Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/30/16 at 01:59 PM CT
Time for another painful look into the not-so-distant future! May signals the end of Spring and the beginning of the long, dry months of the Summer Game Drought. Before things wither away completely, devs and publishers are gracing us with one last diarrheal splatter of moisture before clamping shut until Holiday 2016.
Shovelware is back from its hiatus. In May, we’re getting a new ‘One Piece’ game based on the hideously-drawn anime/manga, and a new ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ game based on Chris’ favorite series of action figures from the mid 1990s… but more likely based on the recent series of Megan Fox movies.
Ports and remasters are still showing no signs of going away, or even slowing down. In May, every platform that ‘matters’ is getting a compilation remaster of the ‘Dead Island’ games (Chris would love that… if he hadn’t already played all of them), while the PS4 is living up to the title ‘PortStation’ with a remaster of the ‘Adam’s …
Sixense STEM Delayed Until Q2/Q3 2016, Hopefully for the Last Time
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/23/16 at 03:02 PM CT
April 2016 is almost over, and I have been waiting with bated breath for more news about the much-delayed Sixense STEM motion controller – the wireless, VR-ready successor to my beloved Razer Hydra. Unfortunately, no news was forthcoming, and in the case of hardware/software development, no news is usually not good news.
I emailed Steve Hansted, Sixense’s Business Development Director and sender of STEM update emails, and asked him what was up. Here’s the reply:
“Late last year, the STEM System passed all the required FCC tests with good margins and is now ready to enter into production (details below). But, as the final engineering and testing took longer than we had originally anticipated, we’ve missed our scheduled production slot. The current schedule from our CM (contract manufacturer) has STEM Systems coming off the line and starting to ship at the end of this month (author’s note: April 2016).
It’s been a long ride, obviously longer than anticipated and …
Open Windows: It’s Time, Microsoft
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/16/16 at 03:04 PM CT
Ever since its beginnings as a GUI frontend for IBM’s PC-DOS, Microsoft’s Windows operating system has been the dominant platform running on personal computers. To this day, Microsoft is the biggest provider of OSes for non-mobile devices. However, where Microsoft once held over 90% of the market, their current numbers (according to Wikipedia) hovering around 85% of the market is a noticeable drop. Among developers, this percentage is even lower, at 52%.
For gamers specifically, DOS and Windows have always been the only two operating systems that mattered. Apple’s Macs have never been particularly gamer friendly (though iOS is very popular as a time-wasting platform among non-gamers), and Linux on the Desktop is nothing more than a long-running joke at the expense of an open source OS that has never managed to garner a double-digit market percentage. Valve may be working toward the goal of a gamer-centric, Linux-based open gaming platform with SteamOS, but I don’t think …
Valve Makes VR Look Great with HTC Vive
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/10/16 at 03:08 PM CT
Steam’s parent company, Valve, is pushing ahead with promotional material for the Virtual Reality Headset they co-developed with HTC. The HTC Vive, a not-so-bargain-priced headset and motion controller combo, breaks the bank at $799, which is significantly more expensive than both the ruined-by-Facebook Oculus Rift and Sony’s PlayStation VR (formerly known as Morpheus).
In an attempt to show potential buyers just how nifty VR can be, Valve arranged for some play testers to try out a Vive in a green screen room, thus allowing spectators who aren’t actually wearing the headset to see the person playing the demo games embedded within the game environments. The results look incredibly immersive.
Unfortunately, the way things are looking now, the Vive will really only work with games designed for it. Sure, it would be very easy to remap older games’ inputs to use the Vive’s motion controllers, but the core features of head tracking and independent head/body movement …
Backlog: The Embiggening – April, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/01/16 at 01:58 PM CT
April’s fools are out in droves, feverishly pre-ordering (or importing the Asian version) “King’s Field 8,” while simultaneously forming masturbatory circle-jerks in order to prepare their e-peens for the raw rubbing that game will give them. For the rest of us, April looks like yet another month of bland crap… except for 3DS owners, who will be seeing the most interesting single month of releases since the thing launched. The other upside of April is that every platform will be getting at least one exclusive! Yay?
No traditional shovelware again this month. An optimist would take this dearth as a sign that publishers have finally decided that preying on the fans of a given IP with a terrible game isn’t the best way to win a reputation… but I’m not an optimist. The only shovelware coming in April is an annual ‘R.B.I. Baseball’ release.
To make up for the lack of traditional shovelware, plenty of devs and pubs are shoveling games from platform to platform via …
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