http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Thu, 10 Apr 2014 23:08:13 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-getting-special-choppers-from-legendary-bike-designer-paul-jr/1100-6418908/ <p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/280/2802776/2503775-azerothchoppers1.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503775" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/280/2802776/2503775-azerothchoppers1.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503775"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/280/2802776/2503775-azerothchoppers1.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">Blizzard has announced it will be bringing customised <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/world-of-warcraft/" data-ref-id="false">World of Warcraft</a>-inspired motorcycles to life in a show called Azeroth Choppers. Custom motorcycle designer Paul Jr. will lead teams who will build two motorcycles to represent the warring Horde and the Alliance factions respectively.</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">The process will be documented in a series of episodes, with Blizzard's senior vice president Chris Metzen leading Team Alliance and art director Samwise Didier leading Team Horde. According to the <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/choppers/" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">website</a>, the first episode is scheduled to go live on April 17.</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">World of Warcraft was released in 2004. The game's upcoming expansion, <a href="/world-of-warcraft-warlords-of-draenor/" data-ref-id="false">World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor</a>, will include an overhaul of <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/racial-traits-get-overhaul-in-world-of-warcraft-warlords-of-draenor/1100-6418084/" data-ref-id="1100-6418084">racial traits </a>and character models. Blizzard recently revealed the<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-female-orc-character-revamp-revealed/1100-6417850/" data-ref-id="1100-6417850"> new female Orc model</a>.</p><p style="">For more on World of Warcraft: Heroes of Draenor check out <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/world-of-warcraft-warlords-of-draenor/" data-ref-id="false">GameSpot's previous coverage</a>.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--kd6W6Iuc8" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2F--kd6W6Iuc8%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D--kd6W6Iuc8&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2F--kd6W6Iuc8%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=6efca6e5ad9640f180f14146a0bc1392&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Zorine Te is an associate editor at GameSpot, and you can follow her on <a href="https://twitter.com/ztharli" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">Twitter @ztharli</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 18:32:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-getting-special-choppers-from-legendary-bike-designer-paul-jr/1100-6418908/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/below-come-in-from-the-storm-trailer/2300-6418263/ Come in from the Storm. Enter the depths of Below, coming to Steam & Xbox One. Thu, 10 Apr 2014 17:52:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/below-come-in-from-the-storm-trailer/2300-6418263/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/you-can-pre-order-watch-dogs-for-59-off-on-origin/1100-6418907/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503743-screen+shot+2014-04-10+at+4.49.47+pm.png" data-ref-id="1300-2503743" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503743-screen+shot+2014-04-10+at+4.49.47+pm.png" data-ref-id="1300-2503743"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1534/15343359/2503743-screen+shot+2014-04-10+at+4.49.47+pm.png"></a></figure><p style=""><a href="/watch-dogs/" data-ref-id="false">Watch Dogs</a>, the open-world adventure game from Ubisoft is going for 59% off on the Origin store in India right now. <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/comments/22q0a3/origin_watch_dogs_deluxe_edition_preorder_indian/" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">Enterprising users on the forum Reddit spotted the sweet, sweet deal </a>and also laid out the instructions for residents of any other country to take advantage of the discount through the use of either a VPN or a browser extension. </p><p style="">The price has been slashed from Rs. 4,200 (currently $70 USD) to Rs. 1,699.00 (currently $28.28 USD) for the limited edition version. The standard edition has a the same deep discount, going from Rs. 3,600 (currently $60 USD) to Rs. 1,499 (currently $25 USD). </p><p style=""><a href="https://www.origin.com/en-in/store/browse-ANW.html?q=watch%20dogs" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">Watch Dogs is full price in the US Origin store. </a></p><p style="">There are no details on exactly how long the sale will last (or how long it will be accessible outside the country), so if this is something that interests you, it might be worth looking into. </p><table data-max-width="true"><tbody><tr><td><p style=""><strong>Justin Haywald is a senior editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/JustinHaywald" rel="nofollow"> Twitter @JustinHaywald</a></strong></p><p style=""><strong>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></strong></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 17:09:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/you-can-pre-order-watch-dogs-for-59-off-on-origin/1100-6418907/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-watch-dogs-pc-graphics-reveal-new-zombie-m/2300-6418267/ Nvidia shows us what Watch Dogs on PC will look like, The Last of Us teases its PS4 graphics, PLUS Sony's new zombie-riffic MMORPG! Thu, 10 Apr 2014 16:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-watch-dogs-pc-graphics-reveal-new-zombie-m/2300-6418267/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-family-guy-game-wants-to-make-you-laugh-not-rob-your-wallet/1100-6418759/ <div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6418201" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6418201/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style=""><em>"How many reliable sources of laughter do you have in your life, every day? Every time you open your device and play this game, you will have at least a laugh."</em></p><p dir="ltr" style="">That's a quote from TinyCo business head Andrew Green, describing his company's upcoming mobile game based on the Family Guy universe. It's a bold claim, for sure, but after meeting with Green at his company's office in San Francisco and learning about what his team hopes to deliver, it sounds to me like he's put the right pieces in place to pull off a hit with the appropriately (and hilariously) titled <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/family-guy-mobile-game-gets-release-date-has-you-rebuilding-quahog-after-insane-chicken-fight/1100-6418760/" data-ref-id="1100-6418760">Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">I caught up with Green--a former Take-Two and Electronic Arts manager--and we spoke at length about almost every facet of the new Family Guy game. How it got off the ground, how it is similar to and different than <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheSimpsonsTappedOut" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">The Simpsons: Tapped Out</a>, the stigma attached to free-to-play games, and the ugly track-record that licensed games have. We discussed these topics and more. Below are highlights from our conversation.</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>The Genesis of Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff:</strong></p><blockquote data-align="right"><p dir="ltr" style="">"People are going to draw comparisons between Simpsons: Tapped Out and Family Guy"</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">"I personally reached out to FOX myself because we didn't have any contacts there and we just started the conversation there. We had identified some of the properties that we would love to work with. There's literally a list of like 150 different properties...so many brands that we were interested in working on. I'm a huge nerd myself, like an actual nerd--I have social anxiety. I love storyworlds, a lot of people [at TinyCo] love storyworlds, if you walk around [our office] you'll see toys and whatnot and we have such a great process and platform for development and we just thought that bringing that to properties that people are already love for a variety of reasons was a really cool thing to do. Family Guy was one of our top ones though; we went and talked to FOX and then the process kind of went on from there."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>How Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff Is <em>Not</em> Like The Simpson's: Tapped Out:</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"People are going to draw comparisons between Simpsons: Tapped Out and Family Guy, but I think the key differentiator that you'll see...I think Simpsons Tapped Out is much more just straight collection; build and collect. Whereas [Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff] is all narrative-driven, which is really important for Family Guy because the humor is all about the character interactions, the cutaways, the randomness, the references, the insanity. And if you're just doing collect and build, you're not going to get access to as much of that. The core pillar of the game that we have when we first started was '<em>A Laugh Every Session</em>' and I think we really nailed that. I find the game to be hilarious. And we worked with the writers at FOX Television, we have writers internally also, so it's been a really collaborative effort there. And we've written tons of new stories, there's a lot of new animation, but chiefly, there's a lot of story and a lot of character interaction that drives the loop that could be seen as similar to Tapped Out."</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2497091-fg1.png" data-ref-id="1300-2497091" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2497091-fg1.png" data-ref-id="1300-2497091"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1179/11799911/2497091-fg1.png"></a></figure><p dir="ltr" style="">"I don't want to go out on a limb and say it's an adventure game, but there is the element where you need certain things to actually motivate people. In the initial play session, Chris wet himself and needs new pants. There's a way that Peter can get him new pants; it's not like a coins or XP; there's actual materials that are story materials that drive the story forward. There's a lot more character discourse and narrative [than Tapped Out] and I think the other thing is there's some also major world...the interaction with the world. You might go and do a quest and then all of sudden your entire playspace is on fire. So it's stuff like that. The depth of the features are still rolling out. You'll end up with chickens on fire that will run around your playspace. Stuff like that. And so there's just a lot more randomness and interesting narrative elements."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>On The Pressure of Working On One Of Fox's Biggest Brands:</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"It's actually been really good. I've been lucky to be involved initially a lot more with the writers here and at FOX and [Family Guy production studio Fuzzy Door]. It's pretty great. We write, they write, they edit, but essentially we want them to be as involved as possible. They're the experts, and they're hilarious and brilliant. We have a bunch of jokes that we'll write--maybe sometimes 50 percent, sometimes 40 percent, sometimes 30 percent will just get tossed. And it's just like a very collaborative process. And a lot of times we get back stuff or they have an idea and they get very involved in the process. And I think one of the things that was really important for it was to give them a platform that they understood to develop content in and then understand how to interact with us. And I think they actually have, at this point, a really deep understanding of the mechanics and how the game flows and that's where all their ideation really kills it."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>Family Guy Creator Seth MacFarlane Is Not Very Involved, But Did You Think He Would Be?</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"Seth has been involved in approvals and more high-level stuff, but he hasn't been feet-on-the-ground. That's why he has the organization that he has. All the people there are entrusted with creating show content so they're amazing writers trusted by both the showrunners and Seth to be creating content. And so I think they can speak the quality through. I know he's very, very involved, in the brand and in the show. He definitely has been involved in the game, but it's not like we sit down."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff Was Always Going To Be A Free-To-Play Game:</strong></p><blockquote data-align="right"><p dir="ltr" style="">"First and foremost I'm a gamer, been a gamer since I was 4 years old; I understand all the issues that free-to-play would bring."</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">TinyCo's always made free-to-play mobile games. We were one of the first free-to-play mobile game developers on mobile devices in general back in 2009/2010. Solving a lot of the issues with the mobile infrastructure in general and how to make free-to-play mobile games. That's one of our specialties, free-to-play mobile, and this was always conceived as a free to play mobile game."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>On The "Free-to-Play" Stigma And How Family Guy Will Be "Fair":</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">Customers...their thoughts, their feelings on our products are important. Any and all customers. You want to listen to your customers, you want to understand what they're talking about. I come from a traditional games background; first and foremost I'm a gamer, been a gamer since I was 4 years old; I understand all the issues that free-to-play would bring and I think it's actually a really interesting topic. It's a lot more nuanced than the black and white conversation that some people have. If you look at a lot of our games or even Simpsons: Tapped Out or a myriad of other popular free-to-play games that are in this space right now, people are monetizing, people are engaging, people are enjoying themselves with these games."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think the disconnect comes from 'what type of experiences fits what platform' For instance, I play <a href="/borderlands-2/" data-ref-id="false">Borderlands 2</a> on console, I have my expectations set, I know how I'm going to play. I'm gonna lean back, I'm gonna drive through quest after quest, loot after loot; do I really want someone cherry picking $1.99 here or there? Interestingly, I've spent money on microtransactions for Borderlands 2, and I bet you if they threw out a new gun a week for $1.99 I'd buy it. So Borderlands is a very different type of experience on a very different platform than Family Guy is on its platform. And if I were to talk about experiences like a Borderlands or games that have PvP specifically, pay to win sucks. It just makes everyone that feels like their skill or their abilities that they're bringing to the game are moot because I could just loot up through hundreds of dollars of transactions and then I could just dominate whoever I wanted to because I'm just superior. And that to me strikes as unfair. It just feels unfair. Those kinds of games are really complex; the systems are complex, the moment-to-moment gameplay is really complex; the relationship the gamer has to those games is so much more entrenched and competitive and their heart is in it; it's skill, it's competition, and it's taken seriously.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1197/11970954/2384427-bl2_hunger_wattlegobbler.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2384427" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1197/11970954/2384427-bl2_hunger_wattlegobbler.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2384427"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1197/11970954/2384427-bl2_hunger_wattlegobbler.jpg"></a></figure><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">"What's funny is that this has been going on for a very long time. There are free-to-play games that have been out there since 1994. Magic: The Gathering is essentially a free-to-play game. Where you can essentially build a deck for $400; yeah, you'll probably still get your butt kicked by some other people, as I've learned over and over again, but yeah, you can buy your way into being competitive. That's an issue for those games. I think that's a very different issue than what people bring to...when they look at a free-to-play mobile game. I think they're not taking into account the platform to the game. So you look at games like the ones that we've made in the past or you look at a game like Family Guy that we're making now and what we're essentially doing is we're giving you access to a world that you love and you're getting bite-sized content access on your mobile devices. To me I think that's super-cool. Simpsons is a great example of that. I think even our games Tiny Monsters, Tiny Zoo, obviously these are much simpler games with brands that aren't as deep; the characters aren't as deep, the worlds aren't as deep, but that's the great value of Family Guy. So now I get to have a bite-sized content moment with Family Guy. I get to interact with the characters; I get to even play around with it a bit. And the monetization comes from the customization and the depth...more like speed of access. And it allows us to create a ton more content over a longer period of time and people can access pretty much all of that content for free as well. And it's a pretty big value in my opinion."</p><blockquote data-align="right"><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think that there could be more innovation in the free-to-play space in general and I think we're going to continue to work on that"</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">"There's going to be customization as well as some premium elements, but eventually you are going to be prompted for microtransactions as part of the new user experience; we want that to be a really good experience. And we want to make sure that when you do get to the point where you have to potentially pay to go more quickly through the progression than waiting on the progression, that that's not an unforgiving thing. We also want there to be things that you can do that if you're waiting, there's other things for you to do so that you're not just waiting and that's that. The game and the model is actually a pretty good fit and I think that there could be more innovation in the free-to-play space in general and I think we're going to continue to work on that--on balancing the reward vs. the amount of what the user is putting in. I think that's important. And I do think that we've balanced it pretty well on Family Guy. And I think that the one takeaway that I think is really important is 'is the quality of what you're producing going to drive people to be happy with that dynamic?' And I think Yes. I think that people are going to get incredibly rich, premium story, adventure, access to the characters. It's actually very valuable.