Following Valve's announcement this week that Steam hardware is getting its own section at select physical retailers, one of those stores, GameStop, has released some images that show off what it looks like. As you'll see in the image gallery below, GameStop's Steam hardware section is decked out with Steam Controllers, Steam Links, Steam Machines, prepaid Steam cards, and other PC wares.
Steam hardware goes on sale starting November 10. For the holiday season, GameStop (US), GAME (UK), and EB Games (Canada) will be the "exclusive non-digital retailers" for Steam hardware.
"Creating a 'store within a store' across North America and the UK is a significant win for getting the first generation of Steam Hardware products into gamers' hands," Valve boss Gabe Newell said earlier.
Just days after the game went gold, copies of Halo 5: Guardians are now showing up in the wild. The images below come from Imgur and give us a good look at the game's box art. What's more, the fine print reveals that you'll need "up to 60 GB" of hard drive space to install and play Halo 5.
The origin of these images is unclear, though the background would suggest they stem from a retailer or warehouse, among other possibilities. Retail copies of 2012's Halo 4 also leaked early.
In addition, these images show off Halo 5's new T-for-Teen rating (past games were rated M-for-Mature), as well as its one-player limit for local play. Halo 5 breaks from Halo tradition in that it does not support local split-screen. The game does have online co-op for up to four players and a new 24-player Warzone mode.
Activision and Treyarch have revealed a new multiplayer map and Specialist character for the upcoming shooter, Call of Duty: Black Ops III. As revealed on Activision's new weekly video series, the map is called Redwood and the Specialist, the ninth confirmed so far, is titled Firebreak. You can watch the entire, 36-minute broadcast that goes over both the map and Specialist below. The video features insight directly from multiplayer designer Dan Bunting and overall design director David Vonderhaar.
As you could have probably guessed, the Redwood map is set in the Redwood Forest of northern California. Bunting described the map as very different from any map featured in Black Ops III or the franchise overall. It was also the very last multiplayer map developed for the game; this worked to the map's benefit, Bunting and Vonderhaar said, as it allowed the team to put into practice everything it had learned from developing all of the game's other maps. Take a closer look at Redwood in the gallery below.
The new Specialist character, Firebreak, is focused on fire powers. The character wields a flamethrower weapon called a Purifier that is capable of clearing a room. Firebreak also sports an ability called Heat Wave, which overwhelms and incapacitates enemies with a blast of heat.
DICE is most famous for its Battlefield series. So when it was announced that the studio would be working on a new Star Wars Battlefront, some worried this game would essentially amount to Battlefield with a Star Wars skin. In a new interview, DICE general manager Patrick Bach said such a game would be a "safe" and guaranteed money-maker in the short term, but it would have damaged the brand in the long run.
"You could have done Battlefield with a Star Wars skin; that would be safe," Bach said in the latest issue of OXM(via GamesRadar). "That would be the sane and sober thing to do if you just want to make money. That's the money-grab; go for it. But that's not very strategic in the long term."
He added: "Think where you want to be in five years and you won't want that reputation behind you because that would be a burden rather than a benefit. You want a fresh start so you can go in a new direction. That's exactly what we're doing. The first Star Wars movie was in the same place. When you look at it now, it was the safest bet ever--but that's easy to say now. Back then, why would you want this space opera?"
In a previous interview, Bach said DICE wanted Battlefront to have a "heart and soul of its own."
"Star Wars fans expect a Star Wars game, not a Battlefield game," he said over the summer. "We looked at what Star Wars stands for, rather than asking how can we tweak Battlefield to be something else."
In a statement, PDP CEO Chris Richards said his company worked "closely" with Sony on the device, which he says should "seamlessly" work with your PS4 right out of the box.
The controller can power the PS4 on and off; it can also control up to three other devices, including your TV, cable box, and audio receiver. In addition, the controller features all the familiar DualShock 4 controller buttons, while it will be compatible with the following services at launch:
Blu-ray Disc Player
Crunchyroll
NFL Sunday Ticket
FUNimation
HBO GO
Media Player
NBA GAME TIME
Netflix
PlayStation Video
PlayStation Vue
Twitch
YouTube
The PS4 media remote requires two AAA batteries; battery life is pegged at a minimum of six months under normal use. For a closer look, click through the images in the gallery above.
