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You can play three hours of 'Watch Dogs 2' for free
In an unusual move, Ubisoft has announced a free three-hour 'trial' of Watch Dogs 2 for console players. As of today, PS4 owners can hack their way through San Fransisco for free, before the trial comes to Xbox One on January 24th. PC gamers, however, get no such luxury. This extended demo will allow players to experience a range of solo missions as well as three of the game's online modes: Hacking Invasion, Bounty Hunter and two player co-op.
Ubisoft executives fined millions for alleged insider trading
In addition to a looming hostile takeover, Ubisoft corporate has to deal with over a million Euros in fines for alleged insider trading. The Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) has levied a combined €1.27 million (almost $1.4 million) fine against Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat and VP of corporate affairs Francis Baillet. Executive director of worldwide studios Christine Burgess, Ubisoft Montreal VP of executive operations Olivier Paris and Damien Moret, who's the director of brand development for the company were also named.
'Watch Dogs 2' finally has all the features Ubisoft promised
People who bought Watch Dogs 2 under the promise of a seamless blend between a solo campaign and multiplayer are finally going to get the game they paid for. Yesterday, developer/publisher Ubisoft turned on what it's calling the "second phase" of the feature to both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners. From the company statement:
'Watch Dogs 2' web app tries to reveal secrets in your selfies
Ubisoft is no stranger to producing poignant on the surface, but ultimately vapid marketing for its hacker-centric Watch Dogs series. And the latest example of that is a selfie analyzer for the upcoming sequel. The pitch is that your self-portraiture reveals a lot of hidden info about you, and uploading a picture to the web app will reveal it. Stuff like your age, what your picture says about you to employers, financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies, political organizations and police databases -- info based on details in your photos. That's in theory, of course. In practice the results don't pan out so well.
The hostile takeover of 'Watch Dogs' studio Ubisoft continues
Ubisoft, the studio behind Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, South Park, Rabbids and plenty of other off-the-wall franchises, is slowly losing itself. The company is being swallowed up by Vivendi, the entertainment conglomerate responsible for Universal Music Group and Dailymotion, among other ventures. Vivendi has been buying Ubisoft stock with the goal of securing a seat on the studio's board, and it now controls 20.1 percent of Ubisoft shares and 17.76 percent of its voting rights. The latest stock purchase comes just days after E3 ended on June 16th.
Everything we saw at Ubisoft's E3 event
Ubisoft's annual bit-too-weird E3 event went as scheduled, with acid-colored dance routines; weird, ironic Ubisoft creatives in comedy skits I didn't quite understand; oh, and a bunch of games. That included closer looks at Watch Dogs 2, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, as well as some virtual Star Trek and a peak behind the scenes of Fassassin's Creed. Let's take a look. Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
Ubisoft is still making a 'Watch Dogs' movie
Ubisoft has decided that all of its major video game franchises should be turned into movies. Following Assassin's Creed and The Division, the publisher has reiterated (almost three years after its original announcement) that Watch Dogs is getting a big screen adaptation. There's no word, however, on when it'll be coming out. Or what it'll be like. The upcoming Watch Dogs 2 has a wildly different tone to its predecessor, removing the unlikeable Aiden Pearce in favor of a more youthful hero. The trailers so far have been hilarious, in a borderline cringeworthy way -- if the film is based on the new game, hopefully it can strike a better tone.
'Watch Dogs 2' takes over San Francisco on November 15th
Watch Dogs 2 takes place in the heart of the tech world, San Francisco, and it's heading to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on November 15th. Information about the game's release date and setting leaked prior to Ubisoft's big livestream this morning, but the reveal offered a few more details about the sequel's main character and new tricks.
There won't be an 'Assassin's Creed' game this year
Time-traveling parkour people, take it easy this year. Ubisoft will not release a new Assassin's Creed game in 2016, breaking the franchise's annual launch schedule for the first time since 2009. Ubisoft says it's listened to fan feedback since the release of Assassin's Creed Unity, a game that was plagued by technical glitches when it launched in 2014. Sales of last year's installment, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, were slower than expected, Ubisoft noted in its quarterly financial report released today.
