The Destiny beta period is nearly upon us. Beta play for the game will begin to roll out on July 17. The beta will hit the PS4, Xbox One and PC all within a couple days of the 17th. The beta is available to anyone that preorders the game. If you’re in a state of uncertainty over the kind of game its turning out to be, drop a $5-$10 preorder via Amazon, Microsoft Store, Gamestop, etc and you’ll net yourself a beta access code. Just ask for a refund if the beta doesn’t wow you. Having said that, Destiny has received its official beta trailer which teases some of the places and things you’ll encounter. The beta will only be live for roughly five days per platform, so dig in while you can to get a taste of what we think is going to be game of the year material!
Gaming
Titanfall’s Next DLC Named, Due Out Soon
With a flurry of games sitting on the horizon, it’s important for titles that have already come to get what value they can into their mixes before your money faces heavier contention. Destiny, EVOLVE, Minecraft, Sunset Overdrive, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Forza Horizon 2, Assassin’s Creed Unity, Project Spark, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, The Crew, The Evil Within, Far Cry 4… we didn’t have to list every one of those games but we wanted to really drive home the message that there’s a wealth of gamer product coming our way. This leads us back to our original point: DLC.
Titanfall’s next expansion has been announced and is titled “Frontier’s Edge”. The DLC will bring forth three additional maps and could bring some additional tweaks and improvements to the game with it. There is no release date officially set for the maps, but Respawn Entertainment have pinned a “summer” launch. This could mean that September would be the launch window, but we anticipate something sooner since the first set of DLC released over a month ago. Also, waiting until the end of September would force Respawn into competing for dollars with gamers which will only hurt them since DLC is expansive and a new game is an entirely new experience (we think Destiny is going to be that big of a launch and will take much of your time if you choose to experience it). Our money is on mid August, but don’t expect much lead time on the DLC release date. The first maps out were announced several weeks in advance but the date wasn’t confirmed until just days before.
Xbox’s Beta Period For Destiny Confirmed
Bungie has just announced Destiny’s beta access week for the Xbox platforms. For both Xbox One and 360 owners, registration begins on July 10, where you’ll be able to choose your platform and get your access lined up. The actual beta for Xbox owners will begin on July 23 and runs until July 27, netting you a grand total of five days of playtime six weeks before the game officially launches. If you’ve pre-ordered the game already, you should have received a beta access code at some point in the last couple months that can be used to gain access as well. We’re amped for Destiny and the potential it carries to be a standout shooter experience later this year, get an early taste for what we gamers will be in for come September.
According to the FAQ’s on the website, the beta will include character creation, story missions, cooperative and social activities, plus competitive multiplayer. We’re not sure what else is in store, but this sounds like a huge chunk of what Bungie was intending to deliver in the final product. There will likely be a limited number of content to play through and this is more of a stress test than a content feedback session.
Titanfall Update 4 Live on All Platforms
At E3, Respawn Entertainment showed us a glimpse of their upcoming patch to Titanfall that would address a few bugs but also add in some cool extras and a new gametype. “Marked For Death” has been added as a specialty game type that will likely rotate with other specialty game modes, like “Wingman Last Titan Standing” (2v2 LTS). There’s now an expanded Burn Card storage, decals for your titan, new achievements and more. Check out Respawn’s official patch notes below!
Destiny Beta Coming “Late July” on Xbox One/360
Sony got first dibs because of the deal between and Destiny developer Bungie, but now Bungie has confirmed that the Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles will see a beta of the game shortly after it goes live on the PS4/PS3. Slated for “late July”, those that preorder the Destiny video game on either Xbox console will be eligible to partake in an early look of the near-finished product. Destiny very recently was brought out of alpha-build and is now confirmed to be in its beta-build. Alpha refers to early-development where everything is basically fluid/flexible and things can be taken in/out of the game as the developer sees fit. With a beta stage, most of the content is set and the developer is just looking to find the bugs and stress test servers (if the game contains online capabilities). Whether the Xbox One beta will tap the 1080p goal Bungie is aiming for by the end of July or not is still to-be-seen, but it’s great to know that a somewhat dry season for consoles will be spiced up with a glimpse at the highly-anticipated MMOFPS.
Destiny launches September 9.