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"That's the thing that we really focus on here is to make sure that the game is valuable, and that it's funny, and that the brand flies out of your phone at you. I think it really sings. At that point, as a player, you get to decide do I want to purchase more quickly or should I wait? But the value is there in my opinion and that's what important."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>You'll Know What You're Getting When You're Prompted For A Microtransaction:</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We illustrate that pretty directly, always. It's important that our customers understand what they are paying for and why they are paying for it. That's one of the points of good communication, good user experience. The other thing that we also have is a really great community team that actually really cares about our customers. And they're going to be heavily involved, and we have <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FamilyGuy?fref=ts" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">55 million customers [on Facebook]</a> that we're going to be talking to; we're going to make sure that all of them have the best experience they possible can have with the game. I think [the debate around free-to-play] is something that as an industry that we should be talking about. But I also think that talking about it will [remove the stigma]. It's a changing and evolving industry."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>Licensed Games <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/family-guy-back-to-the-multiverse" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">Don't Have The Best Track Record</a>...Why Will Family Guy Be Different?</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"What we're doing is we went to the drawing board, literally, and we were like 'What is the experience that people want to have with this brand?' And what they want is they want more of the show. They want to interact in the same way that they interact with the show. So if you can't match the world, if you can't match the humor, if you can't match the characters, the feel, then you're not going to be successful."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"Not talking about any other game, but let's say I take Snoopy. Let's say I take Snoopy and it's going to be the Snoopy shooter, and then everyone's like OK, sounds good. Let's make the Snoopy shooter. Now Snoopy is kind of just running around shooting Woodstock and everybody else, and you're not getting the normal kind of interactions between the characters that people want. Because really what you're interacting with is this mechanic. And I think console games in the past have had to rely very heavily on the mechanic and less on the experience of the IP. The best ones have been ones where they're like 'What makes this amazing? What makes being Batman the coolest thing you can possibly do?' And then how do you build a mechanic around that. As opposed to being, 'OK, third-person shooter, but you're Iron Man' [laughs]."</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/7/8/0/5/2017805-669883_20121108_002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2017805" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/7/8/0/5/2017805-669883_20121108_002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2017805"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/mig/7/8/0/5/2017805-669883_20121108_002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse</figcaption></figure><p dir="ltr" style="">"There are some sh***y action games that I love. I'm just a fan of sh***ty third-person action games. For instance, I play all the Spider-Man games. I love the Spider-Man games, and those, ehh, they go up and down but they're never really reviewed past a 75 or so. I love them because I get to fly around like Spidey, the fighting is pretty good, they've done enough for me as someone who likes Spider-Man. As a game, for everybody? I don't know if it's going to make the cut. I think it's all about what is the brand, what is the experience of that, how do you translate that. It's just like taking a book and adapting it to a movie. Taking anything and adapting it to anything, it's like, what makes this great? Where does that actually spirit lie and then how do we get that onto the platform--which in this case are mobile phones [which are] very different than consoles--and actually make it work? I couldn't even tell you necessarily what a successful Family Guy game on consoles looks like. I haven't done the work. But what we've made for the mobile device is the right thing because we said what people want--when they look at the screen they want to know that they feel like they're watching the show. That they feel like they're in that world, they've got ownership of that world, that the characters are completely who they are, that the writing is new and just as funny as the show; it's unique, it's hilarious, that you have that element of randomness. And that you bring out the flavor and the subversivness of the Family Guy universe in everything that you do. That it's imbued in all of the mechanics and all of the things that you're doing. And it's there."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff Will Riff On Current Events As Recent As The Week Prior:</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We have weekly content cycles. So we actually can make fun of or lampoon anything that's [recent]. Our updates are going to be pretty regular. Our bigger feature updates are going to be monthly, every five weeks or so, but yes, weekly content updates."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><b>Green Can't Wait For Someone Who's Not Familiar With Family Guy To Play The Game:</b></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"What I'm excited about [laughs] is someone who hasn't watched Family Guy who downloads the game, starts playing it, and they're just like 'What the heck?' I can't wait to see how many more people we can bring into the brand because I do think it's a very authentic brand experience. But yes, you're going to have to like [type of humor]."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><em>Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff is available today on iOS and Android. </em></p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/EddieMakuch" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @EddieMakuch</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 15:30:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-family-guy-game-wants-to-make-you-laugh-not-rob-your-wallet/1100-6418759/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/magic-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-2015-announcement/2300-6418265/ Take your first look at Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015. Thu, 10 Apr 2014 15:03:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/magic-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-2015-announcement/2300-6418265/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/npd-predictions-will-the-xbox-one-finally-overtake-the-playstation-4/1100-6418905/ <p style="">April 17th is when we finally see which games and consoles sold the most in March. With a number of huge games released and a price drop from the Xbox One, we're anxiously awaiting the results of this heated month. Do we have any inside information? Nope, so don't run to your bookie to gamble your life saving's on our guesses. But we do have theories on how the retail wars played out.</p><h3><strong>Justin Haywald - A new challenge has arrived</strong></h3><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503663" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503663-titanfall_screenshot.jpg" data-size="medium" data-align="left" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503663-titanfall_screenshot.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503663"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_medium/725/7253563/2503663-titanfall_screenshot.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">Last month I wrote about how the <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/advantage-ps4-why-sony-is-winning-the-console-war/1100-6418034/" data-ref-id="1100-6418034">PlayStation 4 has a strong advantage</a> in the current console race. They've had the price advantage, PlayStation Plus is a better value than Xbox Live Gold, and Sony's console is already out in Japan (where they've historically always outsold Microsoft). I'm not backing down from that opinion, but that doesn't mean Sony's going to win every month, and I think March is going to belong to the Xbox One.</p><p style="">Sure, it's not official, but the <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/now-even-microsoft-is-offering-the-titanfall-xbox-one-bundle-for-450/1100-6418520/" data-ref-id="1100-6418520">Xbox One is essentially $100 cheaper</a> than when it launched<b> </b><i>and </i>it comes with a free game. And not just any game, but the AAA blockbuster <a href="/titanfall/" data-ref-id="false">Titanfall</a>. Factoring that in, Microsoft actually has a price advantage now. And there's no going back, whether they call it an actual price drop or not.</p><p style="">It was a gutsy move, but it was the right one, and it'll require an answer from Sony. Whether Sony thinks they're far enough ahead or not remains to be seen, but it would be great to get a PS4 bundled with a game at its $400 price point, especially if that game is the recently <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-remastered-confirmed-for-ps4-by-sony/1100-6418860/" data-ref-id="1100-6418860">confirmed The Last of Us: Remastered</a>.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503664" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503664-ku-xlarge.jpg" data-size="medium" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503664-ku-xlarge.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503664"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_medium/725/7253563/2503664-ku-xlarge.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">Speaking of AAA-exclusives, Titanfall will have undoubtedly helped push the Xbox One ahead. Rumors have circulated that the Xbox 360 version was delayed specifically to bolster sales of the Xbox One, and that sounds like a gambit that will pay off big for Microsoft.</p><p style="">Now, that doesn't mean Titanfall is on top overall. I think there's a pretty slim chance that it'll have beaten out a multiplatform last-gen title like <a href="/south-park-the-stick-of-truth/" data-ref-id="false">South Park: The Stick of Truth</a> (which is my front-runner for best-selling game of March) or even <a href="/dark-souls-ii/" data-ref-id="false">Dark Souls II</a>, but Titanfall likely came out ahead in terms of next-gen. Sony's <a href="/infamous-second-son/" data-ref-id="false">Infamous: Second Son</a> was well-received, but Titanfall not only has the advantage of getting a PC release, it's also a game with immediate appeal to the <a href="/call-of-duty-ghosts/" data-ref-id="false">Call of Duty</a> and <a href="/battlefield-3/" data-ref-id="false">Battlefield</a> crowd.</p><p style="">Will Microsoft be able to carry this momentum over to April? It's unlikely that the Xbox One will remain on top, but the 360 version of Titanfall (and no corresponding big title from Sony) will ensure that combined sales of Microsoft's consoles give them a lot of good news. Maybe not enough to upset the edge Sony has in worldwide sales, but it's going to be an exciting, neck-and-neck race in the lead-up to E3.</p><h3><strong>Tom Mc Shea - Desperation pays</strong></h3><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503665" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503665-infamous_second_son_13695118598684.jpg" data-size="medium" data-align="left" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503665-infamous_second_son_13695118598684.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503665"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_medium/725/7253563/2503665-infamous_second_son_13695118598684.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">Is five months too soon to panic? Considering how long a console's life cycle lasts, most would say that there's no need for rash moves so soon after launch. But Microsoft didn't see things that way. After falling far behind the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/sonys-ps4-outsells-xbox-one-nearly-two-to-one-clearing-6-million-global-sales-9168279.html" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">PlayStation 4 in worldwide sales</a>, we saw a number of desperate moves that not even the most reactionary people could have predicted. Microsoft had already shelled out money to Electronic Arts to secure <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-titanfall-will-remain-exclusive-to-xbox-pc/1100-6415844/" data-ref-id="1100-6415844">exclusive next-gen rights to Titanfall</a>--which I thought would have been enough for the Xbox One to draw even with its main competition for the month of March--and we saw a major shake-up shortly after the game's release. Not only was the game bundled with systems, but a <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-one-titanfall-bundle-drops-to-450-at-wal-mart-best-buy/1100-6418457/" data-ref-id="1100-6418457">price drop across many retailers</a> (included Microsoft's website) means you can get the console and a copy of the game for only $50 more than what the PlayStation 4 costs on its own.</p><p style="">Now we're left with the cold, hard numbers from that quick price drop. If Microsoft's console once more comes up short to Sony's, we can officially say that the first signs of trouble are emerging. But if it came out ahead of the PlayStation 4, then it proves that Microsoft's moves ultimately worked in getting people interested in jumping to the next generation. Oh, what a scary day this must be for executives in Redmond.</p><p style="">My guess is that Microsoft's major price cut will push it slightly ahead of the PlayStation 4 this month. More so than even Titanfall landing at retail, a price drop creates a ripple among the buying public that shows immediate results. After all, who doesn't like getting a deal? Once word broke that major retailers were slashing prices, people across the nation assuredly jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of that discount. This is especially true because the price cut was presented as a temporary sale rather than a permanent markdown, so people were even more likely to strike while the iron was hot. Of course, there's no way Microsoft can raise the price back to $500 without a game, so we've seen the first price slash in the console war, and one that took place even quicker than when <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-slashes-3ds-prices/1100-6325850/" data-ref-id="1100-6325850">Nintendo cut the 3DS' price</a> six months after it launched in America.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503667" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503667-dsii_e32013_11.jpg" data-size="medium" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503667-dsii_e32013_11.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503667"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_medium/725/7253563/2503667-dsii_e32013_11.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">So, if the Xbox One sells better than the PlayStation 4, does that mean that its biggest exclusive (Titanfall) will outsell Sony's (Infamous: Second Son)? Not quite. We already know that <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/infamous-second-son-sells-1m-in-nine-days-meaning-roughly-a-sixth-of-all-ps4-owners-bought-it/1100-6418887/" data-ref-id="1100-6418887">Second Son has sold 1 million</a> copies worldwide, and it's reasonable to guess 600,000 of those have been in America. And I doubt Titanfall sold that many copies on the Xbox One. Not only could people buy it on PC as well, but many waited for the oft-delayed though technically sound Xbox 360 version. Even with a price drop, shelling out so much money for a console because you're interested in one game isn't too enticing, especially if you already own another platform that can run it.</p><p style="">Considering how much money Microsoft spent to catch up to Sony, I have to wonder if they're happy with their investments. Was it worth whatever they had to pay Electronic Arts to keep Titanfall off Sony's platforms? Did selling their console for even cheaper warrant how much money they're now losing on each Xbox One sold? It's too early to tell at this point. One thing is clear, Sony has to make a move to counter Mcrosoft's, though it's unclear what their next step will be. Maybe we'll see a <a href="/killzone-shadow-fall/" data-ref-id="false">Killzone: Shadow Fall</a> pack-in, or free year of PlayStation Plus included with each system. Who knows? But resting on your laurels is rarely a good strategy, especially when your competition is so anxious to make strides.</p><p style="">One final prediction. Though so much talk has centered around the two major exclusives, I think both will be outsold by a gem from last generation. Souls fans are a fanatical bunch (I know because I'm one of them), and after <a href="/dark-souls/" data-ref-id="false">Dark Souls</a> sold <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dark-souls-crosses-23-million-sales/1100-6406891/" data-ref-id="1100-6406891">more than 2 million copies</a>, it's clear there are enough who are interested in these amazing games to create waves at retail. And when you factor in the massive install base of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, I believe Dark Souls II trumped both Titanfall and Infamous: Second Son. Will I be right? Tune in to the NPD sales numbers later today to find out.</p><p style=""><em>Editor's Note: This article originally stated that the NPD numbers would be released on April 10th. In actuality, those numbers will be made public April 17th. We regret the error more than you could ever know.