Immersion’s all well and good, but: I’d had Garrett balanced on a beam above a shop. Able to hear voices, I searched carefully for guards – but couldn’t see anything except the beam, which filled Garratt’s entire field of view. Dropping down, I was immediately spotted and chopped to bits. I indicated, politely, that I did not consider this an appropriate consequence to my actions.
Cantin did not agree, saying that Eidos Montreal deliberately leads players to locations where they are not supposed to take action – players are supposed to make mistakes and learn from them.
“The first-person view gave you a lot of possibilities. But yes, at some point – you can’t see behind you. You don’t have a rear-view mirror,” he said. “The goal is to explore, and as you explore you’ll come to know the world more, and then you’ll start to understand the universe and the map. But there’s some challenge there.”
Which segues nicely into Thief’s Challenge Mode; maps which you can choose to run again and again under various conditions, submitting your high scores against those of your friends. It’s a perfect idea for the Let’s Play and Speed Run age, and nicely complemented by the PlayStation 4′s easy sharing capabilities, which Square Enix seemed a little besotted by. Experts who have learned the maps thoroughly, Cantin agreed, will get a lot out of Challenge Mode.
“I think there’s a big replay value to the game. It’s a competitive game. You want to beat yourself at some point,” he said.
“I love that people are playing their finest; ‘Oh, I did that map in two minutes.’ ‘Oh, yeah, I did that map in 20 minutes, but I got all the loot.’ It’s all about your objectives, what you want as a thief or as a player.”
Marvellous, yes, but it does lend an element of rote learning; to progression by trial and error rather than organically problem-solving with the tools at hand, which is what I – perhaps unfairly – expected.
Maybe I expected it because Thief does look so very much like Dishonored at first glance, a game I came to love most tenderly. This visual similarity, which dissolves on closer inspection, is kind of appropriate, because Dishonored sprang, through Harvey Smith, from the same Ion Storm and Looking Glass DNA – think Ken Levine and Warren Spector. Thief has been in the works for a long time, and there’s no suggestion that it took cues from Dishonored, but that’s something people are likely to banter about given their relative release dates. Cantin doesn’t seem bothered by this possibility, saying both games stand on their own merits, like scions of the same family.
“When Dishonored was released, we were really well advanced in the project. Both games had Thief as a reference, but our goal was really to stay true to what was a Thief game. We really encouraged the stealth aspect; it’s really our main core mechanic,” he said.
“If you walk in the city, you’ll see it’s the city from previous [Thief] games. It’s a medieval city on the verge of the industrial revolution. A lot of those aspects, on our side, come from Thief. It was our main reference.
“It’s true that when they released the first trailer we were like, ‘Oh my god, it looks like Thief’. We were really well advanced. The story was written and everything.
“And then we saw – phew, it’s not like Thief. Yeah, it has a lot of similarities, but you don’t play it like the same thing.
“It was really cool to see the success of Dishonored. It told us people want stealth games. We were really happy about the success they had because it confirmed for us that we were going in a good direction.”
Thief is not Dishonored. It’s hard for me to be okay with that, because what I really want, all day every day, is more Dishonored. But I ought to be okay with that, because what Thief is is a thing that should exist – an unforgiving stealth simulator that’s a long way from the accessible new-school romp fans have been afraid would turn up.
I didn’t immediately love Thief the way I expected to – the way I feel about Dishonored, and to a lesser extent BioShock Infinite and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, also distant cousins. I don’t know if I’m going to end up just as besotted with Thief as I was with Arkane’s glorious stab-’em-up, once I get over that initial learning hurdle and come to terms with the fact that I’m playing – gosh! – an entirely different game.

Thief will be available on PC, PlayStation 3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One from February 25 in the US, Feb 27 in Australia and Feb 28 in Europe.

