e32014
Latest
Watch Conan O'Brien make E3 2014 into an even bigger spectacle than it already was
As if the game industry's annual trade show weren't enough of a spectacle on its own, massively tall comedian/talk show host Conan O'Brien took to E3 2014's lavish booths and talked with swaths of attendees for a hilarious recap video. He makes the rounds: luging at Sony's Project Morpheus, high-speed driving in Forza, and making childhood fantasies a reality with Nintendo's gang of ladies (not quite "booth babes," but not quite not either). Sadly, we can't get away with asking crowds of people to applaud our rock-solid run through Hyrule Warriors, but Conan does it and makes it funny. Head below for the full video, but be prepared to set aside about 10 minutes. He's thorough!
These are the biggest third-party games at E3 2014
Sure, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft all have their own internally developed games, but there's so much more to E3 than what The Big Three show off for their respective platforms. Even better, almost every game from the likes of Activision and Electronic Arts will appear on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One so there's almost no need to choose which platform to buy if you want to play a specific title, either. Let's get down to business, shall we?
Weekends with Engadget: E3 2014, getting sweaty with Sony's Project Morpheus and more!
This week, we stormed the floors of E3 2014, interviewed Shuhei Yoshida and Phil Spencer, took Sony's Project Morpheus for a test-run and watched Amazon launch its Prime Music streaming service. Read on for Engadget's news highlights from the last seven days. Oh, and be sure to subscribe to our Flipboard magazine!
These are the biggest Xbox One games at E3 2014
Sure, you could spend the rest of your days playing Titanfall online, but what if you'd like to give your Xbox One something a little different to play? Microsoft's message for this E3 was clear: games, games and more games. We took to the company's booth this week to find out what you'd be playing this fall, and whether you like shooters, driving games or indies, you should be all set for first-party titles. How does Redmond stack up to Sony's plan for the PlayStation? We'll let you be the judge.
Ridley Scott's 'Halo' project is a prequel to the next major 'Halo' game
In a way, director Ridley Scott's Halo-themed project, dubbed Nightfall, brings Microsoft's tentpole shooter franchise full circle. Master Chief's galaxy-spanning exploits owe a giant debt to the filmmaker's iconic tale of deep-space horror, Alien, and now Scott is helping establish where the franchise goes on the Xbox One. As 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross said during my meeting at E3 this week, working with him "kind of upped the bar" on the series, especially compared to 343's last attempt at live-action, the Halo 4 lead-in Forward Unto Dawn. "Hopefully we get better each time," she said. Nightfall tells the origin story for Agent Locke, a character Ross said plays a "pivotal role" in Halo 5: Guardians. As far as story, that's as much as we know so far. Ross isn't sure how many episodes Nightfall will span, but said that there will be five of them leading into Halo 5's beta timeframe.
How I got stabbed in the chest at E3 2014 (an Oculus Rift tale)
There I was, impaled by an alien. I was carefully walking around a space station, with nothing more than my (admittedly dim) wits and a motion tracker, watching a large, terrifying alien stamp about. My only direction was to survive. "You had one job!" I failed at it. The tech demos are over: Oculus Rift's second development kit at E3 2014 isn't running any dalliances aimed at proving the tech. It's running real-ass games. Alien: Isolation was the third game I played, and it was by far the most terrifying. You're not a space marine, and you're not named Ellen Ripley. You're just some unwitting sheep running from assured death at the hands/tentacles/teeth of an H.R. Giger-designed alien. Delightful.
The man who made the game in 'Her' is about to release a game you can play
He's fresh to game development, but David O'Reilly has already created a game you likely know very well: the game in Spike Jonze's excellent film, "Her." While that "game" was, ya know, in a film and not a real game, he's just about to release his first actual game in Mountain. O'Reilly describes it as a "mountain simulator" -- he explained to a crowd at Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art this morning that it enables you to "live out all your dark twisted fantasies" of, uh, being a mountain. Okay, so what in the world is happening here? In actuality, it's a game about interacting with a relatively static mountain. Weather changes, music changes, and you can input melodies (via touch on iOS, keyboard on PC/OS X) which alter the state of the world. Sometimes you push forward time, sometimes you change the weather, sometimes you zoom out into outerspace -- where your mountain lives, apparently! O'Reilly says it'll be out in the next few weeks, and it'll cost "about a dollar."
