It would be fair to say that Valve’s digital card game, Artifact, failed to make much of an impact following its high-profile launch at the end of 2018. Mere weeks after its arrival, user numbers had tumbled – and now, after a year of silence, Valve has finally announced a radical overhaul for the game, one that even ditches its fundamental monetisation model of selling cards.
Designed by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield, who left Valve last March, Artifact struggled from the off, with players rejecting everything from the game’s perceived complexity to balance issues and even its pricing model, which – unlike free-to-play competitors Hearthstone and Gwent – included an upfront cost, alongside payment for additional cards. By the time July came around, Artifact was barely seeing 100 players online in a 24-hour period.
Valve said little about Artifact for almost year, but suddenly, earlier this month, it began to tease new activity for the game, saying it would reveal “more news after the launch of Half-Life: Alyx”. Now, with Alyx out the door and basking in the light of rave reviews, Valve has kept its promise, outlining some early changes for what it’s calling Artifact 2.0.
According to the company, it has been “focussing on gameplay changes first”, with the biggest of these seeing Artifact’s action zoomed right out so that players can view all three lanes at once. “The majority of effects still work on individual lanes so they still maintain their identity,” it says, “but it’s less likely that a player will get shut out in the same way they used to.”
It’s also introducing a new draft mode, Hero Draft, designed to give players “a taste of constructing decks without all the pressure.”
Perhaps the most significant change revealed so far, though – and one that highlights just how radical Valve intends its overhaul to be – is that Artifact’s previous monetisation model will be completely abandoned, and Valve will no longer be selling cards and packs for the game. Instead, cards (which are likely to be either altered or entirely new for the reboot) will be unlocked through play, meaning players’ old decks and stats will become obsolete.
The goal here, says Valve, is to make the experience “easier to pick up”, and removing the ability to buy cards means players “won’t face an opponent with a stacked deck.”
The developer says it has “some ideas about what we’d like to sell” instead of cards, although it stopped short of whispering the magical phrase “hats”.
Valve hasn’t yet offered a release window for Artifact 2.0’s beta (which will take the form of a completely new executable), but says access will “trickle out” to individual accounts. Priority will be given to players of Artifact’s original release, and open beta will begin once closed beta has sufficiently ramped up. Valve says it hopes to reach 1.0 “quicker than Dota 2”.
There’s not much more to be gleaned right now as far as Valve’s future plans go, but for a more thorough breakdown of the original Artifact’s failed first few months, it’s well worth having a read of Eurogamer’s investigation into the subject, as penned by Mike Stubbs.
Rockstar Games has announced they’ll donate a percentage of purchases from GTA Online and Red Dead Online to COVID-19 relief efforts.
In a post on their Instagram page, Rockstar Games has announced they’ll donate 5% of their revenue from GTA Online and Red Dead Online to COVID-19 relief efforts.
“Starting April 1st, and continuing through the end of May, 5% of our revenue from purchases in our online games, GTA Online and Red Dead Online, will be donated to COVID-19 relief efforts,” says Rockstar Games. “These funds will be used to help local communities and businesses struggling with the impacts of COVID-19, both directly and by supporting some of the amazing organizations who are on the ground helping those affected by the crisis. As things progress, we will share more on these efforts.”
“The Rockstar Games community is at the center of everything we do,” continues Rockstar. “We love seeing players immersed in exploration of our virtual world and connecting with each other through them. As our teams navigate these difficult times, we see our local communities in North America, the UK, India, and beyond being deeply affected. Small businesses have closed their doors, and communities who rely on government-provided support that they cannot access are struggling. The road ahead will be challenging, and we want to help where we can.”
Like every other industry, COVID-19 has left an impact on the games industry. GDC was supposed to happen this month but it got postponed to this August. Additionally, E3 got canceled, leaving developers such as Ubisoft and Microsoft to hold digital events instead.
If you want to hear DualShockers’ thoughts on Resident Evil 3, check out our review discussion where we talk about Nemesis, Gameplay, and Martin Sandwich.
You might have to wait a few more days to explore the grimy, zombie-filled streets of Raccoon City yourself, but, fortunately for you, a few of DualShockers‘ staff has braved the horrors of Resident Evil 3 and lived to tell about it.
Managing Editor Logan Moore, Video Manager Mario Rivera, and I, Senior Staff Writer Ricky Frech, got together and went over our thoughts on Capcom’s latest in a half-hour long review discussion. Put it in your eyeholes below:
Resident Evil 3 takes what Capcom did with 2019’s Resident Evil 2 remake and turns the action up a few notches. For some, Jill’s improved moveset over her predecessors is going to be exactly what the doctor ordered. Others might pine for the slower but more tense experience that RE2 gave you. You’ll have to watch the video to see which camp each of us falls into.
The big draw of RE3, of course, is Nemesis. After how harrowing each encounter felt against Mr. X in RE2, the superpowered bioweapon had some big shoes to fill. While the character design is astounding and he certainly has his moments, Nemesis definitely feels like the weaker of Umbrella Corps’ big baddies.
And, of course, the discussion wouldn’t be complete without a mention of Resident Evil Resistance, the new multiplayer component of this game. At the time of recording we hadn’t had a ton of time to play it, but the new asymmetrical multiplayer mode has potential, even if it’s not quite there yet.
Resident Evil 3 is out on April 3 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. We’re going to have more coverage than you could ask for over the course of this week. So keep your eyes on DualShockers for all your Resident Evil 3 needs.
A number of nominees in this year’s BAFTA Game Awards are now on sale at the Humble Store.
Frustratingly, it’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of good offers. Some prices, including those for Sekiro and Control, are the lowest we’ve seen for those games so far on PC. Others you’ll find for cheaper elsewhere if you do a quick scout around.
I’ve put some of the key offers and prices below, but you can find everything (and maybe even a few hidden gems) on the full BAFTA Game Awards Humble sale page.
Sekiro: Shadow Die Twice for £32.49
Control for £32.15
Final Fantasy 14: Complete Edition for £20.99
A Plague Tale: Innocence for £15.99
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for £41.24
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep for £17.99
Borderlands 3 for £24.99
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition for £42.49
Planet Zoo Deluxe Edition for £32.24
Total War: Three Kingdoms for £33.74
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan for £12.49
The Outer Worlds for £37.49
Civilization 6 Platinum Edition for £41.15
No Man’s Sky for £19.99
Life is Strange 2 – Complete Season for £13.19
Life is Strange 2 – Episode 1 for £1.62
As you can see: some good, some not so good.
Take Star War Jedi: Fallen Order, for example. The Respawn hit is actually £36.99 over at Amazon UK, saving you a couple more quid. Meanwhile, you can find the Final Fantasy 14: Complete Edition and the MMORPG’s latest expansion pack, Shadowbringers, for 50 per cent off at the official Square Enix Store. Lastly, Borderlands 3 is £22 and the Super Deluxe Edition is £37.40 at Green Man Gaming.
Outside of the heavy hitters, you can also find a handful of last year’s most interesting indies reduced. Katana Zero, Baba is You and Observation are my picks of the lot.
For the last few years, I’ve appeared on a panel at EGX Rezzed to talk about how to get into game journalism. I love doing this panel, answering questions from the audience and chatting on-stage with my super cool colleagues about their personal journeys. So when EGX Rezzed was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak, I was heartbroken at the thought we wouldn’t be able to do it again this year.
Thankfully, the wonderful events team behind EGX Rezzed has pulled together Rezzed Digital, an online version of the show, and we’re running the panel remotely. It kicks off at 1pm today, 27th March on YouTube, where I’ll be joined by Eurogamer news editor Tom Phillips, Eurogamer reporter Emma Kent, and Rock, Paper Shotgun reporter Imogen Beckhelling to offer our advice and answer your questions. Tune in via the embedded video below.
A word on the Eurogamer internship. We’ve made the difficult decision to postpone the 2020 internship until a point we feel it’s right to do it. With all the uncertainty around coronavirus, we’re not sure when that will be. But we are committed to the internship, we are proud of the interns we’ve worked with over the last three years, and it will return.
So! If you’re wondering about game journalism, thinking about how freelance works at Eurogamer, or just fancy stopping by to say hello, we’d love to see you in our YouTube chat from 1pm. I promise to keep the dad jokes to a minimum.
Sci-fi role-player The Outer Worlds will arrive for Nintendo Switch as a physical release and digital download on 5th June.
Boxed copies will include a physical cartridge – but also a sizeable download, as has rather become the norm. You’ll need space to fit a 6GB download, described as a “day one patch”.
