Firefly Online Ship

With Comic-Con 2013 (and the Assassin's Creed IV party pirate ship!) now under our wings, it's time to play catch-up on a few key news items. PS4's PlanetSide 2 aims to offer the best PC gameplay; Joss Whedon's Firefly finall gets a game; Borderlands 2 DLC goes beyond the season pass; Torchlight II & SimCity sell two million each; Dragon Age saves somehow carry to next-gen consoles (we think); Disney's Toy Box gets showcased; Prince of Persia 2 returns; David Jaffe's name doesn't help one Kickstarter campaign, and more!

Read on for the details and more stories.

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PlanetSide 2 on PS4

With large-scale shooters like Battlefield 3 taking a huge hit in performance and player counts in its console version vs. PC, Matt Higby, creative director of PlanetSide 2, wants to let fans know that SOE's massive shooter will not suffer from similar issues thanks to the power of the PlayStation 4.

"Our plan right now is to basically take the PC game with maximum settings and have that be running on the PS4... So there won’t be any limitations in terms of number of players, there won’t be any limitations on the map."

Source: NowGamer

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Pay For More 'Borderlands 2' DLC

If you missed it, pre-paying for Borderlands 2 DLC doesn't actually give all of the DLC. The last content add-on released was Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, and that's all you get. Sorry, the Season's Pass covers a limited "season" and Gearbox is releasing more campaign DLC that will be charged for separately. We have reached an era where there are literally layers of season's passes, it's DLCception. As if DLC prices weren't already out of control, Randy Pitchford tells Nerdist:

"We did a season pass for Borderlands 2 and the season pass was like hey, if you buy the season pass we would be doing four campaign add-ons and you can buy all four of them for the price of three, if you buy upfront. So everyone was under the expectation that those would be the four DLCs and that's it."

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Browncoats Go Mobile!

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Firefly is another one of those TV causalities, placed on a bad night and out of order by Fox, because at the time, someone didn't trust Joss Whedon - the guy who's now know for writing and directing the third biggest box office success of all time. Firefly is finally getting a game... but it's a mobile title developed by Spark Plug Games described officially as a "social RPG."

  • Assume the role of a ship captain - create a crew and customize a ship
  • Aim to misbehave in space and planet-side adventures
  • Cross-platform player experience across devices (pick-up and play from anywhere)
  • Unique social features connecting Firefly fans
  • Create a shiny ship and explore the Verse

Firefly Online releases next year, sign up and read more here.

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Don't Need DRM

Diablo 3 is one of the best-selling PC games in years but it released to negative buzz and server issues thanks to its anti-consumer always-online requirement, something EA also suffered from in their decision to release SimCity with the same requirements (that it didn't really need). Interestingly, Torchlight II - arguably the main competitor to Diablo 3 - didn't have any type of DRM and in the end, it sold as much as SimCity did, at 2 million units each. Unfortunately, it's a far cry from the long-anticipated third Diablo which has sold nearly seven times that and is on its way to selling more when it releases on consoles.

Sources: Destructoid, VentureBeat

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Dragon Age Save Files

Dragon Age players, your work in the previous games matters, even with Dragon Age: Inquisition coming to next-gen platforms. BioWare producer Cameron Lee wouldn't say how, but at PAX Australia, Lee said "We know what we want to do. It will absolutely come across - your decisions carry [and] will matter." Whether that's an online transfer somehow or an interactive sequence not unlike Mass Effect 2 featured, we don't quite know.

Source: GameSpot

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Disney's Toy Box

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One of the most exciting features of Disney Infinity is the fact that players and mix and match characters and items from the many different Disney movie realms together in Toy Box mode. Know that down the road, Marvel and Star Wars will be a part of the formula as well only helps boost our anticipation. The above and below videos help demonstrate the unusual pairings of characters that players can enjoy, along with some of the limitless creations they can craft in Toy Box mode.

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Kickstarter Fail

Not unlike the abysmal Kickstarter campaign for Shadow of the Eternals which didn't come close to its initial funding goal, but was recently relaunched, the crowdfunding campaign for the David Jaffe supported MotorGun title was unable to achieve even 10% of its funding goal, with only 766 players backing it. It was also canceled and aims to relaunch in the future. The latest update reads:

Kickstarter is a harsh mistress. Lots of projects are pitched to the community and sometimes they resonate and sometimes they don’t. In this case, what we were pitching wasn’t exactly what you guys wanted.  So, as a result we’re making the tough decision to not drag it out, and we’re going to cancel the campaign and start working to reformulate it.

Source: Kickstarter

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Prince of Persia Returns

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After rumblings and rumors hinted that Ubisoft might be bringing back the Prince of Persia franchise with a new title, we instead have a remake of the original sequel, Prince of Persia: The Shadow and the Flame. The game released 20 years ago and is now available for Andoid and iOS.

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