</em></p><p style=""> </p> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 14:19:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/npd-predictions-will-the-xbox-one-finally-overtake-the-playstation-4/1100-6418905/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/arma-3-zeus-dlc/2300-6418261/ Take a first look at Arma 3 Zeus Free DLC - a new form of multiplayer, where improvisation is the key to success! Thu, 10 Apr 2014 13:52:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/arma-3-zeus-dlc/2300-6418261/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/reality-check-are-mmo-games-actually-bad-for-you/2300-6418255/ Prepare for The Elder Scrolls Online with Cam's investigation of the negative claims surrounding MMO games. Are they really all that bad for you? Thu, 10 Apr 2014 12:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/reality-check-are-mmo-games-actually-bad-for-you/2300-6418255/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/if-the-sims-had-a-baby-with-animal-crossing-and-posted-about-it-on-facebook-you-d-have-tomodachi-life/1100-6418903/ <div data-height="100%" data-width="100%" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcmx4kC0tiU" data-embed-type="video"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2Flcmx4kC0tiU%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dlcmx4kC0tiU&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Flcmx4kC0tiU%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=6efca6e5ad9640f180f14146a0bc1392&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p style="">Sometimes Nintendo seems like a mix of completely opposing mindsets. On the one hand, they can be painfully slow to adapt to new technologies--back in 2004 when the Xbox was making online multiplayer mainstream, Nintendo infamously said, "<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/iwata-customers-do-not-want-online-games/1100-6102100/">Customers do not want online games."</a> And <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/latest-3ds-update-brings-miiverse-and-unified-accounts/1100-6416636/">the 3DS and Wii U have only recently gotten unified accounts</a>. But this is the same company that also revolutionized movement in games with the Wii, attracting a wider audience to gaming than any console before, and they take chances with their first-party titles that no other developer would dare. And nowhere is that more apparent than in <a href="/tomodachi-life/" data-ref-id="false">Tomodachi Life.</a></p><p style=""> </p><p style="">Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-quirkiest-nintendo-3ds-game-you-haven-t-played-yet-is-coming-to-the-us-and-eu/1100-6417452/">leaked the news earlier this year that the Tomodachi series was coming to the West</a>, but the video above really shows what the game is like. A quirky mash-up of <a href="/the-sims/" data-ref-id="false">The Sims</a>, <a href="/animal-crossing-new-leaf/" data-ref-id="false">Animal Crossing</a>, and unbelievable weirdness. In an interview with Nintendo's senior product marketing manager Bill Trinnen regarding the game's release, he told GameSpot, "Tomodachi Life is unique in that it's almost not even a typical game. People may look at it and assume it's some sort of simulation. But really the game is its own living, breathing world where unexpected things happen to the people that you know and love. Tomodachi, being the Japanese word for friend, is about bringing your friends, your family, the people that you know, into the world and seeing the funny antics that occur."</p><h4><b>Why It Took So Long</b></h4><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503169" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503169-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_02+copy.jpg" data-size="small" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503169-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_02+copy.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503169"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_small/1534/15343359/2503169-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_02+copy.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">The game series has been around since 2009 in Japan when it released on the original DS, and a 3DS version came out there last year. But while I assumed that the game would never get an English release because it was just too weird, too niche, Trinnen says that wasn't the case. "Tomodachi Life has a universal appeal regardless of whether you're in Japan or in the United States."</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">"With the original DS version," Trinnen said, "we looked very hard at potentially trying to bring it over to the US. We've had Mii characters for a while and you've been able to create and play as a Mii character within a game, but typically their actions and what they do in that game has really been limited to some physical motions, they've never really had their own personality or their own voice.</p><blockquote data-align="left" data-size="small"><p style="">With the original DS version, we looked very hard at potentially trying to bring it over to the US. -- Bill Trinnen</p></blockquote><p style="">"In Tomodachi Life, a very key component of the game, and what's really important to you as a player in terms of building that connection with these Mii versions of your friends and family, is that they have their own personality. Each individual character has a voice that you can customize, and they'll actually speak. That's done through a voice generation library on the software. We weren't able to do that on the DS in the US. It's much easier to do in Japanese because Japanese is a phonetic-based language; English is much more difficult.</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">"So part of the reason that it didn't come out on DS, and part of the reason that it's taken a long time for us to release on 3DS here in North America has been all the work that's put into creating this library to handle English and the other languages and to get it to work well in a way that helps you connect to those characters and helps bring their personalities to life."</p><h4><b>What's Changed?</b></h4><p style="">Regardless of the game's potential wider appeal, the original Tomodachi game had a lot of distinctly Japanese elements. But, like Animal Crossing, Trinnen says that they didn't change the gameplay when localizing: "The core structure of Tomodachi Life is as it existed in the original Japanese version."</p><p style="">"What they're doing is they're going in and they're finding those places where they can change some of those moments that exist in there or help create some new unexpected moments that might be more relatable for a US audience," Trinnen explained. "One good example is that, in the US version, instead of having sing-offs, there are rap battles. Where you have the characters going back and forth trying to defeat one another in a rap battle. You may see some video of Reggie and Mr. Iwata going at it sometime soon.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503171" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503171-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_01+copy.jpg" data-size="small" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503171-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_01+copy.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503171"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_small/1534/15343359/2503171-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_01+copy.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">"There was also a sumo game in the original Japanese Tomodachi Life, and while sumo is vaguely familiar to people here in North America, they don't quite understand the rules or the mechanics behind it. So that was changed into a North American equivalent of a football game where you've got two big blockers who are going at each other and trying to knock one another off balance."</p><p style=""> </p><p style=""><b>The New Social Media</b></p><p style=""> </p><p style="">Tomodachi Life is going to be $35, whether you buy it as a retail game or digitally. But even after watching the game in action, Trinnen admits that, "It's certainly almost not a game in a lot of perspectives, and particularly if you're used to playing very goal-driven games, this isn't that, much in the same way that Animal Crossing isn't a goal-driven game. But it's a very unique experience in the sense that that's what Nintendo does." Tomodachi Life isn't that easy to categorize.</p><p style="">Instead, Trinnen describes the game as "being a bit like social media plus gameplay. ... There's the observation factor: 'What are they doing?' and it is a little passive in that sense. But then there's also the role that you play in terms of meeting the needs of the Mii characters on the island. You're feeding them to see their reaction, and that builds up the relationship level that you have with that Mii character. The higher you build that up, the more money you'll get from that Mii character. You use that for purchasing and collecting other items and things like that, and you can then give those to more Mii characters. So in that sense it has a lot of those collection elements. And even to a certain degree the ability to level up your character."</p><blockquote data-align="left" data-size="small"><p style="">It has a lot of those collection elements. And even to a certain degree the ability to level up your character. -- Bill Trinnen</p></blockquote><p style="">Nintendo has explained before that <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-on-why-bringing-mario-to-iphones-is-problematic/1100-6418105/">they don't plan on taking their games mobile in any traditional sense</a>, and experiences like this that they provide on 3DS mean they don't have to. "We look at 3DS as being our platform, and our platform is the only place that you can play our content. We're trying to create content that is so compelling, that people will want to come play it and play it on our platform. That's always been the focus of Nintendo since back in the NES days and even Game & Watch before that.</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">"Certainly, the one benefit of mobile is that it has many, many more people playing games now. But when those people realize that there are deeper and more fun experiences to have in video games and that that's to be had on a 3DS or on a Wii U, that's where they're going to graduate to."</p><p style=""> </p><div data-height="100%" data-width="100%" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBTHSY5GKKY" data-embed-type="video"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FsBTHSY5GKKY%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DsBTHSY5GKKY&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FsBTHSY5GKKY%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=6efca6e5ad9640f180f14146a0bc1392&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p style=""><b>Where Nintendo Meets Facebook</b></p><p style="">Tomodachi Life will have Miiverse compatibility through the 3DS Miiverse, but in addition to that, Trinnen says, "The game itself includes a built-in screenshot tool, similar to Animal Crossing so you can capture these moments within the game at any time. And it is compatible with the Nintendo 3DS image share tool, which was the web-based tool through the 3DS browser that could be used to upload screenshots to Facebook and Twitter and things like that."</p><p style="">But rather than forcing users to quit out of the game to use those tools, Nintendo has "built a link directly in the game so that if when you want to share an image you've captured from any game, you can access the image share tool and then post directly." And that's probably one of the biggest draws of the game: catching your friends in ridiculous situations and sharing those moments with them (and the rest of the world).</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503173" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503173-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_05+copy.jpg" data-size="small" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503173-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_05+copy.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503173"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_small/1534/15343359/2503173-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_05+copy.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p style="">But with any game that involves sharing information online, Nintendo is notoriously conservative with what you're allowed to write publicly, even if that sometimes prevents people from using normally non-offensive words and phrases. "There's a universal list that exists at Nintendo that will prevent you from using those types of words in a character name or something. In Tomodachi Life, there are probably fewer restrictions this time because we didn't want to block people out from using their actual names. But it's more of a development side library that they have, rather than something that the localization team actually does."</p><p style=""><b>Who is this game for?</b></p><p style="">Even if you don't know that many people in real-life who are also playing the game, Trinnen lists out the ways that you can fill up your island with familiar faces:</p><ul><li>Create your own custom Mii characters in the game or on the Mii maker</li><li>Import Mii characters from StreetPass Mii Plaza (and Nintendo will continue distributing celebrities and Nintendo developers through Nintendo Zone wifi hotspots</li><li>Load characters from QR codes</li><li>"I expect that perhaps on the website we'll look to give people access to Mii characters as well. That could be anyone from maybe historical figures to Nintendo developers to fictional characters or things like that."</li></ul><p style="">It's quirky and different, but Nintendo has experience (and success) in reaching out beyond players who just want another Mario or Zelda game. Trinnen is optimistic about Tomodachi Life's chances: "The hope is that it will be the next Animal Crossing. I think, having been involved in the original localization of Animal Crossing, and the original E3 that we showed it off at, and you see where it is today: one of the most powerful franchises that Nintendo has. So our hope is that we're going to introduce the world to a whole new way to play with Tomodachi Life and hopefully, even if it starts small with a group that's very excited about it, they're going to be sharing that experience with others. And hopefully we'll see it grow from there.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503176" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503176-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_04+copy.jpg" data-size="small" data-align="left" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503176-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_04+copy.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503176"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_small/1534/15343359/2503176-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_04+copy.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">"I think regardless of what kind of game we create, we're always trying to define the audience as broadly as possible and trying to create interactive experiences that appeal to human nature rather than a specific age group. So if you think about the appeal of social media, and that idea of checking in, that's universally appealing."</p><p style="">Tomodachi Life is set to release on June 6, so we don't have long to wait to find out whether Nintendo can have another surprising success with the kind of inventive experience that only they can make.</p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"> </th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><p style=""><strong>Justin Haywald is a senior editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/JustinHaywald" rel="nofollow"> Twitter @JustinHaywald</a></strong></p><p style=""><strong>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></strong></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 11:53:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/if-the-sims-had-a-baby-with-animal-crossing-and-posted-about-it-on-facebook-you-d-have-tomodachi-life/1100-6418903/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-ps4-turns-the-graphics-up-to-11-naughty-dog-says/1100-6418904/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2503174-tloups4new.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503174" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2503174-tloups4new.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503174"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1179/11799911/2503174-tloups4new.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style=""><a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-for-ps4-runs-in-1080p-has-dlc-and-director-s-commentary-retailers-list-it-for-60/1100-6418878/" data-ref-id="1100-6418878">The Last of Us Remastered </a>for the PlayStation 4 will be a visually stunning experience, Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells said about the game's visual fidelity in a new interview.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"The graphic fidelity has been turned up to eleven. We've got 1080p, we're pushing the draw distances further, we're creating higher resolution character models, better lighting, better shadows," Wells told <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bPJWGMM1b4" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">PlayStation Access</a><a href="http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/10/the-last-of-us-ps4-development-began-ages-ago" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> </a>in a new interview.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Naughty Dog is<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-for-ps4-runs-in-1080p-has-dlc-and-director-s-commentary-retailers-list-it-for-60/1100-6418878/" data-ref-id="1100-6418878"> targeting 60 fps for The Last of Us Remastered</a>, but the game's final frame-rate has not been revealed, as the game was <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-for-ps4-runs-in-1080p-has-dlc-and-director-s-commentary-retailers-list-it-for-60/1100-6418878/" data-ref-id="1100-6418878">only just announced yesterday</a>. Sony today released a snippet of footage from the PS4 version, and <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/here-s-what-the-last-of-us-looks-like-on-ps4-in-1080p/1100-6418898/" data-ref-id="1100-6418898">it does look quite impressive</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Also in the interview, Wells revealed that Naughty Dog got to work on The Last of Us Remastered almost immediately after it wrapped production on the <a href="/the-last-of-us/" data-ref-id="false">original PlayStation 3 game</a> last year.