Monthly Archives: July 2014
Game Trailers Roundup for July 14, 2014
While last week was a busy one for our video game trailers roundup, this week is a bit quieter. We’ve had to go into gameplay previews to fill out the post this week.
Considering that I talked about Battleborn earlier today, it’s only appropriate that we have the Battleborn reveal trailer today. Along with that, we have a look at the E3 demo for Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game that I’m hoping to get a review copy of so I’m shamelessly running a trailer-ish video. Okay, PR folks recommended I do “preview coverage” but these posts are as close as I’m willing to come without slapping a disingenuous title on the preview like “Hype Train.”
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Intel Extreme Masters is Coming to Fan Expo
It was just speculation when IEM Canada first announced but the folks behind Fan Expo have made it official. This August’s stop on ESL’s Intel Extreme Masters tour will be coming to Toronto as part of Fan Expo Canada.
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Can A New MOBA Compete in an Oversaturated Genre?
The International might be taking place right now and it is the biggest eSports tournament in history but it’s far from alone in the MOBA genre. While it’s big, Dota 2 only boasts 9 million monthly players to League of Legends’ 67 million people playing each month. While they’re two of the most popular games in the world, they’re far from the only MOBAs on the block.
Alongside League and Dota is an ever-expanding group of competitors in the MOBA sector. In the last year or so alone, we’ve seen alphas, betas and full releases of Smite, Dawngate, Heroes of the Storm, Infinite Crisis, Dead Island: Epidemic and more. That’s not included the recently announced MOBAs from Gearbox, Crytek and CD Projekt.
With so many MOBAs entering the market against dominating category leaders, do any of these new entries stand a chance and what, if anything, can they do to compete?
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Crytek UK Losing Senior Staff Over Financial Troubles
When we reported last month that Crytek was in the midst of major financial troubles, we knew that those sorts of stories tend to get worse before they get better. Well, it looks like Crytek’s UK studio might be the hardest hit with senior staff leaving the studio and others walking off the job because of unpaid wages.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: July 10 – 13, 2014
While this weekend’s eSports calendar has the upcoming action in StarCraft and League of Legends, the next two weeks are all about Dota 2 and the rest of eSports is just fighting for what little viewership is left. Yesterday marked the start of The International 2014 for a prize pool of over $10 million. Yesterday was the Phase One qualifier for the 16th spot in the tournament. Through Saturday, it’s the 16-team round robin followed by two days of the Phase Three playoff to get us to the eight-team elimination bracket.
Well, I suppose that’s unless you’re a fighting game fan. This weekend is EVO 2014. The big fighting game convention / tournament starts on Friday in Las Vegas and runs through Sunday.
Elsewhere, SC2 has the semi-finals of the Acer TeamStory Cup and Red Bull Battlegrounds in Atlanta. And League of Legends continues the regular seasons of their top-flight professional leagues.
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Team Liquid Earns 16th Spot in The International 2014
The world’s biggest eSports tournament kicks off round robin play today. Before the sixteen-team round robin began, the 16th team had to qualify for The International. After a four-team playoff among regional qualifier runners-up, it was Team Liquid who reigned supreme and earned the final entry to The International.
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GameStop Working with Devs for Exclusive Gameplay as Pre-Order Bonuses
Well, the video game apocalypse is nigh. An analyst at R.W. Baird says that leading gaming retailer GameStop is looking at new ways of adding value to pre-orders and purchases of games at the store. One of those ways is working with developers to create exclusive “important” gameplay content for people who pre-order from GameStop.
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Comic Book Pull List for July 9, 2014
I’m a little behind on my Spider-Man comics so these previews of this week’s new Spider-Man issues might be completely out of date. Much like the Fantastic Four last week, Spider-Man gets his own speculative future issue. This week, the Spider-Man of 2061 stars in 100th Anniversary Special: Spider-Man #1. And straight from the pages of Superior Spider-Man, it’s the return of the Spider-Man of 2099 in Spider-Man 2099 #1.
Elsewhere, Dick Grayson gets a new adventure and his own comic following his adventures in Forever Evil in Grayson #1. And the rebooted Star Trek dips into another classic Star Trek storyline. Q is back! Who knows what he’ll be up to now that he has a whole new timeline to meddle with over the course of six issues starting in Star Trek #35.
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Ubisoft Exec Says that DLC is “Pretty Much Accepted” by Gamers
Ubisoft executives are just a gift for bloggers looking for something to write. In the last year, they’ve said that they only want to launch new IPs that can become franchises, called making Beyond Good & Evil a mistake, tried bribing members of the press at a Watch Dogs event and gotten developers to dumb down PC game graphics to comparable to console levels. All this and people still give Ubisoft their money.
Now, they want you to know how much they appreciate continuing to give them money. Ubisoft’s Vice President of Digital Publishing, Chris Early, told GamesIndustry.biz that there was “no resistance” to their latest DLC strategy and that DLC is pretty much accepted by gamers now.
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Battlefield Hardline Beta Impressions: $60 of an Expansion Pack
I know that it’s been a few weeks since the Battlefield Hardline beta has wrapped up but I think I’ve documented (either here or on The Lowdown) how busy I was during the month of June. Now that I’ve finally got a little bit of free time, I’m going to start pumping out reviews and other long-form pieces with a bit more frequency.
So let’s start with the beta for Battlefield Hardline. It was launched with great fanfare at the end of EA’s E3 keynote and was so popular that the Battlefield website crashed as people tried to get into the Beta. With all that hype, it would be hard for BF Hardline to live up to it. And, wouldn’t you know it, Hardline didn’t live up to the hype.
et geekera 