The first thing we hear once behind closed doors with Thief at E3 isn’t much better: we’re told the game – a reinvention of a long-dormant hardcore first-person stealth franchise – has been “changed for modern audiences”. While an actual gander at a pre-alpha build of the game running on a debug PlayStation 4 largely assuaged our fears as far as the game’s tone and intended audience go, other aspects left us somewhat concerned.

The playthrough we witness begins several hours into the game in a town whose populace are revolting against an oppressive regime led by a Baron. Player character Garrett hopes to use the distraction provided by the rioting townsfolk to steal a priceless family heirloom called the Heart of the Lion from the Baron’s Mansion.
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The level begins after dark in the gardens outside Northcrest Manor which are a typical English upper-class affair, featuring cobbled pathways, marble statues, hedges, and brick walls laced with vines, with pools of illumination provided by strategically-placed lanterns and torches.

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"On PlayStation 4 , it just happens. You just make a PS4 game, it supports Remote Play," Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida told Engadget.

"The single biggest issue, why there are not many PlayStation 3 games that support Remote Play, was that it was optional – the system didn't do much.

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The company's interactive entertainment business president Don Mattrick told Bloomberg TV that the console’s NZ$749 price tag was “a lower number than some of the analysts had forecast".

"We're over-delivering value against other choices I think consumers can get, said Mattrick.

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An open world zombie sandbox title, State of Decay has sold over half a million copies since its launch on June 5, with half those sales occurring within its first two days on the market. That makes it the fastest-selling XBLA original game in the platform's history.

The proposed follow-up, codenamed Class4, would be an MMO according to Undead Labs.

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The job losses have seen three-year production director Hannes Seifert named as the new studio head.

"We are making significant changes at IO Interactive as we align our business against a changing and challenging market," said an IO spokesperson.

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Speaking with Gamespot, Valve VP of marketing Doug Lombardi said that the full game would be available before this year's The International championship, which begins on August 7.

The International’s top prize is US$1 million, and this will be the tournament’s third year.

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The studio will open next month in Kraków, and will house 20 employees.

"As we informed in our strategy outlook some time ago, aside from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077, the studio aims to develop two smaller (approximately 20 hours of gameplay) premium quality titles,” said CDPR managing director Adam Badowski.

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The game, Wicked Paradise, is described by its creators as “the world’s first fully immersive Erotic Virtual Reality Adventure Game specifically designed to make use of the amazing capabilities of the Oculus Rift”.

“Instead of watching an erotic movie or reading an erotic book in which the main character has exciting sexual adventures, you become that character!”

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Battle Tails!

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“I’m kind of surprised Sony has it in the theatre here,” says Blow of his latest game. “There’s no guns.” One could read this comment as yet another dig from the notorious dev towards the skew of the mainstream industry. But here it sounds more like an acknowledgement that The Witness is bereft of the frantic action typical of the attention-stealing games of E3. Rather, it’s an adventure/puzzle game that thrives on delivering a sense of ongoing achievement. “This game is for people who are interested in that feeling of fascination and discovery.”

[Please note that this preview contains some light spoilers – the game would be difficult to describe without them. -Ed]

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As detailed in a post by Xbox Live's Michael Dunn on Major Nelson’s blog, players with bad reputations will only be matched with equally disruptive gamers.

However, players headed towards this low reputation level would see many different alerts before their matchmaking was altered, said Dunn.

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EA's Patrick Söderlund told Eurogamer that those working at the studio had moved to other projects.

"Danger Close as it was doesn't exist anymore," he said.

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The just-released Fuse and one Facebook game aside, since 1996 Insomniac has only ever released games on PlayStation hardware.

“It may surprise some of our longtime fans that we have partnered with Microsoft Studios to develop Sunset Overdrive exclusively for Xbox One,” wrote Price.

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However, those wanting to play the game DRM-free should do so on PC, The Witcher 3 game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz told Gameplanet.

“We have the same philosophy we had before. On the first day [of release] the game will be available on gog.com without any DRM. At the same time, we cannot punish players who don’t have PCs.