Microsoft will release a cheaper Xbox One this year, a well-respected source has told VG247, apparently confirming this week’s leaks out of Redmond.
Microsoft has told trusted publishing partners that it will release a new model Xbox One before the end of the year, a senior source has confirmed to VG247.
Although the source was unable to confirm that the system will be disc-less and feature  a bluetooth adaptor, the new console will be priced cheaper than the current $499 model.
Upon release, Microsoft would likely drop the price of the current Xbox One model, placing it in the same price point as Sony’s PlayStation 4.
New hardware isn’t the only leak from Microsoft this week, with reports suggesting Halo 2 Anniversary Edition will be released on November 11, complete with a beta for Halo 5.
Although Microsoft isn’t commenting on the rumours, it isn’t taking these leaks lightly – the firm is reportedly looking to get legal on someone’s ass, adding fuel to the fire.

Remember Me developers Dontnod have dismissed earlier reports that it has filed for bankruptcy. Instead, the firm is under judicial reorganization which will allow it to “rezie” in order to continue working on current projects.
Speaking with GI International, the firm’s CEO Oskar Guilbert said that any financial issues the firm may have faced are in the past.
“There are some rumors about the bankruptcy of Dontnod,” he said. “There is no bankruptcy, Dontnod is not in bankruptcy.
“We are in something called in France ‘judicial reorganization’ which allows us to re-adapt our production pipeline to the new situation. Because as you know we finished a game called Remember Me for Capcom which was out in June 2013, last year. This game, I think it’s important to mention, is number two in terms of downloads on PlayStation Plus in Europe, so it’s a big success on the digital side at least.
“We started new projects and those new projects need some investment and we decided to resize the company in order to match these new needs. That’s why we needed judicial reorganization.”
How this works, is a judicial administrator is assigned to the case in order to oversee the company’s “sustainability, settling liabilities and managing labor costs,” according to GI.
Guilbert said the appointment allowed it to flexibly reduce costs. He was unable to comment on whether there would be any layoffs at the company.
“We are also in close negotiations with one big partner; I cannot of course announce the name and say that but we are in very close negotiations for our next project with one of the top publishers,” he said.
Earlier reports form multiple French outlets this morning via Gamasutra such as Factor News stated the studio had entered receivership, and financial site Societe stated the firm had legal representatives assigned to the case.
Remember Me was released on PS3 and Xbox 360 in the US on June 4, and across Europe on June 7, 2013 and was published by Capcom.

EverQuest Next Landmark goes into Alpha starting today with Founder’s Pack purchasers able to access the tester. Those who purchased the pack at either Explorer or Trailblazer level can dive right in, providing their system meets the updated system requirements. RPS and Shacknews both played around in it. You can read each site’s respective thoughts on it through the links. Everquest Next will be released on both PC and PlayStation 4 at some point.

Storage giant Seagate has pledged to launch a desktop hard drive with a capacity of 6TB in the second quarter of this year, in an attempt to catch up to rival Western Digital.

Western Digital's HGST division - previously Hitachi Global Storage Technologies - became the first manufacturer to offer a single standard form-factor 3.5" hard drive offering a whopping 6TB capacity in November last year. The surprising jump in capacity came thanks to a novel manufacturing technique which replaces the air normally found inside a hard drive with helium in order to reduce drag - allowing for a seven-platter spinning-rust storage device that just about crams into a standard hard drive bay.

Now, Seagate has pledged to match that but with a more sedate six-platter layout - and to launch the device by the end of the second quarter. 'We are continuing to expand our offering of high capacity drives,' Seagate chief executive Steve Luczo told investors and press during the company's most recent earnings call, 'with our six-disk, 6TB drive shipping early next quarter.'

Luczo was, however, silent on how the company has managed to add an extra platter to its drives' design without taking a leaf from Hitachi's book and using a novel gas for its interior. The company has, however, confirmed that the drives will be based around perpendicular magnetic recording and be of the same design as the company uses in its existing 1TB-per-platter storage offerings.

Sadly for those hoping that the launch will lead to a high-capacity price war, Luczo noted that the first 6TB drives will be aimed firmly at the enterprise storage market - meaning it could be a while before prices drop to the level of the enthusiast's pocket.

