Author: Kyle Orland

(credit: Kyle Orland)

A French consumer group has brought a lawsuit against Valve, saying the Steam and its required terms of service infringe on a number of European legal rights, including the right to legally resell purchased software.

The 64-year-old UFC-Que Choisir (the "federal union of consumers") argues that Valve must provide the capability for Steam users to resell their legally purchased digital games whenever they want. While noting that many online stores have similar resale restrictions, the group argues that the difference between being able to resell a physical game disc and not being able to resell a digitally purchased game is "incomprehensible... No court decision prohibits the resale on the second-hand market games bought online, and the European Court has even explicitly stated that it’s possible to resell software which, let’s remember, is an integral part of a video game."

The group is referring to a 2012 decision from the European Court of Justice that focused on the resale of downloadable enterprise software licensed from Oracle. "It makes no difference whether the copy of the computer program was made available by means of a download from the rightholder’s website or by means of a material medium such as a CD-ROM or DVD," the court ruled.

(credit: Aurich Lawson Getty Images)

Back in late 2013 when both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were brand new to the gaming scene, we recommended taking a wait-and-see attitude before diving into the new generation of console hardware. Even a year ago, we still said both consoles felt a little too expensive and a little too lacking in must-play exclusives. There was no need to run out and buy immediately.

Today, the “next generation” of consoles has been the “current generation” of consoles for more than two years, and it’s finally time for those who’ve been waiting to make the upgrade. Competition drove both the Xbox One and the PS4 to sell for $300 with included games this holiday season, prices that are likely to persist into 2016. Combined with an increasing lack of last-generation ports for many big-budget games and continuing improvements to both the libraries and features of the new consoles, there’s plenty of reason to take the plunge on a new system.

But which new system should you choose? A lot has changed in the battle between the PS4 and Xbox One since we last took a comprehensive look at the market, so here’s where things stand with the latest battle in the console wars.

Don't question it... just do it!

In November, when Microsoft announced the first 104 Xbox 360 titles that would be newly compatible with the Xbox One, the company announced further compatibility would be added "on a regular basis" starting this month. That process began Thursday, with the announcement of 16 additional Xbox 360 titles now supported by Microsoft's newest console. Those titles are:

• Braid
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Doritos Crash Course
• Fable III
• Halo: Reach
• Hydro Thunder
• Iron Brigade
• Kane & Lynch 2
• Motocross Madness
• MS.PAC-MAN
• Peggle
• Portal: Still Alive
• Spelunky
• Splosion Man
• Ticket to Ride
• Zuma’s Revenge!

Though Microsoft says some games require slight tweaks to Microsoft's emulation system to allow for compatibility, the major factor slowing down the rollout seems to be securing permission from the various publishers of each game. Indeed, today Microsoft said it is "continuing to work with our publishing partners to grow our library of Xbox One Backward Compatibility titles, so stay tuned for more."

At the current rate of 16 newly compatible games per month, it would take about five years for the 1,000 or so Xbox 360 titles released in North America to be fully supported on the Xbox One.

Men are much more likely than women to describe themselves as "gamers," even though both genders are about equally likely to be game players.

5 more images in gallery

Debates over what makes someone a true "gamer" boil up quite frequently in and around the video game industry, especially on certain Internet message boards. Now, a new survey of US adults from the Pew Research Center shows that people who apply the "gamer" label to themselves are quite different from the wider population that plays games, both demographically and in terms of opinions about the medium. Those self-described gamers are much more likely to be young, male, non-white, and poor when compared to "non-gamer" game players.

Pew's survey shows that video games are growing as a mainstream leisure time activity across the country. A full 49 percent of Americans now report that they "ever" play video games on a computer, game console, or portable device like a cell phone. While gaming still isn't nearly as universally enjoyed as more mass-market entertainment like TV and movies, that's a big increase from the medium's generally child-focused niche a couple of decades ago.

The logo for the newly independent Kojima Productions, which is working on a PS4 console exclusive.

Update: Sony Computer Entertainment president Andrew House took to YouTube late Tuesday night to confirm that Hideo Koijma's first independently produced game will be made as a "collaboration with PlayStation" to launch exclusively on Sony consoles. A Q&A posted on Medium (since taken down, but still available on Google Cache) confirmed that the new Kojima Productions is not a subsidiary of Sony, and that future Kojima Productions games (past the first) won't necessarily be exclusive to PlayStation. Kojima's next game, which is being described as "something completely new," will also come to the PC after its PS4 release.

Original Story

It looks like Hideo Kojima's long, troubled history with publisher Konami has finally come to an end. Translations of a Nikkei news article out of Japan say the Metal Gear Solid creator officially left the company on December 15, taking a few team members from his Kojima Productions studio with him to start a new company. The report also suggests that Kojima's first new title under the independent company could debut on Sony's PlayStation 4.

PC gamers of a certain age probably fondly remember the Commander Keen game series, some of the first smoothly scrolling platform games made for MS-DOS. What many classic gamers might not know is that before working on Commander Keen, John Carmack, John Romero, and the rest of the team at id Software (then known as Ideas from the Deep) pitched Nintendo on the idea of porting Super Mario Bros. 3 to the personal computer. The group went so far as to code up a proof-of-concept demo for the game running on the PC.

As David Kushner memorably lays out in his book Masters of Doom, the IFD team managed to come up with one of the first smooth side-scrolling algorithms designed for the PC way back in September of 1990. Unlike platformers on dedicated game consoles (which had hardware more suited to smooth scrolling), PC side-scrollers at the time usually had clunky, screen-clearing transitions when a character got to the edge of the screen. Carmack's algorithm, though, allowed for much smoother background movement by only redrawing the elements of the screen that actually changed frame to frame.