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As reported by Polygon, Apogee claims it is owed US$2 million (NZ$2.5 million) in unpaid royalties in addition to an unspecified sum from when Gearbox purchased the franchise. It also claims that Gearbox has refused to allow it to independently verify how much money the game made.

In response, Gearbox said that it had fulfilled all its commitments to Apogee/3D Realms (3DR), and that in doing so, Gearbox “enriched 3DR, saved 3DR from its debts, and rescued 3DR from its litigation surrounding its failed dozen-plus year attempt to ship Duke Nukem Forever”.

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First Microsoft revealed a new games console but mistakenly pitched it as a device for watching television instead.

Then Microsoft announced its policies around software licensing for the Xbox One. The reaction from commenters across the Internet was explosive: the software giant appeared to be plotting a draconian digital rights management system for Xbox that would put the interests of its corporate publishing and retail partners ahead of the wishes of the consumers who actually buy and play games – indeed, a system that would treat paying customers as potential criminals, and restrict rights and freedoms that they had previously taken to be inalienable.

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Guillemot was blunt about the situation: “We need more sold,” he said.

Ubisoft has been Nintendo's strongest supporter among third-party publishers since the launch of the Wii U in November last year, creating ZombiU, Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2013, Sports Connection, and Rabbids Land specifically for the platform.

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“It's kilobytes, not megabytes,” Spencer told GameInformer. “You can also set your console to always have the latest bits in a standby state.”

In addition, the specifications for Xbox One say it will require a minimum 1.5 Mbps Internet connection, but Spencer said he was confident that anyone who can play online now with an Xbox 360 will have no problems with Xbox One.

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In comparison with the equivalent list for PlayStation 4, Microsoft's console has a handful more exclusive Xbox One titles – thirteen to Sony's nine – but the PlayStation 4 has a tidy lead once console exclusives are added in (titles which are not coming to Xbox, but might appear on PC and other platforms).

Overall, the total number of games announced for each platform is 56 for Xbox One versus 69 for PlayStation 4.

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In comparison with the equivalent list for Xbox One, Sony's console has fewer exclusive PlayStation 4 titles – nine to Microsoft's thirteen – but the PlayStation 4 has a tidy lead once console exclusives are added in (titles which are not coming to Xbox, but might appear on PC and other platforms).

Overall, the total number of games announced for each platform is 69 for PlayStation 4 versus 56 for Xbox One.

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Yesterday, Gameplanet saw the game in action for the first time in a behind-closed-doors session led by Arkham Origins' gameplay director, Michael McIntyre. At this early stage, we can report that the game will feel instantly familiar to series veterans; the Montreal studio has certainly not upset the apple cart in any serious way, and the core Arkham gameplay remains intact. What's unknown at this stage, however, is whether this gameplay has the legs to justify a third outing, even with an assortment of gameplay additions.

Perhaps the biggest shake-up for Arkham Origins is, ironically, a plot device that is fast becoming a cliche at the tail end of this current generation: the prequel or origin story. "You play a young Batman who is about to face the biggest challenge of his young career," explains McIntyre. Black Mask has placed a large bounty on Batman's head, and so the caped crusader finds himself the target of a large number of deadly, determined assassins. Batman’s tasks (at least as far as we currently know) are simply to survive and to ascertain who is trying to take him down. McIntyre tells us that Origins will see Batman encounter some of his most famous enemies for the first time.

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Gameplanet took the game for a brief spin this morning.

But first of all there's a departure from tradition. The first thing fans of The Elder Scrolls series will notice when creating a character in The Elder Scrolls Online is the class selection tab. Typically in an Elder Scrolls title a race is chosen (which comes with particular boons and blemishes) and skills are dynamically honed based on the amount of use they get.

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The trailer was played at the Horizon indie press conference at E3.

Creator Phil Fish was not on hand to discuss the announcement.

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Revealed during EA’s Monday E3 press conference, Garden Warfare is a third-person shooter, featuring elements of horde, tower defense and hardcore multiplayer deathmatch. As if it weren't obvious by the homonym in the title, the game parodies military shooters such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. PopCap has set out to present a humorous mirror to the face of a genre that is typically po-faced and awash in machismo.