If you build a new PC in 2014, chances are you’ll end up installing three types of storage inside: RAM, SSDs, and hard drives. RAM is the fastest, but wont retain its data without power, SSDs beat out hard drives on speed but is price-limited on storage size, and hard drives give you terabytes of space at very affordable prices, but they are slow.
That transition to using faster, and currently more expensive flash memory has been going on for a number of years now and is set to continue, but it goes well beyond the consumer market. Enterprise computing is also experimenting heavily with flash memory, with the latest company to embrace it being IBM who put 12TB of flash memory inside a server. The reason: the huge performance gains being realized by doing so.
Now the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is using flash storage to revolutionize the so-called “Big Data” industry. We’re talking systems that have to cope with massive amounts of data, like the University of Washington’s universe simulation, which requires gigabytes of data be passed around a network in order to function.



Doing such work using existing systems requires thousands of hard drives all linked together and accessed over an Ethernet network. It works, but it’s relatively slow. A hard drive typically has an access time measured in milliseconds, where as flash memory cuts that to microseconds.
Even if you switch out the hard drives for flash storage, you are still limited by the Ethernet network that connects them all together. You get a performance increase for sure, but it’s still slow, and by no means real-time.
A team at CSAIL believes it has come up with a solution to this problem and in the process created a real-time data storage system. It’s called the Blue Database Machine, or BlueDM, and the key to its speed is a combination of flash storage, programmable FPGA chips, and a serial network connecting the nodes together.
What the team did was to create a node consisting of flash memory connected to an FPGA. By doing that the node not only has very fast storage, it gains the ability to do some local processing on the data stored there using the FPGA. That’s much faster than sending the data to a central computer to be processed.
Nodes can also be linked together to form large networks, and by using a high performance serial network, communication between the nodes is measured in nanoseconds. The end result is a network of storage and processing power that allows real-time access to data while remaining highly scalable.
CSAIL has been working out the kinks in BlueDM using a 4-node network built using 5-year-old hardware. A new 16-node prototype should demonstrate the true potential of the system, though, which is expected to have 32 terabytes of storage and nodes operating at 3 gigabytes per second.
The BlueDM is prototype is expected to make an appearance at FPGA 2014 symposium being held in California on February 26-28.

Now a day’s From Nvidia Gtx 750 Ti, Gtx Titan Black Edition and Gtx 790 is the eye catching candies. The Gtx 750 Ti would be the Maxwell First Card and Gtx Titan Black Edition is based on Gk110 Core and Gtx 790 on Dual Gk-110. The Asus Gtx 790 is revealed, the Russian Electricity supplier has come with the card on their website for pre-order. There was a rumor about the specification of Gtx 790 which we covered in our previous articles


The Gtx 790 based on Outdated you can say after Maxwell but Two Full Gk110 Core with 4992 Stream Processors, 2×320 Bit core memory, It is the first 320bit card from Nvidia with 10Gb of VRam with the thermal power design of 300W.



The Picture from Russian Website, this is the ASUS Gtx 790 6Gb DDR5, the 6GD5 clearly tell us the VRAM of 6Gb, the 10Gb memory is for workstations, but the memory interference will be the 384 bits. If we talk about price 48,470 Russian Ruble, which is almost equal to $1400 Amercian Dollor, the price seems a little high at this stage when Maxwell architecture cards are also on the way.

Sony has finalised its acquisition of Japanese manufacturing plant Renesas Electronics, the same site that produces the Wii U’s DRAM chip. While Sony has issued a press release on the matter, Nintendo is yet to discuss it.

We first reported on the rumoured ¥7 billion take-over earlier in the week. Just hit the link for all of the details.
Now, Sony has purchased the plant, located in Tsuruoka, Yamagata prefecture. The site was acquired for ¥7.51 billion, which is around $73 million, and gives Sony ownership of the whole business as of March 31.
The plant was due to be closed to make way for a major restructuring effort, but Sony has vowed to oversee the site and even absorb some of Renesas’ staff into its ranks. Sony will use the location to open its new Yamagata Technology Center, geared primarily towards the production of CMOS smartphone sensors, with a promise to invest a further ¥27.5 billion into bolstering production.
Sony’s official statement reads, “After the Asset Transfer, the system LSIs and others produced at the Tsuruoka Factory will be produced there for Renesas Electronics by SCK (Sony Semiconductor Corporation) on a contract basis for a certain period of time as agreed by Renesas Electronics and Sony.
“After expiration of that period, Renesas Electronics will shift the production of the system LSIs to its Naka Factory or discontinue production, as Renesas Electronics previously announced to its customers.”
We’ll update you if Nintendo steps forward with a statement, as it’s currently unclear where this leaves its DRAM chip production.

