It’s not uncommon for big AAA games to have enormous budgets that are often bigger than blockbuster movies. Consider the budgets for Destiny, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Grand Theft Auto V. Respectively these games have budgets of $500 million, $275 million and $268 million.

With budgets like this these games have to be big hits that appeal to mass audiences. They need to be flashy, action-packed adventures that appeal to anyone. In essence, they need to be the summer blockbuster material.

But games like this do not appeal to everyone. Just as some have tired of the endless supply of Marvel Comics movies that dominate summer release schedules, many want games that appeal that take risks with both the narrative and gameplay. Convincing a big studio to take a risk and fund a game like this isn’t the easiest of tasks — impossible if you don’t already have the right connections — which has given rise to the Kickstarter gaming economy.

Rise of the indies

The perception that big studios are drowning out creativity and leaving the industry with a creative deficit has led to a strong Kickstarter-backed gaming community pushing out indie games. These are games that aren’t pushing to have the cutting-edge graphics, or multi-platform releases. These are games that push the envelope of narrative and interaction creativity.

“Working in independent games right now, it feels like there’s infinite potential in any direction,” indie game designer Robin Arnott is quoted as saying in the trailer to new video game documentary GameLoading: Rise of the Indies.

Kickstarter developers are not constrained by the need for their projects to become massive commercial successes. While some games utilize cutting-edge engines such as the Unreal Engine 4 or the CryTek engine (made possible by the indie-friendly license fees both have), others take a step back and incorporate retro-style 8-bit graphics.

Big studios taking notice

The rise of indie gaming has not gone unnoticed by big game studios. While initially some indie developers were ‘refugees’ from creativity-starved studios, now studios are developing publishing brands to give indies a wider release. In many ways this is like how major studios such as Fox (NASDAQ: FOX) have developed spin-off brands for indie films like Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Consider the case of Valiant Hearts, a 2D-side scroller set in the trenches of the First World War with a strong anti-war message. Neither the First World War nor side scrollers are very marketable when compared to Call of Duty style first-person shooters, but the game’s developers, who work at Ubisoft (EPA: UBI), got the publishing giant to greenlight the game and release it earlier this year.

Yoan Fanise, the game’s Content Director, explained to Kotaku, explained he got the game approved by Ubisoft’s CEO after a successful pitch meeting.

“Our luck was that Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft himself, was emotionally touched by the story. He was a constant support for us,” Fanise explained to Kotaku. “The First World War itself is not a theme with a very wide appeal. It’s even less appealing in 2D, and even less again with no gun in your hands, so we had to constantly be knocking on doors to even exist alongside Ubisoft’s blockbusters.”

Fansie believes that eventually the game industry will evolve to incorporate more challenging, indie title as gamers’ tastes mature.

“The movie industry has the exact same problem, but is more mature and is often willing to take bigger risks. I think it’s time for our industry to grew up and be less scary about original ideas, or trying new things,” he explained.

The future of the industry

While examples like Valiant Hearts show that big studios are taking note of the rise of indie games, in many ways the indie game industry is fine without them. It used to be that big publishers played a key role in game development: you needed access to their capital to develop the game, and without their distribution network you couldn’t get your product to customers.

But Kickstarter and digital distribution platforms such as Steam have changed that; they have democratized the industry and leveled the playing field so that merit — not connections — matter when getting an idea for an indie game off the ground.

There will always be cases such a Valiant Hearts where a big studio steps in, but there are too many cases of successful game developers doing just fine without them to say that big studios play a pivotal role in the future of indie gaming. Now, it’s all about artists and developers.

The post The Rise and Rise of Kickstarter Indie Games appeared first on VR World.

Asus (TPE:2357) is making a Steam Machine, which is called the GR8S.

Set for a launch in the month of November, the machine will offer the latest hardware available from Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). After a delay of one year, Valve’s ambitions are going ahead with full steam, with over 15 brands pledging to launch a Steam Machine this year.

The Steam Store listing for the GR8S mentions that the prices for the unit start at $699, with hardware configurations that include Intel’s Core i5/i7 CPUs, Nvidia GeForce 900 series video cards, DDR3 RAM ranging from 4GB to 16GB, storage options in the form of mechanical hard drives that are available in 500GB and 1TB flavors and SSDs from 128GB to 512GB. Here’s the full list of specs on offer:

• Price: Starting at $699
• CPU: Intel Core i5/i7 processors
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9-series graphics
• Memory: DDR3 4GB ~ 16GB
• Storage: 500GB/1TB 7200rpm HDD, or 128GB ~ 512GB SSD
• Audio: ROG SupremeFX 5.1 HD audio
• Network: Intel Gb LAN with 802.11 ac Wi-Fi

Asus has opted for a tower design, unlike Zotac, which went with a more traditional mini-PC styling. Asus’ design does stand out, with the red on black styling serving to highlight the premium nature of the chassis. The Steam Machine will be 4K-ready, with connectivity options including HDMI and DisplayPort. It is unclear if Asus will go with HDMI 2.0 connectivity, which is aimed at delivering 4K at 60fps through a single port, but seeing as how the GR8S will launch in the month of November, it is likely we’ll see the latest standard on board.

If you’re interested in seeing all Steam Machines that will go on sale later this year, be sure to visit Steam’s storefront. There are options from 15 mainstream vendors that begin at $459 and go all the way up to $4,999. Valve also launched a Steam Controller that will be up for sale for $49.99.

The post Asus’ Steam Machine Is Called The ‘GR8S’ appeared first on VR World.

Steam has just kicked off its own Black Friday sale that heavily discounts a huge offering of PC games.

Dubbed the Steam Exploration Sale, you can find mark-downs on yesteryear hits like the BioShock Triple Pack for $10.19 or the masterful post-apocalyptic RPG’s Fallout 3 and New Vegas for just $4.99. Skyrim and Dragon Age: Origins are both $10, and all Grand Theft Auto games up to GTA IV are -60% off.

The immortal FPS classic Deus Ex has an absurdly awesome asking price of $1.74–and that’s for the game of the year edition.

Newer releases can be found as well, with Shinji Mikami’s The Evil Within for $20.39 and Creative Assembly’s terrifying interstellar horror game Alien: Isolation spotted at $37.49. Bethesda’s MMORPG The Elder Scrolls: Online can be snagged for $20.39 as well.

The Exploration Sale will continue up until December 2, so be sure to act fast and make your back catalog swell up even more.

