Month: September 2020

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is just a few months away, but Koei Tecmo is keeping busy. Today, the company officially announced Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires at its first next-generation release, just in time for the 20^th anniversary of the series.

Releasing for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, PS5, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC, Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires features the series classic massive battles along with Siege Battles that let you act as commander and deploy units in strategic locations.

A new edit function allows you to customize your officers, and there is an expanded domestic system that lets you govern as you see fit: even if that means being pure evil. As characters’ relationships with each other change, it will affect gameplay.

Speaking to GameSpot, producer Akihiro Suzuki said the next-gen game will feature improved visuals and a more stable framerate compared to the other versions, along with “crowded chaotic gameplay.” He also said the SSD on both systems will let the game load much faster, much like we’ve seen in demonstrations from both Microsoft and Sony already.

Though Dynasty Warriors 9 featured a more open-world structure than the series had seen to date, Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires will not be doing this. Because the outcomes of battles determine whether your territory expands, it’s using the Empire sub-series’ structure. Your ultimate goal is to unify all of ancient China, so you would not have access to the entire region right out of the gate.

Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires is planned to release in early 2021.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Fortnite’s third birthday event is live in the battle royale. Players can hop in the game to complete a handful of challenges to unlock special rewards and earn experience. Two of the challenges require you to traverse the map to find different birthday cakes. This guide will help you dance in front of different birthday cakes with ease.

Where Are The Birthday Cake Locations?

Birthday cakes are scattered all over the map, with most in named locations. You’ll need to dance around ten of them by using an emote. Cakes are usually near the center of a named location. Be careful though, as everyone is going for the cake, so most of these landing spots are quite dangerous. Here’s a map with cake locations:

Once you find a cake and dance next to it, eat the small slices of cake around it to get shield. This will help you complete another challenge: Gain health or shield from birthday cake. There is a limited amount of cake pieces per game though, so you’ll need to get to a cake before anyone else does to eat it. Here’s what it looks like in-game:

What Do I Get For Completing The Birthday Challenges?

You’ll need to complete four of the special birthday challenges in order to unlock a special cake back bling. Completing other challenges will net you special birthday emotes, sprays, weapon skins, and other cosmetics.

Once you’ve gained enough shield or health from eating cake, you’ll earn 80,000 experience points. It’s not a bad reward for completing one challenge.

Players have until October 1 to complete the challenges and earn the rewards. They’ll go away until next year after this week. Make sure to complete all of the Wolverine challenges that pop up week to week as well.

Now Playing: Fortnite PS5 Reveal Trailer | PS5 Showcase

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It’s no surprise that both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S preorder launches were disastrous. There was a divide on the internet: those agonizing over bots and refresh buttons, and those who didn’t even bother because it’s all too expensive. And while this sounds like it could be any console launch, it wasn’t–because we are in a pandemic.

Both the high-end PS5 and Series X consoles cost $499.99, but only the latter currently has flexible payment options. GameStop is working on three different payment options, which include layaway and monthly payments. Adding onto that, the return of Microsoft’s economical All Access plan allows customers to choose a next-generation Xbox console of their choice bundled with Game Pass Ultimate for a monthly payment over 24 months. This service allows members cross-platform access to a library containing over 100 games, with some even playable on their respective launch days. Between GameStop’s payment installation plan and Microsoft’s bundle, it’s a wonder that these payment plans weren’t implemented earlier.

Why is this a big deal? Putting it simply: COVID-19 has dealt a massive blow to the world in every sense, and not everyone can front money for a next-gen console. With massive layoffs, reduced salaries, and overall tense economic conditions, the justification for dropping half a thousand dollars in one go isn’t just anxiety-inducing–it can be downright terrifying. According to USA Today, roughly 833,000 more Americans filed for unemployment in just the last week of August alone, bumping the total number of people filing for some form of government benefits up to 29.6 million. Depending on your financial situation, a $500 expense could make or break your month. And that’s in addition to the fact that $70 games could become the standard price point for PS5 and Series X games.

It’s both disappointing and unsurprising that Sony hasn’t announced a similar competitor to Xbox’s All Access or GameStop’s monthly installment options. The company has historically been rigid with its prices, even during blowout sales events. But with the ongoing pandemic and the rival launch of the Series X/S, Sony needs to step it up. Even with news of PS4 backward compatibility and the newly-announced PlayStation Plus Collection, that may not be enough for customers. More than ever, we’re facing immense pressure to be financially cautious.

