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Skyrim patch 1.3 up for Xbox 360 [update: PS3 patch live in Europe]
In a note that could be called "terse" even for a tweet, Bethesda has informed fans of forward-facing dragons and worldwide stability that Skyrim's update version 1.3 is available on Xbox Live. Originally scheduled to hit consoles last week, 1.3 is designed to address some issues caused by the last patch, including backwards-flying dragons and "magic resistance not calculating properly." You can find the patch notes here. Version 1.3 went out for PC on December 7. There's no word on when it will spread to the beleaguered PS3 version. [Update: here's word! It's up right now in Europe.]
Skyrim flies past Modern Warfare 3 on UK charts
It took some time for the Dovahkiin to level up, but Skyrim has slain a fearsome beast and taken the top spot of Chart-Track's UK sales chart. Five weeks after its debut, Skyrim has grabbed first place from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, thanks to the game's continued buzz and an average price reduction of £13 last week. But an evil still lingers, growing in strength. Just Dance 3, the latest lieutenant in the army of dance darkness, has entered third place. The launch of the PS3 version of Just Dance 3 helped the game on the all formats chart, but the Wii edition still makes up 89 percent of sales. The rest of the UK top ten is playing musical chairs -- check those out after the break.
Skyrim to have multiple DLC releases, powerful buckets
Game Director Todd Howard was at the Spike Video Game Awards yesterday to accept a well-deserved Game of the Year award for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and he said to Joystiq that the game's popularity has surprised even the development team. "We thought it would do well," he said, "but it has gone above and beyond." One of the surprising effects of that popularity is the many YouTube videos (and "arrow in the knee" references) out there, but Howard says one in particular stood out to Bethesda. "I think our favorite really is putting the buckets on the heads," he laughed. "It was like day two, and we went, what? Do we fix that? Our lead programmer is pissed and wants to fix it, and I said I'm not sure we should. That's one of those where maybe we leave it in." Howard couldn't yet share plans for DLC, but he says it will be focused on "ways to make the game better, not just have more, because the game is so big. So we're going through ideas right now, and processing everything people are doing in the game, and trying to think of ways that we can improve it." There will be multiple releases (as with Bethesda's past games), but Howard says they "don't have a timetable. They won't be quick, and they'll have a lot of meat on them." For all of its successes, the one thing Skyrim doesn't have is other players. Is there a chance we'll ever see a multiplayer title, or even an MMO, from Howard and his company? "You can never say never to anything like that," he admitted, "but it's not what our focus is. This type of game is where our hearts are, what we get excited about, and that's what we want to focus on. We don't want to lose that focus and we never want to sacrifice anything in the singleplayer game just to have it be multiplayer."
Here are the winners of the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards
Regardless of what you think about the actual Spike Video Game Awards broadcast, with its frustrating focus on everything but the actual video game awards, we don't think that means the awards themselves are any less valid. That could be because this writer is a judge (disclosure!) but if you have a look at the list of winners past the break, you won't find a single award for Mountain Dew, though you will find plenty for games like Skyrim, Portal 2, Bastion, and Skyward Sword.
