These were some of 2015's best selling games

Major franchises like 'Call of Duty,' 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Madden' sold the most last year.

What games sold the most copies in 2015? Exactly the titles you'd expect: the latest entries in long-running franchises like Call of Duty: Black Ops III,Madden NFL 16 and Fallout 4. It's not surprising -- sequels have the springboard advantage of an existing fanbase -- but disappointing: not a single new IP shows up on the NPD's top 10 best selling games list for last year.

Annual 2015 Top 10 Games (New Physical Retail only; across all platforms incl. PC)

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (XBO, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)**
2. Madden NFL 16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)**
3. Fallout 4 (PS4, XBO, PC)**
4. Star Wars Battlefront 2015 (XBO, PS4, PC)**
5. Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3, PC)**
6. NBA 2K16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)**
7. Minecraft (360, XBO, PS3, PS4)
8. Mortal Kombat X (PS4, XBO)**
9. FIFA 16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)**
10. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (XBO, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)**

**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)

That said, this breakdown still makes a lot of sense. The new Star Wars: Battlefront title was sure to sell droves in the wake of the franchise's new feature film and Grand Theft Auto V (the 5th best selling game of the year, continentally) was one of the most anticipated titles of this console generation. NBA 2k16, Minecraft, Mortal Kombat X, FIFA 16 and last year'sCall of Duty: Advanced Warfare rounded out the last five top-sellers for the year.

As far as new and unique titles go, last year's NPD best sellers were far more interesting, including not only two new IPs (Watch Dogs and Destiny), but a console-exclusive title as well (Super Smash Bros). Still, if you missed out on 2015's most popular games, give them a shot -- with a wide mix of popular franchise games, there was something for everyone in 2015.

Read More

'Metal Gear,' 'The Witcher 3' lead game developers' nominees

You probably have a short list of favorite video games from 2015, but what do you think game creators would pick if given the chance? You don't have to wonder: the Game Developers Choice Awards has delivered its nominees, and there are a few clear front-runners this time around. For one thing, third-person action is definitely in vogue: Metal Gear Solid Vand The Witcher 3 were both nominated for four awards each, including game of the year. A few other well-known games also received multiple nods, including Bloodborne, Fallout 4 and Splatoon.

And don't worry, some of the bigger indie titles are in the running as well.Her Story and Undertale received three nominations each, while cult hits like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes found their way on to the chart. You'll have to wait until the actual awards ceremony on March 16th (at the start of the Game Developers Conference) to find out which titles are the cream of the crop, but it's already reasonable to say that many devs share your tastes -- they're more interested in fun than technical wizardry.

Source: Game Developers Choice Awards

Read More

'Battlefield 4' hides an incredibly elaborate Easter egg

You've probably seen some clever gaming Easter eggs in your day, but few of them are likely to be this... involved. Gamers playing Battlefield 4's new Dragon Valley map have discovered an Easter egg that requires a massive, multi-step sleuthing campaign to complete. How massive? Well, it starts with translating Belarusian Morse code and moves on to hidden objects, logic puzzles and audio editing. The kicker is that this isn't repeatable -- even if you pay close attention to the video below, you'll have to do some of the hard work yourself.

The effort might be worth it if you're a hardcore fan. Besides hearing nods to Battlefield fan videos, you'll unlock a special uniform that's otherwise available only to DICE's Los Angeles team. You'll be the talk of any server you play on, at least among in-the-know veterans. This isn't the first Battlefield Easter egg (creator Julian Manolov is known for them), but it might be the series' most legendary prize before long.



Via: Shacknews
Source: Jackfrags (YouTube)

Read More

Street Fighter V is coming to SteamOS

Capcom's Street Fighter V is coming to Valve's SteamOS with full support for the company's Steam Controller. The franchise's first new series since 2008 will also be the first to make an appearance on the Linux-based operating system. The decision is quite a coup for Valve. It's positioning SteamOS and Steam Machines as the friendly face of PC gaming; a legitimate living-room replacement for a console.

The long-awaited brawler is due to hit PlayStation 4 and PC on February 16th. It's unclear when the SteamOS port will be ready, or if it'll be able to take advantage of the cross-platform multiplayer features already announced for PC and PlayStation 4. One thing we do know is that Steam Controller support is baked into the Street Fighter V beta, which runs from today through to December 20th.

