Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
| The video game industry has gone from a mole hill to a mountain in no time flat, Chris DiMarco is your Sherpa as you endeavor to scale Mount “Everquest”

Longview IoT Boosts Energy and Wireless Efficiency

Some of the biggest challenges slowing down the adoption of IoT are security, efficient battery usage and optimized wireless communications.One company has...

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Hallmark's Simple, Inexpensive Way to Boost Customer Satisfaction

In an effort to boost margins, companies often push more users to automated solutions such as FAQs, chatbots, voice bots and anything...

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Huawei Places the World's First 5G VoNR Video Call

Huawei recently completed the world's first voice over NR (VoNR) call. The voice and video call service was made using two Huawei...

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IGEL Advances Future of Work

IGEL is a provider of a next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces. The company’s software products include IGEL OS, IGEL UD Pocket (UDP) and Universal...

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Tata Communications and Cisco Collaborate on SD-WAN

Tata Communications and Cisco have extended their partnership to enable enterprises to transform their legacy network to a customized and secure multi-cloud...

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How to Win the 50-Year-Old China Trade War

Today and this week in-fact is historic - the left and right in the U.S. agree that we have a major trade...

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Extreme Elements Enables The Autonomous Enterprise

Extreme Networks just announced Extreme Elements which in-turn enables the autonomous network and subsequently the autonomous enterprise. In a dynamic webinar, Dan...

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MMOs and Xbox One Making an Increasingly Great Team

July 31, 2014

For anyone who's ever played an MMO, there's certainly an appeal there. Teaming up with friends, teaming up with people you've never even met, and going out to conquer worlds or just blow up large portions of them certainly has points to its merit. But the MMO was largely a province of the PC gaming market, at least, until now. While games like Defiance started things up, the near future will be a big one indeed for MMOs on Xbox One.

There are actually several MMOs set to arrive on Xbox One before too much longer has passed, and not just in the United States market either.

The Legend of Zelda on Oculus Rift Shows VR's Truest Power

July 30, 2014

When the original Nintendo Entertainment System came out, way back in the 1980s, there were fewer bigger names around than The Legend of Zelda. In many ways one of the first open world games, the tale of brave warrior Link roaming a series of dungeons and connecting fields to defeat the evil wizard Ganon and rescue Princess Zelda were widely known and widely loved. But this beloved relic from the past holds a chunk of the future in it thanks to a recently released recasting of The Legend of Zelda specifically for the Oculus Rift, putting this classic title in a whole new perspective, and showing us just how strong this new platform can be.

By any standard save that of its own era, the graphics on The Legend of Zelda are poor. It's all eight-bit, sprites, limited colors, so on and so forth.

EA Access: An Idea The Industry Can Learn From

July 29, 2014

It's easy to hate on EA. Really, it is; not so long ago it won The Consumerist's award for worst company ever two years running, losing out on a three-peat this year to Time Warner Cable. But EA may have just had an idea that's about to shake up the industry, especially if the rest of the field starts to learn from it. EA Access is set to charge a $5 monthly fee—or a $30 annual fee, which is about a 50 percent savings over the monthly version—to allow access to several EA titles, allowing users to play certain titles right from that single interface.

HBO's "Love Child" Asks One of Gaming's Toughest Questions

July 28, 2014

The “just one more” phenomenon is widely known among gamers. Just one more boss fight, just one more round, just one more level, just one more game; it's a phenomenon almost as old as video gaming itself, and for the most part, it's innocent enough. Many gamers out there know what it's like to see a Saturday morning sunrise after playing a game all of Friday night. But is it possible to go to far?

Do Game Rentals Mean Game Sales?

July 24, 2014

While the days of the video store seem to be somewhat in decline, and the idea of the rented game was going out with such edifices—for a while there, it was almost impossible to rent a game for the Xbox One, before massive outcry from the user base turned that around—there's a new report out that suggests that it may be a good idea to leave the game rental side of things alone, particularly in terms of Redbox.

