Rome 2: The strategy game was No.2 in the UK retail charts with over 32,000 units sold, narrowly missing out on the No.1 spot by just 200 copies.
Yet if you factor in UK digital sales of 73,000, and the game would not only have comfortably been top of the charts, but it would have been one of the biggest single format launches of the year, with 105,00 games sold.
This is further evidence of the growing importance of including digital data in the weekly charts.
Wow! Game is probably close to a million already WW, or perhaps over it.
The UK market has been shrinking for some time so 100k for week one is a great achivement for any game in that territory. But it is their home turf and the UK likes the historical angle traditionally (I blame the BBC and their terrific docos) so that might give them a bit of an edge there. Still there is a pretty good chance that the game has already topped 1 million globally, the game has been doing pretty well on the Steam activity charts. Europe especially Germany is a very big market for startergy PC games.
Shadowrun Returns Berlin campaign to feature hub-worlds
Harebrained Schemes, the developer behind Kickstater success story Shadowrun Returns, is looking to expand upon the turn-based tactical RPG with a new campaign set in Berlin. The new story will see a new hero take to the european streets, and the world is promised to be much more open than the Seattle campaign of the core game.
Writing in a dev diary at Harebrained’s website, art director Micke McCain said: “The main campaign of the game will allow you to complete certain missions in the order you choose, and will present you with some different ways to tackle those missions as well as some optional side objectives. To be clear though, Berlin is not a sandbox environment or an open-world experience. What we are working to create is a more flexible story structure and an engaging “hub area” that will give the player some choices and a sense of place and purpose.”
McCain finds Berlin an exciting place not just because of its more open nature, but because of the opportunities the city’s fictional history provides. “ Berlin exists as a fully neo-anarchist state – it’s not a crazy, lawless frontier, but rather a grand experiment in self-governance and emergent social order. Neighborhoods in Berlin become their own entities, with small communities banding together and often operating completely independently of the rest of the city.”
This independent nature has led to a very individual art style that McCain has relished It’s fun to think about how a neighborhood would become self-sustaining – the residents of this place have to have their own shared arrangements for power, food, communications… this district is independent from the outside. This means, for example, rooftop gardens and a central growing area with hydroponics technology allowing a high yield of crops from a relatively small area; solar panels plastered across buildings; a cafe at the end of the block which has become the community’s informal gathering place; jury-rigged street lighting along the main strip of the area; and a ruined, fenced-off building which has since become an agreed-upon dump location for unwanted items.”
Of course the most important thing that Berlin will introduce is new ways to kill people in messier ways, so a grenade launcher, a sniper rifle, and a variety of throwable items are being introduced, alongside a taser for those who get all up on the moral high ground about murder. Also, since Shadowrun Returns prides itself on old-school, we’ll be seeing exploding barrels this time around.
The Berlin campaign has just moved out of pre-production and is now fully underway by a strengthened team. Keep an eye on Harebrained’s website for more updates on Shadowrun Return’s progress. Berlin was originally slated for release in October, but the decision to make the project a much larger effort means we won't be seeing it until January.
Total War: Rome II – Beta Patch 2 Available, Contains 100 Fixes
As promised, Creative Assembly has released the second beta patch for its newly released strategy title, Total War: Rome II. According to its release notes, this patch comes with some Campaign performance optimisations, improvements on the campaign’s AI round time, pathfinding optimisations for its campaign mode and more conservative out-of-the-box graphics settings and resolution for DirectX 10 and 11 on Mobile GPUs. This patch will can be downloaded once you apply for the game’s beta update phase, and you can view its complete changelog below.
AMD Radeon R9 280X to replace HD 7970, features 3GB GDDR5 memory
It seems that someone from HIS made a huge mistake today by posting more information about the future AMD products.
