New submitter rescendent writes "In an interview with Massively, Illyriad Games developers Ben Adams and James Niesewand predict the death of Flash, the rise of HTML5, and a long-term shift away from installed games. Quoting: 'The major advantages that boxed set or download games have had over browser-based games are local storage and direct access to the graphics and audio engines. Those barriers are being smashed apart by HTML5. ... Especially for MMO game developers, I personally don't believe that developers have any real long-term choice about embarking on this path or not. Ultimately, I believe it's either browser-based or obsolescence. If you don't do it, your competitors will, and they'll be making games that work identically on more device platforms, on more browsers, on more operating systems. It's going to take a very long time to get there, though, but this change has begun now, and we firmly believe that HTML5 is the future.' With Microsoft joining the ranks of Apple and not supporting Flash in Windows 8, there's definitely a risk to Flash. But will browser-based games really replace installed games?"

An anonymous reader writes "After recently running a full-page ad in the WSJ saying, 'PC gaming is not dead,' Razer has now announced a new laptop, the Blade, for the express purpose of playing video games. Its most distinctive feature is what they call the 'Switchblade' UI, which is an area next to the keyboard that has a multi-touch LCD screen and 10 dynamic keys. The screen can receive and display information from games, and the keys can show unique icons particular to the game you're playing. The requisite hardware for a gaming laptop makes it weigh almost seven pounds, but it's less than an inch thick. Another distinctive feature is the price — at $2,800, they price a lot of gamers right out of the market. As the article says, 'It's a gamble, but an exciting one.'"

Over 11 years ago, Deus Ex became one of the most celebrated games of its time, tightly weaving FPS and RPG gameplay together with a rich cyberpunk story. Today, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix launched a new entry to the series, titled Deus Ex: Human Revolution. A launch trailer is available, and early reviews for the game are positive. Opposable Thumbs says, "Fans can take a deep breath: they will get what they want from a Deus Ex game in this release. The story is dense, complete with twists, interesting characters, and far-flung locations." Rock, Paper, Shotgun largely agrees, and both reviews praise the breadth of choices players have in how they accomplish mission objectives. However, they disagree on the quality of the voice acting, and RPS complains of untimely and oddly-designed boss battles. DE:HR's stealth gameplay and hacking minigame receive high marks, as does the game's overall length and replayability.

An anonymous reader writes "An article at Ars goes through some of the biggest sins game publishers commit when porting a console game to the PC. At the top of the list, predictably, are annoying DRM and inconvenient game settings. From the article: 'PC gamers like to play with their mouse settings, adjust the amount of detail in the characters or environment, and change the audio mix between the music and the sound effects. We want to adjust the resolution, the aspect ratio, and even the field of view settings. The more options given to PC gamers, the better. While some engines support more options than others, there is a minimum amount of tweaking that should be available when we jump into the game. For an example of how badly PC gamers can get screwed on this issue, we can take a look at Bulletstorm when it was launched. Not only was mouse smoothing turned on as a default, but there was no way to turn it off. You had to find the configuration files, which were encrypted for some insane reason, and then install a third-party program to be able to turn off mouse smoothing and get the game feeling like it should on the PC."

JimWise writes "The fourth Humble Bundle has been released (the third to be released was the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle). Included in this bundle are: Crayon Physics Deluxe by Klooniegames; Cogs by Lazy 8 Studios; VVVVVV by Terry Cavanagh; Hammerfight by Kranx Productions; and And Yet It Moves by Broken Rules. Each of the games in the bundle is DRM free and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as available through Steam. As with the other Humble Bundles, you pay what you want and customize how much goes towards the developers, EFF, Child's Play, and the Humble Tip."

