Next Gen User Interface Pet Peeves

We've had the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for roughly a month now, which has given us time to familiarize ourselves with the ins and outs of the two systems we will be spending way too much time with over the next several years. Like a family member you are intimately familiar with, it's hard not do develop some pet peeves with these systems. Here are 10 easily correctible things Sony and Microsoft could do to smooth out the platforms.

PlayStation 4

Streamline Friend Invites

Meeting new people and catching up with old friends is one of the best parts about modern gaming. Sony has largely righted the ship with regards to its approach to socializing on PS4, but we have one niggling complaint. It takes way too many button clicks to get to the actual friend invite after you've received one, and if you reject an invite it doesn't delete it. You need to click the options button and do it there. Both instances should be a one-click process.

Introduce Dashboard Customization

I'm sure many adore the flowing dashboard art and contemplative, ethereal soundscape that constantly plays in the background after you boot up the PS4. But after hearing this elevator music for the 100th time, I was ready to forgo sound altogether. You can turn off the music in the settings menu, but no options exist for changing your background. Personalization is a major part of user interfaces in everything from cell phones to remote controls, and we would love it if Sony allowed us to put our own personal stamp on the PS4 dashboard.

Let People Change Their PSN Names

Reiner once went by the Xbox Live name BeerJesus, but after the 7,000th flippant comment about the name in Call of Duty lobbies, he decided it was time to become The Artist Formerly Known As BeerJesus. Someone out there on PSN also regrets his or her off-the-cuff pick for a PlayStation identity. Do the right thing, Sony, and set them free.

Turn Off The Controller Glow

We get it – you can emblazon the DualShock 4 controller with different colors to match the on-screen activity. This is an interesting flair (kind of) when applied to games. You know when it absolutely sucks? When you're using Netflix or another app and the controller is sitting on your coffee table emitting an obnoxious glow. Please let us turn this off. Think of all the energy it would save!

Lose The Annoying Health And Safety Message

Quit acting like an overbearing mother and please remove that annoying message we're forced to read every time we boot our systems. Video games are a non-contact sport. We'll be fine.

Xbox One

Re-Surface The Friends List

The Xbox 360 was unrivaled in its approach to making socialization a destination. The Xbox One, on the other hand, must be embarrassed of your friends, because it does its best to hide them under a collection of menus. Please bring our friends back to the forefront where they belong.

Stop Automatically Recording Meaningless Gameplay

Giving gamers the ability to showcase cool video clips on a timeline is a great idea. But we're all less likely to check out these timelines if all the videos are meaningless clips of people clearing boards on Peggle or ranking up in Battlefield 4. These should be reserved for videos that people actually think are cool.

Give Us A Download Queue And Storage Management

Microsoft thinks it knows best when it comes to managing your storage. It's wrong. We would like to be able to prioritize which installed games stay and which ones go after we all inevitably run out of storage space given the minuscule hard drives the Xbox One ships with. While we're at it, could we please have a download queue that shows whether or not any progress is being made on a title update download? Thanks!

Let Netflix Use Its Superior User Interface

We get it, Microsoft. You think your Metro design is sleek, functional, and sexy. If you want to use it for your official apps, that's fine, but don't make Netflix conform to the same design parameters. It limits the amount of choices users have on screen while browsing films, and it looks worse than the Netflix offering on every other platform.

Fix The Parties

If we want to join a chat session while playing Battlefield 4 right now, we need to exit out of the game, accept the chat invite, turn party chat on, and then rejoin whatever game we were playing. Xbox parties, now with red tape! Also, you can't chat with someone who is playing a different game than you. Please go back to the old way of doing things, Xbox. It was much more efficient.

GameStop Offering $10 Off Select PlayStation 4 And Xbox One Games

While PC owners are reveling in Steam, GoG, and other sales. Console owners might be wondering how to load up their libraries with titles for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

GameStop (disclosure: GameStop is Game Informer’s parent company) is offering $10 off select games for the new systems from Microsoft and Sony. The titles included in the sale are:

• Battlefield 4
• Call of Duty: Ghosts
• FIFA 14
• Madden 25
• NBA Live 14
• Need for Speed: Rivals

There are also a number of Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, handheld titles, and accessories on sale. You can see the full list on the sale page. 