AMD Radeon R9 280X is a successor to Radeon HD 7970
So far we know only about Radeon R9 and R7 segments, most likely to be released together. The R9 segment will kick off with R9 280X graphics card, which will replace the HD 7970 GHz Edition. This is probably the most anticipated model featuring Hawaii XT GPU. We do not know how many Stream Processors it will have, but don’t be surprised if the number is somewhere between 2304 and 2560. It is now officially confirmed that the successor to HD 7970 will have 3GB GDDR5 memory, most likely across 384-bit interface. The iPower IceQ X2 from HIS will be equipped with a Dual-DVI connector along with HDMI and two mini-DisplayPorts. Of course it will support Power Tune Boost technology as well. It looks like a direct copy of HIS 7970 IceQ X² 3GB GDDR5 PCI-E DVI/HDMI/2xMini DP (iPower). It is unknown whether guys from HIS made any changes to the cooling solution.
Here’s a complete list of a leaky content, straight from HIS Digital:
HIS R7 250 iCooler 2GB DDR3 PCI-E HDMI/SLDVI-D/VGA
HIS R7 250 iCooler 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E HDMI/SLDVI-D/VGA
HIS R7 250 IceQ 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E HDMI/SLDVI-D/VGA
HIS R7 240 iCooler 2GB DDR3 PCI-E HDMI/SLDVI-D/VGA
HIS R7 240 IceQ 2GB DDR3 PCI-E HDMI/SLDVI-D/VGA
HIS R7 240 iCooler 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E HDMI/SLDVI-D/VGA
AMD Radeon R7 250 and R7 240
The Radeon R7 series will most likely be based on Pitcairn GPUs, that would explain 1 and 2GB memory configuration across 256-bit interface.
Because of the new leak I had to update the chart from yesterday. Finally it all makes sense. The Radeon R9 290 will be a successor to dual-gpu Radeon HD 7990, just as we thought earlier. The Radeon R9 280 series will correspond to single-gpu Radeon HD 7900 series. Some numbers have changed and it will surely be confusing right now for those who did not follow the recent news. Just look at the chart and see what I mean:
R9 290 series are successor to HD x990 (dual-gpu)
R9 280 series are successor to HD x900 (single-gpu)
R9 270 series are successor to HD x800
R9 260 series are successor to HD x700 series.
At this point we don’t know whether R9 270 series will feature new GPU, it’s hard to say what could replace Pitcairn. If AMD is determined to show something new then we might expect a new processor, however it would make much more sense just by putting Tahiti right there.
No 4Gb GDDR5 chips is dissapointing, I was going to conside getting one (Nvidia's recen driver desaster has kinda put me off them a bit) but without the VRAM boost I will just hold off for Maxwell I guess. Looks to be another respin of GCN on the architecture side as well.
No 4Gb GDDR5 chips is dissapointing, I was going to conside getting one (Nvidia's recen driver desaster has kinda put me off them a bit) but without the VRAM boost I will just hold off for Maxwell I guess. Looks to be another respin of GCN on the architecture side as well.
You won't have 4Gb of memory on a 384 bit bus. You would have: 1.5Gb, 3Gb, 6Gb, 12gb etc'.
Unless of course it's an nVidia card. - For example nVidia's 192 and 384 bit memory buses can have even amounts of Ram because each 64bit memory controller might have more memory than the next. For example a 192bit memory controller on an nVidia card would have 3x 64bit memory buses, to achieve 2Gb of memory one 64bit bus would have 1024Mb of memory with another 2x 64bit controllers each with 512Mb of memory so that it has 2Gb. What that means is you would get optimal performance only with up-to 1.5Gb of memory being used, once you exceed that, performance will drop, not an ideal situation on a high-end GPU. :)
It was more or less a marketing ploy at the time to combat AMD which used to use either a 128bit or 256bit bus and thus consequently always had more video memory.
I'm actually rather dissapointed at the lack of AMD offering a 6Gb+ model right out of the gate, I need more video memory, now and if AMD is unable to provide that, then my only real option is nVidia, Titan is looking like a viable upgrade alternative, or sell my current 7970's and get 6Gb models, but that would mean I've been stuck essentially with the same GPU for 9 cards and 2+ years. :P
OHHHHHHHH Shit just got REAL! Who's ready to get their asses kicked by me in King of Fighters XIII? And by who, I mean me, and by me I mean everyone else.