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Bill Giese, design director of Forza 5, talked us through the many changes and improvements to the series' popular formula that the Xbox One architecture affords. The first major improvement brought to our attention pertains to Autovista: the mode introduced in Forza Motorsport 4 that enabled players to examine their vehicles in exceptional detail. Where Forza 4's Autovista featured only 24 vehicles, every single one of the "hundreds" of cars on offer (Turn 10 isn't talking exact numbers just yet) will feature in Forza 5's version, now simply named "Forza Vista."

While Forza 4's cars were indeed striking when viewed in Autovista, Giese and his teammates acknowledged that "there was something that still wasn't quite right, kind of in an uncanny-valley way." So Turn 10 re-examined the way it approached lighting and real-world materials and learned something crucial: their existing approach was too good for its own good, and it's the imperfections that make an object believable in a high-definition environment.

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Lengthy sessions are not necessarily what developer Honeyslug is going for with PSN game Hohokum, but it's certainly a potential consequence. Russell explains that it's intended as a "Zen game" along the lines of Flower, and as a calming experience that PlayStation 4 owners might play for 10 or 15 minutes between games. Russell offered a scenario that a player might fire up Hohokum while, say, Killzone: Shadow Fall searches for a match-made multiplayer game in the background. "The hardware allows us to do that," he says of the PlayStation 4's multitasking capabilities.

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Microsoft revealed last week that it will allow publishers to have an undefined level of control over ownership transfers for Xbox One games, while Sony has eschewed any changes to the existing disc-based trading model for PlayStation 4 games. However, publishers could still implement their own restrictions on used games without Sony's help – as they did on current generation consoles with online pass schemes, for example.

EA is still deciding on a used games strategy for next-gen consoles. “We are formulating our strategy based on the information they released,” EA Labels president Frank Gibeau said during an investor call today.

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It's another staggeringly dismissive statement from a company which seems to have caught a serious case of the PR shakes this year, and one fed directly to journalists this afternoon. Safely in a WiFi zone, gathered in a booth behind closed doors on the E3 showfloor, Gameplanet was given a first-hand (yet not hands-on) glimpse at the powerful features of Xbox One.

First up, an engineering boss at Redmond showed off the raw computational power of the AMD Jaguar CPU. Using a dataset of stars and celestial bodies sourced from NASA, Microsoft showed floating blobs moving in orbit relative to the sun. While the demo appeared smooth, there wasn’t a lot of technical information given.

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Creator David Cage pulled no punches in his assessment of the new scene, "It's difficult for [Quantic Dream] to be at E3, as we don't make [explosion sound] games."

He contrasted the reaction they received to their most recent trailer, featuring fights and gunplay between Ellen Page's character, Jodie, and a CIA trainer, with both their previous moodier demo from 2012 and their Tribeca Film Festival trailer, which received a very positive reaction there. Cage was reluctantly enthusiastic regarding the E3 reaction to the fight-based trailers and action gameplay, but he insists this is a very small part of the finished product.

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The revelation came during an interview with GameTrailers prior to Microsoft's E3 conference, as Mattrick attempted to explain Microsoft's strategy and rationale for requiring an Internet connection on Xbox One.

Once people see Microsoft's line-up of games, “people are going to love it,” said Mattrick, “and they're going to understand what we are trying to create, and how it links games and entertainment, the functionality of the box, some of the advantages that you get, of having a box that is designed to use an online state. So that to me is the future-proof choice, and I think people could’ve arguably gone the other way if we didn’t do it, and fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity, it’s called Xbox 360.”

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To be fair, the franchise looks better than ever thanks to significant improvements that have been made under the hood. Ghosts runs at sixty frames a second on a heavily overhauled version of the Infinity Ward Engine – so modified that for the sake of expedience, the developer is fairly calling it new – and its advancements are immediately apparent.

New lighting has the player character’s eyes adjust in a more realistic fashion when moving from shade to light, and the game’s use of displacement mapping and subdivision surface (sub d) techniques – the latter a movie technology that consoles are finally advanced enough to use – has everything looking smooth and round, from gun sights to the game’s environmental textures. Sub d also allows the inclusion of smaller details such as cuts and imperfections on all character models.

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