Via DualShockers.

PlayStation Plus subscriptions have tripled since PS4 launched, according to Sony’s UK boss Fergal Gara.

The news came out of a PS Vita Slim reveal event in London yesterday. Sony’s new handheld will launch in the UK on February 7, and you’ll find pricing and details through the link.
Gara revealed the latest PS Plus figures during the event, as seen in this photo tweeted by TheSixthAxis.
You’ll find February’s PS Plus freebies through the link.

Granted; you need a PS Plus subscription to play PS4 games online, but the uptake of subs surely means big financial returns for Sony moving forward.
Via DualShockers.

Battlefield 4 received a new patch on PS4 yesterday, and a note from DICE confirms that the update will help prepare the game for the “upcoming” launch of DLC pack Second Assault.

It follows this list of incoming Battlefield 4 gun balancing updates coming from DICE soon.
In a Battlelog post, one DICE developer wrote, “This update is mainly designed to prepare the game for the upcoming release of the expansion pack Battlefield 4 Second Assault. We will announce the release date for this expansion pack later.
As yet, the Second Assault DLC pack has not been dated, but rumours persist that it’s coming late February. Take the above quote as you will.
Here are the PS4 patch notes in full:
Jan 30 PS4 Game Update Notes

DMR Balance Tweaks

• -Increased the damage of all DMRs across all ranges. Specifically, damage has been increased at long ranges to allow three-hit kills against unarmored opponents. Additionally, reduced the penalty to accuracy for sustained DMR fire, allowing more rapid follow up shots in combat. The amount of the damage increase varies from weapon to weapon, according to its intended range, rate of fire, and damage. We will continue to monitor the effectiveness of DMRs in combat, and determine if additional action is needed to make DMRs a viable mid to long range weapon.

Other items

• -Significantly reduced the duration of the black screen when spawning in, and fixed the issue with players getting killed before being in-game
• -Greatly reduced the risk of crosshairs disappearing, which would also result in hit markers disappearing
• -Added a headshot icon on the killcard. This should help identify instances where players are correctly killed by one shot
• -Fixed an issue in Squad Deathmatch where the “Win/Lose” text was overlapping
• -Fixed an issue with players using an exploit for the SOFLAM
• -Fixed an issue with players using an exploit for the MAV
• -Fixed the gameplay code to properly track the FOV (Field of View) changes in the options menu
• -Fixed an issue where chat would break when entering “false” or “true” in the chat window
• -Fixed an out-of-helicopter glitch in Air Superiority where players could spawn on the ground and play as infantry
• -Fixed the misaligned crosshairs on the T90 MBT
• -Added setting to tweak joystick dead zone
• -Various minor crash fixes

Via MP1st.

“Based on demand for DLC content on the system, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has made the decision to remove its offering of the upcoming all-new story campaign for Wii U,” a PR representative for Warner. Bros told VG247.
We fired off a query after AllGamesBeta posted an email allegedly from Nintendo of America’s customer support, offering refunds on the game’s season pass.
Wii U fans have been uncertain about the prospect of the DLC’s release for some time; announcements failed to mention a Wii U release for DLC as early as June 2013.
This won’t be the first time the Wii U has gone neglected when it came to DLC; Injustice DLC was very late, and Ubisoft elected not to bring Assassin’s Creed DLC over at all.

It follows our report that Halo 2: Anniversary will launch November 11 and Crackdown 3 is slated for release in 2016.
Now, the same source has said Forza Horizon 2 will “probably” launch this September on Xbox One, and will run at 1080p.
It follows recent acknowledgement of Forza Horizon 2‘s existence on Facebook. Hit the link to see what went down.
The source added that Forza Horizon 2 will feature a, “super sexy weather system,” and “shit tons of co-op/social stuff… so you can road trip with your bros.”
Make of this what you will.
Via Videogamer.

