Author: Kyle Orland

For years now, we've been hearing dueling predictions about the eventual fate of high-end, consumer-grade virtual reality. Will the technology cause a revolution in gaming and computer interaction? Will it quickly become a faddish flop? Or are we looking at something in between?

It will likely take years to fully answer those questions. But a month after the launch of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, software sales estimates from Ars Technica's Steam Gauge project can at least give us some idea of how quickly one branch of PC-based virtual reality is getting off the ground. The answer, it seems, is a small, slow, and steady start for an HTC Vive market that's still quite limited by lack of hardware in players' homes.

We'll note right up front that Steam Gauge doesn't give precise sales or gameplay data for Steam games. Instead, it generates estimates for gameplay and ownership based on random sampling of public data from Steam's own API. While there may be a small margin of error from actual sales numbers, this data should be accurate enough to provide a general view of the market. More details on the Steam Gauge methodology and its limitations can be found in our initial write-up.

Nintendo continues to lower the price floor for access to its vast ecosystem of dual-screen portable games. The company announced today that it would start selling the slate-like Nintendo 2DS for $80 on May 20, along with a preinstalled copy of Mario Kart 7.

The 2DS is definitely the bargain-basement option for getting access to the full library of 3DS (and backward-compatible original DS) games. That has been the case since it launched at $130 in 2013 and dropped to $100 last summer. That low price comes with some compromises compared to the traditional 3DS line, though, including a lack of stereoscopic 3D, a non-folding design with slightly uncomfortable button positioning, and a smaller screen than the "XL" line. The 2DS also doesn't play the few games that require the "new 3DS" chipset.

Still, the 2DS is a pretty good deal compared to the $200 that Nintendo charges for a top-end New 3DS XL these days, and it comes in cheaper than even a $120 used 3DS from GameStop. If you haven't taken the plunge on a Nintendo portable yet, $80 is a great price for getting access to over 500 3DS games, thousands of original DS games, and hundreds of downloadable Virtual Console titles from Nintendo's back catalog. That list includes at least a few dozen games that are actually good (We recommend Super Mario 3D World, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and Fire Emblem: Awakening just for starters). Plus, we hear there's a new Pokemon game coming soon...

Disney may be enjoying a renaissance as the popular cross-media publisher of everything from Star Wars to Inside Out to Captain America. That list won't include video games anymore. The company just announced it will be shutting down its Disney Infinity line of games and associated collectible toys, and it will be ending its "self-published console games business" altogether.

Disney Infinity Senior VP and General Manager John Blackburn said in a surprise announcement today that "we have made the difficult decision to discontinue production of Disney Infinity. From the beginning, Disney Infinity was built for you—our fans—and I wanted to take a moment to thank you not just for your support over the years, but for creating a community that made Disney Infinity more than just a game." Blackburn promised that there would be two final retail releases of Infinity toy playsets in the next two months, before the line is shut down entirely.

In an earnings report today, Disney said it will write down a $147 million charge in connection with the shutdown of its console business, largely due to Infinity. The company's latest earnings report cites "lower results for Infinity" as part of the reason for a slight decrease in revenues and income from its Consumer Products & Interactive Media division.

Since 2007's The King of Kong hit theaters, the back-and-forth race for ever-higher scores on the arcade classic Donkey Kong has attracted outsized attention from competitive gamers. Last week, Wes Copeland tried to put that battle to bed once and for all with an incredible new world record score of 1,218,000 points.

Some press reports have referred to this accomplishment as the world's first "perfect" game of Donkey Kong, implying a scoring mark that will never be surpassed. That framing has partly been driven by Copeland himself, who said on Facebook that "this will be my last record score... I don't believe I can put up a game any higher than this." A breathless post by the score-watchers at Donkey Kong Blog calls it "a score about which we could confidently say, even if not definitively, 'this will never be beaten.'"

Yet there's still some reason to believe higher Donkey Kong scores are technically achievable, even if no one in their right mind may be able to do so any time soon.

The release of yet another bit of cosmetic DLC for one specific version of Minecraft isn't usually the kind of thing we'd take the time to write about at Ars. But the latest skin pack for the game caught our eye because it marks the first time that characters from Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. series have shown up in a game published by an ostensible console competitor: Microsoft, in this case.

The "Super Mario Mash-Up Pack" will launch as a free download exclusively for the Wii U version of the game on May 17 and come included on the retail disc when it launches on June 17 (the downloadable version launched on Wii U last December). It includes 40 Mario-themed skins, new world and item textures inspired by the Mario series, and 15 pieces of music from Super Mario 64.

Releasing special content specifically targeted at Wii U players may seem like an odd thing for Microsoft to do after the company spent $2.5 billion to acquire Minecraft maker Mojang back in 2014. At the time, though, Microsoft promised that the many existing versions of Minecraft on platforms like PlayStation systems, iOS, and Android wouldn't be affected by the purchase. The company has proved true to its word since then, releasing a Wii U version just a few months ago and even featuring Sony's LittleBigPlanet series in DLC for the PlayStation 4 version of the game last year.