An anonymous reader tips a Tech Report article laying out ten sacred conventions of PC gaming. Quoting: "VI. Keep thine configurations options exposed. PC gamers are used to being able to configure things. That comes from both necessity and whim, and while one doesn't necessarily need to cater to the latter, the former is a must. Games don't have to expose a 1000-line menu for every conceivable detail level on the torches of King Whatever's castle entrance, but we'd like at least some amount of granularity. ... X. Honor thine modders and mod communities. Not every game benefits from mod support, mind you. When they do and the tools exist, however, the result is almost invariably a much bigger and more pervasive community (especially on the multiplayer front). That, in turn, leads to a constant stream of sales. It truly is a win-win situation."

donniebaseball23 writes "Valve's digital Steam service is going strong with 30 million active accounts, and now the developer has further boosted its offerings by adding free-to-play titles. Steam is kicking off its support of the free-to-play model with five titles (which will include in-game Steam exclusives): Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms. Valve's support of free-to-play shows just how widely accepted it's become."

Valve has announced the beta release of a set of authoring tools for Portal 2, allowing users to create their own puzzles and challenges in the name of science. "The Portal 2 Authoring Tools include versions of the same tools we used to make Portal 2. They'll allow you to create your own singleplayer and co-op maps, new character skins, 3D models, sound effects, and music." The tools are available for free to anyone who owns the PC version of the game.

Samfer writes with this excerpt from Operation Reality Gaming: "[...] sometime this summer, likely around August, we will see the appearance online of both a Crysis 2 editor and a CryEngine 3 SDK (software development kit). This not only means that people will be able to make full blown new levels for Crysis 2 but that the CryEngine 3 will also be made publicly available for the development of non-commercial projects to the community at large. To quote, 'This will be a complete version of our engine, including C++ code access, our content exporters (including our LiveCreate real-time pipeline), shader code, game sample code from Crysis 2, script samples, new improved Flowgraph and a whole host of great asset examples, which will allow teams to build complete games from scratch for PC.'"

Zothecula writes "While motion controllers are becoming a staple for console gamers with the release of the Wii, PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect, PC gamers have been left wanting. Razer is looking to change that with its Hydra motion controller which has been developed specifically for PC gamers. Unlike console-based motion control systems, the Hydra uses magnetic tracking technology by way of a base station that emits a magnetic field that Razer says allows the exact location and orientation of the handheld controllers to be detected with millimeter accuracy."

itwbennett writes "Portal 2 is breaking some new ground – at least the PlayStation 3 version is. 'Portal 2 marks the first time that Valve's social gaming network (and digital distribution system), Steam, will appear on consoles,' writes blogger Peter Smith. What this means is that once you link your Playstation Network [PSN] and Steam accounts 'you'll be able to keep tabs on what your Steam friends are up to from within a game of Portal 2 on the PS3,' says Smith. And, you'll be able to play Portal 2 with friends playing on PC or Mac. 'I can think of at least one other example of cross-platform gaming (Shadowrun supported both PC and Xbox players in the same game servers),' says Smith, 'but it's still very rare.'" This afternoon Valve launched a countdown to Portal 2 which can be accelerated by playing any of a group of indie games.

supersloshy writes "The team behind last December's successful Humble Indie Bundle 2 (as well as the original Bundle of course) have launched yet another bundle, but this time it's comprised entirely of games by developer Frozenbyte, including Trine, Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, a pre-order of Splot, and the prototype Jack Claw (with source code). All games (except Jack Claw) are, as always, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux-based operating systems and are DRM-free."

tekgoblin writes "Minecraft has currently sold about 2 million copies and it's still only in beta. However, the developers have just announced that the game will officially launch on 11/11/11. The date 11/11/11 was actually chosen because it falls on the same date as other various game releases, the most notable being Skyrim."

CVG recently spoke with Christofer Sundberg, co-founder of Avalanche Studios, the company behind Just Cause and its sequel. Sundberg expressed his disdain for both DRM and poor cross-platform ports, and talked about how he sees the hacker community as more of an ally than publishers do. Quoting: "'... 50 percent of the people that work for me come from a hacker background - that's true.' When asked whether approaching leading hackers and asking them to put their programming skills to good use was a wise idea, Sundberg added: 'Oh yeah. I absolutely think that's a fair approach, to think about how these people can fit on the right side of the law. It's one way, at least. Perhaps the truest pirates are too much down the road of anarchy to ever work with you in a proper way; these are the guys who see us as evil! But in Sweden the [hacking] scene was huge... As a studio, we've found that there's definitely a lot of talent [in that community].'"