A collection of snippets summarised in this NeoGAF post hail from a range of generally reliable sources.
According to the leaks, Halo 2: Anniversary Edition will release on Xbox One on November 11.
The package will also include beta access for Halo 5, the sources say, and a “real time” Halo show like Forward Unto Dawn. This show is not related to Steven Spielberg’s Halo series.
Microsoft is said to have contracted Saber Interactive and Certain Affinity, who assisted 343 Industries with the production of Halo: Combat Evolved – Anniversary Edition, to work on the re-release.
Less confidently, the sources said the game may feature an alternate ending, but was very cagey as to the legitimacy of this aspect of the rumour.
Moving on from Halo for a minute, the old Crackdown 3 chestnut surfaced again, with new and therefore untested sources saying an announcement is unlikely this year as Microsoft is targeting a 2016 release.
Microsoft is said to have struck a deal with Scottish cloud services provider Cloudgine for the game, which is codenamed Nimbus.

Obviously, Sony is rather pleased.
“I am thrilled that so many users have been enjoying KILLZONE SHADOW FALL since the launch of PS4,” said Sony Worldwide president Shuhei Yoshida. “This title fully embraces the creativity of the development team at Guerrilla Games based in the Netherlands, and is a great representation of what SCE WWS has to offer.
“SCE will continue to deliver exciting software titles, and is currently developing more than 30 titles including DriveClub, InFamous: Second Son and The Order: 1886, which offer entertainment experiences only possible on PS4.”
SCE will “continuously expand the world of PS4 through the introduction of attractive software titles,” it said.

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition’s assets, textures, character models and other features are identical across the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, Square Enix insists. It follows video comparisons that suggest there are some discrepancies between both formats.

It follows our Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition review round-up. Hit the link to see what scores it’s been getting.
We also reported that both the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition were developed by two different teams, and not by Crystal Dynamics itself.
Now, following Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition video comparisons from sites like IGN and Gamersyde, Square has passed a statement on to Videogamer to stress that both versions feature the same assets.
“Both Xbox One and PS4 gameplay run at native 1080p,” a company rep wrote. “The assets from one platform to the other are the same as all source assets were shared 1:1 (textures, models, particles, etc.).”
Watch the videos above and judge for yourself. Let us know what you think.

Describing NaturalMotion as a “leading mobile game and technology developer”, Zynga said NaturalMotion’s buyout is aimed at “accelerating planned mobile growth, and bringing in next-generation technology and tools”.
NaturalMotion, which was founded in 2011 and employs approximately 260 staff in Oxford, London, Brighton and San Francisco, is responsible for CSR racing and Clumsy Ninja. However, it’s also the developer of simulation technologies used in console games and movies. These include Euphoria, which was licensed by Rockstar for use in Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto 5, and Endorphin, featured in Tekken 5 and the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
“Our acquisition of NaturalMotion will allow us to significantly expand our creative pipeline, accelerate our mobile growth and bring next-generation technology and tools to Zynga that we believe will fast track our ability to deliver more hit games,” former Xbox boss turned Zynga CEO Don Mattrick said.
“Their creative portfolio aligns perfectly with our content strategy as Zynga will now have five top brands and capabilities in the Farm, Casino, Words, Racing and People categories.”
“Don’s background in AAA games and Zynga’s expertise in social game play and large-scale game operations will be invaluable to helping us grow our existing CSR and Clumsy Ninja franchises and maximize the breakout potential of our upcoming titles,” NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil said. “We’ve reached our first milestones – creating #1 top-grossing and top-free titles – on our own. We can’t wait to see what we can achieve together with Zynga.”
This is Zynga’s most expensive acquisition to date, far outweighing the notorious OMPOP buy-out; the Draw Something developer was shuttered just 15 months later. The company has spent over $300 million in acquisitions since 2010.