The game’s Nintendo Switch price point has been set at £50/€60.
The Outer Worlds launched first for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One back in October last year to generally favourable reviews. It’s developed by Obsidian, the studio perhaps best known for its work on Fallout: New Vegas, and more recently the enjoyable South Park: The Stick of Truth.
A magical door in a magical forest? Who can resist that? Not me, at least – particularly when the art has the style of those Atomic Age children’s books from the US: flat, four-colour printing, a hero with a sort of Charlie Brown squiggle for a quiff, everything thick and dash and aching of mimeo-ink. Jeepers!
So yes, The Other Side is a puzzle game for smartphones with a killer sense of art. And it’s wonderful to play with, too: a game about getting characters – sometimes one, sometimes more – to the door in a level and then on to the next one.
You do this by pulling them along on conveyor belts that move them and everything else that’s on the belt with them – trees, bushes, water towers, bits of fence and chimneys. The twist is that various belts overlay each other, so you move a guy left, then get him onto a down belt, them move him down and along and…and…and… man it gets tricky fast.
The belts are not just straight lines, basically. They take sudden right angles and form loops and whatnot. It’s a bit head-melty, but only in the description. In the hands, it all clicks even before the sound track has given a sense of the taut finely-worked mechanism that allows everything to operate, even before the brain has found words for what you’re up to.
All this, and look at the mauves, the lilacs, the bursts of orange and scribbles of hot pink. Puzzles grow in complexity, but they also shift you around – the woods one second, a rooftop in Brooklyn the next. This game is beautiful – just beautiful. I can’t wait for more.
We’re covering this game as part of Rezzed Digital, highlighting our favourite indie games from the delayed EGX Rezzed.
Undoubtedly the biggest surprise of The Game Awards back in December 2019 was Microsoft’s decision to reveal Xbox Series X: the name, the branding – and most crucially, the form factor. It was a console quite unlike anything we’d seen before, possibly the most original home console design since Nintendo’s GameCube way back in 2001. During our recent visit to the Microsoft campus in Redmond WA, we had a chance to meet key members of the hardware team that created this remarkable-looking device – and in the process, we gained a much better understanding of why Xbox Series X required a top to bottom revamp of the traditional console form factor.
“When we started thinking about how we would design this, everything was theoretical,” says Chris Kujawski, principal designer at Microsoft. “We didn’t have stuff we could test, we didn’t have measurements we could take, we knew it was going to be powerful and we knew it was going to require a totally different way of thinking about how to design a console.”
The key issue facing the designers came down to power and target performance. The Xbox system architects decided from the get-go that the next generation console had to deliver an absolute minimum of twice the overall graphics performance of the Xbox One X, meaning 12 teraflops of GPU compute, sitting alongside the Zen 2 cores that would deliver a 4x improvement in CPU power. At the same time, the mandate was set that the machine also had to equal the acoustic performance of the Xbox One X – a tall order when system power would be increasing significantly.
The challenge came into focus once the outsize power requirements of the new hardware came into focus. Based on the prototype hardware we saw, Xbox Series X ships with a 315W power supply and in keeping with all of Microsoft’s console designs since Xbox Series S, this would be delivered internally. With the sheer amount of electrical power pumping through the processor, the regulators pump up to 100W per square inch, delivering up to 190A. What made this all coalesce into the form factor we have today is the key decision to move to a split motherboard design: one board houses the high-power components like the Series X processor, the GDDR6 and the power regulators. The other is the Southbridge board, principally handling I/O. The boards sit on either side of a substantial chassis block – a sheer aluminium casting.
Constructing Xbox Series X – Microsoft and Digital Foundry build the console up from the centre chassis upwards.
“I like to think about our past generations as having a bit of an exoskeleton, so you have a mechanical structure with electrical shielding all on the outside then you have all the guts in the inside,” explains Jim Wahl, director of mechanical engineering for Xbox hardware. “And so what we did in this generation is that we turned that completely inside out… and so this centre chassis essentially forms the spine, the foundation of this system and then we build things out from there.”
“This is actually my favorite part of the console on the inside,” adds Chris Kujawski. “It’s like it’s the coolest part that anybody who actually buys the console will never actually see.” It’s also essential in keeping the thermal demands of the hottest components in check. “It creates what we call a parallel cooling architecture, so you get cool air in – and cool air streams through separate zones of the console,” adds Wahl. “The second thing it does is that it actually distributes the heat sources a bit differently in the console – so those two things together are really effective at cooling a console. And then the third thing it does is… we play this sort of 3D Tetris game, where you’re trying to figure out where the components should go and what’s the best arrangement – and then that starts to establish some of the dimensional aspects.”
While all of this is happening, Chris Kujawski is literally building an Xbox Series X right in front of us using all of these component parts – an exercise we would be carrying out ourselves the following day when it came to producing the video content at the top of this page. The two main boards are of broadly equivalent size, slotting into place on either side of the chassis. I’m reminded more of the old Apple Mac Pro design rather than any kind of console I’d seen before. “So already you can see how these larger components are being Tetrissed together,” says Kujawski. “Already you can tell it’s going to be a very different kind of shaped product than we’ve ever done before.”
Along with the 4K UHD Blu-ray optical drive and the 315W power supply, electrical shielding is added to the construction. There’s a real balancing act to this. Essentially, electromagnetic radiation has to be contained within the machine, but at the same time, Xbox Series X has to dissipate a lot of heat. “What’s interesting is that if you look up previous generations, we always had a very nice piece of metal around [the internals] like a Faraday cage,” says Andres Hernandez, director of electrical engineering for Xbox. “This time, we had to think a little outside the box. We have board-level shields. We have localised shielding, instead of having that huge piece of metal shielding.”
Xbox Series X
Xbox One X
Xbox One S
Dimensions
15.1cm x 15.1cm x 30.1cm
30cm x 24cm x 6cm
29.5cm x 23cm x 6.5cm
Total Volume
6.86 litres
4.32 litres
4.41 litres
Weight
4.45kg/9.8lbs
3.69kg/8.14kg
2.90kg/6.4lbs
Ports:
HDMI 2.1 output, 3x USB 3.2, networking port, expanded storage slot, power input
HDMI 2.0b output, HDMI 1.4 input, 3x USB 3.2, Toslink audio, IR output, Gigabit Ethernet, power input.
HDMI 2.0a output, HDMI 1.4 input, 3x USB 3.2, Toslink audio, IR output, Gigabit Ethernet, power input.
Optical Drive:
4K UHD Blu-ray
4K UHD Blu-ray
4K UHD Blu-ray
After this, we get a look at the solid-state storage drive – a custom module built for Xbox Series X, which has its own thermal challenges. “What’s really impressive is that this is a 1TB internal module and it runs at 2.4GB/s at up 3.8W, so this is a big challenge for us,” says Hernandez. “When you’re in a 22x30mm [SSD] form factor, that’s really tiny… how do you dissipate all of that heat? So that’s one of the pieces where we had to go and rethink a lot of our thermal strategy, because that’s a lot of bandwidth to go push into such a small form factor.”
PC NVMe SSDs often lose performance simply because they get too hot – and this required some innovative engineering for the new Xbox. “We have these competing set of springs that we call thermal bias springs,” says Jim Wahl. “What that does is that it actually biases the card up against this top thick heatsink, so that the card is transferring heat through its connector into the chassis off to cooling air as it goes through the system… there’s tons of engineering that just sort of sharpens the pencil and gets it right.”
Chris Kujawski continues to construct the Series X and it’s time to bring out one of the largest single components in the entire design – the heat sink. It’s pretty big, relatively speaking, a heavy copper vapour chamber with a lightweight aluminium heat sink attached. It’s big enough to cover the vast majority of the SoC board – but it doesn’t just siphon heat away from the main processor. “We have these very powerful regulators, so one of the challenges is how do we actually cool that much power density? So, we actually ended up using the vapour chamber for a couple of things,” says Andres Hernandez. “The first one is we also heat sink our GDDR6 memory to the vapour chamber. That made a lot of sense because when you’re pushing a lot of bandwidth, those chips are thermally high. And then the second piece is, as I mentioned, the regulators. It’s one of the most power-dense pieces of our box.”
