In this bumper-length episode Graham, Rich and Chris discuss E3, the Oculus Rift, new Wolfenstein, The Evil Within and your questions from Twitter. If you like tangents, this episode is basically Christmas.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes as well as downloading the MP3 directly. There's also a YouTube version.

To ask a question in a future episode, follow PC Gamer on Twitter. On the day of recording we'll invite people to ping us their quandries.

You can also follow us as individuals:

Chris - @cthursten
Graham - @gonnas
Rich - @richmcc

Show notes

All of our E3 coverage can be found on the relevent tag page.
Episode 90, in which Tom Senior breaks free of the bonds of decency in order to describe EVR.
Tom's Sleeping Dogs review.
That horror game we totally forgot the name of is Darkwood.
Rich Cobbett on the Doom novels.
Football Manager Ruined My Life, a book.

After a disastrous financial year, in which Square Enix not only failed to make their expected profits, but were hit instead with by massive financial loss, the company's senior executive managing director Yosuke Matsuda has been looking at Kickstarter as a possible guide to improving "asset turnover". Which isn't to say they'll attempt to raise $100,000,000 for a Tomb Raider sequel via the crowd-funding site. ($110,000,000 stretch goal: add some proper tombs.) Instead, Matsuda wants Square Enix to interact with its customers at an earlier stage.

"One could go as far as to say that in today's times, making customers wait for years with little to no information is being dishonest to them," Matsuda said, in an earnings call two weeks ago. "We're no longer in an age where customers are left in the dark until a product is completed. We need to shift to a business model where we frequently interact with our customers for our products that are in‐development and/or prior to being sold, have our customers understand games under development, and finally make sure we develop games that meet their expectations."

"There is a crowdfunding website called 'Kickstarter,'" he continued, "which does not only serve as a method of financing for developers, but I believe should also be seen as a way to unite marketing and development together by allowing us to interact with customers while a game is in development."

Matsuda also pointed to Steam's Greenlight and Early Access initiatives as ways in which game makers are communicating with their community:

"Valve's Steam Greenlight and Early Access, are also very interesting, in that they raise the frequency by which we interact with customers, increasing their engagement and reflecting customer needs. We are also looking at what initiatives are possible from this perspective. What should we present to our customers before a game is finished, how can our customers enjoy this, and how do we connect this to profitability, is something we are thinking about implementing, and which can improve our asset turnover in the process."

Traditionally these services have been used by smaller developers, with smaller communities, making direct engagement a more manageable prospect. How Square Enix would scale these ideas out onto a much larger scale remains to be seen. But more openness and interaction from the publisher surely can't be a bad thing.

Thanks, GamesIndustry.

Square Enix's incoming president, Yosuke Matsuda, has started sharpening the axe of financial viability after the "extraordinary loss" of this last financial year. In a Square Enix Holdings briefing session, translated by Siliconera, Matsuda announces plans to review all elements of the business, with a view to focusing its direction on "what makes us successful".

"After having succeeded the important role as the president, I plan on reviewing all Square Enix duties, business and assets on a zero-based budgeting standpoint," Matsuda says. "Due to the radical change of environment, I’d like to fundamentally review what works and what doesn't work for our company, then cast all of our resources towards extending what makes us successful and thoroughly squeezing out what doesn't.

"As far as a concrete plan on what to expect from us, I will further explain it on another briefing session in the near future, so I kindly ask for your patience. Thank you for your support."

While Matsuda isn't due to step into the role until June, Square Enix have already begun to restructure. In a statement to Polygon, senior director of PR Reilly Brennan announced, "We can confirm that Square Enix's Los Angeles office has eliminated a number of positions as part of the corporate restructuring announced last week. This is an unfortunate situation and we are offering assistance and severance packages to any employees affected by this, we want to thank them for their hard work and sincerely wish them well in the future." This is in addition to the LA office lay-offs made back in December.

How SE's development studios will be affected by Matsuda's review is unclear, but sales figures suggest a change may be due. Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs all failed to meet expectations, despite Tomb Raider experiencing a record launch week for the series.

