Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Angry Birds, Dragon Quest, FIFA Soccer, and Silent Hill are the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
- GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) – Yarn Spinner (2026)
- The History Of The Word “Metroidvania” And How It Spread – A Critical Hit (2025)
- Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment – Bloomberg (2025)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
Most Recent: PC
Oculus Rift will be available on March 28 for $600
After all the waiting, Oculus has finally announced a release date for the Oculus Rift. In a new post on the Oculus Blog, the company has revealed that the virtual reality headset is now available to pre-order and will ship to consumers on March 28 (with addition headsets available in stores in April). But make sure your finances are in order as the Rift will retail for the budget-busting price of $599.
The complete Oculus Rift package will include the headset, a sensor, the Oculus Remote, an Xbox One controller, and a copy of Lucky’s Tale, a VR platformer developed in-house by Oculus. All pre-order customers will also receive a copy of Eve: Valkyrie, a dogfighting game from CCP Games. Running this software through the Oculus Rift will require a fairly powerful PC, and the company has posted a list of system requirements so users can get the “full experience” from their virtual reality headset:
Oculus Rift: Recommended System Requirements
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
- Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
- Memory: 8GB+ RAM
- Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
- Input: Three USB 3.0 Ports + One USB 2.0 Port
- Operating System: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit or newer
But if you’d rather buy all the necessary equipment at the same time, Oculus will begin pre-selling Oculus Ready PCs (bundled with a Rift headset) in February. Prices for Oculus Ready PCs will start at $1,499.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged EVE: Valkyrie
Rise of the Tomb Raider will officially be released for the PC on January 28
Square Enix has finally made it official after Steam leaked the news a week ago… Rise of the Tomb Raider will officially be available for the PC on January 28. Lara Croft’s latest will make the jump to the PC with a number of improvements over the Xbox version released in November, including Windows 10 support and a 4K resolution display option.
Players interested in purchasing Rise of Tomb Raider for the PC will get three different bundles to choose from:
- A $59.99 Standard Edition will be available in stores and online.
- A $89.99 Digital Deluxe Edition, available only online, will include the game’s Season Pass.
- A $149.99 Collector’s Edition, available exclusively from the Square Enix Online Store, will include the game, a 12-inch Lara Croft Statue, Replicas of Lara’s Journal and Jade Necklace, a copy of 2013’s Tomb Raider, the Season Pass, and a Collectible Steel Case.
In other Rise of the Tomb Raider news, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg has confirmed (via Twitter) that “well over” one million copies of the game have been sold on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 to date.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Rise of the Tomb Raider
Microsoft offers a “snapshot” of their 2016 Xbox One/Windows 10 exclusives
Microsoft loved to promote their 2015 release schedule as the “Greatest Games Line-Up in Xbox History,” but the publisher plans to continue to use that tagline in 2016. Mike Nichols, the Xbox Division’s Corporate Vice President of Marketing, has posted a look back at some of Microsoft’s achievements from the previous year on the Xbox Wire, but the executive also gave us a “snapshot” of Big Redmond’s 2016 lineup of Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusives.
Most of these release dates are well known, but it’s nice to learn that the Windows 10 version of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition will be released this Spring. And it looks like Keiji Inafune’s ReCore will also be released for the PC in addition to the Xbox One, though its release date has been changed from “Spring 2016” to “TBA 2016”:
Greatest Games Line-Up in Xbox History Extends to 2016
- Cobalt (Xbox One / Xbox 360 / Steam) – February 2
- Killer Instinct: Season 3 (Xbox One / Windows 10) – March
- Quantum Break (Xbox One) – April 5
- Fable Legends (Xbox One / Windows 10) – Spring (Open Beta)
- Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (Windows 10) – Spring
- Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (Xbox One / Windows 10) – Spring
- Crackdown 3 (Xbox One) – Summer (Multiplayer)
- Gears of War 4 (Xbox One) – Fall (Launch) / Spring (Multiplayer Beta)
- Halo Wars 2 (Xbox One / Windows 10) – Fall
- Gigantic (Xbox One / Windows 10) – TBA 2016
- ReCore (Xbox One / Windows 10) – TBA 2016
- Sea of Thieves (Xbox One / Windows 10) – TBA 2016
Microsoft has several other unannounced titles on track for 2016 and will make further “new title reveals” in the coming months.
