General Gaming Article

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• Canalys Predicts Half a Billion Traditional and Tablet PC Sales in 2013
• Intel Announces S3500 Series Solid State Drives for Data Centers
• Newegg Daily Deals: Corsair Vengeance Series C70 Case, WD Red 1TB HDD, and More!
• E3 2013: Arma III
• Microsoft's Mattrick Advises Gamers with Shaky Internet to Stick with Xbox 360
• Richland Review
• E3 2013: A Look at Battlefield 4
• Club 3D Terminates Relationship with Nvidia, Cozies Up to AMD
• E3 2013: DayZ
• Goodbye Microsoft Points, Hello Real Currency

Canalys Predicts Half a Billion Traditional and Tablet PC Sales in 2013 Posted: 12 Jun 2013 02:59 PM PDT Traditional PCs and tablets can coexist. The demise of the PC as you know it is often talked about, or at least alluded to, but just because tablets are uber popular doesn't mean there isn't room for old and new style PCs in the market. According the latest forecast by Canalys, traditional and tablet PC sales combined in 2013 will total 493.1 million units, up from 459.6 million 2012. By 2017, that number will jump to 713.8 million. Out of those half a billion PC sales, notebooks will account for the lion's share at 205.6 million, followed by tablets at 182.5 million, and finally desktops at 105 million. Though the three types of PCs will coexist, tablets are clearly the hot item right now. "Worldwide demand for tablets has gone from strength to strength, while that for desktops and notebooks has waned. In the first quarter of 2013, the desktop market fell 10.3 percent and the notebook market declined 13.1 percent," Canalys says. "The size of the tablet market, however, more than doubled in Q1 2013, with a 106.1 percent increase in shipments to 41.9 million units. Shipments show no sign of slowing and Canalys forecasts that in 2013 tablet shipments will reach 182.5 million units, with global tablet shipments surpassing those of notebooks in the final quarter of the year." Despite Microsoft's best marketing efforts, Canalys says the reception to Windows 8 has failed to reinvigorate demand for Windows-based PCs, prompting PC makers to come to market with cheaper Android devices. Meanwhile, Microsoft is hoping that next crop of convertibles will win users over, especially following the release of Windows 8.1, a free update that's due out later this summer. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Intel Announces S3500 Series Solid State Drives for Data Centers Posted: 12 Jun 2013 12:40 PM PDT Available in 80GB to 800GB capacities. Intel this week announced a new line of solid state drives for data centers and cloud computing servers. Dubbed DC S3500, the new series of SSDs are designed for read-intensive applications such as web hosting, cloud computing, and data center virtualization, the Santa Clara chip maker says. The S3500 line is also being billed as a cost-effective replacement for traditional hard drives. "The Intel SSD DC S3500 Series breaks through barriers – like the need for high throughput/low latency storage with a low total cost of ownership – to deliver the storage solution that meets the needs of the cloud, and its demand for storage, which has exploded in recent years," said Rob Crooke, Intel corporate vice president and general manager for the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "Intel's data center family of SSDs helps make cloud computing faster and more reliable, enabling more transactions and richer experiences." Intel's new drives combine 20nm NAND flash memory technology with support for SATA 6Gbps, resulting in sequential read speeds of up to 500MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 450MB/s. The drives are available in both 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch form factors in 80GB, 120GB, 160GB, 240GB, 300GB, 400GB, 480GB, and 800GB capacities. Prices range from $115 to $979. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: Corsair Vengeance Series C70 Case, WD Red 1TB HDD, and More! Posted: 12 Jun 2013 12:20 PM PDT Top Deal: Now that Haswell has landed, the time is ripe to build a new PC. Are you set with a case? If not, have a look at today's top deal for a Corsair Vengeance Series C70 Arctic White Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case for $80 with free shipping (regularly $110, now with a $20 mail-in-rebate and 10% off promotional code). It has a tinted side window, cable routing tie downs, and oodles of fan mounts. Other Deals: Western Digital Red 1TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive for $70 with free shipping (normally $85 - use coupon code:[EMCXPWW23]) Asus GTX660-DC2O-2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 2GB Video Card for $190 with free shipping (normally $210 - use coupon code:[EMCXPWW24]; additional $20 mail-in rebate) OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive for $120 with free shipping (normally $150) Thermaltake TR2 430W Power Supply for $40 with free shipping (normally $50; additional $10 mail-in rebate)

