Hasta La Gadget!

The Elder Scrolls Online is set to launch sometime this year, and there are some players who understandably skeptical that the game can satisfy series fans. Just the same, there are some players who think that the this is finally the multiplayer game so many Elder Scrolls fans have been asking about for years. Regardless of which camp you fall in – skeptic or believer – ZeniMax Online Studios has issued a call for for beta testers, so you can net a chance to test out a pre-release build of the game.

The beta is of the closed variety, which means that you’ll need to sign a non-disclosure agreement to participate. There isn’t any word on when the beta will officially kick off, which means that it might be a little while before players find out if they were accepted. While you won’t know if you got in right away, there is a little sidebar that pops up on the side of the application that gives you an idea of your chances of being accepted as you fill in information. You probably shouldn’t take that assessment as truth, but it’s a nice feature to have anyway.

Today also saw the release of a new cinematic trailer for the Elder Scrolls Online, this one coming in at nearly six minutes long. Being a cinematic, the trailer naturally doesn’t show any gameplay, but instead a massive battle scene. The battle is certainly impressive, but at this point, we have a feeling that fans are craving more gameplay footage. In any case, have a look at the latest Elder Scrolls Online trailer below.

If you’re interested in signing up for the closed beta, you can head over to the Elder Scrolls Online official site to do so. Keep in mind that there are a lot of people looking to sign up, so you may not be able to submit your application right away. Did any of sign up for the Elder Scrolls Online beta today?

[via Eurogamer]

Elder Scrolls Online closed beta registration opens as new trailer drops is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re still enjoying Halo 2 on PC, then we’ve got some sad news for you. In the latest installment of the Halo Bulletin, Halo Waypoint’s Jessica Shea announced that the multiplayer servers for the PC port will be going dark next month. Specifically speaking, players will have until February 15, 2013 to get their multiplayer kicks in, because after that date, Halo 2‘s online multiplayer will be inaccessible.

Shea clarifies that players will still be able to access multiplayer through LAN, but points out that Halo 2‘s player numbers have “been peaking consistently at approximately 20 players or less.” Hearing that, it’s pretty obvious why Microsoft has opted to shut down the game’s servers, though this news probably stings a bit for players who have a soft spot for Halo 2 on PC. Multiplayer for the Xbox version of Halo 2 was ended back in 2010 when Microsoft pulled the plug on Xbox Live service for its first console.

Despite the fact that Microsoft’s decision to shut off the multiplayer servers for Halo 2 is bound to make at least a few players upset, online multiplayer for both versions was supported for almost six years. That certainly isn’t bad, especially when there are some publishers who seem all too willing to shut down online functionality just a couple of years after release. Of course, if you get the urge to play Halo online after the servers go dark, you can always pick up a copy of Halo 3, Halo: Reach, or Halo 4, all of which still have accessible matchmaking.

Shea’s announcement was hidden in a much longer post about the future of Halo 4‘s multiplayer, among other things. The post reminded us that the first season of Spartan Ops is set to resume on January 21, while players will get to enjoy two new class specializations starting next week: the Pioneer and the Pathfinder, both of which were given a rundown when Microsoft detailed all of the different specializations last year. No word on when the other specializations will become available, so it might not be the best idea to blow through the additional 20 SR levels the Pioneer and Pathfinder classes add to the game.

[via Eurogamer]

Halo 2 PC multiplayer servers going dark in February is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Back when Activision announced the first Skylanders game, a fair few people thought that offering collectible toys to use with a video game wasn’t a winning idea. Fast forward to today and Skylanders is easily one of Activision’s biggest franchises, perhaps second to only Call of Duty. Disney today introduced the world to its answer to Skylanders, officially pulling the veil off Disney Infinity.

With Disney Infinity, we’re seeing the same basic premise of collecting figures and then using them in-game, only Disney seems to have taken the idea one step further. Players will be able to adventure through famous Disney worlds – called “Play Sets” in Infinity – all the while solving puzzles, battling enemies, and collecting items and characters from Disney worlds. The items you collect get put into the in-game Toy Box, and it’s what players will do with the stuff in that Toy Box that’s especially impressive.

