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Top runner for Game of the Year, TESV: Skyrim flies into stores on November 11!
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Welcome to the ZombiePimps.net forum!
ZombiePimps is a moderately sized community clan. We are based in the UK, and have been running for over 3 years. We aim to encompass various kinds of people, from competitive hardcore games to the more casual and relaxed players.
We play various games for various reasons, be it relaxation, competition, achievement hunting or anything in between. We strive to create an entertaining Xbox LIVE experience, and forge new friendships with our fellow gamers.
This forum is designed to allow our members to communicate with each other outside of Xbox LIVE, as well as functioning as a news source and an introduction to new or potential members.
February's Member of the Month: Xai!
Current Biscuit Head: Fenix!
Current "It": UP FOR GRABS!
No current clan matches. Challenge us!:
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Skyrim DLC will feel like Expansion Packs | 17 Feb 12 |
16:46:51 by XaiXoViews: 10 | Comments: 0
Bethesda: Skyrim DLC Will Feel More Like Expansion Packs
We've been promised substantial downloadable content for last year's blockbuster Skyrim, but it sounds like Bethesda is thinking really big.
"For Fallout 3 we did five DLCs," Howard told me during an interview last week at the DICE Summit. "That was a very aggressive path for us. Our plan now is to take more time, to have more meat on them [for Skyrim]. They'll feel closer to an expansion pack."
Some of Fallout 3's expansions, such as Operation Anchorage were slender, linear mission sequences that lasted a few hours, but others, such as Point Lookout were entire new regions filled with quests.
It does sound like there will be fewer than five of these expansion-pack additions to Skyrim.
"With Fallout 3, it was, 'Ten dollars is the sweet spot for us and we know we want to put out five of them. And we had overlapping teams. We were coming off Fallout 3 and right back in." He describes that development cycle as "a real hardcore loop," but adds, "we just think we can do better content if we approach it a different way."
In between those expansions, Howard is committed to releasing smaller pieces of content for the game.
"Because that gap is going to be bigger, we want to put litle things out for free in between. We've already done that for PC with the high-res pack. We're trying to figure out what those things are."
How big should a Bethesda role-playing game be? All this talk of Skyrim expansions shouldn't distract from the fact that Skyrim is already gargantuan. How do they know how long to make these games, in terms of play time? Howard explained: "It was similar with Fallout 3 and Oblivion. We want it to be around 20 hours. That's where we start. I want to feel like I finished the main thing in 20ish hours. That's us day one saying that. After that, we rarely look at the target. It's just more of a gut for: 'it should be about this long.' After that, it's purely: 'Does it feel too fast right here?', 'Does it feel too slow?' It's purely a gut thing for us. After the initial point, it's purely: 'How does the momentum feel? '" He says Skyrim got longer. He thinks it takes the average player about 30 hours to get through, if they're trying to reach the end and not necessarily exploring all the side stuff.
Even if you don't factor in the DLC, Bethesda has bigger plans for tweaking and enhancing Skyrim post-release than they have had for other big games they've released. The game was destined to be more organic. "We knew before release that we were going to support it in a larger way, with lots of updates every month," Howard said. "We knew we wanted to do more stuff to bring mods to people.
"So I think we had more of a plan and thought process of 'We want to make the game better after it's out.' We don't know what that means yet. People will tell us. But maybe we want to rebalance it. Maybe we want to add some features and patch them in, whereas in previous games, like Oblvivion or Fallout 3, our thinking was just to patch it, fix the big problems. Our bandwidth at that time was that we needed to work on Skyrim. But now, with the game's popularity, we really want to do all that stuff."
Shortly before Howard I talked last week, he showed a video featuring all sorts of wonderful additions to Skyrim that his developers had cooked up in one week after the game shipped. They had characters riding dragons, guards re-lighting torches, water arrows, fat giants, players as vampire lords and so much more.
