New Destiny Retail Details

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Why Am I A Console Game?

[Short Answer] I hate you PC Folk

The Continual Problems with Battlefield 4

Why the DICE multiplayer needs another tweak...

Six Months with Microsoft Next Gen Hardware

Games Console or Entertainment System?

The Best DLC Money Can Buy

Does it have Zombies, Burials or Dragons.....?

Sunday 3 August 2014

The Growth of Twitch

When Twitch.tv branched off from the less focused Justin.tv back in 2011, it was predominantly used for eSports and general broadcasts. Now, in the year 2014, every John, Dick and Harry has a stream up showing off their gameplay for their favourite titles.

For streamers, the challenge is to make their channel stand out from the hefty crowd, and with Twitch playing host to around 1 million unique broadcasters a month during 2014, getting noticed is no easy feat. Streaming is a very competitive business and it takes a lot of effort and guile to keep the audience engaged and the viewership growing.

It’s usually a fresh idea that gets an audience growing but the vast amount of broadcasters it’s hard to be noticed. A good recent example of playing outside the box was “TwitchPlaysPokemon”. The channel allowed gamers to watch a full playthrough of Pokemon Red by inputting commands into the stream chat. It took 16 long days of sporadic commands, from 120,000 users, to finally beat the Elite Four but it became a thought provoking experiment for many (even those that didn’t take part). 

The three most popular games on Twitch are, and have been for a long time, League of Legends, Starcraft II and Dota 2. These are all cornerstones of competitive PC gaming so it’s hardly surprising that the output reflect the games popularity. However, the launch of the current console generation has seen many PlayStation 4 and Xbox One exclusives taking a seat at the table. Because broadcasting can be particularly casual it’s easy to grab a few viewers or to see how a game plays before picking it up yourself – it’s more difficult to make it into the big time. Most serious Twitch channels are expressed through Twitter as well as Facebook and Reddit. The PlayStation and Xbox One crowds have added 1 million additional broadcasters to these numbers so we can only expect for the volume of channels to get even bigger. 
Personally, I don’t think streaming works as a substitution to playing games but rather an addition to make gaming even more fund.

Streams like TheJustinFlynn has over 70,000 followers and is one of the most prominent success stories to come out of the medium. In fact broadcaster Justine Flynn, an aspiring Pokemon X and Y pro has used Twitch to teach others the mechanics of the title and its deep battle systems. It’s not being used to make him a better player, but also his audience.

Another well-known channel ManVsGame, from Jayson Love, now has 140,000 Twitch followers that watch him beat particularly difficult games. His stream has seen him conquer the Dead Space series, Splinter Cell: Blacklist and, more recently, Outlast on its highest setting. It sounds like every gamers dream to play games and to make them fun but, and Jayson shows this, you need a certain amount of charisma to keep the crowds entertained – and therefore coming back for more.

The more Internet traffic shown to Twitch, the more views and channels are bound to come up. Rajakaru Games are now streaming – not excessively – as are many other publications. It’s a great concept that has made the founders a whole lot of money, and many more gamers very, very happy.

Do you stream? Do you watch Twitch? If so please let us know your thoughts below. In fact, if you have an aversion to Twitch please also let us know why.


Saturday 2 August 2014

EA Access Announced

On 29th July EA announced a new service for Xbox One that will give subscribers access to multiple triple A games for $4.99 (or £3.99 in the UK) a month.

Titled EA Access, this service is being rolled out today in a beta format for a limited number of players (including me). The beta will initial give subscribers unlimited access to FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, Peggle 2 and Battlefield 4 with more titles to come in the next few months.

Additionally, EA Access members will receive 10 per cent off most EA games and DLC downloaded on the console too. Sony have been quick to judge the offerings as “expensive” but it looks like a good opportunity for certain users (families or those who would rather try a few games on the cheap)

Another benefit to the service is that its members will be able to play trials of upcoming games up to five days prior to their launch. So far the list of games this will include are: Madden NFL 15, NHL 15, FIFA 15, NBA LIVE 15 and Dragon Age: Inquisition. Your progress from these trials will also carry over into the full game upon release which makes this package even more exciting for some users.

EA Access memberships will be available over Xbox Live or at retail via Amazon, GameStop and EB Games (US only). There are currently no high street stores announced for Europe but its probably that Game will be the UK’s offerer.

It’s worth noting that the games you download will only be available while your subscription lasts.