Newshogg – 1 Billion Dark Machines

Some of it is news, some of it is olds, but all of it is right here for your looking balls. All hail Newshogg.

Valve announces the Gabecube, Dark Souls 2 coverage, the first AAA Soulslike, GTA V sells a few copes, and more, just after the jump.

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The Tokyo Game Show is a thing, and it happened. Here’s a round-up from GamesBeat of all the trailers.

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GabeCube

In the first two of three announcements, Valve has officially unveiled SteamOS and the Steam Machine (affectionately known now as the Gabecube).

SteamOS is going to be a Linux-powered operating system built specifically for the living room. Designed to run games, play movies and music, and stream non-Linux games from your PC, it’ll be open, it’ll be free and it will be interesting to watch how this changes the industry as a whole. Because it will – this is Valve after all, who almost singlehandedly drove the digital distribution revolution.

There’s less information right now about the Steam Machines, but obviously they’re going to be pieces of hardware designed to take full advantage of SteamOS, and made to be hooked up to the big screen TV in your living room.

The third announcement won’t be Half-Life 3. Smart money is on a biometric controller to use with the GabeCube.

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Dark Date

A few bits and pieces of news out of the Dark Souls 2 camp. First and most importantly is that they’ve confirmed the release date for the consoles: March 11, 2014 for North America, March 13 for Japan and March 14 for Europe… I’m not sure where this leaves Australia… And there’s no official word on how long we’ll have to wait for the PC release.

Amazon has three versions up for preorder – on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3(referral links) – with the most comprehensive edition going for 120USD.

They’ve also said they’ll be continuing to use the Havok Physics Engine, so all three of you that care about that sort of thing can now go and get super excited.

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Deep Sixed

Deep Down is the first in what will likely be a long series of Souls-likes. Looking like Dark Souls but with an Assassin’s Creed-style sci-fi meta-narrative, I was interested to see what they were going to do with the game… Until they announced it would be free to play, ensuring that the game will be greatly effected and possibly ruined by the nickle-and-diming we’ve all come to expect from free to play.

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Grand Earnt Auto

Take-Two Interactive (publishers of GTA V) estimate that the game earned over one billion dollars in its first three days of sales which is insane, but hardly surprising. Once they’ve all gotten sick of doing Dr. Evil impressions at each other we’ll see if they release any official figures to back up these internal estimates.

In related news, if you bought GTA V via the PSN store you can rest assured that you are living in the future and helped to ensure there is a little less plastic waste in the world… but your version of the game stutters compared to the retail release. Sorry!

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Xboner

Whilst the vertical Xbox 360 has been a mainstay in advertising images since before the console’s release, Microsoft are say that if you put the Xbone vertical, you do so at your own risk.

And finally, we’ve taken a few stabs at the Xbox One in previous issues of Newshogg, so it’s good to see we aren’t the only ones with concerns. US Gamer asks the question – Is the Xbone Ready for Launch? Well worth the read.

Special thanks (as ever) to James McKibbin for helping to tame the Newshogg.