E3 2013: Arma III Posted: 12 Jun 2013 11:49 AM PDT Arma III game footage. In just less than two weeks from now -- June 25, 2013 -- Arma III will release to PC in beta form, though you don't have to wait until then to see what the upcoming open world tactical shooter is all about. Maximum PC Online Managing Editor Jimmy Thang made his way over to Arma III's booth at E3, where he was able to record several minutes of gameplay footage and extract some information about the title. Like previous versions, Arma III is influenced by information obtained from real military experts in order to keep the game as authentic as possible. Thang also found out that the landscape will be huge, about 270 square kilometers, the largest yet in the Arma series. Arma has been known for being demanding in terms of hardware, and it sounds like Arma III won't be an exception, though it sounds like minimum specs will be around a Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM. Take a look! Arma III is scheduled to launch in Q3 of this year. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Microsoft's Mattrick Advises Gamers with Shaky Internet to Stick with Xbox 360 Posted: 12 Jun 2013 11:23 AM PDT No or slow Internet? Don't buy an Xbox One. Former Microsoft director Adam Orth found himself in hot water after issuing a barrage of snarky statements on Twitter related to the Xbox One and the concept of always-on game consoles, and not long after, word spread that he resigned from his position. Such is the sensitive nature of maintaining a relationship with gamers who aren't down with the idea of a console that requires a persistent Internet connection. It also begs the question of what a gamer should do if he has slow Internet or no Internet at all. In that case, Microsoft says you should stick with the Xbox 360. In an interview with GameTrailers at E3, Microsoft's Xbox president Don Mattrick said, rather bluntly, "fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360." Geoff Keighley, who was conducting the interview, quickly followed up by asking Mattrick straight up if he's advising gamers to stick with the Xbox 360 if they don't like the fact that the Xbox One dials home on a daily basis as part of a controversial DRM strategy. "Well if you have zero access to the Internet, [the Xbox 360] is an offline device. I mean, seriously, when I read the blogs and thought about who's really the most impacted, there was a person who said, 'Hey, I'm on a nuclear sub,' and I don't even know what it means to be on a nuclear sub but I've gotta imagine it's not easy to get an Internet connection." Mattrick added that he's empathetic, and that if he was on a nuclear sub, he'd be disappointed too. So, yeah. Here's a look at the full interview: Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Richland Review Posted: 12 Jun 2013 10:50 AM PDT Richland review: Even the most diehard fan boy can admit AMD's not in the hunt against Intel's top-end processors That doesn't mean AMD still can't give Intel a hard time. While AMD can't compete with the Core i7-3970X or even the Core i7—4770K, the company's rush to merge CPU and GPU to make the APU has put more pressure on Intel than Intel would probably want to admit. AMD's first Brazos APUs, for example, blew away peoples' sales and performance expectations.  Since then, AMD has kept its foot on the gas peddle. While it hasn't eclipsed Intel's efficiency per core on the x86 side, the graphics portion of the APUs have always lead Intel's integrated graphics. The company's Llano parts have been even more competitive, giving up better integrated graphics and fair x86 performance. From Llano, AMD introduced Trinity and the latest sequel: Richland. Richland doesn't bring any fancy new 3D transistors or a fabrication process that's the envy of the technical free world, but it still offers a pretty compelling message: a high-clocked quad-core chip with graphics that's surprisingly decent. Richland Benchmarks Since Richland rolled out just as Intel's Haswell hit, we had a nice set of systems all ready to go for direct comparison using the latest graphics drivers and UEFIs. Obviously, we're not making a direct comparison between the $142 A10-6800K, $122 Core Core i3-3220 and three Core i7 procs, but since we had the numbers, we're including them to give users an idea of how much they're missing and not missing by spending twice or three times as much on a CPU. For our testing, we outfitted three different systems with the same GeForce GTX 580 cards, 16GB of Corsair DDR3/1600 and 240GB Corsair Neutron GTX SSDs. Windows 8 was used for all of our testing.  