When Nintendo came out with the Circle Pad Pro accessory for the original Nintendo 3DS – which added a second Circle Pad and extra buttons to the 3DS which allowed for even more control; and which Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate made good use of – many asked why a second Circle Pad could not have been a standard feature of the 3DS. When the 3DS XL was released and also lacked the second pad, the complaints became even more vocal.

Colour choices at launch for the New 3DS and New 3DS XL

Today in Japan, Nintendo have not only finally heeded the call, but have gone even further. The company announced all new models of their popular hand-held game consoles, the Nintendo 3DS and the 3DS XL (called the 3DS LL in Japan), which along with extra controls, make a number of other additions and improvements over the previous models.

If you actually care that the new models are a few mm bigger in most directions, you probably have an Apple device and/or no shame
(click pictures to enlarge)

The real big news of the announcement, however, comes in the form of a small toy.

If you’re wondering why this pic shows just the Amiibo logo instead of an actual Amiibo, blame Nintendo.

With the new consoles including an NFC Reader, the new 3DS and 3DS XL will come with built-in support for Amiibo, Nintendo’s upcoming range of NFC-enabled figurines. Previously thought to be exclusive to the Wii U, the new addition enables future 3DS games to also offer the ability to allow select Nintendo characters to be stored and shared across compatible games or to use the toys for special in-game functions; and use of the feature in the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. is already confirmed – what it consists of is yet to be announced, but if one is to make a guess, imagine something like the sticker mode in Brawl, but with an actual physical toy to enhance and make your own character with.

Those colourful SNES-like buttons.

As to the controls, the new 3DS and 3DS XL will add a splash of colour to the A/B/X/Y button. The new 3DS gets the more significant facelift with fully-coloured buttons, while the XL simply gets coloured button labels. The colours are the same as those originally used on the Japanese SNES controller, in a nice homage to Nintendo history.

…But that’s not what you care about, is it? The bigger news is both devices finally feature a second Circle Pad – well, kind of. Dubbed the “C-Stick” by Nintendo in another homage (this time to the yellow analogue stick of Nintendo’s own GameCube controller), the new stick is much smaller than the main Circle Pad – in fact, it’s roughly the same size as one of the four A/B/X/Y buttons. This isn’t accidental – according to Nintendo’s own Satoru Iwata, while the new control will function like a stick, it’s also designed to be used as though it were a button itself. Iwata also claims the new C-Stick “is easy to use”; with Nintendo releasing a picture showing that the size and positioning of the button should make it easy to control with the same thumb used to press the lettered buttons – it remains to be seen if this turns out to be the case. The new C-stick will be used in Dragon Quest X: Online, Final Fantasy Explorers, and Monster Hunter 4G to control the in-game camera function, and in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS to unleash Smash Attacks.

The back of the New 3DS XL. Notice anything different?

The new 3DS models will also include ZL and ZR buttons on the back beside the existing L/R buttons, thus making the Circle Pad Pro accessory entirely redundant. Because there is no longer space for the game card, the game card slot is now found on new 3DS and XL’s bottom-left side, which seems poorly thought out – surely it’ll be right underneath your left palm thus making it easy to accidentally push the card in and eject it? The space at the top previously occupied by the game card slot now houses the charging port, which has been moved from its original off-centre position.

Battery life comparisons (given in minimum to maximum expected time between charges) for the New 3DS XL (left image) and New 3DS (right image) compared to their predecessors
(click to enlarge)

Nintendo claim that the new 3DS and XL models also make small improvements on the battery life, with their rated maximum life up half an hour on the XL to 7 hours; and up a whole hour on the regular 3DS to 6 hours. Part of the reason for these gains are due to a new adaptive brightness feature, where the screen will automatically brighten or darken depending on the currently displayed picture, which is also aimed to improve colour quality. Another big reason for the small improvement is a new, more efficient processor – which also grants the new models a small speed boost to make downloads and loading times quicker – though exact specs are not yet known. Speaking of downloads, you’ll also now be able to use Micro SD cards with both new 3DS models, with a new slot located under the bottom covering.

The new Nintendo 3DS models also have an improved 3D function. With the original 3DS and XL, if you viewed the 3D effect from the side and didn’t stay in the “sweet spot,” the graphics became all blurred. However, the New 3DS has improved 3D, enabling players to continue to see the 3D effect even if viewed from an angle. Using the device’s cameras and gyroscopes, the new 3DS and 3DS XL actually track your face to work out the angle the screen is being viewed from – and will adjust the 3D effect to what’s best for your view. Clever!

Though the international launches of the new 3DS and 3DS XL models is still to be announced, both will be out October 11 in Japan. The New Nintendo 3DS is priced at 16,000 yen (approx. £92.75 at time of posting) and the New Nintendo 3DS XL is priced at 18,800 yen (approx. £109 at time of posting) – given the usual mark-ups, however, I’m personally predicting prices of £129 and £159 when they hit the UK. Sorry, that’s business.