It’s both disappointing and unsurprising that Sony hasn’t announced a similar competitor to Xbox’s All Access or GameStop’s monthly installment options.

When it comes down to it, Microsoft’s All Access plan isn’t dissimilar to getting a new phone. There’s already success in monthly payment models; mobile carriers have been doing this for years with smartphones. The iPhone 11, for example, is currently listed for $699 on Apple’s website. That’s almost $100 more than either the PS5 or Xbox Series X, yet iPhones aren’t usually considered rare commodities or inaccessible to the average person. Despite their steep price points, high-end smartphones have become ubiquitous in the last decade. And that’s part of what payment installation plans can offer: more access to the latest tech for more people. For many, paying $25 a month for two years is far more doable than dropping $699 in one sitting. Gaming has always been expensive to keep up with, and it’s time for retailers to treat next-gen consoles with the same amount of flexibility as other large, high-profile purchases.

Whether it’s PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold, consumers still have to pay for a recurring monthly subscription if they want to play games online. It makes sense to bundle this recurring charge with monthly payments on a new console, like how it works with getting a new phone. A similar payment plan can lower the barrier of entry to adopt a new next-gen console for existing players and their subscriptions (and probably increases day-one sales). If they’re new, this streamlines the process of getting set up. In the case of Microsoft’s All Access offer, Game Pass Ultimate is already included so new players won’t have to worry about breaking the bank by stocking up on a new library of games. Because even when you buy a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, you’re not actually done spending money–you need games.

This is a pivotal time for both companies and their new consoles. With winter only a few months away and the world bracing for a potential second wave of infections, more people are going to be staying inside than ever. The days will be shorter, the seasonal affective disorder back in full force, the cabin fever taking us all. What better way to unwind than diving into games and streaming for hours? It should be crucial, then, for Sony to position itself as a viable competitor, not in the way of games but in adapting to its consumers’ needs and lifestyles. The coronavirus pandemic merely expedited and exacerbated a problem that was already there: the disparity between the high upfront costs of a next-gen console and consumer habits in the current socioeconomic landscape.

While both next-gen consoles are hotly anticipated, the consumer edge lies with Microsoft here. It’s time for companies and retailers to take a page from the Series X/S launch and adapt not just to quarantine life, but financially leaner and frugal times for everyone. If the way we live is different, shouldn’t the way we spend money change too?

We’re back with another deep dive into the world and history of Cyberpunk 2077 in this installment of our video lore series exploring everything you’ll want and need to know ahead of the release of CD Projekt Red’s first-person RPG. This week’s episode, we’re delving into the street gangs that operate throughout Night City.

In the video above, Jean-Luc Seipke talks about the main gangs that you’ll have to worry about in Cyberpunk 2077. There are over 50 gangs in Night City, but only 10 will pose a serious threat to you. Those 10 will be more than enough, though, with each controlling and operating in a different part of the city.

In Cyberpunk 2077, you’ll contend with Maelstrom, the Animals, 6th Street, Valentinos, the Tyger Claws, The Mox, the Voodoo Boys, the Scavengers, the Aldecaldos, and the Wraiths. Like we said before, there are a whole lot more, but we’ll save the remaining minor gangs for another video down the line.

Cyberpunk 2077 will be released for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on November 19. The game is coming to Google Stadia sometime this year as well, and both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 next-gen ports are in the works too.

In 2013, console makers Microsoft and Sony looked toward a future they thought was going to completely change the video game industry. Like Nintendo had the year before with the Wii U, the other two platform holders tried to incorporate big new technology ideas into their new consoles, adapting to trends such as touchscreens, mobile app integration, motion control, voice control, and the power of cloud integration. With the Xbox One, Microsoft envisioned a completely new game console that would power your entire living room and tried to completely change the game with its hardware and capabilities.

As we near the release of the ninth generation of consoles and the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, though, things are very different. Most of the ideas that defined the Xbox One when it was announced have disappeared from the console, and new elements that were initially discounted have come to help define it. We’re looking back at some of the best and worst tech ideas of the Xbox One, from the ill-fated Kinect to the about-face that made backward compatibility possible. The Xbox One’s story is a strange one, and the console has gone through some drastic changes–largely for the better.

Be sure to also check out our rundown of the best and worst PlayStation 4 tech and hardware as well.