deanbmmv quotes a plea from gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun for game makers to stop delaying game releases in continents with lower per capita cheeseburger consumption: "Crysis 2 comes out today! And Lego Star Wars III! Hooray! Except of course, only if you drawl your vowels. These two big games are out in America only today. Crysis 2 reaches Australia on Thursday, and the finally completes its journey to Europe by Friday. Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is taking a three day journey to Europe to reach us by Friday, before then walking to Australia to eventually be released eight days after its US launch. We've had enough. ... There’s an internet now. It’s changed everything. Once we were separate nations kept apart by vast spreads of water. But the internet contains no oceans. The time was a game could come out in North America and we’d not hear about it until the boats arrived carrying news from the new country. But now we can see the Steam page, the giant clocks on the game websites counting down to a day that means nothing, the launch trailers and excitable press releases about something we can’t have yet."

Bit-tech recently spoke with Richard Huddy, worldwide developer relations manager of AMD's GPU division, about the lack of a great disparity between PC game graphics and console game graphics, despite the hardware gap. Quoting: "'We often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look ten times as good. To a significant extent, that's because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad - mostly good, DirectX is getting in the way.' Huddy says that one of the most common requests he gets from game developers is: 'Make the API go away.' 'I certainly hear this in my conversations with games developers,' he says, 'and I guess it was actually the primary appeal of Larrabee to developers – not the hardware, which was hot and slow and unimpressive, but the software – being able to have total control over the machine, which is what the very best games developers want. By giving you access to the hardware at the very low level, you give games developers a chance to innovate, and that's going to put pressure on Microsoft – no doubt at all.'"

An anonymous reader writes "What has been clear from this year's Game Developers Conference is that consoles are beginning to show their age. With nothing beyond a possible Nintendo update on the horizon, developers at this year's GDC have turned their eyes to the PC. The article includes three videos that give a fantastic insight into where PC graphics are headed, including a version of Epic's Unreal engine, Crytek's Cryengine 3, and DICE's Frostbite 2 engine. Considering that these leaps in eye candy are only possible with the current state of PC graphics, we wonder how long consoles will be the target platform for development of blockbuster games."

Today marks the US launch of Dragon Age II, the sequel to BioWare's popular 2009 RPG Dragon Age: Origins. Like its predecessor and other BioWare RPGs, Dragon Age II is non-linear and has extensive dialog, though this time the story focuses on a particular character, Hawke, whose race and identity you can't change. A demo of the game is available, and early opinions noted both the impressive art direction and less punishing difficulty settings. BioWare has also released an optional ~1GB texture pack for the PC version that bumps up the level of detail for owners of high end computers. They explained some of the technological changes they made in a couple of blog posts. It's available for Windows, OS X, the PS3, and the Xbox 360.

An anonymous reader writes with this quote from PC Authority: "Ever since Microsoft turned its back on Windows gaming in favor of the closed Xbox ecosystem, the platform has been crying out for a champion. The company occasionally gives nods toward a revived focus upon PC gaming, most recently with yet another relaunch on Games for Windows Live and a trio of upcoming PC games, but when it comes to throwing cash around the Xbox is the beneficiary. What can definitely be said is that the one group that should be championing the PC, the PC Gaming Alliance, is going backwards. In 2009 the group lost the biggest PC game developer/publisher, Activision-Blizzard, and now it seems that both Microsoft and Nvidia have bid the alliance farewell."

iviv66 writes with this excerpt from Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "According to a thread on the Facepunch forums, a developer build of Crysis 2 containing the full game, multiplayer and the master key for the online authentication has been leaked, and is currently freely available from all sorts of astonishingly illegal websites. This sounds like it might be a serious tragedy for Crytek. Crysis 2 was scheduled for release on the 22nd of March, so the leaked build could be dangerously close to finished." EA and Crytek have responded to the leak, saying that the illicit copy is incomplete and unfinished, and that "Piracy continues to damage the PC packaged goods market and the PC development community."