The Upshot Obviously, you need to dig into the details of our tests. But rather than having you click around looking for the conclusion, we'll just put it right here. Our impression of Richland is generally good. The graphics performance obviously schools the Intel parts that we've seen. Intel's HD5000 and HD5200 is another story, though, but somehow we doubt you'll get those in $140 CPUs. Richland's big problem from the enthusiast perspective is that we don't quite get it. The APU, when rolled into a NUC-sized or HTPC mini PC, is a pretty damned decent story. What we don't get is why you'd ever build with a Richland in a full-sized FM2 board. Our instincts tells us to suck it up  and build on AM3+ with discrete graphics for maybe $75 more. Talking to motherboard vendors, though, we've heard FM2 boards in full ATX are overwhelmingly favored by consumers. That tells us that most of the people buying FM2 systems have very tight budgets, and putting out another $75 for a GPU is out of the question. And that's really the magic of the FM2 platform and Llano/Richland. For those on very tight budgets, Richland does the job and it does it very well. For those of us with a bit more scratch, we think AM3+ or even LGA1155 is the better choice for a full-sized desktop box. Click the next page for our Richland Benchmarks.     A good GPU test shouldn't vary much from the CPU, and here we see amazingly close scores despite the differences in clock speeds, core counts and generations of cores.  We found similar results in the overall scores in 3DMark11 (incorrectly labeled 3DMark2011 in our chart) as well as for the new 3DMark, so we decided to simply skip those charts here. The results is an overall score, and higher is better. The story changes when we flip over to physics testing. The test is a theoretical physics test and favors core and thread count. Here's a first glimpse of the steep hill AMD's Piledriver cores still face: the dual-core Core i3-3220 is a dual-core Hyper-threaded part without Turbo Boost. That means the A10-6800K's 4.1GHz to 4.4GHz clock speed and quad-core/shared modules don't give up much more than the i3. The result is an overall score and higher is better. Echoing 3DMark11, the new 3DMark also favors the higher core count parts, and we found the A10 and Core-i3 on equal footing, despite one being a quad-core. The results is an overall score, and higher is better. The popular and free 7-Zip has a built-in benchmark mode that gives approximations of how well a processor would perform in compression duties. Here, the quad-core A10 actually proves itself well against the Core i3-3220 and—surprise—comes amazingly close to the new Haswell chip. A10, pat yourself on the back. The result is an overall score of MIPS, and higher is better. Cinebench 10 is the older version of Maxon's popular 3D rendering benchmark. It features the ability to render the test on a single core. This should give an idea of the efficiency of each respective CPU microarchitecture. Sandy Bridge is slower than Ivy Bridge, which is slower than Haswell. The Core i3-3220's weakness is likely due to its inability run at higher clock speeds than 3.30GHz. Seen in red, the A10 single-core performance could use some help, especially when you consider it's running at 4.1+GHz. The result is an overall score, and higher is better. Oh, but those cores in the A10 do pay off when it comes to a multi-threaded workload. The A10 outruns the Intel dual-core handily. Those longer bars? You have to pay for those, buddy. The result is an overall score, and higher is better. Cinebench 11.5 is the newest version of Maxon's popular benchmark. The A10 again comes out on top of the Core i3, but the more efficient Intel cores and Hyper-Threading make it closer than you'd think. For those wondering if a 6-core Core i7-3930K is even worth it, look at the hexa-cores' numbers. If you are getting paid to render out a scene, the hexa-core will save you time and money. The result is an overall score, and higher is better. POV-Ray is a ray-tracing engine that's been around the block. It favors core and thread count, and the A10's quad-cores trounces the Core i3's dual-cores, despite the presence of Hyper-Threading. Count this as a win for AMD. The results are in seconds, and lower is better. There is an OpenCL version of Handbrake floating around in beta. But for now, we stuck with the public version of the latest build, so you're seeing purely x86 performance, not GPU performance here. The A10's quad part comes out on top of the Core i3 dualie, and again, we see the hexa-core part outrun even the new Haswell chip. Did your buddy tell you hexa-core's are worthless even when you said you intended to transcode a lot of video? He was wrong. The results are in seconds, and lower is better. For our Premiere Pro CS6 test, we take 1080P video shot on an EOS 5D Mk II and export it as a Blu-ray formatted video. All of the encoding here is done on the CPU rather than the GeForce GTX 580, as we want to see CPU performance. Keep in mind, there is a new version of Premiere Pro coming out with OpenCL support rather than pure CUDA. Still, this test is a pure CPU x86 test, and the A10 gets trashed really, really badly. AMD fans will say that's Intel's hand in making compilers that gives them the upper hand. We'll say that whatever the reason is, it's pretty clear that if you are using Premiere Pro CS6, you need to be running Intel silicon with at least four cores aboard and Hyper-Threading. This is simply horrible performance from the A10 here. The results are in seconds, and lower is better. TechARP's X264 HD 5.01 is a pretty thread-heavy benchmark that tests how fast a CPU can encode using the free X264 encoder library. It makes two passes for the benchmark, and the A10 and Core i3 are