Kinect To Everything

The defining feature of the Xbox One at launch was one of the feathers in Microsoft’s cap from the Xbox 360 era: Kinect. This natural motion interface camera was a pretty impressive piece of tech with the 360–the camera could map your body and the environment around you, allowing you to control games with your motions without the need for additional controllers or hardware, unlike Nintendo’s Wii remote or Sony’s PlayStation Move. For the Xbox One, Microsoft expanded on Kinect, making it a required part of the system and packaging it with the system.

Kinect offered voice control, body tracking, head tracking, and augmented reality features for games. You could use it as a webcam while streaming or for Skype calls, or place yourself into different settings with a feature that’s not dissimilar to the popular use of Zoom backgrounds in this pandemic era. Microsoft wanted voice control to be a big part of the Xbox One experience, so you could shout at your console from across the room to switch it on and off, change channels or games, or record gameplay for sharing online. The device was also supposed to recognize your voice, allowing you to instantly sign you in to your Xbox One and Xbox Live profiles, so when you fired up the console, you’d get your personalized dashboard and experience.

The Kinect was a big part of what made the Xbox One stand out from the competition. Importantly, however–nobody really liked it.

For starters, though there were a few interesting Kinect games on the 360, developers didn’t really gravitate to motion controls in the Xbox One era; perhaps that gimmick had come and gone by the time Microsoft was putting out its new console in 2013. Titles such as Just Dance continued to use the body tracking features, and some major releases such as Battlefield 4 and Alien: Isolation offered head tracking to let you move and peek around corners. Xbox exclusives, such as Dead Rising 4, included voice controls. But there was just never much to play with the device, and while hackers and homebrewers found tons of interesting uses for the Kinect in arenas like medicine and robotics, it just didn’t take off as a game device.

What’s more, though, the Kinect was an actively annoying inclusion. The device sucked up useful processing power in the Xbox One and dedicated it to constantly mapping your living room in case you felt like waving your hand around to control an interface. The device also sported a microphone, allowing you to use voice controls in games and the Xbox One interface. But the voice controls weren’t too reliable–in one infamous Xbox One commercial, actor Aaron Paul called out voice commands that could switch off the Xboxes in people’s living rooms. Privacy was also something of concern: the Kinect was a camera and a microphone that was always active in your living room, sucking up data without oversight.

After a few years, Microsoft ended the Xbox One’s Kinect requirement, disconnecting it from the Xbox One dashboard interface and allowing consoles to function without it. Microsoft walking back on Kinect was huge; initially, the console maker had claimed its motion sensor was mandatory hardware and that it wasn’t possible to detach Kinect from the Xbox One altogether. After that, Microsoft stopped including the device with the new Xboxes it sold. Though the Kinect was the quintessential Xbox One feature at launch, especially with its ubiquitous use of voice control, the device died an ignoble death about halfway through the console’s life.

It’s All In The Cloud

One of the more successful elements of the Xbox One, but something players might not even notice, is its various cloud features. When it’s connected to the internet and you’re signed in to an Xbox Live account, the Xbox One is always interacting with the cloud. It’s constantly uploading your saved game information to Microsoft’s servers, which helps to back up your data–if anything goes wrong with your local data, you can instantly get it back from the cloud. That also means if you start playing a game on one Xbox and then pick it up on another, you keep all your saved progress, so long as you sign in with your Xbox Live account. And with the recent addition of Xbox Game Pass, you can play the same game on Xbox One, PC, and cloud streaming, and seamlessly pick up your progress on each. It’s actually the most impressive aspect of Microsoft’s xCloud features for the Xbox Series X because you can play a game on any supported device without having to start over.

Xbox One also makes use of other Microsoft architecture, like the cloud-based OneDrive storage system. On Xbox One, OneDrive makes for a handy place to upload your game content, including screenshots and videos; since the service also is compatible with Windows, you can access your OneDrive and the Xbox content you upload to it from your PC. The downfall was that OneDrive on Xbox One was always a bit cumbersome–uploads were unreliable and sometimes slow, making it tough to easily move and access content right away.

All that cloud integration makes the Xbox One work pretty seamlessly in instances when the internet is required, especially in moving easily between devices. But it’s Game Pass that seems to really be leveraging the Xbox One’s cloud capabilities better than the console ever has before. Jumping between devices is really satisfying when you want to play games in multiple places and in varying situations, and Microsoft’s cloud gaming capabilities seem like they’re the most useful and practical of the current slate of competitors, thanks to the integration of both console and PC games. “The power of the cloud” is something Microsoft has been talking about for a while, and while it strengthened the Xbox One in a lot of ways that were never especially flashy, we’re now starting to see what the console maker was so excited about.