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We had a lot of people on the forums saying 'can I play this on PlayStation 4?' We've been actually anticipating that, and started working on it pretty much as soon as we finished the PlayStation 3 [version]," he said. "We weren't sure whether it was going to go anywhere, but when we saw the fans clamoring for it we doubled-down, and put more effort behind it."</p><p style="">The Last of Us Remastered arrives for PS4 this summer, and <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-for-ps4-runs-in-1080p-has-dlc-and-director-s-commentary-retailers-list-it-for-60/1100-6418878/" data-ref-id="1100-6418878">retailers say it will cost $60</a>. In addition to updated graphics, the game will feature previously released single- and multiplayer expansions, as well as director's commentary from Neil Druckmann, and audio from voice actors Troy Baker (Joel) and Ashley Johnson (Ellie).</p><p style="">Naughty Dog has (at least) two internal development teams. One is working on The Last of Us Remastered, while the other is currently moving forward on the <a href="/uncharted-4/" data-ref-id="false">all-new Uncharted game</a> for PS4. Wells said the "lion's share" of Naughty Dog staffers are working on that game. </p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/EddieMakuch" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @EddieMakuch</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 11:33:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-ps4-turns-the-graphics-up-to-11-naughty-dog-says/1100-6418904/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bruce-lee-s-daughter-doesn-t-have-time-for-ea-sports-ufc-haters/1100-6418879/ <p style=""> </p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2502206-brucelee2.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2502206" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2502206-brucelee2.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2502206"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1179/11799911/2502206-brucelee2.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">When EA Sports announced this week that legendary martial artist and movie actor Bruce Lee would appear in <a href="/ufc-ultimate-fighting-championship/" data-ref-id="false">EA Sports UFC</a> as a playable character, some people scoffed at the news and pointed out that he never actually fought competitively. This might be true, but according to his daughter Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee is, in some ways, more of a real fighter than a lot of MMA brawlers today because he "lived and breathed" martial arts.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think that people who have negative comments [about Bruce Lee's inclusion in EA Sports UFC] are misguided for the most part," Shannon Lee told GameSpot this week. "Some people don't realize that my father was more than just an actor, that he was truly a real martial artist. In a lot of ways more so than a lot of the fighters today because he lived and breathed martial arts. He often said everything he learned in his life he learned from the practice of martial arts. So I think there's some misunderstanding in that regard.</p><blockquote data-align="right"><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think some of the purists out there [will say] 'Oh, Bruce Lee never would have competed in real life...' And my answer to that is this isn't real life; this is fun, Bruce Lee liked to have fun."</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think some of the purists out there [will say] 'Oh, Bruce Lee never would have competed in real life...' And my answer to that is this isn't real life; this is fun, Bruce Lee liked to have fun. This is an opportunity to live out a fighting fantasy," she added. "And I think we should all be grateful that the technology exists to have some fun in this way. And there are just some people who are haters [laughs]. And there's not a whole lot I can do for those people than just to tell them that they might enjoy their lives a lot more if they stopped worrying about everybody else so much."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Also in our interview with Shannon Lee, she recalled being very enthusiastic when EA originally approached her to ask about including Bruce Lee in their upcoming UFC game.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I was super-excited. But as with everything, you always have to take a beat and really check in with yourself and see how you feel about it," Shannon Lee recalled. "And honestly, when I checked in with myself, I was really excited about it. I know that there are purists out there who will say 'oh, Bruce Lee didn't compete in real life!" This is a video game and it's meant to be fun."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"And I think there are a lot of people out there who don't really know that my father was the caliber of martial artist that he was," she added. "They see him in movies and so they think he was primarily an actor, but that couldn't be further from the truth."</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6418169" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6418169/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">One of the reasons why Shannon Lee was not only OK with, but excited about her father's inclusion in EA Sports UFC as a playable character was because she believes EA has the right technology in place to create a virtual version of her father with a high degree of fidelity and authenticity.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Just <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/ufc-ultimate-fighting-championship/images/" data-ref-id="false">look at some of the images </a>and you'll likely agree that the power of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 has allowed for an eerily accurate representation of Bruce Lee. But while other fighters like Chuck Liddell or Ronda Rousey had their bodies scanned in for EA Sports UFC to ensure authenticity, this was obviously not possible for Bruce Lee. This was a hurdle EA could not overcome, but Shannon Lee had an interesting workaround. In the 1960s, filmmakers made a mask of Bruce Lee's face for the movie <em>Green Hornet</em> and Shannon held onto it over the years. She sent it to EA and they were able to scan it to create Bruce Lee's face with a high degree of accuracy.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Though the final version of Bruce Lee that you see in EA Sports UFC looks incredible, it definitely took a lot of work and refinement, Shannon Lee said. "There were definitely points where I said 'Ooh, they've got to change that' and they did," Lee said. "I really can't say enough that they have worked very closely with me and my team to make it the best presentation that they can."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Bruce Lee's legacy is forever preserved in movies where he's seen as a total master of martial arts. But what if a novice player uploads a video of themselves playing horribly with Bruce Lee? Will this tarnish Lee's legacy? No, Shannon Lee says. She even encourages newcomers to play as Bruce Lee because doing so will honor his legacy, she says.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"That doesn't concern me. If anybody was the perpetual student, it was my father. If they're not good players and they're using him to get better, I also think that's something that fits in perfectly with his legacy of...he used to always say 'you're only defeated if you accept defeat.'"</p><p dir="ltr" style="">In movies like <em>Enter the Dragon</em>, Bruce Lee is an indomitable force that eviscerates his enemies with ease. But this doesn't mean he's going to be a 100-rated character in EA Sports UFC, creative director Brian Hayes told us.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We're evaluating Bruce Lee as he was known, from the people who trained with him, as opposed to 'Let's put him in the game as the unstoppable force that was depicted in cinema.' People that had the experience of training with Bruce Lee will, without fail, speak about his tremendous athleticism, his speed, his strength relative to his size, his commitment to exploring innovative training techniques," Hayes said. "We're taking the approach that he's a tremendous athlete that is trained, primarily, in striking disciplines, but expanded that as he grew as a martial artist to include an appreciation for how important fighting on the ground was as well. With our recreation of him in the game, he is the lightning-fast, lethal striker that you expect from what he was in reality. But perhaps only a capable grappler on the ground, as opposed to just being the guy that's rated 100 in everything.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Hayes said </p><blockquote data-align="left"><p dir="ltr" style="">"For us, this is about creating the most authentic version of Bruce Lee we possibly can, from what he looks like visually to how he actually moves inside the Octagon" -- EA Sports UFC creative director Brian Hayes</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">We also asked Hayes if including a legendary, and no longer living, character like Bruce Lee was, in a way, selling out his memory. Hayes shook this off, saying he doesn't see it as overstepping any boundaries, going on to explain that he is a Bruce Lee super-fan and making clear that EA went to great lengths to ensure the legendary fighter was portrayed accurately in the game.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"For us, this is about creating the most authentic version of Bruce Lee we possibly can, from what he looks like visually to how he actually moves inside the Octagon. The notion of selling out his memory is not something that I would care to evaluate with any great effort. From my own perspective, when I was 12 or 13 I saw my first Bruce Lee film, and then went and rented every Bruce Lee film that there was from the local video story immediately after that. I made a crappy pair of nunchucks with my friends with a piece of string and two pieces of dowel; one of us split our head open trying to do stuff like Bruce Lee. I'm just an enormous fan, and having the ability to simulate his participation in a sport like mixed martial arts is just a really cool thing to be able to do."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"People that say, 'I can't believe that Bruce Lee is in the game.' If it doesn't make you happy, then I honestly don't care," he added.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">And what of the trolling potential of video games in 2014? You can imagine someone uploading a video of themselves playing as Bruce Lee in EA Sports UFC and losing horribly just for the sake of mocking the beloved fighter. Shannon Lee isn't losing any sleep over this.</p><p style="">"Look, it's a game. If people are posting YouTube videos of him not performing well...they've got a lot of time on their hands [laughs]."</p><p style=""><em>EA Sports UFC launches June 17 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.</em></p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/EddieMakuch" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @EddieMakuch</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 10:38:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bruce-lee-s-daughter-doesn-t-have-time-for-ea-sports-ufc-haters/1100-6418879/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/new-watch-dogs-pc-trailer-shows-off-the-open-world-game-at-its-best/1100-6418902/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/536/5360430/2449262-watch_dogs_motorcycle_steampipe.png" data-ref-id="1300-2449262" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/536/5360430/2449262-watch_dogs_motorcycle_steampipe.png" data-ref-id="1300-2449262"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/536/5360430/2449262-watch_dogs_motorcycle_steampipe.png"></a></figure><p style="">Ubisoft and Nvidia have released a new <a href="/watch-dogs/" data-ref-id="false">Watch Dogs</a> trailer designed to show off the high-end graphics that will be available to those with a fancy PC.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">In the video, engineer Paul Vlasie talks about how Nvidia and Ubisoft Montreal have worked together to add the hardware maker's HBAO+ tech, designed to create more realistic shadows, and its fancy TXAA anti-aliasing effects.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We really want to make sure PC gamers will be able to enjoy and explore the most realistic and visually stunning world environment ever created," Vlasie says.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Over the weekend, Ubisoft also confirmed the <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/watch-dogs-now-available-to-preorder-on-steam-recommended-system-requirements-revealed/1100-6418788/" data-ref-id="1100-6418788">minimum and recommended PC specs for Watch Dogs</a>. If you haven't seen them yet, well, there's a good chance you might have to consider an upgrade if you're looking to play with the graphics settings cranked up.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Ubisoft also reportedly said earlier this week that it was <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/report-watch-dogs-targeting-1080p-on-ps4-but-what-about-xbox-one/1100-6418888/" data-ref-id="1100-6418888">targeting a resolution of 1080p</a> on the PlayStation 4, but made no reference of the goal for Xbox One.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">How do you think the video stacks up with previous trailers for the game?</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKOyqOJMmQ" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FfWKOyqOJMmQ%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DfWKOyqOJMmQ&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FfWKOyqOJMmQ%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=6efca6e5ad9640f180f14146a0bc1392&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Martin Gaston is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/squidmania" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @squidmania</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 10:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/new-watch-dogs-pc-trailer-shows-off-the-open-world-game-at-its-best/1100-6418902/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/civilization-xcom-studio-firaxis-to-announce-new-game-at-pax-east/1100-6418900/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2503095-dontmiss.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503095" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2503095-dontmiss.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503095"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1179/11799911/2503095-dontmiss.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">Civilization and XCOM developer Firaxis Games will announce its "next big AAA title" this weekend at PAX East in Boston, Mass., 2K Games <a href="https://blog.2k.com/index.php/home/single/2k-pax-east-pre-show-checklist" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">announced today on its website</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The announcement will be made during the Firaxis Mega Games Panel starting at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Saturday, April 12 at the Dragonfly Theatre. GameSpot will be in attendance bringing you the news as it happens.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Firaxis Games' most recent AAA title was 2012's <a href="/xcom-enemy-unknown/" data-ref-id="false">XCOM: Enemy Unknown</a>, which was followed up the next year with expansion pack <a href="/xcom-enemy-within/" data-ref-id="false">Enemy Within</a>. The most recent entry in the Civilization series was 2010's <a href="/sid-meiers-civilization-v/" data-ref-id="false">Civilization V</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">XCOM designer Jake Solomon <a href="https://twitter.com/SolomonJake/status/454012225276350464" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">hyped the Firaxis Games announcement on Twitter</a>, saying: "If you're at <a dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23PAXEast&src=hash" rel="nofollow">#PAXEast</a> then you should go to the <a dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/FiraxisGames" rel="nofollow">@FiraxisGames</a> panel. You will not be disappointed, I promise. I'VE SAID TOO MUCH."</p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/EddieMakuch" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @EddieMakuch</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 09:35:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/civilization-xcom-studio-firaxis-to-announce-new-game-at-pax-east/1100-6418900/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bastion-developer-s-next-game-transistor-is-coming-to-pc-and-ps4-in-may/1100-6418899/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/2/2/9/5/2032295-707823_20130319_004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2032295" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/2/2/9/5/2032295-707823_20130319_004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2032295"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/mig/2/2/9/5/2032295-707823_20130319_004.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">The next game from <a href="/bastion/" data-ref-id="false">Bastion</a> developers Supergiant Games, <a href="/transistor/" data-ref-id="false">Transistor</a>, will be released on May 20.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">You'll be able to get the game on PC, through Steam and <a href="http://supergiantgames.com/index.php/2014/04/transistor-arrives-may-20-on-ps4-and-pc/" rel="nofollow">the Supergiant Games website</a>, and PlayStation 4. The price will be $19.99/£14.99 /€18.99.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">There are no preorder options right now, although Supergiant says it's looking into the option. It also adds that, at launch, the game will feature an English voiceover and text in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Transistor revolves around a young woman, who wields the titular Transistor sword and fights a sinister pursuing force. The game features both real-time combat and a planning screen, where you can pause the action to map out powerful combos.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6405556" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6405556/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Martin Gaston is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/squidmania" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @squidmania</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 09:32:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bastion-developer-s-next-game-transistor-is-coming-to-pc-and-ps4-in-may/1100-6418899/