Below we have a breakdown of some of our favorite deals so far:

• Alien: Isolation – $37.49 (-25% off)

• The Evil Within – $20.39 (-66% off)

• BioShock Infinite – $7.49 (-75% off)

• Wolfenstein: The New Order – $20.39 (-66% off)

• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor – $33.49 (-33% off)

• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – $23.99 (-40% off)

• Watch Dogs – $29.99 (-50% off)

• The Elder Scrolls: Online – $20.39 (66% off)

• Morrowind: Game of the Year Edition – $11.99 (-40% off)

• Skyrim – $9.99 (-50% off)

• Dragon Age: Origins – $9.99 (-50% off)

• Dragon Age: Origins  Ultimate Edition – $14.99 (-50% off)

• Injustice: Gods Among Us – $9.99 (-50% off)

• GTA III – $3.99 (-60% off)

• GTA: Vice City – $3.99 (-60% off)

• GTA: San Andreas – $5.99 (-60% off)

• GTA IV – $7.99 (-60% off)

• Far Cry 3 – $17.99 (-40% off)

• Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon – $8.99 (-40% off)

• Fallout – $4.99 (-50% off)

• Fallout 3 – $4.99 (-50% off)

• Fallout: New Vegas – $4.99 (-50% off)

• Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition – $11.99 (-40% off)

• Torchlight – $7.49 (-50% off)

• Torchlight II – $9.99 (-50% off)

• Divinity: Original Sin – $31.99 (-20% off)

• The Bureau: XCOM Declassified – $6.79 (-66% off)

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – $6.69 (-33% off)

• RAGE – $9.99 (-50% off)

• The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsin – $7.49 (-50% off)

• Dead Space – $4.99 (-75% off)

• Dead Space 2 – $4.99 (-75% off)

• Borderlands Game of the Year Edition – $14.99 (-50% off)

• Borderlands 2 – $9.99 (-50% off)

• Tales From the Borderlands – $22.49 (10% off)

• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel – $49.79 (-17% off)

• Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition – $9.99 (-50% off)

• Tomb Raider (reboot) – $9.99 (-50% off)

• Crusader Kings II – $19.99 (-50% off)

• South Park: The Stick of Truth – $23.99 (-40% off)

• Don’t Starve – $3.74 (-75% off)

• FTL Advanced Edition – $4.99 (-50% off)

• Terraria – $2.99 (-70% off)

• They Bleed Pixels – $2.49 (-75% off)

• Magicite – $4.99 (-50% off)

• Bastion – $5.99 (-60% off)

• The Forest – $12.74 (-15% off)

• Evoland – $7.49 (-50% off)

• Five Nights at Freddy’s – $2.49 (-50% off)

• Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 – $6.39 (-20% off)

• Slender: The Arrival – $4.99 (-50% off)

• Luftrausers – $4.99 (-50% off)

• Batteblock Theater – $3.74 (-75% off)

• Castle Crashers – $3.74 (-75% off)

• Wasteland 2 – $29.99 (-25% off)

• This War of Mine – $17.99 (-10% off)

• DayZ – $29.74 (-15% off)

• Mass Effect – $4.99 (-75% off)

• Mass Effect 2 – $7.49 (-75% off)

• Batman: Arkham Origins – $9.99 (-50% off)

• Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition – $1.74 (-75% off)

• Counter-Strike GO – $7.49 (-50% off)

• Counter-Strike Complete – $10.19 (-66% off)

• Battlefield: Bad Company – $4.99 (-75% off)

• The Wolf Among Us – $16.74 (-33% off)

• The Stanley Parable –  $7.49 (-50% off)

• RYSE: Son of Rome – $29.99 (-25% off)

• Civilization: Beyond Earth – $34.99 (-30% off)

• Valve Complete Pack – $24.99 (-75% off)

• Civilization V: The Complete Edition – $12.49 (-75% off)

• BioShock Triple Pack – $10.19 (-83% off)

• Divine Divinity – $2.03 (-66% off)

• Divinity II: Developer’s Cut – $6.79 (-66% off)

• Age of Empires II HD Edition – $3.99 (-80% off)

• Payday 2 – $7.49 (-75% off)

• Total War: Rome II Emperor Edition – $14.98 (-75% off)

• Spintires – $10.19 (-66% off)

• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – $4.99 (-75% off)

• Shadow Warrior – $3.99 (-90% off)

• Mount and Blade: Warband – $4.99 (-75% off)

• Tropico 5 – $13.99 (-65%)

• Might and Magic Heroes V – $2.49 (-75% off)

• Might & Magic Heroes VI – $7.49 (-75% off)

• Dark Messiah: Might and Magic – $2.49 (-75% off)

• Might and Magic Heroes V: Tribes of the East – $2.49 (-75% off)

• Max Payne 3 – $4.99 (-75% off)

• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Ultimate Edition – $7.49 (-75% off)

• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 – $7.99 (-80% off)

• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fate – $3.74 (-75% off)

• Need for Speed: Shift – $17.49 (-75% off)

• Burnout Paradise Ultimate Box – $4.99 (-75% off)

• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit – $17.49 (-75% off)

• Deadlight – $2.99 (-80% off)

Be sure to drop by Steam and check out the full sale for yourself! There’s a ton of games discounted across all genres, from AAA to indies and everything in between, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to find something that fits your fancy.

The post Explore Savings With Steam's Black Friday Sale appeared first on VR World.

Over the weekend, Dell started selling the Alienware Alpha, a mini-PC that decidedly looks like a console. It comes with a similar style as the Alienware-branded Steam Machine that is scheduled to launch next year, but features Windows 8.1 with a custom UI that is designed to have a console-like feel to it.

Dubbed Alpha-UI, the interface allows you to navigate using the bundled Xbox 360 controller. The custom interface is loaded by default in what Dell is calling a Console Mode, but there is also a full-fledged desktop mode if you’re more comfortable with a traditional layout. The desktop is disabled until you plug in a mouse and keyboard. There’s Steam Big Picture mode and compatibility with over 3,000 titles on the Steam store.

Although building your own rig has gotten significantly easier over the years, there are several users that want the convenience of a console combined with the prowess of a full-fledged gamin rig. This is the market Dell is looking to target with the Alpha. That being said, the hardware that is being offered leaves a lot to be desired for.

Hardware configurations for the Alienware Alpha start from $549, which includes a 2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i3-4130T CPU, 500 GB mechanical hard drive, 4 GB DDR3L RAM clocked at 1600 MHz and a 2 GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M GPU. Not the fastest machine in the world, but it is targeted at gamers looking to play recent titles at decent frame rates without breaking the bank.