November NPD: A new record, with Xbox 360 joined by MW3 and Skyrim on top (Update 2: Sony PR added)
(Update: Microsoft Chief of Interactive Entertainment Aaron Greenberg has released Xbox 360 sales via Twitter, which are included below.) It's a little good, a little bad with this year's November 2011 NPD results. While "unit sales grew for console hardware, as well as console, portable, and PC software," NPD analyst Anita Frazier warns that "a decline in average retail price in all categories" besides portable hardware resulted in dollar sales that were flat compared to last November. That said, November 2011 "marks the best November on record for sales of new physical content," besting the previous record holder, November 2008. Unsurprisingly, the Xbox 360 was the top selling piece of gear for the month and Frazier notes that the "gap between 360 sales and sales of the next best selling platform was the largest we've seen since December 2008 when the Nintendo DS was the top selling system." Microsoft Chief of Interactive Entertainment Aaron Greenberg later added via Twitter that the Xbox 360 sold 1.7 million consoles during the month of November, up 23% year over year. For the month, Nintendo announced it sold more than 860,000 Wii systems, more than 795,000 Nintendo 3DS systems and more than 350,000 Nintendo DS systems. Meanwhile, Sony declined to provide specific sales numbers for the PS3. According to Sony PR chief Patrick Seybold, "PlayStation 3 is off to a phenomenal start to the holiday season, recording the best ever Black Friday sales period in the console's five-year history. According to the November NPD report the PS3 saw a 70% increase in hardware and a 30% increase in software year-over-year." The PS3 sold 530,000 units last year, which would situate PS3 sales for November 2011 in the neighborhood of 901,000 units. In the software arena, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 took its perch at the top of the charts, besting Black Ops "by about 7%," while Skyrim managed "a five-fold increase over Oblivion's first month sales" coming in just a half-million units short of matching its predecessor's lifetime sales. Other newcomers include single SKU exclusives like Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception in seventh place and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword in ninth. [Image source: onrpg.net]
5 iOS Apps for Skyrim
Skyrim is an action, role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios that's filled with magic, potions, and dragon shouts. The game follows the main character's quest to defeat Alduin and the other dragons that returned to Skyrim. It's the fifth installment in the Elder Scroll series and one of the best so far. If you're a Skyrim fan, here are five apps that'll improve your alchemy skills, level up your character and help you find all the powerful weapons you'll need to slay some dragons (as well as Storm Cloaks or Imperials, depending on how you view the war). All prices are USD. Dragon Shout (Free; universal) Dragon Shout is a simple Skyrim map application. It launches with a blank map and you get to fill it in as you travel and complete quests. You need a free account if you want to add markers, and you can sign up for one within the app. Once you have an account, you can start adding markers to the map and give them a name, description and custom icon. A journal feature keeps a running list of your markers for future reference. All your markers are stored in the cloud and shared across devices. You can choose to keep your markers private or share them publicly. It isn't implemented yet, but Dragon Shout will eventually let you share your public markers with the Skyrim community. You'll also be able to chat with other people who are using the app. Dragon Shout shows promise and will shine when the community features are enabled. It's available for free, so you have little reason not to download it. Guide for Elder Scrolls Skyrim: Fast Leveling, Money, Master Spells, Unique Weapons and Armor ($1.99; universal) Guide for Elder Scrolls Skyrim is a general guide to all things Skyrim. It has tips on how to level up spells, increase your smithing skills and master the art of enchanting. Instead of text-based instructions, the guide often shows a YouTube video within the app. You can literally watch and learn. The app also has a long list of unique weapons and unique armor (armor, rings, shoes, etc). The list will tell you where each item is located, what quest you must take to earn the item, and its effect. There's one small oversight with the effect attribute, though. The effect is listed for the armor, but not for the weapons. So if you look up the Sanguine Rose, the guide won't tell you the staff summons a Dremora Lord to fight on your behalf. I talked to the developer, and this is something that'll be added in a future version of the app. The app has a nice UI and is an excellent first effort. It works on the iPhone and the iPad, which is perfect for the video clips. Skyrim Alchemist ($0.99; iPhone only) Skyrim Alchemist does one thing and does it well. It helps you find