Author: Kyle Orland

Since Overwatch's launch last week, there has been a proliferation of online lists ranking the game's 21 characters on their raw power, or their effectiveness in certain modes, or their ability to counter certain other characters, or whatever metric you'd like.

Those lists are useful and fine for what they are. But after playing the game extensively for the last week or so (and seeing our beta impressions validated in a post-launch environment), we thought it would be more useful to rank the characters by how much fun we've had playing as each of them.

Below, Ars gaming contributor Steven Strom and I place every single Overwatch character into one of three self-explanatory tiers: "Fun," "Meh," and "Not Fun." These rankings are based partly on how useful the characters are to helping the team (because winning is fun), but they're more focused on how interesting and versatile they are for inventive and satisfying play. The rankings all assume the character is filling a needed hole in the team, too. A team of six Tracers is a lot less fun than a team where other characters can help protect her, for example.

For decades, PC gaming elitists have lorded their ability to download imaginative game mods over their dirty console gaming peasant cousins. That advantage goes away today... at least for one major recent release. Bethesda just launched an update that allows Xbox One players to download and run Fallout 4 mods (though the Bethesda mod servers seem to be melting under the strain at the moment). A similar update for the PS4 is promised for later in June.

There are a few caveats to consider before exploring the freewheeling modding scene, as Bethesda discussed in a livestream last week. All mods have to be downloaded to the console through the in-game interface (which requires a BethesdaNet account), and there's a 2GB limit to total mod storage per system. While loading the wrong mods (or loading them in the wrong order) could make the game temporarily unplayable, you don't have to worry about screwing up your save game while playing with mods loaded—a separate "modded save" will be stored alongside the standard version. Achievements and Trophies can't be earned while using mods.

Bethesda says it will be cracking down on nudity and the use of outside copyrighted content in the console mods it hosts, so forget about your dreams of running a naked Master Chief through the post-apocalyptic wasteland. As of now, 888 of the 1375 PC mods listed on the Bethesda Workshop for the game have been approved for the Xbox One, and that ratio will likely go up as Bethesda does more testing.

As someone who has been immersed in gaming and Internet culture for decades, I'm no stranger to how fans with enflamed passions can spew some heated and at times hateful rhetoric about their favorite properties online. Random Internet users can and do generate huge volumes of uncivil discussion, harassment, and sometimes even threats over everything from Mass Effect 3's ending to arguments over review scores.

Still, a portion of the reaction to news of the No Man's Sky delay in recent days seems fundamentally different in a way that has been troubling me.

The basic news being discussed here is pretty boring by game industry standards. No Man's Sky, which developer Hello Games has been targeting for a June 2016 release since last October, was first rumored and then confirmed to be delayed to early August over the past week.

In a surprise move ahead of next month's Electronic Entertainment Expo, Microsoft has lowered the price on almost all of its Xbox One bundles by $50. That means you can now get a 500GB Xbox One bundled with either Quantum Break, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, The Lego Movie Videogame, Forza Motorsport 6, Rise of the Tomb Raider, or Rare Replay for just $299. Systems with a 1TB hard drive and other bundled games range from $319 to $349.

A system with a Kinect camera and three compatible games is now $349, while one with an Elite controller and a 1TB hard drive is $449.

While the prices are listed as "for a limited time" on the Microsoft website, other online retailers seem to be matching the sudden, platform-wide price drop. The Xbox One previously dropped to $299 as part of some holiday season deals in 2015 and again as part of a Microsoft Store promotion in March.

Ars can confirm that at least one major developer is currently planning to release a new virtual reality game on the Xbox One in 2017 and plans to show that game at E3. The news lends credence to multiple recent reports suggesting Microsoft is planning a more powerful, VR-compatible Xbox One for 2017.

The information was provided to Ars directly by the developer as part of pre-E3 planning and was confirmed by a PR representative. Ars isn't at liberty to discuss the name of the game or the specific developer, but we can say that a well-known European studio is planning "a new VR game" set in the universe of an established, long-running franchise.

The game is also being planned for release on the PC and PS4, and while it seems likely the E3 demonstration will be on one of those platforms, the PR representative was clear that an Xbox One version was also being planned. The game's working title contains the word "VR," strongly suggesting this isn't merely a VR-compatible game that happens to have a more traditional Xbox One version.

