Microsoft on Games for Windows LIVE

Microsoft’s epic fail of a service; Games of Windows LIVE, got jackshit exposure/mentioning at this year’s E3. Why did that happen and will it actually evolve into a brilliant platform like Steam or die a cold/dry death? Kevin Unagnst has the answers as he tries to explain Microsoft’s ignorance towards pc gamers and pc gaming.

At the end of the day, E3 is the battle of the consoles. We know that’s predominantly what people are interested in, that’s what the air time is about,” said Unangst. “And so, rather than try and raise a volume level that’s five minutes out of an hour and a half keynote, we said ‘you know what, let’s give PC its due.’ We did an event in San Francisco two weeks ago, it had a whole separate rollout, we talked to folks, we showed some of the great new games coming up. And then here tonight we’re having our own dedicated event for the people who truly care about the PC and are tracking it. That was a decision on our part that says the consoles are going to fight it out, I’d rather have a dedicated event where we can talk, where we can showcase the news. There’s going to be even more. We’re talking about it at Gamefest next week. If we did it the other way, you’d be saying why was there only five minutes of Games for Windows during an hour and a half? ‘

Awesome.

Burnout: Paradise - 3 New Screenshots

Criterion Games has released 3 new screenshots for Burnout: Paradise. One screenshot also compares the in-game image quality with SSAO turned ON and OFF:

We’re just implementing Ambient Occlusion (AO).

If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s an effect that uses soft shadows to add extra depth. Enclosed spaces naturally receive less light than open spaces and look darker – that helps us to see how close objects are to each other.

Some games already use AO but most rely on artists to build this into the environment. For Burnout this would be a nightmare, because we like to smash things up and move them around a lot! For this reason, we’ve implemented a dynamic AO system that affects fast-moving and destructible objects!

Screenshots after the jump.

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X-Blades 3 New Screenshots

Southpeak games has released three new high-resolution screenshots of their upcoming Hack-n-Slash title: X-Blades. Check out the TnA-filled screens after the jump.

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Battlefield: Heroes BETA Announcement

As reported earlier, a BETA for Battlefield: Heroes is on it’s way. The official Battlefield: Heroes website has posted an announcement regarding the BETA:

As you may have noticed, you killed our website. We are not angry. We’re very pleased you want to be in the Beta.

The beta for Heroes will be divided into several stages, the first of which is all about testing out this new way of getting games to you all; by downloading and installing them from a website. We’ll also be trying out some other dull stuff to do with servers, so we are expecting the systems to be down as much as they are up.

To help us track down all the technical issues, we have asked a third party to find us some specialist Beta testers. We are doing all this because we want to be sure that when we launch Heroes, everything will work smoothly.

So hang in there! We will announce here when it’s time to sign up for the public stage of the Beta.

Goodman
Community Manager

Brand New Mafia Screenshot

2K Games have release 1 new screenshot and 1 new wallpaper for their upcoming action-adventure title Mafia 2. Check them out after the break.

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