I’ve decided to dedicate this weekly to GDC, as it’s easy to miss the little bits of news that have been announced, like how Nvidia have announced a home console, much more too!

If you would like to check out the weekly gaming news, skip to the bottom and I’ll hyperlink a few news articles for you to read!

 

There was an impressively large presence of Virtual Reality at this year’s GDC (Games Developers Conference), more than I thought there would be, that’s for sure.

First off, JD8531 wrote an article earlier in the week about the engines and news from valve, click here to read about unity, unreal engine 3 and source engine too:

https://wololo.net/2015/03/05/game-engine-news-galore-source-engine-2-announced/

A bit of pre-GDC news is the announcement of HTC Vive, which was expanded upon during GDC, take a read here, it’s got impressive specs, too:

https://wololo.net/2015/03/05/valve-announce-partnership-with-htc-to-create-a-vr-headset-vive/

The news that was talked about along with a hands-on from a few  websites, the general consensus is that it’s pretty impressive, but as with all VR I guess it is, Arstechnica covered the hands on of the headset pretty well.

They mentioned quite a few demo’s they tried out, and what I mentioned when in my first report of it is how there is actually full room tracking, it seems that my understanding was correct and I wasn’t being an idiot. In one demo Arstechnica describe walking over to a fridge, picking up an ingredient with the controller and walking back to the pot to drop it in.

During one demo, I walked from a countertop over to a refrigerator a few steps to my left, grabbed an ingredient, then walked back to drop it into a pot. In another, I walked away from a huge rock monster speaking to me to solve a gear puzzle sitting on a back wall, pausing to admire a set of wind chimes in between. In a Portal-themed Aperture Science demo, I could walk around a massive, 3-D holographic cross-section of a robot’s innards, viewing and manipulating it from all sides and angles, not just the ones I could lean in and see from a sitting position.

Here’s a look at the controllers, where your thumb rests there’s a little touchpad,  where your thumb rests along with a few other buttons:

The other key piece of the Vive experience is the controllers. There’s one for each hand, both long and thin like PlayStation Move wands, but with flat, circular, clickable touchpads on the front where your thumbs naturally rest. There’s also a trigger under each index finger and a pair of buttons that you can squeeze with the inside of your palm, as if you’re gripping something.

The partnership with valve is quite interesting, and valve definitely seem to be expanding their presence in the gaming industry, and it’s nice to see that they will be properly supporting the virtual reality space with their SteamVR,  I’m not entirely sure of Valves total involvement, whether HTC developed this on their own, much like steam machines, but they have said there will be more VR headsets compatible with SteamVR, so it seems to be the case.

There’s a lot more to read about, if you’re interested head here:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming

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Project Morpheus was mentioned quite a bit too, with playable demo’s at GDC and also and updated prototype with pretty nice specs, there’s plenty to talk about, but I’ll try to keep it short.

Here’s the latest prototype first of all:

You can tell since they announced it last year, they have added a few more lights, here’s last years design.

They haven’t just updated the amount of tracking lights on the outside however, they’ve updated the screen resolution and have improved the response time of the screen, here are the listed changes on the PS Blog:

 

– OLED display – In exchange for the 5 inch LCD, the new Morpheus VR headset is equipped with a 5.7 inch 1920 X RGB X 1080 resolution OLED display. This new screen expands the field of view and enables low persistence, removing motion blur.

– 120hz refresh rate – The previous refresh rate spec has been doubled for this new prototype, which means games for Morpheus can be rendered at 120fps. When combined with the OLED display’s high refresh rate and the power of PS4, Morpheus is able to output amazingly smooth visuals.

– Super low latency – We know how critical low latency is to delivering a great VR experience, and we’ve reduced latency to less than 18ms, about half of what the first Morpheus prototype had. Low latency is critical to deliver a sense of presence, at the same time making the VR experience comfortable to players.

– More accurate tracking– To make positional tracking more precise, we’ve added three LEDs to the headset – one on the front and two on the side – for a total of nine LEDs to support robust 360 degree tracking.