The Xbox One’s Successor Is Likely To Release By 2018
The Xbox One launched last November but there are some of us that are already looking for signs of the next Xbox. The Xbox One has been confirmed for a ten year lifespan, which means Microsoft is committed to supporting the console entirely with software updates and games during that period. What a lot of less-informed fans and even professional writers/editors are assuming is that Microsoft won’t have another console to talk about until the end of that ten-year span. But there are several facts that should be considered when looking at the release cycle for the Xbox going forward.
The Xbox One Is Already 3 Years Old – Don’t call me crazy, this is pretty accurate. GDDR3 and your standard DDR3 memory have been widely available and affordable for a few years now. While SDDR3 memory is still a go-to memory standard found in all low and high-budget machines, GDDR3 is only found in low-end graphics chips that typically retail for $60-$90 while GDDR5 is found in basically all mid-high level GPUs. Microsoft’s Xbox One console doesn’t opt for the GDDR5 that Sony went for but instead went with GDDR3 with the eSRAM module that can handle a maximum of 32MB of data at a time. Microsoft were likely trying to make the console as cheap as they could without drastically sacrificing performance so that they didn’t lose money on each console, something that could indicate that the company doesn’t intend to champion the Xbox One as the best you can get for a full ten years as graphics technologies will be extremely advanced well before 2020.
New Graphical Technologies Are Already Surfacing – Something called “tracing” is rearing its head in the graphics space and is a technology that greatly advances things like lighting effects in real time that currently would take a few Xbox Ones to power (or so we’ve been told). This comes straight from the mouths of Microsoft’s software engineers who are trying to tie in these new graphics technologies into first-party games but have to get creative since the hardware currently isn’t quite up to snuff to outright run the games. Platforms like DirectX 12 will boost the available resources of the Xbox One by bringing the software and hardware operations closer than ever before, but that doesn’t offer the kind of upgrade that would radically drive the Xbox One to the point where 1080p & 60FPS will be standard with every title regardless of complexity or size. Even deactivating the Kinect sensor to open up an additional 10% power for the Xbox One’s GPU is only going to get the Xbox One to the point where more games can achieve 1080p. In cases like Bungie’s upcoming Destiny game 1080p will likely be achieved yet the smoothness of 60 frames per second will be deducted to 30 to reduce stress on the graphics platform. A reasonable trade off, but one that shows that the hardware is not up to snuff to hold out for another 9 1/2 years while greater technology comes rolling out.
Hardware Refreshes Are Practiced Company-Wide – Microsoft’s newly-acquired Nokia division that supports hardware like the Lumia brand are seeing product refreshes every year. The same can be said about the Surface tablets, to which the Pro line of the tablet has already seen its third revision in under two years. Just like all things hardware in the computing industry, Microsoft will likely move to a refresh cycle that brings in a new console well before the previous generation is retired from support. Should that be the case, we’re probably talking a five-year release cycle. Previously, this would be tougher to do since consoles seemingly danced between hardware configurations like x86 CPUs, PowerPC, cell processors, etc. that made it tougher to move onto new hardware without poaching your previous generation console since backwards compatibility could be tricky or non-existent at times. Now, the Xbox One runs the same CPU base that the first Xbox ran on (x86) which is also the same core technology that AMD and Intel use in their desktop/laptop processors. These are widely used and can be lower cost when purchased in bulk, which consoles hardware always is, making it easier to transition from generation to generation.
A five-year rolling console refresh would be the smartest way to proceed at this point if Microsoft wish to support their Xbox One console. Five years is enough time for the product to come down in price without falling so far behind in technology that it becomes insulting to experience games on antiquated hardware. Five years is a long time to go without refreshing your PC, why would gamers adopting consoles feel any better about it? Games can be released on simultaneously on the Xbox One and its successor since they would run the same core technology and developers would merely scale back their graphical or processing detail to make sure the game runs tight on the One while its successor would be able to allow gamers to enjoy the technology that game companies are actively rolling out.
The Xbox 360 to Xbox One hardware jump was minor compared to what we got when we went from the Xbox to the Xbox 360. The One offers roughly 8x more power than the 360 does but it comes eight years after the 360. Microsoft opted to run this hardware because they wanted to run with the One and the Kinect in the same box and likely accepted slightly lesser hardware as a result. Had Microsoft decided to omit the Kinect from the same package from the get-go then perhaps Microsoft could have opted to run a $449 package with stronger hardware, but that wouldn’t be as necessary if they intend to update the hardware well before that ten-year support period ends for the Xbox One, which should be expected without hesitation since the 360 is still being supported until the end of 2015 (most likely). With gaming already on the verge of pushing to 4K resolutions with games like Star Citizen, the Xbox One, Wii U and PlayStation 4 all stand to look pretty weak by 2015 or 2016. Games like Halo 5: Guardians will likely keep gamers satisfied with the performance of the XB1 into 2016, but because we’re using x86 architecture instead of PowerPC, there’s a good chance that developers will learn how to squeeze every ounce of power out of the console much quicker than they did with the 360.