…But Not Always Online

The Xbox One had a rough go of it at launch thanks to a lot of features that Microsoft seemed adamant about including in its machine–whether people wanted them or not. The original announced conception of the console was one that required a constant working internet connection. The cloud integration was part of that vision, as was the Kinect functionality–but a constant internet connection also had some serious drawbacks that drove away potential buyers.

Primarily, always having your console connected to the internet was planned as a means of digital rights management, using an internet connection to check that you had paid for a game. Before the console’s release, Microsoft said that every Xbox One game you purchased, including those on physical game discs, linking to your Xbox Live account. That meant you would be able to play those games on other machines on your account, but you couldn’t loan them to friends or, much more crucially, sell them to second-hand retailers. A lot of potential Xbox owners considered that a dealbreaker in the months after the Xbox One was announced– they felt the platform maker was locking down their ability to actually own the games they purchased.

The announcement of the always-online requirement hurt the Xbox One significantly. Sony made hay from the controversy by releasing a joking social video demonstrating that you could lend a physical PlayStation 4 game to a friend simply by handing it to them. There was also the issue of internet connectivity in rural areas that many players felt Microsoft hadn’t fully considered. Even in the US, not everyone has strong, stable internet service, and with the always-online requirement, many of them would struggle to play games. The same was true of, for example, soldiers overseas who wanted to bring their Xboxes on deployment but who wouldn’t have a handy internet connection.

In the end, Microsoft ended up abandoning the always-online requirement before the Xbox One’s release.

Though it maintained a lot of the internet benefits it had baked into the Xbox One, like Kinect, Microsoft walked back the requirement to always be online. Lending of games continued through the PS4 and Xbox One generation, although both Microsoft and Sony are putting out all-digital versions of their next-generation consoles in 2020–so it’s possible we’ll see something like Microsoft’s initial plans for the Xbox One finally come to fruition, although a few years later.

Watch TV, Xbox-Style

When it announced the Xbox One, Microsoft dedicated a ton of time to the console’s capabilities as an all-in-one entertainment machine, not just a box for playing video games. Microsoft wanted the Xbox One to be the centerpiece of your living room, where you would play games, stream movies and TV shows, and even tune for cable channels. “For the first time, you’re going to have a relationship with your TV,” Microsoft said at the start of its Xbox One announcement press conference. It was a big deal.

In a practical sense, Microsoft added HDMI passthrough capability to the Xbox One. Instead of plugging your cable box straight into your TV, you could plug it into your Xbox, which would then take control of it. The passthrough idea would give you voice control over your TV viewing options care of Kinect, and it seemed, early on, that Microsoft intended for the console to offer DVR capabilities, at least through some third-party partnerships. Those features never really materialized–a TV tuner accessory released in Europe allowed for pausing and rewinding TV shows, but that was it. Microsoft also showed off Snap mode when it announced the console, which would allow you to run two apps at the same time. The idea was that you might pull up a web browser window to look up something as you’re watching a movie, or fire up a Skype call in the middle of playing a game.

Though it pushed the entertainment box idea, Microsoft couldn’t quite take over everyone’s living room, even though voice-controlling your Xbox to make it play movies was a cool feature. A lot of the elements of the Xbox One were nice novelties but not especially practical–take away Kinect motion controls and voice commands, which not everyone liked and which didn’t always work super well, and suddenly there’s no good reason to upend your existing entertainment setup with cable passthrough. Lots of Xbox owners use their console for streaming apps, music, and other entertainment options, but just as many use a PS4, a smart TV, or any number of other solutions–the Xbox One never became a dominant force there. And before long, Microsoft abandoned functionality that might have made the Xbox One more competitive in that space. Plans for DVR were eventually abandoned, and the Snap feature was phased out about halfway through the Xbox One’s life.

An Xbox TV Network

The other half of Microsoft’s big push into entertainment was on the content side: It planned not only for the Xbox One to unite all your entertainment and TV in one place, but to provide exclusive content you couldn’t get anywhere else. On this front, Microsoft talked a big game, and at the center of it was Halo. Way back when the Xbox One was first announced in 2013, Microsoft said a Halo TV show was in the works, and that Steven Spielberg was creating it.

