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Indie games are vast, varied and very 80s in this Megabooth trailer
There is no single definition of an "indie" video game. "Indie" doesn't mean free, cheap, mobile, 8-bit, 3D, platformer, shooter or any other thing. Thanks to the recent, rapid evolution of game-making technologies, more people than ever are able to craft and sell their own video games with help from friends and without involving a large publisher. That's what "indie" means -- independent, but not alone. The development community has plenty of avenues for people to gather and support one another, and one of the largest such organizations is the Indie Megabooth. Every year since 2012, the Megabooth has set up stalls at PAX East and PAX Prime showing off a selection of stellar independent games. It started with 16 games in 2012, took a trip around the globe in 2014, and will now boast a lineup of more than 70 games at this year's PAX Prime from August 28th to 31st. The list includes beautiful digital board game Armello, intense Xbox One game Below, gorgeous space shooter Galak-Z, poetic point-and-click That Dragon, Cancer, wacky competitive game Gang Beasts (shown above), and tons more.
Major Nelson: Xbox One won't support external storage at launch
We hope you weren't counting on using the Xbox One's USB ports for external storage from day one; as it turns out, you'll likely have to be patient. Speaking at the PAX Prime expo this weekend, Microsoft's Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) mentioned that external drive support wouldn't be available at launch because the Xbox team was "working on other things." It's not certain when the feature will arrive, Hryb says. We've reached out to Microsoft to verify the statement. If it's accurate, though, you'll want to be cautious when filling the Xbox One's built-in 500GB drive with Xbox Game Store downloads.
Twitch takes over streaming duties for PAX, New York Comic Con
The folks in charge of running America's largest biannual gaming event are teaming up with gaming's most popular streaming solution to offer streams of PAX Prime, PAX East, and New York Comic Con going forward. The company behind all three conventions, ReedPOP, are working in conjunction with Twitch.tv to offer live broadcasts from the aforementioned three shows, as well as Chicago's Comic & Entertainment Expo. ReedPOP also runs PAX Australia, though it looks like Twitch isn't handling that streaming as well. Twitch's biggest competitor in the streaming space, Ustream, secured a deal with Sony to handle streaming from the company's forthcoming PlayStation 4 game console. Microsoft's Xbox One can also handle streaming -- Xbox One distinguished engineer Nick Baker told Engadget, "We architected in several components to allow that. We have a video hardware encoder, h.264, and the ability to essentially screen scrape. Take your output without having to render two separate images. Take your output, feed that back to memory, compress it, save it, stream it to a companion device. The hardware has the capability." Microsoft has yet to announce a plan for how its streaming will work on Xbox One, but we imagine we'll know much more as of next week.