Using the items collected through gameplay, players will be able to build their own worlds for their friends to explore. So, think of Disney Infinity as something similar to Skylanders, only the Spyro characters have been swapped out for Disney’s line up and the company has added on a creative mode. What’s more, it appears that players will be able to transfer up to three characters into the game at a time using the portal, which is a feature that Skylanders lacks.

By moving a character into the game, you’ll unlock their world to explore. Disney Infinity will ship with a total of three characters: Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, Sully from Monsters Inc., and Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles. Disney plans to release a total of 17 characters in this initial batch of figures, some of which can be seen in the announcement trailer above. Even better is the fact that the characters are cross-platform, so they’ll work with every version of the game regardless of the platform you’re playing it on. Disney Infinity will be arriving in June for Xbox 360, PS3, 3DS, Wii, Wii U, PC, and mobile devices, though we don’t have a price point to talk about just yet. Stay tuned for more details!

Disney Infinity announced to capitalize on collectible craze is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The officially release of the third installment in the BioShock series is slowly creeping in on us. While it’s still a couple months away, it’ll be here before we know it, and Irrational Games has released PC specification requirements for the new game, BioShock Infinite. This will give you a little bit of time to save up some cash and buy a new graphics card, because you may need it.

Minimum requirements are actually quite respectable, and we can’t imagine most PC gamers will have a hard time running the upcoming game. BioShock Infinite requires at least an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHz, with 2GB of RAM, and 20GB of hard drive space available. As far as a video card goes, at least an ATI Radeon HD 3870, NVIDIA 8800 GT, or Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics will be good enough.

Recommended requirements call for a bit more prowess. You’ll need a “quad-core processer”, 4GB of RAM, 30GB of hard drive space available, and at least an AMD Radeon HD 6950 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560. Even the recommended requirements aren’t too bad, and we’re guessing that any hardcore PC gamers already have a tricked-out PC that can run this.

As far as PC controls and other options, Irrational Games says that you’ll have all of the traditional options to choose from in the settings, like changing key combinations and adjusting levels for mouse sensitivity. The game will also support AMD Eyefinity, NVIDIA Surround, and Matrox TripleHead2Go, and gamers will have separate controls available for aspect ratio, resolution, and display mode.

BioShock Infinite PC requirements announced is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We already knew that sales for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition came in over the 5 million mark for 2012, but today we’re getting a broader picture of the sales the franchise managed last year. Mojang has shared a list of Christmas Day stats for all versions of Minecraft, and in doing so, the company has also revealed how many sales each version brought in throughout 2012. Needless to say, the numbers for each impress, while the final tally for the franchise in general is pretty staggering.

First though, let’s check out those Christmas stats. Mojang says that on December 25th, 70,808 players either purchased or redeemed codes for the PC and Mac version of Minecraft. When we zoom out and look at the week of December 24th, that number grows to 241,845 purchases. In all, the PC/Mac version of Minecraft brought in 4,177,843 sales throughout the year, which isn’t bad for a game that has been available for a number of years already.

Of course, while the PC version’s sales were impressive, they couldn’t top the sales of the Xbox 360 version. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was purchased 100,416 times on Christmas day, jumping up to 325,591 sales during the larger Christmas week. 5,002,370 sales was the final tally for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, which again is something that we already knew.

With the huge number of people getting a new smartphone or tablet on Christmas day, it definitely isn’t surprising that the sales for Minecraft: Pocket Edition managed to come in on top of the Xbox 360 and PC versions. The mobile version of Minecraft netted 283,939 sales on Christmas day, 706,419 on Christmas week, and 5,899,727 for 2012 as a whole. Both iOS and Android sales are counted in this figure, so it would appear that Mojang is cleaning up across all platforms.

Add up all of those numbers for 2012, and we come to 15,079,940 sales for all versions of Minecraft in 2012. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars for Mojang, so the studio is definitely sitting pretty as we head into 2013. We imagine that Minecraft sales will continue to be strong as more players decide to finally jump on the bandwagon and see what all the talk is about, so don’t be surprised to hear Mojang touting similar numbers at the end of this year. We’re you one of the millions who picked up Minecraft in 2012?

[via Mojang]

Minecraft sales top 15 million in 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.