Month: December 2015

Enlarge / The original placeholder box art released by Konami (left) and the newly released box art (right) with a final rating and no "Kojima" branding.

Thursday night's The Game Awards ceremony included two awards given to Konami for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and one of those was accepted by voice actor Kiefer Sutherland on series creator Hideo Kojima's behalf. Viewers might have assumed Kojima didn't attend the show because of international travel to Los Angeles, or because of sour grapes over things like having his name removed from the game's box, but host Geoff Keighley went to unusual lengths to explain exactly why Kojima wasn't in the house—and to shame Konami in the process.

"Mr. Kojima had every intention of being here with us tonight, but unfortunately he was informed by a lawyer representing Konami, just recently, that he would not be allowed to travel to tonight's awards ceremony to accept any awards," Keighley told the award ceremony's crowd. They responded with boos as Keighley continued: "He's still under an employment contract, and it's disappointing. It's inconceivable to me that an artist like Hideo would not be allowed to come here and celebrate with his peers, his fellow teammates, for such an incredible game as MGS 5. That's the situation we're in."

At that point, Keighley said that Kojima was watching the awards from his home in Tokyo and, as a result, the ceremony had "put together a surprise" for the game maker—a performance of a song from MGS V's soundtrack by its original singer, Stephanie Jooston. "We wanted you to know, Hideo, that we're thinking of you. We miss you, and we hope to see you at the Game Awards 2016," Keighley added.

Psychonauts 2! Yes! (credit: Double Fine)

Thursday evening's broadcast of The Game Awards included celebrities, trophies (real ones—not virtual ones on PlayStation), and music performances, but like in previous years, its most interesting content came in the form of world-premiere trailers for games expected to launch the following year. Perhaps the biggest brand-new announcement came from Double Fine, whose founder Tim Schafer took the stage to announce a crowdfunding campaign for Psychonauts 2.

The reveal teaser showed an admiral speaking vaguely about assaulting an island, then was warned that it was protected by "a comatose young girl who believes she’s herding a flock of sheep," at which point the admiral asked for the Psychonauts to do the job. After the trailer was shown, Schafer took the stage and told the crowd that it would immediately launch a crowdfunding campaign at fig.co, and that campaign is asking fans for $3.3 million to get a sequel off the ground for an adventure series that has enjoyed much more critical acclaim than it ever did commercial success.

"I wanna say, 'fuck yeah, we can do this!'" Schafer said in a follow-up crowdfunding request video, which confirmed that the $3.3 million ask will only make up a third of the game's total budget; the other parts will be paid for by outside investors and by Double Fine itself. (Schafer has yet to confirm if Markus "Notch" Persson will be one of those investors.) Fans of the company's last making-of documentary series will be happy to know that filming crew 2 Player Productions are on board to chronicle Psychonauts 2's creation, as well.

Windows Server 2016, not likely to arrive until the second half of next year, is going to shake up the way Microsoft licenses its server operating system, moving away from per socket licensing to per core. The change was first spotted by Wes Miller who is, for his sins, an expert on Microsoft licensing policies.

Windows Server 2012 introduced a great rationalization in the way Microsoft licensed its server operating system. The two main editions, Standard and Datacenter, had identical features, and differed only in terms of the number of virtual operating system instances they supported. Standard supported two VMs (in addition to the host OS); Datacenter was unlimited. Beyond that, they were identical. The licenses for both editions were sold in two socket units; one license was needed for each pair of sockets a system contained.

Windows Server 2016 makes that simple system less simple. First, it reinstates the functional differences between Standard and Datacenter editions. Datacenter will include additional storage replication capabilities, a new network stack with richer virtualization options, and shielded virtual machines that protect the content of a virtual machine from the administrator of the host operating system. These features won't be found in the Standard edition.