When people think of the Unity Engine, they usually think of small graphically un-intensive indie games, but Unity is trying to change that perception. The video above is in-engine and rendered in real time, so no image capturing here. While it may not quite be feature film grade it is still very impressive for a ‘free’ game engine, and it shows how far gaming software has come. All I know is that it makes me want to buy a new video card. Or possibly an Xbox Scorpio.
E3 2016 Press Conference Wrap-Up!
The E3 press conferences used to be a place where game companies would surprise people, but lately thanks to leaks or publishers trying to get out in front of news cycles there aren’t a lot of surprises any more. The only company that seems to really be able to have those exciting shock moments is Sony. Will any of those games be good? Will they be out any time soon? Who knows, but they make for a good show. Now that is not to say that other companies didn’t have a lot to show, they did, and a lot of it was good. There just wasn’t the excitement level that we used to have.
EA
EA had a good year with Star Wars, Mass Effect, and Titanfall 2, but honestly Battlefield 1 was still by far the most impressive thing that they had to show. I don’t think I have been this jazzed about a Battlefield game since 1941.
Bethesda
Bethesda has had a reduced E3 presence since they bought Id, and thus bought QuakeCon, but they still had a couple of new games to show, one of which was the much wondered about Prey 2. Which is no longer a ‘2’ or anything like what that game or its predecessor were, but the new Prey still looks very interesting. Also we are getting a new Quake. After a new Wolfenstein and Doom, this was hardly a shock.
Microsoft
Microsoft started and ended their show talking about hardware. While I can’t wait to get my hands on a more powerful Xbox at least I will have a lot of games to play to help me bide my time. They had what might be my game of show, Sea of Thieves. I was curious before, but the video above and the show floor hands-ons have me supper hyped for this game.
Ubisoft
Ubisoft’s show was all over the place. Steep a new extreme sports game looked like a lot of fun, but the disappointing Ghost Recon: Wildlands demo was a real bummer. Worst game reveal this year. They also really want Watch Dogs to be a thing. Watch Dogs 2 was like half of the show.
Sony
Sony went all out! Games that we have been wanting for years like Last Guardian got release dates, and then they announced stuff like Death Stranding. I don’t know what the heck is going on in that video, but it has got everyone talking. Great job Sony!
Nintendo
Zelda. Nintendo brought Zelda and little else. This Zelda looks to be the most ‘Western RPG’ inspired, and it looks great, but Nintendo needs to do something soon to knock our socks off. Otherwise they will not even be worth talking about.
All in All there were a lot of great games brought to this year’s E3, but just not a lot of surprises. I can’t wait to get my hands on Sea of Thieves or figure out what Death Stranding is all about. It looks like we got a lot of good years of gaming still ahead of us!
Some Windows 10 Beta Updates!
Windows 10 has been out on PC for a few months and it has been a worthy upgrade, but on the phone it has been a different story. It has been a slow buggy mess. To be fair it was in more of an alpha state instead of a beta, but that has changed with Build 572. It finally feels fast enough to be a decent upgrade to Windows 8.1, or at least on a downgrade. I hope things keep progressing this way because it would awesome for Microsoft to have a viable mobile operating system, and as a bonus have it be the same OS that is on all their other devices.
Also on the Windows 10 upgrade train is the Xbox One. It is being call the new Xbox One Experience, but it is really just Windows 10 with a new console interface. For the most part the new interface layout does make basic day to day tasks better, but one problem is that the Apps and Games section feels disconnected from the rest of the layout. They should be just a blade away instead of an app. It makes it feel disjointed when you are looking for a game. They are starting to upgrade all the preview program members, but I think they may be pushing it a little. While I haven’t had any major issues with the new interface it does feel a little glitchy still.
The last little piece I am going to talk about is the new Windows 10 like start menu that they gave older Surface devices. It was nice of Microsoft to do something for Surface and Surface 2 users, and I love having the Start Menu back, but they really should find a way to put Windows 10 on these tablets. They should be far more capable then a cell phone. It just seems like they are burning those early users.
I hope Microsoft’s unified platform works out for them. They have a lot of work left to go, but for users to have one OS across all their devices would be amazing. We will see how it turns out later this Fall.
E3 2015 Press Conference Wrap Up!
There was a lot of news that came out of this year’s E3 press conferences, and I think it is one of the better years I have seen. Everyone had a major announcement or two, and I am really excited about the year to come. I am going to try and go through the press conferences in chronological order, but we will see. He we go!
Bethesda:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE2BkLqMef4
Oh man Bethesda had a good show, and they had three epic games to show off: Doom, Dishonored 2, and of course Fallout 4. Any one of these games pretty much every publisher would kill to have, and Bethesda showed them all, and better yet they are not that far away with Fallout for coming out this year, and Doom and Dishonored next year. Great work guys. There is a reason they are one of my favorite game makers.