pretty much tied. This test also shows that if you intend to encode video, pay more for your CPU. The results are in frames per second, and higher is better. Pass 2 of the X264 HD 5.01 benchmark favors thread and core count more, so we now see the quad-core A10 outpace the dual-core Core i3 by a healthy clip. The results are in frames per second, and higher is better. For our Proshow Producer 5 test, we take a couple of hundred images shot with a Canon EOS 5D MkII, create a custom slideshow, and export it to a 1080P video file. ProShow Producer 5 pretty much tops out at four-cores. The A10 is slightly faster than the Core i3 part, but nothing to really text home about. The budget parts do amazingly well on this, considering how much pricier the other parts are in this roundup, which means photoslide show production isn't something anyone should consider a heavy duty workload anymore. Perhaps ProShow Producer 6 will step it up. The results are in seconds, and lower is better. HDRs are so popular now, it's a built-in feature on point-and-shoot digital cameras and phones. Those modes are just fakes, though. If you're going to make an HDR, you need different exposures, which is what HDR Soft's PhotoMatix does. Favored by HDR experts, PhotoMatix has a batch mode that's unavailable in the main interface, because it grinds most machines into the ground. It favors core and thread count, and here we see the A10 outpacing the dual-core Core i3. PhotoMatix is also one of those apps that actually show spending more money on the CPU helps. The Core i7-4770K is roughly twice as much (plus some change) as the A10-6800K, and the performance you get is actually the equivalent too. The results are in seconds, and lower is better.   Bah, we don't give a damn that your phone has a 16-megapixel sensor. The future is about Gigapixel, so we used a GigaPan EPIC Pro to shoot 263 images with a Canon EOS 7D and stitched them with Stitch.EFx 2.0 to make a 1.1 gigapixel image. Stitch.EFx2.0 is interesting because the first two thirds of it is single-threaded, with the last third exploiting all of the cores available. It's a good mix that favors efficiency, clock speed, and core count. The A10's high clocks and more cores hands the dual-core Core i3 -- a pretty handy defeat which, frankly, gives the even the pricier Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge quad chips a good scare. The results are in seconds, and lower is better. Click the next page to see some Richland game benchmarks.     For some real-world gaming tests, we ran Hitman: Absolution at 13x7 resolution with graphics quality turned way down. We expected the performance to be pretty uniform, but that didn't pan out. The A10 actually came in last with the Core i3 running at nearly 1GHz lower clock speed, beating it. It's pretty clear that Hitman: Absolution likes quad-core parts, and not quad-cores that share resources the way AMD's Piledriver cores do. These are framerates, and higher is better. Resident Evil 6 also saw the much higher-clocked A10 lose to the Core i3. It's not by much, but a loss nonetheless. In reality, the gameplay between the six chips would likely be indistinguishable at 1080p with graphics quality turned up. These are framerates, and higher is better. Total War: Shogun 2 CPU benchmark shows that pricier quad-cores have a pretty heavy advantage over the budget parts. In budgetland, the AMD chip was again slightly trailing the Intel chip, despite its core and clock advantage. This reminds us of a forum post we read on another site that said AMD's chips were faster in gaming. Our results, and most of the hardware community, would disagree. These are framerates, and higher is better. Valve's particle test was created around the time the Core 2 Quad was released and made to show off a pure CPU-based physics engine. Again, the Core i3-3220 running at 3.2GHz or lower owns the A10-6800K running at 4.1GHz to 4.4GHz. We've seen this particular test favor cache size and memory latency, which is why we think the fat hexa-core part beats even the Haswell chip. These are framerates, and higher is better. Echoing the Core i3's prowess at gaming, we ran Dirt 3 at low resolution with features turned down to take the GPU out of the equation. The result was an A10 part that is OK with discrete graphics, but it's clearly trailing a chip that's clocked almost 1GHz lower. Let's also take a moment to admire the Haswell's thrashing of the other quad parts and the hexa-core chip.  These are framerates, and higher is better. PCMark 8 came out just as we finishing our testing, and rather than being even later with this story, we rolled with our existing PCMark 7 numbers.  The test has never particularly favored core counts, and here we see it's mostly a wash between the Core i3 and A10 CPU.  These are overall scores, and higher is better. Click the next page to check out Richland's integrated graphics.  