'The Division': Experience New York City as you never have before
New York City's Flatiron District is pure chaos. As I peer around the corner of a skyscraper, automatic rifle in hand, all I see are abandoned cars and people shouting in the streets. I'm not alone, though: I'm with three comrades prepared to shoot anyone who seems to have bad intentions. But this isn't the Midtown Manhattan I know; it's a scene from Ubisoft's The Division, the new Tom Clancy game that's scheduled to release March 8th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
'Assassin's Creed' and 'Watch Dogs' lead Jade Raymond has left Ubisoft
The driving force behind some of Ubisoft's most successful franchises and best moments is no longer with the game maker as of today. Jade Raymond, executive producer on Assassin's Creed II, Watch Dogs and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, has left the company after ten years of service, the company announced. To do what, exactly? That's anyone's guess. She's been in the AAA space for a good portion of her career, working on The Sims Online prior to joining Ubisoft and being a key voice in the creation of the first two Assassin's Creeds. Given her experience running Ubisoft's Toronto studio, though, it might not be much of a stretch to imagine her going indie and assembling a quick and nimble team entirely of her own -- it wouldn't be the first time we've seen it happen.
GameStop explains how it made $724 million selling digital games and add-ons
It turns out that when a GameStop exec opens their mouth, it doesn't have to be controversial after all. Case in point: company president Tony Bartel recently broke down exactly how the brick-and-mortar retailer makes money selling digital goods in its physical stores; a figure to the tune of $724.4 million. Bartel tells GamesBeat that over 70 percent of the season passes for game developer-and-publisher Ubisoft came not from purchases made through each console's respective marketplace like you'd imagine, but through retail stores. What's more, he says that many customers actually like being up-sold (he describes it as "discoverability") on future downloadable content (DLC) packs at the time of pre-order or purchase, and he has the numbers to back it up too -- some 30 percent of all of Watch Dogs' catch-all DLC tickets were bought from his stores. If you notice the store's clerks are a little more pushy than normal when you put a deposit down for Assassin's Creed: Unity, well, now you'll know why. [Image credit: Moe_/Flickr]
'Watch Dogs' web app turns real data into a virtual surveillance state
It seems like there's even more truth to developer Ubisoft's ode-to-hackers, Watch Dogs, than we first thought. Like we've previously reported, the game's depiction of a smart city that connects drawbridges, traffic lights and its population's smartphones (among other things) all to a single operating system is closer to fact than science-fiction, but the game studio has taken the notion one step further. With the We Are Data web app, you can wade through maps of publicly available geo-location information like tweets, Foursquare check-ins and even traffic light and CCTV camera placement -- all stuff you can find in the game's Chicago. As of now, you can only live out your Aiden Pearce fantasies with info from neighborhoods in London, Berlin and Paris, but there's quite a bit to click on should you be so inclined. The available datasets aren't nearly as extensive as, say, something like Urban Observatory's, but it's pretty neat nonetheless. If searching for public restroom-locations from your desk isn't quite your cup of tea, you could always leave the browser tab open in the background -- its ambient city sounds are oddly calming.
What's on your HDTV this week: Watch Dogs, The Life Aquatic, Wil Wheaton, Mario Kart
With Memorial Day come and gone and the temperatures rising, it's time to get ready for our summer TV schedule. The NBA and NHL are almost ready to enter the championship rounds of the playoffs, and most of the winter TV shows are out of the way. That means we have a few new entrants this week to take their place, including The Wil Wheaton Project, Crossbones and Undateable. HBO's Silicon Valley is also wrapping up with a season finale, but don't worry it will be back. For now, it will be replaced by AMC's new series Halt and Catch Fire, which focuses on a group trying to reverse engineer IBM's PC in the 80s. Also this week, NBC News will interview NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Movie and game fans have a lot of good options, lead by Watch Dogs, Mario Kart 8, and Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on Blu-ray from Criterion. Still, Game of Thrones watchers are probably focused entirely on Sunday night's episode, and with good reason, while soccer fans can tune in to all of the 30 for 30: Soccer Stories flicks on Netflix, and catch up on the US National team (suddenly without Landon Donovan) with ESPN's documentary series update on Thursday. Check after the break for a list of what's new this week plus a few trailers, and drop in the comments if you see any highlights that we've missed.
