Author: Kyle Orland

E3 informally kicks off today, and Ars will be on the scene this week covering all the action. Before the event begins, we're surfacing our liveblog schedule.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo may be a bit smaller this year, thanks to some high-profile publisher departures. But that doesn't mean the show overall won't be the same loud, in-your-face cavalcade of big-name game announcements and demos that it has always been. Oh, and the gaming public will be right outside the doors this year, which should amp up the excitement a bit.

This year's E3 has the added potential of a heavily rumored new console announcements from Microsoft (and an actual mid-cycle upgrade announcement from Sony). And then there's virtual reality, which is poised to be a major presence once again now that big-name hardware is starting to get into consumers' hands.

Ahead of the start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Sony president and CEO Andrew House has confirmed the long-rumored existence of a more powerful PlayStation 4, codenamed Neo, that will be sold alongside the standard PS4.

Speaking to the Financial Times (subscription or Google-Fu required), House made clear that this isn't a replacement for the current PlayStation 4 hardware, but merely would provide an upgraded experience to games that would largely work on both consoles.

“It is intended to sit alongside and complement the standard PS4,” he said. “We will be selling both [versions] through the life cycle... All games will support the standard PS4 and we anticipate all or a very large majority of games will also support the high-end PS4."

In a move intended to help stem a wave of cheating in the online portions of The Division, Ubisoft says it is rescinding its policy of issuing 14-day suspensions when a player is first detected using a cheat engine. Now, those players will be permanently banned when found.

The new policy comes after The Division team said it became clear to them that the 14-day suspension policy currently in place "has not been dissuasive enough... judging from your feedback, and based on what we witnessed when cheaters came back to the game." That 14-day suspension policy was itself an increase from the previous three-day suspensions that were given out for first offenses until late April.

Those temporary suspensions certainly didn't seem to be discouraging cheaters very much, according to widespread reports of cheating and exploit use in the game. "The message is out," one player wrote on The Division forums in April. "Cheat all you want, it will take forever to catch you apparently, and you get to keep all the exp/money/items you gained and then after a three-day suspension you get to laugh, come back in, and reap your reward. Then just don't cheat anymore."

Virtual reality can be used for much more than some interesting gaming experiments, and HTC wants users in "business and commercial environments" to be able to take advantage of its Vive VR hardware. Thus, the company announced its new Vive Business Edition (Vive BE), a full Vive system being sold for the low, low price of $1,200—or 50 percent more than the $800 consumer Vive.

Despite the increased cost, there doesn't seem to be anything different about the physical hardware you get with the Vive BE. The "business" system still comes with a headset, two controllers, two base stations, and all the necessary cables and face cushions you could need. All that extra money will instead help pay for a 12-month limited warranty and a "dedicated Vive Business Edition customer support line" (as well as "commercial licensing," if that's something your lawyer says you need for some reason).

That support line might be useful when one of your employees can't figure out how to plug the headphones into the little dongle on top of the headset, we suppose. Still, the $400 markup is a pretty dear price to pay for support on a system that's already pretty user-friendly. The "limited warranty" doesn't even cover things like "physical damage," "rough handling," or "accidents" that might arise from the headset being exposed to the general public in a business setting.

Last August, Microsoft finally confirmed earlier rumors by announcing that the Xbox One would be usable as a digital video recorder sometime in 2016. Now, it seems Microsoft is giving up those plans.

"After careful consideration, we've decided to put development of DVR for over-the-air TV on hold to focus our attention on launching new, higher fan-requested gaming experiences across Xbox One and Windows 10," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge in a statement. "We're always listening to fan feedback and we look forward to bringing more requested experiences on Xbox One, Windows 10, and Xbox Live this year."

As originally announced, the feature would have been limited to over-the-air broadcasts received through the system's optional antenna USB dongle, and it wouldn't have worked with cable and/or satellite broadcasts taken through the built-in USB input. Users would have had to store shows on an external USB hard drive rather than the system's internal storage, and they would have been able to stream or download recordings to other mobile devices or Windows PCs.

As usual, next week's Electronic Entertainment Expo will be home to dozens of new game announcements from the industry's biggest publishers. This week, though, is when a lot of those announcements actually leak out publicly before their official, splashy reveals at the show. There's only one problem: amid the credible rumors about upcoming games are a bunch of completely wild guesses from a hyped-up gaming public.

How do you separate the reliable information from the uninformed conjecture? That's what we're here for! Below, we take a look at some of the most interesting E3 rumors floating around and analyze the available evidence to determine just how likely these murmurings are. (This list doesn't include the many games at the show that have already been announced or shown previously.) Take a look, and keep an eye out when we cover all the official announcements from the E3 show floor next week.