So, the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor live event just finished and we have the release date for Warlords of Draenor now…

13th November 2014!

The release date was dropped at the end of the reveal of the new game cinematic leading into Warlords of Draenor.

The trailer shows Grommash Hellscream stepping up to drink the deamons blood from Gul’Dan, however, unlike the events of The Burning Crusade, this time Garrosh (Grommash’s son) has forewarned Grommash of the treachery and Grommash throws away the deamon blood.   Mannanoth then appears for destroy them all for their failure, but Garrosh has bought future weapons and helps Grommash kill mannanoth, forever changing the future of Draenor and Azeroth!

you can watch the full new cinematic below:

The other new thing Chris Metzen from Blizzard showed off during the event, was the new 5 part Lore animated shorts, Lords of War!  Chapter 1, Kargath Bladefist and the birth of the Shattered Hand clan.

The mostly stylised motion comic design is very appealing and really conveys the story of this early boss in Burning Crusade (One I very much enjoyed taking down and getting his fist as a weapon 😀 )

These lore animated shorts will be released on a weekly basis, so stay turned for more of those

You can watch the first episode of Lords of War below:

See you all in Draenor!

(Thanks to Gamespot for the videos and the live stream!)

The SteamDB group have unearthed something fairly interesting in the coding for Steam’s latest big Beta update. Seems that Valve are already beginning to build in places for apps for game play things such as demos and DLC as well as other types of media such as music and TV.

Valve had already revealed the news of Steam Music earlier on, with a beta client for the new app being sent to testers in February. There has also been film released via Steam already, the Dota 2 documentary Free-To-Play as well as award-winning film Indie Game: The Movie although both are still stored into the game library at present.

This capability to fit apps into Steam’s architecture suggests that as well as trying to conquer the traditional part of the console market with their Steam Box console and Steam Controller (now delayed until 2015) Valve might be planning to offer a complete package of media to rival that of the Xbox’s upon the Steam Box’s launch.

It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.

(Editor’s Note: The views in this article are entirely those of the author.)

Let’s get this out of the way first: If you are expecting me to rant and rail against the changes to Twitch, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

Still here? Good. Let’s continue.

When Google announced that it had purchased Twitch, we all knew changes were going to happen. Some of them would be fore the best. Some of them wouldn’t. lets start with the good. Or, what I consider the good.

Twitch is completely overhauling the way it stores VODs.  Video on demand is not a huge part of Twitch, but it is a good way to catch up on what you might have missed while you were at the store, work or what have you. Still, Twitch is primarily a live platform, and many users, myself included, tend to ignore VOD as it doesn’t provide the same connection to the streamer and community as a live feed. That being said, some people do utilize the VOD aspect of Twitch. Until now, all VODs were stored in FLV format. Without getting to technical and as someone who does all of the station’s video production as well as my own channel, FLV SUCKS. Twitch is switching formats and VODs will now be viewable on mobile devices and consoles. Thats a big deal for Twitch. It might be a bid to expand the reach of VODs. Or it might be something that makes the “bad” part of the new changes easier for them to implement.

In addition to the format change, there are also changes to how videos are stored to begin with. Twitch discovered that a massive amount of VODs on the site (somewhere around 80% of their total storage capacity) were never watched. Literally, thats PETABYTES of wasted storage space. To address this, Twitch is changing the system. The save forever option is going away. It will be replaced with a more organized video manager. You will now have 14 days (if you have opted in to “Enable Archive Broadcasts” in your dashboard) to highlight videos before rolling storage removes them. Turbo subscribers and Twitch Partners get a max of 60 days to do this. This means that Twitch is trying to streamline their processes. And this is a good thing for users. Getting rid of petabytes of wasted space should improve our overall experience of the site. It forces streamers to either use it or lose it when it comes to highlights, meaning the viewer benefits by getting more content in the long run. And, the move to a new format means that we can now watch VODs on the go or on our consoles.

So, thats the good. Lets turn to the “bad”. You may notice that I keep putting bad in quotes. Theres a reason for that. Similar to YouTube…strike that. EXACTLY like YouTube, Twitch is now implementing an audio content matching system. In fact, Audible Magic is the same service YouTube used before it developed it’s own in house version for audio recognition. In a (extremely simplified) nutshell, Audible magic crawls all VODs on Twitch searching for copyrighted music in 30 minute blocks. If said music is found, the software mutes the audio of the VOD for that 30 minute block. Of course, as with YouTube, affected streamers can submit a claim arguing against the block. Let us be perfectly clear here: Audible Magic is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate. Even Twitch freely admits in their blog (found HERE ) that it may return fals positives or miss content from copyright owners that aren’t partnered with Audible Magic. Lets also be clear: This includes in-game AND ambient music. Let’s looks at this in two chunks, shall we?