the ingredients you need to mix up potions. The Alchemist app lets you find ingredients or find effects. It's broken up into 4 panes -- the top lets your browse ingredients and the bottom lets you browse effects. When you select an ingredient at the top of the app, it will show the effects of that ingredient on the top right. When you click on the effect the top, the bottom wheel will scroll and show you all the other ingredients that produce that effect. It's a fantastic resource for making potions and works exceptionally well on the small screen of the iPhone. You can also use it on the iPad at 2X view. Unofficial Guide for Skyrim ($1.99; iPhone only) If you could only afford one app, then you should spend your money on the Unofficial Guide for Skyrim. The app has a tabular UI that's somewhat plain, but the app makes up for it with information. The Unofficial Guide has detailed quest walk-throughs and information on races, skills, perks, locations, and achievements. There's also a FAQ for commonly asked questions. You should think of the app as a well-organized, information-packed Skyrim wiki on your iPhone. It's formatted for the iPhone's screen, but it works on the iPad, too. MAppZ- Skyrim edition ($1.99; universal) MAppZ- Skyrim edition is a map-based app that's similar to Dragon Shout. What sets MAppZ apart from its competition is its pre-filled information. When you launch MAppZ- Skyrim edition, you are greeted with a map filled with noteworthy locations. Each location has an icon and tapping on the icon will bring up its name. Unfortunately, there is no description. You will have to search outside the app if you want more information on that marker. Similar to Dragon Shout, you can add custom markers to the map and save them for future use. You can also submit them to the database for inclusion on the map. There's also a search feature that'll let you find both pre-filled locations and the custom markers you added. MAppZ also has a nice UI and an easy-to-use menu bar which makes it a pleasure to use. At $1.99, it's another must-have for the Skyrim player. %Gallery-141441%
Skyrim is 2011's most-played game, according to Raptr
Popular game-tracking service Raptr recently published its list of top-performing games of 2011, a roster entirely decided by the amount of man hours (and woman hours) its gaming community poured into them. The list isn't terribly surprising: Skyrim was the most-played RPG (beating out Dragon Age 2 by a factor of six), Modern Warfare 3 was the most-played shooter and FIFA Soccer 12 was the most-played sports game, because, you know, Europe. Here's a surprise, though: According to Raptr, the most played game of the year was Skyrim. Crazy, right? We thought for sure that Modern Warfare 3 and the siren call of its quintuple prestiges would take the cake. We admit this tendency could have possibly been surpassed by infinite dragons and somehow-even-more-infinite adventure.
Ask Massively: Inappropriate recollections edition
I have to be honest here -- the Templars destroy The Secret World for me -- not because they don't look cool (I'm kind of a sucker for this sort of thing) but because they remind me an awful lot of The Grail from Preacher. They've got the same color scheme, the same pseudo-military sense of things, the same trappings. So I look at these guys, and suddenly I stop thinking about The Secret World and want to go read some comics. Maybe if they all wore clown makeup, that would fix it. This week's installment of Ask Massively actually is fielding a question about TSW, so my desire to see the Templars in clownface is vaguely on-topic. Plus, our readers ask about Skyrim, which I hear is all the rage these days. So click on past the break for this week's questions, and if you've got a question for a future installment, mail it to ask@massively.com or leave it in the comments.
Explore Skyrim's other epic settings with PC tweak guide
Nvidia has published an extensive optimization guide -- written by TweakGuides creator Koroush Ghazi -- for Skyrim. It explains and advises on the PC game's standard settings (anisotropic filtering, motion blur, etc.), as well as more granular modifications involving console commands and custom initialization files. It should be immensely helpful in getting Bethesda's sprawling game looking and running as good as your system allows. Be attentive while following the guide, though. Our game used to run so well, but we took an error to the INI.
FUS RO DAH! Skyrim modded for Kinect
Questing through Skyrim with Kinect forms the latest tech demonstration from YouTube user KinectFAAST. The mod features the motion controls he's shown off in previous videos, along with additional voice controls for Skyrim. This means one important thing: Shouts!The voice controls go even further, enabling the player to switch weapons and access favorites. There are also some voice commands not featured in the video, including "Hello" to start a conversation with an NPC and "Journal" to access the quest log. It'd be the type of feature we'd love to see added to the game if we thought it would work "first time, every time."