Playdate: We're livestreaming Watch Dogs for PS4! (update: game over)
Welcome, ladygeeks and gentlenerds, to the new era of gaming. The one where you get to watch, and comment, as other people livestream gameplay from next-gen consoles. Because games! They're fun! What would you do if you could control your hometown with nothing more than a smartphone? That's what the world of Watch Dogs asks. Here, escaping the cops (and Big Brother) takes a little more than fancy driving skills and sheer firepower; it takes brains and creativity. We've been itching to get our hands on the game since its show-stealing debut back at E3 2012 and now that wait is over -- we'll be streaming live at 4PM PT/7PM ET! Feel like hacking the planet along with us on PS4 before picking up your copy? All it takes is a press of the button below. And if you've already grabbed your copy, let us know what you think of Watch Dogs in the forums; we've set up a thread and everything!
Watch Dogs: The Joystiq Review
The advanced technology in Watch Dogs is not just indistinguishable from magic – it IS magic. The game would have you believe you're the world's most powerful hacker, bending surveillance cameras, traffic control and all manner of personal electronics to your one-touch whims. But in this paranoid vision of the future, in which every mundane device is grafted to the same computerized skeleton, the right software might as well be an all-powerful wand. Wouldn't you like to be the wizard? Click here for more
PlayStation 4 to get pre-loading of all pre-order games starting with Destiny
Tired of making sandwich after sandwich, idly waiting while the ol' PlayStation 4 downloads Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes? Though we'd never encourage you to stop making delicious sandwiches, we do sympathize with the situation. Thankfully for you, Sony's adding pre-loading of all pre-ordered upcoming games to the PlayStation 4 starting this fall with Bungie's next big game: Destiny. That means you can download the whole shebang ahead of the game's "official" launch on September 9th, and when midnight strikes, you're ready to go. Bizarrely, the news comes via PlayStation Network message from Ubisoft; as seen above, Watch Dogs (which launches this Tuesday) won't have pre-loading. Sorry Charlie! Come September, however, you're good to go.
Engadget Daily: Microsoft Surface Pro 3 review, hacking Watch Dogs and more!
We put Microsoft's new Surface tablet through the review ringer, took a look at vaporizer technology, found out just how realistic hacking in a video game can be, and discovered that Sony's new console's raking in the cash. Read on for Engadget's news highlights from the last 24 hours.
The real-life hacking behind Watch Dogs' virtual world
It starts out simply. One day, you're scrolling through the Naval Criminal Investigative Service database, identifying a perp's body when an alert flashes red on your monitor. "INTRUSION DETECTED," it screams. You're getting hacked and there's only one solution: Call your bumbling partner over and have him join you at the keyboard. The two of you frantically bang out rapid-fire key sequences as random program windows flash onscreen. The hacker's getting further and further into the system. Your partner's never seen code like this before and his usual tricks to combat it aren't working. That's when the display goes dead and your silver fox of a boss saves the day by pulling the power plug of your workstation.
Watch Dogs arrives on May 27th
When Ubisoft showed off Watch Dogs for the first time in 2012, there was no such thing as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Well, okay, they existed in some sense of the word, but both consoles were far from publicly ready, making Watch Dogs an unbelievably pretty game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Unbelievable to the point that many journalists were incredulous about it not being touted as intended for next-gen, but Ubisoft couldn't say it was headed to unannounced consoles. In so many words, Watch Dogs was essentially the first "next-gen" game shown off ... even before the consoles were unveiled. It's somewhat hilarious then that we're here to tell you today that Watch Dogs now has a release date -- May 27th -- after being delayed past the actual launch of the new consoles. It's unclear if that means all versions (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PC and Wii U) will arrive on the same day, though the Wii U version was already given a release date sometime after the other versions. Sorry Wii U, owners!
