Monthly Archives: January 2015
Opinion: Why Cross-Platform Gaming Should Be a Reality
There is a wall that divides the greater community of gamers. It's the barrier that prevents two people who buy the same game, with the same features, made by the same developer and publisher, for the same price, from playing with or against each other, simply because they're on competing platforms. It exists for no real reason, other than that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo feel the need to guard their walled-garden ecosystems with the jealous ferocity of Benedict Cumberbatch in a motion-capture suit.
Hulu Announces Original Series by VGHS Creators
Online streaming service Hulu has greenlit a brand new series by the creators of Video Game High School. The show will chronicle the behind-the-scenes creation of the video shorts creator Freddie Wong's RocketJump has become known for.
Hulu is working in conjunction with Lionsgate and RocketJump to produce eight episodes and a series of shorts. These episodes will air weekly, and all newly-created shorts will air first on Hulu. RocketJump will produce the show in association with Lionsgate.
RocketJump has amassed a total of over 7 million subscribers on YouTube, with over a billion total views on their channel's content. Video Game High School alone has reached over 84 million views in its first two seasons.
DayZ Standalone Reaches 3M Copies Sold
Bohemia Interactive's mod-turned-standalone game DayZ has sold 3,000,000 copies on PC.
Initially launched over a year ago on Steam Early Access, the team recently announced this sales milestone while also explaining some of their plans for development in 2015.
According to a press release, the development team at Bohemia Interactive is working to re-write the core engine upon which DayZ is built, in hopes to enhance performance and visual effects for players.
Results: Your Thoughts on Venom’s New Costume
We asked, and you answered. With Venom getting a new costume design in this week's Guardians of the Galaxy #23, we polled the IGN community about what they thought. Here are the results.
9.84% said they preferred the previous Agent Venom costume.
16.51% said the new look was amazing, while 22.21% said it was just okay.
OOTP 16 Debuts Official MLB License
Out of the Park Baseball 16 will ship in March featuring something the series never has before: licenses for official MLB and Minor League Baseball.
These licenses allow the long-running baseball sim to use official team and league logos, names, and jerseys from both the American and National League of MLB, all 30 of its teams, MiLB leagues, and historical MLB teams.
Read up on how the licensing agreements came to be on the OOTP blog.
If you're unfamiliar with the series, check out the trailer for last year's installment, Out of the Park Baseball 15, below.
Ronan Will Not Be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Actor Lee Pace has been vocal about his desire to reprise his role as Ronan the Accuser in a future Guardians of the Galaxy film, but it appears he won't be putting the Kree makeup on anytime soon.
During a Facebook Q&A, director James Gunn confirmed Ronan would not be making a return in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. When asked about future films, he remained vague, answering with "Perhaps someday."
Daily Deals: Amazon Anime Sale, Minecraft Legos, DualShock 4 and Charger Bundle
Hateful Eight: Full Cast Revealed
Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight -- the Academy Award-winning director's Western that almost didn't happen -- has begun filming in Telluride, Colorado, for The Weinstein Company. Additionally, the film's full cast has been revealed and includes several Tarantino alumni.
According to Variety, The Hateful Eight cast now includes several faces familiar to Tarantino fans, including: Django Unchained's James Parks, Dana Gourrier, Keith Jefferson, Lee Horsley, Craig Stark and Belinda Owino, as well as Zoe Bell (Death Proof) and Gene Jones (No Country for Old Men).
Destiny’s New Crota’s End Hard Mode Raid Stats
Destiny's updated Crota's End raid, which added a Hard Mode, went live on January 21. In the following 24 hours, 557,354 raids were launched, with 3,344,124 players taking part, according to stats from Bungie.
Those numbers represented the single largest event launch in Destiny's history, with "more than double the population of the very first run on Atheon," Bungie said.
Fire team One and Done were the first to complete the new raid, besting Crota in just under 27 minutes. The next team to complete the raid was WRECKnation, led by team leader Ari with 39 minutes. They were also the first team to beat the raid live on Twitch.
Why Marvel Still Needs the Ultimate Universe
Marvel readers have speculated for years that the Ultimate Universe would be folded up and eliminated in the wake of stories like Ultimatum and Cataclysm. Now it seems that 2015 will mark the end of that imprint, as Secret Wars destroys both the regular Marvel and Ultimate Universes and leaves... something in their wake. However, even though the Ultimate Universe doesn't have the luster it did a decade ago, I'm disappointed at the thought that it will no longer exist. There remains a need for the Ultimate Universe and its characters within Marvel's publishing lineup.
There's no real reason to assume every single piece of the Ultimate Universe is going away. It's clear from what little Secret Wars art that's been revealed so far that Miles Morales and some of the Ultimate FF will be playing a role in Secret Wars. And these characters may find a place in whatever new Marvel Universe is being formed in the wake of Secret Wars. It's widely believed that, at the very least, Miles will find a permanent home in the core Marvel Universe even if the rest of his world is wiped.