Category: PC

Metro 2033 taught me one thing – post-apocalyptic Moscow is a dangerous place. Aside from mutated monsters and neo-nazis, players also had to contend with malicious spirits of the dead and those weird ooze blobs that killed framerates the world over.

In Metro: Last Light, it doesn’t look like things have gotten any better. In fact, things may have gotten worse. To help you survive in this environment, the developers at 4A Games have thrown together a couple of videos with survival tips.

The first explores the different factions of the Metro and the areas they inhabit:

The second explores the different enemies – both human and mutant – that players will encounter:

Metro: Last Light launches across the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on May 14.

For an industry whose lot in life is to invent the future and challenge the status quo, technology’s giants are astonishingly stubborn when faced with change. And no two companies personify that more than Microsoft and Intel — the glimmer twins of the personal computer revolution. For decades the PC buying cycle left these two companies sitting on a mountain of cash higher than even the highest Himalayan peaks. I guess when you are sitting at such heights, it is hard to look down and recognize that the base is being chipped away.

To be sure, I am not saying that Microsoft and Intel are going to go away tomorrow. Their fiscal muscle is enough to put even Popeye to shame. And monopolies (even quasi-monopolies) take forever to fade.

But for the first time they are facing a challenge that is much more profound and broader than they have ever faced in their monopolistic lives: competition and changing tastes. How they deal with these changes is going to write the next chapter of their corporate history.

PC sales horror show

But let’s take a step back. The signs of crumbling came last week when research companies like IDC and Gartner shared data that showed double digit percentage declines in PC sales during the first quarter of 2013. To be sure, the first ninety days of the year are relatively slow for sales of consumer goods, considering that people go on a buying binge during the holiday season, but still a 14 percent year over year decline during the quarter is not something to skim over. It was so bad that even downward trend defying Apple PC sales are expected to head south.

Many media reports blamed the Windows 8 operating system for this debacle, but this is the fourth quarter in a row we have seen PC sales sagging; we can’t blame the new operating system. The reason why media and analysts continue to make that correlation is because we have in the past made that correlation: new Windows equals big PC sales, almost like clockwork every three or four years. Except now it is not true because our relationship with PC (as we knew it) has changed.

The new personal

It has been just about six years since Apple’s iPhone launched and changed our expectations of computers and our relationship with technology. It became more intimate and personal than either Intel or Microsoft had imagined. It wasn’t as that the companies were unaware of mobile phones, or that iPhone was the first smartphone — Nokia and Palm had been selling them for quite a few years — but the iPhone and later Android phones became truly “personal.”

They made us spend less and less time on our PCs. They were always there, and even when the PC sat on the table, the phone in your hand was more fun and easy to use. And then three years ago came the iPad (and later other tablets) to take away even more of our attention from the PC. And when the iPad launched, I knew my PC was going to become less important. The iPad was my slate of imagination.

In the end, an increasing number of people are finding that they don’t need a whiz-bang PC anymore and they don’t need to upgrade because they can do a lot of things on their iPad or Kindle Fire or Samsung Android tablet.

The signs of this change were obvious to anyone who was paying attention. When Apple dropped “computer” from its name, the late (and then chief executive) Steve Jobs pointed out that it was a sign of the times and where the world was going. Here is what I wrote then:

Apple is making the phone do all things a computer does – surf, email, browse, iChat, music and watch videos. Nary a keyboard or mouse in sight, and everything running on OS-X. While I am not suggesting that this replaces our notebooks or desktops for crucial productivity tasks, the iPhone (if it lives up to its hype) is at least going to decrease our dependence on it.

The future is here

Six years later, the world has really changed for the twin gods of the PC. Unlike Apple and Google, who have hitched their bandwagons to wireless devices, Microsoft and Intel are still weighed down by the legacy of their past. I mean, it is hard for Microsoft to look beyond the profits from Windows and Office. It will always look at the future through the lens of those two products. I have been suspect of Intel’s ability to come out ahead as well.