Oculus Touch controller won’t be released until second half of 2016
2016 is being touted as “The Year Virtual Reality Goes Mainstream,” but the calendar changeover was a rough one for fans of the Oculus Rift. Yesterday, the development team at Oculus announced that the Oculus Touch controller has been delayed, and that it won’t be available alongside the Oculus Rift headset’s early 2016 release.
Posting on the Oculus Blog, the developer said they need more time to perfect design of the controller:
On Touch hardware, we’ve made significant advances in ergonomics, and we’re implementing many changes that make Touch even more comfortable, reliable, and natural. We’re also implementing changes that improve hand pose recognition.
[…]
The feedback on Touch has been incredibly positive, and we know this new timeline will produce an even better product, one that will set the bar for VR input. We appreciate your patience and promise Touch will be worth the wait.
In order to make these improvements, the Oculus Touch controller will now be released sometime in the second half of 2016. However, Oculus still plans to bundle an Xbox One controller with every Rift headset.
Square Enix will bring Final Fantasy IX to PC and mobile devices in 2016
Square Enix has announced that Final Fantasy IX will be the next game in the long-running RPG series to receive a re-release on mobile devices and the PC.
There’s no release date for Final Fantasy IX’s return just yet, but we do know that the adventures of Zidane and his crew will be enhanced with “high-definition graphics, newly added achievements, auto-save, high speed mode, and several game boosting features.” Square Enix also released an announcement trailer, which has been embedded above, and launched an official website with story and character details for those who missed it the first time around.
Less famous among gamers than Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX was originally released in 2000 and was the last game in the franchise to be released for the PlayStation.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC
Tagged Final Fantasy IX
Steam Store shows a January 2016 release date for Rise of the Tomb Raider
We knew that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be released for the PC in “Early 2016,” but an update to the game’s Steam page has narrowed it down a bit.
According to Valve’s digital storefront, Rise of the Tomb Raider will be available to download for the PC in “January 2016.” Steam wouldn’t (or couldn’t) get more specific than that, and Square Enix has yet to make an official announcement concerning the game’s PC launch, but it seems very likely that Rise of the Tomb Raider will be released for the PC sometime in the next four weeks.
Rise of the Tomb Raider was originally released for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 on November 10.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Rise of the Tomb Raider
GalaxyTrail officially announces Freedom Planet 2
GalaxyTrail has announced that they will continue the story of their Genesis-inspired platformer, Freedom Planet, in the upcoming Freedom Planet 2. The scoop on the sequel comes to us via the game’s recently launched official website, which delves a bit into Freedom Planet 2’s story:
An ancient terror has emerged from the depths of the ocean. Merga, a water dragon from Avalice’s oldest and deadliest war, has been freed from her crystal prison as a consequence of the Kingdom Stone’s destruction. Through her acts of vengeance, she holds a dark and terrible truth about Avalice’s leaders that will change the history of the three kingdoms forever.
War is imminent once again, but this time, the heroes are split between sides. As friendships are tested, will the girls stand united when Bakunawa rises?
Main characters Lilac, Carol, and Milla will all return in Freedom Planet 2, which will also feature a redesigned art style, a difficulty modifying system that lets you “change the rules of the game temporarily to make certain stages easier or harder,” and several new special items including a shield block and a quick revival after losing a life.
Executive Producer Stephen DiDuro said these changes will help make Freedom Planet 2 stand on its own: “The original Freedom Planet was modeled as a tribute to Sega Genesis platform games. We’ve learned what works and what doesn’t, what’s fun and what’s frustrating, what we should expand on and what we can afford to lose. With all of this in mind, we feel that we are ready to bid farewell to nostalgia and create a sequel that will define Freedom Planet’s identity as a franchise.”
Freedom Planet 2 will be released for PC platforms in mid-2017, with a plan to bring it to Nintendo platforms (the Wii U or, more likely, the NX) sometime after that.
Posted in News, PC, Switch, Wii U
Tagged Freedom Planet 2
Capybara will now release Below in 2016
It look like Capybara’s Below, a roguelike in development for the PC and Xbox One, is going to need a little more time in the oven. Originally expected to be out by the end of 2015, Capybara’s President and Co-Founder, Nathan Vella, recently told Game Informer that the game was pushed back to 2016:
Below is indeed coming in 2016. Past that I can’t share much, yet. We’ll certainly have a lot more content to show and news to share in the new year.
Since there’s just a week and a half to go in 2015, this news isn’t too surprising.