Summer 2014 Gaming On Xbox One
Summer is officially here according to our calendars. This is a time for BBQs, frisbees, water parks and minimal couch-surfing time, but lets face it: we’re still going to park our backsides in front of our TVs and play some games. Summer is traditionally a slow season for gaming. There’s plenty of news as the summer sets up the fall, which is looking like the busiest season for games in recent years (especially for high-profile titles like Far Cry, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Assassin’s Creed, etc) but new, playable games in the summer tend to be meager in availability. With that said, here’s a short list of what has been confirmed as coming to our Xbox One consoles over the next couple months:
Valiant Hearts: The Great War – June 25
Minecraft – August
Sniper Elite – July 1
Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition – August 19
Madden NFL 15: August 26
Homefront: The Revolution Could Be The Dark Horse For 2015
THQ initially made a play at big-budget gaming by going after the likes of Call of Duty and Crysis when they released Homefront on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The results were very mixed as the game was cinematic and carried a cool setting but felt a bit aimless in identifying itself within a crowded shooter genre. The game fizzled a bit and didn’t carry well with its online component after its first month or so in stores. THQ eventually sold off their intellectual property as the studio was being dismantled and other developers and publishers were bidding on the potential money-makers that sat under THQ. Homefront made a new home with Crytek, who is now in development of a second title, called Homefront: The Revolution.
Crytek is responsible for the likes of Crysis and Ryse: Son of Rome and are bringing those franchises high-quality visual standards along with The Revolution. The second game will be based around a small militia using guerrilla tactics in an occupied US which is being occupied by the KPA (Korean Peoples army) and suppressing the American people. This new Homefront game will feature interesting environments and objectives that will allow players to customize their approach in order to get any task completed. Technology can be used to stealthily infiltrate enemy positions or players can straight up assault an encampment and hope to come out victorious once the shots have been fired. This non-linear approach will give The Revolution a slightly different flavor of experience than you would expect from giants like CoD or Battlefield – a cookie cutter campaign that feels too scripted to feel like you’re actually playing your way and relies too heavily on good writing (otherwise they just fall flat – see CoD Ghosts’ or Battlefield 4’s campaigns for reference).
The landscape for shooters is getting a pretty sizable shift right now. Games like Titanfall completely ignore the formulaic approach for shooters and offer interesting new ways to traverse landscapes, making everything seem fresh when really it’s just small augmentations that give the game a much different experience from your typical shooter. Homefront: The Revolution carries little expectation in terms of impressing, which is why it should be considered a dark horse for 2015. Crytek is a good studio that has experience with successful shooters and translating that experience into a different setting could bode very well for Homefront. There’s a small gameplay trailer from E3 that’s being included at the end here. Check it out and see for yourself why this game peaks our interest, especially since it’s still in an alpha stage.
Kinect Power Scalable – Destiny Aims for 1080p/30FPS on Xbox One
On the E3 floor Bungie representatives were talking with Microsoft folks about the June update to Xbox One removing the requirement to keep the Kinect active while plugged in. In an open forum, when asked about the recent removal of the Kinect from the Xbox One and what effect it would have with Destiny, we were told that an upgrade in resolution was to be expected, though no word was official in terms of what kind of resolution we would be exposed to. Now we know what Bungie’s aim will be prior to the September 6 launch of Destiny: 1080p with a set framerate of 30FPS. This news is good for Xbox One owners which have undoubtedly been at least mildly worried that their new console may not be up to the task of consistent 1080p showings. Destiny, if it does achieve 1080p/30FPS prior to the launch of the game, will be a big deal for the Xbox console as Destiny is open and can show numerous players in the same area which translates to a pretty heavy workout for any console or PC system.