– User-friendly design – We’ve made the Morpheus VR headset easier to put on and take off, with a single band design and quick release button. The headband supports the weight of the unit on the top of your head, so there is no pressure on your face. Other components have also been adjusted and configured to make the headset lighter, so that players do not find the headset cumbersome or uncomfortable to use.

 

The OLED HD screen and 120fps are certainly a very nice welcome, and I’m pretty excited for it’s release, speaking of which, they announced also!

Our one and only Shu Yoshida let us know that Project Morpheus will be coming in the first half of 2016, I can’t imagine the specs changing too much, maybe a strap design alteration to improve the fit, and possibly a few more lights to improve tracking, but I can’t imagine it’ll improve much more before going into production.

We’re just awaiting a price now!

If you would like to read more about Engadget’s experience with Project Morpheus, follow the link below:

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/06/state-of-vr-sony-project-morpheus-2015/

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Let’s take a break from VR for a second and move onto home consoles like I mentioned in the beginning part, Nvidia announced an android console and a pretty good looking one at that. But that’s not all! I’ll divulge on that in a bit (It’s a new graphics card)

 

Following the release of the Nvidia’s shield portable and tablet, they have now announced a new home console, just named ‘Nvidia Shield’, to make it extra confusing for everyone else. This little box seems pretty impressive and has certainly wowed me with what Nvidia are offering, a quality home entertainment system at an affordable price of $199 (Worldwide pricing has not been announced, but convert to your currency here)

It is essentially an Android home system, but with Nvidia’s gaming features packed in too, the Nvidia Grid service, if you are unaware of what it is, this is a streaming service which will feature the latest game releases, including MGS: Ground Zeroes and also Batman: Arkham Knight. Something pretty amazing I thought, was that if you purchase the game on the Nvidia store, you’ll also get a steam code for the game. Which is an added bonus, and being as there’ll be 50 games available on launch, as well as the wide array of android games, you shouldn’t have a problem with nothing to play with this one!

I’ve got the Shield Tablet, along with the controller, and might I say, it’s a pretty brilliant controller. I really enjoy using it and the battery life on it is amazing. With the ability to stream all sound to the headset, just like the ps4 controller can is an added bonus too!

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/gaming/games-consoles/nvidia-shield

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Onto the Nvidia’s other announcement too, is their new Graphics card – They already had the Titan, but needed to take it a step further with the Titan X, which has the ‘most advanced GPU ever built’ – This beasty piece of kit has a massive 12 gigs of RAM, along with 8 billion transistors.

 

Nvidia will reveal more at it’s GTC even soon, but the CEO, Jen Husn Huang said the Titan X will be available pretty soon!

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/nvidia-announces-titan-x

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Along with Project Morpheus, the Steam controller also got an update on it’s prototype, and now has an analogue stick and buttons!

It seems that when they started, they wanted to completely revolutionise the handheld controller, but they are slowly realising that how the standard console controllers are now (PS & Xbox controllers) are actually pretty nifty at doing their job, so they’ve added an analogue stick the infamous 4 buttons, ABXY, just like current controllers. Let’s take a look at the latest model:

I’m sure there has been more than 2 revisions made public, but maybe not, here’s the original one that was announced and also the once after:   1  –  2

Although 99% of people believe that having the controller analogue stick beveled makes it 10x better, I actually prefer having it like how the PS3 controller was, and just like the steam controller above, it made moving your thumb around the hole stick a lot nicer and you got a wider coverage of the controller. But maybe it’s just me.

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Let’s take a look at what Microsoft had in store for this GDC; they developed upon what was already announced a while ago, the HoloLens device.

Much like the other companies with a gaming division, MS have announced that they will be using their device for gaming, although it will not be as impressive as true virtual reality, I can imagine something like illumiroom, enhancing current games more than dedicated games, this prediction couldn’t be too far off, being as it does have 2 cameras on the front for space awareness….