With the PlayStation TV, Sony's going after families with young kids
The PlayStation TV is a curious oddity. The $100 device, a rebranded Vita TV that's slated to launch in North America and Europe later this fall, is Sony's direct answer to the Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV streaming boxes currently flooding the market. It's also the only box of the bunch capable of offering a video game experience that goes beyond just casual gaming. In fact, the PlayStation TV's library of titles spans several platforms: the PS Vita, PSP, PS One, PS3 (via PS Now's cloud streaming) and PS4 over Remote Play. It'll also offer consumers the ability to stream video content. But with the PS4 occupying the top spot in the PlayStation totem pole, we have to wonder: Just who is the PlayStation TV for?
Getting sweaty with the future of Sony's virtual reality
The private room, elevated above the crazed throngs of E3 attendees, was dark and oppressively stuffy. Inside, Conan O'Brien lay on a beanbag in front of Sony's newest virtual reality demo for its Project Morpheus headset: Street Luge. And he was surrounded by two Nintendo booth babes -- an awkward collision of rival gaming worlds that wasn't lost on Sony PR. Conan was finishing up a shoot for a spoof segment on Morpheus and I had to wait for the celebrity fanfare to stop.
Oculus VR explains why mobile virtual reality won't poison the well
With all the talk of high-fidelity virtual reality coming from Oculus VR -- the virtual reality headset company that's now part of Facebook -- it's easy to believe that the only type of VR is PC-based. But that isn't the case! Beyond what we learned recently about Samsung and Oculus working on a VR peripheral that uses your phone, Oculus has been open about working on a mobile software development kit for some time now. Heck, we even spoke with Oculus CTO John Carmack about it last year. "I think you'll see the mobile SDK launch publicly before the consumer Rift comes out," Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell told us this week at E3 2014. Beyond Samsung, a handful of developers are "experimenting with some high-end Android devices ... building experiences and seeing what's possible." But here's the issue: Great VR requires serious horsepower. While the current range of flagship Android mobile devices are pretty powerful, they don't hold a candle to even low-end gaming PCs. In so many words, isn't Oculus worried that a subpar, Android-based VR experience could poison the well for the full Oculus Rift coming down the line? If your first experience with VR is a bad one, you may never try it again. "That's a completely fair statement," Mitchell said.
These are the biggest PlayStation games at E3 2014
The launch window is over. The PlayStation 4 is, for now, leading the sales charts and the best way for Sony to keep driving that momentum this generation is with -- what else? -- compelling games. This year's showing at Sony's E3 booth is no different than the last: You've got your smattering of indies, AAA titles and downloadable content. So what should you expect to add to your growing collection in 2014? We took a tour of Sony's booth to find out.
PlayStation at E3 2014: an interview with Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida
Sony Computer Entertainment's Shuhei Yoshida wants his company's new game-streaming service, PlayStation Now, to be the Netflix of gaming. When it launches later this summer, it won't be. In fact, it's launching in open beta. "We have to walk before we run," Yoshida told us in an interview this week at E3, the game industry's big annual show in Los Angeles. He sees the service as a long-term plan, part of Sony's ongoing initiative to bring PlayStation games to many devices. And that plan is just kicking off.
Making your own Mario level is incredibly fun, but difficult to master
Today, I wrote my very own level of Super Mario Bros. at E3. Featuring a pyramid of goombas, several randomly placed pipes, a dozen mystery blocks in a row and countless coins scattered throughout, my creation was a jumbled mess; coming up with a cool world for Mario to navigate is a lot easier said than done. But it was mine. In the first half of next year, Wii U owners will have the same opportunity thanks to a game called Mario Maker. It's Nintendo's first attempt at producing a level creator similar to LittleBigPlanet or Project Spark, and it tugged at my heartstrings. For a brief moment, I shared the same experience as a small group of video game designers: Armed with a Wii U GamePad and its included stylus, I placed enemies, pipes, platforms and other Mario obstacles anywhere I wanted. In my demo, I was allowed to choose between the original game's 8-bit style and the high-def style from the franchise's recent titles. And just to make sure my Mario genesis was actually playable, I was able to play through it in real time.
Here are Nintendo's new 'Super Smash Bros.' Amiibo toys for Wii U
Toy-based gaming is not only alive and well, but it's also expanding to more franchises. This time it's Nintendo's turn: Following in the footsteps of games like Skylanders and Disney Infinity, Nintendo announced the Amiibo, which are plastic figurines that you scan into your Wii U by holding them on the GamePad. As soon as the toy is scanned, its corresponding character -- Mario is a primary example -- appears in the game with its own unique score, experience points and skills. The point of doing this is so you can either partner with or fight against these virtual characters. Additionally, the more the Amiibo fights, the better it will become. The toys, which were shown off for the first time at E3, will initially be available for (and compatible with) Super Smash Bros. this holiday season, but more games will be compatible later on, such as Mario Kart 8 and Mario Party 10.
