The Division Beta Breaks New IP Record

Ubisoft has announced that more than 6.4 million people played the Division Beta across PlayStation 4,Xbox One, and PC. This makes it the biggest ever for a new game brand on current generation platforms.

In comparison the Destiny beta attracted 4.6 million players, though this figure also included PS3 and Xbox 360.

Ubisoft also announced that The Division beta players logged an average of five hours in the game, with two average hours spent per player in the beta's Dark Zone. Almost 50 percent of players "went rogue," meaning they killed friendly players, while players successfully extracted more than 63 million items.

The Division is set for full release on March 8th.

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Rare system-linked VR machines will be at PLAY Expo Blackpool

Replay Events are have announced that once again RCM: The Retro Computer Museum will be partnering up to bring virtual reality to PLAY Expo Blackpool.

The RCM will be bringing two linked W Industries Virtual Reality machines aswell as some rare computers.

“The museum has supported the PLAY Expo in Manchester twice and as a team we thoroughly enjoyed both times. We are looking forward to being part of Play Expo Blackpool to see what excitement that will bring.” Andy Spencer, RCM

The Retro Computer Museum has recently moved to a bigger premises in Leicester and now has nearly 2,500 sqft of gaming goodness for you to sink your teeth into. You can find out more details and how to find them on their website.

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The Forum is back and up and running!

We are pleased to announce that the forum is back and working again. Unfortunately due to being on a different server it will mean that you will have to rejoin. More categories will be added in the coming days. We look forward to interacting with you all! 

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PS4 Free Online Play Weekend Starts Friday

Timed with the release of Street Fighter V, Sony announced today that it will hold a free multiplayer weekend on PlayStation 4 starting this Friday. On that date, you will be able to play online multiplayer in any PS4 game for free; this normally requires a PlayStation Plus 

subscription.

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Fallout 4 Season Pass price hike

Bethesda has revealed the first set of add-ons for Fallout 4 and stated that the price will be going up!

In a post on Bethesda.net, Bethesda announced add-ons Automatron, Wasteland Workshop and Far Harbor.

Automatron, out in March 2016 for £7.99, revolves around the Mechanist, who releases evil robots into the Commonwealth. The Robobrain, last seen in New Vegas, returns. Also, you can build and mod your own custom robot companion. There are hundreds of mods, Bethesda said, as well as the new lightning chain gun.

Wasteland Workshop is out in April and costs £3.99. This lets you design and set cages to capture live creatures, from raiders to Deathclaws. You can tame them and have them fight each other, as well as against your settlers. This add-on also includes new options for your settlements.

Far Harbor, which costs £19.99 and is out in May, sounds like the most substantial add-on. It's a new case from Valentine's Detective Agency, and involves searching for a young woman and a secret colony of synths. You travel to the island of Far Harbor which suffers from higher levels of radiation and, as a result, is "a more feral world". There is a conflict between the synths, the Children of Atom and the locals.

Bethesda said it has plans for even more DLC to be released in 2016, and so it's increasing the price of the season pass from £24.99 to £39.99 on 1st March 2016. If you've already bought the season pass nothing changes.

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Site Update

Hello everybody! It's me Liam giving you a quick site update! This has took quiet a bit of time to get back into the groove as it's been hard recently to find the time to do the site. Things seem to be getting there all though the new website isn't totally up and running yet. Content will be uploaded more often these days as it will be done on the move quiet alot through the Blogger app. Before Blogger the site was run through Wix and me and Mike decided best to move over to a new host but we just never found the time to get things working right or even migrate all the stuff from Wix over. This still isn't the case as there is tonnes to shift over and it will be a gradual process. The look of the site is nailed down now and everything has foundation laid for future developments to start up once again. I'm looking to incorporate the forum back in the near future and also include a members area. That's just a start though and hopefully it will be service resumed once videos are being made, then maybe we can look at Podcasting again! So yeah i'd like to thank anyone for their patience and hopefully you wont be too disgruntled from our little hiatus!

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Dark Souls 3 is two DLC packs and a season pass

​The Australian Xbox store has let slip a few unannounced Dark Souls 3 details.

For starters, the game will launch alongside a season pass, which grants access to two DLC packs.

The DLC packs will reportedly introduce new maps, bosses, enemies and additional weapon and armour sets​, according to Videogamer.

Xbox One pre-order customers will also receive the original Dark Souls, which is getting the backwards compatibility treatment.

Dark Souls 3 launches on April 12 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

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Play Expo 2016 Tickets - Available Now!

Tickets to PLAY Expo Blackpool are on sale now from our preferred ticket agent Eventbrite. You can choose single day or weekend pass options and the popular family pass is also available.

