We’re now officially inside the holiday season, and that suggests individuals are rushing out to purchase the newest and greatest toys and gadgets for friends and family members. It’s important to recollect, however, that there are other folks in the market this holiday season who need your support greater than your friend needs that new online game. If only there has been the way to kill two birds with one stone, right?

Sony announced today that it has the stone you’re in search of with its holiday partnership with Extra Life, a charity that encourages gamers to offer money to children’s hospitals. To not be mistaken with Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play, this charity exclusively deals with cash donations and that’s what Sony wants out of gamers this year.

Of course, it’d be a bit boring if all Sony wanted was your money. Instead, the oldsters at PlayStation are challenging gamers to lift money for additional Life with plenty of prizes at stake. Here’s the way it all works – participants will enroll with Extra Life under the PlayStation promotion. From there, participants will encourage family and friends to donate of their name. On the end of the contest, prizes can be handed out based upon how much someone raised.

Here’s what you will get:

You have until November 3 to boost as much money as you possibly can. You may also join a team to extend your probabilities of raising the biggest sum of money.

If this seems like something you’d have an interest in, you may join the movement here. If you’re already a member of additional Life, that you can switch over to the PlayStation Movement here.

[Image: PlayStation/YouTube]

The release of Call of Duty: Ghosts is simply weeks away. Call of Duty fans fed-up with Grand Theft Auto Online may be ready to jump back into some working multiplayer gaming at that time.

While the multiplayer in Ghosts is determined to be nearly similar to the action that fans know and love from previous games, there are some tweaks on the way to change the experience. Female soldiers will change the tone of the sport slightly, as will “dynamic” maps where certain terrain will change through the years.

Activision and developer Infinity Ward also today showed off the recent “Squads” modes for Ghosts. The multiplayer mode will allow players to wade into combat with a squad in their own pre-customized AI teammates. Players may be capable of battle each others’ squads, or groups of players can tackle a completely-AI squad on their lonesome. The XP earned in Squads modes will still contribute to every player’s multiplayer rank, so it seems that Squads may soon become a method for players to grind up their levels against computer-controlled opponents.

A trailer for the mode released today shows off different Squads modes included in Ghosts. A horde mode against the AI is included, and player-created squads may well be battled even if those players are offline.

Many gamers today don’t realize it, however the games industry almost died in 1983 because of quite a lot of issues, including market saturation. Nintendo basically single-handedly saved the industry a year later with the launch of the NES in North America, and it’s been a thriving business ever since. That doesn’t mean a crash won’t ever happen again though.

SuperData Research and Digital River partnered up on a brand new report that appears on the current state of gaming. They discovered that 79 percent of gamers own not less than one game console with the typical variety of consoles owned among that group sitting at 2.6. That’s a number of hardware, and SuperData Research is bothered that gamers is probably not willing so as to add more:

“Industry veterans will remember the crash of 1983, when the games market was saturated with hardware devices. Today, the industry runs an analogous risk, as [with] an improved-than-ever console installed base, consumers may well be proof against adding more hardware to their living rooms.”

It’s definitely an engaging thought, and one that’s supported by recent data showing gamers increasingly moving to PC and mobile devices. In 2008, 42 percent of gamers played games on consoles while 37 percent primarily played games at the PC. This year, the numbers have almost reversed with 51 percent of gamers primarily playing at the PC while only 30 percent play games on consoles. It doesn’t help that 13 percent of gamers are actually on mobile.

Things definitely look grim for consoles, but there’s a lot of differences between the crash of 1983 and the gaming industry of today which can be worth taking into consideration.

For starters, consumers really only have three consoles to choose between – the Wii U, PS4 and Xbox One. Sure, there are microconsoles just like the Ouya, but most gamers are going to be troubled with consoles from the gigantic three. Within the years leading as much as 1983, gamers needed to select from five different consoles. The shortage of quality controls on software also didn’t help matters as gamers increasingly stopped buying games after Atari botched its Pac-Man port and released the infamous game adaptation of E.T.

It must also be noted that there are actually more gamers than ever before. many of the gamers that were brought in with the Wii and DS have since jumped over to mobile and PC, but there’s also lots which have stuck around because of big franchises like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed. These same gamers would possibly not upgrade to next-gen consoles this year, but they’ll once the franchises they love stop popping out for current gen consoles.

