Photo by Stephen Brashear/Invision for XBOX/AP Images

Microsoft’s Xbox One reveal this morning didn’t present any immediate or obvious implications for Our Dear Hobby. Conspicuously few games were shown during the debut of a new video game console, and no games were demonstrated live. Microsoft mostly spoke about the new utilities (Skype!), partnerships (NFL!), and living room takeover (Kinect!) we’ll expect from the Xbox One when it releases this year. From a technical perspective, 8 GB of RAM is the only concrete hardware spec Microsoft dropped.

Our response around the office to the presentation was an uncynical but collective shrug. The modest amount of information Microsoft let out gives us little to react to as PC gamers, as Microsoft spent so little of the precious hour that it held the attention of the internet showing us what kinds of gaming experiences we could expect to have on its new system. Those will be revealed next month at what should be a memorable E3.

Still, we’re interested in thinking about how Microsoft’s decisions could have a direct or indirect impact on PC gaming, something that has happened before. Microsoft used the talents of Age of Empires creator Ensemble Studios to produce a console-exclusive RTS (Halo Wars) and a cancelled Halo MMO. The MechWarrior license lingered in limbo until recently, in our opinion, because Microsoft wasn't sure if it could make a profitable mech game on Xbox. Microsoft’s attempt at extending Xbox to the Windows platform birthed the disastrous Games For Windows LIVE, a service so frustrating that it was newsworthy when developers told us they weren't using it.

Based on what we know and a little bit of crystal ball-gazing, here’s three possible ways PC gaming could be affected by the release of the Xbox One.

Exclusive games
 


Microsoft announced that the Xbox One will get 15 exclusive games in its first year, including eight new franchises. One of those exclusives may be a new Remedy game, Quantum Break, which appears to cross-over with a live-action show.

There’s hope, however, that some of these exclusives will sneak onto PC. Over the past console generation, marketers have made the term “exclusive” synonymous with “timed exclusive,” acknowledging the distinction only at the last possible moment. Remedy's Alan Wake, for instance, was eventually ported to PC.

A majority of Xbox 360 games announced as exclusives, however, remain firmly stuck on the platform. We’ve never seen a Forza game or a Gears of War after the first, and Microsoft Game Studios seems to have given up entirely on Halo ports.

The good news is that many of the Xbox 360 exclusives were Kinect titles best suited for the living room anyway, and others, such as Rare’s Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, weren’t games we ever expected to be developed for PC in the first place. Let’s hope it stays that way.

The best-known developers owned by Microsoft are 343 Industries (Halo), Turn 10 (Forza), Lionhead (Fable), and Rare (Banjo-Kazooie). Expect exclusives from them—we already know a new Forza is coming—and a few from its third-party developers, such as Crackdown creators Ruffian Games. Ideally, the games we expect to be multiplatform, such as the first game from Respawn, will stay that way. We'll have a much better picture come E3 next month.

Growth of streaming, new Steam features
 


A casual survey of the web pretty clearly pegs PC gamers as the leading producers of gameplay videos and livestreams, but console gamers may soon catch up. Both Sony and Microsoft now promise that their new consoles will make it easy to capture and share gameplay video, a task which formerly required capture hardware. If streaming is a part of that plan, it could be good news for services like Twitch.tv, which we'd expect to be flooded with new members as the console crowd joins the show.

If that happens, we can also assume that more players will start watching streams, possibly growing eSports awareness and viewership and acting as a catalyst for overall improvements to streaming. That's our loose, foggy prediction, but we do expect some concrete effects—Steam will likely start responding to the features of the Xbox One and PS4, especially with Steam box on its way to directly compete for living rooms. At the very least, integrated video capture and sharing seem very likely. At the most, Steam becomes the same kind of media center Microsoft showed off today, offering much more than games.