Everything in Halo 5: Guardians' new REQ system can be earned through traditional gameplay. But if you'd like to get going faster, you will be able to pay real-world money for that convenience. In a blog post, 343 Industries revealed pricing details for the game's various REQ Packs and talked more about how they work.
Halo 5 REQ Pack/Microtransaction Pricing Details
Bronze:
In-game currency cost: 1250 RP
Real-world money cost: not offered
Silver:
In-game currency cost: 5000 RP
Real-world money cost: $2
Gold:
In-game currency cost: 10,000 RP
Real-world money cost: $3
343 explained that in-game pricing has been set so that players can afford at least one REQ Pack for every other game played. You should expect to earn around 2000 RP for every Warzone game played, meaning it won't take very long to reach Silver or Gold status. In addition, everyone gets 7500 RP to start.
On top of these three REQ Packs, Microsoft will offer a Warzone REQ Bundle, which comes with two "Premium" packs every week for seven weeks (for a total of 14). This bundle is included with the Halo 5 premium bundles, or it can be purchased separately for $25.
In addition, 343 isn't taking all of Halo 5's microtransaction revenue for itself. A "portion" of the proceeds of all REQ Packs will be added to the Halo World Championship prize pool. For lots more, check out the full blog post about Halo 5's REQ system.
GameSpot recently spoke with 343 design director Kevin Franklin about Halo 5's microtransactions. An excerpt from our interview is below; read the full thing here.
"Everything you can get in the REQ system, you can earn whether you spend money or not," he said. "There's no crazy special items that are only going to be reserved for people who spend a lot more money. Also, you get a lot of rewards whether you're playing Arena or Warzone, so you're always going to have a ton of stuff that you'll be able to use. The biggest thing for us the moment we started even talking about this system was that the game has to be balanced. At the end of the day, it's a multiplayer game. It's not a spend-more-to-win game. We wanted to make sure that if you spend a whole ton of money, and you thought you could get five scorpions just because you spent more money, it's not going to work. You're still going to have to earn the right to call these scorpions into the battlefield.
"So we have a mid-session progression loop, which any MOBA player will be familiar with. You have to level your character up in-game, every game, by killing enemies, going after A.I., and contributing to your team. Then you'll unlock the ability to use these cards. So if you have ten scorpions, you can't just call in ten scorpions. You actually have an energy system, and that levelling system that will gate you and keep the end-game balanced. And that was really huge--we're multiplayer designers, we can't just make a really unbalanced game. It just wouldn't feel Halo."
Following his recent comments about how the Xbox One may never outsell the rival PlayStation 4, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has again broached the subject of Microsoft's vision for the Xbox platform and how this is affected by the competition. In short, he says it's not. Read on for Spencer's new take on the subject.
According to Spencer, he's more interested in making the Xbox One the best console it can possibly be. "Our long-term Xbox vision isn't about competitors, it's about gamers," Spencer said to a fan on Twitter. "We'll stay focused there."
He added: "Team is 100% committed to making XB1 a great gaming console. Games, OS, XBL, that's the focus."
Speaking frankly earlier this month, Spencer said something similar. After admitting that the PS4 has a "huge lead" over the Xbox One in the sales race, Spencer said, "We're not motivated by beating Sony, we're motivated by gaining as many customers as we can." Get the full story here.
Before that, Spencer said he's not interested in engaging much with the Xbox One vs. PS4 debate.
"I've said before, the one thing that I probably find a little distasteful in the discourse around games is the divisiveness that people try to build between platforms," he said in September.
What do you make of Spencer's latest quotes? Let us know in the comments below.
Today at CitizenCon, the annual fan event dedicated to PC space game Star Citizen, developer Cloud Imperium Games announced a celebrity cast for the game's single-player campaign. Actors appearing in the campaign, Squadron 42, include Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, and Gillian Anderson.
Oldman plays a character named Admiral Bishop; take a look at his in-game character model above. Click through the images in the gallery to get a behind-the-scenes look at the motion-capture process.
In addition to the actors mentioned above, Squadron 42's impressive casts includes people like Andy Serkis, Ben Mendelsohn, and Mark Strong. Check out all of the actors confirmed so far in the image below.
The crowdfunding campaign for Star Citizen started three years ago today. To date, Cloud Imperium has raised close to $91 million. A release date for the final version of the game has not been announced.
What do you make of the Squadron 42 cast? Let us know in the comments below.
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