BitSummit is back. The annual Japanese indie game festival recently announced its lineup of musicians and speakers including Koji Igarashi of Bloodstained and Castlevania fame, Rez creator Tetsuya Mizguchi, Tom Happ (the man behind Axiom Verge) and Goichi "Suda51" Suda. Oh, and Sony Interactive Entertainment's president of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida.
Source: BitSummit (Facebook)
Quake fans have plenty of reasons to celebrate these days. Wolfenstein: The New Order developer MachineGames is championing id Software's classic first-person shooter's 20th anniversary and offering fans a little something special in return: A brand new episode of the game, downloadable for free.
Via: IGN
It was bound to happen, the question was just a matter of when. The "it" I'm referring to, of course, is developer Bungie cutting off support for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Destiny. In a post on Bungie.net, the company says that starting in August, progression won't be shared among last-gen hardware and the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. "Characters progress separately on two parallel paths," an infographic reads. Importing your character from last-gen hardware to a PS4 or Xbox One and then going back to your old system to play a strike or two with friends means that the experience points and gear earned will no longer carry over.
Source: Bungie.net
In a big more for openness in the VR landscape, Oculus has stepped back from its position of blocking its games from working on the HTC Vive. The company quietly issued an update for its desktop software today which strips away the headset exclusivity check that has caused VR fans so much consternation, Ars Technica reports. That limitation pushed the developers of the Revive tool, which lets Vive owners play Oculus games, to completely crack Oculus's DRM last month. But in response to today's news, the Revive devs have dumped their DRM cracking technology.
Via: Ars Technica
With the Halo Wars 2 beta freshly ended, Halo fans are likely looking for something solid to sink their teeth into. Halo 5: Guardians developer 343 Industries has come forward with exactly that: The big Warzone Firefight update, which launches next week on July 29th. Get ready to dust off those Needlers.
Source: Xbox Wire
Ever dream of working in a kitchen with Gordon Ramsay breathing down your neck? With the new Gordon Ramsay Dash game, which lands on iOS and Android next week, you can get a taste of cooking in a stressful environment under the chef's watchful eye. I had a chance to speak about the game with Ramsay himself -- who, by the way, is unnervingly calm in person.
RZA already made one big announcement this summer, and the member of the Wu-Tang Clan doesn't appear to be done yet. The rapper/producer announced this week that he's teaming up with Atari on a new album that takes inspiration from the audio in the company's video games. "I'm so excited to work on these iconic games to deliver what I believe will be one of my best albums," RZA told Billboard.
Via: Pitchfork
Source: Billboard
Minecraft isn't the only game headed to the classroom these days. Next fall, CivilizationEDU takes the storied strategy franchise to schools, too. The game "will provide students with the opportunity to think critically and create historical events, consider and evaluate the geographical ramifications of their economic and technological decisions, and to engage in systems thinking and experiment with the causal/correlative relationships between military, technology, political and socioeconomic development," according to a press release.
Source: Business Wire
Many have argued -- including our own Sean Buckley -- that the steady stream of platform-exclusive virtual reality games is a bad thing. Oculus has been by the far the most aggressive in pursuing such deals, but its head of content Jason Rubin claims that this is a good thing for the industry.
In an interview with gamesindustry.biz, Rubin made an argument focused on the growth of the industry. He compared the VR industry to PC gaming in the '80s, noting that the market is similar in size. The problem, he asserted, is one of expectation. "The average gamer is now aware of $100 million games. And while we certainly cannot build a $100 million game that takes four years, in the year we've had dev kits, we can try to get closer to that by funding significant leaps beyond the financial certainty that a developer would need to have to do it on their own."
Source: GamesIndustry.biz