Valve has already dabbled in film by offering Indie Game: The Movie for sale on Steam, and recently added non-game software to its catalog. Its most recent major updates have been about expanding community features and giving us more to do in Steam, both in and out of our games. What's next? Our gut feeling is that it'll be significant.

More free-to-play PC games, and they won’t be MOBAs
 


Microsoft didn’t drop the phrase “free-to-play” once during its reveal of Xbox One, but we’d be baffled if free-to-play games don't become a prominent new category on the system. And we’d be more surprised if some of those hypothetical, F2P Xbox One games didn't make their way to PC.

We expect the success of free-to-play as a business model on PC and mobile (in 2011, free-to-play earned more revenue than paid games in the App Store) to create a gold rush within the industry. Plenty of developers have to be eager to become the Riot Games of the console world, to gain a foothold through early adoption rather than reacting to the potential success of the business model on Xbox One.

On the safe assumption that mouse and keyboard won’t be native to the Xbox One, the free-to-play games that propagate on Microsoft’s system will probably be multiplayer action games and low-budget, indie experiments that can be played with a controller: shooters, platformers, puzzle games, action-RPGs, and MMOs. Most of those are portable to PC. Microsoft has already dabbled with F2P a bit with Ascend: New Gods, an unreleased action-RPG, as well as with advertising-supported free games. Our pals at OXM speculated that a free-to-play Fable MMO could be in the works.

This feels like an incredibly safe prediction to us. One or more free-to-play games being part of the Xbox One launch lineup would be a feather in Microsoft’s cap—it’d be a way for early adopters to justify their (probably fairly) expensive purchase, and a novelty to console owners who’ve never played something like League of Legends or PlanetSide 2.

The big finale at Microsoft's Xbox One reveal today was not Call of Duty: Ghosts. It was Call of Duty: Ghosts' instantly famous mo-capped dog. That's right, Ghosts will feature Peter Molyneux's essential invention: a dog companion to keep us company as we fight back against an oppressive someone. This is Call of Doggy. Collar Duty. The rex generation of gaming. I could go on, but I'll stop before you flea.

The lead character and his pup will be an emotional duo, according to Activision, which brought in Academy Award winning filmmaker Stephen Gaghan, writer of Traffic and Syriana, to pen the script.

"We're pushing the genre forward with Ghosts," said Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg. "I think a lot of people were expecting us to create Modern Warfare 4, but we didn't want to rest on our laurels. We wanted to press the franchise forward with a new world and new engine."



"Soldiers stand against their enemies, but ghosts haunt them," rumbles the trailer, a string of in-engine cutscenes which you can watch above. The rest of the reveal was largely behind-the-scenes video of mo-cap sessions and asset creation, but Activision did show off impressive destructible multiplayer maps which will react to player-triggered events. The other gameplay snippets were less-impressive demonstrations of leaning and sliding, which both look just fine, but aren't exactly groundbreaking stuff.

The bulk of the presentation, however, was about the engine's graphical improvements. Aside from the high-fidelity dog, Activision showed off arm hair, a shaved head, and the jungle scene below. We captured these from the Xbox One reveal livestream, but we'll replace them with high-quality screenshots when they become available.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist is shaping up to be a nice return to form for the decade-old stealth franchise. Previous trailers have shown a return of the celebrated Spys vs. Mercs multiplayer mode and a reward system for different styles of play: stealthy and non-lethal, stealthy and lethal, and bull-in-a-china-shop.
Since the third game in the Splinter Cell series, Chaos Theory, cooperative multiplayer has put players in the roles of a secondary team of spies sent in to grease the wheels for / clean up the messes of main character Sam Fisher. The multiplayer experience in Blacklist is getting an upgrade with Fisher himself teaming up with new character Isaac Briggs. The campaign will span 14 missions, which is a decent chunk of time.



Having your main character share the spotlight is a bit of a gamble, but if the pair can have some buddy cop-style exchanges along the way, it might all be worth it. I’ll be waiting on the edge of my seat for the moment when Fisher drops a “I’m too old for this” and threatens to retire.