Intel, too, is so married to the idea of selling more expensive PC chips and silicon for servers that it doesn’t know how to readjust its focus and its fiscal models around a world that wants lower priced chips for a different and always shifting market. Since then the world has embraced the little pocket marvels with amazing speed and that in turn has unleashed a new cellphone economics. The mobile chips are getting faster and faster. And thanks to demand that far strips the demand of classic PC devices, they are getting cheaper.

The mobile phone market is so big that it has attracted all sorts of chip makers into the business: Qualcomm, MediaTek and Nvidia are some of the players in the mobile chip business that are relentlessly flooding the market with faster, cheaper and more powerful chips. They are being helped by ARM Holdings, which keeps beefing up its chip technology and expanding its possible uses by focusing on not making chips, but instead licensing chip designs to others like Qualcomm.

Intel has to react to these guys; not to Advanced Micro Devices, the perennial also-ran that was always weighed down with an anemic balance sheet and an inability to compete even when it had better chips. And we all know, Qualcomm is no AMD. MediaTek knows how to play the mobile chip game better than anyone else. What does Intel have to show for its mobile efforts?

Change is hard

A lot of noise – press releases, product releases and a handful of devices. Sorry, but I remain resolute in my belief that the company’s DNA is making this transition to anywhere computing very difficult. That inability to change is reflected in the company’s current dilemma over the chief executive position. In an article this week, The New York Times detailed the likely replacements for outgoing CEO Paul Otellini.

Analysts say the two top contenders to be Intel’s next C.E.O. are Brian Krzanich and David Perlmutter, who are close to Intel’s core business. Mr. Krzanich, Intel’s chief operating officer, oversees its fabrication facilities. Mr. Perlmutter, the chief product officer, oversees chip design. Renee James, the head of Intel’s software group, is considered a more remote chance to run what has long been a hardware company. And Stacy Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer, is well liked inside and outside the company, but like Mr. Otellini, lacks an engineering background, which diminishes his prospects.

Regardless of who becomes the new Intel chief, the problem is that they were all weaned on the classic PC business, one that is changing with the rise of smartphones and tablets and lower power anywhere-computing devices.

That said (and as my wise colleague Kevin Tofel continues to remind me), Intel is doing relatively well with its Atom lineup of chips and he feels it is one of the reasons why Microsoft RT on ARM devices is facing challenges.

The full Windows 8 tablets that run on Atom processors priced at the same price as RT devices (and with the similar battery life) should give Intel some hope. However, their addiction to the PC-style model and hefty margins that come from being almost monopolistic are going to challenge Intel in the future. As I wrote in the past, companies are defined by their corporate DNA and that determines their outcome.

Microsoft too has similar challenges as it grapples with the idea of competition and a world it doesn’t and can’t control anymore. More on that another day, but in closing, I would like to repeat what I said at the start of this piece: the companies that spearhead the talk of disruption and innovation are the ones who are afraid to disrupt themselves.

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out in late 2011 to multiple game of the year awards, and one too many arrow in the knee memes. Since then, Bethesda has released three DLC expansions with Dragonborn being the latest. Now Bethesda is ready to move on to its next project.

On the official Bethesda blog, the studio announced that Skyrim is now pretty much complete. The studio says that it will release minor updates here and there, but it’s safe to assume that we won’t be seeing anymore expansions released for the title.

Bethesda says that it’s had a small team working on pre-production for its latest title, but the game has now reached the point where it requires the attention of the entire team. There’s no hint as to what this new title is, but we should be getting an announcement pretty soon if it’s already far enough in development to warrant the entire team’s attention.

While some, including yours truly, would love to see Bethesda apply itself to a new IP; some early signs are pointing to Fallout 4. The biggest hint is that Erik Todd Dellums, the voice actor of Fallout 3′s Three Dog, said that he was back in the studio recording lines for the role. This set off plenty of speculation that Bethesda was either working on Fallout 4 or a Fallout TV show. We won’t know for sure until an official announcement, but Bethesda’s new project may very well be a new entry in the Fallout franchise for next-gen consoles.