Via: Gamasutra

Read More

A new Batman game from Telltale is coming 2016

Telltale has a knack for narrative-focused games. The company is known for its excellentWalking Dead series in addition to titles like The Wolf Among Us and Game of Thrones. Now the company is setting its sight on the Dark Knight with a series based on The Dark Knight. Little is known beyond the teaser trailer, which echoes the moody pages of the graphic novels, except that it will be an episodic series (as is the case with other Telltale titles) and it'll debut next year for PC, Mac, home consoles, and mobile.

Here's how Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner describes it (via press release):

"At Telltale, we’ve been honored to bring our unique approach to interactive storytelling to some of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world, and we’re excited to announce that we’ll soon be exploring what it means to be Batman in an all-new series starting next year... This iteration of Batman will give fans a first-hand opportunity to dive deeper into the complex life and mind of Bruce Wayne, the duality of his own identity, and the struggle of responsibility in saving a city overcome with corruption and villainy."

The developer is also making a Marvel game, but that's reportedly not coming until 2017.

Read More

See the vicious wildlife of Far Cry Primal in this new trailer

Back in October Ubisoft surprised many of us with the reveal of a brand new Far Crygame, one that was set in the Stone Age and featured woolly mammoths and sabertooth tigers. At The Game Awards in Los Angeles tonight, the developer provided an even better glimpse Far Cry Primal with a new trailer. It details some of the story, and shows off a bit of gameplay, but most importantly it reveals many of the vicious creatures you can expect to encounter. Primal is slated to launch February 23rd on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with a PC version coming later in March.

Read More

Unreal Engine 4.10 Adds Marshmallow Support, Better Graphics Scaling, Refraction Effects, Web Browser Widgets, Support For Additional Gamepads, And More

The Unreal Engine serves as the core for any number of games across PCs, consoles, and mobile phones alike. When a new version comes out, the changelog is big. Really, really big. Not all of the changes introduced in version 4.10 affect Android, but a solid number of them do. Here are some of the headline grabbers.

For starters, Unreal Engine 4.10 introduced support for Marshmallow. Check. Moving on, a new Material Quality system helps developers scale games to fit low-end and high-end devices. You can choose low, medium, and high quality versions of shaders for all materials, and you can selectively disable rendering to increase performance. The engine can automatically adjust to run optimally on many popular devices.

Compare the difference in a view displayed on a Galaxy S6 Edge with high quality materials (pictured above) versus an older Galaxy S III with the quality scaled down (below).

Refraction effects have made their way to mobile platforms. No extra effort is required on the part of the developer, as existing shaders with refraction will automatically work on phones and tablets. The shot below shows the effect at work in a sphere of floating water.

Unreal Engine 4.10 adds support for a number of gamepads. These controllers include the AmazonFire game controller and TV remote, NVIDIA SHEILD controller and portable console, and the Samsung Game Pad EI-GP20. Mappings are detected automatically based on the name of the controller, and the engine can support multiple ones simultaneously.

If you need to display a web browser in-game for any reason, you now have that option on Android. You can spawn a web browser widget to display content hosted anywhere. An example use of this would be to display the latest news or events.

Other changes affect all platforms, like the ability to mirror landscapes. Think two-player competitive environments, and you'll see how this could come in handy.

The massive changelog is far too long to share here, so dive in at the link below. And if you're not a developer, well, just wait for updates to start rolling out to a few of your favorite games soon enough.

• Source: 
• Unreal Engine

Read More

'The Witcher' will be a movie in 2017

The Witcher is perhaps best known as a video game series, but its roots travel deeper than the digital realm. The Witcher games are based on a long-running series of novels and short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski, and these tales are being turned into a film, due to premiere in 2017. The movie will pull from themes in The Witcher and Lesser Evil, two stories in Sapkowski's collection The Last Wish, which was originally published in 1993; an English version hit the market in 2007. The Sean Daniel Company (the studio that produced The Mummy franchise) is teaming up with Platige Films on the project, alongside Oscar-nominated director of The Cathedral, Tomasz Bagiński. It's planned to be a series, assuming audiences are appropriately charmed by the leading, supernaturally powered man, Geralt. He's fairly bewitching, or so we've heard.