Haswell Integrated Graphics Benchmarks  AMD fans may be ready to declare non-victory and go home, but let's now look at where the A10-6800K is made to really live: in integrated graphics. For that test, we ripped the GeForce GTX 580 card from the systems and compared the respective CPUs on their graphics prowess. The  Core i3-3220 represented HD2500, the Core i7-3770 flew the flag for HD4000, and the new Haswell Core i7-4770K shows up with HD4600. AMD's A10-6800K features Radeon HD 8670D graphics. All three were running dual-channel DDR3/1600 RAM. For those who don't know, if you intend to run integrated graphics only and want the best gaming performance, pay for the fastest RAM you can afford, as DDR3/1866 or DDR3/2133 will give you nice benefits. The A10 doesn't disappoint. It simply destroys the HD2500 and HD4000 graphics. Intel's new HD4600 gets closer, but there's no cigar. Maybe HD Graphics 5200 aka Iris Pro will beat it, but we didn't have it to test. These are overall scores, and higher is better. This test isolates the graphics, and we again see the A10 make a monkey out of all of the Intel parts. Don't expect this to change much, either. These are overall scores, and higher is better. We're actually running out of things to say, as we really aren't seeing anything change for the Intel graphics here. Maybe it's just time for Charlie Sheen to step in with a cliché. These are overall scores, and higher is better. The new 3DMark actually sees the results close up a bit between the A10 and 4000-series Intel graphics, but the A10 still wins, especially against the HD2500 Core i3 CPU. These are overall scores, and higher is better. Firestrike is the heavy-duty test in the new 3DMark and is more apt for testing discrete graphics, but it's still interesting to see the Intel parts lose out to the A10. These are overall scores, and higher is better. 3DMark's Ice Storm Graphics test is intended for mid-range PCs. Here we see HD4600 close up the distance with HD4000. But again, the A10 reigns supreme. These are overall scores, and higher is better. The Cloudgate test in 3DMark is aimed at entry-level computing. For the first time, the HD4000 and HD4600 outpace the A10. The reason? The emphasis shifts from graphics performance to x86 performance, when the physics is factored into it, and the Intel chips now come out on top. Still don't get it? If you're running a game so old and so graphically easy as say Quake III, the Intel graphics and CPUs can actually be faster due to the better x86 performance. Well, except for HD2500 graphics, which is apparently there to insult or tease you. Hmm, maybe Intel shouldn't be allowed to use the word "graphics" with HD2500. Just as you can't call something "juice" unless there's actually fruit in it, maybe the HD2500 should be the purple-colored drink of the graphics world next to the grape juice A10. These are overall scores, and higher is better. In the graphic's only portion of Cloud Gate when physics and x86 is not factored in, the A10 actually pulls even with the new HD4600 graphics. That pretty much tells us that Intel's HD5000 and HD5200 graphics will be faster—they just won't be cheaper. These are frame rates, and higher is better. We ran Hitman: Absolution at 13x7 with the image quality trimmed way low, and we still saw pretty sub-par frame rates. It's pretty clear that as good as integrated graphics has gotten recently, sometimes you really will need a real discrete GPU.  These are frame rates, and higher is better. Resident Evil 6 is surprisingly difficult on integrated graphics, but we think it's almost playable at a low resolution.  Still, count this as a win for the A10. This is an overall score generated by RE6, and higher is better. For what it's worth: Resident Evil 6 benchmark, can you please stop when you're done, rather than looping over and over again? We ran Dirt 3 at ultra-low quality and 13x7 resolution. Believe it or not, it looks surprisingly good at that resolution. The Haswell's HD4600 also motors past the A10 a bit, which might be why Intel keeps showing Dirt 3 in its benchmarks. These are frame rates, and higher is better. Unlike most shooters, driving games don't really need high frame rates to be playable. We ran Dirt 3 at 1920x1080 resolution and medium quality to see how integrated parts would run. The A10 and Haswell do OK. In fact, it would likely be pretty playable to most people's eyes. The HD4000 graphics in the Core i7-3770K would be pushing it and HD2500? Forget it. These are frame rates, and higher is better. We're still turning our OpenCL testing, but we thought CyberLink's MediaEspresso 6.7 would be a fair test of the chips's encoding performance, using the graphics side rather than the x86 side. Intel's QuickSync has always been pretty fast, and here we see even the lowly HD2500 give the A10 a good run for the money. Interestingly the Core i7-3770K and Core i7-4770K are surprisingly close. HD4600's graphics should be improved for computing tasks such as encoding, so we suspect MediaEspresso just can't exploit it yet. The results are in seconds, with lower being better. Sandra has a GPGPU test. It's purely synthetic but the results actually mirror the A10's gaming performance, for the most part. We'll be adding more OpenCL tests using real-world applications as we move forward. The results are expressed as MIPS, and higher is better.

