Hasta La Gadget!

After one NeoGAF user spilled the beans on the project, CD Projekt RED has confirmed that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is in production. The game is being built on the studio’s new REDengine3, which was unveiled to the world just a few days back. It’ll also be the last Witcher game made by CD Projekt RED, so this is the last hurrah for the series that so many players have fallen in love with.

Those who are subscribed to Game Informer might like to know the game is this month’s cover story. That’s how NeoGAF user INDIGO_CYCLOPS found out about it – his digital copy arrived a bit early and gave away the surprise. Some of the more interesting tidbits from the cover story include the fact that The Witcher 3 will be an open world game, and that it’s in-game world will be around 20% bigger than Skyrim‘s.

In the official announcement, the company didn’t say The Witcher 3‘s world will be bigger than Skyrim‘s, but it did say that it will be 30 times bigger than The Witcher 2′s world. Make no mistake, that’s one massive world to explore. Players will also be treated to a revamped combat system, but at the moment, details on it are slim. The game will be launching in 2014 for “all high-end platforms,” leading some to believe that The Witcher 3 will be releasing for next generation consoles.

After all, REDengine3 has been developed specifically for next generation consoles, and since many are thinking that we’ll see the reveals of the next PlayStation and Xbox this year, it would make sense for CD Projekt RED to put the game on the new platform. We’ll just have to wait and see what the studio announces in the coming days and week, but it’s definitely an exciting time for series fans. Stay tuned.

[via Joystiq]

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt announced, built on REDengine3 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

After OUYA‘s immense Kickstarter success, the company is looking to branch out and go mainstream. The portable Android-powered gaming console will begin selling in select retail stores starting in June. Best Buy, Target, and GameStop will sell the console for $99, the same price that Kickstarter backers have been paying for the device.

The console will also be available online at the company’s website and on Amazon. Of course, though, Kickstarter backers will be the first to get their units. Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman says that Kickstarter backers will receive their consoles in March, while orders from the OUYA website will go out in April, and retail stores will begin selling them in June. You can pre-order the console now through Amazon, Best Buy, or Target.

The console will sell for $99.99, and it’ll come with one controller. An extra controller will cost you $49.99 in retail stores, while getting one on OUYA’s website will only cost $40 shipped. Paying $50 for a controller certainly isn’t outrageous, but it raises some concerns when a controller costs half the price of the console itself. Uhrman says that $49.99 is a “premium price” for a controller, indeed, but she says that the touchpad built into the controller makes up for the cost.

The OUYA console raised more than $8.5 million on Kickstarter and has been taking pre-orders for the consoles on its website. There are over 68,000 consoles that need to be shipped out so far, with potentially even more orders to come no doubt. The tiny Android-powered gaming console is already a huge hit, and we’re pretty excited to see how the OUYA community will grow once the consoles start selling.

[via WSJ]

OUYA to be sold at retail stores starting in June is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s only be a little over a couple of week since Temple Run 2 released unto the public, but now we’re hearing word that a third installment of the series will be hitting mobile gamers this month. Based on the upcoming movie Oz the Great and Powerful, Temple Run: Oz the Great and Powerful will be released on February 17 to celebrate the new movie.

Very few details are available at this point, with only a release date to go by. Disney’s France PR representative Cecile Fouques confirmed the release date on Twitter, and with a rough and simple translation, the tweet says, “and soon, February 27, Temple Run OZ, inspired by the film The Fantastic World of OZ.”

We’re not sure what exactly the title of the game will be, whether it’ll just be Temple Run: Oz, or Temple Run: Oz the Great and Powerful. It would make the most sense that the game include the full title of the movie, but we’ll have to wait and see what the developers plan to do. If this is any conciliation, a tester of the game posted the news on Facebook as well, including the entire title of the movie in the post.

The new game is set to release one week before the theatrical launch of Oz the Great and Powerful, which will be hitting theaters on March 8. The movie is directed by Sam Raimi, who also directed Spider-Man 3. The movie stars Spider-Man veteran James Franco and That 70s Show star Mila Kunis, who is also known as the voice of Meg on Family Guy.

[via VG247]

Temple Run: Oz the Great and Powerful arriving February 27 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As we countdown to tonight’s Super Bowl — one of the world’s largest sporting events — it’s only fitting that PBS explores the world of competitive gaming and e-sports. As a part of PBS’s Off Book web series, the company went behind the scenes of the competitive video gaming world to see what makes it tick, and it’s a growing industry that doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

In “The Rise of Competitive Gaming and E-Sports,” the 8-minute mini documentary explores the four main genres that encapsulates competitive gaming: real-time strategy, multiplayer online battle arena, first-person shooters, and fighting games. The video provides a glimpse into what the world of competition-based gaming is like, and not only are there people competing for prizes, but there are also loyal fans that watch these gamers compete for the ultimate prize.

The documentary goes to show that people can, in fact, look to video games as a serious thing, and tons of people make money this way, most notably an infamous gamer by the name of Johnathen Wendel, or better known as Fatal1ty, who is a full-time professional gamer and has multiple lines of PC gaming components with his name on them.

This PBS video comes just days after Microsoft and Activision announced that they would be hosting the Call of Duty Championship, in which 32 teams of four players would compete against one another with a $1 million purse for the top five teams, proving that there is some sweet cash to be taken from these events, as well as the greatest prize of all: bragging rights.

PBS documentary explores the world of competitive video gaming is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Just a few days ago, we told you that Brian Reynolds, Zynga‘s chief game designer is stepping down from his post after almost four years at the company. At the time, it wasn’t clear what Reynolds planned on doing next, but the man has spoken, and while he’s still not 100% sure what he’s going to do, starting up a small game studio is likely in the cards.

In a guest post on VentureBeat, Reynolds discusses the good times that he’s had at Zynga, and reflects on the past at Big Huge Games, as well as co-founding Firaxis Games alongside Sid Meier. However, while we was grateful for the time spent at these studios, Reynolds says he ready to “shift into a different gear,” and is thinking about starting his own small game studio.

Reynolds says that this would give him the power to do things that he wasn’t able to do at Zynga or other past jobs. He says he misses “getting to write code personally and make fun with [his] own hands.” He even says he misses the days of “day-to-day panics of being somewhere small and new and vulnerable, and the excitement of owning a small company.”

Reynolds notes that he wants to take risks and do stuff that might not be up to snuff for a publicly-traded company like Zynga. Thus, Reynolds says that “starting a little studio with a few wingmen…is likely to be on the menu.” As far as what he plans to do at this studio, should he start it up, he notes that mobile strategy games are a big interest for him.

[via VentureBeat]

Image via Flickr

Zynga chief game designer likely to start own game studio is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.