There are configurations that offer better CPUs and more memory, with the $899 version giving you a 3 GHz Intel Core i7-4765T CPU, 8 GB DDR3L RAM (1600 MHz), 2 TB mechanical hard drive and the GeForce GTX 860M. 

The hardware on offer sounds decent, but when you look at the system requirements of games like Assassin’s Creed Unity, it becomes clear that you would need a configuration that costs at least as much as $799 to be able to play the title. Seeing as how current-gen consoles like the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 cost half as much, for now, you’re better off with a console until a better alternative comes along.

The post Alienware Alpha Aims To Blur The Line Between Console And PC appeared first on VR World.

WARMACHINE: Tactics , a turn based strategy game for PC and Mac is leaving it’s Early Access phase and moving on to full version now available on Steam for $39.99. In addition to skirmish and multiplayer game modes full version adds a 20 mission single player campaign.

Developed by WhiteMoon Dreams and published by Privateer Press Interactive WARMACHINE: Tactics is based on the famous WARMACHINE tabletop miniatures game. Funded by Kickstarter and greatly accepted by Early Access players it reached full version in mere 15 months.

WARMACHINE setting takes place in the world of Caen and focuses on the conflict between four sides, Cygnar, The Protectorate of Menoth, Khador and Cryx. Players use squads of troops led by warcasters, powerful mages full of nasty magical abilities and warjacks, techno magical mechs. Like in card games their abilities can be used to greatly buff and enhance the squads or sabotage enemies. Gameplay is best summed up by quoting Page 5 code of ethis „Play Like You’ve Got A Pair“, favouring aggresion and bold tactics compared to hide behind walls in your fort style of some other games.

Cygnar, known as the jewel of the Iron Kingdoms is the most advanced human nation. They are under attack on all sides and use advanced mechanika, elite forces and lightning based technology.

The Protectorate of Menoth used to be a part of Cygnar but  later went down the religious extremist path and now oppenly opose them. Their troops are based on priests, holy soldiers, inquisitors and burn the heretic with fire theme. While individualy weaker they can combine their abilities in powerful ways.

Khador are grim and brutish Russian themed people, imperialistic, expansionist nation hailing from the north. Their warjacks are heavy and slow but have highest armour and can dish out the most damage. To compensate for this their troops are mobile and they have mobility spells. Element of their choice is ice.

Cryx are a classic twisted necromantic abomination faction with a tech spin. Dragon father worshipping masters of dark magic, numerous undead troops and a selection of fast and nimble light warjacks and acid coated weaponry are their thing.

Matt Wilson creator of WARMACHINE and Privateer Press founder is very pleased with reception the game got so far and is looking forward to bring the game to life for both old school tabletop players and those who never experienced this setting.

The post WARMACHINE: Tactics Full Version Stomps It's Way to Steam appeared first on VR World.

Today was a day of good news for all Nvidia Shield Tablet owners and potential owners.  Nvidia announced today that the Lollipop 5.0 update and the new GRID gaming service are coming to the Shield Tablet in an update on November 18th.  Nvidia Also confirmed that the Green Box they teased yesterday is in fact Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode One, and Portal.

Today via the Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) blog the company let people know about the upcoming capabilities and content they have made for its Shield Tablet.  The news of the Lollipop 5.0 update that we have known for a while was confirmed to be scheduled for release on November 18th.  The update brings Android’s new material design and performance benefits.  The update will also have an update for the popular Nvidia Dabbler application that has updates in the user interface, full support for layers, and interestingly the ability to stream the app via Twitch (which the tablet already supports for games).  The blog also confirmed that Half-Life Episode One is coming to Android, and it has been optimized for the Nvidia Shield Tablet.  This game will be part of the new Green Box bundle that will be included free with the 32GB/LTE version of the Shield Tablet.  Also confirmed were new games that are optimized for the Shield Tablet.  These games are OddWorld: Stranger’s Wrath, Pure Pool, Strike Suit Zero, and Turbo Dismount.

The biggest surprise was the announcement of the long in-beta GRID gaming service.  This will harnesses state-of-the-art Nvidia GPU servers to deliver a GeForce GTX gaming experience on SHIELD devices.  The lineup already includes 20 AAA game titles including Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands 2, and Psychonauts.  The service will be adding new titles every week.  Essentially this will be like Netflix for games that users can stream right to the Shield devices to play.  But the best part is that the GRID service will be free on Shield devices (both the tablet and the portable) through June 30, 2015.  This is great that Nvidia is giving users more than 7 months of the gaming service free for owners who have already bought devices. This will help make up for the fact that the Green Box is only available with new purchases of the 32GB/LTE tablet and will possibly encourage people to buy SHIELD devices if they weren’t already planning to.

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Steam Early Access finally gets Onikira: Demon Killer, the 2D side-scroller beat ‘em up game developed by Digital Furnace Games and published by Headup Games and Merge Games, and it will be available on Friday, November 14.

Ancient Japan may not look too original for a game setting, but with monsters from the underworld involved, it’s already packed with action from the get go. You play as the protagonist Yamazaki Jiro, and players get to guide him across beautiful picturesque oriental landscapes that include villages, wrecked towns and mountains, all the while slashing and hacking all of his demonic foes away.

The combat system is simple, yet comprehensive. It gives the player a perfect combination of the old school side-scrolling hack n’ slash and some of the cooler, albeit more complex moves newer action games have introduced. There’s the classic mobile platforms, graded stage levels, and since you play as a cool samurai, a few wall running and rooftop grappling to add up to the game’s overall pacing and tension.

As for the protagonist’s fighting style, you are given four basic weapons. The sword, which is your basic main weapon, the tetsubo, for whacking enemies around you, plus the naginata and arm blades for some stylish all-range combat. Combining these weapons should allow for a wide variety of fighting moves and some really great combos. Additionally, the game introduces the Soul Shop, where players could use accumulated Soul points to restore health, purchase new moves and open Challenge Arenas.

Speaking of combos and styles, your underworld enemies will also have a variety of moves, as well as attack patterns and their own weakness, all of which can be used and exploited by the player to progress through levels. Some enemies simply need a little more altitude leverage to defeat, while others are just too sturdy to simply kill by brute force.

Stages too, have their own level of excitement, as the full version will feature eight complete levels, with a myriad of different combat moves and weapons to choose and use. For the moment though, Early Access users will be able to get the four basic weapons, and at least 50 moves, all of which they need to use to complete its first two levels, five sub-boss and one main boss battles.

