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If you’re a serious gamer, you’ve undoubtedly heard of DirectX. With a rich history spanning over 20 years, Microsoft’s home-grown graphics controller and drivers are still used in many games today – particularly those targeted at consoles and Windows PCs – to enable visual splendour, capable 3D graphics and more. But while it may remain a popular technology, the last version of DirectX officially launched by Microsoft, 11.1, was last updated in 2009. Five years later, with devices becoming more powerful and capable, the technology’s age has begun to shine through, leading many developers to ask Microsoft to supply the tools to take DirectX further and extract the most out of any hardware the games end up on.
According to Microsoft’s DirectX Developer’s site, the company is finally set to deliver on that promise. In a sponsored session at this year’s GDC, entitled “DirectX: Evolving Microsoft’s Graphics Platform”, Microsoft’s development manager for graphics at Microsoft – Anuj Gosalia – is set to reveal the company’s plans for DirectX12. The official GDC website offers the following description of that talk:
For nearly 20 years, DirectX has been the platform used by game developers to create the fastest, most visually impressive games on the planet. However, you asked us to do more. You asked us to bring you even closer to the metal and to do so on an unparalleled assortment of hardware. You also asked us for better tools so that you can squeeze every last drop of performance out of your PC, tablet, phone and console. Come learn our plans to deliver.
Nothing is yet known about what Microsoft plan to reveal – besides the increased power alluded to in the above description – but the talk appears as one of a number of DirectX-related talks planned to be hosted by Microsoft this year, which also apparently includes a talk on the future of Direct3D; and eight talks related to the current DirectX 11.
Four years ago, a new service called OnLive debuted, offering a whole new way to play and get games using online streaming. Rather than downloading games or buying them from stores, you streamed them from online servers and paid for the access rights – meaning low-cost, no-storage-required gaming that just required a solid internet connection and which promise to revolutionise the way we played games. The reality, however, was far less rosy. By marketing itself as its own platform – alienating both publishers who worried about game sales cannibalising those on established platforms, and players who were forced to decide whether to buy their games traditionally, via OnLive, or both; selling some games itself – cutting it off from retailers; and giving developers an extra step in the development process to support the platform, OnLive made an enemy of practically everyone; and in 2012, the company folded, its assets sold off and all the staff laid off.
Now though, OnLive is back and learning from its mistakes, thanks to a relaunch in the hands of the buyer, a new (legally-speaking) company also called OnLive. After 18 months out of the limelight, OnLive has returned under new management and carrying two new business models.
The key to the new OnLive is a brand new offering called Cloudlift. Thanks to a partnership with Valve, OnLive now has access to the full library of Steam games, bringing thousands of games of all different kinds to the platform. OnLive will now let you buy Steam games and add them to your Steam account through the service, solving the platform separation by potentially allowing the same game to run on multiple devices through both OnLive and Steam itself. The magic comes with OnLive’s streaming abilities. Once again, when playing a Steam game through OnLive, you won’t actually be downloading and playing the game locally – instead, the game is streamed to you over an internet connection from super-fast, super-capable servers hosted by OnLive, meaning no storage is required. In a genius touch however, slam in your Steam account details and as long as you’re using Steam’s Cloud Save feature, Cloudlift will grab your online save for each game as you load them up, so you’ll be able to continue the same game you have on your traditional Steam-enabled device. If you have a solid internet connection (2mb/sec minimum, 5mb recommended download speed), you may never notice the difference.
As Cloudlift is available as a smartphone app and as software for PC and Mac, the service potentially will allow Ouya and other Android-based consoles to get the full range of Steam apps and play them with high performance, instantly increasing their usefulness and the size of the game libraries; and also potentially means a game you start on your PC can be later played on the Mac at work, with little change in performance even if the power of all the devices is completely in different leagues – all you need is a compatible controller. Cloudlift comes with a heavy price tag, however, at $14.99 and £9.99 per month; and with only Steam games on offer at the moment, the choice is limited to your already-purchased and future-purchased Steam Games; you don’t get a whole range of games included in the price like with movies on Netflix. Along with this is the problem that not all Steam games come with cloud sync, meaning they can still be streamed but won’t allow players to pick up where they left off.
Luckily, OnLive are not resting on their laurels, as they have two additional plans in the works to increase the game library as they come along. First, the original OnLive game library will soon be relaunched, meaning the company will once again start sellings its own games too. While this will remain a separate service to Cloudlift for now, any games bought from OnLive will also come with seven days’ access to the same game on Cloudlift – whether this feature will remain or be enhanced in future however is yet to be seen, as the company are not committing heavily to the OnLive market to prevent it repeating its past mistakes. OnLive is also allowing games publishers to partner directly with them and deliver demos of their games to stream through the services, which will be a white-label service – so the publishers are free to credit the games however they like (expect names like “Sega Go” or “EA Live” to crop up, for example). Gaijin Games are one of the partners named to be on board.
Will the new strategy allow OnLive to succeed where it once failed? And will full online streaming become the future of, or a strong alternative to, both digitally stored and physical media gaming? Time will soon tell.
Another detail revealed during last night’s Nintendo Direct is the upcoming launch of another spin-off Pokémon game for the 3DS.
Pokémon Link: Battle!, known in America as Pokémon Battle Trozei, is the 3DS sequel to the DS game Pokémon Link/Trozei, which featured match-three style puzzles using Pokémon faces. Battle! sees you doing the same, playing out match-3 style puzzles with Pokémon – but this time, the puzzles take the form of Pokémon battles that progress based on your performance in the game. Burst the right number and type of tiny Pokémon heads and you deal damage to your opponent.
Pokémon Link: Battle! will feature all known Pokémon from Generations 1 through to the present day Gen 6; and all of them will be “befriendable”. The game will launch on the 3DS eShop in the UK on 13 March.
Now Metroid, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Punch-Out!! among new titles to get the Remix treatment.
Remember NES Remix – the Wii U eShop Download that, as I put it at the time, “first remembers classic NES Titles… then screws with them”? After the surprise announcement and rapid release of the original game in December, perhaps it should come as no surprise that in a Nintendo Direct last night, Satoru Iwata once again surprised us by announcing its successor.
Like the previous title, NES Remix 2 takes another selection of classic NES games; and sets you specific challenges to complete in each, both using the original title’s gameplay and then in “altered” versions, where whole new twists are added to radically change the game you once knew. This time around, the titles focus on the later era of the NES, such as Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, Punch-Out!!, Kirby Adventure, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Metroid, among others. The game will also feature a new “Championship Mode”, which was left unexplained.
As well as being a game made up of mini-games from other games, NES Remix 2 is also going to include a full-length game in its own right, in the form of “Super Luigi Bros.” Super Luigi Bros. is a fully playable, reversed version of Super Mario Bros, where you now play as Luigi throughout and can take advantage of his higher jumping ability; and in a new right-to-left viewpoint instead of the classic left-to-right.
NES Remix 2 will hit the Wii U eShop on 25 April, price TBC.