In order to maintain the same kind of acoustic performance seen on Xbox One X, a number of components are required, but it starts with hardware built into the processor itself. Readings from 64 diodes on the SoC are continually monitored, feeding a fan algorithm in the system firmware that keeps the system as quiet as possible, while delivering cooling power when it’s needed. “With all that power, you have to move a lot of air and you want to move it quietly,” says Jim Wahl. “We studied many different ways of doing air movement in a product and a single axial fan was the most efficient, the quietest air mover for our system… we do a bunch of customisations here, so the number of blades, particularly the blade geometry, is highly highly optimised to operate within the confines of our system.
A video presentation of the Xbox Series X’s specifications and features – and a look at a range of impressive demos showing the key technologies in action.
“There are a bunch of under-the-hood things like the bearing surfaces and the bearing types to keep it very quiet, to make sure that this powerful fan stays quiet across its life,” adds Wahl. “And then there are things that are more subtle, like the curvature on the shroud out to the corners, even those little details improve the efficiency of moving air through the box and out the top.”
Sitting next to the Xbox Series X construction taking shape is the main casing into which all of these parts will be packed. However, what’s immediately obvious is that this device is dense. There’s going to be very little free space within it once the component parts are placed within. It’s a complete antithesis to the concept of airflow as we know it within, say, a PC case. “We also have to have good air in to the enclosure, so you have certain venting and large holes,” explains Jim Wahl. “You have exhaust out the top and we have large venting holes, but the the net effect of putting all of this together, having parallel paths, having this really powerful quiet fan at the top, is that we get 70 per cent more airflow through this console than the past generation and we get 20 per cent more airflow through our heatsink alone than in the past generation.”
And at the most fundamental level, there’s a very basic set of ‘rules’ that define the form factor of Xbox Series X beyond the unprecedented power requirements of the processor, as Chris Kujawski explains: “Jim mentioned how the ODD [optical disc drive] sets one dimension, the volume of the heat sink sets the other dimension, the height is set by airflow and throughout this kind of complex negotiation of figuring out how this stuff comes together, we landed on a square form factor which we love.”
Certain thermal realities also helped to define the look of the box. The large holes on the top of the machine are there by virtue of the need to expel a good amount of hot air. “We decided to really focus on this as the signature surface on the product,” explains Kujawski. “We started off by creating some extra depth by making them each about a centimetre deep. And then carving out this surface, it changes the look of it as you approach it – and as you raise and lower your sight line, you see more or less in there. Then we amped it up by adding that green layer underneath and that’s got its own variable depth, so it’s thicker in the middle and it’s thinner on the edges.”
And with that, the internal structure is essentially complete. Kujawski takes a hold of the construction by the heat sink and slots it into the external casing. And the plastic surround must surely be one of the simpler aspects of the design, right? It’s a rectangular piece of casing, after all. In actual fact, the dimensions of the shell created a whole new series of challenges, mostly owing to its depth. Robots construct Xbox Series X on the production line, with tooling moving in and out of the casing – and at one point, there was simply no give left in the design – the tools couldn’t leave the case, requiring another Eureka moment to make the Series X form factor possible to mass produce.
It’s fair to say that the hardware team didn’t quite expect to see some of the memes that emerged from the Game Awards reveal, but it has been fun to see Microsoft react with humour to some of the more amusing form factor comparisons – to the point where the infamous Series X vs fridge head-to-head made it into Microsoft’s own social media. However, the fact remains that it is a fundamentally different, challenging design and with that in mind, it was sent out to focus testers for their thoughts.
“We presented it to them and said, ‘what do you think, does this work for you? Unplug your Xbox, plug this in. Does it fit in your cabinet? Would you want to show this off to your friends?’ And we were relieved and gratified to find out that the vast majority of people totally loved it,” says Chris Kujawski. “The footprint is really small – when you compare it to a traditional shaped console that’s pretty deep, you’ve actually got a really small footprint so when you plug in all your cables, you can actually put it on a much shallower shelf or put it in a shallower cabinet than you could before. That was pretty magical for us to get that feedback so early on in the program and to get that confidence that this was going to work, that people are going to respond well to this.”
With the Series X constructed, the focus shifts to the revised Xbox controller. For our briefing, the design team put together a presentation board showing all of its joypads from across the years from the original vintage 2001 ‘Duke’ all the way up to recent devices like the Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 and Microsoft’s acclaimed Adaptive Controller. Sitting on the top-right of the board is the new pad for Xbox Series X. There’s obviously a journey here of gradual evolution, though obviously the Adaptive Controller is something of a radical departure.
“What was really cool about it is that accessibility and inclusive design is now a baseline part of every product we design,” says Chris Kujawski. “Just like we would talk about performance, specs and reliability, accessibility is is part of that conversation now across all of our hardware and our packaging. That’s been really cool just process-wise for us and I think it’s helped a lot of us grow and become just better product makers, it’s been a really great thing to be part of.”
On the face of it, the new Xbox controller doesn’t look that much different from the pads we’ve seen before with the obvious exception of the share button and a new d-pad that appears to share much in common with the design seen on the Elite series controllers. The number one piece of feedback Microsoft received from its most committed players is that they are happy with the existing design – the key was to extend that level of satisfaction to more users. “Some of the themes that came up, number one was ergonomics,” explains Microsoft senior designer Ryan Whitaker. “Can you make this thing more comfortable? I have small hands. Can you make this fit in my hands better? Connectivity – I have all these new devices, I want to play Xbox games on all these devices, can you make it easier to pair? Sharing – capturing and sharing has become a really big part of the gaming lifestyle.”
Microsoft kept the same basic design, ensuring that existing peripherals like the chat pad would work just fine with the new controller – but went to work in re-sculpting the design. It turned out that small changes could make the pad far more comfortable to use for many, many more users. The existing controller is designed to fit comfortably within the fifth to 95th percentile hand sizes, but small changes could go a long way in accessibility terms. “One of the things we found is that if we can actually reduce the percentiles on the lower end, if we target the third percentile up to the 95th percentile, those two percentile points actually represent hundreds of millions of people,” says Whitaker. “And so just by slightly shrinking some areas of the controller, we found that we can actually reach a lot more people and at the same time make it more comfortable for everyone.”
But this is the next generation Xbox, so why not push on with a more radical design? A look at the presentation board in front of us showing the evolution of the controller demonstrates that the fundamentals haven’t really changed. Behind us on a flipboard, there are photos of how users interact with the existing pad – and let’s just say that there are some strange formations of fingers and hands there. According to Microsoft, the decision to evolve the existing design is essentially born from the fact that users like the current set-up. They’re used to it and happy with it.
“They’ve got a lot of muscle memory in there,” sums up Whitaker. “Some of the ways that we’ve found that we could increase accessibility is by rounding those corners on the bumper. We’ve taken in the opening by a few millimeters and the angle of attack there has changed by a degree. There are things that we knew we didn’t want to change, that includes things like thumbstick heights, we want to make sure that people’s muscle memories still there.”
There are other simple changes that can also help more than you might imagine. “You can see that we have a matte finish on the bumpers and triggers now instead of gloss,” says Ryan Whitaker. “And what that helps us do is – whether you have dry hands or you’re really intense and your fingers are getting kind of sweaty, it actually helps to maintain the same posture, grip, and friction so that your performance doesn’t change over time.” Again, hundreds of thousands of hours of testing are done on new controller designs. “All these angles, heights, textures, they’re finally tuned – we’re talking 0.1mm and people notice the difference,” says Whitaker. “You can actually measure the performance and see how things go up or go down based on how you tune those surfaces.”
Rich Leadbetter and John Linneman talk about their impressions of the Xbox Series X hardware, inside and out.
An interesting point of discussion is the fact that the Xbox controller still ships with AA batteries as opposed to the kind of built-in rechargeable cells we find in the Dual Shock pad – and that tradition extends to the Series X pad too. Tech influencer Austin Evans (also attending this event) asks whether it’s time to move on, while Digital Foundry’s John Linneman points out how his son needs to instantly get back into the game when the batteries die, while also making the argument that AA battery support means that the controller will still work perfectly many years from now, while internal cells fade and die.
Jason Ronald, partner director of program management at Xbox – aka ‘Xbox Beard Guy’ from the E3 2019 Scarlett trailer – muses that the 50/50 split on opinion in the room almost perfectly reflects customer feedback: “What it comes down to is when actually talking to gamers, it’s kind of polarising and there is a strong camp that really want AAs. So just giving flexibility is the way to please both [sets of] people… You can use a rechargeable battery pack and it works just like it does on the Elite, [but] it is a separate thing.”