If you’re into feudal Japan style hack n’ slash games, then Onikira: Demon Killer is definitely the game to pick this month, and it is available now on Steam Early Access for $9.99, £6.99 or €9.99.

The post Onikira: Demon Killer Now Available on Steam Early Access appeared first on VR World.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) released a tweet today that had a pixelated image of what appears to be a Shield Tablet with 3 different game images and a Shield wireless controller. The tag on the picture says “What is GreenBox”, and it looks like there will be a Valve game package coming to your Shield devices soon.

What Do You Think GreenBox Is?

What do you think #GreenBox is? http://t.co/GCAnLqptbm pic.twitter.com/aelLAXf9uU

— NVIDIA (@nvidia) November 11, 2014

Today Nvidia made a tweet today with the pixelated image of a Shield Tablet and what appears to be the art of three games on the screen.  A link takes you to the Nvidia Shield website and has the same image as the Twitter post, and has text that reads “What is GreenBox”.   The image also has text encouraging people to tell them what they thing Green Box is via the Twitter hashtag #GreenBox.  If you are a gamer you can probably notice that two of the images are likely Portal and Half-Life 2.  The name GreenBox is very obvious that it is the none to clever attempt to copy The Orange Box name.  The Orange Box was a release of three Valve games in one package.  The games in the package were Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, and Portal.

Could this mean that we should expect to see the release of Team Fortress 2 for Android?  Another possibility is that Half -Life Episode 1 is about to be released.  While one might hope that Team Fortress 2 will be the next game the fact is that a multiplayer game is likely going to be a lot more work than a single player game.  The other two games, Portal and Half-Life 2 are already available for Android.  Those games were released by Nvidia Tegra Partners on the Play Store and have gotten rave reviews.

What we can gain from the teaser is that this should be a package with 3 games from Valve, two of which are Portal and Half-Life 2.  It is likely the next chosen game will be just as big of a hit as the current games.  Either way this is good news for those who game on Android and those with Nvidia Shield devices.

The post What Is Nvidia's #Greenbox? appeared first on VR World.

Paranautical Activity, a voxel-based FPS-roguelike mashup indie, was pulled from Steam’s digital store after its creator delivered targeted death threats against Valve’s Gabe Newell.

Code Avarice dev and creator Mike Maulbeck issued these threats after a bout of frustration with the platform.

As Maulbeck pointed out, on the game’s launch day–arguably the most important day for any indie game–Steam hadn’t updated its status: Paranautical Activity was still listed it as an Early Access game.

After noting that Steam delayed his game because “it couldn’t be released on weekends” and that being labeled as Early Access could “cripple sales”, Maulbeck’s vexation rose to a boiling point.

“Valve marked our game as ‘now on Early Access’ as we released the final version (no longer in Early Access),” Maulbeck told Eurogamer via e-mail. “I knew this would greatly cripple sales and confuse customers.”

Paranautical Activity was one of the games featured in Steam’s special Halloween-themed bundle, but was yanked shortly after Maulbeck’s vicious threat.

The dev continued to deliver a fusillade of frustration on Twitter, calling Valve a “f-cking monopoly” and lamenting the company as “incompetent pieces of sh-t” among other vicious attacks.

Then Maulbeck crossed the line. “I’m going to kill Gabe Newell,” the deranged developer said. “He is going to die.”

Valve promptly responded to this death threat by pulling Paranautical Activity from Steam altogether and cancelling Maulbeck’s private account.

“Yes, we have removed the game’s sales page and ceased relations with the developer after he threatened to kill one of our employees,” Valve’s Doug Lombardi said to Polygon.

We wouldn’t mess with Gabe, would you?

Maulbeck affirms that he reached out to Valve in an effort to fix the game’s erroneous listing, but ultimately the interactions left the dev angrier than ever.

“I in fact had already begun getting tweets and e-mails from people claiming I marked it as Early Access myself to try and avoid criticism of the final version,” Maulbeck continued in his correspondence with Eurogamer.

As a result to the tumult caused by his threats, Matt Maulbeck reveals that he’s resigned from Code Avarice.

“I’m really, deeply sorry that my short sighted, hot tempered actions resulted in not only my own dreams and aspirations being destroyed, but those of the entire team I worked with. I’m sorry that my statements made Valve and/or Gabe uncomfortable and upset (rightfully so).”

Maulbeck will no longer be a part of the games industry and “will not receive any money made by Paranautical Activity” nor will he “have a hand in future CA games”.

The post Indie Dev Resigns After Making Death Threats To Gabe Newell appeared first on VR World.

A new game to enliven your summer vacation developed by Cuve Games and put out by Phoenix Online Publishing is one month from delivery. Heroes and Legends: Conquerors of Kolhar blends combat and strategies with story-driven and randomly generated adventures in fantasy role playing game (RPG) fun.

Evil lurks in Kohlar

Gamers will custom make their own weapons and armor to be used by their warriors, wizards and assassins. Fire and ice complete the arsenal for battling more than 130 monsters in an attempt to overcome an ancient evil. Scenarios become more and more challenging to be met with collected mystical artifacts that enhance your ability to win.

Jerome Bodin, game designer and owner of Cuve Games claims: “Challenges will appeal to the older hardcore as much as to the newcomers.” Jerome, self-proclaimed tinkerer, says he and his partner Fred, the arts and graphics guy, work out of their “small independent studio somewhere in France.”

Silver Lining Cast

An initial offering from Phoenix Publishing Online, an independent video game publisher, grew out of the Kings Quest series from Sierra Entertainment. Originating in 1984, the series was the very beginnings of the graphic adventure game genre. The concept has continued in several episodes of The Silver Lining which debuted in 2010 from from Phoenix Publishing.

Erica Reed, FBI, stars in Cognition

Another early title, Cognition, features Erica Reed an FBI agent who can see into the past in a point and click game funded by Kickstarter in 2012 and developed cross platform for Windows, Mac, and iOS. There are 24 videos about the episodes on YouTube. TGN (Those Gaming Nerds) gave Episode One a good review while Adventure Gamers gave the fourth episode low marks saying “The Cain Killer, the fourth and final episode in the series, is best described as a strangely dull thud of a climax that generally abandons intuition and reasoning in favor of blunt melodrama.”

Finding the Lost Civilization

Lost Civilization released in early 2014 by Phoenix requires puzzle solving to rescue a kidnapped fiancé. This archaeological adventure that takes you into the Mayan civilization sells for $6.99 to GameHouse members. TouchArcade gave it three stars.

