirmed that it's the "full and rightful owner of the Duke Nukem franchise." Previous rights-holder and creator 3D Realms (aka Apogee Software) relinquished all claims, saying "to secure the future of Duke, 3D realms has agreed with Gearbox that a single home serves (it) best." That's a far cry from the rancor between the parties after Gearbox launched the lawsuit in 2014, however. Gearbox assumed it had bought the full franchise rights from 3D Realms, until 3D Realms announced that it was creating a new title called Duke Nukem Survivor.

Filed under: Gaming

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Source: Gearbox Software

Tags: 3DRealms, DukeNukem, interceptor-entertainment, Lawsuit, Settlement, Survivor

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News::'Rainbow Six: Siege' won't breach and clear until December

It seems like that original October 13th release date proved a bit too unlucky for Ubisoft and Rainbow Six: Siege. A post on the gaming juggernaut's blog says that the game has a lot of room to improve and an extra month or so will help the developers do just that. Namely, balancing weapons and equipment, tweaking co-op "across all game modes" and some other housekeeping bits. Don't worry though because the closed beta is still on for September 24th while the full game launches across all platforms on December 1st. It's starting to look like a trend for the company, and is almost assuredly helped in part by the absolutely atrocious launch of last fall's Assassin's Creed: Unity.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Ubisoft

Tags: December, delay, gaming, hd, hdpostcross, pc, PcGaming, PlayStation, ps4, rainbowsix, rainbowsixsiege, ubisoft, xbox, XboxOne

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