Report: Skyrim PS3 still problematic post-patch
Stuttering, unwieldy exploration in the PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim may be a symptom of the game's design and its consumption. Players report dramatically impeded performance creeping into the frigid realm, as save files grow and in-game clocks count down to the imminent death of a social life. The problem, while particular to the game's complexity and duration, may be rooted in memory management, according to pixel counting pros Digital Foundry. "The bottom line is that Skyrim is an unbounded game world running on a space-constricted system - and this applies regardless of the platform you play it on, hence reports of the PC version running out of address space and displaying solid colours instead of textures," says Tom Morgan. "The PlayStation 3 is unfortunate in that it's the platform with the most oppressive RAM issues (in addition to the split-pool set-up of the memory, the OS has a larger footprint than its 360 equivalent) so it makes sense that it has the most noticeable issues." Said issues led to some disastrous framerate hiccups in Digital Foundry's 65-hour game ("It's the first time our performance analysis tools have ever recorded a 0FPS reading.") and inspired a warning to consumers from CVG. The latest Skyrim patch reportedly brings improvements, but DF suggests it may still become "unplayable for those with a huge time investment in the game - unless you're only willing to play Skyrim in half-hour bursts, saving and restarting the game." We'd advise you to take regular breaks anyway, though we'd prefer if they were less motivated by the game breaking down. As usual, we'll keep you updated as Bethesda issues further updates to all versions of Skyrim.
Skyrim tips (for waiters)
Every few months a group of ravenous, garrulous gamers descends upon La Pentola restaurant in Pretoria, South Africa. If you're their savvy waiter, you realize just how receptive this audience can be to quests -- or requests -- coming from a stranger. That's why you pass them a note (seen above) alongside the bill. "I heard you're going overseas soon," the attentive host tells me as we shuffle out. "Good luck." "Same to you," I say. "I hear you're going to Skyrim." (The citizens there don't tip as well as we did.)
Soothe your soul with Skyrim's Dragonborn bard song, by Malukah
Have you listened to the sound of the Skyrim breeze rustling the cloak of the Dovahkiin as he stands, proud and silent, atop a rugged mountain range? Have you read his thoughts in the frail grass and felt the strength of his resolve? Have you? Listen to this stunning rendition of the Skyrim bard song "The Dragonborn Comes," and you will feel as if you have. Singer Malukah (Malufenix) performs in both English and the language of the dragons in this hauntingly beautiful song -- it has already been used in a mod, and anyone interested can download the track directly from Soundcloud. Personally, we have it on repeat to soothe our sensitive, creative psyches.
Shinji Mikami's studio gets Skyrim shipment, may never get any work done now
Former Capcom superstar Shinji Mikami formed the development studio Tango last year, and it has yet to produce a tangible product -- and after this generous gift from sibling company Bethesda Game Studios, we shouldn't expect any progress for another year or so. Bethesda, part of the Zenimax Group with Tango, sent one Skyrim collector's edition for every employee at Mikami's studio, which, as we can see in the photo, is more than two. Tango is based in Tokyo, but Bethesda sent over English versions of Skyrim because there is no collector's edition for the Japanese version, and because people in countries that aren't the U.S. generally know more than one language. They call it globalization. Weird.
Bethesda teaching dragons to fly correctly in Skyrim's next patch
So, about Bethesda's latest Skyrim patch. There were, you see, some issues. Issues, like, say, dragons that flew backwards (hilarious!), and the game no longer recognizing some folks' active magic powers (significantly less hilarious!). Thankfully, Bethesda is all over it. The publisher today announced on its blog that a patch ... for the 1.2 patch that caused these issues in the first place, will arrive on PC first at some point next week, with Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 flavors to follow "later in the week." Bethesda specifically calls out the aforementioned issues, and ambiguously adds that "other things" will get patched (no word on the VOIP issue for PS3 users, unfortunately). Patch notes will further detail the update when it arrives next week, apparently. The publisher also promises to continue updating the game in the coming months, with PC getting updates first "as that's a process we control." As always, the console patches need to go through certification with Microsoft and Sony before ending up on your box at home. Additionally, PC users will be getting even more love in the coming months, with a promised January release of the game's dev kit (read: mod tools), as well as Steam Workshop integration, which should make finding said mods easier. No word is given yet on upcoming context expansions for the game, but, well, we've still got so much left of Skyrim that we're not really complaining.