After proving the concept with an SMB3-like one-level demo called Dangerous Dave in "Copyright Infringement," the team set down to make a respectable PC conversion of Super Mario Bros. 3. They sent it to Nintendo in the hopes of gaining a lucrative licensing contract, but Nintendo declined the offer (Romero says they weren't interested in making games for non-Nintendo hardware anymore). At that point, the tech was funneled into the Commander Keen games. Id Software later went on to focus on leaps in 3D gaming with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and its progeny, and the rest is history.

Onward... to a largely ignored launch!

Nintendo doesn't publish all that many Wii U games these days, but you can usually expect to hear a lot about the few games it does release; you may have seen the marketing blitzes for titles like Super Mario Maker or Xenoblade Chronicles X this holiday season. But last Friday's release of Devil's Third in North America was so quiet that probably only the most obsessive of Nintendo fans even realized the game exists.

Devil's Third has a storied and tumultuous development history. The game is the brainchild of Tomonobu Itagaki, the famed Tecmo developer known for series such as Dead or Alive and the 3D revival of the Ninja Gaiden series. After leaving Tecmo in 2008, Itagaki formed the independent Valhalla Game Studios with some other departing members of his Team Ninja development studio. Devil's Third was Valhalla's first announced game, revealed way back in 2010 as an Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC title. The game represented a departure from Itagaki's usual style, focusing on third-person shooting and online play rather than local brawling.

The game went through a number of changes in gameplay style and underlying technology over the years, according to reports at the time. But development dragged on for so long that its original publisher, THQ, actually went out of business in 2013 before releasing the unfinished game. Nintendo—perhaps seeing an opportunity to pick up an M-rated exclusive with a big name behind it—obtained the publishing rights and announced the game as a Wii U exclusive in a June 2014 "Digital Event."

The touchscreen display described in the patent surrounds the dual thumbsticks and goes almost all the way to the controller's oval edge. (credit: US Patent Application 2015/0355768)

Nintendo has remained largely silent on its plans for its next console, codenamed NX, since the system was casually announced earlier this year. A newly published patent application from Nintendo, first filed in June, shows off one possible design: an innovative handheld that tightly integrates embedded analog sticks with a surrounding oval touchscreen that reaches to the very edge of the device.

Unlike the Wii U or the DS portables—which have small rectangular touchscreens placed between more traditional button-based controls on each side— the patent shows an elliptical touchscreen that dominates almost the entire front surface of the device, smartphone-style. The only break in that surface is two small holes on either side for "operation sticks" (read: analog thumbsticks) that extend deep into the controller. The tops of these clickable sticks sit nearly flush with the screen, letting players move their thumbs smoothly from analog controls to the touchscreen directly adjacent. (The patent also suggests the possibility of a 3DS-style parallax barrier display that allows for "stereoscopic view with naked eyes").

Other similar cutouts from the touchscreen surface could be included for buttons, "cross buttons," (read: d-pads), jog dials, etc., according to the patent, and shoulder buttons allow for further, traditional tactile input. The key is that all of these traditional controls would be embedded directly "within" the touchscreen via holes in the surface, rather than sitting off to the side in a separate plastic housing, as with existing Nintendo hardware.

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

Account theft is a common and longstanding problem for all kinds of online gaming services, as I can personally attest after losing all of my Diablo III loot to a hacker a few years ago. But Valve says the problem is reaching epidemic proportions on Steam, with "around 77,000 accounts hijacked and pillaged each month." Since the service launched item-trading features back in 2011, Valve says the problem of account theft "has increased twenty-fold as the number one complaint from our users... What used to be a handful of hackers is now a highly effective, organized network, in the business of stealing and selling items."

It's not hard to see why the problem is increasing. Items in games like Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: GO can be worth a lot of real money on the secondary market, not to mention the inexplicably popular virtual trading cards floating around the Steam social network. As Valve puts it "practically every active Steam account is now involved in the economy, via items or trading cards, with enough value to be worth a hacker's time. Essentially all Steam accounts are now targets." Goods transferred from stolen accounts can be relatively easy to unload on unsuspecting legitimate customers, too, making it hard to unwind the theft once it's detected.

Now, Valve is taking additional steps to decrease the value of these hacks when they happen. By default, traded items will now be "held" by Valve for "up to three days"—hopefully enough time to give users a chance to discover their account has been compromised (and to prevent quick item transfer/liquidation by the hackers). Users that have two-factor authentication enabled will be exempt from this restriction, since their accounts are theoretically safe from most hacking attempts. Trades between users that have been friends for a year or more will only be held for "up to one day" even without two-factor, since that implies a real relationship between the traders.

(credit: Ars Technica/Aurich Lawson)

Were you too busy enjoying the pleasures of friends and family to get the lowest-ever official prices on Xbox One and PS4 bundles over Black Friday weekend? Good news, procrastinators: Microsoft and Sony are giving you a second chance at those low prices.

All Xbox One bundles (listed below) are available at $50 off the usual price starting today through December 26, putting them as low as $299. Meanwhile, two PS4 bundles (including either Star Wars: Battlefront or Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection) are back at their $300 sale price through December 19. If you happened to buy either system at regular price in the last week or so... well, we hope you kept the receipt.

Don't be shocked if either Microsoft or Sony pivot from these "limited time offers" for the holidays to a permanent price drop for the consoles going in to next year. In 2014, the Xbox One dropped to $349 as a holiday promotion from November 2 through January 3. Two weeks after that offer expired, the company decided to stick with the $349 price for the longer term (Sony didn't drop the PS4 to $350 until October.)