We had the chance to use the pad and fundamentally it delivers exactly what the Xbox team says it does. It’s familiar, yet easier to hold, the share button addresses easy access to game clips and screenshots while the extra clicky d-pad feels like a big improvement over the existing pad. Under the hood, the latest Bluetooth radio is integrated for easier connectivity to non-Xbox hardware while the existing wireless interface is refined for lower latency. It’s a software-based revamp on the pad at least, so the Xbox team’s drive to lower input lag will be retrofitted into existing controllers, while the new model pairs to Xbox One too.
Microsoft’s initial Game Awards reveal ended with a look at the Series X console, the new controller resting against it – and this one image effectively summarises the contrasts in approach to the next-gen design. On the one hand, there’s revolution in the form of the console itself, its revamped form factor, double board design and prodigious airflow. And then there’s the controller – an altogether more cautious design perhaps, but with worthwhile new features and an approach to accessibility that opens up the controller to more users, while making it more comfortable for those already used to it.
There’s still plenty of unanswered questions though. Just how much power will the console actually draw from the wall? Is the final retail Series X really going to be as discreet as the Xbox One X under load? We’ve already showcased the form factor up against the X, but how about actual integration into a media cabinet? And finally – the biggest question of all. If there is another Xbox console coming alongside Series X, what’s that going to look like? We can’t wait to find out.
Digital Foundry was invited to Microsoft in Redmond WA during early March to cover the Xbox Series X specs reveal. Microsoft paid for travel and accommodation.
In Spring 2016, I took part in a rather unusual archaeological dig. There was no dirt, no trowelling – in fact the excavation didn’t even take place outside. It was just me, in my childhood bedroom, digging through old copies of Official Nintendo Magazine and realising that I could map my childhood obsession with video games from the stacks hidden in my bookshelf. Opening up an issue from February 2006 I found a feature lauding the mysterious new ‘Nintendo Revolution’ console and a caption jibing “Good looks and great to play with. Revolution sounds like our ideal girl.” It’s a window into a different time. 14 years later and some things have changed- we didn’t get a Revolution, we got a Wii. I’ve grown up. Games journalism (for the most part) has too.
Back in 2016 someone else was also rifling through some old stuff in their house, but their discovery would draw more attention. Dan Tiebold found the last known existing Nintendo PlayStation prototype in his dad Terry’s attic. The console represents a turning point for the games industry; Nintendo and Sony were to collaborate on an add-on to the SNES. Nintendo infamously snubbed Sony in 1991 when it announced it had instead made a deal with Phillips. Sony would go on to release its own console, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Fast forward to 2020 and the Nintendo PlayStation was once again in the limelight as Terry Diebold put his up for auction. On March 6th, Greg McLemore paid $380,000 in total to get his hands on a piece of hardware that had been touted as priceless. As an archaeologist, I’m familiar with the buzz that can surround individual artefacts, and the cognitive dissonance on display in auction houses putting the hammer down on ‘priceless’ objects to the highest bidder. While I’ve been intrigued by the billing of the Nintendo PlayStation as a fable turned to fortune, I wondered what video game historians and preservationists made of the furore surrounding it.
Frank Cifaldi, founder of the Videogame History Foundation, succinctly describes the piece as a “view into an alternate timeline.” Frank has been working in games preservation for almost twenty years and founded the VHF after identifying the gaps in the field that needed to be filled. “Things like working with games developers to preserve their original source code, and a library of complete video game magazines,” Cifaldi explained to me over Skype, reminding me that my trove of magazines is tiny compared to the thousands he’s carefully collected. When I ask him about the historical value of the Nintendo PlayStation, he understands that people want to see it preserved but tells me “I don’t think historians can extract more stories out of this physical object than they already have.” The console has been photographed and analysed to the point that it’s been bled dry of new data. Given Cifaldi describes his work on video game preservation as “stopping the bleeding rather than re-inventing the wheel,” it’s not surprising he doesn’t consider the Nintendo PlayStation as a top priority for preservation.
The Nintendo PlayStation
Like Cifaldi, video game historian Carly A. Kocurek believes that “ephemera like magazines, flyers, promotional merchandise are profoundly important… A lot of my work is going through tens of thousands of pages of magazines. It’s extremely glamorous, I assure you.” Kocurek is an associate professor of digital humanities and media studies at Illinois Tech, and author of the book Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade. A key argument of the book is that the gendering of video games as a masculine pursuit was never inevitable, but was shaped by young boys’ greater access to public gaming in arcades, the association of video games with competitive male-dominated sports, and the idea that technological skill was a male attribute. I wondered if the hype surrounding the auction of the Nintendo PlayStation, itself a public game for the prize of influencing video game history, reflected the techno-masculine competitiveness discussed in Kocurek’s book. “On the one hand, I’m glad people are excited about video game history,” she continues, “on the other hand, I think about what half a million dollars would mean to any of the institutions really doing the hard work of preserving games.”
The Videogame History Foundation is one such institution. Cifaldi pointed out that the money spent on the Nintendo PlayStation amounts to a third of the VHF’s annual revenue. Fundraising is his main priority going forward. “We’ve digitised 10,000 optical disks and old press kits. By our own estimate we need two years to catalogue what we just have now.” New projects are constantly popping up. Cifaldi recently worked with the family of a programmer who had sadly passed away and left boxes of degrading floppy disks that needed urgent attention. This kind of work can involve collaboration with other games heritage institutions, like the Strong Museum of Play.
While the Nintendo PlayStation may have dominated recent video game history discourse, there is a diverse range of work going on that isn’t just concerned with the legacy of big brands. “I’m really excited by the work a lot of researchers are doing,” Kocurek elaborated. “Whitney Pow’s research on work by transgender game developers is just beautiful. Adrienne Shaw’s LGBTQ Game Archive has turned up so many fascinating things-someone should give that project half a million.” Furthermore, TreAndrea Russworm and Samantha Blackmon have recently published a piece in a special issue that edited about video game history as black feminist mixtape. Hearing her and Cifaldi cite different collaborators and researchers makes it clear that video game history can’t and shouldn’t only be the purview of a narrow group of people who can afford to buy themselves into it.
While it’s easy to put prestige pieces like the Nintendo PlayStation on a pedestal, modest personal video game histories are important. When I asked Frank Cifaldi how he felt about becoming a part of video game history himself he admitted to not having saved articles from his time as a journalist at 1UP. “I finally started a box in our archives that’s our company archives. When we’ve hand-made some swag for a little retro show I try to keep at least one or two examples.” When we make the effort to preserve something, it shows that we value it and can envision it being valued in the future.
Video game hardware and software preservation poses a host of problems in terms of proprietary software, obsolescence, media forms subject to disk rot and legal issues with emulation software. The analogue record of games culture has a key part to play in video games history because it’s actually more durable. As Kocurek elaborated, “Our hope is that we get robust study and documentation before the games decay beyond playability. But, paper is much more robust. We’ll have magazines and flyers for a long, long time, and they’re so important.”
This brings me back to those dusty magazines I mentioned earlier. They’re important as a source on gaming in the mid-00s. They’re also a memento on how I felt about games as a 13-year-old. Austin Walker, co-founder of Waypoint and Friends at the Table, wrote a piece for ROMChip called “The History of Games Could Be a History of What Play Felt Like.” He argues that blogs, let’s plays and guides are key for capturing what play actually means to people, which is a crucial aspect of their history. After all, a game can have very different connotations in different contexts, as Carly explained to me: “Children playing in grade school chess tournaments in 1997, for example, are having a very different experience and doing something quite different from the experience Margaret of Anjou [Queen of England in the 15th century] had playing chess.”
I was intrigued that I had a very similar experience to Kocurek growing up with video games. In the introduction to Coin-Operated Americans, she laments how once she reached adolescence she no longer felt as comfortable gaming. As a teen when I considered myself a young woman (I’ve since come out as non-binary), I turned my back on games and the publications that made jokes about “our ideal girl.” My game magazine collection stops in 2006 because I stopped playing. If the Nintendo PlayStation points to an alternate history in which Nintendo and Sony weren’t competitors, then my collection of Official Nintendo Magazine represents an alternate personal history of gaming.
Video game history is about stories. As Frank Cifaldi says of the Videogame History Foundation, “I run a charity whose sole purpose is to make sure that people who want to tell the story of video games have access to the tools and materials that they would need to do that.” Researching video games has been my way of writing myself back into their history. You don’t need to be a white middle class cis man to have your turn. If you play games, if you make them, if you like watching them or discussing them, you’re a part of their history. Who gets to write video game history? We do.
After weeks (months?) of zero availability, Nintendo’s quirky home fitness curio Ring Fit Adventure is now starting to come back in stock.