Square Enix have announced the resignation of their CEO, Yoichi Wada, following an earnings forecast that predicts the company will experience "extraordinary loss" this financial year. According to their consolidated results report, the company had expected to make profits of 3.5 billion yen (approx. £24.5 million) before the end of the financial year, this March 31st. That didn't happen. Instead, Square Enix is now expected to report a loss of 13 billion yen (approx. £91 million).

According to the report, "The Company forecasts that actual business results from its Digital Entertainment Segment substantially fall below its plan primarily due to slow sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets." Detailed sales breakdowns aren't available, but while some of the low earnings will be from the Japanese console-only side of the business, no doubt their Western studios, recently responsible for Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider, have also underperformed.

In addition to Wada's resignation, to be replaced by former company president Yosuke Matsuda, Square Enix are also planning a major restructure in "development policy, organizational structure, some business models, and others." What the means in real terms - especially for upcoming projects like Eidos Montreal's Thief - remains to be seen.

Thanks, Polygon.

As it typically does for a major game launch, Nvidia has updated its GeForce card drivers to 314.22 for boosts in performance and stability. It claims recent titans BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider both get a significant bump in frames-per-second, with the former increasing by 41 percent and the latter by an astonishing 71 percent.

Nvidia's article provides benchmark results and pretty green graph bars to scrutinize. Though the company's test hardware was an Intel i7-3960X and a GTX 680—a beefy setup most definitely on the high-end of priciness—Nvidia says the improvements apply to most other cards in the GTX family.

Other frame gains include an extra 30 percent for Civilization 5, 22 percent for Sniper Elite V2, and 12 percent for Sleeping Dogs. Smaller boosts are given to Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2, Black Ops 2, and Skyrim. Really, if you're playing nearly any graphics-heavy game from the past few years, and you're a GeForce user, pick up the drivers on the official website or through the useful GeForce Experience tool. It's green across the board.

Broken menus, wonky mouse controls, single figure framerates - this is the familiar story of PC gaming prowess held back by consoles. We understand why it happens: console-land was where the majority of sales were, and thus the focus of development. But that reasoning has never seemed, well, reasonable: a trashy console port can knock a chunk off your Metacritic rating, sour a huge potential audience against you forever and lose you loads of sales on a platform that can be extremely lucrative if only you know how to approach it.

It's really not that hard or expensive. After all, a pair of talented modders managed to make Dark Souls' PC version immeasurably better within the space of an evening, and while devs might not want to spend resources making hi-res assets just for PC, there's plenty of really basic stuff that can be done to not totally fuck up a game. Which, given the amount of time, love and money spent on these creations, is surely something that would please the developers and publishers as much as their beleaguered PC audience.

We've thrown together a list of tips, common foibles and fixes - add your own in the comments!

On release, Binary Domain defaulted to gamepad inputs which could only be changed by running a separate settings program. Gnnngggn.

Accessible settings
PC configurations are as many and varied as the gamers that own them. A PC game has to account for this with its range of settings. Have these options accessible in-game, and don't require the player to drop back to the main menu to change them. Definitely don't put them in a separate trainer which forces you to restart the entire damn game. (Hi there, Binary Domain.)

Resolution
For the love of Baal, let us change the resolution. And definitely let us change the resolution before embarking on a lengthy unskippable opening cinematic in enforced default shatto-vision. (I’m looking at you, Max Payne 3 - or trying to, anyway.) Better still, autodetect the native resolution!

Key-bindings
Let us at them. Particularly if, for whatever reason, you've decided to give charge of your keyboard inputs to someone who has never actually seen or used a keyboard before. How do you reach the main menu in Binary Domain? Oh, that’s right, it’s Enter. Of course. Then, when in the menus, you press space to select and F to go back. Obviously, in-game, F is the interact key - except when interact is space. Argh. Incidentally, Enter is not the PC's equivalent of the gamepad's A button - it's the furthest you can get from both hands in normal FPS control mode. So don't make it the compulsory key to dismiss pop-up messages.

Gamepads
Some games are designed for and best suit a gamepad. That's cool. But for games which might easily be controlled by either a gamepad or a traditional PC set-up, please autodetect which system is currently under use. Most games seem pretty good at this now, but there are still some stragglers.