Ambient Music: This means…commercial music. Let’s say you are playing DOTA2 on stream. Since you and your viewers have heard the music in DOTA2 a million times, you’ve turned it off and opted for some sweet Beyonce instead.  First off, I find your musical taste questionable. Clearly Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” is FAR more appropriate to a fast paced game of DOTA2. That aside, you are essentially rebroadcasting music intended for private use. Especially if you are doing so using Pandora or Spotify. You see, Spotify or Pandora pay a microtransaction royalty fee every time an individual listener plays a song. If you rock out to Beyonce while playing for 10,000 people, only one payment has been made to that copyright/license holder. Meaning that the other 10,000 people are listening for free. The artist and copyright holder aren’t getting paid properly. And you…are breaking the law. And I can hear the arguments now. “But Digm, people have been doing it forever on Twitch!” Yes. Yes they have. The fact that people have been getting away with it does nothing to change the fact that it is still illegal. “But Digm! Sanitarium.fm does the same thing! You broadcast music to listeners over radio!” Yes. We do. However, we are recognized as a legitimate radio station and have gone through the necessary paperwork and licensing processes that allow us to broadcast as a radio station. Just like your local radio station. You’ll also notice that we do NOT play our own radio stream on our Twitch page. The reason for this is that the legality of that, even for a licensed radio station such as ourselves, is questionable. At best. So, to the ambient music part of the changes, my final thought is this: If you are a  streamer and you get hit with a copyright claim for playing commercial music in the background while you stream, you’ve brought it on yourself. You’ve broken a very clear set of laws under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (Yes, its a US law, but Twitch is based in the US, hence the law applies) and you have only the very shakiest of grounds upon which to base counter claims. I feel little to no sympathy for people caught in this predicament and personally am glad that Twitch is cracking down on this, as in the end it will help to protect us all from outside corporate attempts to crush new media.

In-Game Music: Ok. This one is a little trickier. We all know that Twitch exists solely for the purpose of streaming games. They’ve never made any bones about that. And one of the major parts of any game, particularly single player ones, is the music. The problem is that many studios might not hold exclusive claim to that music. Or the Audible Magic system might return a false positive. Take the recent International DOTA2 Championships. Valve composed the music in DOTA2. Valve owns the music in DOTA2. And Valve streamed content on Twitch of which it was the sole creator and owner. Audible Magic still muted huge portions of the tournament VODs on copyright claims. This is an example of a false positive. Its proof that not only is the system not perfect, but in many ways (just as YouTube’s) it is draconian to the extreme and rather broken. However, we have no choice but to live with it. That being said, there are many grey areas here. We are given permission to stream games on Twitch. Since music is considered an integral part of most games, there is a tacitly implied permission that the music is also acceptable for streaming. Furthermore, a argument could be made that removing the music from a game compromises the artistic integrity/vision of said game and is therefore open to retaliation from those that created said game. The problem is this: If you start down the road of saying that removing music from a game compromises the developer’s vision, its a very short hop to asserting that a streamer’s commentary ALSO compromises that vision. This is a highly imperfect system, and it gets even more complicated when you bring games like GTA and Saint’s Row into the mix. Games which feature real world commercial music prominently in their soundtracks. The in-game music question is a thorny one, with mostly imperfect answers. To that end, I will reserve judgement until further experience shows us how Twitch plans to play this out. that being said…there truly is some bad in the changes Twitch is making, and all of it centers heavily on the question of making in-game music subject to copyright games. Its not much of a reach to extend that claim to videos as well.

It remains to be seen what will happen in this regard, but you can rest assured I’ll be writing another of these articles in a few months time.

Electronic Arts has announced a new subscription service that gives Xbox One owners access to some of its biggest games for a small monthly fee. Called EA Access, the service is launching to select users in beta today, with a starting price of $4.99 (£3.99) per month or $29.99 (£19.99) per year. The company says EA Access will “launch for everyone on Xbox One soon.” Paying for the subscription will get you access to what EA calls its Vault, a collection of games you’ll have unlimited access to as long as you’re subscribed. During the beta, that will include a sampling of four titles — FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4 — though the company says more games will be added “soon.”

The service will also get you early access to some of EA’s upcoming titles. Subscribers will be able to play trials for upcoming games like Dragon Age: Inquisition and this year’s EA Sports titles “up to five days” ahead of their launch date. Additionally, EA says subscribers will save 10 percent when buying EA games through the Xbox One game store. “This is something we’ve never done before and we’re excited to share it with you,” the company says. EA calls the service a “partnership” with Microsoft, and there’s no word on whether it will be available on other platforms as well.