This year’s Virtual Ticket is enhanced with live coverage of every stage, an all-access channel, and more

Kick off the party now with the first in-game item and several new video series, now live at BlizzCon.com

IRVINE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– The BlizzCon^® Virtual Ticket has leveled up! Blizzard’s two-day gaming convention returns to Anaheim, California November 3-4, and for those unable to attend in person, Blizzard has expanded the Virtual Ticket with more show coverage than ever before. For the first time, Virtual Ticket holders will have access to every stage at BlizzCon, a new all-access channel, and special events featuring streamers, voice actors, and community creators. Anyone looking to enjoy BlizzCon from home can purchase a Virtual Ticket now through the Blizzard Shop.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170913006394/en/

“BlizzCon is a celebration for our entire community, including those joining us from their homes around the world. With that in mind, we’ve updated this year’s Virtual Ticket experience to cover even more of the show—including expanding our live coverage to all the stages,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re excited to bring people closer to BlizzCon than ever before, and we can’t wait for everyone at home and attending in person to join us.”

The new BlizzCon All-Access channel will serve as the official Virtual Ticket tour guide all weekend as hosts take viewers around the show floor, behind the scenes, and deeper into the games through exclusive interviews. For those who can’t wait to get started, the season of BlizzCon starts today at www.blizzcon.com, where gamers can watch several series of all-new videos, which will have new episodes regularly in the weeks leading up to the convention. These videos will cover subjects ranging from Blizzard music to cosplay to behind-the-scenes insights from developers, and some of this content will only be available to Virtual Ticket holders as a special thank-you for their purchase.

In addition to the game developer discussions, main stage events, community contests, and other great content that is a mainstay of the BlizzCon experience, the enhanced Virtual Ticket also includes:

• BlizzCon in-game goodies for your favorite Blizzard games, including World of Warcraft^® faction-specific mounts available in-game starting today: the Stormwind Skychaser (Alliance) and Orgrimmar Interceptor (Horde).
• A customizable viewing playlist, making it easy for Virtual Ticket holders to catch all their favorite moments live.
• On-demand replays available for a month after the show, giving viewers plenty of time to catch every bit of the action.
• An enhanced esports-viewing experience, including the BlizzCon Opening Week competition.
• The option to pre-purchase this year’s BlizzCon Goody Bag (while supplies last)—a backpack full of real-world loot representing your favorite Blizzard games—at a $10 (USD) discount.
• A front-row seat to more than 60 hours of BlizzCon content from wherever you are.

As always, coverage of the BlizzCon opening ceremony and this year’s esports tournaments—including the global championships for StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm, and World of Warcraft; the Hearthstone Inn-vitational and Tavern Vs. Tavern finals; and the finals of the Overwatch World Cup—will be streamed for free in HD at www.blizzcon.com.

To learn more or purchase this year’s Virtual Ticket for $39.99 (USD), visit the Blizzard Shop, and to stay up-to-date on the latest BlizzCon news, keep an eye on www.blizzcon.com.

About Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

Best known for blockbuster hits including World of Warcraft^®, Hearthstone^®, Overwatch^®, the Warcraft^®, StarCraft^®, and Diablo^® franchises, and the multi-franchise Heroes of the Storm^®, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard Entertainment’s track record includes twenty-one #1 games* and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company’s online gaming service, Blizzard Battle.net^®, is one of the largest online-gaming services in the world, with millions of active players.

*Sales and/or downloads, based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Blizzard Entertainment’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements about the dates, event plans and features of BlizzCon and the pricing, features and functionality of the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause Blizzard Entertainment’s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Blizzard Entertainment nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Blizzard Entertainment or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170913006394/en/

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.
Rob Hilburger
VP, Global Corporate Communications
949.955.1380 x13228
rhilburger@blizzard.com
or
Andrew Reynolds
Director, Global Public Relations
949.955.1380 x14301
areynolds@blizzard.com
or
Ana-Luisa Mota
Global Public Relations Manager
949.955.1380 x14066
amota@blizzard.com

Source: Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

News Provided by Acquire Media

IRVINE, Calif.—August 10, 2017—As the cold shroud of death falls upon the land of the living, Azeroth’s mortal inhabitants shiver with fear—Knights of the Frozen Throne™, the new expansion for Blizzard Entertainment’s smash-hit digital card game Hearthstone®, has arrived. The Lich King—Lord of the Scourge, master of Icecrown Citadel, and wielder of the cursed runeblade Frostmourne—has come to conquer the tavern and those within it, promising power in the form of 135 frosty new cards.

