Good news for all of you who like to take advantage of a bargain. A mistake in the Steam listing for the double pack of indie game The Red Solstice means that not only is the pack being sold for the price of one copy of the game – it’s also currently 40% off. What’s more, you won’t get into trouble with the developers for taking advantage of the error.

Developers Ironward are going to correct the error tomorrow, but for now they’re not opposed to people taking advantage of the mistake. This is probably a good thing, as it does mean that not only can copies of their game get out to a wider audience with this impromptu sale, because it’s a multiplayer game this means that the servers will be filled with enough people to hopefully fill the 8-player squad and give it a good long life.

The game itself is a Kickstarter funded game, set in the future on the surface of Mars where a solar storm has cut all contact with a capital colony called Tharsis, and even as the storm continues to rage you are sent to find out what has happened to Tharsis, controlling a squad of space marines against an alien threat similar to Space Hulk.

Hopefully the accident will turn out to be a happy one for The Red Solstice and its developers, Ironward. If you’re unsure, try the demo on the Kickstarter page first… but hurry if you want to take advantage of the accidental offer.

Kickstarter page: [x]
Steam page: [x]

Sunset Overdrive will be available for digital pre-order on Xbox Insomniac Games had revealed, and hopefully soon. This makes it the first Xbox One game to be confirmed to be up for digital pre-order.

In their series Sunset TV, which takes questions from fans and answeres them community manager Brandon Winfrey has told fans that the pre-orders will have the same in-game content as those copies that get bought at retail, the Day One content. Digital pre-order customers will also get a pre-order bonus although he didn’t specify what that bonus would be.

The video also went into more detail about the ‘amp’ power-ups that will be unlocked during the game and slotted into the character, mainly revealing a new one called ‘Scorched Earth’ which forces bursts of lava upwards from the player’s footfalls to catch groups of chasing enemies in its fiery damage radius.

Sunset Overdrive’s release date is October 28^th in North America and October 31^st for Europe.

A chief staff member of Xbox’s UK team has acknowledged the perception of their console having an ‘inferior’ framerate compared to their rival Sony’s Playstation 4, and the negative effect in could be having on sales in what he calls a ‘perception challenge’ that needs to be overcome.

Speaking to CVG Xbox UK marketing boss Harvey Eagle said that although he personally couldn’t see a difference in framerates or resolutions between the two, he realises that in the market the Xbox One was seen as having the weaker of both and that they must tackle and change this perception.

He sees the decision to do away with the Kinect being a permanent add-on to the console as a step in the right direction to challenge it though, as the resources that the Kinect used to make use of were now freed up for developers to make use of with their games.

“There is some GPU power that can be allocated to Kinect that we’re now freeing up for developers if they want to increase the fidelity of their games.” Eagle said, saying that it was up to the developers how they chose to make use of the freed-up resources now.

Currently as it stands, the Playstation 4 does at times outperform Microsoft’s console with framerates and resolution on games that the consoles share between them; but with the announcement about the Kinect no longer being mandatory having only been made two months ago it is possible we could see the gap becoming smaller as new games are developed to make use of the new higher amount of GPU power available in Xbox Ones.

Mojang have released a small snapshot for Minecraft, mostly for the purposes of optimisation because they say that they’re gearing up to release the long awaited 1.8 update for the game.
 
Snapshot 14w28a is mainly a snapshot that works behind the scenes to help with smooth client and server running as well as the usual bug fixes that come with one. It does also add the ability to finally specify an enchantment or effect by name rather than with the ID number at last which will make it a lot easier for new map-makers to program effects to be added to players into command blocks if they don’t know the ID number. It’s also since had a b version release to fix new bugs that cropped up with the fixes.
 
Keep an eye on the horizon people, 1.8 might be just around the corner at last!
 

San Diego Comic Con has been revealed to be the place that more information about the Halo: Master Chief Collection is to be given out to the public, specifically around Halo: Nightfall – a live-action digital series to be released on a weekly basis starting from the game’s release date of November 11^th 2014.

The game itself will have a panel to itself and it’s probable that the talk about Nightfall will be a part of it. Microsoft says it will be a place to be the first to get the details on the story of the series and the production of it, with the panel hosting guests such as 343 Industries’ Kiki Wolf, Halo franchise director Frank O’Connor and “key Halo: Nightfall cast and crew”.

Other games at the event include Sunset Overdrive, which also has its own panel, as well as around 20 playable games including Evolve, Fables Legends and The Crew. The event itself will take place July 24-27 at the San Diego Convention centre.