April 2014 saw the company’s paranormal mystery adventure game Moebius: Empire Rising written by Jane Jensen and releasedfor both PC and Mac. It was followed by Quest for Infamy, a humorous role playing game with customizable spells. Players must lie, cheat, and steal to win. You can get it for PC and Linux.

August 21 brings the latest offering, Heroes and Legends: Conquerors of Kolhar  to the marketplace for PC, MAC, and Linux. It will be available via Steam, the Phoenix Online Store, and the usual major online retailers.

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The guys and girls over at Malwarebytes have uncovered a new method of Steam account phishing which gets around Valve’s own Steam Guard service. Valve’s Steam Guard service is a serviced designed by Valve to make sure that people’s account credentials aren’t being stolen by other people and using them on their own computers. This both acts to protect users’ accounts and acts as a sort of level of DRM to protect the content from people unauthorized to use it. From my expereince, Valve’s Steam Guard has worked quite well and always sends me an email whenever I log in from a new machine or one that isn’t recognized by Steam’s service. Steam Guard essentially sends you an email with an authorization code after a pop-up comes up within Steam itself asking for that code that was sent to your email.

These phishers are using this system, that most Steam users are familiar with in order to create fake Steam sites that look very much like what you would see if you used Steam and got a Steam Guard notification. They do this by sending you a message over Steam or via an email and get you to go to their phishing site. Once there, you will be prompted to provide them with your SSFN file, which is a bit unlike most phishing schemes where they ask for your username and password. But, since Steam Guard exists, this information simply isn’t enough and they need your SSFN file. What is the SSFN file? Well, it’s the file that enables Steam Guard to authenticate your account and ensure that your computer is an authorized one. If you delete your SSFN file, you will be forced to re-authenticate your computer via Steam Guard and get the email code and everything all over again.

Steam SSFN Upload

The phishers have successfully found a way to steal users’ SSFN files by simply asking them to upload it to their site and at that same time use the SSFN file on their systems in order to gain full access to the users’ account. Why is this important? Well, many users, myself included, have hundreds of dollars worth of games on their account and those accounts could be sold to other people for a lot of money if properly stolen. So, naturally, there are a lot of people searching for new methods of phishing and getting around Steam’s own protections to prevent such bad things happening to their users. Hopefully Valve is aware of the issue now and makes it impossible to phish someone for their account SSFN file to steal their account and either use it for themselves or to sell it off to the highest bidder.

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So, we already reported to you about the cake we got from Nvidia along with an Aperture Laboratories-themed letter, as well as the ultimate result of Portal arriving on the SHIELD with a short review of our experience and some screen shots. Well, Nvidia’s viral marketing doesn’t stop there with SHIELD as today we received a bright green crowbar from Nvidia that simply said, “What Would Gordon Do?” This is a clear allusion to Half Life 2, and as if that isn’t enough, they also have the Half-Life 2 and SHIELD logos emblazoned on the crowbar itself.

Nvidia SHIELD Themed Crowbar

As we had alluded to in the previous article, there was a good chance that Nvidia and Valve’s next logical step would be to port over other games from the Orange Box since Portal was part of that group. So, it comes as little surprise that today’s crowbar that we got from Nvidia had a Half Life 2 logo on it accompanied by the SHIELD logo with the “What Would Gordon Do?” phrasing on it. Maybe WWGD will make a comeback as a joke phrase that alludes to games, but the truth is that Nvidia and Valve are likely going to be releasing more Orange Box games on the SHIELD which is awesome. Even though, to be honest, Portal is probably my favorite game out of the entire Orange Box even  though all of the Half Life games are quite good as well, and Team Fortress 2 is still wildly popular today as a Free to Play game with a plethora of hats…

And no, this doesn’t somehow confirm that Half Life 3 is coming, you can CLEARLY see that it says HL2 on the crowbar, so don’t get too excited about that yet, Valve appears busy trying to make better use of their game portfolio on mobile. Which, is admittedly a good idea, they need to maximize their utilization of their own IP even on platforms they don’t entirely control (like Google Play or Tegrazone). This is a good move for both Nvidia and Valve and should simultaneously yield some awesome SHIELD-based exclusive titles.

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Nvidia has been talking about the fact that Portal will be coming to SHIELD since they announced it at their GPU Technology Conference along with the $199 price cut of the SHIELD. Since then, the guys at Valve and Nvidia have been working feverishly to deliver a working port of Portal from the PC to SHIELD. Well, we got an early access to the APK a few days ago and we’ve been playing it ever since, and the verdict is that its virtually impossible to tell whether or not I’m playing on my PC or on my SHIELD. I’ve played Portal before on my PC and the experience on the SHIELD might even be better because you’re so much more focused on the screen and the speakers are right in front of your face. Every time I pick up Portal on my SHIELD, another 10-20 minutes seemingly evaporate within what feels like seconds. Portal is just one of those games that you can’t help playing, especially after a really long break in playing the game.

Portal on NVIDIA’s SHIELD

The gameplay with the SHIELD feels incredibly natural and I hate to admit it, but I think I like playing Portal more on my SHIELD than I do on my keyboard and mouse because of how immersive the experience is. This is a great game that you can play virtually anywhere and anyone can enjoy. My only concern is the replayability of Portal for people after they’ve dropped the $10. Not to mention, this may expose a new generation of gamers to Portal that have never played it before (the game is 7 years old now). But since it is only coming on on SHIELD for now, which is understandable considering the controls, most of the people that will be buying Portal for SHIELD will probably already own a PC and have already bought Portal for their PC or have gotten it for free through some bundle or sale like most of us have. You can see all of the screenshots we’ve posted are actual gameplay of Portal from the SHIELD.

Playing Portal on Nvidia’s SHIELD

The game itself will be available to the general public on May 12th, for the ripe old price of $9.99 which if you ask me, is a bit pricey for a game that sells on Steam for PC for exactly the same price. Even so, nobody actually would pay $9.99 for Portal, they would wait for some sort of bundle or Steam Sale, which honestly would be an awesome thing for Nvidia and Valve to do, sell an ‘Orange Box’ like deal for the Steam-based Valve games ported to SHIELD. I would be really excited to see what other interesting things other than Portal Valve and Nvidia are able to accomplish, perhaps even simultaneous launches of Valve PC titles with the Tegra/Mobile version? Eh, maybe we’re just being too optimistic, but after our experience with Portal on the SHIELD, we can’t help but be overly optimistic.