Xbox at E3 2014: an interview with the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer
Yesterday wasn't the first time Phil Spencer took an E3 stage for Microsoft to talk Xbox, but it was his first time as the head of Microsoft's Xbox division. After taking over for Marc Whitten back in March, Spencer's been on a charm offensive. His focus was clear at yesterday's show: games, all games. Forget about last year's coming out for Xbox One as an "entertainment" platform -- yesterday's focus was all games, all the time. The 90-minute show was divided cleanly in half between games coming this year and games arriving in 2015 and beyond. It was, in short, an impressive display of the Xbox One's gaming prowess over anything else. "I want the content to be the star," Spencer told us. So, that aside, we wanted him to give us more on the other stuff that the Xbox One does: media streaming, voice control, Windows 8 and television. And hey, what's Microsoft doing to compete with Sony's Project Morpheus VR headset, not to mention the Oculus Rift?
Nintendo teases 'Mario Maker' for creating custom Mario levels on Wii U
We had a feeling Nintendo was going to announce something called "Mario Maker," a game that allows you to create your own levels in Super Mario Brothers -- after all, Nintendo Enthusiast found a poster for the damn thing in the company's E3 booth. Indeed, Nintendo just teased it in a press event, though it only provided a scant few details. In a series of screenshots, we saw someone creating custom levels, with the help of the Wii U's included stylus. Though you can design the level using old-school 8-bit graphics, as in the screenshot above, you can also go with the sort of modern look found in Mario's newer titles. No word on exact release date, except that it will hit North America and Europe sometime in 2015.
Open-world 'Zelda' game heading to Wii U in 2015
Last year, Zelda tastemaker Eiji Aonuma told us that he wanted to give players more freedom. "I want them to be able to explore more." Back then, he was talking about A Link Between Worlds; today Nintendo is talking about the franchise's first game designed natively for the Wii U. Taking the screen during Nintendo's Digital Event at E3, Aonuma showed a deep, lush landscape and pointed to the horizon. "You can even reach those mountains in the distance if you walk far enough." It's the first truly open-world Zelda game.
'Star Fox' sets course for Wii U along with smaller projects from Miyamoto
Sure, Star Fox hasn't seen a home console game of his own since the GameCube, but Nintendo has different plans for the Wii U. Time's let word slip that the Big N is releasing a game starring the anthropomorphic space canine. While there aren't many details just yet, players will use the GamePad's motion controls to aim and fire, while controlling their ship Arwing with thumbsticks. And yes, it'll still be able to transform into the land tank. In addition to the tried-and-true roving fortress, Nintendo's baked in a new helicopter-like craft. The aircraft's movements can be controlled by one player, while another takes control of shooting enemies or directing a small robot that drops down and blasts things independently.
Watch Nintendo's E3 'Digital Event' right here!
Hey! Nintendo's annual not quite E3 event is kicking off at 9 AM PT (12 PM ET). As usual the company isn't holding an in-the-flesh press event. So, why don't you follow along with us and watch a stream of the company's big gaming announcements (we'll be watching right along with you). Mario Kart already out of the way, maybe we'll get word on some of our other favorite Nintendo franchises. (Zelda or Donkey Kong, anybody?) Only one way to find out. Click on through past the break to watch a Twitch stream of the "Digital Event" or just check back with us throughout the day as we bring you all the latest E3 news.
Sony's PlayStation Now beta opens to all PS4 owners on July 31st
While its E3 presser has mostly been about specific games like Little Big Planet 3 and Destiny, Sony has just given us a bit of good news about its game streaming service, PlayStation Now. Starting July 31st, all gamers in the US and Canada (excluding Hawaii and Alaska) will be able to join a full public beta of PS Now, assuming they have a PS4. PlayStation 3, Vita and "select" Sony TV owners (meaning you need the right TV model and a DualShock 3 controller to pair with it) will also be getting beta access shortly thereafter. Update: Sony has pushed out a press release with pricing information for some of the service's games. There will be over 100 titles available, all for rent at prices between $2.99 and $19.99 available for varying periods of time. Subscription-style access is still off in the future, as is a "pilot service" for compatible Bravia TVs, or access in Asia and Europe.