Gaming News So Small It Gets a Second Thread

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/ubisofts-avatar-frontiers-of-pandora-delayed

Ubisoft delays Avatar till next year - changer

https://www.eurogamer.net/splinter-cell-vr-and-ghost-recon-frontline-cancelled

Also 4 other games cancelled including Ghost Recon F2P and Splinter Cell VR

[Yakumo]

What Happened to Ninja Gaiden?

The first sentence in that artical is enough to stop me reading. Ninja Gaiden did not originate on the NES. It was an arcade game.

[huxley]

https://www.eurogamer.net/ubisofts-a...andora-delayed
Ubisoft delays Avatar till next year - changer

https://www.eurogamer.net/splinter-cell-vr-and-ghost-recon-frontline-cancelled

Also 4 other games cancelled including Ghost Recon F2P and Splinter Cell VR

I thought the VR games were Facebook exclusives.

[Hirst]

The first sentence in that artical is enough to stop me reading. Ninja Gaiden did not originate on the NES. It was an arcade game.

Going to guess they copied off the Wikipedia article which is extremely NES-biased too, the opening paragraphs are just complete nonsense: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_Gaiden

The series gained popularity on the 8-bit NES for its tight action-platform gameplay, catchy music and, according to G4's X-Play, for being the first console game to have the story presented in cinematic cutscenes.

[Brad]

The first sentence in that artical is enough to stop me reading. Ninja Gaiden did not originate on the NES. It was an arcade game.

It gets worse as you continue. Tell me what happened to ninja gaiden without telling me what happened to ninja gaiden.

[Yakumo]

It gets worse as you continue. Tell me what happened to ninja gaiden without telling me what happened to ninja gaiden.

Man, so glad I stopped after the fist line.
Read that and thought "nope, load of typical know nothing bollocks."

[dataDave]

Didn’t it come out at the same time as the arcade version despite not really being the same game? I always looked at arcade Ninja Gaiden the same way I’d look at Atari ST screens on the back of Spectrum cassette cases.

[fuse]

City Connection's next S-Tribute release is Suchie-Pai

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Tactics Ogre: Reborn seemingly due out, and only months away at that

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[Asura]

https://www.eurogamer.net/splinter-c...line-cancelled
Also 4 other games cancelled including ... Splinter Cell VR

Shame.

[QualityChimp]

Microsoft is speeding up Xbox boot times.

"Microsoft is speeding up the boot time of its Xbox consoles. In the latest Xbox Insider test builds of the Xbox dashboard, the cold boot startup time has been reduced by around 5 seconds for Xbox Series X / S consoles. Microsoft was able to speed up the boot sequence by creating a shorter bootup animation."



Edit: Sorry, this was covered in the Xbox thread, but I don't have a new Xbox, so rarely frequent the thread, but others might only see this in here.

[QualityChimp]

Stray multiplayer is here, thanks to this mod

"Stray mods are transforming BlueTwelve’s cat sim, but this may be the biggest yet, adding a splitscreen multiplayer mode to the beautiful cyberpunk platformer."



You can now play Stray in first-person mode thanks to this mod

"Created by Jessica Natalia, this mod allows you to play Stray in first-person mod. And while there are a couple of bugs, we highly recommend downloading it.


Stray uses Unreal Engine 4, so we can expect more mods for it. In fact, there is already a mod that brings Garfield to the game. Another mod replaces the user-inputted meowing with a pleading call to find Jason from Heavy Rain."

[Asura]

Microsoft is speeding up Xbox boot times.

"Microsoft is speeding up the boot time of its Xbox consoles. In the latest Xbox Insider test builds of the Xbox dashboard, the cold boot startup time has been reduced by around 5 seconds for Xbox Series X / S consoles. Microsoft was able to speed up the boot sequence by creating a shorter bootup animation."

Good. I don't own one but I hope the idea catches on.

One of the things I loved about the New-3DS was that it ran the same software as the regular 3DS but on better hardware, meaning it booted much faster, the menus were much snappier... Everything was more responsive.

I have a command-line switch for Half-Life Alyx which makes the game boot straight to the menu, missing the title screen, and honestly it saves sooo much time.

[wakka]

Good. I don't own one but I hope the idea catches on.

One of the things I loved about the New-3DS was that it ran the same software as the regular 3DS but on better hardware, meaning it booted much faster, the menus were much snappier... Everything was more responsive.

I have a command-line switch for Half-Life Alyx which makes the game boot straight to the menu, missing the title screen, and honestly it saves sooo much time.

Yeah it's also just good to see investment being made in improving these areas which aren't going to be profit centres in and of themselves but simply improve the overall experience for existing customers.

Your New 3DS point is exactly how I feel about the PS5. You can easily level the complaint at it that it's basically a PS4 Pro Plus. I mean I mostly play PS4 software on it honestly. But, ugh, the experience is SO much better. Everything is just way snappier, the system menus run in a crisp and rich 4K HDR, and it's dead quiet. It's just way nicer to use.

[Asura]

Yeah it's also just good to see investment being made in improving these areas which aren't going to be profit centres in and of themselves but simply improve the overall experience for existing customers.

That's an interesting point, though - these actually do improve revenues.

Developers for this stuff have terms for this - I've seen it referred to as "the golden path". It's the series of steps which lie between the user thinking/saying "I'm gonna buy x", and the actual final moment they hit the BUY button that charges their payment card. This is important for them as they generally try to make sure that while bugs can exist in many parts of the user experience, that there are absolutely no bugs which affect the golden path.

Every little bit of loading, or connection errors, or anything else - could be the moment someone says "oh forget it" and they decide to do something else.

It wouldn't surprise me if Micosoft have data to support this; that they expect increased revenue just by making the interface snappier.

[fuse]

You can easily level the complaint at it that it's basically a PS4 Pro Plus

Except that unlike Pro Plus, if you use it too much within a 24 hour period, it doesn't make you **** yourself.