http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Thu, 10 Apr 2014 23:08:13 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-getting-special-choppers-from-legendary-bike-designer-paul-jr/1100-6418908/ <p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/280/2802776/2503775-azerothchoppers1.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503775" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/280/2802776/2503775-azerothchoppers1.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503775"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/280/2802776/2503775-azerothchoppers1.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">Blizzard has announced it will be bringing customised <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/world-of-warcraft/" data-ref-id="false">World of Warcraft</a>-inspired motorcycles to life in a show called Azeroth Choppers. Custom motorcycle designer Paul Jr. will lead teams who will build two motorcycles to represent the warring Horde and the Alliance factions respectively.</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">The process will be documented in a series of episodes, with Blizzard's senior vice president Chris Metzen leading Team Alliance and art director Samwise Didier leading Team Horde. According to the <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/choppers/" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">website</a>, the first episode is scheduled to go live on April 17.</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">World of Warcraft was released in 2004. The game's upcoming expansion, <a href="/world-of-warcraft-warlords-of-draenor/" data-ref-id="false">World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor</a>, will include an overhaul of <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/racial-traits-get-overhaul-in-world-of-warcraft-warlords-of-draenor/1100-6418084/" data-ref-id="1100-6418084">racial traits </a>and character models. Blizzard recently revealed the<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-female-orc-character-revamp-revealed/1100-6417850/" data-ref-id="1100-6417850"> new female Orc model</a>.</p><p style="">For more on World of Warcraft: Heroes of Draenor check out <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/world-of-warcraft-warlords-of-draenor/" data-ref-id="false">GameSpot's previous coverage</a>.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--kd6W6Iuc8" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2F--kd6W6Iuc8%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D--kd6W6Iuc8&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2F--kd6W6Iuc8%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=6efca6e5ad9640f180f14146a0bc1392&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Zorine Te is an associate editor at GameSpot, and you can follow her on <a href="https://twitter.com/ztharli" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">Twitter @ztharli</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 18:32:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-getting-special-choppers-from-legendary-bike-designer-paul-jr/1100-6418908/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/below-come-in-from-the-storm-trailer/2300-6418263/ Come in from the Storm. Enter the depths of Below, coming to Steam & Xbox One. Thu, 10 Apr 2014 17:52:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/below-come-in-from-the-storm-trailer/2300-6418263/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/you-can-pre-order-watch-dogs-for-59-off-on-origin/1100-6418907/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503743-screen+shot+2014-04-10+at+4.49.47+pm.png" data-ref-id="1300-2503743" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503743-screen+shot+2014-04-10+at+4.49.47+pm.png" data-ref-id="1300-2503743"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1534/15343359/2503743-screen+shot+2014-04-10+at+4.49.47+pm.png"></a></figure><p style=""><a href="/watch-dogs/" data-ref-id="false">Watch Dogs</a>, the open-world adventure game from Ubisoft is going for 59% off on the Origin store in India right now. <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/comments/22q0a3/origin_watch_dogs_deluxe_edition_preorder_indian/" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">Enterprising users on the forum Reddit spotted the sweet, sweet deal </a>and also laid out the instructions for residents of any other country to take advantage of the discount through the use of either a VPN or a browser extension. </p><p style="">The price has been slashed from Rs. 4,200 (currently $70 USD) to Rs. 1,699.00 (currently $28.28 USD) for the limited edition version. The standard edition has a the same deep discount, going from Rs. 3,600 (currently $60 USD) to Rs. 1,499 (currently $25 USD). </p><p style=""><a href="https://www.origin.com/en-in/store/browse-ANW.html?q=watch%20dogs" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">Watch Dogs is full price in the US Origin store. </a></p><p style="">There are no details on exactly how long the sale will last (or how long it will be accessible outside the country), so if this is something that interests you, it might be worth looking into. </p><table data-max-width="true"><tbody><tr><td><p style=""><strong>Justin Haywald is a senior editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/JustinHaywald" rel="nofollow"> Twitter @JustinHaywald</a></strong></p><p style=""><strong>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></strong></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 17:09:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/you-can-pre-order-watch-dogs-for-59-off-on-origin/1100-6418907/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-watch-dogs-pc-graphics-reveal-new-zombie-m/2300-6418267/ Nvidia shows us what Watch Dogs on PC will look like, The Last of Us teases its PS4 graphics, PLUS Sony's new zombie-riffic MMORPG! Thu, 10 Apr 2014 16:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/gs-news-watch-dogs-pc-graphics-reveal-new-zombie-m/2300-6418267/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-family-guy-game-wants-to-make-you-laugh-not-rob-your-wallet/1100-6418759/ <div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6418201" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6418201/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style=""><em>"How many reliable sources of laughter do you have in your life, every day? Every time you open your device and play this game, you will have at least a laugh."</em></p><p dir="ltr" style="">That's a quote from TinyCo business head Andrew Green, describing his company's upcoming mobile game based on the Family Guy universe. It's a bold claim, for sure, but after meeting with Green at his company's office in San Francisco and learning about what his team hopes to deliver, it sounds to me like he's put the right pieces in place to pull off a hit with the appropriately (and hilariously) titled <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/family-guy-mobile-game-gets-release-date-has-you-rebuilding-quahog-after-insane-chicken-fight/1100-6418760/" data-ref-id="1100-6418760">Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">I caught up with Green--a former Take-Two and Electronic Arts manager--and we spoke at length about almost every facet of the new Family Guy game. How it got off the ground, how it is similar to and different than <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheSimpsonsTappedOut" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">The Simpsons: Tapped Out</a>, the stigma attached to free-to-play games, and the ugly track-record that licensed games have. We discussed these topics and more. Below are highlights from our conversation.</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>The Genesis of Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff:</strong></p><blockquote data-align="right"><p dir="ltr" style="">"People are going to draw comparisons between Simpsons: Tapped Out and Family Guy"</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">"I personally reached out to FOX myself because we didn't have any contacts there and we just started the conversation there. We had identified some of the properties that we would love to work with. There's literally a list of like 150 different properties...so many brands that we were interested in working on. I'm a huge nerd myself, like an actual nerd--I have social anxiety. I love storyworlds, a lot of people [at TinyCo] love storyworlds, if you walk around [our office] you'll see toys and whatnot and we have such a great process and platform for development and we just thought that bringing that to properties that people are already love for a variety of reasons was a really cool thing to do. Family Guy was one of our top ones though; we went and talked to FOX and then the process kind of went on from there."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>How Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff Is <em>Not</em> Like The Simpson's: Tapped Out:</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"People are going to draw comparisons between Simpsons: Tapped Out and Family Guy, but I think the key differentiator that you'll see...I think Simpsons Tapped Out is much more just straight collection; build and collect. Whereas [Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff] is all narrative-driven, which is really important for Family Guy because the humor is all about the character interactions, the cutaways, the randomness, the references, the insanity. And if you're just doing collect and build, you're not going to get access to as much of that. The core pillar of the game that we have when we first started was '<em>A Laugh Every Session</em>' and I think we really nailed that. I find the game to be hilarious. And we worked with the writers at FOX Television, we have writers internally also, so it's been a really collaborative effort there. And we've written tons of new stories, there's a lot of new animation, but chiefly, there's a lot of story and a lot of character interaction that drives the loop that could be seen as similar to Tapped Out."</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2497091-fg1.png" data-ref-id="1300-2497091" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2497091-fg1.png" data-ref-id="1300-2497091"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1179/11799911/2497091-fg1.png"></a></figure><p dir="ltr" style="">"I don't want to go out on a limb and say it's an adventure game, but there is the element where you need certain things to actually motivate people. In the initial play session, Chris wet himself and needs new pants. There's a way that Peter can get him new pants; it's not like a coins or XP; there's actual materials that are story materials that drive the story forward. There's a lot more character discourse and narrative [than Tapped Out] and I think the other thing is there's some also major world...the interaction with the world. You might go and do a quest and then all of sudden your entire playspace is on fire. So it's stuff like that. The depth of the features are still rolling out. You'll end up with chickens on fire that will run around your playspace. Stuff like that. And so there's just a lot more randomness and interesting narrative elements."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>On The Pressure of Working On One Of Fox's Biggest Brands:</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"It's actually been really good. I've been lucky to be involved initially a lot more with the writers here and at FOX and [Family Guy production studio Fuzzy Door]. It's pretty great. We write, they write, they edit, but essentially we want them to be as involved as possible. They're the experts, and they're hilarious and brilliant. We have a bunch of jokes that we'll write--maybe sometimes 50 percent, sometimes 40 percent, sometimes 30 percent will just get tossed. And it's just like a very collaborative process. And a lot of times we get back stuff or they have an idea and they get very involved in the process. And I think one of the things that was really important for it was to give them a platform that they understood to develop content in and then understand how to interact with us. And I think they actually have, at this point, a really deep understanding of the mechanics and how the game flows and that's where all their ideation really kills it."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>Family Guy Creator Seth MacFarlane Is Not Very Involved, But Did You Think He Would Be?</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"Seth has been involved in approvals and more high-level stuff, but he hasn't been feet-on-the-ground. That's why he has the organization that he has. All the people there are entrusted with creating show content so they're amazing writers trusted by both the showrunners and Seth to be creating content. And so I think they can speak the quality through. I know he's very, very involved, in the brand and in the show. He definitely has been involved in the game, but it's not like we sit down."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff Was Always Going To Be A Free-To-Play Game:</strong></p><blockquote data-align="right"><p dir="ltr" style="">"First and foremost I'm a gamer, been a gamer since I was 4 years old; I understand all the issues that free-to-play would bring."</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">TinyCo's always made free-to-play mobile games. We were one of the first free-to-play mobile game developers on mobile devices in general back in 2009/2010. Solving a lot of the issues with the mobile infrastructure in general and how to make free-to-play mobile games. That's one of our specialties, free-to-play mobile, and this was always conceived as a free to play mobile game."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>On The "Free-to-Play" Stigma And How Family Guy Will Be "Fair":</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">Customers...their thoughts, their feelings on our products are important. Any and all customers. You want to listen to your customers, you want to understand what they're talking about. I come from a traditional games background; first and foremost I'm a gamer, been a gamer since I was 4 years old; I understand all the issues that free-to-play would bring and I think it's actually a really interesting topic. It's a lot more nuanced than the black and white conversation that some people have. If you look at a lot of our games or even Simpsons: Tapped Out or a myriad of other popular free-to-play games that are in this space right now, people are monetizing, people are engaging, people are enjoying themselves with these games."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think the disconnect comes from 'what type of experiences fits what platform' For instance, I play <a href="/borderlands-2/" data-ref-id="false">Borderlands 2</a> on console, I have my expectations set, I know how I'm going to play. I'm gonna lean back, I'm gonna drive through quest after quest, loot after loot; do I really want someone cherry picking $1.99 here or there? Interestingly, I've spent money on microtransactions for Borderlands 2, and I bet you if they threw out a new gun a week for $1.99 I'd buy it. So Borderlands is a very different type of experience on a very different platform than Family Guy is on its platform. And if I were to talk about experiences like a Borderlands or games that have PvP specifically, pay to win sucks. It just makes everyone that feels like their skill or their abilities that they're bringing to the game are moot because I could just loot up through hundreds of dollars of transactions and then I could just dominate whoever I wanted to because I'm just superior. And that to me strikes as unfair. It just feels unfair. Those kinds of games are really complex; the systems are complex, the moment-to-moment gameplay is really complex; the relationship the gamer has to those games is so much more entrenched and competitive and their heart is in it; it's skill, it's competition, and it's taken seriously.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1197/11970954/2384427-bl2_hunger_wattlegobbler.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2384427" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1197/11970954/2384427-bl2_hunger_wattlegobbler.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2384427"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1197/11970954/2384427-bl2_hunger_wattlegobbler.jpg"></a></figure><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">"What's funny is that this has been going on for a very long time. There are free-to-play games that have been out there since 1994. Magic: The Gathering is essentially a free-to-play game. Where you can essentially build a deck for $400; yeah, you'll probably still get your butt kicked by some other people, as I've learned over and over again, but yeah, you can buy your way into being competitive. That's an issue for those games. I think that's a very different issue than what people bring to...when they look at a free-to-play mobile game. I think they're not taking into account the platform to the game. So you look at games like the ones that we've made in the past or you look at a game like Family Guy that we're making now and what we're essentially doing is we're giving you access to a world that you love and you're getting bite-sized content access on your mobile devices. To me I think that's super-cool. Simpsons is a great example of that. I think even our games Tiny Monsters, Tiny Zoo, obviously these are much simpler games with brands that aren't as deep; the characters aren't as deep, the worlds aren't as deep, but that's the great value of Family Guy. So now I get to have a bite-sized content moment with Family Guy. I get to interact with the characters; I get to even play around with it a bit. And the monetization comes from the customization and the depth...more like speed of access. And it allows us to create a ton more content over a longer period of time and people can access pretty much all of that content for free as well. And it's a pretty big value in my opinion."</p><blockquote data-align="right"><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think that there could be more innovation in the free-to-play space in general and I think we're going to continue to work on that"</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">"There's going to be customization as well as some premium elements, but eventually you are going to be prompted for microtransactions as part of the new user experience; we want that to be a really good experience. And we want to make sure that when you do get to the point where you have to potentially pay to go more quickly through the progression than waiting on the progression, that that's not an unforgiving thing. We also want there to be things that you can do that if you're waiting, there's other things for you to do so that you're not just waiting and that's that. The game and the model is actually a pretty good fit and I think that there could be more innovation in the free-to-play space in general and I think we're going to continue to work on that--on balancing the reward vs. the amount of what the user is putting in. I think that's important. And I do think that we've balanced it pretty well on Family Guy. And I think that the one takeaway that I think is really important is 'is the quality of what you're producing going to drive people to be happy with that dynamic?' And I think Yes. I think that people are going to get incredibly rich, premium story, adventure, access to the characters. It's actually very valuable.