Well what do you know? We were so busy playing and talking about Overwatch this week that we failed to note an important vaporware milestone on Tuesday. Just over ten years ago, on May 24, 2006, Valve first announced it was working on Half-Life 2: Episode 3, the final part "in a trilogy... that will conclude by Christmas 2007."

Back then, Valve even hinted at a standalone Episode 4, developed outside of Valve, which could be ready six to eight months after Episode 3. Pretty ambitious, eh?

Ten years... where does the time go? If you're Valve, it goes into a litany of broken timeline promises and continual stonewalling, as noted in this memorable video of quotes from Valve cofounder and Managing Director Gabe Newell regarding Episode 3 and the mythical Half-Life 3 (which was sort of first announced in 2007 but might as well be considered equally nonexistent at this point).

A pair of reports from anonymous Microsoft sources suggest the company is preparing to launch at least one downsized version of the Xbox One later this year and a more powerful, potentially VR-capable version of the console next year.

Kotaku cites "three people familiar" with the matter describing the new, more powerful Xbox One model. Code-named Scorpio, this version is set for 2017 release according to the report. Kotaku writes that the console will be able to support the Oculus Rift, and it could have a GPU technically capable of supporting 4K resolutions. This year, meanwhile, the anonymous sources suggest Microsoft will release a cheaper, smaller Xbox One, perhaps with an upgraded 2TB hard drive.

Elsewhere, Brad Sams at the Microsoft-focused Thurott Report posted a podcast with similar but slightly different information on Microsoft's Xbox hardware plans. Sams' sources suggest that Microsoft will announce two "miniature" Xbox systems for release this year. The smaller one (priced around $100) will reportedly be a streaming-focused stick comparable to devices like the Chromecast and Amazon Fire. The larger one, coming in "a little bit smaller than a large lunchbox," might be able to play "lightweight" Windows Store games thanks to Microsoft's recent integration with Universal Windows apps, Sams suggested.

[Update (3:49pm): The "European Phenotypes" mod has been reposted by Progeny of Europe, along with a somewhat mocking description calling it "an experiment to test how far Paradox will lie about banning my other mod" after "a wild ride of lies and slander."

Progeny says the current description shouldn't run afoul of Paradox rules that he says he was forced to glean from "conflicting reports to gaming media about why [Paradox] removed my mod." To keep the mod in Paradox's good graces, "any comments that will trigger Paradox and send them into an irrational fit of lies will be removed... If you are going to leave a comment, talk as though you are talking to the Stasi."]

Original Story (11:14am)

Overwatch goes into full launch this week after one of the most successful beta tests in gaming history, attracting nearly 10 million players in the open beta (and more during a smaller closed beta). Yet deciding to release the game, which was ready for release after more than two years of development, was still tough, Assistant Game Director Aaron Keller told Ars.

"It's really hard to say you're finished with something, especially something you're so invested in and passionate about like the team is," he said in a recent interview. And after announcing the final release date in March, the pressure of the development cycle really came to a head. "After that, it was like 'Oh my gosh, we're not going to get to work on it any more, there's this huge list of features we want to add.' We had to really focus to get everything in that we wanted to."

Despite the expected last-second rush, though, Keller said that the core of Overwatch has changed remarkably little overall over the course of development. "Early on the first hero that we made was Tracer, and the first map we made was Temple of Anubis," he said. "Those were being worked on concurrently. One day we got both of them in, and just with Tracer running around an unfinished map it was fun."

A new report out of Japan could be the first indication of a new handheld console in the pipeline for Nintendo, with the codename "MH." But despite some breathless reports on the news, there is reason for skepticism.

The rumor mill got churning this time thanks to off-handed mention in a report from the business analysts at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley (published in Japanese here and here). A couple of translations of that report predict that future economic growth for Nintendo through the 2020 fiscal year will be driven by "the next generation game console NX and next generation portable game console MH (Tentative title) [or (temporary name), depending on the translation]."

The translated wording certainly seems certain enough, and the specificity of the codename suggests an actual product in the works at Nintendo rather than mere speculation. Still, it's pretty odd that the first public mention of a major new hardware initiative at Nintendo would come in an aside in a business analyst's note rather than from Nintendo itself.