Yearly Archives: 2014
The Qualifiers and Invitees for IEM Toronto Are Set
The eight qualifier and four wildcard spots for the upcoming Intel Extreme Masters Season IX event at Fan Expo in Toronto have been set. Over 200 StarCraft II players tried to enter the biggest SC2 tournament in Canada this year but only eight qualified straight through to the group stages.
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Smite is Bringing MOBAs to Xbox One
Considering that the MOBA genre is among the biggest genres in gaming right now, it was only a matter of time before they left the PC and made their way to console. However, it’s not industry leaders League of Legends or Dota 2 that will make the jump. Hi-Rez Studios announced at Gamescom that Smite would be making the jump to consoles on the Xbox One.
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Tomb Raider Sequel to be Xbox One Exclusive
It wasn’t but a few months after release that Square Enix said that they were disappointed with the sales of Tomb Raider. That didn’t stop them from trying to cash in with a next-gen re-release and the announcement of a sequel at E3.
The latter wasn’t a case of Square Enix realizing the error of their analysis or their finance team being able to make budgets and projected revenues work out. It seems to be a case of Microsoft stepping in to make the money work as Rise of The Tomb Raider was announced to be an Xbox One exclusive.
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Comic Book Pull List for August 13, 2014
With Disney buying Lucasfilm, everything Star Wars that isn’t under the Disney umbrella is coming to an end. This week, the Star Wars comic series that’s set between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back is ending its run in Star Wars #20. Hopefully Marvel gives us some good Star Wars comics before too long and not all just Episode VII tie-ins either.
IDW has a few new miniseries this week but the one I’m looking forward to is Judge Dredd: Anderson, Psi-Division which takes a look at Dredd sidekick Anderson’s early days in Psi-Division in a four-issue miniseries. Alternatively, part two of the Q storyline brings us to an alternative timeline Deep Space Nine to see what happens to Ben Sisko in a rebooted Star Trek universe in Star Trek #36. And just to keep dancing around the big two with my recommendations, The Walking Dead #130 is out this week too.
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Valve Releases Source 2… In Dota 2 Steam Workshop Tools
Most companies will launch their new game engines with a quick little sizzle reel or tech demo showing off how spectacular their new engine looks and fill in devs on the back-end bells and whistles later. Valve isn’t most companies, though. While we knew they were working on Source 2 behind the scenes, the first look at Source 2 in the wild appears to be in the Steam Workshop Tools for Dota 2.
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Steam Reportedly Adding Movie, TV Shows and Music to the Service
With Steam trying to move into the living room with Steam Machines and the other console manufacturers trying to shift into roles as multimedia devices for your living room, a couple of lines of code in the latest Steam client beta shouldn’t surprise you but it’s making big news. SteamDB has found new binaries in the latest Steam beta referring to movies, TV series and music.
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Game Trailers Roundup for August 11, 2014
The Trailers Roundup is a little bit short this week. That’s because everyone is gearing up for Gamescom this weekend. In the grand scheme of things, it’s the last big industry event between now and the holiday buying season. Any remaining bullets in the chamber are being held onto for this weekend in Cologne so things are a bit quiet this week.
We do have three triple-A games with trailers this week. Metro Redux, Dying Light and the legacy-gen Assassin’s Creed: Rogue all revealed new trailers last week. And Sierra might be coming back for a Gamescom revival.
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Xbox Loses $400 Million in 2014 Fiscal Year
The launch of a new video game console is an exciting time to be a gamer but investors are often a little less excited about that. Traditionally, consoles are loss leaders with the manufacturers making up the difference through license fees on game sales, patch certification fees, their own stores and subscriber programs.
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Casey Hudson Leaves BioWare
It’s starting to seem as though all we do around here is cover major departures from developers but this is a fairly significant one. Long-time BioWare employee and director of the Mass Effect trilogy, Casey Hudson, announced his departure from the company after 16 years.
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Geek Links of the Week
John Oliver and most of the internet is behind net neutrality. Leading civil rights groups are throwing their lot in with Big Telecom because net neutrality will “harm communities of colour.” I think my brain just shut down from the sheer stupidity of that statement. [The Nation]
Big Telecom is also buying off people to troll articles in support of net neutrality. You know, if they spent less on lobbying, they could spend that money on better infrastructure, higher speeds or lower prices. That would mean that those companies are run by people with brains though. [Vice]
Dial-up might be dead but don’t tell AOL. They’re still making money off of it. [Quartz]
Microsoft isn’t planning a second major update for Windows 8. It looks like they’re going all-in on Windows 9. [Forbes]
Could Galaxy Quest finally get a sequel? Probably not but it’s fun to dream. [/Film]
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