Author: Kyle Orland

One of the nice things about purely digital collectible card games like Hearthstone is that cards never have to go out of print. Sure, different cards are rarer than others by design—some significantly so. But unlike cardboard collectible cards—which are costly and logistically difficult to produce at scale indefinitely—there's no technical reason Blizzard can't keep producing digital copies of the entire set of Hearthstone cards for purchase by new players just getting into the game.

That state of affairs is set to change soon. With the introduction of a set of new formats today, Blizzard isn't only shaking up how Hearthstone is played but also how it's sold. The changes highlight how a form of time-limited scarcity is becoming more common even in the functionally limitless store shelves of online games.

New Formats?

The details of Hearthstone's new Standard format are laid out in great detail over on the Battle.net blog, but in short, Blizzard is splitting the game into two separate modes. The "Wild" format will let players use all existing Hearthstone cards as normal, while "Standard" play will let players only use cards from sets released in the last year or two. Players are free to play either or both formats, but Standard will be the only format sanctioned in Blizzard-sponsored tournaments, which should have a strong effect on the competitive scene.

Two decades after the flop of the Virtual Boy and after years of saying that virtual reality isn't a good fit for its company philosophy, Nintendo has joined the swelling ranks of tech companies interested in VR. The news comes from a Nintendo earnings call out of Japan last night, during which Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima reportedly said the company is "looking into" VR.

Nintendo didn't provide any other details about any potential VR plans, but the tidbit is especially interesting considering Nintendo's work on the still shadowy NX console, first mentioned last March. Since that announcement, we've been left guessing about a project Nintendo has only said is "the new hardware system with a brand-new concept." With the Wii U seemingly not powerful enough to drive a really convincing, high-res VR headset, it's not ridiculous to think that Nintendo has been "looking into" VR as an integral part of its new NX hardware.

If Nintendo has been working on a VR system this whole time, though, it has done a good job of hiding it. Until today, the company has been consistently bearish on the kind of VR technology that has excited much of the gaming industry. When asked about VR plans back in 2014, Nintendo Senior Director of Corporate Communications Charlie Scibetta told Ars that the company "[tries] to innovate on our own and not necessarily follow what others have done just for the sake of doing that."

When you looked at the recent Need for Speed games from EA subsidiary Ghost Games, did you mistakenly think you were actually buying a game in the long-running Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon series. No? Well, Ubisoft is worried that you might be confused, now or in the future. That's why the company is officially opposing EA's application to trademark the "Ghost" name with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

In a Notice of Opposition posted on the USPTO site, Ubisoft correctly points out that the "Ghost Recon" name has been in use since 2001, long before the first game under the Ghost Games label came out in 2013. But Ubisoft goes on to claim that "applicant’s proposed mark GHOST mark is nearly identical to the GHOST RECON marks used and owned by [Ubisoft]" and that the new mark is "likely... to cause confusion, to cause mistake, or to deceive."

"Consumers are likely to believe, mistakenly, that the goods and services [EA] offers under Applicant’s Mark are provided, sponsored, endorsed, or approved by [Ubisoft], or are in some way affiliated, connected, or associated with [Ubisoft], all to the detriment of [Ubisoft]," the filing argues.

We'll admit we've gotten a bit caught up in the buzz for Tom Clancy's The Division since its stellar premiere trailer at E3 2013, so much so that we put the game on our most anticipated games of 2016 list. After I played a few hours of the closed beta for the game on Xbox One yesterday, my anticipation isn't gone, but it has been dulled quite a bit.

That's not to say there weren't things I liked. The beta shows off the same kind of detailed environmental design as those initial trailers, rendering a disease-ruined and fallen world where hauntingly beautiful signs of decaying civilization are everywhere you look. I also like the game's augmented-reality style interface, which overlays paths and information neatly over the "real world," including map projections that make it easy to figure out where you are and which way to go. The mix of high-end, near-future technology and crumbling urban infrastructure is certainly visually striking.

The online party integration also seems pretty solid so far. While you can see a whole server full of players running around and buying items in central "safe zones," individual missions are split off into smaller team-based instances. It's relatively easy to join up with friends or strangers to take on those missions in small groups and coordinate your goals on a shared map. The only quibble is that voice communication seems to be the only reliable way to communicate; there are no in-game tools to quickly highlight nearby points of interest or send quick commands and information to your team (if there are, I didn't find them).

Video game mega-retailer GameStop is continuing to branch out from running 6,900 worldwide stores and into directly publishing games itself. The company revealed today that it will serve as the publisher for Song of the Deep, a new 2D underwater action-adventure game from Ratchet & Clank and Resistance developer Insomniac.

While GameStop and Insomniac both say this isn't a "traditional" publishing relationship, the deal does mean that GameStop will be the only place to buy disc-based copies of the game (which will also be available for direct download on PC, PS4, and Xbox One when it launches this spring). And while Insomniac says it will have full creative control over the title, GameStop will own the intellectual property, presumably maintaining control of the series if it becomes a franchise. GamesStop will also presumably retain most of the profits from the game's merchandising plans, which already include a children's book and a Funko vinyl doll.

"We've all noticed a resurgence of indie titles over the years, and what's awesome about that is that the smaller titles tend to take more creative risks and deliver something that's very different than, say, the AAA, more realistic titles," Insomniac Games President Ted Price said at an event announcing the game (as reported by IGN). "When [GameStop executive] Mark [Stanley] and I were talking about how the market's evolving and looking ahead and bringing more to players, we started connecting on that particular topic, and we were serendipitously working on a pitch for Song of the Deep, and sparks ignited."

