By Emanuel Maiberg on Mar 30, 2015 12:13 am Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii
Tetsuya Takahashi, director at Xenoblade Chronicles 3D developer Monolith Software says that he never imagined the game would be available to play on handheld devices when it was originally made for Nintendo's Wii, but now that it is, it raises the bar for portable role-playing games.
"Now we can play Xenoblade Chronicles on the New Nintendo 3DS XL, and...now, this may sound a little egotistical, but I thought, 'This is really going to raise the bar for RPGs on portable devices,'" Takahashi said in the latest Iwata Asks interview series, in which Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata sits down with different developers.
Takahashi said he was surprised the game found an audience in the West, and discussed the differences between protagonists in Western RPGs and Japanese RPGs.
"One difference is that [Xenoblade Chronicles] did a good job of incorporating the innate heroism of JRPGs...allowing the user to become the hero, to become the protagonist," Takahashi said. "On the other hand, games made in the West - and this is only my personal opinion - they are very well made, down to the last detail, but there's something stoic about them, and often the heroism aspect seems to take a bit of a back seat."
"In JRPGs, the protagonists aren't very strong," Iwata said. "They seem like people you could meet on the street who just happen to be born to a certain destiny, and are drawn by some force into doing things that they could have never believed possible... But if Westerners really didn't like that kind of story, Star Wars wouldn't have become such a hit. Because that movie is just this type of story."
Xenoblade Chronicles 3D is a re-release of Wii RPG Xenoblade Chronicles coming on April 10. It's the first 3DS game that will require the New 3DS in order to play.
Tekken executive producer and game director Katsuhiro Harada revealed three new characters for Tekken 7 during a 20th anniversary stream for the series on Nico Nico.
The three new confirmed characters are Jin Kazama, which you can see in the video above, Devil Jin, and a wholly new character to the series Josie Rizal, which you can see in the videos below.
Jin Kazama and Devil Jin, seem much like they did in previous Tekken games, while Josie Rizal, the series first Filipina character, uses a kickboxing fighting style.
Tekken 7 was announced last year. The game, which is powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 4, is already in Japanese arcades, but Bandai Namco has yet to announce when the game will hit other platforms in other territories.
In September 2014 Valve released the Steam Discovery Update, which aimed to help users filter through the glut of new releases with improved personalized recommendations and Steam Curators, individuals or groups you can follow for more game recommendations. Six month later, Valve says that the update is generally achieving its goal, but could still improve in some areas.
Valve posted the update to the SteamworksDev group, which was reposted to Reddit with Valve's permission.
The good news is that the new discovery queue, which shows users a mix of new releases, popular products, and unique recommendations based on the users' tastes is driving users to view and buy new games.
"The Steam Discovery Update as a whole resulted in a sustained 30 percent increase in views of product pages across Steam, and the discovery queue has contributed almost 75 percent of that total increase in page views," Valve said.
"In addition to the raw increases in traffic, we've also carefully monitored sales data to make sure we're growing the size of the pie, rather than just adjusting the size of the slices," Valve said. "Steam's overall growth doesn't just come from the biggest hits (which continue to see great success), but also from the smaller titles that are now better able to reach the audience that is right for them."
Valve revealed that revenue for all apps outside of the 500 top sellers, has increased by 18 percent, and that daily earnings per app have increased by five percent.
The not so great news is that one of the biggest features of the Steam Discovery Update, Steam Curators, isn't having the desired effect.
"Unfortunately, the day to day interactions are not as high as we'd like, and we know we need to make some changes to better expose curators," Valve said. However, the company did say that 3.1 million unique users arrived at a store page via a curator, meaning they browsed a list of curators are noticed a curator's recommendation in their activity feed. "We think the general notion of editorialized and community-curated content has a lot of potential to help users discover new content and make better informed decisions, but we still have work to do to make better use of information generated by curators."
Overall, Valve says that the update helped expose users to more of the Steam catalog, and that it will continue to improve these new features with user and developer feedback.
Has the Steam Discovery Update impacted your Steam shopping habits at all? Let us know in the comments below.
If you like streaming yourself playing games on Twitch and don't already own a PlayStation 4, Best Buy has a great deal on Sony's console.
For $400, you'll get the PS4, a copy of The Last of Us Remastered, and a free PlayStation Camera, which usually costs $60. You can find the deal on Best Buy's website here.
Another great PS4 deal this weekend includes one of the biggest exclusive games to hit the console yet. For $400, you can get a PlayStation 4, a copy of Bloodborne, a $20 Amazon gift card, and a copy of The Last of Us Remastered. You can find the deal on Amazon here.
Atari is planning to reboot more of its classic games like Tempest and Missile Command, the company has announced.
Earlier this week, Atari launched Asteroid: Outpost, an open world sandbox survival game, in Steam Early Access, and with that announcement the company revealed that the game is part of its new strategy.
"We are going to be teaming up with young and innovative studios to take a refreshing look at each game from our extensive portfolio," Atari Chief Operating Officer Todd Shallbetter said. "Asteroids is the first of a long series of re-births, and we are considering doing the same for our other iconic games such as Warlords, Adventure, Tempest, Missile Command and many more."
Judging by how liberally Asteroid: Outpost interpreted the original top-down shooter, Atari could do anything with updated versions of the games mentioned above.
If you purchased the game on Steam, you'll be automatically upgraded to the full Steamworks edition so you don't have to use GFWL anymore. If you originally bought a retail package GFWL version, you can use the GFWL activation code on Steam to redeem the Steamworks-enabled version. The game also has a built-in tool to allow you to transfer save data and Achievements from the GFWL version to Steam.
Sadly, any DLC content you bought directly from Microsoft's GFWL Marketplace store will not carry over to Steam due to the lack of a CD or activation key.
If you want, you can also just keep playing the GFWL you have installed.
The new Steamworks version also adds the Gold Edition content that was released on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Available for $15, the Untold Stories Bundle adds a versus mode, four new costumes, Mercenaries Reunion, and two new story-based chapters.
Valve and HTC will give their virtual reality headset Vive to some developers for free, Valve has announced.
Valve's spokesperson Doug Lombardi told Ars Technica that the company hopes to start taking requests from developers soon. "More info and 'sign up' forms will be available to all interested developers, big or small, via a new site coming soon," Lombardi said, adding that a new sign-up site might go live as early as next week.
So far, we've seen only a handful of developers make games for the Vive headset, like Owlchemy Labs, which is working on Job Simulator.
Giving the development kits away for free could help Valve and HTC encourage developers who are already making games for the Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus develop games for Vive as well, which Valve said will be out by the end of the year. Oculus, by comparison, currently charges $350 for development kits, while the Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition (which is powered by Oculus and a Galaxy Note 4 smartphone) is already for sale at Best Buy for $199.
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