The Rumor: Watch Dogs 2

The first Mirror's Edge solved a seemingly unsolvable problem in gaming: effortless first-person running and jumping. Usually, in 2D or 3D, a good third-person camera is needed to let the player see around corners, above and below ledges, past gaps, and even behind and to the side of the character in a way that allows for smooth planning of jumps and moves two or three steps ahead of time. In first person, by contrast, you often can’t see where you need to be until you’re already up in the air, getting ready to hopefully land somewhere safe.

Mirror’s Edge figured out this problem with a clever system of environmental cues that gave back some of the preternatural knowledge taken away by the perspective. Objects highlighted in bright red against the game’s stark white backgrounds showed you precisely where you should plan to jump, grab, or slide safely without having to worry about what you can’t see beyond the horizon. Combined with a set of fast, smooth parkour moves, protagonist Faith felt like an unstoppable super-powered force, cutting swiftly and precisely through dangerous environments mere mortals couldn’t tread.

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst doubles down on this “Runner’s Vision” conceit, adding a paint-like red line that darts in front of your vision to show you exactly where to wall run, ledge grab, or spring jump. Sometimes, the game goes so far as to show an outline of a person doing the precise parkour move you need to move on. It’s subtle enough to not be annoying but clear enough to stand out among the game’s gleaming, techno-utopian environments.

At its best, Catalyst’s version of Runner’s Vision gives you that same feeling of being a superpowered badass that can’t be stopped by walls, fences, or even towering changes of elevation. Following that red line quickly becomes second nature, giving a sense of effortless flow and seeming mastery that’s rare when traversing first-person environments.

We're looking forward to spending some time with Dangerous Golf, the destruction-focused, ball-bouncing "simulation" that just launched on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 courtesy of some veteran developers from Burnout Paradise-maker Criterion Games. Still, we're a little surprised by a prominent missing feature from the PC version. As the game's Steam page now notes quite prominently, "Dangerous Golf requires a controller to play."

A lack of keyboard and/or mouse support is more than just a rarity in PC games; it's practically unheard of. Even when games are specifically designed for a handheld controller on another platform, the PC port usually offers some sort of option for the two input methods that have been standard on practically every home PC for the past two or three decades. Console games that would be functionally impossible to control or feel incredibly compromised without a controller (EA's Skate series comes to mind) usually just don't end up with PC ports in the first place.

Aside from some recent virtual reality games (which might as well be considered a separate platform), the only PC game we can think of that officially requires a controller is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (players report there is some basic, barely functional keyboard support anyway). That game was explicitly designed to use a console controller's dual analog sticks to allow for simultaneous, separate control of two protagonists. It would at the very least be extremely awkward to control without those sticks. Dangerous Golf, on the other hand, could probably have implemented the same basic keyboard/mouse-based control scheme that dozens of other PC golf games has used for decades without too much trouble.

It's been about seven months now since Valve officially got into the hardware business with its Steam Machines, a line of Linux-powered gaming console/PC hybrids paired with a unique dual touchpad Steam Controller. Today, we're getting our first concrete glimpse of the impact that hardware has had on the wider market for gaming machines—and the numbers don't look too good for Valve.

As part of an update on new Steam Controller functions, Valve announced that it has sold over 500,000 Steam Controllers since the early November launch. A Valve representative confirmed to Ars that this number includes the controllers that are packaged with every branded Steam Machine sold through Valve's hardware partners.

Put it together, and you find that there have been less than half a million Steam Machines sold over a span of more than half a year. The real number could potentially be much lower when you consider curious Windows gamers who bought a Steam Controller and SteamOS players who bought additional controllers. While the 500,000 number doesn't necessarily include people who decided to download and install SteamOS on their own PCs (or all sales of Valve's $50 Steam Link streaming box), it probably serves as a good ceiling for the wider SteamOS market at this point.

As impressed as we have been with the technology behind new, consumer-level virtual reality headsets, there has been something important missing from the initial selection of software available for the likes of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive: games from the industry's biggest, most popular publishers. It's still early, but the lack of initial enthusiasm for VR from most AAA studios continues to be a headwind to the technology's potential success.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently verbalized the problem. At the Cowen and Company 44th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference yesterday, the head of the multi-billion-dollar publisher said VR's current $2,000 asking price (when you factor in high-powered PC costs) and need for a dedicated play space limit the potential for mass appeal.

"We have like $300 to spend on an entertainment device and we do not have a dedicated room," he said. "We have a room for a screen, a couch, and controllers. We don’t have something where you stand in a big open space and hold two controllers with something on your head and, you know, not crash into the coffee table. We don’t have that."