The offer ends on December 29, 2013. For more ongoing sales, check out the most recent Steam offerings, an amazing Humble Bundle, upcoming PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection titles, and a big eShop sale for the 3DS (once that service is back online tomorrow).

Xbox One Gets Battlefield 4 Patch Fixing 'Kill Trading' And More

Battlefield 4 on Xbox One has a new patch that brings this version up to speed with the others. Headlining the update is a fix to latency-based “kill trading.” If you’ve ever wondered how a supposedly deceased opponent killed you, it was probably due to server problems that have now been addressed.

Here’s the full list of what’s been addressed in the new update:

• Reduced the probability of the “Kill trade” issue (see below for details). 
• Fixed a common crash that could occur during gameplay. 
• Fixed an issue that could corrupt save files in the single player campaign. 
• Fix for the game mode specific ribbons being counted twice in the multiplayer progression. 
• Fix for a graphical glitch that could appear on terrain. 
• Fix for the SUAV (introduced in the China Rising expansion pack) not exploding when hitting enemy soldiers. While these indeed should be deadly, they were never designed for “roadkilling” opponents. 
• Fix for an issue where 4x the damage from a vehicle's minigun would be applied to the chest when a player had the Defense specialization equipped. 
• Servers that friends are playing on now have a higher priority in the server list. 
• Server Browser is no longer showing empty or full servers by default. 
• Balancing jet handling across all stealth and attack jet classes. 
• Fixed a bug in Defuse mode where defenders could win a round by killing all the attackers without disarming the bomb. If the attackers arm the bomb, the defenders need to disarm it to win, even if they have killed all the attackers. 
• Fix for a Defuse bug where none of the teams would win a round by letting the timer run out. 
• Fix for players getting stuck in the revive screen. 
• Fix for players getting stuck in the kill camera after being revived. Note that you might see a graphical bug on-screen after being revived when accepting a revive within 1 second. This graphical bug will be removed in the next patch. 
• Fixed the instance where players suddenly would transition into Spectator Mode while playing the Defuse game mode. 
• Fix for the death camera/screen being displayed too early. 
• Raised the first-person camera slightly for walking in crouch to more accurately reflect the actual position of the character. 
• Fixed an issue with the party chat app not working. 
• Fixed an issue in the in-game Battlelog where non-ASCII characters would display incorrectly. 
• Fixed an issue when maps were not loading properly while player didn’t have the game in full screen. 

This is just the latest patch for Battlefield 4 that has seen problems across the five platforms it has been launched on. The issues were so severe that EA has halted DICE’s other work to repair the game. Additionally, a class action suit is in process against the publisher on behalf of investors.

The second suit, which has been filed, allege that EA executives willfully misled investors by making statements about Battlefield 4’s performance (and the publisher’s overall financial performance) that it knew weren't true. EA has responded to that lawsuit saying that it will defend against the complaint and that the claims are “meritless.”

Namco unveils first look at Tales of Zestiria

Namco Bandai has unveiled the debut trailer for Tales of Zestiria, and it has dragons. The role-playing game is currently in development for the PlayStation 3 and will ostensibly release in 2015 in commemoration of the series' 20th anniversary.

In keeping with that theme, the title's creators are aiming to take the franchise back to its roots with the latest entry. It will feature characters created by all four of the series' designers, animations from Ufotable, and a medieval fantasy setting. for more, vist GamezMentor

Online expansion of Star Trek coming in 2014

In the latest blog post of Star Trek Online, Perfect World has teased that a new expansion for the MMO will be launching sometime in late 2014.