Tickets purchased in advance of the show will benefit from an earlier opening time of 10am (on the door cash sales will not commence until 11am on the show days).

Grab your tickets here

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Street Fighter 5 Reviews Roundup

Street Fighter is out tomorrow and reviews are starting to surface online. From what's available so far it would seem the game is getting some rather favourable reviews. You can check them out below.

GameSpot -- Review in Progress (No Score)

"When I'm playing Street Fighter V with friends, I'm completely lost in the heat of the moment. Win or lose, I'm attracted to the thrill of its action-oriented combat system, which discourages overcautious behavior and keeps fights moving along. There's an excellent foundation here, and for now, I am going to keep playing until I can put the servers to the test on launch day." --Peter Brown [Full review]

EventHubs -- No Score

"Street Fighter 5 provides fun, frantic, fighting action for players of all skill levels. V-moves give newcomers an easy way to perform strong attacks, while leaving much room for exploration from hardcore fans. The game feels fairly limited in single player features at the moment, but we will be seeing much more content next month and in the future, all of which will come free of charge. Street Fighter 5 is a strong successor to Ultra Street Fighter 4 and one that is a very welcome addition to the franchise." -- Steven Chavez [Full review]

Shoryuken.com -- No Score

"Is Street Fighter V fun? Yes, it is. Is it lacking out-of-box features that should be industry standards by now? Absolutely. Be sure to keep that in mind if you don’t expect pure competition to carry you through the next few months." -- SRK Staff [Full review]

IGN -- 8.0

"It’s hard to criticize something that seems like it was tailor-made for a wannabe competitive player like me, but I just can’t ignore how little Street Fighter 5 does for the average fighting game player. It sports a wonderful, diverse cast of characters, places a clear emphasis on strong fundamental play, it gives competitive players a great online experience, and it does it all while looking gorgeous. Strictly in terms of mechanics and competitive features, Street Fighter 5 is just about peerless, but it has quite a ways to go before it stacks up against other fighting games - including its own predecessor - in terms of overall content." --Vince Ingenito[Full review]

GamesRadar+ -- 4.5/5
"At its core, still brilliant. Being brutally honest, your mileage with it – during the early phase of its life at least – will vary greatly depending on the availability of fight-ready friends in your immediate vicinity. Its pleasures are great and many, but for all of their eagerness to please, you’ll really need to explore them shoulder-to-shoulder with others. That, of course, is why the heart of any great fighting game truly beats, and Street Fighter 5’s beats as hard and loud as that of any you care to mention. As such, it would be a real shame if the curious new players it has so much to offer were turned off by its limited early content." --David Houghton [Full review]

PC Gamer -- No Score
"Provided you’re prepared to seek out the help Capcom should be giving you themselves (in my case, finding the Pastebin transcripts of a series of YouTube videos and collating them in a Google Drive folder, for heaven’s sake) and put in some time to learn the way the game and its varied cast of characters work, you’re in for a hell of a time. If you’re not so inclined, you might be better off waiting a few months for the rest of the game to arrive. Street Fighter V may launch this week, but it’s a long, disappointing way from being finished." -- Nathan Brown [Full review]

VideoGamer -- No Score
"While the core of the experience is great, the trinkets around it do feel very bare-bones, mostly because the vast majority is coming via DLC. That's not the end of the world, especially as the simple nature of playing VS mode with a friend never gets old, but I would assume quite a few people will raise a single eyebrow thinking about the bulk of content coming down the line, even if it can be earned in-game using 5's built-in currency. Complicated and fiddly doesn't even begin to describe it ... The good news is that, as ever, Street Fighter 5 is the leader of the pack, even all these years later. If the servers can offer a solid online playground, too, then we should all be very happy." --Simon Miller [Full review]

The Guardian -- No Score
"Certainly much of how Street Fighter V works remains, even at launch, frustratingly unclear. Nobodycould offer a definitive judgement on the game today in good conscience. One thing, however, is certain: like throwing a punch in the dark, buying Street Fighter V today is a speculative gamble." -- Simon Parkin[Full review]

ShackNews -- 7
"What is available now is a lot of fun. The overall fighting game mechanics feel incredible and a big step up from the Street Fighter IV generation. Even someone eternally in scrub tier, like myself, can feel like they can have a good time and eventually get better. That's why the aforementioned is so frustrating, because Street Fighter V feels like a genuinely great fighting game and it's hard not to want more." -- Ozzie Mejia [Full review]

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Man plays Pokemon non-stop for five years to get a shiny Mewtwo

When Joe O'Connell​ wants something, he chases it with tireless dedication - this is a man who spent five years playing Pokemon to get a shiny variation of Mewtwo.