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Confirmation came in this Valve’s monthly update to their hardware survey, probably the best statistics about gaming hardware out there, touching “only” 16+ million people. This survey shows that the Christmas shopping season smiled nicely on Intel on the CPU side and both ATI and Nvidia on the graphics side.

15% of all users dropped single-core processors between June and January...

Roughly 50.000 people who used Intel’s integrated graphics subsystem bought ATI and Nvidia GPUs, reducing Intel’s share to 5.07% (5% too much, if you ask me). ATI now owns 27.25%, while Nvidia marginally increased its share to 64.72% of all graphics cards used. Big losers were also owners of multi-GPU configurations. As users are selling their 8800GTX SLI and 9800GX2 cards, most of them opted for a single graphics card, such as GeForce GTX or Radeon 4800 series. Less than 300.000 Steam users own a multi-GPU setup, yet everybody in the industry state that multi-GPU setup is the future?

On the CPU side, things turned quite interesting for the eternal battle between AMD and Intel. As you could read in the title, 0.43% of all users use Intel’s 8-core Skulltrail platform, while Phenom X3 has marginally higher market share (0.49%). 8-core Skulltrail beat 3-Core Phenom by almost four times, and by survey for March 2009, Skulltrail will probably overtake 3-core Phenoms in terms of overall share. Rough estimate would be roughly 70.000 Skulltrail systems out there, and 80.000 Phenom X3 systems. Who earned more money?

My take is that a certain ex-ATI/now-AMD is now chewing his hat of, because it was his decision to kill FASN8, AMD’s Barcelona-powered dual-socket gaming system.
In case you missed, this also proves that a certain Voodoo-empowered HP executive was wrong in his column about the end of high-end gaming machines. A lot of workstation users bought Skulltrail machines, but this statistics applies to people who installed Steam on their computers. And as we all know, it’s not that Steam is used for distribution of AutoCAD, Maya, Adobe CS4 and other professional software packages.

This month was also big on DirectX 10 – almost 25% of all users now use DirectX 10 on Windows Vista. Then again, percentage of owners of DirectX 10 hardware and DX9 operating system (Windows XP) jumped to 27.28% (up by 2%) as well.

All in all, Steam Hardware Survey once more provided us with an invaluable insight into the world of gaming hardware. I am personally surprised with the success of Skulltrail platform, given the state of economy and prices of Skulltrail systems. Then again, it is a living proof that Francois Piednoel and his team at Intel knew what they were doing when they created V8, followed by Skulltrail.

On a side note, I can’t wait for Nehalem-EP based Skulltrail… codename Skullcrusher? Greyscull? Or again back in the car world with Bugatti-like V-16 (two 4-core CPUs feature 8 threads each, thus 16 cores visible in task manager )?

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Steam Hardware Survey, December 2008

Following our article with November 2008 details, here are the changes:

• AMD lost 1.04% of CPU share in December alone – Intel gained that share
• Nvidia lost 0.47% of its GPU share, while AMD/ATI gained 0.45%
• Out of those 0.47%, 0.25% bought a graphics card with 1GB of video memory
• Quad-Core processors are now used by 10.76%, up 0.64% from Nov ’08
• 50.81% of all users have at least 2 cores to play with
• DirectX 10 API is now used by 22.88% of all users, up 1.45% from Nov ’08
• 41.5% users use widescreen resolution, gained 1.47% from Nov’08
• Multi-GPU configurations are still used by less than 2% of all users, with 1.84% (+0.06%). This means that just 300.000 Steam gamers have more than one GPU in their computer.
• Revenue-wise, these 300.000 gamers spent 200+ million USD on their GPU hardware alone, or equal revenue to 1.2 million mainstream users (if they spent $199 on a card)

We can conclude that roughly 1% of all users (150.000) bought new systems, mostly equipped with quad-core processors and ATI Radeon graphics cards. Given the fact that cut-off for SHS is 10th in the month, only Steam Hardware Survey for January 2009 will show all the Christmas sales results. Then, we can see what happened with the base of Steam users.

This does not include the whole world, so there is a lot of room for free interpretation, but bear in mind that this number includes more than 15.5 million users worldwide. And Steam itself is gaining users, so it will be interesting to see how it will all equal out.

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Based on his article, which speaks about the death of high-end PC computers (neatly, some years after Rahul sold his own boutique PC manufacturer to HP for a large sum of dead presidents), the world is going to evolve into small and neat things. And that is a nice pitch to launch a product like the upcoming Blackbird 003, as insinuated in a follow-up post.

And this is where it hit me. The perception of human species is that we’re an exclusive kind. One cannot co-exist with another, starting in kindergartens, throughout school, rivalry between brothers/sisters in a family or nations – does not matter, we all think of ourselves as God/Allah/Manitou-given right to exterminate the opponent because “we’re better”. However, when we look at the world in general, we see that everything is inclusive, even our position in the food chain. We cannot be different, because we would belong to a different position in the food chain, not on top of it. We are predators (Orca the killer whale is also a mammal, so don’t pull that argument that we’re cute as dolphins), we take all the best qualities, them being good or bad, and use them for our own interests. However, we do not cancel each other out. It is the competition that drives us to the best or worst of our potentials, and it does not matter who comes second, it is the matter of who makes the best product, that being your performance in a family, or a company.

The IT industry – error in global economy DNA
Factor of inclusiveness comes to life the moment you walk into the world of IT industry. This industry is best described as “disruptive”, because it continuously shakes up the world order, like it or not. We change the level playing field in every industry that we touch, that being weapons of our own destruction, or tools of our own creation. Now, why all of a sudden this industry is turning into an exclusive one, or just keeps talking about exclusiveness?

For starters, a lot of my mainstream colleagues are now writing about Apple products like nothing else exists in the world. For starters, Apple did not invent multi-touch nor does it own the technology. But, Apple is the first company that took the existing technology and did a brilliant job to create currently the best interface between humans and machines.

Tomorrow brings a whole another ballgame of alternative interfaces that will change the way how we communicate with the digital world. Perceptive Pixel, Dragon Systems/Nuance, Google Voice-activated search, and E-Plus Speech-to-Text (SMS) technologies – all of these companies are bringing technologies that are utterly brilliant, but in the end, they will be adopted by other companies. Following exclusive logic, all of these companies will keep technologies to themselves, regardless of Google being an American company, E-Plus a German mobile operator, Dragon a small UK company that exchanged more hands (corporations) than Microsoft has employees… but all of these companies bring stuff that will be adopted by other companies and they will deliver their stuff.

