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What to expect when you're expecting Gamescom 2013
Gamescom 2013: the year that games strike back? Okay, maybe not, but this is a huge year for the world's biggest game show -- to the tune of 250,000 attendees in the days the event is open to the public. Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One are getting their last big showing before going up for sale this holiday, and it sounds like we'll get final launch dates for both consoles. Beyond that...well, we've got a video co-anchored by Joystiq reviews editor Richard Mitchell. Weigh in with your own expectations and gawk at our goofy mugs in video form just below!
Wii U now allows eShop purchases from within indie games and ported apps
Nintendo first shared details of its Wii U Web Framework at GDC in March, which it hoped would encourage more apps and games to be ported over, and facilitate quicker Wii U game prototyping. Fast-forward to GDC Europe and Martin Buchholz, manager of developer relations at Nintendo, confirmed that the framework has now been updated to include eCommerce support -- such as DLC purchases. Something of a significant lure for those with existing games that have yet to be convinced to move them over to Wii U. It's not quite in-app purchases, but it will certainly ease the worries of those game makers who prefer to monetize their titles after the initial transaction.
What Age of Empires Online says about Steam's impact on free-to-play games
Microsoft's attempt to reinvigorate its aging Age of Empires game franchise most recently resulted in a free-to-play game distributed on the company's (now shuttered) Games for Windows Live service. The game, Age of Empires Online, launched as a free title with two civilizations available to play as; any additional civilizations (initially) cost $20 apiece, a hefty price despite the amount of content therein (30ish hours per civilization). Longtime AOE fans, understandably, reacted negatively to the game's business model, which took the content previously offered in full from older AOE games and broke it up into an a la carte, F2P title. As Microsoft AOEO executive producer Kevin Perry told a crowd of GDC Europe attendees this morning in a panel titled "F2P the Wrong Way: Age of Empires Online," the game outright "wasn't ready for launch" when it arrived in Summer 2011. Though Perry ran through a variety of ways that his team helped to fix AOEO's course, he brought up one particularly interesting factor: Valve's Steam game service. When the game hit Steam in March 2012, the game's DAU (daily active users) spiked by more than three times -- a larger bump than any other change by far, including new content (as seen in the above image).
We're live from Gamescom 2013!
Gamescom is once more upon us, and a quartet of Engadget's finest are here in Cologne, Germany to cover all the major game happenings live from the (enormous) show floor at the Koelnmesse. We'll be at Sony's big event tomorrow afternoon bringing you liveblog coverage, and from Microsoft's "showcase" event -- Nintendo isn't holding anything formal, though we'd love to see a surprise Wii U price drop this week. Also, Valve and Epic are notoriously absent from 2013's proceedings. This year's show promises the first big European news assault on Microsoft and Sony's next-gen game boxes, not to mention a more specific date for PlayStation 4's launch. Our friends at Oculus Rift are also milling about, and we're always hoping to hear more about their upcoming consumer-grade Oculus headset. First up this week we've got the Euro version of the Game Developers Conference -- should you wish to follow along with our intrepid team as the week progresses, we've put together a convenient Twitter list right here. Willkommen!
Xbox One enters internal beta phase, gets GPU clock speed boost
Plain old civilians like us can't buy Xbox One just yet, but some lucky folks who work for Microsoft already have beta units in their homes. Xbox VP Marc Whitten shared that tidbit, among others, with Xbox spokeperson Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb on a recent podcast. Not only do some folks internal to Microsoft have beta kits of final retail units, but many game developers have their hands on final versions of development kits. Given that last bit, Whitten said that Microsoft increased the Xbox One's GPU clock speed from 800MHz to 853MHz, released its "mono driver" to developers -- a DirectX graphics driver "100% optimized for Xbox One" -- and more and more games are inching closer to "final" every day as a result. Essentially, Whitten's signaling the transition for Xbox One from a model seen only at press briefings to a physical thing you can own and use. Though Whitten kept mum about many other details, he repeatedly reiterated that we'd hear more solid detail at Gamescom in a few weeks. We'll of course be on the ground in Cologne, hounding Whitten and co. for more. Today's Xbox One news comes just over a week after Microsoft revealed a more indie-friendly publishing model for its upcoming game console. It was also recently revealed that each Xbox One console acts as debug hardware, allowing developers to run incomplete code on any box -- a concept with major implications. Xbox One arrives this November and, should you be convinced by Microsoft's next-gen game console, it'll cost you $500.