Framerate
Let those framerates soar free into the vast open skies of PC gaming wonderment. Also, let us fiddle with things like V-sync - with the vast array of PC hardware set-ups possible it is unlikely you will have guessed how to best optimise your game's performance for any one PC. Why wreck your hard work with dropped or torn frames when you could just trust players to tweak the game to perfection.

FOV sliders, particularly in singleplayer games, should be a given.

Field of View
PC gamers typically sit closer to their screens than console gamers and this changes the effect of a limited FOV. Unless you are setting out specifically to discomfit and sicken the player, offering the ability to adjust FOV will only make people like you. You do want to be liked, right?

Alt-tab
If your game cannot do this, you are probably going to Hell, where you'll be forced to troubleshoot for irascible Windows ME users for the rest of eternity. Sorry about that.

Menus
PCs typically come equipped with a mouse - the perfect device with which to gaily skip through menus. Please make use of it. Do not make us scroll through a gazillion options when a single click would do. Relatedly, make your menus pay attention to where the cursor actually IS. Console ports, like many carnivorous predators, seem to only sense movement. So you often see the wrong menu option highlighted and have to wiggle the cursor a bit to make it notice where you're actually pointing.

Mouse support
Mice are not thumbsticks. This should be quickly apparent from their different shape. Do not duplicate the analogue stick deadzone with your mouse acceleration. (Got that, Dead Space?) Also do not impose momentum on mouse movements. My world stops spinning when my mouse stops, not a few seconds later, Syndicate. And don't use autotargeting systems based on the assumption that there are 8 degrees in a circle.

Sleeping Dogs was a port done right. It also featured a man urinating into a toilet full of sick. A rare game indeed.

Social media integration
No.

Games for Windows Live
Don’t do it. You may think that we PC gamers object to GfwL because we are a prickly bunch who resent having to install yet another wedge of corporate molestation replete with its own superfluous achievements system, fragmentary friends-lists, cross-promotional guff, easily lost log-in details and so on - particularly when we are already so well served by Steam. All that might be true of Origin or uPlay, but it doesn’t come close to describing the genuine horror of GfwL, which remains one of the most ill-conceived and poorly executed pieces of software it is possible to install on your PC. It’s hideously designed, hugely unergonomic, painfully slow, intrusive and prone to complete failure in every single aspect of its operation. It’s just unbelievably terrible.

DRM
Piracy sucks. We know. However, the solution should never be to periodically lose players' saves, punt them to desktop mid-game or prevent them from playing the game altogether.

Hi-res textures
Now, we’re not asking you to create an entirely new assets pipeline for the PC alone, but in many instances textures are created first at high resolution then scaled down to fit onto the itty-bitty consoles. You can make use of those on PC, you know.

Post-release patches
We salute your ongoing commitment to PC gamers by releasing fixes after launch. But don't leave it until then to make your game playable. Don't leave it until launch day, even. There are good business reasons for this: reviewers will be playing your undercooked code; you'll burn your earliest purchasers and most loyal customers; you'll lose momentum building a community among players (particularly key if your game has an online component); people will be more likely to pirate your game if they think it's not worth the risk of an actual purchase.

Any more? Add them in the comments.

Want a free copy of Hitman: Absolution, Far Cry 3 and Sleeping Dogs? As part of its Gaming Evolved program of working with game devs, AMD is bundling up free copies of some of the most exciting titles of the coming holiday season with its current generation of graphics cards. If you buy any AMD card, from any add-in board manufacturer at all, the participating etailer/retailer will include a voucher for a free copy of the relevant games.

Participating etailers are as follows:


Overclockers
DABS
Scan
Aria
CCL
eBuyer
Novatech
DinoPC


Every card will also come with a 20% discount on Medal of Honour: Warfighter. It might not be the first game you'd stretch open your wallet for this holiday season, but that discount looks a bit tastier once you've crossed Far Cry 3 and Hitman off your shopping list.

Here’s a handy chart so you can tell which cards will get you which games. Bless AMD for its ambitious bundling of Hitman: Absolution with CrossFire pairings of its HD 7800 and HD 7700 series of cards.



Sadly, if you’re just buying a single HD 7870 (awesome price/performance right now, people!) then you’re only eligible for the Medal of Brothers in Warfighting Duty discount and a copy of Far Cry 3.