Users reporting issues with Skyrim 1.2 patch
Skyrim's 1.2 update rolled out yesterday on PS3 (and should be on Xbox 360 and PC sometime today), and the word from the front is that things aren't going well. The frequently reported PS3 framerate issue is apparently still a problem, but now there's a whole laundry list of new and old bugs at the party. The new issues include amusing things like dragons flying backwards, and decidedly non-funny Bethesda bugs like the game becoming unable to recognize magic resistance. We've contacted Bethesda for official word on the issue. In the meantime, as has become fairly routine with a Bethesda RPG patch, consider avoiding it if you're happy with how things are running at the moment.
Skyrim dialogue gets salty when unnecessarily censored
Apparently we haven't been paying nearly as much attention to the dialogue in Skyrim as we should have. We thought it was all about shouting at dragons, putting baskets on heads, and sneaking around in the dark. Turns out it's much more about ****ing, ****ing, and ****ing ****s with *****es. ****ing dragons, man.
Dragon Shout app brings interactive Skyrim map to iOS soon, for free
You could always download a large PDF of the entire world of Skyrim and either print that out or clumsily navigate it on your phone, or you could wait for Dragon Shout, an upcoming interactive map for iOS. "The first version of the app contains an interactive map where you can drop annotated markers / journal entries down," the developer told Touch Arcade. "For example, yesterday I played Skyrim and left a bunch of dragon scales and bones on the side of a mountain because they were too heavy." Even better, future updates plan to incorporate a social aspect, allowing "marker sharing, party or app-wide chats, pictures, and more." Want to tell your friend to "STAY AWAY" from that one cave you got whomped in? Or maybe, for the devious amongst you, encourage them to "CHECK OUT" said cave? The app has been submitted to Apple and "should be out within the next couple of days" for both iPhone and iPad. With a $0 asking price, you can't really go wrong, can you?
Prepare to be psychologically overburdened by Skyrim's fully detailed locations map
We forgive you if you're already overwhelmed by Skyrim's ongoing notifications of new discoveries -- there's kind of a lot of stuff to do in Bethesda's latest Elder Scrolls realm. But for the rest of you fearless wanderers, the un-overwhelmable, Gamebanshee.com has put together this highly detailed, totally printable map of Skyrim's many, many locations. And if you should be so inclined to, say, print out a giant version of said map and adorn your wall with it, the cartographers responsible also have you covered (.ZIP link). If it weren't already clear that you've still got plenty left to explore in Skyrim, this map should handily clarify that. Just look at all that tiny writing! Those are all places!
Read all of Skyrim's literature on your iPad
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim isn't available on the Mac yet, but odds are that if you're a big fan of gaming, you're probably already playing it on consoles or the PC. Bethesda's latest role-playing game is just a massive piece of world-building, with tons of dungeons to crawl through, a huge world full of cities and places to explore, and a collection of a couple hundred actual in-game books that you can pick up and read. Turns out those books come straight from a plain text file in the game's documents, so a blogger named Capaneus has kindly assembled them into an actual ebook that you can download and read on your iPad (or any other e-reader or app you happen to use). The book's got its own cover and table of contents, and since its available in epub format, you can change the text to whatever size you want. Good deal. Unfortunately, I'm not sure this is legal. Bethesda undoubtedly owns the copyright on these texts, and they likely didn't authorize them being shared like this. Still, all of this text is just background lore on the game, not spoilery or anything, so maybe they'll let it fly as a nice promotion for just how densely packed with fun content this game has. [via Joystiq]