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"That's the thing that we really focus on here is to make sure that the game is valuable, and that it's funny, and that the brand flies out of your phone at you. I think it really sings. At that point, as a player, you get to decide do I want to purchase more quickly or should I wait? But the value is there in my opinion and that's what important."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>You'll Know What You're Getting When You're Prompted For A Microtransaction:</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We illustrate that pretty directly, always. It's important that our customers understand what they are paying for and why they are paying for it. That's one of the points of good communication, good user experience. The other thing that we also have is a really great community team that actually really cares about our customers. And they're going to be heavily involved, and we have <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FamilyGuy?fref=ts" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">55 million customers [on Facebook]</a> that we're going to be talking to; we're going to make sure that all of them have the best experience they possible can have with the game. I think [the debate around free-to-play] is something that as an industry that we should be talking about. But I also think that talking about it will [remove the stigma]. It's a changing and evolving industry."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>Licensed Games <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/family-guy-back-to-the-multiverse" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">Don't Have The Best Track Record</a>...Why Will Family Guy Be Different?</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"What we're doing is we went to the drawing board, literally, and we were like 'What is the experience that people want to have with this brand?' And what they want is they want more of the show. They want to interact in the same way that they interact with the show. So if you can't match the world, if you can't match the humor, if you can't match the characters, the feel, then you're not going to be successful."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"Not talking about any other game, but let's say I take Snoopy. Let's say I take Snoopy and it's going to be the Snoopy shooter, and then everyone's like OK, sounds good. Let's make the Snoopy shooter. Now Snoopy is kind of just running around shooting Woodstock and everybody else, and you're not getting the normal kind of interactions between the characters that people want. Because really what you're interacting with is this mechanic. And I think console games in the past have had to rely very heavily on the mechanic and less on the experience of the IP. The best ones have been ones where they're like 'What makes this amazing? What makes being Batman the coolest thing you can possibly do?' And then how do you build a mechanic around that. As opposed to being, 'OK, third-person shooter, but you're Iron Man' [laughs]."</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/7/8/0/5/2017805-669883_20121108_002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2017805" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/7/8/0/5/2017805-669883_20121108_002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2017805"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/mig/7/8/0/5/2017805-669883_20121108_002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse</figcaption></figure><p dir="ltr" style="">"There are some sh***y action games that I love. I'm just a fan of sh***ty third-person action games. For instance, I play all the Spider-Man games. I love the Spider-Man games, and those, ehh, they go up and down but they're never really reviewed past a 75 or so. I love them because I get to fly around like Spidey, the fighting is pretty good, they've done enough for me as someone who likes Spider-Man. As a game, for everybody? I don't know if it's going to make the cut. I think it's all about what is the brand, what is the experience of that, how do you translate that. It's just like taking a book and adapting it to a movie. Taking anything and adapting it to anything, it's like, what makes this great? Where does that actually spirit lie and then how do we get that onto the platform--which in this case are mobile phones [which are] very different than consoles--and actually make it work? I couldn't even tell you necessarily what a successful Family Guy game on consoles looks like. I haven't done the work. But what we've made for the mobile device is the right thing because we said what people want--when they look at the screen they want to know that they feel like they're watching the show. That they feel like they're in that world, they've got ownership of that world, that the characters are completely who they are, that the writing is new and just as funny as the show; it's unique, it's hilarious, that you have that element of randomness. And that you bring out the flavor and the subversivness of the Family Guy universe in everything that you do. That it's imbued in all of the mechanics and all of the things that you're doing. And it's there."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><strong>Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff Will Riff On Current Events As Recent As The Week Prior:</strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We have weekly content cycles. So we actually can make fun of or lampoon anything that's [recent]. Our updates are going to be pretty regular. Our bigger feature updates are going to be monthly, every five weeks or so, but yes, weekly content updates."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><b>Green Can't Wait For Someone Who's Not Familiar With Family Guy To Play The Game:</b></p><p dir="ltr" style="">"What I'm excited about [laughs] is someone who hasn't watched Family Guy who downloads the game, starts playing it, and they're just like 'What the heck?' I can't wait to see how many more people we can bring into the brand because I do think it's a very authentic brand experience. But yes, you're going to have to like [type of humor]."</p><p dir="ltr" style=""><em>Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff is available today on iOS and Android. </em></p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/EddieMakuch" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @EddieMakuch</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 15:30:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-family-guy-game-wants-to-make-you-laugh-not-rob-your-wallet/1100-6418759/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/magic-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-2015-announcement/2300-6418265/ Take your first look at Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015. Thu, 10 Apr 2014 15:03:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/magic-duels-of-the-planeswalkers-2015-announcement/2300-6418265/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/npd-predictions-will-the-xbox-one-finally-overtake-the-playstation-4/1100-6418905/ <p style="">April 17th is when we finally see which games and consoles sold the most in March. With a number of huge games released and a price drop from the Xbox One, we're anxiously awaiting the results of this heated month. Do we have any inside information? Nope, so don't run to your bookie to gamble your life saving's on our guesses. But we do have theories on how the retail wars played out.</p><h3><strong>Justin Haywald - A new challenge has arrived</strong></h3><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503663" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503663-titanfall_screenshot.jpg" data-size="medium" data-align="left" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503663-titanfall_screenshot.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503663"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_medium/725/7253563/2503663-titanfall_screenshot.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">Last month I wrote about how the <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/advantage-ps4-why-sony-is-winning-the-console-war/1100-6418034/" data-ref-id="1100-6418034">PlayStation 4 has a strong advantage</a> in the current console race. They've had the price advantage, PlayStation Plus is a better value than Xbox Live Gold, and Sony's console is already out in Japan (where they've historically always outsold Microsoft). I'm not backing down from that opinion, but that doesn't mean Sony's going to win every month, and I think March is going to belong to the Xbox One.</p><p style="">Sure, it's not official, but the <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/now-even-microsoft-is-offering-the-titanfall-xbox-one-bundle-for-450/1100-6418520/" data-ref-id="1100-6418520">Xbox One is essentially $100 cheaper</a> than when it launched<b> </b><i>and </i>it comes with a free game. And not just any game, but the AAA blockbuster <a href="/titanfall/" data-ref-id="false">Titanfall</a>. Factoring that in, Microsoft actually has a price advantage now. And there's no going back, whether they call it an actual price drop or not.</p><p style="">It was a gutsy move, but it was the right one, and it'll require an answer from Sony. Whether Sony thinks they're far enough ahead or not remains to be seen, but it would be great to get a PS4 bundled with a game at its $400 price point, especially if that game is the recently <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-remastered-confirmed-for-ps4-by-sony/1100-6418860/" data-ref-id="1100-6418860">confirmed The Last of Us: Remastered</a>.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503664" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503664-ku-xlarge.jpg" data-size="medium" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503664-ku-xlarge.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503664"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_medium/725/7253563/2503664-ku-xlarge.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">Speaking of AAA-exclusives, Titanfall will have undoubtedly helped push the Xbox One ahead. Rumors have circulated that the Xbox 360 version was delayed specifically to bolster sales of the Xbox One, and that sounds like a gambit that will pay off big for Microsoft.</p><p style="">Now, that doesn't mean Titanfall is on top overall. I think there's a pretty slim chance that it'll have beaten out a multiplatform last-gen title like <a href="/south-park-the-stick-of-truth/" data-ref-id="false">South Park: The Stick of Truth</a> (which is my front-runner for best-selling game of March) or even <a href="/dark-souls-ii/" data-ref-id="false">Dark Souls II</a>, but Titanfall likely came out ahead in terms of next-gen. Sony's <a href="/infamous-second-son/" data-ref-id="false">Infamous: Second Son</a> was well-received, but Titanfall not only has the advantage of getting a PC release, it's also a game with immediate appeal to the <a href="/call-of-duty-ghosts/" data-ref-id="false">Call of Duty</a> and <a href="/battlefield-3/" data-ref-id="false">Battlefield</a> crowd.</p><p style="">Will Microsoft be able to carry this momentum over to April? It's unlikely that the Xbox One will remain on top, but the 360 version of Titanfall (and no corresponding big title from Sony) will ensure that combined sales of Microsoft's consoles give them a lot of good news. Maybe not enough to upset the edge Sony has in worldwide sales, but it's going to be an exciting, neck-and-neck race in the lead-up to E3.</p><h3><strong>Tom Mc Shea - Desperation pays</strong></h3><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503665" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503665-infamous_second_son_13695118598684.jpg" data-size="medium" data-align="left" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503665-infamous_second_son_13695118598684.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503665"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_medium/725/7253563/2503665-infamous_second_son_13695118598684.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">Is five months too soon to panic? Considering how long a console's life cycle lasts, most would say that there's no need for rash moves so soon after launch. But Microsoft didn't see things that way. After falling far behind the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/sonys-ps4-outsells-xbox-one-nearly-two-to-one-clearing-6-million-global-sales-9168279.html" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">PlayStation 4 in worldwide sales</a>, we saw a number of desperate moves that not even the most reactionary people could have predicted. Microsoft had already shelled out money to Electronic Arts to secure <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-titanfall-will-remain-exclusive-to-xbox-pc/1100-6415844/" data-ref-id="1100-6415844">exclusive next-gen rights to Titanfall</a>--which I thought would have been enough for the Xbox One to draw even with its main competition for the month of March--and we saw a major shake-up shortly after the game's release. Not only was the game bundled with systems, but a <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-one-titanfall-bundle-drops-to-450-at-wal-mart-best-buy/1100-6418457/" data-ref-id="1100-6418457">price drop across many retailers</a> (included Microsoft's website) means you can get the console and a copy of the game for only $50 more than what the PlayStation 4 costs on its own.</p><p style="">Now we're left with the cold, hard numbers from that quick price drop. If Microsoft's console once more comes up short to Sony's, we can officially say that the first signs of trouble are emerging. But if it came out ahead of the PlayStation 4, then it proves that Microsoft's moves ultimately worked in getting people interested in jumping to the next generation. Oh, what a scary day this must be for executives in Redmond.</p><p style="">My guess is that Microsoft's major price cut will push it slightly ahead of the PlayStation 4 this month. More so than even Titanfall landing at retail, a price drop creates a ripple among the buying public that shows immediate results. After all, who doesn't like getting a deal? Once word broke that major retailers were slashing prices, people across the nation assuredly jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of that discount. This is especially true because the price cut was presented as a temporary sale rather than a permanent markdown, so people were even more likely to strike while the iron was hot. Of course, there's no way Microsoft can raise the price back to $500 without a game, so we've seen the first price slash in the console war, and one that took place even quicker than when <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-slashes-3ds-prices/1100-6325850/" data-ref-id="1100-6325850">Nintendo cut the 3DS' price</a> six months after it launched in America.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503667" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503667-dsii_e32013_11.jpg" data-size="medium" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2503667-dsii_e32013_11.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503667"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_medium/725/7253563/2503667-dsii_e32013_11.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">So, if the Xbox One sells better than the PlayStation 4, does that mean that its biggest exclusive (Titanfall) will outsell Sony's (Infamous: Second Son)? Not quite. We already know that <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/infamous-second-son-sells-1m-in-nine-days-meaning-roughly-a-sixth-of-all-ps4-owners-bought-it/1100-6418887/" data-ref-id="1100-6418887">Second Son has sold 1 million</a> copies worldwide, and it's reasonable to guess 600,000 of those have been in America. And I doubt Titanfall sold that many copies on the Xbox One. Not only could people buy it on PC as well, but many waited for the oft-delayed though technically sound Xbox 360 version. Even with a price drop, shelling out so much money for a console because you're interested in one game isn't too enticing, especially if you already own another platform that can run it.</p><p style="">Considering how much money Microsoft spent to catch up to Sony, I have to wonder if they're happy with their investments. Was it worth whatever they had to pay Electronic Arts to keep Titanfall off Sony's platforms? Did selling their console for even cheaper warrant how much money they're now losing on each Xbox One sold? It's too early to tell at this point. One thing is clear, Sony has to make a move to counter Mcrosoft's, though it's unclear what their next step will be. Maybe we'll see a <a href="/killzone-shadow-fall/" data-ref-id="false">Killzone: Shadow Fall</a> pack-in, or free year of PlayStation Plus included with each system. Who knows? But resting on your laurels is rarely a good strategy, especially when your competition is so anxious to make strides.</p><p style="">One final prediction. Though so much talk has centered around the two major exclusives, I think both will be outsold by a gem from last generation. Souls fans are a fanatical bunch (I know because I'm one of them), and after <a href="/dark-souls/" data-ref-id="false">Dark Souls</a> sold <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dark-souls-crosses-23-million-sales/1100-6406891/" data-ref-id="1100-6406891">more than 2 million copies</a>, it's clear there are enough who are interested in these amazing games to create waves at retail. And when you factor in the massive install base of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, I believe Dark Souls II trumped both Titanfall and Infamous: Second Son. Will I be right? Tune in to the NPD sales numbers later today to find out.</p><p style=""><em>Editor's Note: This article originally stated that the NPD numbers would be released on April 10th. In actuality, those numbers will be made public April 17th. We regret the error more than you could ever know.