SOURCE: Platige

Read More

Activision buys 'Candy Crush' developer King for $5.9 billion

Say what you will about the quality of Activision's output, but the company makesincredibly smart business moves. Like the announcement that it purchased Candy Crushstudio King Digital Entertainment for a cool $5.9 billion. For comparison's sake, Amazon paid a paltry $970 million for Twitch while Facebook spent $2 billion on Oculus VR and$19 billion on messaging platform Whatsapp. Oh, and Minecraft only set Microsoft back$2.5 billion. Bobby Kotick and Co. definitely think this is a big deal, and considering just how many people play the mindless puzzler this is likely a smart investment.

Think about it this way, now Activision Blizzard has the entire spectrum of gamers covered: Kids and families with the Skylanders series, World of Warcraft lifers, folks who casually play Hearthstone, the hardcore who continuously play Destiny and Call of Dutyand of course, the gateway drug to in-app purchases, Candy Crush Saga. For brevity's sake, I even left out a bunch of other franchises that are cash cows (oh, hey thereStarCraft)! That's one hell of a portfolio no matter how you look at it.

drew olanoff 

✔@drew

Candy Crushin' It

 Follow

Hunter Walk @hunterwalk

@drew quick, someone mock up an In-App Purchase option for "Entire Company $6b"

9:20 AM - 3 Nov 2015

 
•  22 Retweets
 
•  1111 favorites

Fork Parker @ForkParker

Again, @DevolverDigital is available for a very reasonable $1 billion or best offer.

9:39 AM - 3 Nov 2015

 
•  1111 Retweets
 
•  3838 favorites

[Image credit: AFP/Getty Images]

Read More

Warner Bros. offers refunds for 'Batman: Arkham Knight' on PC

The failure of Batman: Arkham Knight's PC port is finally complete -- after being removed from digital stores for being completely broken at launch, going through a four month overhaul and returning with too many lingering issues to forgive, Warner Bros. has finally thrown in the towel. If you bought the game on PC, you're eligible for a refund between now and the end of the year.

Warner Bros. spelled out the details on the game's Steam community page. It's pretty straightforward, save for one exception: the Arkham Knight season pass is only eligible for a refund with the main game, you can't return the DLC separately. Not all versions of the game seem eligible for a refund, either -- users who purchased a retail copy of the game are reporting that the refund page won't load for them.

Users that choose not to (or aren't able to) take the refund are also being promised that Warner Bros. will continue to work on the game, but carefully notes that it may not be able to fix some issues. That's not promising. Unless you're one of the lucky few PC gamers for whom this title runs well, you should probably just get a refund.

VIA: Kotaku

Read More

Need For Speed’s cars look almost real

Is it possible to enter the uncanny valley when looking at cars? No, probably not. We need some sort of human-esque figure in order to achieve that science fiction level of creepiness.

Need For Speed‘s making me reconsider the definition, though. This game looks crazy good, friends, and that’s talking about a multiplatform title to boot.

In a way, it’s arguable that EA and Ghost Games had to make the cars in the new Need For Speed look incredible. That comes two fold, really.

First, there aren’t too many cars in the game to begin with. This isn’t the latest Forzaor Gran Turismo where players will slowly unlock hundreds of cars spanning practically all makes and models. No, there are around 40 cars in Need For Speed. The emphasis has been placed on car customization of car quantity.

If the cars look super nice, maybe players will get even more attached to them, thus solving the problem of having too few.

Second, the game’s cutscenes are all done in full motion video. That means they’re live action with live performers, not CGI. In order for the cars and world to blend with the cutscenes, they had to look good.

For gamers, this is sort of a great corner for EA and Ghost Games to have metaphorically backed themselves in to. We win because they chose, for whatever reason, to go all out with the car design. Kudos to them.

As for how it plays? We’ll know next week. Need For Speed launches for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on November 3, 2015. It’s due for the PC platform in the spring of 2016. We’ll have more on the title as it comes.

Read More

Ben Affleck's costume and Batmobile are coming next month to Batman: Arkham Knight

The critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham Knight has been really good about including the history of Batsuits, from comics through Keaton, in its add-on content. And starting next month, you'll be able to play as the new Ben Affleck-era Batman.