So yeah, free games. Nom. What is almost as nommy though is extra free performance from your existing graphics card. To that end AMD is also pushing out a beta of its latest Catalyst driver, version 12.11 and it’s promising some significant performance gains in a number of titles.

In Battlefield 3 it’s looking at 30-40% improvements over the last 12.8 Catalyst drivers. It claims that these performance improvements are down to the fact that its current range of cards carrying the Graphics Core Next architecture represent a brand new direction for its driver team and it’s still finding different ways to unlock latent potential in the chips themselves.

Still, with AMD’s cards being the top price/performance options out there already any extra speed we can squeeze out of our GPUs is always welcome. I’ll be testing the step up in performance later in the week, so stay tuned!

An analysis of the Windows 8 app certification requirements by programmer and tech blogger Casey Muratori suggests that games with a rating over PEGI 16 or ESRB Mature will not be allowed on the Windows 8 storefront.

This means we won't be seeing many of the current crop of games on the store, or, given the proliferation of rating-baiting neck-stabbing seen at E3, many of next year's either - not unless publisher's are willing to heavily sanitise their content.

The guidelines are pretty explicit about creating a walled-garden within Microsoft's hitherto anything-goes OS. As section 6.2 of the certificaiton requirements state: "Your app must not contain adult content, and metadata must be appropriate for everyone. Apps with a rating over PEGI 16, ESRB MATURE, or that contain content that would warrant such a rating, are not allowed."

As Kotaku pointed out, this might not be such a problem in the US, where relatively few games receive a mature rating, but it will be very significant in Europe, where games such as Dishonored, Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty all fall foul of the restriction.

Of course, you'll still be able to buy and install these games on the OS - you just won't be able to get them from the official Windows storefront. So is this a problem? Perhaps - games that don't make the cut won't be able to make use of Windows 8's bespoke features, and by bifurcating the platform Microsoft risks fragmenting the PC gaming marketplace. If games are rated as mature in one location and not in another, will that create stark regional differences? And what's more, from a creative perspective, it may force developers to censor themselves in an attempt to reach that wider audience.

It's a curious direction to take for a platform which prides itself on being open, and the reaction among devs is sure to echo the fears already annunciated by the likes of Gabe Newell, Blizzard's Rob Pardo, Notch and others.

This week's best deals  ►  Total War, EVE Online, Dragon Age
Steam has routed your excuses for not trying out the Total War franchise with Rome Gold, Empire, Medieval II, Napoleon, Shogun 2, and Fall of the Samurai all for $32. Amazon will throw you pod-first into the ruthless galaxy of EVE Online for a fiver. GameStop is looking to hook you up with over 100 hours of Dragon Age goodness for $10.

Steam  ►  Total War Franchise, Modern Warfare 3, Hearts of Iron III
Modern Warfare 3 is half price and the multiplayer is free to play this weekend. This is in addition to basically everything that says "Total War" on it being discounted 25% or more.


75% off Total War Master Collection - $31.98 Individual Total War titles are also 25% off or more.
50% off Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - $29.99
75% off Hearts of Iron 3 Collection - $7.49
75% off The Binding of Isaac - $1.24, Wrath of the Lamb DLC is also 75% off - 74 cents
50% off Age of Empires Online Steam Starter Pack - $9.99
More Steam Deals



Amazon  ►  EVE Online, Sleeping Dogs, XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Get your start in Spreadsheet Commando EVE Online for only $5. You can also pre-order XCOM for 10% off.


75% off EVE Online: Inferno - $4.99
10% off XCOM: Enemy Unknown - $44.99
40% off Sleeping Dogs - $29.99
87% off the Viva Big Bundle of Games (Featuring Grand Ages Rome and Crazy Machines) - $9.99
26% off Assassin's Creed 2 - $14.83
More Amazon Deals



Green Man Gaming  ►  Alpha Protocol, Sonic 3 and Knuckles, XCOM
Green Man is offering up Obsidian's spy-themed story RPG Alpha Protocol and an armload of Sonic the Hedgehog titles - including the quintessential Sonic 3 and Knuckles - at half off. They've also got two voucher deals running: GMG20-27J4Z-8NXHO for 20% off any download, and GMGSD-W3R94-DZBAZ for 30% off Sleeping Dogs.