At the end of the day, we all will benefit – smaller and big companies, but only those that think outside the box.

What a Ferrari F1 car has to do with my car?
In order to be able to draw parallels with current situation, let’s compare computers to cars, since both share emotional similarities. There is a world crisis in car sales, as a consequence of recession. But, let’s take a deeper look into numbers, shall we? Big Three in US are in trouble, because they have millions (sadly, not exaggerating) of unsold cars. Why? Because people don’t want to buy them. Car industry missed the way what car drivers’ desire and that was punished with a dramatic decrease in sales… from makers of bog standard automobiles.

No wonder, you might add – because these cars don’t give us that buzz, that emotion. Now, let’s take a look into the world of supercars… are the sales down? Judging by the appearance of numerous supercars manufacturers, the answer is a very loud – NO. Ferrari increased its production from 4999 cars/annum in 2005 to 6700 cars in 2008, followed by 7500 cars in 2009. Current leadership of the company told yours truly that they won’t increase production for more than 10,000 cars a year, because they want to keep the exclusivity. Then again, they told me the same thing back in 2005, so don’t hold your breath. Porsche makes 80,000 cars/year, and they plan to pass the 100,000 mark with the introduction of baby SUV and a four-door limo. Crisis? What crisis?

I won’t even explain how start-ups companies like Tesla, Carbon Motors and many others are preparing the stage for either a takeover, or big ones “stealing” a lot of ideas from their 2010 cars. Let’s move forward. In the past five years, more supercar manufacturers appeared than in 10 years between 1990 and 2000. Whoever heard about companies such as British Atom or German Gumpert? Yet, these manufacturers are finding their customers than GM or Ford. Different volume? Certainly. Profitability? Well… if GM was any smart and produced real sport versions of their cars, they would not be in such a doodle. Honda Type-R was a stuff legends were made from, yet their current Civic Type-R is a heavy and non-responsive PoS of a car. What happened to sales? You’ve guessed it. In today’s world, we’re pampered by dream visions wherever we go. These marketing visions make our emotions work and make us want things. In all honesty, can a Chevy Tahoe make us drool? Hardly. It’s a workhorse, regardless how you like present it. Range Rover Sport or chrome alloys on Tahoe are nothing else but “pig with a lipstick”.

Getting back to the world of computers, did Dell, IBM, HP, Gateway and others really thought they could continue to sell beige boxes forever? The answer is very simple – NO.

HP had to buy VoodooPC, Dell had to buy Alienware, and Acer had to buy Gateway, eMachines. Why? Because all of these companies need to generate buzz around their products. Raise hands who want to buy “beige or maybe grey” PC with “ultra-interesting” 19″ LCD display (connecting to PC with analog D-SUB connector, DVI cable is more expensive) and a beige PS/2 keyboard (still have on stock) that will change color the moment you touch it?

What happened after these acquisitions? HP launched all-carbon fiber Envy 133 and more importantly, All-in-One PC with a massive 22″ or 25.5″ touchscreen. Dell implemented Alienware DNA in its XPS series while keeping the company intact (and learned to live with the fact that there are tens of thousands of people want to buy their screens, but not interested in their computers). Gateway launched a sold out notebook which specs are now emulated by ASUS, Toshiba and others. The list goes on.

How to create an industry – sandboxes anyone?
At the dying years of 20th century, the need for better coolers created a whole new industry – premium cooling that became premium cases. Could you imagine Antec Skeleton, Cooler Master Stacker, Cosmos Black Edition, and Blackbird 002 – or imagine that a Ferrari-designer Pininfarina worked with Spire to create a design case for 70 greenbacks. And all of that happened because a small group of people went nuts and overclocked Celeron 300A to 450 MHz and Duron 650 to 1.1 GHz and started to build systems around it (sorry, omitted Athlon 550 and 650 to 950 courtesy of legendary “Gold Finger” device).

This grassroots movement turned into an industry of premium components, yielding companies such as Corsair, OCZ, Mushkin from the world of system memory, BFG, Diamond, EVGA, XFX, Sapphire in the world of graphics cards, Extreme Edition and FX processors from Intel and AMD and completely changed the way how Dell, HP, Acer, ASUS and others market their computers.

Tesla Supercomputer is the latest example of taking an underground movement and creating an industry. Five years from now, every scientist will have a minimum of 100 TFLOPS on his desktop, and supercomputers will become 10-20-40 PFLOPS machines capable of solving world’s greatest problems. Because of who? Because a group of young doctors of science took four gaming cards and turned a gaming machine into a processing monster for computational topography http://fastra.ua.ac.be/en/specs.html and inspired Nvidia to launch an ecosystem around Tesla cards for aspiring scientists.

Would that ever happened if there weren’t for gamers who demanded more and more realistic graphics in computer games, forcing companies to turn regular video processing chips with some texturing power into TFLOPS monsters that eat CPUs for breakfast in any stream-like application?

The answer is very simple. NO. Liked it or not, it all started with bilinear filtering of textures. 3Dfx had it, S3 and Matrox didn’t. Games looked awesome even on Pentium 100 machine, looked like crap on Matrox and Pentium 233 MMX. ATI and Nvidia came later and with wiser moves, moved ahead. End of story.

Personally, I consider that the most important product that HP has in its complete PC lineup is its TouchSmart series. Yet, I don’t see HP advertising this system wherever you go, I don’t see discussions about how controlling the computer by our own fingers is changing the world. No, that’s left to Apple and be honest; iMac does not come close to level of interactivity offered by HP’s system. Apple’s buyers used to be consisted out of dreamers, visionaries and people that don’t want to live in bog standard world. Judging by the rate of market share growth, people want to dream, live the vision and they don’t want to live in a bog standard world. That’s why Apple stuff sells like hotcakes – not to enthusiasts, but to grandmas and grandpas that want to own something beautiful. This is the place where CE industry missed the boat completely and it will get eaten by IT industry (not getting “destroyed”, but adopting IT technology to a point where you can’t tell a difference). Your telly in the living room will have a complete computer inside, or just connect to a home server that will become more important than ever. Is it a Sony TV or Sony Vaio with a larger screen? Wait and see.

High end PC – what can we make of it?
Here comes the ultimate failure of PC industry as such – it lacks people that will spark that creativity, all in the name of cutting costs, even if $2 means the difference between PoS product that nobody wants to buy or will buy only when forced (enterprises tied into their own cycles).