Knights of the Frozen Throne takes players to Northrend, where they’ll meet an untimely demise, only to be raised by the Lich King and granted terrifying new powers from beyond the grave. Adventurers can harness this unholy might by collecting nine new legendary Hero Cards that, when played, transform the heroes of Hearthstone into fearsome Death Knights.

Those with the will to rise against the Lich King can embark on a series of challenging missions that Knights of the Frozen Throne offers to everyone—for free. Players who enter the icy halls of Icecrown Citadel and complete the prologue shall receive a random Legendary Death Knight Hero Card before battling through two wings guarded by iconic bosses like the pestilent Professor Putricide and Blood Queen Lana’thel . . . until only the Lich King stands between them and the Frozen Throne.

 “The Lich King is one of our most iconic villains, and we’re excited to finally bring him—and his nine new Death Knights—to Hearthstone,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Whether they’re ascending the Frozen Throne or dueling with friends at Fireside Gatherings, we can’t wait to see how players wield these deadly new cards.”

Knights of the Frozen Throne is available now for Windows® and Mac® PCs; Windows, iOS, and Android™ tablets; and iOS and Android phones. Card packs can be purchased individually or in discounted bundles from the in-game Shop for gold or real-world currency at the same price as all other Hearthstone card packs. Players now have the chance to win Knights of the Frozen Throne card packs as quest rewards or prizes in the Arena, and can also craft cards from the expansion by using Arcane Dust collected from disenchanting unwanted cards. Players who log in by November 1 will receive three free Knights of the Frozen Throne card packs^* to aid them as reinforcements arrive to storm Icecrown Citadel.

Taste the Lich King’s power at thefrozenthrone.com.

* 3 free Knights of the Frozen Throne packs are a one-time offer and available only for a limited time. Offer ends November 1.
 

About Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.
Best known for blockbuster hits including World of Warcraft®, Hearthstone®, Overwatch®, the Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® franchises, and the multifranchise Heroes of the Storm®, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard Entertainment’s track record includes twenty-one #1 games^†  and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company’s online-gaming service is one of the largest in the world, with millions of active players.

^†Based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners.

This week at Bungie, we are welcoming back some old friends. 

First off, if you still haven’t finished the Destiny 2 campaign, there will be some SPOILERS in this blog post. If you haven’t learned the fate of the City, yet, you should definitely go play through it right now. We’ll still be here waiting for you. Seriously, go do it now!

Now that you’ve defeated Ghaul, we are ready for a special event called Faction Rallies. Starting on September 26 at 2 AM Pacific, you will be able to volunteer your services in support of your favorite faction, or the one that holds the loot you most desire. 

We spoke with Senior Designer Tim Williams to find out what Faction Rallies is and how players can join in on the fun.

Tim Williams: Each of the factions of the Tower is having a rally to collect resources for its cause. They’re recruiting Guardians to gather supplies for their faction and destroy enemy resources. They’ll offer a suite of rewards to help the Guardians rise up against any enemy threats. As an incentive, each faction has set aside a powerful weapon to entice players to choose their side. The faction whose Guardians collect the most faction packages will be declared the winner. The winning faction will offer the weapon to everyone, but all who pledged loyalty will receive it with a huge discount as repayment for their contributions to their faction’s cause.

Arach Jalaal from Dead Orbit, Lakshmi-2 from Future War Cult, and Executor Hideo of New Monarchy will return to the Tower to ask you to pledge your loyalty. Before you can make this choice, you must first reach Level 20 and gain access to the Tower. You will only be able to pledge to one faction per character.

