Publishing

Killer Instinct’s limited character roster suited to the modern gamer, MS says

Free-to-play Xbox One fighter Killer Instinct won’t have an expansive character roster. And rightly so, argues Microsoft. "Most fighting games that come out are disc based games where you get a huge cast of awesome characters, but it is a massive cast," Microsoft producer Torin Rettig told Polygon. "Some games …

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Oculus Rift attracts $16m in additional funding

Virtual reality startup Oculus has attracted Series A funding of $16m to back the headline-grabbing Oculus Rift. The fund-raising endeavour was led by Spark Capital and Matrix Partners. Santo Politi and Antonio Rodriguez, execs at the respective firms, have now also joined the Oculus board of directors. The company says …

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Mattrick: Xbox one is "over-delivering value"

Xbox boss Don Mattrick has argued that, even at 429, the Xbox One is over-delivering value”. "It’s a lower number than some of the analysts had forecasted," Mattrick told Bloomberg TV (as spotted by Joystiq) of the machine’s RRP. "We’re over-delivering value against other choices, I think, consumers can get. …

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IO Interactive cuts half of staff, cancels all non-Hitman projects

Square Enix has laid off almost half of the employees at IO Interactive as part of significant changes” at the studio. In a statement passed on toMCV, a spokesperson for the studio said the Denmark-based company was moving toward a sole focus on the Hitman franchise, and as a result …

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Book of Potions and Walking With Dinosaurs heading to Wonderbook

Sony’s brave experiment that is Wonderbook is to receive two new games in the coming year, including a new Harry Potter entry. E3 saw the announcement of both Wonderbook: Book of Potions and Wonderbook: Walking With Dinosaurs. The former is a fully Pottermore licensed product developed in conjunction with Harry …

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Microsoft pledges to keep new game RRPs static for Xbox One

Xbox One games will not cost more than Xbox 360 titles. That’s the pledge from Microsoft, with a rep telling Polygon that "I can confirm that Microsoft Studios games on Xbox One will be $59.99”. Which seems pretty definitive. For once it seems to be Sony that is being less …

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DFC: "The entire future of the Xbox business is in question"

Interactive entertainment research firm DFC has delivered a scathing verdict of Xbox One’s market chances in the wake of last weeks’ incredible events at E3. In fact, it even goes as far as to question whether the scope of Xbox One’s PR failure to date could jeopardise Microsoft’s entire games …

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