No 4Gb GDDR5 chips is dissapointing, I was going to conside getting one (Nvidia's recen driver desaster has kinda put me off them a bit) but without the VRAM boost I will just hold off for Maxwell I guess. Looks to be another respin of GCN on the architecture side as well.
You won't have 4Gb of memory on a 384 bit bus. You would have: 1.5Gb, 3Gb, 6Gb, 12gb etc'.
Unless of course it's an nVidia card. - For example nVidia's 192 and 384 bit memory buses can have even amounts of Ram because each 64bit memory controller might have more memory than the next. For example a 192bit memory controller on an nVidia card would have 3x 64bit memory buses, to achieve 2Gb of memory one 64bit bus would have 1024Mb of memory with another 2x 64bit controllers each with 512Mb of memory so that it has 2Gb. What that means is you would get optimal performance only with up-to 1.5Gb of memory being used, once you exceed that, performance will drop, not an ideal situation on a high-end GPU. :)
It was more or less a marketing ploy at the time to combat AMD which used to use either a 128bit or 256bit bus and thus consequently always had more video memory.
I'm actually rather dissapointed at the lack of AMD offering a 6Gb+ model right out of the gate, I need more video memory, now and if AMD is unable to provide that, then my only real option is nVidia, Titan is looking like a viable upgrade alternative, or sell my current 7970's and get 6Gb models, but that would mean I've been stuck essentially with the same GPU for 9 cards and 2+ years. :P
No I mean the new high density chips so they could have had double the capacity wiyhout doubling the number of chips. If they went with 4Gb chips they could have had 6GB as standard. they are aparently in mass production now and the PS4 will use them (which is why they were able to go for 8GB) but I guess they are still too expensive or something.
JEMC said: Poor zarx and Permalite and their 1st world problems
3GB is more than enough for most of us... at least for now
If I was running at 1920x1080 or even 2560x1600, I would have to agree. :P
zarx said:
No I mean the new high density chips so they could have had double the capacity wiyhout doubling the number of chips. If they went with 4Gb chips they could have had 6GB as standard. they are aparently in mass production now and the PS4 will use them (which is why they were able to go for 8GB) but I guess they are still too expensive or something.
My mistake! Ignore everything I said. :P
The higher density Ram has been out for well over year, AMD had it with the Radeon 7970 first. See what the card manufacturers come up with, just means I won't be watercooling the GPU's unless it uses a reference designed PCB.
JEMC said: Poor zarx and Permalite and their 1st world problems
3GB is more than enough for most of us... at least for now
But higher numbers! 3GB will probably be fine going forward, I was just hoping that they would push things forward and allow for a little more future-proofing as games start pushing past their last gen shackles (64bit standard plus the 8GB RAM on the next gen consoles will soon see a large leap in asset quality and density) no big deal.
@ Permalite well there is the option of going for a non reference design with double the chips. I have heard that there can be issues with the memory controlers not being designed to work with double the number of chips so that they have to alternate between each bank. Which can cause some performance issues once you start using the seccond bank. Tho that was a few years ago so maybe that isn't an issue anymore.
Godus is pretty good, tho a little feature lite at the moment, and the UI is clearly designed around a touch interface which causes some frustration at times. Seems very promising tho if you like kinda layed back god games. Tho the ammount of busywork built into the mechanics may put off some people and may wear out your mouse buttons.
I got splinter cell: Blacklist for 20 bucks from ATI voucher I purchased. It's pretty good, but it's sort of like a not as cool version of Dishonored or Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Chaos Theory it is not. But it looks a lot better than Either Game :P.
It's still fun though, and a good game. Edit: I've played it a bit more, and it's pretty awesome, it has some rough spots particularly at the start, but what I've played today has been awesome.
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