The problem of high-end PCs does not lie in the fact that there is no market between ultra-high end PCs and mainstream crowd. The problem, as some like to see it – actually does not exist. There will always be a market for those 300.000 people (Steam Hardware survey November 2008). That number accounts to 300 million greenbacks of revenue for graphics subsystem alone. Even in five years spread, that’s a hefty number to overlook for anyone, and this exlcuded rest of components that also belong to premium world. Most of motherboard manufacturers now focus on catering overclockers, spend hundreds of thousand of dollars on organizing overclocking competitions… all in the name of better products.

Is this market something that is going to disappear? Nope and yes, I will shave my head if I am wrong. This industry also has its heroes, like Shamino who came from overclocking world to help EVGA design ultimate motherboards, Macci who helped AMD to create an attack on Intel and change the way company markets its CPUs… examples are numerous. And no, these people will not go away, they will actually – get company.

Conclusion
In conclusion, boutique vendors like Biohazard Computers, HyperSonic-PC, SolidWavePC, Smooth Creations, YOYOTech and others will not just continue to exist, but expand their line-ups and put their DNA into more volume products. I won’t make a distinction between Biohazard and McLaren Group, or stop to mention similarities between VoodooPC/HP, Alienware/Dell and AMG/Mercedes relationship.
This industry is huge, there is more than enough room for everybody and guess what? AMD, Intel and Nvidia are not making enough chips to satisfy world’s need for computing. Once that this trio starts making 3-5 billion chips a year, we can start saying that the industry is saturated.

Then, we can start talking about exclusiveness – until then, whenever you hear an industry leader saying that users “don’t need that”, with “that” being TV-out on 3dfx Voodoo cards (Alex Leupp, 3dfx CEO), “that” being 64-bit instruction set (Patrick Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s CTO at time)… is setting its company for the fall or a hefty portion of humble pie.

The new site will have open discussions with the industry leaders outside of this industry, and then it will be interesting to see what IT industry leaders will say. Bear in mind that everybody is talking about netbooks today. First netbook in present form was a computer that a lot of industry executives and journalists claimed that it is impossible to make. Nicholas Negroponte, AMD and Quanta created netbook; ASUS came with Intel platform and created EEE. The rest is history.

And again, this would not happen if there wasn’t for Ferraris and Lambos of this industry. The future is bright for high-end PC manufacturers, but not just that. The future is bright only for open minded manufacturers that will push the envelope in their respective market.
Slow giants will be overrun, regardless of how you look at it. It is the real evolution and exclusiveness in the all-inclusive world.

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Steam has more than 15 million users worldwide and is to software distribution what World of Warcraft is in the world of MMO games. But probably the most interesting part of Steam is world famous “Steam Hardware Survey”. Every month, Valve collect data from 15 million users and lists what kind of hardware do people use. This is an invaluable process that gives developers golden information about platforms they should target. In my discussions with game developers, I had countless verbal battles with people who didn’t want to create a game for high-end hardware, because the adoption rate is too low. Well, think again.

In survey for November 2008, stats show that Intel leads the CPU share with 63.62%, while AMD owns the remaining 36.38%. Dual-core dominates with 49.04%, e.g. almost eight million people own a dual-core processor. Quad-core captured just 10.43%, which means quaddies have a mountain to climb. It is surprising to see that 40.19% still own a single-core processor, but multi-thread support is a must-have feature today, not tomorrow – 59.47% own a multi-thread capable computer.

CPU-wise, best sellers are Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 processors (2.4-2.66 GHz), while owners of AMD platform just cannot get enough of Athlon 64 X2 2.2 GHz (4400+). Graphics-wise, Nvidia captured 65.11% of all steam users, translated into more than 10 million gamers. Here comes the most interesting part of the survey. According to Steam, GeForce 8800 captured the hearts of no less than 32.35% of users. Out of 10 million Nvidia users, more than three million people own a high-performing GeForce 8800 card – it is almost incredible to see that amount of 3D horsepower taking more market share than numerous mainstream and low-end cards. 

API is a key decided in what platform to go with, and software developers will appreciate the fact that even though almost half of all Steam users use DirectX 10 hardware, only 21.43% of all steam users can actually use DX10 API. Windows XP is loved by more than massive majority of DX10 HW-owning users.

Numbers don't lie, and these are results from more than 15M people around the world. World's largest IT-related survey, that's for sure.

Summary

All in all, I would conclude that this survey proves just how popular Core 2 Duo and GeForce 8800 are. If you’re working on game code optimization today, and plan to launch the game on Steam in 2009, focus your efforts on following parts:

• Vista is a failure, gamers are waiting for Windows 7 to tell Good Bye to Windows XP
• Focus optimization on two cores, most likely in 2.5 GHz range
• 480.000 users overclocked their CPU beyond fastest shipping clock, additional 1.5 million moderately overclock their machines
• Users have around 100GB of free space on the hard drive
• Most of users have 512MB of video memory.
• Most popular resolution is 1024×768
• Most widescreen users use 27″ screens (surprised?), followed by 24″ ones. Thus, for widescreen focus on FullHD resolution
• Multi-GPU is esoteric at best, with 1.79% of overall share. Yes, only 280.000 people have multi-GPU configuration, with SLI dominating the share with 1.55% (240.000).
• Currently, nobody uses 4 GPUs with ATI chips and mere 4600 people own two 7950GX2 cards
• Valve currently makes world’s largest IT-based survey, and probably one of largest surveys in existence (does anybody know how many people Nielsen actually track?)  

All in all, Steam survey offered an interesting insight. I’ll follow-up on this one in our future monthly reports on Steam.

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Who knew that this title will change our expectations for future games?

I’ve met Gabe and Doug on several dozen occassions, and these guys are just “body of evidence” where bold thinking can lead you. Gabe Newell wasn’t afraid to show how crappy his code runs on GeForce FX 5800/5900 cards, the company launched distribution model that changed the way how games are bought and there is still plenty more to come.
To celebrate this anniversary, Valve is making Half-Life available for purchase on STEAM for the price of 98 cents (until 12:01PM on Nov 21).
All in all, big congratulations to Valve.

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The official release is November 18 in North America and November 21 in Europe. Of course, if you buy the game via steam, it will be available on Nov. 18, so there is additional incentive for Europeans to buy the game via Valve’s own distribution platform. The pre-order comes at 10% off regular price ($44.95), and that is visible in the fact that the pre-orders are 65% higher than for Orange Box.

This is one game I am eagerly waiting for. Second one is Fallout 3.

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