E3 2013: A Look at Battlefield 4 Posted: 12 Jun 2013 10:43 AM PDT Dominate on all fronts: Land, air, and sea! Battlefield 4, the 13th installment in the popular Battlefield franchise, is due to release on October 29, 2013 in North America and shortly after in other parts of the world on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Some of the elements will be the same or similar to prior versions, like the heads-up display (HUD) with a mini-map and compass in the lower left corner, and ammo counter and health meter in the lower right. The potential for destruction is greater than it's ever been, as we got a chance to see first hand at E3. We have three BF4 videos to share, the first of which shows narrated gameplay elements. One of the cooler things we got to see was the destruction of a skyscraper, which is always an option if you're having trouble taking out your enemy's defenses in a particular location. The second video shows nearly six minutes of unscripted gameplay, as E3 attendees got a chance to strap on their military boots and join the action. All the footage you see is from next-gen platforms. One of the most interesting elements is the return of Commander Mode, which we last saw in Battlefield 2142. This gives players a tactical map and the ability to issue orders. You can use Commander Mode to gather intelligence and issue supply drops, among other things. And, you can do these things from a tablet. Have a look: Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Club 3D Terminates Relationship with Nvidia, Cozies Up to AMD Posted: 12 Jun 2013 10:14 AM PDT Club 3D officially severs ties with Nvidia. Perhaps things were getting a little awkward for Club 3D in trying to maintain a relationship with both AMD and Nvidia, two competing GPU makers. Whatever the reason, from this point forward Club 3D is solely in AMD's corner and will no longer be producing video cards with Nvidia's silicon. Club 3D provided an official statement on its decision, noting that it's been a long ride serving both companies, but that it now wants to put all its focus on developing AMD cards. "We are showing our commitment to AMD because we believe that AMD is ideally positioned to deliver a complete solution to our customers, and after 16 years in the business offering solutions from a variety of processor partners, we truly believe that we can offer a better solution going forward with AMD," Club 3D CEO Judith Ma Tseng said in a statement. AMD was obviously happy with Club 3D's decision, calling it a "powerful acknowledgement" of the chip designer's leadership in GPUs. Might some other factor be at play, however? According to Fudzilla, there have been rumors that Nvidia has been seeking to reduce the number of add-in board (AIB) partners, focusing on just the more profitable ones. Whether or not that's the case here, only Nvidia and Club 3D know for sure. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

E3 2013: DayZ Posted: 12 Jun 2013 09:49 AM PDT Survival + zombies = DayZ Gamers have been fighting zombies in virtual worlds for several years, though the theme has arguably never been more popular than it is right now. One title that we're looking forward to playing is DayZ, an upcoming multi-player open world survival horror game where you'll have to keep your character fed, watered, and clothed. No easy task when the world is overrun by zombies. Maximum PC Online Editor Jimmy Thang caught up with DayZ designer Dean Hall to talk about the upcoming game, which is in development with Bohemia Interactive. DayZ, as you're probably aware, started off as a mod for Arma 2. It became popular, so Hall began working with Bohemia to develop a standalone game, which is what was being shown at E3. One of the differences between the mod and upcoming game is that Arma 2 is a first person shooter whereas Day is being designed as an MMO. "We basically remade the engine as an MMO," Hall told Thang. You'll meet other people in the game and it will be up to you whether or not to join up or kill them and take their stuff. Check it out below! Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Goodbye Microsoft Points, Hello Real Currency Posted: 12 Jun 2013 09:19 AM PDT Microsoft Points being phased out. Microsoft earlier this week finally revealed details about its next generation game console, the Xbox One, at the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3), setting in motion an eventual showdown this holiday shopping season with Sony's PlayStation 4 (and Nintendo's Wii U, though that one's been out for awhile). Most of the unveiling focused on upcoming games, though one tidbit that's been mostly overlooked is that Microsoft is finally moving away from its Microsoft Points system in favor of real currency. Beginning this fall, gamers will make purchases using their local currency instead of virtual currency. This is great news, considering that the Xbox One is so heavily invested in the cloud. From downloadable content (DLC) to games and other goods and services, gamers figure to spend a boatload of money on the Xbox One. Currently Microsoft sells Points in 400 ($5), 800 ($10), 1600 ($20), 4,000 ($50), and 6,000 ($75) increments. After Microsoft transitions to a real currency model, any existing points you already have will be converted over, which you can then redeem. Also, you'll still be able to redeem any Microsoft Points cards that are collecting dust. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

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