Even with all this, a crash could certainly still happen. i might argue, however, that a contemporary crash is much likely to occur due to the losing developers. Everyone is going to need to play games whatever, but they’re going to visit the platforms that experience the games they need. That platform was mobile for the past few years, but that’s beginning to slowly unravel as increasingly developers realize that it’s nearly impossible anymore to get a success like Angry Birds. Those developers at the moment are moving back to console and PC where the audience is more receptive to their games and discoverability isn’t as much of a difficulty.

I’ve always been a believer that the gaming industry is enormous enough for everyone. That doesn’t mean things can stay an identical though. Sony and Microsoft are already evolving to compare what players want with social and mobile integration being built into next-gen boxes. They can have the large AAA games that players want at home with complementary experiences on mobile.

In the tip, all of here is to mention that the games industry is changing. That vary is also scary, but it’s also presenting us with a variety of new experiences and opportunities. There’s never been another moment in history where gaming have been more exciting than it’s now, and we’re just getting started. Despite the fact that the large publishers suffer a crash, that’s unlikely to harm gaming within the slightest. Developers with ideas are still going to make games, and gamers are still going to play them.

[Image: Wikimedia]
[h/t: Games Industry International]

Microsoft is betting big on its next-generation version of its Kinect motion sensor. The device was packed in with every person of its upcoming Xbox One consoles, ensuring that every one Xbox gamers may have a Kinect.

This has caused greater than a grumble in some segments of the gaming community. Kinect games of the present generation were, generally, embarrassingly bad. Furthermore, the brand new Kinect has obviously contributed highly to the Xbox One’s $100 price premium over Sony’s PlayStation 4.

Regardless of whether gamers should want to use the Kinect to play games or watch TV, the tech displayed within the device itself is impressive.

Microsoft Research today put out two videos demonstrating the capabilities of the hot Kinect sensor. The primary demonstrates the upper fidelity 3D vision, larger field of view, and new “active IR” mode that include the device.

The second shows the hot wireframe skeleton the Kinect can create to sense motion, which now has two hand point to detect claw-like motions. As well as movement, the device can use a blocky shape to detect the orientation of other body parts or a blobby shape that depicts how much force is being applied to varied muscle tissues within the body. The much-touted heart rate monitoring capability of the brand new Kinect may be demonstrated. It uses color video and IR sensing together to detect a pulse rate through subtle color change in faces:

Though the tech will not be right for gaming or replacing a TV remote, creative PC developers will undoubtedly find some futuristic uses for the hot Kinect.

Never within the history of game consoles has a hardware manufacturer bundled a house console with a handheld device. Sure, home consoles can interact with handhelds in limited ways, but they’ve always been sold as separate experiences. Sony could be rethinking that unspoken rule.

Official PlayStation Magazine U.K. recently had a possibility to sit with Sony UK boss Fergal Gara to speak about a possible PS4/PS Vita combo. The excellent news is that it’s something Sony is now considering. The bad news is that there probably won’t be the sort of bundle at launch.

So, what was the instant that made Sony consider bundling its hardware together? At Gamescom, it showed off the remote play functionality of the PS Vita by playing the PS4 version of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag at the device. That functionality alone received this sort of positive reaction that Sony is now looking into methods to market the PS4 and PS Vita as complementary devices.

Of course, you shouldn’t expect a combo pack anytime soon. Sony will continue selling them separately for now, and it’ll probably remain that way until Sony can sell both a PS4 and a Vita within the same box for under $500. That being said, Gara says that it’d be incredibly easy to slap a PS4 and PS Vita into the identical box and ship it to retail. He concludes by saying any future bundle could be constructed in a fashion that’s best for his or her retail partners.

It’s not exactly a confirmation or denial, but it surely certainly does appear that Sony is taking this concept very seriously. That’s just a great point as remote play could become among the strongest selling points for the Vita and the imminent Vita TV. The power to stream full console titles to a handheld device via a web connection isn’t exactly a unique idea, but it surely feels like the PS4/PS Vita combo nails the execution better than any of its predecessors. There’s real value in that, and Sony will definitely pursue that during future marketing and/or bundles.

[Image: PlayStation/YouTube]