10% off XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Pre-order) - $44.99
50% off Alpha Protocol - $9.98
50% off Condemned: Criminal Origins - $7.49
50% off Sonic 3 and Knuckles - $2.49
50% off Renegade Ops - $7.49
More GMG Deals



GOG  ►  Square Enix Squad
How does this sound: Thief 1, 2, and 3, Deus Ex GOTY and Deus Ex Invisible War, Hitman 1 and 2, Tomb Raider 1, 2, and 3... all for $38.30. You can also add the Legacy of Kain series, Conflict: Desert Storm, Anachronox, and Pandemonium! to the deal to increase your percentage savings.

Also, it's not on sale, but the Carmageddon Max Pack is now available for $9.99.

Get Games  ►  Hitman Absolution, Guild Wars 2 (EU), Far Cry series
Get Games is selling the Professional Edition of Hitman Absolution (pre-order) for the same price as the normal edition, which is cheaper than we've seen it anywhere else.


25% off Hitman Absolution Professional Edition (Pre-order) - $44.99
10% off Carrier Command: Gaea Mission - $44.99
15% off Guild Wars 2 - $46.75 (Europe only)
75% off Far Cry 1 and 2 - $6.25
60% off Lord of the Rings: War in the North - $19.99
75% off Overlord II - $2.49
More deals from Get Games



GameStop   ►   War of the Roses, Dragon Age, Battlefield 3
The problem with pre-ordering War of the Roses on Steam is that it gives you the House of Lancaster armor set. Toss aside those pretenders and support the noble House of York with GameStop for only 30 bucks. You can also get ALL THE DRAGON AGE! (Excluding DA2 DLC) that there is to play for 10.


War of the Roses House of York Deluxe Edition (Pre-order) - $29.99
80% off Dragon Age Bundle - $9.99, includes Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition and Dragon Age 2
75% off Battlefield 3 - $9.99
50% off Spore Ultimate Digital Collection - $14.99
More GameStop deals



GameFly   ►  Modern Warfare, Prototype, Singularity
You could grab the entire Prototype franchise for under 40 bucks, or the entire Modern Warfare franchise for $60 from GameFly this week.

50% off Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - $9.99
50% off Modern Warfare 2 - $9.99
50% off Modern Warfare 3 - $29.99
75% off Prototype - $4.99
33% off Prototype 2 - $33.49
75% off Singularity - $7.49
More GameFly Deals




Best Buy   ►  Max Payne 3
Finally, Best Buy has Max Payne 3 for 66% off, at $20.

Let us know in the comments if you find any more great deals!

Disclaimer: We offer no guarantees regarding the validity of these sales, their restrictions, or the quality of service provided by these distributors. We cannot vet every deal: we only list what we see advertised at the time of writing. Buy at your own risk!

Undercover Detective Wei Shen's Triad shenanigans in Sleeping Dogs involve plenty of activities beyond strong-arming street vendors and butterfly-kicking random civilians, and he'll soon have more diversions at his disposal. Developer United Front Games and publisher Square Enix plan a bevy of DLC content in October to furnish the open-world action-adventure with additional racing activities, cop missions, and weapons across five content packs releasing throughout the month.

The teaser trailer above touches on what each pack offers, but the announcement from Square Enix drifted on details like a souped-up Audi. Speaking of drifting, however, we do know the Street Racer Pack peppers racing missions throughout the dense Hong (Honk?) Kong roads.



If that sounds a little too hooligan-y, the SWAT Pack returns Shen to the force with 20 new cop missions awaiting sweet street justice, though an extra wait nets you the awesome armory of the Tactical Soldier pack which brings "the game's most powerful weapons and armor."

Lastly, a free Community Gift Pack gives "tailor-made content" to players straight from United Front. What that content entails isn't known yet, but we hope United Front takes a page from Saints Row and gives us giant fist-gloves for Shen.



Square Enix also hinted at a story-driven DLC appearing sometime in October but won't elaborate until a special panel at New York Comic Con on October 14. Speculation alert: John Woo punches Shen in the face after sliding down a banister as doves majestically flap away in slow motion.

No other details on specific release dates and pricing, but previous DLC suggests a price tag of around $3-$5.