Phil Spencer, Xbox Boss said the following:

Gaming and entertainment is going to be critical, we see this as a full Windows 10 device with holographic capability

Spencer also mentioned how there will be quite a bit of first party support for the device. Here was the announcement video, which showcased Minecraft being played. whether this happens or not however is a completely different story, but Mojang is a first party studio for Microsoft now so this may be more likely than thought.

Xbox wire did a good roundup of everything they did at GDC to make Xbox development a heck of a lot easier, head here for the breakdown:

news.xbox.com/2015/03/xbox-gdc-2015

 

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So that’s a fair bit of news for you to gloss over, you know a feature I’d really like to see? A camera at the front of the device, that you can switch to on the whim so it’s possible to view the outside without taking the headset off if you want to drink something or look at someone to talk to, you don’t have to take the headset off. That’d be cool.

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So let’s move onto gaming news if you’ve skipped straight here, scroll up because the gaming news started at the beginning! 🙂

Vita announcements:

PS Plus games for Vita, PS4 and PS3:

PlayStation Vita:

• CounterSpy
• OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood

PlayStation 4:

• CounterSpy
• Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty
• OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood
• Valiant Hearts

PlayStation 3:

• CounterSpy
• Papo & Yo
• Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishment

Quick links!

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Microsoft working with Sony and Nintendo to combat DDOS attacks – Awesome!
Steam now shows Steam Machines and their prices – There’s a pretty wide selection here!
30 new GTA Online screens show two Heists – Is anyone still playing GTA Online?
20.2 Million PS4’s now sold! – :O
Microsoft drops list of 40 games coming to Xbox One –  A nice huge list for the Xbox gamers out there!
Stealth Inc 2, previously a Wii U exclusive will be coming to PS Vita, PS4, Ps3, PC and Xbox One – I really enjoyed stealth inc, hopefully this is just as good, if not better!
Is The Uncharted trailer a tribute to Crash Bandicoot? – Whoever spotted this, has a pretty good eye that’s for sure!

Being as I’ve already linked my previous article above, I don’t see the point in linking it here. So here’s the one before that! If you didn’t read it there were some pretty cool things inside it!

Minimur, WTH Happened This Week? Fable Legends F2P, Final Fantasy 15 Update, and Bloodborne Boss! http://t.co/Uq9e3ukxbX

— Minimur12 (@minimur12) March 3, 2015

 

 

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WEEKLY BLOG ROUND-UP

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Well holy moly, us bloggers were sure busy this week! averaging just over one blog per day and smashing out 3 on Saturday, I’m not entirely sure what went happening, I’m kind of worried. I figured it out, I reckon The Z and REPREP had a bet to see who can write the most articles!

It’s definitely good to know JD8531 and Acid_Snake are back in the game, although Acid hasn’t written any this week, JD did!

PS4 Jailbreak: the status in 2015
How to: Play almost every multimedia file on your 3DS/NDS (by jokingley)
Upcoming Playstation 4 Firmware 2.50 – Its changes and new features!
PSP Firmware 6.61 – CFW users finally excluded from using PSN services?!
3 Generations, 3 Handhelds, 3 Emulators
Best Vita/PSP homebrews for March 2015
First Wii-U Homebrew
What does the latest 3DS firmware update really do?

 

Reddit Time!

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I know I missed it last week, and by the comments you were a bit upset at that, so here it is!

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Playstation Trivia!

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41.The first Crash Bandicoot contains a hidden level called Stormy Ascent that wasn’t discovered until 13 years after the game’s release, it was removed because it was too hard and prevented people from finishing the game

42.Leon was originally meant to rescue Sherry Birkin from Wesker in Resident Evil 4, not Ashley from the Las Plagas.

43.Final Fantasy 7’s Cloud originally had slicked black hair to save polygons

44.One of Gran Turismo 2’s discs featured a scratch and sniff panel that smelt of burning rubber.

45. Fifa 2001 also has a scratch and sniff panel, although that one smelt of grass

 

 

You know, I’ve been blogging for 2 years now, and this is my 177th blog! Have I got any readers that have been reading since I very first started still with me?