Elder Scrolls Online going (almost) free to play from March 17th

Surprising no one. It couldn't compete with World of Warcraft to maintain a subscription based service.

Guild Wars 2 setting the example that if you provide good regular content and in game transactions, you can still make a profitable game while maintaining a wide potential customer base.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-21-elder-scrolls-online-gets-console-release-date-drops-subscription

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2015/01/21/elder-scrolls-online-goes-free-to-play-surprising-no-one/

Stream Xbox One games to Windows 10 & tablets this year.

So it looks like Microsoft is going to take another stab at PC gamers with Windows 10 while muddying the waters with being able to stream your Xbox One to windows 10 PC's

http://www.joystiq.com/2015/01/21/stream-xbox-one-games-to-windows-10-pcs-and-tablets-later-this/

http://www.joystiq.com/2015/01/21/fable-legends-confirmed-for-windows-10-pcs/

Getting a Logitech G510's Windows key to work as the command key on OSX

So the G510 has a joystick stick on the upper row of the keyboard next to mute and MR button. If this is on the Logitech Gaming software doesn't detect the Command key when you try to detect the button.

Click the plus sign next to the word 'Command', detect it and add it to your keystrokes list. Its also worth saving it to a separate profile if you switch between PC's a fair bit.

Intel approached AMD about access to Mantle

Looks like Intel knows a good thing when it sees it...

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/intel-approached-amd-about-access-to-mantle/

You can preload all your new PS4 games starting next week

I wonder if we'll see video services start doing this for major VOD released (i,.e. Netflix or new BoxSets on Sky Go).

Still, for the time being it should keep gamers happy as there is nothing more frustrating that having to wait for something you've purchased to come down when you just want to jump straight into the action.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/18/ps4-preloading-transformers/

Engadget: AMD says its next PC chip trumps Intel with 12 'compute cores' and smoother gaming.

Engadget: AMD says its next PC chip trumps Intel with 12 'compute cores' and smoother gaming. http://google.com/producer/s/CBIwx4biixA

Been on a bit of a gaming binge today so have been neglecting ukgamesdeals.co.uk and this blog a little. CS:GO, Rome 2: Total War and Bioshock: Infinite if your curious.

I can across a rather unusual bug in Bioshock: Infinite though. All keys in game would work apart from the WASD & arrow keys. As you can imagine this makes the game pretty much impossible to play.

The answer was found on the link below:

½pint:

I have solved this problem. It was being caused by the 'synergy' service that was running on my computer. Synergy itself wasn't running, but the service was (it starts automatically if you install synergy as a service). You can actually reproduce the bug live while the game is running - stop the synergy service and the keys start working immediately, start the service and the keys stop working immediately. Bizarre.
http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php?222941-Keyboard-Bug-some-keys-work-some-keys-don-t

I think I've've blogged about Synergy before, its a great tool but it can be buggy as well. Still, can't complain for a free application! 

Maingear Pulse 17

Maingear Pulse 17.  Check out the spec, the resolution is only 1080p but apart from that its an impressive package and until Apple consider making 17" laptops again it's as good as it gets for such a compact size. 

https://www.maingear.com/custom/notebooks/pulse17/index.php

The new Nintendo 2DS.

Microsoft lists 23 launch-day titles for Xbox One

Here's the current list of games you can expect to see on store shelves (and Xbox Marketplace online displays) when the Xbox One releases sometime in November.

• Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft)
• Battlefield 4 (EA DICE, Electronic Arts)
• Call of Duty: Ghosts (Infinity Ward, Activision)
• Crimson Dragon (Grounding/Land Ho!, Microsoft Studios)
• Dead Rising 3 (Capcom Vancouver, Microsoft Studios)
• FIFA 14 (EA Sports, Electronic Arts)
• Fighter Within (AMA Ltd., Ubisoft)
• Forza Motorsport 5 (Turn 10 Studios, Microsoft Studios)
• Just Dance 2014 (Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft)
• Killer Instinct (Double Helix, Microsoft Studios)
• Lego Marvel Super Heroes (TT Games, Warner Bros. Interactive)
• Lococycle (Twisted Pixel, Microsoft Studios)
• Madden NFL 25 (EA Sports, Electronic Arts)
• NBA 2K14 (Visual Concepts, 2K Sports)
• NBA Live 14 (EA Sports, Electronic Arts)
• Need for Speed Rivals (Ghost Games, Electronic Arts)
• Peggle 2 (PopCap Games, Electronic Arts)
• Powerstar Golf (Zoe Mode, Microsoft Studios)
• Ryse: Son of Rome (Crytek, Microsoft Studios)
• Skylanders: Swap Force (Vicarious Visions, Activision)
• Watch Dogs (Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft)
• Zoo Tycoon (Frontier Developments, Microsoft Studios)
• Zumba Fitness: World Party (Zoë Mode, Majesco)