Some of that—Howard would stress the "some"—could be coming as part of all of this expanded content.
"There are definitely things in there that we are planning on exploring," he said.
"It looks like a ton of stuff that could ship right now," he admitted, "but it's in a sizzle video. It's, you know, it's not bug-tested, polished, balanced." He thinks it shows off the creativity of his team and says that some of it is being worked on, but don't take that as the blueprint for the expansions.
Of course, he couldn't resist teasing more: "That wasn't all of it. It's probably 60% of it. The other 40% doesn't show as well in a video or we didn't have good footage."
We have no actual release dates for the Skyrim expansions. No specific plans. But we do have what sounds like a long-term commitment to beefing up this game. Howard says his team is "very early" into the development of the DLC, but it's happening. Skyrim will be getting bigger—much bigger, it sounds like. ... |
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Xbox 720 | 26 Jan 12 |
19:04:42 by XaiXoViews: 45 | Comments: 4
While I hate the obviously not real name, there's been a lot of rumours popping up this week about the next Xbox (or, to use another fake name, Nextbox). Here's the skinny: Microsoft will upgrade its disc technology for its next Xbox from DVDs to Blu-Ray discs, catching up to rival Sony, games industry sources tell Kotaku.
Sony's PlayStation 3 currently supports Blu-Ray, which can contain 25 or 50GB of data compared to DVD's 9GB.
But that disc detail could be far less impactful to the next generation of game consoles than the assertion I've heard from one reliable industry source that Microsoft intends to incorporate some sort of anti-used game system as part of their so-called Xbox 720.
It's not clear if that means that the system wouldn't play used games or how such a set-up would work. Obvious approaches—I'm theorizing here—like linking a copy of a game to a specific Xbox Live account could seemingly be foiled by used-game owners who would keep their system offline. My source wasn't sure how Microsoft intended to implement any anti-used game system in the new machine.
A push in any way by Microsoft against used games would likely be cheered from publishers sick of seeing retailers like GameStop crow about their revenues from the sale of used games. But it could potentially anger consumers who rely on buying cheaply-sold used games or even pass games to relatives or friends.
One source familiar with Microsoft's plans for the new Xbox said Microsoft plans to ship their new Xbox with a new version of its red-hot Kinect hands-free sensor system. The new Kinect would contain an on-board processor, a feature originally intended for the first Kinect. That processor would enable a new Kinect to more effectively detect users' motions.
I'm also hearing that Microsoft is interested in making a smaller controller for its new console.
And what of gaming site IGN's report that the machine could be six times more powerful than the Xbox 360? From some industry sources I'm hearing that that's the right ballpark and that Microsoft is estimating they might even get to 8x the Xbox 360. But another insider clarified that no one in the industry has development kits yet and that any talk about specs right now is still hypothetical.
[UPDATE: A Microsoft rep e-mailed me the following statement: "As an innovator we're always thinking about what is next and how we can push the boundaries of technology like we did with Kinect. We believe the key to extending the lifespan of a console is not just about the console hardware, but about the games and entertainment experiences being delivered to consumers. Beyond that we don't comment on rumors or speculation."]
"Xbox 720" is being used as shorthand by reporters like me to refer to the next Xbox. It's not necessarily the name of the next device. Tech sites Semi Accurate and Fudzilla have reported that the first chips for 720 development kits are going into production, leading to a possible late 2013 release despite my earlier reporting which had pointed to 2014 as the year of the next Xbox and PlayStation.
Nintendo's next console, the Wii U, will go on sale later this year. Time for the latest instalment of "shit people are saying/guessing about the next Xbox console"! This week we have two reports, one from IGN and the other from Fudzilla.
The IGN rumour says the next console will be out in October or November next year, and that it's graphics processor will be based on the existing Radeon HD 6670 (pictured). It also states that "In real terms, the Xbox 720's raw graphics processing power is expected to be six times that of the Xbox 360 and will yield 20-percent greater performance than Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Wii U."