Even years after the disastrous launches of games like SimCity and Battlefield 4, EA's poor reputation among many PC gamers still hasn't recovered all that much. EA Senior Marketing Director for Origin Peter O’Reilly seems to realize this, telling trade magazine MCV recently that the company is on a "journey to regain the trust of the PC gamer."

That means "ensuring a great play experience from launch," O'Reilly said, and indeed, online games like Battlefield: Hardline and Star Wars Battlefront have launched without the widespread server trouble reported on some previous EA titles. But O'Reilly also pointed to a number of consumer-focused programs as part of EA's trust-building attempts on the PC. Those include no-questions-asked refunds for games on Origin within seven days of purchase, free Origin game downloads as part of the "On the House" program, and the recently launched Origin Access subscription program that gives PC gamers access to older titles for $5 a month. "We’re excited about the progress we’ve made but are always pushing ourselves to innovate on behalf of players," O'Reilly said of those efforts.

Regardless of the specifics, it's definitely a welcome message from EA, which has been fighting against poor opinions of its Origin service for years. The tenor reminded us a bit of Microsoft's Phil Spencer, who last June owned up to the failure of Games for Windows Live and promised a new focus on the PC with "Xbox on Windows 10" (an effort that has paid decent dividends so far).

If you follow the business side of the game industry at all, you're probably sick of hearing how mobile gaming is a fast-growing business juggernaut destined to overtake all other forms of digital entertainment (in strict dollars-and-cents terms). So it might surprise you to hear that a new report shows the humble PC generated more worldwide gaming revenue than any other segment of the market last year.

SuperData's worldwide digital games market report uses sampled data from tens of millions of gamers, as well as publishers, developers, and payment providers themselves, to give us one of the best public estimates of overall spending on downloadable games. The bottom line for 2015: PC gaming is "an undervalued platform... contrary to the amount of attention that is generally paid to mobile gaming, total revenues from the PC gaming market is larger ($32 billion) than that of mobile ($25 billion)."

If anything, SuperData's measurement undersells PC gaming's revenue-generating potential, since it doesn't take retail sales into account (while retail sales are a small part of the PC gaming market these days, they're practically nonexistent in the mobile space). For some additional context, the worldwide market for console game software (which is still largely dependent on retail disc sales) was estimated at $25.1 billion, according to a NewZoo report. Even combining three major hardware platforms, console software still can't match the revenue-generating potential of PC games.

Virtual reality headset makers are quick to claim that they have solved the widely reported problems with nausea and "VR sickness" that plagued earlier hardware. But if actions speak louder than words, one artist's 48-hour, reportedly nausea-free stint in an HTC Vive headset speaks pretty highly of the comfort and immersion of the VR device.

"I had no physical problems, no burning eyes, killing headaches or nausea," Thorsten Wiedemann, the founder and artistic director of the A MAZE Festival, told Vice after spending two straight days in a Vive headset for an art project called Disconnected earlier this month. While a panic attack in the 25th hour almost caused Wiedemann to drop out, the rest of the Wiedemann's extended time in VR went off uneventfully, as you can see from livestreamed footage archived on Game Science Center Berlin's YouTube channel.

Wiedemann didn't spend two whole days wandering around virtual reality in fuzzy pink pajamas to prove the safety and comfort of the hardware, though. As Wiedemann told Vice, the project was an early test of what he believes will be a common pastime in 2026, when it will be "normal that you jump into VR to meet your international friends in Social VR Rooms and go on crazy adventures together. But a long trip will be still special and could be understood as a controlled drug experience."

As new, high-end virtual reality headsets from the likes of Oculus, Valve/HTC, and Sony prepare to hit the market in the coming months, potential buyers may rightly wonder which VR solution is most likely to get a critical mass of support from the game development community. A new survey released ahead of March's Game Developers Conference suggests that, so far, the Oculus Rift is drawing outsized interest from those developers.

GDC's 2016 State of the Industry Report surveyed 2,000 professional developers who attended the popular annual trade show during the past three years, asking about their current work and interest in various virtual reality and augmented reality technologies (among other things). The Oculus Rift was by far the most popular VR headset among the surveyed developers, with 19 percent of respondents saying they were currently working on a game for the device. A number of Rift competitors were well behind in a statistical dead heat for second place among active VR developers: Samsung's GearVR at 8 percent of respondents, Google Cardboard at 7 percent, and HTC Vive and PlayStation VR at 6 percent each.

The Rift's lead extends to respondents' thoughts about the platform for their next VR game project; 20 percent say it will be on the Rift, compared to 9 percent for PlayStation VR and 8 percent for the HTC Vive.

The game industry is a quick-moving beast. Before you even have a chance to really dive into all the good games that come out in a year, another January is upon us with the promise of 12 more months of great titles. So almost immediately after we made our decisions on the best games of 2015, we started looking ahead to what games are worth paying attention to in 2016.

It's too easy to simply fill these kinds of lists with sequels, reboots, and remakes of the big-name game franchises you already know and love. That's not very illuminating, though. For the most part, if you liked the previous games, you'll look forward to the sequels. For our list, we'll instead focus on original games with the potential to start franchises of their own (with one exception that we felt justified itself as a comprehensive reboot).

As such, these are the completely new titles we'll be looking forward to most until 2017 comes along.