Splinter Cell: Blacklist will be available August 20 in the US, August 23 in Europe.

Dragons. Let's face it: the poor beasts are generally woefully misrepresented in video games. Dragonborn's dragon-riding feature was decidedly underwhelming, and the Sims 3's attempt at beastliness doesn't look capable of roasting more than a marshmallow. To top it off, WoW's Vial of the Sands simply transformed you into something dopey-looking and vomit-colored, and people would demand to ride on your back. That's why we're hoping that Sony Online Entertainment's next free-to-play MMO, Dragon's Prophet, will restore badassery to the serpentine beings when it opens for beta at the end of this month.

The fantasy MMO has been in closed beta for awhile, but we've heard few roars bursting forth from the gates to the dragony kingdom till now. Dragon's Prophet will have you capturing, trainining, riding, or—if you're a bit of a jerk—even fighting "hundreds of unique dragons."

"Ah, but if everyone gets to ride a massive dragon, doesn't that make no one a badass?" I hear you ask. And maybe that's why Sony Online have concocted their own Founders program. Besides three tiers of the usual stuff—in-game currency, items, and titles for your toons—players can also get a headstart, entering beta a day earlier than the rest of the population for a brief leg-up on the name-claiming leveling progress.

It isn't long until the open beta, but you can still try for the closed beta on Dragon Prophet's website.

A series of tweets by SOE's president John Smedley have revealed an imminent promotion for PlanetSide 1, offering players of PlanetSide 2 - and former PS1 recruits - six months free membership to the original MMOFPS, ahead of an eventual plan to make it fully free-to-play. I'm guessing age will play a large part in whether you react to the sight of the 2003 shooter with a new-found respect for its many achievements, or recoil in horror at its graphics and creaky netcode. It was the best we had, damn it. Don't judge us.

"We did a mass grant of anyone who has ever played PS1 or PS2 with free time in PS1," Smedley announced, addressing some confusion over who was to be included in the promotion. "We weren't ready to announce it yet because the database grant is still ongoing and won't be done till morning. So please if you didn't get flagged chill. We are trying to do something cool for everyone and we were going to tell people when it's done. But people saw it and others broadcast the info.

"Please don't complain," he continued. "We aren't raising your taxes we are making a game free. This also gives us more time to make it F2P. So enjoy starting late morning."

No timeframe has been given for the full free-to-play switch, but the PS1 promotion should start soon.

Thanks, Massively.

Looking through this selection of screenshots for the upcoming 8.6 update to World of Tanks, I'm starting to think it's a shame these giant metal machines were designed for war and destruction. There's just something adorable about the way they position themselves around the map, cocking a inquisitive turret as if thoughtfully peering into the distance. It seems a waste to make them fight each other.

But fight they will. "Update 8.6 is a major step in game balance enhancement and is really going to make SPGs players happy," said Mike Zhivets, producer on World of Tanks. "Artillery gameplay is going to feel a lot more balanced with a normal ten tier structure, making advancing through that class of armor more comfortable for players."

Aside from the balance changes and new SPGs, the update will also add a Korean based map and the British A33 Excelsior.

Life for the pagan warriors of 867 AD was certainly eventful. You had to decide which of the many gods you'd offer a freshly chopped head, fight over the exact distribution of the spoils of a successful pillage, and endure continuous interruption from the members of Led Zeppelin, who were constantly looking for inspiration for 1970s rock songs.

Now Paradox are offering you the chance to add your own notable pagan conundrums to their upcoming Crusader Kings 2 expansion, The Old Gods.

The competition asks players to create an in-game event, providing the title, description and potential outcomes. Of the submitted entries, three winners will picked, and their submissions will be added into the game.

