Unreal engine 4.11 now released as beta

Epic, a few days ago, made available UE4 4.11 Preview 1; for the big UE4 aficionados this is worth checking out though what needs to be kept in mind is that this is merely a beta (so if you are after stability then 4.10.1 is the one to go for instead).

You can read more about UE4 4.11 Preview 1 here.

VS Games 2016 conference

The next VS Games (2016) conference is to take place in Barcelona, Spain in September of the new year (the conference was organised in Bournemouth in 2013, where I acted as a general chair for it that year).

More information on its official website here, including submission deadlines plus arrangements for a special issue at Springer's Virtual Reality journal.

Game to be shipped with the Oculus Rift announced

It appears that the Oculus Rift VR headset is now to be bundled with a game called Lucky's Tale (on its release). Bundled titles like that (for consoles and gaming hardware in general) has been about showcasing the hardware as much as the game itself so much is expected from the game.

You can read the full news and check out a video of the game on the official Oculus Rift blog here.

Superhot game

It is not often that a first person shooter provides significant innovation to the genre these days; despite the fact that there are many great FPS games released continuously. Superhot, coming out of Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter campaigns, appears to be doing this both visually but also (more importantly) in terms of mechanics.

More about this upcoming, to be released in 2016, game on its official site here.

Raspberry Pi Zero

There is now a new -and smaller, see pic below- version of the well known Raspberry Pi; titled Raspberry Pi Zero. 

It is worth reading more about this here on its official site, however the new version is a more cost-efficient one of the original; intended to provide the same service to a target market where even a modest/basic cost can be an obstruction.

Global Game Jam 2016

The Global Game Jam 2016 competition is set to take place between the 29th and 31st of January; this is a games jam which takes place, under a common theme, at different locations across the entire world.

As with 2015 there is local Bournemouth University organisation for this, more details on this here.

Unreal Match 3

For those interested in developing mobile games with Epic's UE4 a great learning resource that the company has recently added is Unreal Match 3, consisting of a game plus written and video tutorials around it.

If you are interested in developing something for that market specifically (rather than AAA console that UE4 is more often thought of as more compatible with) this is well recommended.

More on this here on the official Epic site.

HTC Vive delayed

The HTC Vive; one of the few headsets set to compete for the crown of VR tech is to be delayed for spring 2016 (bringing it more in line with the other names it is positioned against, regarding release dates at least). Additionally, reports (see the Engadget article here) seem to suggest new additional innovation added to the technology.

While this is not elaborated on we will soon know in 2016 what HTC plans for their Vive device (the CES January exhibition is said to have a demo of the device).

Aardvark Swift's Search for a Star and Rising Star competitions

Aardvark Swift, who recently delivered an excellent guest talk at Bournemouth University, have launched again their annual Search for a Star and Rising Star undergraduate student competitions.

With Autodesk and Microsoft involved in the two different strands more can be found on the official website here.

Nintendo NX's controller?

As MCV recently reported (the full news item can be found here), Nintendo has filed a patent for a new controller. While this could of course turn out to be not the case, there is some speculation this could be the next Nintendo NX console controller.

Pictured above is the controller; one that is different to previous Nintendo efforts. Time will tell if this turns out to be their new approach for their next (and much-awaited) console which succeeds the Wii U.

Steam Link

Valve's Steam Link is the company's answer to approaches such as Apple TV (see previous post); essentially it is envisaged as a box sitting beneath a large screen TV in a living room streaming Steam games from a PC elsewhere in the house. 

With its low cost (shifted admittedly on having a PC with a strong spec available) quite attractive, plus a dedicated controller, the device could be a hit for Valve in hardware and open the door for other future approaches of the like with the Steam platform.

Unity 4 receives its final version release

A much used and pivotal version of the Unity engine is now reportedly on its final release. With Unity moving on to version 5 during 2015 the company has recently released version 4.7 as the last iteration of the previous version.

More information on the official Unity blog here.