While streaming and downloading are increasingly the way to go to get new games for many users, there are still plenty who turn to physical discs and the distribution methods for same. Redbox's director of video games, Ryan Calnan, pointed out that there's as much as a 50 percent conversion rate for gamers who rent games through Redbox subsequently going out and buying said game later on. Calnan's figures suggest that there's a minimum of a 20 percent conversion rate, but either way, that's a pretty good figure. Reports suggest that time of year is a major factor in whether it trends toward the bottom end or the top end of the scale, and represents a big opportunity for game makers.

Reports suggest that two games that tried specific Redbox promotions—Saints Row 4 and Thief—actually saw incremental purchases from those who normally wouldn't classify themselves as gamers.



The Long Dark: Whither Survival Gaming?

July 23, 2014

Ever feel like the game “How to Survive” was horribly misnamed? Ever play hardcore mode on “Fallout: New Vegas” and wish every game was like that? There may be some hope as yet with a new kind of game that seems to be cropping up of late, at least on PC, and it's being exemplified in a new game known as “The Long Dark.” But “The Long Dark” has got me to thinking, what's going on in the field of survival gaming, anyway?

There have been some efforts on this front. On a certain level, “How to Survive” took a run at it, and the Xbox Live Arcade indie title “Survivalist” gave it a shot as well.

Microsoft's Quarterly Numbers Prove Xbox One's Worth

July 22, 2014

Last quarter, Microsoft shipped 1.1 million Xbox units. That's a pretty stark number to start things out with, but there's quite a bit more to that number than meets the eye. In fact, starting to run down that number along with the rest of the numbers from the fourth quarter of Microsoft's fiscal year 2014 shows some key points that suggest the Xbox division is looking fairly sharp.

That 1.1 million units actually represents both Xbox One and Xbox 360 units, and actually represents a 10 percent increase in total sales for the devices. Not particularly exciting, of course, but here's the interesting part; the Xbox One is priced quite a bit higher than a 2013-era Xbox 360 was, so that's a boost in revenue for Microsoft; fully 14 percent extra revenue, in fact, taking the total for the quarter to $104 million.

It's Game On For Android Wear Smartwatches With Swip3

July 21, 2014

While Android Wear hasn't exactly been around for long, it's already starting to turn some heads in the wearable tech department, and with good reason. After all, it's a whole new idea in terms of getting the Android platform out of just smartphones and tablets and directly onto users' wrists. Not surprisingly, this was the kind of development that the gaming market couldn't help but get in on, and Swip3 represents the first game, at last report, specifically designed with the Android Wear in mind.

Swip3 takes advantage of the limitations inherent in a smartwatch—small display and comparatively tight control spaces—to bring out a game where users simply flick blocks around a field, much in the same way that “2048” did. Though this time, instead of a four by four grid crammed with numbers, it's a five by five grid full of colors.

Xbox Shuts Down Microsoft Entertainment Studios

July 17, 2014

Today was an absolutely grim day for large portions of Microsoft. The company dropped somewhere better than 10 percent, by some reports, of its global work force, planning to drop 18,000 jobs out of a total work force around 130,000 and shattering the old record of 5,800 firings by a factor of better than three to one. While this firing has a massive human cost, there is some silver lining this ominous dark cloud.

The good news is that not everyone fired will be immediately fired. One, this takes place over the course of a year, not immediately.

Volition Gets A Tax Dollar Boost From Champaign

July 16, 2014

Not so long ago, we had a look at how tax dollars were impacting gaming as we knew it with a Tax Day look at how Georgia was offering up some incentives to provide tax breaks for various gaming companies in the field. We even had Tripwire Interactive Vice President Alan Wilson drop in to lend a little extra perspective on the move as well, which was terrific. But now, it seems that the move is going on outside of Georgia as well, as the city of Champaign discovered it wanted Saints Row IV developer Volition to stick around, and was willing to put its money where its mouth was, so to speak.

Ever since the success of Saints Row IV, the company was looking to make some expansion efforts. Word emerged that the company was eager to do some remodeling, expand its operations, and make some new hires, including 100 new developers.

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