The Fudzilla report, meanwhile, reckons the new Xbox's chip is called "Odan", and that IBM and Global Foundries began manufacturing it in December 2011.
Next week? Who knows! The Wall Street Journal might say the next Xbox can bake cookies, and will be built entirely out of balsa wood at a factory in Belgium. "If the GPU story is true, it suggests that Microsoft is placing price-point ahead of performance," Leadbetter said.
"By PC standards, the Radeon HD 6670 is an unremarkable, entry-level enthusiast product aimed more towards the home cinema PC audience. It struggles to run Battlefield 3 at 20 frames-per-second on high settings at 1080p, and could maybe hit 30FPS in Crysis 2 at the same resolution."
"In a closed box environment with custom modifications and a dedicated development platform to support it, the chip could achieve much greater things (360 dev kits initially shipped with unremarkable X800 graphics cards, before getting X1800/X1900 upgrades). But it would be a curious choice for a platform holder looking to sustain another lengthy console lifecycle."
Original story: The graphics card (GPU) inside the next Xbox will be "akin to" the £50 Radeon HD 6670, a new report has suggested.
IGN heard from "sources close to the project" that the GPU will provide performance six times greater than Xbox 360, and 20 per cent greater than Wii U.
A Radeon HD 6670 card supports DirectX 11, multi-display output, 3D and 1080p.
Development kits matching the final system configuration of the next Xbox will be sent out in August 2012, apparently. And mass production of the Radeon HD 6670-based GPU should begin by the end of 2012.
The new console itself will ship to shops in late October or early November 2013, IGN wrote.
The release date and dev kit dates we've heard before. However, this is the most specific a report has been about the graphics card inside the next Xbox.
We heard late last year that Microsoft planned two versions of its next Xbox. Both will bundle Kinect, although one machine will be a cheap, "pared down" set-top box; the other a "more fully featured", typical new console for hardcore gamers. Rumor has it the next-generation Xbox may limit exactly what kind of games you're allowed to play. According to sources speaking to Kotaku, the Xbox 360's successor will have some kind of anti-used-game enforcement. There's no explanation of what that means, but speculation surrounding the issue says the console could outright reject used-games altogether.
LA Noire used an online pass this generation. Would you buy an Xbox 3 if you couldn't play its sequel used?
Online passes are a recent staple in staving off used sales. Limiting what used buyers can access is a protective measure for publishers, much to the chagrin of parts of the gaming community. Chris Kohler of Wired argues that the death of used games is inevitable, and passes are the first step toward something exactly like a native anti-used game something integrated into consoles. He notes, of course, that digital is the future of buying games, but in the meantime we may be looking at "an interim period in which the disc as a delivery method is still around but...becomes more like a PC game, which are sold with one-time-use keys that grant one owner a license to play the game on his machine."
For all we know, if this is legitimate, such a theoretical link between a Gamertag and new game would simply negate the need for online pass redemption codes in every game. This alleged feature comes alongside talks that the Xbox 3 will also turn to blu-ray for its primary format.
Until Microsoft officially unveils details about its much-rumored new device, we're relying on speculation with strong rhetoric to figure out the future of gaming. Would a console permanently banning of used-games be a deal-breaker for you? Discuss, zombies and gentlepimps. ... |
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House Party 2012 Dates and Prices Announced | 23 Jan 12 |
21:20:28 by Lethal HunterViews: 36 | Comments: 1
1st up is. WarpFebruary 15, 2012 800 Points Alan Wake: American NightmareFebruary 22, 2012 1200 Points NexuizFebruary 29, 2012 800 Points I am AliveMarch 7, 2012 1200 Points PLUS To make the most of your blockbuster game bash, all party goers will receive 800 Microsoft Points when you buy all four participating House Party games from February 15 – March 13. i'm interested in AW:AN, IAA and Warp, so it means i would get Nexuiz free. ... |
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