Here are the rules, as laid out by Paradox:


It has to be a simple, one-shot event. No follow-ups, no event series.
It can be historical, humorous, serious, or any combination of those - as long as it fits the period.
We prefer character events, but you can also create a narrative event if you want to include more text.
The event will be restricted to pagans (and Zoroastrians). It's up to you whether it should be generic enough to be available to all of them, or if it should be limited to Norse Pagans, Zoroastrians, Tengri or another specific group.
Unless you have an event picture in mind, we'll pick an appropriate artwork for the event.
The event needs both a trigger and an effect. The trigger can be as simple as being an adult and having a certain religion, or something more restrictive. The effect shouldn't be too severe or impact the game too much, as this will be more of a flavor event.
The event can have multiple options with different effects, or just one. (Having additional options that only show up if the character has a certain trait can be a nice touch, but it isn't required.)
Take care not to write too much, as the text needs to fit inside the event window. If it's too long, we'll shorten it as needed if your event is picked as one of the winners.


Beyond seeing their work added to the expansion, the winners will receive the CKII Bundle, including the game and all previous DLC, as well as a copy of March of the Eagles.

To enter, just add your event idea to this thread on the Paradox forums.

Crusader Kings 2: The Old Gods is due out May 28th. For more on the game, check out the latest video development diaries below.

Guild Wars 2's crab-tossing, beach battling Southsun Cove questline is set to conclude next week, with the release of the Last Stand at Southsun update. From May 28th, ArenaNet will add a new solo story dungeon, asking players to infiltrate Canach's lair to bring down the "renegade" Sylvari. Hmm, are you still a renegade if you've got a lair? Surely you're at least miscreant, if not a full-fledged villain.

Players also get to experience the titular last stand, fending off the advances of the area's overly aggressive wildlife. If batting off some animals sounds a bit anti-climatic, hold off until June 5th, when they'll be joined by a "hulking monstrosity" that ArenaNet say threatens to "destroy the settlers and everything they've built". Which does sound like a more appropriate finale.

Living story aside, the update also brings a series of World vs. World changes. Extra daily achievements, additional rewards and new abilities will be added, including the chance to gain a mastery in pouring hot oil over people. World XP is also being changed, with players being rewarded for a wider range of activities in the Mists.

You can see the full scope of Last Stand at Southsun over at the Guild Wars 2 release page.

There are already an absurd number of possible empires in Civilization 5. The vanilla game came with a not-inconsiderable eighteen, DLC gave the option for another seven, and the Gods & Kings expansion raised the total by a further nine. Then there are mods, letting you play an astonishing range of leaders, from Stalin to Adventure Time's Princess Bubblegum.

As well as expanding the cultural victory path and bolstering democracy, the Brave New World expansion also increases the number of countries that can vie for dominance across your hexagonal world. Two more civs have just been announced: Indonesia, led by Gaja Mada, and Morocco, fronted by the sultan Ahmad al-Mansur.

Brave New World will add nine new civilisations when it's released in July. Here are the seven that have been revealed so far:


Casimir of Poland
Pedro II of Brazil
Ashurbanipal of Assyria
Maria of Portugal
Shaka of the Zulu
Gaja Mada of Indonesia
Ahmad al-Mansur of Morocco


With two leaders yet to be announced, who would you like to see added?

Thanks, Joystiq.

What starts as an authentically gruff assessment of a hero of the Wild West, soon becomes a ridiculously excitable celebration of violence, arcade action and skill shots. If you want to place the exact moment when the launch trailer for Call of Juarez: Gunslinger descends into over-the-top silliness, it's right around the line: "the face is one of Silas' favourite places to shoot people."

Previous Gunslinger footage has hinted that the story of Silas Greaves might not be as accurate as he'd have you believe. Here we see that in effect, as an ambush is switched out been Native Americans and cowboys - Greaves proving something of an unreliable narrator when it comes to the retelling of his tale.

Story aside, the action has more than a hint of Bulletstorm, thanks to the skill points awarded for certain kills, and an arcade mode that dispenses with the narrative altogether.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is out tomorrow.