At time of writing, Game is currently taking orders for Ring Fit Adventure at £69.99. It’s unlikely to last long, so better snatch a copy quickly if you’ve been hankering for a home workout.
Stock was also available at ShopTo earlier today, but vanished in a matter of minutes.
Demand for Ring Fit Adventure has soared in the recent weeks as we’ve all been looking for ways to keep fit during the Covid-19 quarantine. It was already much sought after in the months before, as stock dried up in a matter of weeks following the launch in October.
id Software’s Doom Eternal is one of the best-looking shooters ever made. Powered by the id Tech 7 engine, the game delivers even higher resolution textures, more complex environments and a tight lock on its target 60 frames per second. It’s also built from the ground up for the Vulkan low-level graphics API, meaning that in theory, it’s a match made in heaven for Google’s Stadia – a system that focuses on Linux and Vulkan for its technological backbone. However, after putting some time into the game, it’s disappointing overall – at the most basic level, lag makes the Doom Eternal experience a good deal worse than any other platform.
There are advantages though, of course. Taking Xbox One X as an example, you have a 41GB download to get through before you can pick up your controllers. Stadia’s cloud-based set-up means that the process of getting your hands on the game is instantaneous. But in the case of Doom Eternal, that’s where the plus points for gaming at Stadia come to an end.
In assessing this port, we’re pursuing our usual strategy of running the game with the best quality set-up. That means we’re using the Stadia controller connected directly to Google’s servers via WiFi, with imagery delivered via Chromecast Ultra to an LG OLED B8, rated for 22ms of lag under Game Mode. A 300mbps Virgin Media fibre connection, with the Chromecast attached via Ethernet removes any home WiFi-related latency that might occur, while our lag measurements were carried out with no other devices sharing the line. Pulling up the Stadia connection tab, our set-up is rated as excellent with 4K enabled. Despite this, there are still some minor, very infrequent stutters in performance.
With all that in place, let’s see what we’ve got. Delivering such a rapid, supremely detailed game at 60 frames per second is no easy feat – especially avoiding detail loss through compression. I’ve got to say from a purely visual slant, Doom Eternal looks stunning on Stadia. Image quality holds up and every shotgun blast, every squelch of an instant kill takedown, and every skull lining the dungeon walls comes across clearly. Slow the footage down and zoom in and of course, we can highlight some macro-blocking, notably on darker elements of the screen. You can also expect banding artefacts in the shadows, but otherwise it’s absolutely as good as you can realistically expect from a dynamic streaming platform.
Doom Eternal given a full breakdown on Stadia, with latency tests versus Xbox One X.
The high pixel count we’re getting plays a big part in that. Stadia runs in a majority of samples at 3200×1800 – which matches Xbox One X for maximum resolution. I haven’t spotted anything under this yet, but it’s a likelihood given the dynamic resolution setup on other consoles. However, curiously there is more to it than just running at 1800p. Stadia has all HUD elements present at 4K, but at the same time, parts of the gameplay also seem to resolve at 1080p. Pixel testing any objects in front of the skybox – the distant background detail, gives results at 1920×1080. A potential theory is it’s a lower resolution depth of field buffer, a different effect with a different resolution – that causes a less clear outline for objects occluding it. In the main though, you’re getting a comparable 1800p image to Xbox One X, which is a level up from all the other consoles. Meanwhile, for those on 1080p displays you’re getting a straight native 1080p picture from Stadia all round.
Visual differences between Xbox One S and X were already few: anisotropic filtering is better on X and likewise for terrain LODs. Stadia by comparison retains the high texture filtering quality of the latter, and all settings are otherwise equal. There are differences in level of detail though, where Microsoft’s enhanced machine delivers higher quality terrain closer to the camera. Stadia is delivering a curious mixture of both base and enhanced console quality – the resolution of Xbox One X, the terrain detail of Xbox One S (or PC’s medium, if you prefer). The action is moving too fast to notice though, and every other effect, and all textures, run at the same quality level as Xbox One X.
There are some big changes to Stadia’s video options, too. The film grain option is removed outright – which may be disabled to help with video compression. Lots of visual noise does no favours in beaming game footage over, and it makes sense to see this removed – whereas X still has the option. Strangely, the field of view slider is also removed on Stadia and so it’s stuck at the default 90 setting we have on Xbox One X. It’s not obvious why this has been axed; other than to possibly save on performance hits when widening it. What you do get in exchange is a motion blur menu with a suite of options – much like PC’s. The effect is fine on its default medium setting but if it’s not to your tastes you can turn it off. Xbox One X doesn’t have this level of granularity, offering an on/off toggle instead.
Doom Eternal’s performance on console is already a great achievement, and that extends to Stadia. You’ll bump into some hitches and drops, purely based on the quality of your online connection. In my case I got lucky and played for two straight hours without any major problems – aside from one or two big stutters it’s been excellent. The actual, hardware-side performance level is also sticking to 60fps, which helps give it a strong baseline to work from. Accepting some drops to 58fps or so in spots, Stadia isn’t struggling against the huge amount of enemies or effects on screen – at least for the opening few levels. It’s a fluid experience server-side; rendering the action at 60fps is not the issue – and so it’s up to your connection to keep up.
Frame-rates are solid then, and that must help in lowering latency – but this is where the Stadia experience starts to come unstuck. From pressing the trigger on the Stadia controller to seeing the muzzle flash on-screen, there’s always going to be more of a delay compared to locally rendered playback on a home console. TV input lag is a factor for all systems, but Stadia has the extra challenge of sending your input to a server, and then beaming back the video encode of the result as soon as it can.
To cut to the chase, using a 240fps high speed camera, the difference between pressing the fire button and the action playing out on-screen sees Stadia adding an extra 79ms to 100ms over the same motion executed on Xbox One X. Yes, to be clear here, 79ms to 100ms is the extra latency you get by playing Doom Eternal on Stadia. Interestingly, the Xbox One X result is quite laggy in and of itself, with 94ms the most frequent result, but adding anything up to an extra 100ms on top of that and then adding display latency means that Doom Eternal on Stadia delivers cumulative lag over one fifth of a second.
Doom Eternal – the original Digital Foundry tech review, covering all aspects of the game’s tech plus a behind-the-scenes look at some of id’s new tools.
There’s no skirting around the fact that Doom Eternal is inherently less fun to play on Stadia. It looks fantastic: that 1800p picture is incredible to behold, and even compression isn’t too much of a bother. The real sticking point is latency. Even after adapting to it after a few minutes, I found getting a perfect shot on an enemy much easier by strafing slowly left and right, until the reticle aligns with them – rather than panning the camera with right analogue stick as usual. And that’s the problem. My entire method of aiming changes to accommodate the lag. It’s playable, and the more you practise with that extra delay, the better you get at timing the trigger pull just right. The immediacy of your actions is dulled though. It’s blunted by a constant online relay of inputs and returning video feeds that takes just a few milliseconds too long to create a firm connection – between you and the action.
All of which raises an interesting question. With the current Covid-19 lockdown situation and the increased stress on internet infrastructure in general, are we looking at a genuine problem with the game itself or simply the notion of Stadia itself underperforming in extraordinary circumstances. We went back to Mortal Kombat 11 – a game we tested for latency at launch – and found that we were looking at some increased latency. It seemed to vary between 14ms and 26ms more lag, but this may be down to the fact that it was tested on a different connection (albeit one running on the same Virgin Media network). Maybe the situation will improve once the world regains some sense of normality, but even so, the extra lag does seem very much on the high side, even factoring in the variance added by the Mortal Kombat 11 re-test.
The unavoidable conclusion is that this is a game that is simply a lot more fun to play on a local console. Once you bundle in the field of view option, the improved terrain and the snappier input it’s hard to justify going with Stadia purely on the grounds of convenience, unless you don’t have another console available. It’s certainly playable, but to appreciate the hard work id Software put into nailing Doom Eternal’s high tempo action, there are much better options out there. And for a genre that’s defined by its speed of gameplay, it stands out more so than most Stadia games I’ve tried. Sadly then, it’s a fascinating test case, but as with Wolfenstein Youngblood, the practical result spells out the problems Stadia has with running FPS games: visual quality holds up, but the gameplay takes a hit.
There’s a widely held belief that fighting games are hard to get into. That their steep learning curve, niche appeal and high skill ceiling are just too much to swallow. Arc System Works, developer of both the hardcore Guilty Gear and the more accessible Dragon Ball Fighterz, has come up with a sweetener with Granblue Fantasy Vs. As an adaptation of a super popular mobile JRPG and created by arguably the best producers of fighting games today, Granblue has the potential to be truly stellar. Is this the fighting game for those who struggle to find enjoyment in the genre – or is it simply more of the same?