If the thought of Fallout 4 isn’t enough console you over the lack of new Skyrim content going forward, you can always get into the modding scene. The amount of mods available for Skyrim on the PC is astounding, and the tools available for modding, from the Nexus Mod Manager to Steam Workshop, make modding easier than ever before.

Up until this point, I’ve always thought that Injustice: Gods Among Us looked like a great game. After the reveal of the opening cinematic, I’m convinced that DC needs to make an animated film.

If you’re unfamiliar with the events leading up to hero vs. hero fights in Injustice, let’s just say that Metropolis is no more and Superman is very angry. You should avoid the video below if you don’t want the opening moments of the game’s story spoiled, but there’s some quality storytelling and acting here. The Joker in particular stands out even though it’s a little sad that Mark Hamill didn’t reprise his role this time around.

If you don’t like spoilers and just want to watch super heroes beat each other up, you should check out the launch trailer for the game. There’s plenty of combat to go around.

Injustice: Gods Among Us will launch on April 16 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U.

PC shipments and sales are declining. It’s an undeniable fact. What people can’t seem to agree on is the cause. Some say the rise of tablets and smartphones are to blame, while others think it’s just a longer than usual transition period. Both are right in their own way, but one research firm says the root cause can be traced back to Microsoft.

IDC reports that worldwide PC shipments were at 76.3 million units in Q1 of this year. That’s a drop of 13.9 percent compared to the first quarter of 2012. It’s even worse when you consider that IDC was only predicting a 7.7 percent drop in shipments last quarter. Oh, and to just rub salt in the wound, IDC notes that this is the single worst quarter for PC shipments since it started tracking the market in 1994.

What could possibly be causing this huge decline in PC sales? IDC says there’s a lot at play here including a decrease in shipments of low-cost Mini Notebooks, and an increase in consumer spending on tablets and smartphones. The high cost of PCs and Ultrabooks are also presenting obstacles as consumers don’t want to spend more than $1,000 on a PC.

All of the above reasons have contributed to the decline of PC shipments, but IDC points to Windows 8 as one of the leading causes of the current slump the PC industry is facing:

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market,” said Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, Clients and Displays. “While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button, and the costs associated with touch have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices. Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market.”

IDC’s findings jibe with that of UK PC Merchants who in February reported that consumers were still buying Windows 7 PCs over those that came with Windows 8. In fact, one merchant said that he had to start offering Windows 7 as the default OS again lest he lose business.

While this certainly looks bad, IDC reminds us that there’s at least one silver lining in all of this. Going against all expectations, Lenovo posted double year-on-year growth in the U.S. while everybody else, including Dell and HP, have posted double digit losses.

So, what can Microsoft do to turn its, and the entire PC industry’s, fortunes around? That’s hard to say, but the company is obviously up to something with Windows Blue. Whether the improvements being made to Windows 8 can actually turn everything around remains to be seen though.

In early March, Bethesda announced the first piece of story-based DLC for Dishonored – The Knife of Dunwall. The expansion would put players in the shoes of Daud – one of the antagonists from the original game.

Much like Corvo, Daud is an assassin. He has a few different tricks up his sleeve though, and this gameplay trailer should give players a good idea of what to expect from the assassin that killed an empress:

The Knife of Dunwall will be available on April 16 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Ever since viruses started to hit the headlines back in the 1980s, security for PCs has been big business. Products like Norton and McAfee have grown to household name status, and made their original developers very rich men on the back of it.

This is mainly because Windows wasn’t built with security in mind and was adopted in such huge numbers that it made a tempting target. Until recently that is. With Security Essentials built into Windows 8 and active by default, and available free for users of older systems, the boys at Redmond have suddenly started to take security seriously.

So is it time it throw off the shackles of your security subscription and trust Microsoft to do the job? The Consumers’ Association  in the UK certainly thinks so. In independent tests it rated Windows 8 as better than anything else at protecting against viruses and phishing attacks, with Microsoft Security Essentials a close second for those running earlier Windows versions. Their best buy paid suite, Bullguard, came in third with the best rated free alternative, Avira, a distant seventh. You can read details of how the tests were carried out here.