Microsoft:
This was Microsoft’s year to get back in the fight, and I think they did a great job. They showed off all their major franchises, and four of them are coming out this year: Fable Legends, Forza 6, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, and the one they a banking on Halo 5, but by far the biggest news was that they figured out how to make backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games work, and as I can attest to it works pretty well. Oh yeah HoloLens looks crazy cool. I think I may need one. Microsoft’s problem is that they are not showmen. If Sony would have had this lineup they would be dragging Microsoft’s dead carcass around. Still it was a good year for the boys in Redmond.
EA:
EA was doing its best to show that they are not the evil empire any more, and they did a pretty convicting job by showing me two games I want. No, need! Star Wars Battlefront, and Mass Effect: Andromeda. They also had a long boring section in the middle where they talked about sports and stuff, but pretty much they just needed to show Star Was and Mass Effect, and they did, so I will love them. For now.
Ubisoft:
Ubisoft did a good job of pretty much just showing that every game they make is on its way back to the market. Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, South Park, Assassins Creed, and whatever else. If Ubisoft makes it, it is on its way to you. Plus the show was put on by the amazing Aisha Tyler, so they get a lot of points for that.
Sony:
Sony was in kind of a weird position this year. All of its games are coming out next year, but if there is one thing Sony knows how to do it is put on a show, and they did a wonderful job. Their theme this year was definitely we will have the games you want. Remastered Final Fantasy 7, check; Shenmue 3, check (Kickstarted anyway); Hitman, check; all your favorite Sony games, check. Considering that nothing was coming out this year, or was multiplatform, it was still an amazing show. It was fun to watch. If Microsoft would have had this show they would have been graded an ‘F’, but Sony played it just right, “We will have your games!”.
Nintendo:
Their conference was pretty much: “Hey you guys like Star Fox right?!!!” Luckily we do, but that was pretty much all they had. Mario Builder looked cool, but not exciting. The Wii U is going to need some games stat!
Square-Enix:
Square-Enix probably had the most new games to show, but pretty much all I cared about was their amazing Hitman trailer. It looks like the Hitman I have always dreamed about. Wide open areas with tons of different contracts to take out (not on dates), and all sorts of great gear to use. So good. Oh yeah there was some other stuff, but that was for other people, Hitman was for me, and it comes out in December!
AMD:
They pretty much had to release a new high-end video card, and they did! I can’t wait to see the benchmarks. Until then, they did what they needed to do. So good for them. nVidia needs the competition.
Like I said this was a great year unless you were Nintendo, and there are so many great games coming out. It is customary to declare a winner, but I am going to say the gamer was the winner this year. We are getting what we wanted from everybody, so no losers here! Again, unless you were a Nintendo fan. You lost. Sorry.
Windows 10 Preview Update!!!
Microsoft has unveiled the launch date of its new operating system Windows 10: July 29th 2015. For desktops and laptops that is. They have yet to give us the date for phone, Xbox One, or their other devices such as HoloLens and Surface Hub. I am sure they will let us know soon. As for the computer and the phone, I have been using them awhile, and I thought I would let you know what to expect!
For computers Windows 10 is pretty much a streamlined Windows 8. It has a better Start Menu and Notification Center. The settings are finally all in one place, and they are launching a new browser Edge. It is really the Windows 8 we wanted the first time around, so it seems Microsoft is sticking with the every other version of Windows is the one to get. The last couple of updates to Windows 10 have been pretty much bug fixes, and it is running a lot better. If we get a couple of more updates like this Windows will have no trouble hitting their July 29th launch date.
Windows 10 is also including a few fun features as well. There is now an Xbox App that works a little like Steam allowing you to buy games from a store, chat with your Xbox Live friends, control your Xbox One, and also stream Xbox One games to your PC to free up your TV for your significant other. The last feature is the one I can’t wait for! Windows 10 will also see the launch of DirectX 12. Apparently this upgrade to the massively popular API stack can increase performance in games by as much as 20%-50%, and even more if you got a lot of cores in your CPU. We will see, but since I have an eight core processor, I really hope so.
On the phone side, things are not as cheery. Windows 10 Mobile is slow and crashes a lot. I am hoping that with the PC version only two months away from completion we will start to see some updates to the poor mobile builds. You can see what they are going for, and things are laid out better. The Mail, Office, and other apps are way more useful. Having the phone store merged with the computer store should help out the app selection as well. Until there are a few more updates however, I would stay far away from the Windows 10 Mobile test.
As for the Xbox One, I am in the preview program, but there is not a lot to write home about, and they haven’t started the Windows 10 preview. There have been rumors that the Windows 10 test for that platform will launch after it is talked about at E3 this month. Here is hoping. I don’t know what we will see for Windows 10 on the Xbox One, but again the unified store should be cool. I would think they are going to do something soon because they are going to want to have Windows 10 on the Xbox One before Christmas buying season.
There you go. Windows 10 on the computer, good! Windows 10 on the phone, bad (for now)! I will be back in a couple of months with my full review of the PC version of the OS, and I hope that I will have better things to say about the mobile version as well. Until then be sure and reserve your free copy of Windows 10 for computers (if you have Windows 8 or 7) by clicking on the new Windows icon in your task bar!