Starting with the roster, Granblue Fantasy Vs has a pretty shallow pool of 12 characters to pick from. If there’s a silver lining to that slim selection, though, it’s that the diversity of fighting game archetypes is surprisingly large. You’ve got everything from your classic fireball and uppercut fighters, long distance oppressors, and grapplers, alongside a myriad of others with vastly different play-styles. This character diversity comes hand in hand with the appearance of each character, as all of them seem to fill a wide range of tastes. Are you a tad edgy? Vaseraga is for you! You like things basic and simple? Gran is the most vanilla of protagonists you’ll find all year. This lack of overlapping looks and fighting styles should ensure you’ll find someone you enjoy.
If there’s one aspect that the characters – and everything else for that matter – have in common, it’s that they’re all damn gorgeous. I can’t imagine how much work it must have taken the artists at Arc System Works to achieve the aesthetic of Granblue, but all that effort shows. The beautifully animated 3D fighters pop out from the background and rarely get lost regardless of how detailed the stage is, their movements are smooth, and every attack looks as though it has some serious force to it, while stages range from high-fantasy villages with castles jutting upwards behind the buildings, to sweeping wildernesses. Granblue Fantasy Vs is eye candy of the highest calibre.
Throughout the story you get an introduction to the playable characters if you have no idea who they are.
When it comes to the meat of it all, Granblue Fantasy Vs is everything you’d want from a fighting game in terms of depth but with a whole lot of tools and mechanics added so that it’s easy to get to grips with. Additions like auto combos and universal super attack inputs have all been done before, but Arc System Works goes further with the addition of a special move button. Long gone are the days of practicing the direction input for a fireball until it becomes muscle memory, as it now comes out with a single touch of R1. I’d say it took me around 10 minutes to get to grips with a character in Granblue before I was performing decently against other players. It’s important to note that the top tier of competitive play isn’t just mashing triangle and hitting R1, as the most damaging combos still require a high degree of practice. Granblue Fantasy finds that sweet spot between a cake walk and homework.
Granblue Fantasy Vs’ standout offering is its story mode. Rather than a slapdash inclusion without a huge amount of depth (I’m looking at you Street Fighter V), the story mode in Granblue Fantasy Vs is filled with enough features to prevent it from ever becoming a slog. These come in a variety of forms, such as weapon drops that significantly boost your character’s stats and impact their abilities. Later in the story, you unlock additional features like support skills, a shop where you can spend excess cash, and the ability to bring along an AI controller character into missions with you. The rare moments when you and your companion combo enemies into each other adds a little oomph that makes normal fights feel special. There is also an arcade mode – but it’s fairly unremarkable here when compared to the story, even if it’s where you can unlock some cosmetics.
But as good as the story mode might be, it’s dragged down by a perplexing misstep on the part of Arc System Works. This problem – one that overshadows many of the more positive aspects of the game – is Granblue Fantasy Vs’ outdated delay-based netcode, a problem it unfortunately shares with far too many fighting games created today. Playing online right now is fine, not fantastic nor terrible. Sure, you’ll find a healthy number of perfectly playable matches where you can pull off that one combo you’ve been practicing for hours, but the unignorable presence of laggy and unresponsive games counter the good ones. Granblue Fantasy Vs online fills you with a sense of fun and excitement one moment, just for it to come hemorrhaging out the next.
To be blunt, this is an issue that has been fixed for years in plenty of other games. Rising Thunder released in 2015, Skullgirls in 2012, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix in 2008! All of which were built with netcode that allowed for an online play that doesn’t feel like trudging through a swamp. When indie devs with a fraction of your budget can create a game with decent netcode there’s just no excuse for it. Not in 2020.
The combination of vs-style combat and RPG elements creates a new spin to the typical fighting game story mode.
With this fault in mind, some of the other exceptional features sadly lose some of their allure. Take the dedicated tutorial that runs through all the basics you’d need to get you started. Relatively simple lessons like how to block different types of incoming attacks are present as you’d expect, which sounds incredibly boring right? Not many people enjoy sitting through tutorials – myself included – but the addition of mission rankings within Granblue’s tutorial mode makes a huge difference. These optional challenges are potentially huge for new players as it rewards them for completing these while fully learning the techniques within them. If you feel encouraged to actually learn how each aspect of the game works, the looming skill wall that has caused a million people all over the wall to mumble “screw this” before booting up Fortnite might seem far less imposing.
Which would be a fantastic boon for new players, if they had an adequate online environment to then apply these lessons. This leads to the sad truth behind Granblue Fantasy Vs, that despite the stunning amount of reverence towards the source material and a truly admirable dedication to making the game enticing for new players, it fails in what is arguably the most important aspect of a fighting game – the act of playing against other people. For many, playing online right now will certainly be tolerable, but as the player base inevitably shrinks over time the number of playable matches will fall as well. I’m worried that players will celebrate a period of genuine enjoyment, up until the moment frustration overpowers perseverance and Granblue Fantasy Vs becomes just another untouched title – its colourful lobbies largely empty aside from a dwindling community of dedicated fans.
If an otherwise excellent game can distract you from the online issues, or if you have people nearby who’ll play this with you IRL, then Granblue Fantasy Vs is a fantastic buy. Fans of the franchise will adore this game without a doubt, but I worry that a wave of could-be fans will be dissuaded to play not long after release.
What do you get if you mix a bullet-hell shooter with a deck-building game like Slay the Spire? You get One Step from Eden, and it is a revelation.
So much is like Slay the Spire. You have only one life to see how far you can get. You choose cards to add after battle. You choose between different paths to follow. There are bosses, mini-bosses, and things to do other than battle (rescue people, visit the shop, etc). You buy, sell, remove, and upgrade cards. You gain experience which goes towards unlocking new cards and characters. You even progress towards something – Eden in this case, not up a spire.
But at the same time it’s incredibly different. In One Step from Eden, you move. You play on a grid – you on one side, enemies on the other – and you need to move around to line up your abilities while dodging what your opponents throw at you.
Take, for instance, your thunderbolt spell. It’s really powerful and crashes down four spaces in front of you, but if your enemy isn’t there, it won’t hurt them – it will be a wasted attack, and you’ll have to wait for it to shuffle back around to try again.
It’s so odd seeing it still.
Abilities are hot-keyed to Q and P and E, and they automatically change after you’ve used them, cycling in other abilities from your deck to use. Once you’ve used them all, they shuffle, or you can force a shuffle by pressing spacebar. It sounds confusing and it is – to begin with.
But once you learn what things do, once you begin to look up from your hotbar, that’s when the magic happens. That’s when you begin deliberately doing things and conjuring strategies on the fly, depending on what your enemy is doing and where they are.
If they’re hiding at the back, maybe a row of fire will smoke them out, or maybe a poison wall because it attacks the back row and pushes enemies forward. Eden has a lot of movement-affecting abilities. You can hold people in place and freeze them; you can make tiles impassable, you can push and pull. Movement is a central part of the game. You’ve got to keep moving.
This is my best run! I love how it piles all your defeated enemies together, BroForce style.
You’ve got to keep moving because on the left-hand side of the screen, where you are, you’ll be under a constant barrage of attacks. Just like in a bullet-hell shooter, there will be bombing patterns to avoid, beams and projectiles to sidestep, and when you get to them, more advanced boss patterns to learn. They’re tough nuts to crack, the bosses (they’re also the characters you’ll later unlock to play as).
It’s tough to begin with, like I say – a lot to take in. But in an hour or two it will seem different, I promise. Try sticking to Phalanx and Misery abilities to begin with, which generally shield and heal you, and ignore the others. This really helped me; it was a golden piece of advice from a friend. Then once you find your feet, mix it up. Experiment with combos, play around – get into the meat of it, in other words.
One Step from Eden is a dazzling burst of energy in the deck-building Slay the Spire genre. It’s slick, it’s gorgeous and destined for big things.
And someone’s created a companion app for fishing.
You’re a few days in, the Able Sisters have set up shop, and it’s time to get some fancy threads in your Animal Crossing: New Horizons town. But where can you find new custom designs?
If you want to download some lovely designs into your game, chances are you’ll be looking through Twitter and Reddit for ideas. New Horizons allows players to upload their work and share it via codes – but there’s no official database either in-game or online allowing players to browse through everything and select designs they like. So, naturally, a fan is here to help.