The 30 frames per second (FPS) number may be a little underwhelming to some, but rest assured that you’re typically gaming at 30FPS, especially with games from the previous generation on consoles. When you try to double the framerate to a silky-smooth 60 frames per second you effectively double the workload on a GPU. Since there will be so much to display with Destiny it would be beneficial to lock the game at 30 frames instead of trying to stretch out to 60 frames and fail some of the time or all of the time. The Kinect had allocated 10% of the GPUs power in the past but now Microsoft will let developers scale the power back either somewhat or entirely, something that wasn’t explained in great detail previously. This means that if developers wish to keep voice recognition active on the Kinect then the development studio can keep the 2% power draw for voice capture and free up 8% of the GPU by disabling gesture control. This is very crucial for the Xbox One’s power in the long run so that core gamers can get the best looking and performing games possible. After all, Kinect-driven games tend to run simpler graphics which won’t typically tax the GPU and CPU to their max so that 10% draw on those games won’t be missed in most cases. Maybe next time Microsoft will offer an even more powerful Kinect sensor that doesn’t tax the system hardware so much, or Microsoft could consider just running a more powerful system from day one to combat the power draw on an accessory like Kinect.
Destiny Is Nearing, But Can Bungie Nail The Landing?
Bungie’s new entry into the FPS genre, Destiny, is creating quite a stir in the gaming world. We haven’t seen a true MMOFPS title on the consoles yet, even PC gamers haven’t really gotten a true taste of it (Planetside 2 tries but has limited success). Thus, Destiny will be our first true experience with this new genre taking form. The game is in a closed alpha stage right now and will be moving to a beta stage in the coming weeks. At that point all of those people that preordered the game will get their access code to the beta and will get up to a couple months lead time to get a feel for the game before they buy it. While nearly everything about this game looks incredible there are some interesting things to note.
First, the Xbox One will see a noticeable graphical improvement as disclosed at E3. Bungie and Microsoft reps commented on the state of the game graphically and have confirmed that, because of the most recent update to the Xbox One, the game will see a greater resolution on the platform. As expected, the flexible power draw on the Kinect will likely be taken advantage of fully, netting an additional 10% power with the Kinect disabled. Originally it was expected that Destiny would be run at either 720p or 792p, but with the extra GPU power it’s more likely that Destiny can make the jump to 900p without sacrificing frame rate performance. This is great news for Xbox One owners, but what about the actual game you’re going to play?
Impressions from some prospective fans at E3 are leaning toward the game possibly being a bit too simplistic within combat scenarios. Specifically, little strategy is required to take down foes and instead feels a bit more level-based when assessments of difficulty are made. That means that when you approach a computer-controlled enemy (or NPC as some might call them) they will attack you but likely won’t utilize cover mechanics or dodge your attacks very well, if at all. This is different from Bungie’s original endeavors with Halo, where Elites and Brutes were a bit more challenging to take down in situations where cover was an option. So basically your success seems to be more geared toward your level and skill set. The game is in its alpha build, but it’s late in the alpha build where most of the game should be pretty well built as beta is meant more for stress testing and last-minute touch ups before going to release.
The strategic implementation is fairly crucial in a FPS, though, and omissions like these could make the game tail off too quickly and leave the combat something of a “lowlight” rather than a highlight. Bungie haven’t really made anything like an MMO before and it’s unclear how much talent they brought on board to help shape the game when Destiny was birthed, but our hopes are high for this game being one of the best things about 2014. Failing to reach anywhere near our expectations could be somewhat troublesome for Bungie since the game has such a huge amount of money being invested into the game. They need to recoup their dollars, which means they’re going to need to sell something in the neighborhood of 100,000-110,000 copies to get their development and marketing costs back (the game is estimated to cost at least $500M to make and likely more when taking advertising and DLC content into consideration). The 100,000 mark won’t be difficult to hit with so many consoles out there already, but if the game ended up taking an uninspiring metascore of 70 it would likely be a huge blow as those gamers on the fence about buying this might decide to wait for it to go on sale or find a used copy. Many people look at both fan and critic reviews to gauge the quality of a game and whether they buy it or not.
We’re planning to pick it up as we think Destiny ending up being nothing special is quite unlikely, but we’ve been wrong in our assumptions before. Just look at Watch Dogs – a good game that underwhelmed given all the boasting that occurred months prior to its launch. It nabbed a metascore of 82 between the PS4 and XB1 versions and is enjoying successful sales, but the games market is meager right now compared to what it will be like when the next-gen consoles experience a Niagra Falls effect in video game releases this fall.
Xbox One Game Source 