That show never materialized–it’s still apparently in production at Showtime today. Microsoft did create some exclusive Halo content for the Xbox ecosystem, though, including Halo: Nightfall, a live-action web series that served as a prequel to Halo 5: Guardians, and Halo: Fall of Reach, an animated adaptation of the novel by the same name. But Microsoft wanted to go farther than just creating synergy between games and entertainment by trying to merge the two while bringing in social and online features. Microsoft even created a division to head the initiative, called Microsoft Entertainment Studios. Apart from the plan for expanding Halo storytelling into a TV show, the poster child for that idea was Remedy Entertainment’s time-travel game, Quantum Break.

When it was announced, Quantum Break was meant to be both a TV show and a video game, with the story unfolding in both halves of the product simultaneously, and with choices made during the game influencing what you’d see in the TV show. But as with other elements, priorities shifted and features got abandoned. The result was the Quantum Break that eventually was released, which features episodes of a live-action TV show mixed into the game, essentially acting as extended cutscenes. A lot of opinions on Quantum Break are mixed, but it’s fascinating as an artifact of Microsoft’s big TV-meets-gaming plans before they fizzled out. By 2014, Microsoft had closed Microsoft Entertainment Studios, and with it went any inkling that Microsoft might become a force in television content.

Share And Share Alike

As Sony did with the PlayStation 4, Microsoft recognized that easy content sharing was essential in the eighth generation as streaming became essential to the games industry. Some of the best features of the Xbox One are how easily you can save and share content. The console includes menu controls that let you quickly save and share screenshots and videos (though not quite as easily as the dedicated share button on the PS4), and one of the most useful aspects of the Kinect was the ability to say, “Xbox, record that,” and save a clip after doing something awesome in a game.

As noted above, the integration with OneDrive made it easy to save your clips to the cloud. Uploading could sometimes be a pain, but when it all worked smoothly, the ability to access your screenshots and videos from a PC made it easier for content creators to make cool stuff. Xbox One helped lower the barriers for creating content among gamers everywhere, and its sharing features are intuitive, easy to use, and among the best improvements of the console over the Xbox 360.

Integrating Everything With SmartGlass

When Microsoft first announced the Xbox One, the idea of it being a part of a greater entertainment whole was huge. Another part of the vision was SmartGlass, a smartphone and tablet app that integrated with Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The idea with SmartGlass was that a bunch of other devices could connect to the Xbox One for second-screen and control capability. During its announcement press conference, when Microsoft showed off watching a movie while using Snap to simultaneously access a web browser, the browser was controlled with a smartphone through SmartGlass.

In practice, the integration with mobile apps is handy in some cases, but not altogether necessary. Microsoft has since changed its apps to drop the SmartGlass branding in favor of using the Xbox, but they’re still useful for doing things like controlling your console remotely for switching between apps or watching video, making purchases from the Xbox Live store, setting up downloads, viewing your saved screenshots and gameplay clips, or interacting with other players on your friends list. But there’s not a lot of highly-useful second-screen capability with Xbox One’s mobile app integration. If you want to flip between apps or control Netflix with your smartphone, the Xbox One apps are pretty good–but you aren’t likely to do much else with them.

The Backwards Compatibility Revival

There was a time, close to the announcement of the Xbox One, when the idea of backwards compatibility was something Microsoft scoffed at. Then-Xbox boss Don Mattrick famously said that Microsoft had a machine for people who wanted backward compatibility: the Xbox 360. But soon after the release of the Xbox One, the company changed its tune on the issue.

Today, the Xbox One has a surprisingly robust backward compatibility library of both Xbox 360 and original Xbox games. Not every game works, unfortunately, because Microsoft had to use software emulation to get its old games to run on the Xbox One. But a lot of them do, which is impressive–especially given that the PS4 has no such backward compatibility offering at all. Microsoft has also improved many of its backward-compatible games by leveraging the greater power of the Xbox One X version of the console, improving resolution, textures, and colors in some cases. The ability to play old games across multiple generations is a major boon for the Xbox One and works surprisingly well, making it one of the console’s best features.

In fact, thanks to its success on Xbox One, backward compatibility has become part of the Xbox identity going into the next generation, with the Xbox Series X and S featuring backward compatibility with games across all three past generations of Xbox. Though it wasn’t initially in the cards for the Xbox One, backward compatibility is an example of how the console’s changing identity, and Microsoft’s changing focus, created successes as well as failures that weren’t obvious when it was first announced. In the end, it’s an example of how much the Xbox One has changed–it might have abandoned some of the elements Microsoft thought was the future, like the Kinect, but it has embraced other things Xbox fans loved from the past.