Last night Reddit user plump_tomato shared their work-in-progress database called Nookpedia, and it’s already received a significant amount of attention. Users can upload screenshots of their codes and name their designs so other users can find them with the search bar and filters. And, if you want a complete lucky dip, you can simply browse through the custom design pages until you find something you like. I’ve already spotted several stylish Mulan pieces, and contributed my own Fire Emblem: Three Houses Dimitri cosplay.
The database has been so popular, in fact, that the site has been struggling to keep up with demand – but seems to be working again after the owner upgraded the server.
“I figured that now would be a good time to post this as everyone is starting to unlock the Able Sisters”, plump_tomato explained. “I didn’t know this was going to blow up so quick.”
As a word of caution, I was able to upload a design to the database almost instantly – so there’s a chance a few NSFW designs could end up on there before being taken offline. A little bit of fiddling is also required to get upload a screenshot, as you’ll have to upload from Switch to either Facebook or Twitter, then save the image to upload on Nookpedia. The website is currently fairly basic, but it seems like the design will get better over time, as plump_tomato is working on features such as the ability to save favourites.
Meanwhile, if you’re still searching for that sturgeon, there’s an app for that. ACNH Travel Guide is an unofficial companion app to the game which allows players to easily look up fish, bugs and fossils – including where to find them. You can also keep tabs on your own progress by entering which critters you’ve found, and look up which ones you still need to find this season.
Kojima Productions published a statement confirming that one employee has tested positive for COVID-19. All employees will now work remotely.
Kojima Productions employees are all now working from home after one employee tested positive for coronavirus (COVID-19). The company issued a statement confirming the case and the measures they’ve taken to avoid further spreading the virus.
The statement detailed that one employee was sent home on March 20. Since then, they have tested positive for COVID-19 after having a PCR test. The positive result was confirmed yesterday.
Despite testing positive, public health authorities have stated that the Toyko-based offices are able to remain open and that all other employees are not considered “close contacts” because the employee was not in the office when the symptoms started. However, Kojima Productions is implementing precautions to avoid the possible spread and risk to its employees.
For the time being, the office floor will be closed, and all office facilities are to be sanitized. All employees are now to work from home while Kojima Productions has confirmed that it will “supervise and support for the health condition of all staff.” The company will also continue working with health authorities to further prevent the spread.
GamesIndustry.biz reports that recent figures show 443 infections of the virus are in Tokyo, with 2,007 across Japan. Japan’s infection rate is low in comparison to South Korean neighbors, which have reported 10,000 cases. Additionally, fears of a second wave of infections in Tokyo have come to light after a recent spike. Countries around the world are encouraging or enforcing lockdowns to slow the spread of the new virus.
Activision has yet to officially announce its Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remaster, and yet footage of the entire game is now readily available to watch online.
It includes the mission No Russian – the series’ most infamous level where you can massacre civilians in an airport terminal while posing as an undercover terrorist.
Streaming games on Twitch, YouTube or another service is good fun – and for many, it’s become a full-time job. If you’ve dabbled with streaming and want to take things to the next level, this page is for you. We’ve tested and recommended some of the best entry-level streaming accessories available, including mics, cameras, lights and the other AV equipment you’ll need to put on a professional broadcast.
We’ll start with a selection of gaming microphones and audio interfaces, as audio tends to be the hardest thing to master when you start streaming. Whether you go for a simple plug-and-play USB microphone or a more professional XLR setup with an audio interface, our recommendations should help you find the best value options on the market from £50/$50 to around £400/$400 at the upper end.
If streaming has become a serious hobby or actual profession for you, then dedicated video equipment becomes more worthwhile. For our part, we’ve tested a few entry-level cameras and lights, each less than £200/$200, to ensure that you start on the right foot.
While we do have a full range of recommendations here, for the sake of brevity we’ve concentrated on what you’ll need to stream gameplay from a single PC. That means we’ve left some categories out for now – including helpful extras like capture cards, second monitors and builds for dedicated streaming PCs. However, we do have dedicated pages for the best graphics cards and best gaming monitors which you may find helpful and a FAQ section at the end of this article that goes into a little more depth.
With all that out of the way, let’s get straight to the recommendations.
Best streaming accessories for gaming on Twitch 2020
Best cheap USB mic: Blue Snowball Ice
Excellent audio quality for the money
Plug and play USB operation
No physical controls or added features
If you’ve only got $50/£50 to put toward upgrading your recording setup, you’ll get the most bang for your buck from the Blue Snowball Ice. This older desk mic provides surprisingly good audio quality, more than enough for starting your streaming career. It’s also easy to use – just plug it in and hit record, with no software or additional equipment to install. However, in terms of both audio quality and features, the Snowball Ice can’t compare to microphones in the next price bracket up, which starts at around $100/£100.
Best USB mic for streaming: HyperX QuadCast or Blue Yeti X
Detailed audio quality with four recording patterns
QuadCast and Yeti X include easy tap-to-mute features
All three options come with a built-in stand, although a boom arm is best
The QuadCast is the best value USB microphone we’ve found for streaming thanks to its excellent audio quality and its long list of well-implemented features. There are four recording modes on offer – cardioid, stereo, omnidirectional and bidirectional – and a physical gain dial, allowing the mic to be adapted for one audio source or multiple voices with ease. This is a condenser mic, so the sound captured is detailed, but it’s also easy to pick up external noise, particularly if your microphone is some distance from your mouth.
Being able to mute your audio quickly can be indispensable, and the tap-to-mute system on the Quadcast – accompanied by the entire microphone dimming – is the best implementation we’ve seen. Other handy features include an internal pop filter that ensures p and b sounds don’t result in an annoying pop, a shock mount built into the provided desk stand and lag-free audio monitoring. The only real drawbacks here are that the LED lighting isn’t optional and the default stand is a little short, so using a proper boom arm or another mount is recommended.
The Blue Yeti is a strong alternative with the same focus on recording detailed sound and four recording patterns to choose from, but the Yeti has a more professional appearance and comes in a variety of colours. The inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone jack is handy, as it means you can plug in headphones to monitor exactly what the mic is hearing. The standard Yeti lacks a built-in pop filter and its mute light is less obvious than that of the Quadcast, but it provides slightly better audio quality for the same price.
Meanwhile, the Yeti X is the latest edition and includes a new LED volume metre and multi-function control knob right up front, making it easy to adjust gain to dial in the perfect levels on the fly. The Yeti X also comes with Logitech’s G Hub software, including comprehensive options for adjusting tone and removing annoying sonic artefacts, including presets from popular streamers. It is more expensive than the Quadcast or the original Yeti, but for streaming we think it’s worth the premium.
Best cheap XLR mic: Audio-Technica AT2020
Warm, precise sound
Professional, almost anonymous appearance
Allows entry to the complex but powerful XLR ecosystem
The AT2020 is a popular entry-level XLR condenser mic, offering the possibility of extremely clear audio if you’re willing to put together the necessary equipment to get it running. All that comes in the box is the mic, a bag and a stand adapter, so you’ll need to provide at least an XLR cable, a stand and an audio interface or mixer that provides at least 48V of phantom power. Once all of these components are in place, your reward is warm, detailed audio that works well for streaming or voice-over work.
Best XLR mics for streaming: Rode Procaster or Shure SM7B
Professional-grade audio quality with proximity effect
Dynamic microphones mean less unwanted background noise
Requires some set-up, including audio interface and boom arms
If you’re willing to spend more, there are better XLR microphones available too. The two we’re recommending are both dynamic microphones, which are better equipped to isolate your voice compared to the Quadcast, Yeti and AT2020 condenser mics we looked at earlier. This is great for streaming games, as it means background audio like the clatter of your keyboard or your housemates won’t be audible on stream.
The first is the Rode Procaster, which includes a built-in pop shield and provides very clean audio, particularly when the mic is placed just a few inches from your mouth. The Procaster normally comes with just the microphone itself and is relatively heavy, so consider picking up a good boom arm (like Rode’s excellent PSA1) to ensure it stays in that perfect pick-up location.
Our second recommendation is for the Shure SM7B. This legendary microphone is used by audio professionals of all stripes, including recording artists and radio hosts, and of course it’s a favourite of streamers as well. The quality here is top notch, and you can come close to the mic for a warmer tone if you like. It does require a fair amount of gain, so choosing a top audio interface (like some of the examples below) is important.