Of course if you pay for a security suite you get all kinds of extras like a backup tool, parental controls, identity protection, password management and system tune up. But hold on, most of these things are included in Security Essentials too and they don’t seem to put the brakes on performance in the way that some of the third party suites do. For the elements that are missing, like ID protection and a password vault, there are plenty of free alternatives to be had.

With Microsoft’s security solutions putting on a show of strength in this way it’s important to ask what the effect might be on the third-party security market. If these test results stand up to experience in the real world then the big security names are going to be left floundering to justify why you need to use their products. Maybe they’ll turn their marketing efforts on all those unprotected Macs out there instead.

Photo credit: Julien Tromeur/Shutterstock

Ubisoft had me worried when it seemed like Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was just an April Fools joke, but it’s thankfully a real game. The spin-off of last year’s incredible open world shooter takes players back into an 80s infused alternate reality 2007 that looks parts Terminator, Escape From New York and G.I. Joe. The result is something that can only be described as incredible.

To celebrate the game’s announcement, Ubisoft released a trailer today that combines old VHS footage, G.I. Joe-style animation, and gameplay footage into what must be the greatest game trailer released in the past five years:

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon will be assaulting your eyeballs on May 1. It will be available on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The best part – it doesn’t require Far Cry 3 to play. It’s an entirely separate experience that’s a love letter to everything children of the 80s grew up with.

When Dark Souls II was announced during Spike TV’s VGAs, many fans thought this was an admission that the game would be dumbed down to appeal to a more casual audience. Those fears persisted well into the present day, but a new trailer and gameplay video should hopefully put your fears to rest.

First up is a new trailer for Dark Souls II showing some of the environments players will explore in the game. It’s obvious that Dark Souls II has received a pretty major facelift as the environments look way better than past games. There also seems to be a lot more fear and desolation going around if the environments are any indication.

If you want to see the game in action, check out IGN’s 12-minute gameplay reveal in which the director gives us a tour of an area in the game:

Dark Souls II will launch on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC later this year.

Going into the first quarter of 2013, IDC was projecting a dismal 7.7 percent decline in worldwide PC shipments from the same quarter a year ago. Turns out, they were wrong: the decline of the PC market during the quarter was drastically worse.

The 76.3 million PCs that did ship between January and March this year were down a whopping 14 percent from the same quarter a year ago. It’s leading the analysts at IDC, who have been monitoring the PC market since 1994, to call it “the worst quarter” it’s seen.

And, no, it’s not a blip: it’s the fourth quarter in a row that PC shipments have declined.

The numbers show that people still buy PCs, but not in the quantities of the past. Instead, many people — both businesses and individual consumers — are making the purchase of cheaper, more portable tablets their priority right now.

All the big PC makers are affected. Lenovo, which is the second-largest PC maker by volume, was the only one of the top 5 firms who didn’t see double-digit units sales declines during the quarter — it pulled even with the same quarter a year ago. Not terrible, but certainly not good.

Even Apple, which was able to buck the industry trend of the last year and grow Mac sales until the last quarter of 2012, is seeing its laptop and desktop shipments drop off. IDC doesn’t release global numbers for Apple, but in the U.S. its shipments dropped 7.5 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

But what Apple has going for it is its prescience in seeing this shift to smaller mobile computing coming (and of course helping it along). So when people are opting not to buy a more expensive laptop or desktop, it has the iPad to offer.

Apple competitors in the PC business have been slow to adjust to this new reality. And even for those who are trying to offer a good tablet experience, it’s not going that well. Microsoft’s attempt to stanch the bleeding with Windows 8 is faring poorly, IDC says:

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only didn’t provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market,” said Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, Clients and Displays. “While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button and the costs associated with touch PCs have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices. Microsoft is going to have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if they want to help reinvigorate the PC market.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user Alyssa L. Miller via Compfight cc

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Are you finding yourself tired of the same ol’ maps in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2? If so, you will be pleased to know that Treyarch is set to release a new map pack on April 16.