The "2016 Batman v. Superman" pack, coming sometime in November, will include both the Batfleck skin and the new Batmobile. Developer Rocksteady has outlined the full 2015 schedule for Arkham Knightdownloaded content, which will be available first for anyone who picked up the season pass (and everyone else later). Meanwhile, the Christian Bale era "2008 Batman" suit will join the already-released 2008 Batmobile this December.

Notably absent from the plan? George Clooney and Val Kilmer-era Batware. Alas.

Read More

If you haven't played the Uncharted games, play them on PS4

UNCHARTED 2 IS THE TRUE CLASSIC

Read next: Inside the original pitch for Uncharted

If you’re part of the 80 percent of PlayStation 4 owners that developer Naughty Dog claims have never played the Uncharted series, drop what you’re doing after reading this article and go pick up The Nathan Drake Collection, which came out over the weekend. It bundles the three Unchartedgames together in one remastered package for PS4, representing the best way yet to experience the most endearing and explosive trilogy ever to hit a PlayStation.

Uncharted is essentially the video game world’s answer to Indiana Jones, serving up a breakneck mix of exploration, action, and puzzle solving across the globe. With its bright colors and likable characters, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was swashbuckling, charming, and romantic in a way that big action games rarely were — particularly in 2007. It kicked off a period where it seemed like every game’s lead was voiced by Nathan Drake actor Nolan North, granted, but it did feel fresh at the time.

• 

• 

• Drake’s Fortune, the first game in the series, has undergone the biggest graphical overhaul in this collection, because beyond the ambition of their designs each member of the series is pretty much on par with each other on PS4. Naughty Dog is one of the most technically accomplished studios in the world, and each Uncharted outdid its predecessor to become the most impressive PS3 game of its day.
  The Nathan Drake Collection, however, updates assets across the board to make for a smoother transition between each title in the trilogy. Textures, lighting, and character models have all been improved, and each game runs at 1080p and 60 frames per second. Bluepoint Games, which handled the conversions, deserves a ton of credit for a slickly produced package. But Drake’s Fortune still feels a little outdated to play today, with less imaginative combat design and clunky controls that don’t hold up well next to the later two games.
  Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the true classic in this collection, with incredible direction, much-improved pacing, and sensible tweaks to the action — it’s one of the most confident sequels ever made, and the game that cemented the series as a PlayStation mainstay. It’s where Naughty Dog came into its own as a creator of cinematic, heart-stopping set pieces that seamlessly slot in alongside the core action. Who could forget the moment in Nepal when a helicopter demolishes the building you're standing in?
  PHOTO MODE

  The images in this article were taken usingThe Nathan Drake Collection's photo mode, a feature that's getting more and more common in action games like Infamous: Second Son and The Last of Us: Remastered. It lets you freeze the action, adjust the camera, and apply effects like depth-of-field to enhance your shot.

  The mode here is a little limited, however. It can be hard to move the camera around, and you usually can't take photos during a set piece or even with a gun drawn. Still, it's possible to produce some cool results, and the mode is a good way to show off the collection's impressive fidelity.
  And while Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception overreaches a little in its attempt to end the series on a downbeat note, it manages to squeeze in some spectacular moments. There’s a sense that some of the regular encounters were rushed, though — Uncharted’s combat has never been as slick as Gears of War, which it borrows much from, but Among Thieves does a better job of designing stages around Uncharted’s more athletic mechanics. Between that and some sluggish pacing,Drake’s Deception can be a bit of a slog.
  Still, these all remain great games, and The Nathan Drake Collection is the perfect way to get yourself up to speed before Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End drops next year. Uncharted 4 is probably the most anticipated PS4 game yet, and it's certainly the biggest exclusive title for a console sorely lacking. This holiday, The Nathan Drake Collection is likely to be the PS4’s biggest draw, going right up against the Xbox One’s Rise of the Tomb Raider. If you’re a series veteran desperate to make the most of your PS4, this might not be so exciting. But if you’re yet to play these games, this collection is a hell of a solid package. The Unchartedtrilogy is one of gaming’s most beloved, and this is the way you should get on board.

Hint: Use the 's' and 'd' keys to navigate

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Read More