</em></p><p style=""> </p> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 14:19:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/npd-predictions-will-the-xbox-one-finally-overtake-the-playstation-4/1100-6418905/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/arma-3-zeus-dlc/2300-6418261/ Take a first look at Arma 3 Zeus Free DLC - a new form of multiplayer, where improvisation is the key to success! Thu, 10 Apr 2014 13:52:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/arma-3-zeus-dlc/2300-6418261/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/reality-check-are-mmo-games-actually-bad-for-you/2300-6418255/ Prepare for The Elder Scrolls Online with Cam's investigation of the negative claims surrounding MMO games. Are they really all that bad for you? Thu, 10 Apr 2014 12:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/reality-check-are-mmo-games-actually-bad-for-you/2300-6418255/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/if-the-sims-had-a-baby-with-animal-crossing-and-posted-about-it-on-facebook-you-d-have-tomodachi-life/1100-6418903/ <div data-height="100%" data-width="100%" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcmx4kC0tiU" data-embed-type="video"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2Flcmx4kC0tiU%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dlcmx4kC0tiU&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Flcmx4kC0tiU%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=6efca6e5ad9640f180f14146a0bc1392&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p style="">Sometimes Nintendo seems like a mix of completely opposing mindsets. On the one hand, they can be painfully slow to adapt to new technologies--back in 2004 when the Xbox was making online multiplayer mainstream, Nintendo infamously said, "<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/iwata-customers-do-not-want-online-games/1100-6102100/">Customers do not want online games."</a> And <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/latest-3ds-update-brings-miiverse-and-unified-accounts/1100-6416636/">the 3DS and Wii U have only recently gotten unified accounts</a>. But this is the same company that also revolutionized movement in games with the Wii, attracting a wider audience to gaming than any console before, and they take chances with their first-party titles that no other developer would dare. And nowhere is that more apparent than in <a href="/tomodachi-life/" data-ref-id="false">Tomodachi Life.</a></p><p style=""> </p><p style="">Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-quirkiest-nintendo-3ds-game-you-haven-t-played-yet-is-coming-to-the-us-and-eu/1100-6417452/">leaked the news earlier this year that the Tomodachi series was coming to the West</a>, but the video above really shows what the game is like. A quirky mash-up of <a href="/the-sims/" data-ref-id="false">The Sims</a>, <a href="/animal-crossing-new-leaf/" data-ref-id="false">Animal Crossing</a>, and unbelievable weirdness. In an interview with Nintendo's senior product marketing manager Bill Trinnen regarding the game's release, he told GameSpot, "Tomodachi Life is unique in that it's almost not even a typical game. People may look at it and assume it's some sort of simulation. But really the game is its own living, breathing world where unexpected things happen to the people that you know and love. Tomodachi, being the Japanese word for friend, is about bringing your friends, your family, the people that you know, into the world and seeing the funny antics that occur."</p><h4><b>Why It Took So Long</b></h4><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503169" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503169-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_02+copy.jpg" data-size="small" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503169-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_02+copy.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503169"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_small/1534/15343359/2503169-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_02+copy.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">The game series has been around since 2009 in Japan when it released on the original DS, and a 3DS version came out there last year. But while I assumed that the game would never get an English release because it was just too weird, too niche, Trinnen says that wasn't the case. "Tomodachi Life has a universal appeal regardless of whether you're in Japan or in the United States."</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">"With the original DS version," Trinnen said, "we looked very hard at potentially trying to bring it over to the US. We've had Mii characters for a while and you've been able to create and play as a Mii character within a game, but typically their actions and what they do in that game has really been limited to some physical motions, they've never really had their own personality or their own voice.</p><blockquote data-align="left" data-size="small"><p style="">With the original DS version, we looked very hard at potentially trying to bring it over to the US. -- Bill Trinnen</p></blockquote><p style="">"In Tomodachi Life, a very key component of the game, and what's really important to you as a player in terms of building that connection with these Mii versions of your friends and family, is that they have their own personality. Each individual character has a voice that you can customize, and they'll actually speak. That's done through a voice generation library on the software. We weren't able to do that on the DS in the US. It's much easier to do in Japanese because Japanese is a phonetic-based language; English is much more difficult.</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">"So part of the reason that it didn't come out on DS, and part of the reason that it's taken a long time for us to release on 3DS here in North America has been all the work that's put into creating this library to handle English and the other languages and to get it to work well in a way that helps you connect to those characters and helps bring their personalities to life."</p><h4><b>What's Changed?</b></h4><p style="">Regardless of the game's potential wider appeal, the original Tomodachi game had a lot of distinctly Japanese elements. But, like Animal Crossing, Trinnen says that they didn't change the gameplay when localizing: "The core structure of Tomodachi Life is as it existed in the original Japanese version."</p><p style="">"What they're doing is they're going in and they're finding those places where they can change some of those moments that exist in there or help create some new unexpected moments that might be more relatable for a US audience," Trinnen explained. "One good example is that, in the US version, instead of having sing-offs, there are rap battles. Where you have the characters going back and forth trying to defeat one another in a rap battle. You may see some video of Reggie and Mr. Iwata going at it sometime soon.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503171" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503171-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_01+copy.jpg" data-size="small" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503171-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_01+copy.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503171"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_small/1534/15343359/2503171-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_01+copy.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">"There was also a sumo game in the original Japanese Tomodachi Life, and while sumo is vaguely familiar to people here in North America, they don't quite understand the rules or the mechanics behind it. So that was changed into a North American equivalent of a football game where you've got two big blockers who are going at each other and trying to knock one another off balance."</p><p style=""> </p><p style=""><b>The New Social Media</b></p><p style=""> </p><p style="">Tomodachi Life is going to be $35, whether you buy it as a retail game or digitally. But even after watching the game in action, Trinnen admits that, "It's certainly almost not a game in a lot of perspectives, and particularly if you're used to playing very goal-driven games, this isn't that, much in the same way that Animal Crossing isn't a goal-driven game. But it's a very unique experience in the sense that that's what Nintendo does." Tomodachi Life isn't that easy to categorize.</p><p style="">Instead, Trinnen describes the game as "being a bit like social media plus gameplay. ... There's the observation factor: 'What are they doing?' and it is a little passive in that sense. But then there's also the role that you play in terms of meeting the needs of the Mii characters on the island. You're feeding them to see their reaction, and that builds up the relationship level that you have with that Mii character. The higher you build that up, the more money you'll get from that Mii character. You use that for purchasing and collecting other items and things like that, and you can then give those to more Mii characters. So in that sense it has a lot of those collection elements. And even to a certain degree the ability to level up your character."</p><blockquote data-align="left" data-size="small"><p style="">It has a lot of those collection elements. And even to a certain degree the ability to level up your character. -- Bill Trinnen</p></blockquote><p style="">Nintendo has explained before that <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-on-why-bringing-mario-to-iphones-is-problematic/1100-6418105/">they don't plan on taking their games mobile in any traditional sense</a>, and experiences like this that they provide on 3DS mean they don't have to. "We look at 3DS as being our platform, and our platform is the only place that you can play our content. We're trying to create content that is so compelling, that people will want to come play it and play it on our platform. That's always been the focus of Nintendo since back in the NES days and even Game & Watch before that.</p><p style=""> </p><p style="">"Certainly, the one benefit of mobile is that it has many, many more people playing games now. But when those people realize that there are deeper and more fun experiences to have in video games and that that's to be had on a 3DS or on a Wii U, that's where they're going to graduate to."</p><p style=""> </p><div data-height="100%" data-width="100%" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBTHSY5GKKY" data-embed-type="video"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FsBTHSY5GKKY%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DsBTHSY5GKKY&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FsBTHSY5GKKY%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=6efca6e5ad9640f180f14146a0bc1392&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p style=""><b>Where Nintendo Meets Facebook</b></p><p style="">Tomodachi Life will have Miiverse compatibility through the 3DS Miiverse, but in addition to that, Trinnen says, "The game itself includes a built-in screenshot tool, similar to Animal Crossing so you can capture these moments within the game at any time. And it is compatible with the Nintendo 3DS image share tool, which was the web-based tool through the 3DS browser that could be used to upload screenshots to Facebook and Twitter and things like that."</p><p style="">But rather than forcing users to quit out of the game to use those tools, Nintendo has "built a link directly in the game so that if when you want to share an image you've captured from any game, you can access the image share tool and then post directly." And that's probably one of the biggest draws of the game: catching your friends in ridiculous situations and sharing those moments with them (and the rest of the world).</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503173" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503173-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_05+copy.jpg" data-size="small" data-align="right" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503173-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_05+copy.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503173"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_small/1534/15343359/2503173-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_05+copy.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p style="">But with any game that involves sharing information online, Nintendo is notoriously conservative with what you're allowed to write publicly, even if that sometimes prevents people from using normally non-offensive words and phrases. "There's a universal list that exists at Nintendo that will prevent you from using those types of words in a character name or something. In Tomodachi Life, there are probably fewer restrictions this time because we didn't want to block people out from using their actual names. But it's more of a development side library that they have, rather than something that the localization team actually does."</p><p style=""><b>Who is this game for?</b></p><p style="">Even if you don't know that many people in real-life who are also playing the game, Trinnen lists out the ways that you can fill up your island with familiar faces:</p><ul><li>Create your own custom Mii characters in the game or on the Mii maker</li><li>Import Mii characters from StreetPass Mii Plaza (and Nintendo will continue distributing celebrities and Nintendo developers through Nintendo Zone wifi hotspots</li><li>Load characters from QR codes</li><li>"I expect that perhaps on the website we'll look to give people access to Mii characters as well. That could be anyone from maybe historical figures to Nintendo developers to fictional characters or things like that."</li></ul><p style="">It's quirky and different, but Nintendo has experience (and success) in reaching out beyond players who just want another Mario or Zelda game. Trinnen is optimistic about Tomodachi Life's chances: "The hope is that it will be the next Animal Crossing. I think, having been involved in the original localization of Animal Crossing, and the original E3 that we showed it off at, and you see where it is today: one of the most powerful franchises that Nintendo has. So our hope is that we're going to introduce the world to a whole new way to play with Tomodachi Life and hopefully, even if it starts small with a group that's very excited about it, they're going to be sharing that experience with others. And hopefully we'll see it grow from there.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2503176" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503176-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_04+copy.jpg" data-size="small" data-align="left" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343359/2503176-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_04+copy.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503176"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_small/1534/15343359/2503176-3ds_tomodachi_life_pr_0406_04+copy.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">"I think regardless of what kind of game we create, we're always trying to define the audience as broadly as possible and trying to create interactive experiences that appeal to human nature rather than a specific age group. So if you think about the appeal of social media, and that idea of checking in, that's universally appealing."</p><p style="">Tomodachi Life is set to release on June 6, so we don't have long to wait to find out whether Nintendo can have another surprising success with the kind of inventive experience that only they can make.</p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"> </th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><p style=""><strong>Justin Haywald is a senior editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/JustinHaywald" rel="nofollow"> Twitter @JustinHaywald</a></strong></p><p style=""><strong>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></strong></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 11:53:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/if-the-sims-had-a-baby-with-animal-crossing-and-posted-about-it-on-facebook-you-d-have-tomodachi-life/1100-6418903/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-ps4-turns-the-graphics-up-to-11-naughty-dog-says/1100-6418904/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2503174-tloups4new.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503174" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2503174-tloups4new.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503174"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1179/11799911/2503174-tloups4new.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style=""><a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-for-ps4-runs-in-1080p-has-dlc-and-director-s-commentary-retailers-list-it-for-60/1100-6418878/" data-ref-id="1100-6418878">The Last of Us Remastered </a>for the PlayStation 4 will be a visually stunning experience, Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells said about the game's visual fidelity in a new interview.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"The graphic fidelity has been turned up to eleven. We've got 1080p, we're pushing the draw distances further, we're creating higher resolution character models, better lighting, better shadows," Wells told <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bPJWGMM1b4" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">PlayStation Access</a><a href="http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/10/the-last-of-us-ps4-development-began-ages-ago" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> </a>in a new interview.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Naughty Dog is<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-for-ps4-runs-in-1080p-has-dlc-and-director-s-commentary-retailers-list-it-for-60/1100-6418878/" data-ref-id="1100-6418878"> targeting 60 fps for The Last of Us Remastered</a>, but the game's final frame-rate has not been revealed, as the game was <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-for-ps4-runs-in-1080p-has-dlc-and-director-s-commentary-retailers-list-it-for-60/1100-6418878/" data-ref-id="1100-6418878">only just announced yesterday</a>. Sony today released a snippet of footage from the PS4 version, and <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/here-s-what-the-last-of-us-looks-like-on-ps4-in-1080p/1100-6418898/" data-ref-id="1100-6418898">it does look quite impressive</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Also in the interview, Wells revealed that Naughty Dog got to work on The Last of Us Remastered almost immediately after it wrapped production on the <a href="/the-last-of-us/" data-ref-id="false">original PlayStation 3 game</a> last year.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We had a lot of people on the forums saying 'can I play this on PlayStation 4?' We've been actually anticipating that, and started working on it pretty much as soon as we finished the PlayStation 3 [version]," he said. "We weren't sure whether it was going to go anywhere, but when we saw the fans clamoring for it we doubled-down, and put more effort behind it."