Cost cutting
Despite fronting the money for the acquisition and boasting of performing outlook, Zynga also announced a 15% reduction in global workforce, whereby it expects to save up to $35 million in 2014.
314 staff are expected to be affected by the cuts.

By the numbers
For the quarter ending December 31 2014, Zynga posted GAAP revenue of $176 million, significantly down year on year from $311 million, resulting in losses of $25 million.
For the year ending on the same date, it posted GAAP revenue of $873 million, again well down year on year from $1.2 billion, ending with a year loss of $36 million. That’s a much better result than FY 2012, when it closed with losses of $209 million.
Zynga noted that average daily bookings per daily user increased from $0.051 in the fourth quarter of 2012 to $0.060 in the fourth quarter of 2013, up 19% year-on-year, and 10% on the previous quarter.
This increase in spending helped shore up revenues as monthly unique players fell from 2.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2012 to 1.3 million. This is also a drop from the 1.6 million of the previous quarter. Daily active users, monthly active users and monthly unique users all also fell quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year.
Zynga still holds three of the top ten games on Facebook – FarmVille 2, Words With Friends and Zynga Poker. The five year old Words with Friends in particular, is still going strong, hitting record bookings in Q4 2013.
The publisher is predicting revenue up to $165 million for Q1 2014, with a net loss of up to $56 million, including restructuring costs of up to $17 million.
Zynga had not been expected to brief investors until next week, and its surprise early reveal may be tired to the NaturalMotion acquisition. The social and casual publisher will host a conference call with investors later today; stay tuned for any interesting snippets from the call.

“they’re getting rid of Agent 47′s “magic pockets”. Make it a point that it will be very interesting and engaging in managing your tools when its quantity will be limitedOur take- As a gamer I have enjoyed each title of this series. In my opinion developers should not care much about the features they want to put in the game but they should give more attention to the quality of the game which has been a major aspect in whole series.

The model is available to preorder from today in the UK. Sony released the PS Vita 2000 in Japan last year.

It is 20 percent thinner than the original model and 15 percent lighter. More significantly, the OLED screen has been replaced with a new LCD screen and 1GB of built-in memory.

1.Football Manager 2014 (PC Game)
2.FIFA 14 (X360 Game)
3.Call of Duty: Ghosts (X360 Game)
4.The Last of Us (PS3 Game)
5.Call of Duty: Ghosts (PS3 Game)
6.LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (Xbox 360)
7.Battlefield 4 (Xbox 360)
8.Batman: Aarkham Origins (PS3)
9.FIFA 14 (PS3)
10.Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag (Xbox 360)

From 23rd January till 2nd March 2014
Well that's one way to overcome a price gap. For a limited time, the Microsoft Store will give you $100 of store credit when you trade in your PS3 or Xbox 360 E. The offer runs from 23rd January till 2nd March 2014, or while supplies last, and is exclusive to the US (including Puerto Rico) and Canada for the moment.

Just to hammer the point home, Microsoft has also mailed the below to a number of subscribers, via NeoGAF.

Owned by UK-based Dixons Retail, a store manager at one of the consumer electronics chain’s locations confirmed the pre-order plan to Gamereactor.

Rockstar has yet to announce a PC version of the title, but that didn’t stop Amazon Germany or Amazon France from listing the product, nor a supposed 170 page bug report surfacing.

If the Elgiganten store manager is correct, expect Rockstar to make an announcement in due course. Until then, keep this filed away has yet another rumor.

The Previous Release of Uncharted sets a strong mark on the Fans of this release, they follow every new news of Naughty Dogs about the next Release of this series, Well the Naughty Dogs are working on the next instalment Uncharted 4 for Ps4, still from a studio there is no detail news about this project reviled but last night one actor

 "Todd Stashwick tongue told us something on Twitter. Todd StashWick who is nowadays recording, motion scenes of the very new release. Reveals some details of the upcoming Game.Todd Stashwick on TwitterUncharted rehearsal tomorrow. My guess is things will NOT be charted. Again. I repeat, charts will remain un. #uncharted #PS4 #spoiler"