Activision and Treyarch revealed this week that Uprising, the newest map pack for Call of Duty 2: Black Ops 2, will feature the usual four new maps and one new zombie campaign. Three of the maps – Magma, Encore and Vertigo – are entirely new. The other map – Studio – is a reimagining of the Firing Range map. As for the zombies mode, the new campaign is called “Mob of the Dead.”

The Uprising map pack will be available first on Xbox Live starting April 16. It will move to other platforms at a later date.

Remember Me, the memory altering action game that surprised everyone at last year’s E3, is ready to launch later in a few months. Now it’s up to Capcom to get people hyped for what’s looking like one of the best games of the year.

The latest trailer for Remember Me details some of the enemies that players will be tasked with fighting in the game. If you want to know more about how you’ll fight these enemies, check out this previous combat trailer.

Even as we get more diverse protagonists in games, we still can’t escape the dubstep laden quick-cut trailer. Oh well, I guess we can’t win every battle.

Remember Me will launch on June 7 across the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Since Grand Theft Auto III, the series has employed an iconic cover art that’s uniquely GTA. The latest game in the franchise indicates that Rockstar isn’t ditching the style yet.

Rockstar Games today revealed the cover art for the upcoming Grand Theft Auto V. Like past games, the cover art gives plenty of attention to the protagonists of the title while showcasing other characters and scenes that players will encounter in the game.

The cover art reveal hopefully signals that Rockstar will start sharing more details on GTAV. The game still largely remains a mystery at this point, but that should all change in the coming months. In fact, we should see the biggest info drop on the title at this year’s E3 in June.

Grand Theft Auto V is scheduled to launch across the Xbox 360 and PS3 on September 17. A PC port will probably come a few months after if the delayed release of GTAIV on the PC is any indication. As for a Wii U port, don’t hold your breath.

Far Cry 3 is an absolutely amazing game. I can’t really think of anything that could improve the experience beyond an injection of 80s awesomeness.

In what’s either a cruel April Fools’ joke, or the most amazing thing to ever happen in video games – Ubisoft today announced a “movie” called Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Here’s the amazing synopsis:

The year is 2007. It is the future. Earth has been ravaged by a nuclear war and new paths for peace must be found. A U.S. cyborg army may have found a solution: a powerful bioweapon on a distant island. A Mark IV Cyber Commando, Sergeant Rex Power Colt has been sent over to gather information and figure out what the hell is going on.

A previous report from Kotaku indicates that Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon may indeed be an expansion, an entirely new game, based on the Far Cry 3 universe. One indication we have that this may be more than a joke is that it’s been officially rated by the Australian Classification Board as R 18+ for having a “high impact sex scene.” Another sliver of hope is an achievement list for the game that features such feats as “Dragon Slayer” and “The Drug of the Nation.”

There’s still no word on whether or not this is real, but there’s hope that Ubisoft isn’t just pulling our collective legs on this one. I think I would cry if this turned out to be nothing more than a joke.

It seemed unlikely that NetherRealm Studios would announce even more characters for the already star-studded Injustice: Gods Among Us. The studio is full of surprises, however, as it has announced another new character for the DC Comics fighter.

It was announced that Black Adam will be joining the cast of Injustice: Gods Among Us. For those unaware, Black Adam is the villain/anti-hero opposite of Captain Marvel/Shazam. It’s unclear as to how he or Shazam will fit into the story, but Black Adam’s move set looks to be a more aggressive version of Shazam’s.

With this latest announcement, the Injustice roster is now at 24 characters. The developers may have to start looking into more obscure characters if they aim to add anymore. If they do start to add more obscure characters, I can only hope that Mr. Banjo at least makes a cameo appearance.

Injustice: Gods Among Us will launch across the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii U on April 16.

PCs have had a big presence in people’s entertainment systems for years. Some control the entire operation with a wireless mouse and keyboard, for BlackBerry Users controlling everything with your BlackBerry or PlayBook is a more clever idea.

