Gaming

The Oculus Rift creators recently secured $16 million in funding from investors, on top of their September Kickstarter bounty of $2.4 million - and they're going to use that cash to bulk up the team. "We're using the funding to ramp up on hiring more smart people, the best and brightest that we can find," Oculus Rift CEO Brendan Iribe told Engadget. "The dev kit as it is now, that we're shipping, will stay the same, and the software side will just keep getting better." Oculus Rift currently employs fewer than 50 people, and the new hires will be mostly engineers, Iribe said. Right now the headset is in development for PC games, but that doesn't mean other platforms are out of the running completely. "We're always looking at other platforms, looking at consoles; we're also looking at Android and the mobile side in a big way - but right now we really are focused on the PC platform," Iribe said. Sony President Shuhei Yoshida said he loves the Oculus Rift, though the PS4 doesn't currently support the VR headset. Yoshida wouldn't say if the PS4 will support Oculus Rift in the future - and he said it with a big smile, Engadget noted.Oculus Rift using its millions to hire more staff originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

We’ve heard extensively about the gradual decline of the consumer PC market, with industry leaders feeling the pain as consumers gravitate towards more mobile devices: tablets and smartphones. NVIDIA is one such company that has felt the squeeze, and its response is a strong one: an expansion of its business model with an announcement that Read The Full Story

Oh man, the new blue Scribbletaku has power over you. I thought this might be guessed relatively easy, but no. The Crotchdots and Batguys of the world have been thwarted! Today I will give you a clue. This is last chance saloon my scribble buddies. More »      

No More Heroes and Killer is Dead dev Grasshopper Manufacture is "heavily relying" on Unreal Engine 4, with next-gen games in mind. Speaking to Joystiq at E3, Grasshopper CEO Goichi Suda, most commonly known as Suda 51, confirmed his studio's use of Epic's next-gen engine when asked about his thoughts on the PS4 and Xbox One. "As a developer, we're heavily relying right now on Unreal Engine 4," Suda told us. "That works really well with both systems - or in the sense that we could go either way." Grasshopper recently revealed it has a stylistic action game in development that isn't Killer is Dead - and it isn't No More Heroes 3 either. As Suda told Siliconera back in April, it's a new game coming to one or more consoles. He also teased to Siliconera the game was either running on Unreal Engine 3 or Unreal Engine 4, adding that if he said which one then "you would know about the platforms." Suda told Joystiq we can expect Unreal Engine 4 in Grasshopper games "if it's a big title, or if it's suited to that title," all of which suggests a next-gen landing for said secretive game. As for the future possibility of No More Heroes 3, Suda told us, "Travis [Touchdown] is one of the characters I'm really fond of, that means a lot to me. So if there was the opportunity to create another sequel then yeah, I'm always up to the idea."Suda 51 and Grasshopper are using Unreal Engine 4 'heavily' originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments More...

Writer and developer Tom Francis originally planned his game, Gunpoint, as a showcase piece to earn him a job at a game development studio, but after seeing the success of the title so far he says he doesn't need to join another studio. As you can see above, Francis hit his initial goal for the game from preorders alone, and sales have only gone up since then, to the point where Francis now says designing the game was "so commercially successful that I'll never need" to work for someone else. Since the only real monetary cost of the project was a $30 purchase of Game Maker 8 a few years ago, Francis says Gunpoint "recouped its development costs" in just one minute and four seconds. That's after three years of work, of course, but the point remains that Gunpoint was very successful indeed. The next priority, says Francis, will be to port Gunpoint to the newer Game Maker Studio, where it can then be released for Windows, Mac, and Linux. He's looking to hire someone for this task, so he can get moving on actual updates and another project eventually. It sounds like a tough job, essentially taking over the core game's development for other platforms. "But as the graphs above should suggest," says Francis, "I can pay." Gunpoint success allows dev to become independent, Mac and Linux ports on the way originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments More...

PlayStation 3 system software version 4.45 is now available for download. The update gives users the ability to select whether to show a notification when they earn a trophy while playing a game. This can be adjusted under “Trophy Notifications” in the “System Settings” menu under “Settings.” To download the update, power up your PlayStation [...]

To the disappointment of many, the PC version of 17-BIT’s weird and enjoyable RTS Skulls of the Shogun was tethered to Windows 8 upon release. If you wanted to play it on PC, you’d have to upgrade your OS. No one wanted to do that. Thankfully, the game’s finally breaking free. More »      

Writer and developer Tom Francis originally planned his game, Gunpoint, as a showcase piece to earn him a job at a game development studio, but after seeing the success of the title so far he says he doesn't need to join another studio. As you can see above, Francis hit his initial goal for the game from preorders alone, and sales have only gone up since then, to the point where Francis now says designing the game was "so commercially successful that I'll never need" to work for someone else. Since the only real monetary cost of the project was a $30 purchase of Game Maker 8 a few years ago, Francis says Gunpoint "recouped its development costs" in just one minute and four seconds. That's after three years of work, of course, but the point remains that Gunpoint was very successful indeed. The next priority, says Francis, will be to port Gunpoint to the newer Game Maker Studio, where it can then be released for Windows, Mac, and Linux. He's looking to hire someone for this task, so he can get moving on actual updates and another project eventually. It sounds like a tough job, essentially taking over the core game's development for other platforms. "But as the graphs above should suggest," says Francis, "I can pay."Gunpoint success allows dev to become independent, Mac and Linux ports on the way originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

No More Heroes and Killer is Dead dev Grasshopper Manufacture is "heavily relying" on Unreal Engine 4, with next-gen games in mind. Speaking to Joystiq at E3, Grasshopper CEO Goichi Suda, most commonly known as Suda 51, confirmed his studio's use of Epic's next-gen engine when asked about his thoughts on the PS4 and Xbox One. "As a developer, we're heavily relying right now on Unreal Engine 4," Suda told us. "That works really well with both systems - or in the sense that we could go either way." Grasshopper recently revealed it has a stylistic action game in development that isn't Killer is Dead - and it isn't No More Heroes 3 either. As Suda told Siliconera back in April, it's a new game coming to one or more consoles. He also teased to Siliconera the game was either running on Unreal Engine 3 or Unreal Engine 4, adding that if he said which one then "you would know about the platforms." Suda told Joystiq we can expect Unreal Engine 4 in Grasshopper games "if it's a big title, or if it's suited to that title," all of which suggests a next-gen landing for said secretive game. As for the future possibility of No More Heroes 3, Suda told us, "Travis [Touchdown] is one of the characters I'm really fond of, that means a lot to me. So if there was the opportunity to create another sequel then yeah, I'm always up to the idea."Suda 51 and Grasshopper are using Unreal Engine 4 'heavily' originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

Soldiers in the United States Army have shown disdain for Microsoft's Xbox One policies, and now the United States Navy is joining in. Navy Lieutenant Scott Metcalf has published a heartfelt plea to Microsoft in the latest issue of Navy Times dubbing the Xbox One as practically useless for deployed service memebrs.