The post, which serves as a sort of end-of-year summary, noted that 2013 has been the most successful year for Star Trek Online and thanked its supporters for making it so. Perfect World also said that fans' "...enthusiastic support has put another expansion on the schedule for late in 2014. Planning is in the early stages, so there is not much to share just yet, but we’re really hoping to provide something big for you all." For more updates, visit GamezMentor

4 Cutting-Edge Gaming Technologies With Incredible Promise

As he delivered the 2012 DICE conference keynote, Skyrim creator Todd Howard said he sees games "as the ultimate combination of art and technology." It's true. No other art form more tightly ties technology to its innovations and storytelling techniques.

With a new generation of video game consoles upon us, a booming world of innovation in tablet and mobile games, and PC gaming more robust than it's ever been, the future of the technology and game art is nothing short of exhilarating.

So what technologies are developers experimenting with today that give us a glimpse of future gaming innovation?

Some of these examples are audacious, so much so we can't be sure they'll ever actually go anywhere. Others are surefire hits for the next decade of gaming.

1. Oculus Rift

Since the 1980s, science fiction authors and geeks have dreamed of a future in which we all play games with virtual reality headsets.

Oculus Rift seeks to make that dream a reality, as many before have tried to do. It was funded on Kickstarter, and went on to impress tech pundits and reviewers as the best effort yet.

It's easy to write off — "No one ever wants to look goofy, wearing a giant VR headset while he games in the living room." But here's some food for thought: Doom creator and actual rocket scientist John Carmack just left the game software company he founded more than 20 years ago to serve full-time as Oculus VR's chief technical officer.

2. Xbox One Kinect

The Xbox One's Kinect voice command navigation sure feels like the future.

Even the Kinect's Xbox 360 predecessor was impressive, particularly the full-body motion controls made possible by its 3D camera. We haven't seen much in the way of motion controls on the Xbox One yet, but the new Kinect is even more powerful than the last.

Sony’s console offers many of the same features with the PlayStation Camera, but it’s not as powerful as the Xbox One’s improved model.

The Xbox One's entire user interface is built around voice commands, and they feel amazing. It's too bad they only work about 80% of the time. That precludes any hardcore gaming applications, but you feel this should be the future of user interfaces — and it might just be.

3. Digital Distribution

It's already happened on PC and mobile: You download games; you don't buy them at the store anymore. Yet consoles still lag behind. Why?

There are socioeconomic factors at play, but it's as much a culture gap. Console gamers have spent years collecting discs and special edition artwork or toys with their games. And don't forget the established culture of game lending among friends.

When Microsoft announced the Xbox One would require an online connection to facilitate digital games, live updates and cloud computing, console gamers back lashed vigorously.

PC gamers already went through this turbulent transition when Valve Software's Steam platform launched in 2004. At first they resisted the change, but the benefits and convenience of digital distribution for both consumer and publisher became too obvious to ignore, when the right infrastructure was finally in place. The same switch is inevitable on consoles; it just might take awhile.

It reminds us of a wise William Gibson quote: "The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed."

4. Gaming in the Cloud

The sky, as it were, is the limit with this technology. Nothing offers more longterm promise for the future of gaming than cloud computing. It's not 100% about the graphics; that will still be accomplished best on a local machine in the immediate future. Rather, it's about connecting players with each other, with the developers and with the dynamic game world they're inhabiting.

Imagine a game world in which players leave hints for you at every turn, as in 2011's Dark Souls. Or picture fellow gamers dropping in and out of your game seamlessly, blending in with the crowd of non-player characters on the simulated streets of Chicago, as in next year's Watch Dogs.

With cloud technology, game developers could push live updates and events into your game world in seamless real time. They could even carry the load of some non-urgent, non-visual calculations, allowing your Xbox One or PlayStation 4 to dedicate more brainpower to making things prettier.

There are other uses, too. Sony acquired Gaikai, a service that streamed entire games like interactive YouTube videos, in 2012 for $380 million. We later learned Sony plans to use Gaikai's technology to offer old games from past PlayStation platforms on the PS4 by streaming them, handling all the graphics on Sony's servers.

As long as consumers adopt faster and faster broadband Internet connections in the coming years, this tech shows a lot of promise. 

for more visit: GamezMentor