Best audio interface for streaming: GoXLR / GoXLR Mini
Simple all-in-one audio interface and mixing solution
Convenient assortment of ports, faders and buttons
Reasonably priced, but buying individual components can be cheaper
The TC Helicon GoXLR is the most convenient all-in-one audio interface we’ve tested for streamers, offering 48V of phantom power to XLR microphones and up to 70dB of gain to drive almost all mics on the market. While the GoXLR is more costly than a simpler audio interface of equal quality, the added convenience of the hardware controls like faders, buttons and knobs on this unit is substantial. Combined with the system performance benefits of accomplishing your mixing and routing via hardware rather than software, and you’re left with a convincing package.
The impressive audio hardware and controls are backed up by a powerful – and even somewhat intuitive – software package that allows microphones to be dialled in and various processing to be done to keep your voice sounding just the way you want it. You can also adjust how audio is routed to any of the unit’s multiple USB audio devices. For example, you can set your game to one audio device, your mic to another, your chat to another and so on. You can also set up various fun voice effects and samples, if that’s your style. Finally, the lighting is also adjustable, which makes it a nice visual accessory as well.
While the original GoXLR is impressive, the smaller GoXLR Mini offers much better value to money. The ports and processing hardware remain unchanged on the Mini, although you do lose out on the sample and effects controls from the right hand side. Honestly, these are the least important parts of the unit, so they’re a very acceptable sacrifice given the substantial difference in price.
Best camera for streaming: Logitech C920
Provides clear video with autofocus at 1080p30 or 720p60
Mounts easily on most monitors and laptops
Includes a microphone, but we recommend a dedicated mic if possible
While the most popular streamers invariably use high-end mirrorless, DSLR or action cameras to record video, often hooked up via a Cam Link, simple USB webcams are the best way to get started for most Twitch streamers.
The most popular option – and a personal favourite – is the Logitech C920, a well-constructed webcam that mounts easily to most monitors and provides good quality video at 1080p 30fps or 720p 60fps. It’s noticeably sharper than typical budget USB webcams, and substantially better than the webcams built into most laptops. It also includes a microphone, although we recommend opting for a USB or XLR microphone (particularly one of the ones listed above) when you can.
If you have more money to spend but don’t want the hassle of setting up a DSLR or mirrorless camera, then a high-end webcam can be a good shout. The best premium webcam we’ve tested is the Logitech StreamCam, which provides high quality 1080p 60fps video in a convenient package. However, there are a few gotchas – the connection here is USB-C, so you’ll need an adapter or a spare USB-C port on your computer, and there’s no privacy shutter to block the camera’s view – you’ll need to physically disconnect it instead. Still, the upgrade in video quality and frame-rate may make the extra expense worth it.
Best lighting for streaming: Neewer Softbox or Elgato Key Light
Softboxes are cheap and effective, but take up a lot of space
The Elgato Key Light and Key Light Air are pricier, but compact and convenient
When the first game streamers got their site on Justin.tv – the site that would later become Twitch – they tended to use fluorescent lights and softboxes to get favourable lighting conditions. These were bulky and produced a lot of heat, but they got the job done. Today, LED lights can provide that same healthy glow without the accompanying heat stroke, whether you opt for softboxes to diffuse the light of a bulb or panel lights for a more compact setup.
If you have a few feet of space behind your desk, the softbox approach can produce the best results. There are plenty of ready-made kits on retailers like Amazon; we like this one from Neewer that includes two lights and stands for around £65. In terms of colour temperature, a switch on the back of each light lets you swap between a warm 2700K and a more neutral 5500K, while a knob allows you to adjust the brightness. These lights do include a built-in fan to aid in cooling the equipment, but it shouldn’t be audible on your microphone from the distance you’ll be working at.
If you’d prefer a simpler and more compact solution that still produces great results, then the Elgato Key Light is an excellent choice. These lights are a little larger than a sheet of paper and provide up to 2800 lumens, which can be adjusted from a warm 2900K to clinical 7000K. Setup is a cinch too, with the lights clamping onto the side of your desk, telescoping out to the desired height and tilting to find the perfect angle. From here, you can connect to the lights via Wi-Fi (2.4GHz only) and control them in their own software or from an Elgato Stream Deck. The Elgato Key Light is relatively expensive, especially if you pick up a pair, but being able to adjust your lighting from your desktop makes the premium feel worthwhile.
There’s also the smaller Key Light Air, which sits on your desk instead of clamping on and produces a respectable 1400 lumens across the same range of colour temperatures. This is a great choice if you want a convenient and compact lighting solution at a lower price.
Frequently asked questions
What PC hardware do I need for streaming?
Generally speaking, modern PCs can handle the extra demands of streaming pretty well, thanks to hardware media encoders like Nvidia’s NVENC and the prevalence of multi-core processors. So, if you can run your favourite game at a good frame-rate and you have a modern gaming machine, streaming shouldn’t introduce much overhead.
In terms of processors, we recommend a modern Ryzen 3000-series CPU if you’re building a PC from scratch for playing and streaming, as the extra cores that Ryzen provides are very useful and these processors pair well with inexpensive B350 motherboards. The six-core Ryzen 5 3600 is a particularly good value choice, but there are arguments to be made for the eight-core 3700X, 12-core 3900X and even the 16-core 3950X. However, some games still perform best on Intel CPUs, which tend to offer fewer cores but higher frequencies than their AMD equivalents. Here, a recent (8th-gen or later) Core i5, Core i7 or Core i9 should work well.
For graphics cards, the latest NVENC on the RTX 20-series and GTX 16-series cards is more advanced than its AMD equivalent, but cards from either manufacturer can still work well. You can see our round-up of the best graphics cards here.
Otherwise, the speed of your internet connection will limit the bitrate, resolution and frame-rate you can stream at. It’s worth connecting your computer directly to your router via an ethernet cable rather than using wireless to get the most out of your connection, especially if you have high-speed fibre broadband. As with most things, spend some time testing your internet connection speed and stability, and consider upgrading if you’re not able to stream in at least 720p at 30fps – with 1080p at 60fps being the ideal.
What’s the most important accessory for streaming?
We’d say that good-quality audio is the most important, assuming you’re spending most of your stream time in-game. After audio is sorted, consider upgrading to a mid-range webcam and adding lights if necessary. A second monitor, stream controls (like the Elgato Stream Deck or Corsair K95 Platinum XT keyboard) and a capture card from the likes of Avermedia or Elgato can also be helpful.
Our test setup is only really missing that second monitor.
For that second monitor, we recommend a value-oriented option – something that is 1080p and 60fps will work just fine. If you have a decent budget for this, then an IPS screen with wide viewing angles works nicely, and larger screens with higher resolutions will give you more screen real estate to put your chat window, video preview window and other controls.
What microphone accessories are useful?
There are a range of accessories we could discuss, but the most important for newcomers are boom arms and pop filters. Rather than relying on the short stands included with many USB and XLR microphones, a proper adjustable arm makes it easier to position your microphone so that it picks up your voice without taking up too much of your screen (if you’re playing a game) or your camera’s point of view (if you’re streaming). When adjusting your arm, take your microphone’s style of address into account.
Side-address microphones, like the Blue Yeti, work best when you’re speaking into one side, while top address microphones should be pointed directly at your mouth. We used a Blue Compass arm and Radius 3 shock mount for testing these microphones, but there are many other options available at a range of price points.
Pop filters and wind shields are the next accessory you should consider, as they reduce the impact of plosives – sounds like p and b that are harsh on the ears if they are recorded by a bare microphone. Pop filters and wind shields are normally mounted onto your mic or boom arm, and need to be positioned between you and your mic to be effective.
For XLR mics, you’ll also need an audio interface (like the GoXLR mentioned above or the Focusrite Scarlett linked below) and an XLR male to female cable to hook up your microphone.
Is it better to use USB or XLR?
If you’re just going to use your single mic at your PC, then a USB microphone is ideal – it’s plug and play, with no extra equipment needed. XLR mics need to be connected via an audio interface, but these allow you to include other audio equipment like multiple microphones or mixers. If you’re just starting out, USB is the way to go, while XLR may be a better choice for dedicated content creators that want room to grow into more advanced setups. You can also split the difference – pick up an XLR mic, but use a simple XLR to USB adapter until you bring in a proper audio interface.
Which platforms can I use these mics on?
The USB mics mentioned above will work pretty much out of the box on Windows, macOS and PS4, while XLR mics will need to be connected to an adapter or interface with a USB output to achieve the same goal. The Xbox One doesn’t support USB mics, unfortunately.