Remote Control Collection Pro by Stephan Schultz separates the control schemes in to a few different task-specific groups.

Mouse and Keyboard work in an intuitive fashion transforming your touchscreen into a touchpad for your PC. To scroll use the very right side of the touchscreen. The keyboard be it virtual or physical works just fine even for special characters like arrows and currency characters.

The Media Remote is a simplified tool for controlling a movie or song. This remote supports VLC, Windows Media Player, iTunes, Spotify and more.

The Slideshow Remote is handy for doing a Powerpoint or taking people through a PDF or document. The Scroll remote is ideal for navigating long list-based websites like facebook, Tumblr and more. There is also a shortcut section that puts critical tasks in the palm of your hand like shutdown and sleep.

Click here to buy Remote Control Collection for $2.99 for BlackBerry 10 and PlayBook from BlackBerry World.

Battlefield, the only franchise that can compete head-to-head with Call of Duty, will be getting a new installment this year. Unsurprisingly, the game will be called Battlefield 4 and feature more of the same excellent multiplayer that fans have come to expected coupled with a singleplayer campaign that promises to be more “human, dramatic and believable” than past entries.

That singleplayer campaign is the focus of the 17 minute gameplayer trailer that accompanied the reveal last night. DICE stresses that everything in the trailer is rendered in game. Battlefield 3 was already a visually impressive game, and Battlefield 4 is already looking like it will set a new benchmark for in-game visuals.

“We are so humbled and proud to debut Battlefield 4 on a global stage with simultaneous events in San Francisco and Stockholm. To be this early in development, and to already be so polished is a huge achievement for the DICE team and reflection of their passion and commitment to driving the franchise forward. Today’s demo was just the beginning — we have so much more in store,” said Patrick Soderlund, Executive Vice President, EA Games Label. “It is thrilling to witness peoples’ reaction when seeing the game for the first time. It really makes you realize that we are at the beginning of a whole new era for gaming. As artists and craftspeople, we are focused on creating a dynamic, open design that brings people together with amazing, surprising unscripted moments that they’ll talk about for days. That’s the beauty of Battlefield.”

Beyond the visuals, it looks like we’ll get more of the solid gameplay that Battlefield is known for. The only unknown is the story, but the early gameplay demo shows promise. DICE has already proven it can tell an entertaining story with the Bad Company series, but it remains to be seen if the developer can do the same thing with a more dramatic turn of events.

Battlefield 4 will be released this fall for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. There’s no mention of next-gen consoles, but a game this pretty is bound to end up on them.

Up until now, trailers for Watch Dogs have focused on Aiden Pearce and his ability to hack into the city of Chicago to control its surveillance, gather intel on its citizens, and more or less become a high-tech anti-hero. What about those who run the city though? What are they doing while Pearce hacks them blind? The latest trailer for Watch Dogs seeks to answer some of those questions.

It will be interesting to see how the asymmetrical gameplay of Watch Dogs works with the introduction of this new element. The game promises to give control of rival hackers to other players as they try to take down (or perhaps help) Pearce. This latest trailer makes it appear that some players may also be put into the role of those running the city as they try to make sense of those who are hacking into its system. Either way, the game shows a lot of promise for something that we still know next to nothing about.

Watch Dogs is slated to launch later this year for all current and next-gen consoles, and PC.

Earlier this month, Ubisoft revealed that the next Assassin’s Creed game would be titled Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. The announcement came with a CG trailer that didn’t show any gameplay, but it did make PETA look more foolish than usual.

Now Ubisoft is ready to show some gameplay from the latest Assassin’s Creed title, and I can confirm, based solely on the trailer, that this is indeed an Assassin’s Creed title. It’s a little more bombastic than previous trailers with a focus on all-out fights instead of stealth or assassinations, but it still looks like every other game in the series.

Assassin’s Creed III was seen as a disappointment to some gamers. The next title will have to win back these gamers if it hopes to remain one of the best selling annual franchises.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag will launch later this year across all current and next-gen consoles, including the PS4, Wii U and whatever name Microsoft gives the next Xbox.