It appears the anticipated sequel to Battlefield 4 will not be Battlefield 5. Instead, EA has apparently thrown traditional counting out the window by preparing Battlefield 1, a new shooter that seems to be set in an alternate history version of World War I.

None of this is official yet; EA is set to actually reveal the next Battlefield title as part of a day-long livestream at 4pm Eastern time today. But the name has been leaked ahead of time by photos from a retail source. The promotional art in those photos matches art that showed up briefly on Xbox Live earlier today and on the livestream itself, depicting a figure with a WWI-era pistol and trench club. There have been previous rumors about the game's setting, too. Back in February, a game called Battlefield 5 was briefly listed as a "WW1 tactical shooter" by a Swiss retailer with an October 26 release date.

Remember that the first Battlefield game (the one people sometimes call "Battlefield One," and which came before Battlefield 2) was actually titled Battlefield 1942.  The name Battlefield 1 remains technically available, we suppose. The series has already jumped around to "1943" and "2143" over the years if you want to get really confusing with the numbering.

Nearly nine years ago, the first Uncharted game stood out as the ultimate fulfillment of a long-promised melding between interactive games and cinematic movie-making. Our own review drew instant comparisons to the Indiana Jones film series, marveling at how the game transitioned seamlessly from well-animated climb-and-gun action to expertly produced, pre-rendered cut scenes.

All these years later, Uncharted 4 adds a few welcome refinements to that formula. It also adds a welcome PlayStation 4-powered coat of gloss to the finish. Still, as Nathan Drake's story comes to a conclusion, the series' effortlessly cinematic storytelling ends up feeling a little thin and dated. The Uncharted series has been surpassed by some of the games it helped inspire at this point. And though Uncharted 4 is an action-packed tale that's well told, it's not necessarily one worth telling.

A family affair

Uncharted 4 begins with a very different view of the action-loving Nathan Drake we know and love. The former adventurer is now safely ensconced in a low-key diving salvage job, lifting wrecks off the seafloor in locations that feature a distinct and noticeable lack of people shooting at him. Outside of work, Nathan shares a calm and quiet suburban-style existence with his globetrotting wife Elena, playing video games to pass the time he used to spend starring in them. He's happy enough, but it's clear he's not content as he looks over relics of his past that have been relegated to the attic.

Nintendo has taken popular indie gravity-flipping platform game VVVVVV down from the 3DS eShop after hackers revealed the game can be used to help load unsigned code onto the system. On Sunday, a hacker going by the handle ShinyQuagsire published the newly revealed hacking method, which uses a modified save game to allow the system to load unsigned homebrew software.

The new hack is a bit redundant, since it requires first using an existing 3DS exploit (such as Ninjhax) to load the modified save file onto the 3DS' SD card in the first place. That distinction doesn't seem important to Nintendo, which took the game down from the North American 3DS eShop within a day of the hack's publication (though it is currently still available in the European eShop.

Creator Terry Cavanaugh expressed surprise at the existence of the hacking method on Twitter and said that the need to stack the exploit on top of another hack would "hopefully [mean] I won't need to patch anything, woo." But the game will likely need to see some sort of modification before Nintendo agrees to let it back on the eShop.

Update, May 25, 2:40 p.m. EDT: Following the Oculus Rift's limited launch at Best Buy's physical locations, the virtual reality headset has now gone live at the retailer's web site. In-store pick-up is not available, so interested shoppers will want to rush to the site and pick a shipping option should they want a headset with estimated delivery as soon as June 3rd—which may still be quicker than trying to buy from Oculus's own site. We imagine this availability will be gone almost as quickly as this update goes live.

Original report, May 2, 2:20 p.m. EDT: The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will be available for demonstration and purchase at select Best Buy stores starting May 7 (and for purchase through Amazon and Microsoft Stores online starting at 9am Pacific on May 6). That means walk-in customers at brick-and-mortar stores will be able to get their headset well before many who pre-ordered the system directly from Oculus months ago.

While Oculus started taking Rift pre-orders in January and officially started shipping the units in March, many early pre-orders have seen their shipping date estimates slip amid production delays. In April, Oculus admitted that an "unexpected component shortage" meant early adopters could have to wait an extra month or two from initial estimates to receive their units. Orders placed on the Oculus site right now are slated for August delivery.

Having apparently run out of incoherently threatening foreigners to shoot here on earth, Activision and Infinty Ward's next Call of Duty game will take the wholly original angle of shooting enemies in space, a concept which we believe has never before been done in video games.

A new three-minute trailer for the previously rumored Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is heavy on the usual jump cuts and explosions amid rubble and showers of gunfire, only now some of those scenes are set in the vacuum of space (or the cold, dead light of a space station). There are a few shots of space-based combat that look more at home in a game like Elite: Dangerous than in a Call of Duty game. One shot of floating amid a ruined space station could have come right out of Adr1ft, while another scene walking through a dark corridor looks pulled directly from the Dead Space series.

The new trailer follows an earlier teaser that revealed the Settlement Defense Front, a new antagonist that promises, "You will know loss. We will be the architects of your pain. We will build monuments to your destruction."