Ordinarily, there's ​a 1 in 4,096 chance​ of finding this specific Pokemon variant out in the wild, but O'Connell increased his chances by grinding the same thing for half a decade.

In Pokemon Leaf Green and Heart Gold, O'Connell repeatedly went into battle against the same Mewtwo located at Cerulean Cave, resetting the game every time it didn't turn up shiny.

He got this down to such an art that he could enter battle, reset the game and re-enter battle in 18 seconds. Over 500 hours of game time later, shiny Mewtwo was his.

O'Connell could have hacked the game to make the legendary Pokemonappear, of course, but he says that would feel "uncool".

​"After I caught him and managed to stop my hands from shaking enough to dial her number, I phoned my girlfriend - who was on holiday at the time - to let her know," he told Kotaku of the special moment.

"Whilst she was disappointed she hadn't been there to see me pee my pants, I think she was hugely relieved it was all over."

​We could do with people like O'Connell working in SETI. ​

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NBA® 2K Joins the Competitive Gaming Landscape

2K today announced that competitive gaming is officially coming to NBA 2K16 with NBA 2K16 Road to the Finals, an exciting new competition that merges simulation basketball with eSports and culminates over the course of the NBA Finals in June. Players on PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system and Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, can form their own NBA 2K Pro-Am teams and compete in a series of in-game events to qualify for the tournament to win $250,000.

"As the world of competitive gaming continues to evolve, NBA 2K is a natural fit to join the growing landscape," said Alfie Brody, VP of Marketing for NBA 2K. "Our series has long inspired rivalry among gamers, and we're looking forward to encouraging our fans to enjoy the thrill of competition on a larger scale."

Road to the Finals tips off on February 15 in North America with a series of unique, NBA 2K16 in-game events scheduled through May 8. Teams can participate in any of the 16 qualifying events where they will need to win at least four games in order to qualify. Those four games will be scored based on the team's performance and then ranked on the event leaderboard. The top score of each qualifying event day will be deemed the winner and will move on to the tournament.

On May 21, the 16 winners on both the PlayStation®4 and Xbox One will go head-to-head in a single elimination tournament. The console winners will then face off for the $250,000 championship in June while the NBA Finals are taking place.

"The NBA 2K development team has aspired to join the exciting world of eSports for years," said Greg Thomas, president of Visual Concepts. "Road to the Finals is our first step, and we can't wait to add even more excitement and competitive action to our franchise."

Last fall's release of NBA 2K16 set a franchise record, selling-in over four million units worldwide within the first week of release. This year's iteration also has achieved several incredible year-over-year milestones since launch, including doubling sales through digital download and nearly tripling the number of games played online.

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Square Enix Profits Surge Thanks to Mobile and PC Games

Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, and Hitman publisher Square Enix has detailed its financial results for the nine-month period spanning April to December 2015. reporting strong growth in sales and operating profit driven by mobile and PC games.
The Tokyo-headquartered company reported ¥152 billion ($1.3 billion) in sales for the period, which represents a 28 percent increase compared to the same nine months in 2014.

Operating profit, meanwhile was ¥23 billion ($202 million) in 2015, compared to ¥14 billion ($125 million) in 2014. This is an increase of 60 percent over the previous year.

In its statement, Square Enix said Just Cause 3 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, both which were released in the holiday period of 2015, made a "solid start," but did not specify sales figures. Revenue generated from MMOs including Final Fantasy XIV andDragon Quest X "are sustaining their strong performance," Square Enix said, while some premium expansions have helped.

Games for platforms such as PC and mobile continued to show strong performance. The launches of Mobius Final Fantasy, Hoshi no Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius were described as "successful."

Square Enix's amusement and arcade business have been showing "steady performance through efficient store management efforts." Sales of Dissidia Final Fantasy machines were said to have "gained favourable results."

Discussing the industry as a whole, Square Enix said the business environment is "in the midst of major change, where smart devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs are spreading rapidly."

Although console markets in North America and Europe are growing, it continued, the markets are becoming "oligopolistic", in that they are dominated by a handful of large companies. As a result, Square Enix is focusing on establishing a "solid revenue foundation through the introduction of flexible content" that can accommodate the changes.

The company's next big release is Hitman, which launchesacross PS4, PC, and Xbox One in March 2016. The game was originally slated to launch in late 2015 but was delayed so that developer IO Interactive could add more content.

On January 14, however, Square Enix and developer Io Interactive announced Hitman will be "fully episodic" instead of being a full game at launch, as previously indicated.

Although Final Fantasy XV doesn't have a release date has said it will reveal the date in LA on March 30 at 7PM PT (4PM ET). It will make the announcement during a live event that willl take place at the Shrine Auditorium.

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