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/08/microsoft-lists-23-launch-day-titles-for-xbox-one/

Former Valve business head now at Microsoft to lead PC gaming division

 Lets hope he gets the support he needs. Microsoft have never really been good at pushing the PC as a serious gaming platform (apart from all their work on DirectX). Its weird as this is where some of the biggests RTS's and MMO's are and generally the platform pushes graphics forwards in the later years of the console markets life-cycles.

http://www.neowin.net/news/former-valve-business-head-now-at-microsoft-to-lead-pc-gaming-division

Ship just got real

Pun tastic trailer for Parado's new game


http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/17/leviathan-warships-trailer-sets-sail-with-boat-puns-and-smooth-jazz/

Skyrim for consoles gets updated to 1.9

Lots of bug fixes with some new features:

NEW FEATURES
Legendary difficulty setting
Legendary Skills – Skills of 100 can be made Legendary. This will reset the skill to 15, return its Perks and allow the skill to affect levelling again. This effectively removes the overall level cap.

Nice to see its still getting support. Possibly in the run up to some new DLC as well hopefully.

http://www.bethblog.com/2013/04/08/skyrim-1-9-update-on-consoles/

Anandtech has detailed info on Nvidia's next mobile graphics family.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6873/nvidias-geforce-700m-family-full-details-and-specs

RuneScape

Some times I wonder why people bother with making need MMO's... There are already so many good ones out there.

I didn't play RuneScape too much, although I did start when I first got an interview for them (I declined in the end) but it certainly was fun.

Here's a cool infographic to show just how expansive the universe of it really is:
http://www.runescape.com/200million/infographics.ws

Steam not loading on Mac 10.8.2 ?

Had a weird issues with steam on OS X 10.8.2 where the client would not launch. Absolutely nothing would load or start when trying to open the steam application.

This seemed to start when I tried to redeem a gifted Dota 2.

The only way I could fix the issue was to re-download the client and install over the existing install. Very strange.

Opinion: A bad year for new consoles! 4K & 8K on the way!

It's never a good time to release new technology.
Something is always around the corner to screw with your product roadmap and thats exactly why I think this'll be a bad year to release a games console.

Why? Well head on over to your favourite gadget website like Engadget, T3, The verge or whatever and search TV's. They are talking about 4K and 8K TV's.

New consoles coming this year would be looking at stable, reliable hardware thats readily available and heavily optimised. You can bet it'll be geared towards 1080p resolutions, thats OK for a good few years, maybe even 5. If though, Sony or whoever state the console is on a 10 year life-cycle then thats going to suck big time in the long run with 1080p. The Wii just about got away with it but they divided the market so people didn't consider them as much a competitor as something different. With Xbox and the Playstation, people want cutting edge graphics and are clear about that.

Personally I don't feel like current generation graphics are keeping with resolution increases in recent hardware. I'm typing this on a Retina MacBook Pro and although I love it, I don't have many games I can stick onto native resolution and whack up all the details on. To be fair this doesn't have a top end GPU but even if it did it'd sturggle with a lot of new released games on full settings. So 4k & 8k seem a bit of a pipe dream for a console right now.

One solutions... Thunderbolt.
Make the graphics upgradeable. It'd be an interesting move for a console manufacturer and it would be an awesome way to keep their console relevant going forward. Is it unreasonable? Microsoft did it with the DVD HD add on and although the format didn't take off people who bought it mostly liked it! The inclusion of USB gave them that option as well as Kinect!

I'm not aware of external graphics via USB3 so Thunderbolt seems logical to me.

Aside from the above I think the other technologies are mostly in place.

Blu-ray for the optical media.
USB3 (or thunderbolt) for wired devices.
2.4Ghz for wireless.
Gigabit Ethernet for cabled connections.
Optical / HDMI for sound.


It'd be insane for Microsoft to ignore optical media in my opinion. It's too early to ditch. Countries still have speed limitations in infrastructure / subscription policies and prices. Until this is globally not an issue they would be shooting them selves in the foot with a global product. Thats not to say online distribution isn't a force to be reckoned with. Look at XBOX live, Steam and Origin! There are also Onlive and Sony's gaming streaming service (I always forget the name of) although with OnLive's 2012 troubles that may also be a technology thats not quite ready.

Bohemia Interactive's employees get into hot water in Greece

Naughty naughty Bohemia Interactive
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21028105

But can it run Crisis?

Maximum PC: You Built a New PC, But Can It Run Crysis 3?

Wow, my Nvidia GTX 275 simply doesn't cut it with just under 1Gb of ram and no dx 11...That's just for the minimum specs!

Canonical Work to Improve Gaming on Ubuntu

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/canonical-work-to-improve-gaming-on-ubuntu