</p><p style="">The Last of Us Remastered arrives for PS4 this summer, and <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-for-ps4-runs-in-1080p-has-dlc-and-director-s-commentary-retailers-list-it-for-60/1100-6418878/" data-ref-id="1100-6418878">retailers say it will cost $60</a>. In addition to updated graphics, the game will feature previously released single- and multiplayer expansions, as well as director's commentary from Neil Druckmann, and audio from voice actors Troy Baker (Joel) and Ashley Johnson (Ellie).</p><p style="">Naughty Dog has (at least) two internal development teams. One is working on The Last of Us Remastered, while the other is currently moving forward on the <a href="/uncharted-4/" data-ref-id="false">all-new Uncharted game</a> for PS4. Wells said the "lion's share" of Naughty Dog staffers are working on that game. </p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/EddieMakuch" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @EddieMakuch</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 11:33:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-ps4-turns-the-graphics-up-to-11-naughty-dog-says/1100-6418904/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bruce-lee-s-daughter-doesn-t-have-time-for-ea-sports-ufc-haters/1100-6418879/ <p style=""> </p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2502206-brucelee2.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2502206" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2502206-brucelee2.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2502206"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1179/11799911/2502206-brucelee2.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">When EA Sports announced this week that legendary martial artist and movie actor Bruce Lee would appear in <a href="/ufc-ultimate-fighting-championship/" data-ref-id="false">EA Sports UFC</a> as a playable character, some people scoffed at the news and pointed out that he never actually fought competitively. This might be true, but according to his daughter Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee is, in some ways, more of a real fighter than a lot of MMA brawlers today because he "lived and breathed" martial arts.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think that people who have negative comments [about Bruce Lee's inclusion in EA Sports UFC] are misguided for the most part," Shannon Lee told GameSpot this week. "Some people don't realize that my father was more than just an actor, that he was truly a real martial artist. In a lot of ways more so than a lot of the fighters today because he lived and breathed martial arts. He often said everything he learned in his life he learned from the practice of martial arts. So I think there's some misunderstanding in that regard.</p><blockquote data-align="right"><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think some of the purists out there [will say] 'Oh, Bruce Lee never would have competed in real life...' And my answer to that is this isn't real life; this is fun, Bruce Lee liked to have fun."</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">"I think some of the purists out there [will say] 'Oh, Bruce Lee never would have competed in real life...' And my answer to that is this isn't real life; this is fun, Bruce Lee liked to have fun. This is an opportunity to live out a fighting fantasy," she added. "And I think we should all be grateful that the technology exists to have some fun in this way. And there are just some people who are haters [laughs]. And there's not a whole lot I can do for those people than just to tell them that they might enjoy their lives a lot more if they stopped worrying about everybody else so much."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Also in our interview with Shannon Lee, she recalled being very enthusiastic when EA originally approached her to ask about including Bruce Lee in their upcoming UFC game.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"I was super-excited. But as with everything, you always have to take a beat and really check in with yourself and see how you feel about it," Shannon Lee recalled. "And honestly, when I checked in with myself, I was really excited about it. I know that there are purists out there who will say 'oh, Bruce Lee didn't compete in real life!" This is a video game and it's meant to be fun."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"And I think there are a lot of people out there who don't really know that my father was the caliber of martial artist that he was," she added. "They see him in movies and so they think he was primarily an actor, but that couldn't be further from the truth."</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6418169" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6418169/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">One of the reasons why Shannon Lee was not only OK with, but excited about her father's inclusion in EA Sports UFC as a playable character was because she believes EA has the right technology in place to create a virtual version of her father with a high degree of fidelity and authenticity.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Just <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/ufc-ultimate-fighting-championship/images/" data-ref-id="false">look at some of the images </a>and you'll likely agree that the power of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 has allowed for an eerily accurate representation of Bruce Lee. But while other fighters like Chuck Liddell or Ronda Rousey had their bodies scanned in for EA Sports UFC to ensure authenticity, this was obviously not possible for Bruce Lee. This was a hurdle EA could not overcome, but Shannon Lee had an interesting workaround. In the 1960s, filmmakers made a mask of Bruce Lee's face for the movie <em>Green Hornet</em> and Shannon held onto it over the years. She sent it to EA and they were able to scan it to create Bruce Lee's face with a high degree of accuracy.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Though the final version of Bruce Lee that you see in EA Sports UFC looks incredible, it definitely took a lot of work and refinement, Shannon Lee said. "There were definitely points where I said 'Ooh, they've got to change that' and they did," Lee said. "I really can't say enough that they have worked very closely with me and my team to make it the best presentation that they can."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Bruce Lee's legacy is forever preserved in movies where he's seen as a total master of martial arts. But what if a novice player uploads a video of themselves playing horribly with Bruce Lee? Will this tarnish Lee's legacy? No, Shannon Lee says. She even encourages newcomers to play as Bruce Lee because doing so will honor his legacy, she says.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"That doesn't concern me. If anybody was the perpetual student, it was my father. If they're not good players and they're using him to get better, I also think that's something that fits in perfectly with his legacy of...he used to always say 'you're only defeated if you accept defeat.'"</p><p dir="ltr" style="">In movies like <em>Enter the Dragon</em>, Bruce Lee is an indomitable force that eviscerates his enemies with ease. But this doesn't mean he's going to be a 100-rated character in EA Sports UFC, creative director Brian Hayes told us.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We're evaluating Bruce Lee as he was known, from the people who trained with him, as opposed to 'Let's put him in the game as the unstoppable force that was depicted in cinema.' People that had the experience of training with Bruce Lee will, without fail, speak about his tremendous athleticism, his speed, his strength relative to his size, his commitment to exploring innovative training techniques," Hayes said. "We're taking the approach that he's a tremendous athlete that is trained, primarily, in striking disciplines, but expanded that as he grew as a martial artist to include an appreciation for how important fighting on the ground was as well. With our recreation of him in the game, he is the lightning-fast, lethal striker that you expect from what he was in reality. But perhaps only a capable grappler on the ground, as opposed to just being the guy that's rated 100 in everything.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Hayes said </p><blockquote data-align="left"><p dir="ltr" style="">"For us, this is about creating the most authentic version of Bruce Lee we possibly can, from what he looks like visually to how he actually moves inside the Octagon" -- EA Sports UFC creative director Brian Hayes</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="">We also asked Hayes if including a legendary, and no longer living, character like Bruce Lee was, in a way, selling out his memory. Hayes shook this off, saying he doesn't see it as overstepping any boundaries, going on to explain that he is a Bruce Lee super-fan and making clear that EA went to great lengths to ensure the legendary fighter was portrayed accurately in the game.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"For us, this is about creating the most authentic version of Bruce Lee we possibly can, from what he looks like visually to how he actually moves inside the Octagon. The notion of selling out his memory is not something that I would care to evaluate with any great effort. From my own perspective, when I was 12 or 13 I saw my first Bruce Lee film, and then went and rented every Bruce Lee film that there was from the local video story immediately after that. I made a crappy pair of nunchucks with my friends with a piece of string and two pieces of dowel; one of us split our head open trying to do stuff like Bruce Lee. I'm just an enormous fan, and having the ability to simulate his participation in a sport like mixed martial arts is just a really cool thing to be able to do."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"People that say, 'I can't believe that Bruce Lee is in the game.' If it doesn't make you happy, then I honestly don't care," he added.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">And what of the trolling potential of video games in 2014? You can imagine someone uploading a video of themselves playing as Bruce Lee in EA Sports UFC and losing horribly just for the sake of mocking the beloved fighter. Shannon Lee isn't losing any sleep over this.</p><p style="">"Look, it's a game. If people are posting YouTube videos of him not performing well...they've got a lot of time on their hands [laughs]."</p><p style=""><em>EA Sports UFC launches June 17 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.</em></p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/EddieMakuch" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @EddieMakuch</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 10:38:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bruce-lee-s-daughter-doesn-t-have-time-for-ea-sports-ufc-haters/1100-6418879/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/new-watch-dogs-pc-trailer-shows-off-the-open-world-game-at-its-best/1100-6418902/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/536/5360430/2449262-watch_dogs_motorcycle_steampipe.png" data-ref-id="1300-2449262" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/536/5360430/2449262-watch_dogs_motorcycle_steampipe.png" data-ref-id="1300-2449262"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/536/5360430/2449262-watch_dogs_motorcycle_steampipe.png"></a></figure><p style="">Ubisoft and Nvidia have released a new <a href="/watch-dogs/" data-ref-id="false">Watch Dogs</a> trailer designed to show off the high-end graphics that will be available to those with a fancy PC.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">In the video, engineer Paul Vlasie talks about how Nvidia and Ubisoft Montreal have worked together to add the hardware maker's HBAO+ tech, designed to create more realistic shadows, and its fancy TXAA anti-aliasing effects.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"We really want to make sure PC gamers will be able to enjoy and explore the most realistic and visually stunning world environment ever created," Vlasie says.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Over the weekend, Ubisoft also confirmed the <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/watch-dogs-now-available-to-preorder-on-steam-recommended-system-requirements-revealed/1100-6418788/" data-ref-id="1100-6418788">minimum and recommended PC specs for Watch Dogs</a>. If you haven't seen them yet, well, there's a good chance you might have to consider an upgrade if you're looking to play with the graphics settings cranked up.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Ubisoft also reportedly said earlier this week that it was <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/report-watch-dogs-targeting-1080p-on-ps4-but-what-about-xbox-one/1100-6418888/" data-ref-id="1100-6418888">targeting a resolution of 1080p</a> on the PlayStation 4, but made no reference of the goal for Xbox One.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">How do you think the video stacks up with previous trailers for the game?</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKOyqOJMmQ" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FfWKOyqOJMmQ%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DfWKOyqOJMmQ&image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FfWKOyqOJMmQ%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=6efca6e5ad9640f180f14146a0bc1392&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Martin Gaston is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/squidmania" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @squidmania</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 10:00:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/new-watch-dogs-pc-trailer-shows-off-the-open-world-game-at-its-best/1100-6418902/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/civilization-xcom-studio-firaxis-to-announce-new-game-at-pax-east/1100-6418900/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2503095-dontmiss.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503095" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1179/11799911/2503095-dontmiss.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2503095"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/1179/11799911/2503095-dontmiss.jpg"></a></figure><p style=""> </p><p dir="ltr" style="">Civilization and XCOM developer Firaxis Games will announce its "next big AAA title" this weekend at PAX East in Boston, Mass., 2K Games <a href="https://blog.2k.com/index.php/home/single/2k-pax-east-pre-show-checklist" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">announced today on its website</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The announcement will be made during the Firaxis Mega Games Panel starting at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Saturday, April 12 at the Dragonfly Theatre. GameSpot will be in attendance bringing you the news as it happens.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Firaxis Games' most recent AAA title was 2012's <a href="/xcom-enemy-unknown/" data-ref-id="false">XCOM: Enemy Unknown</a>, which was followed up the next year with expansion pack <a href="/xcom-enemy-within/" data-ref-id="false">Enemy Within</a>. The most recent entry in the Civilization series was 2010's <a href="/sid-meiers-civilization-v/" data-ref-id="false">Civilization V</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">XCOM designer Jake Solomon <a href="https://twitter.com/SolomonJake/status/454012225276350464" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false">hyped the Firaxis Games announcement on Twitter</a>, saying: "If you're at <a dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23PAXEast&src=hash" rel="nofollow">#PAXEast</a> then you should go to the <a dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/FiraxisGames" rel="nofollow">@FiraxisGames</a> panel. You will not be disappointed, I promise. I'VE SAID TOO MUCH."</p><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/EddieMakuch" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @EddieMakuch</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 09:35:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/civilization-xcom-studio-firaxis-to-announce-new-game-at-pax-east/1100-6418900/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bastion-developer-s-next-game-transistor-is-coming-to-pc-and-ps4-in-may/1100-6418899/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/2/2/9/5/2032295-707823_20130319_004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2032295" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/2/2/9/5/2032295-707823_20130319_004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2032295"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/ignore_jpg_scale_super/mig/2/2/9/5/2032295-707823_20130319_004.jpg"></a></figure><p style="">The next game from <a href="/bastion/" data-ref-id="false">Bastion</a> developers Supergiant Games, <a href="/transistor/" data-ref-id="false">Transistor</a>, will be released on May 20.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">You'll be able to get the game on PC, through Steam and <a href="http://supergiantgames.com/index.php/2014/04/transistor-arrives-may-20-on-ps4-and-pc/" rel="nofollow">the Supergiant Games website</a>, and PlayStation 4. The price will be $19.99/£14.99 /€18.99.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">There are no preorder options right now, although Supergiant says it's looking into the option. It also adds that, at launch, the game will feature an English voiceover and text in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Transistor revolves around a young woman, who wields the titular Transistor sword and fights a sinister pursuing force. The game features both real-time combat and a planning screen, where you can pause the action to map out powerful combos.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6405556" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6405556/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><table data-max-width="true"><thead><tr><th scope="col"><em>Martin Gaston is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on<a href="https://twitter.com/squidmania" rel="nofollow" data-ref-id="false"> Twitter @squidmania</a></em></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong><em>Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email <a href="mailto:news@gamespot.com" rel="nofollow">news@gamespot.com</a></em></strong></td></tr></tbody></table> Thu, 10 Apr 2014 09:32:00 -0700 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bastion-developer-s-next-game-transistor-is-coming-to-pc-and-ps4-in-may/1100-6418899/
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