Once you have chosen your side, your mission will be to return to the wild and complete activities in support of your faction. You can do public events, explore Lost Sectors, complete strikes, clear the raid, or compete in the Crucible. As you complete these activities, you will be rewarded with faction tokens that you can turn in for packages full of loot.

Dead Orbit

Future War Cult 

New Monarchy

In addition to all of the gear on display above, each faction will be offering a special weapon as a reward to be sold if they emerge victorious. Everyone who pledged to the winning faction will be able to purchase it for 1,000 glimmer. Anyone who did not pledge can still get it, but will have to pay a higher price of 50,000 glimmer.

Here’s what is up for grabs during this event.

Dead Orbit Scout Rifle

Future War Cult Pulse Rifle

New Monarchy Sidearm 

You can earn faction Tokens to turn into your faction of choice all the way up until 2 AM Pacific on October 3. We will declare a winner later that day at 10 AM Pacific. Good luck Guardians, and may the best faction win!

Destiny 2 Art Parade

Bungie houses a roster of incredible artists. All of the gorgeous armor, weapons, characters, environments, and everything else your eyes get to admire in Destiny 2 is created by many, many talented people. Now that you’ve had a fair chance to experience their work (we did warn you to finish that campaign), we’ve invited them to pick some of their favorite pieces to share with you. If you click any of their names, you will be able to browse even more of their beautiful creations in their personal portfolios. This is just a small sample of artists from our Art team. Hopefully we can encourage more of them to share their work with you in the future.

Guided Raids

Guided Games will become available for seekers seeking clans to show them the mysteries of the Leviathan on Tuesday, September 26, at 10 AM Pacific. It’s just over a week into the Guided Games Beta, and we want to update you on how things are going before we open it up for those brave enough to take on the Raid. Senior Designer Steve Dolan is on hand to give us a better idea of how Guided Games work. 

How have Guided Games been going?

Steve: So far, over 100 ,000 seekers have been guided through the Nightfall strike. Throughout those games, over 90% of Nightfall attempts have resulted in completion.  Even when the activity is hard, Guardians fight it out to the end.  You’re an amazing community and we love hearing stories about players meeting their new clan through Guided Games. 

Some players don’t have mics, or have trouble speaking. Do they have to be in a voice chat?

Steve: Even if you’re unable to speak over a mic, being able to listen in on chat can make a huge difference in your team’s success. Nightfalls and raids are pinnacle content, designed and tuned so that communication between players is essential to success. Guides and seekers are not forced to join the same chat channel after they land in the pre-game lobby, but are strongly encouraged to do so before the fireteam leader starts the guided game. If you use in-game chat you should already all be in a chat channel together. Guides, if you’re in a PSN or Xbox party, be sure to invite your seeker to chat. 

Does finishing a Guided Game version of an activity advance milestones?

Steve: Yes, even though the UI tooltip doesn’t mention the milestone, it will advance when you finish the Guided Game version of the activity. 

How does a clan get punished for being a jerk?

Steve: We review all reports on clan identity information and take action on objectionable clans.  If you come across a clan with an offensive name, mission statement, or motto, file a report and we’ll take a look. If you’re at the front of the queue for Guided Games, we’ll hold your spot in line until you’re done with your report. 

If a clan doesn’t lead a good Guided Game, their Oathkeeper score will go down. To get credit for a good Guided Game it must either finish successfully, last as long as the activity or Guardian Oath, or end with an agreement to disband. When you get to the front of the guided game seeker queue, make sure to check out a clans Oathkeeper score before selecting them for the activity you’re about to start.

What if the Oathkeeper score is blank?

Steve: We don’t give a Clan an Oathkeeper score until they’ve run at least four Guided Games of an activity. You can skip them or choose to trust a clan who has just begun to host Guided Games. 

When players match with a clan, do they have to wait again if they reject that clan? What happens after they reject a clan?

Steve: We want you to be able to select a clan you want to play with. When a seeker gets to the front of the line, we show you a clan with which you have a good internet connection. If you say no to that clan, you’ll go right back to the front of the line where you will match with a new clan soon. Find one that looks good to you before clicking “accept”.

Sometimes life happens and players need to leave before they finish. How do they leave without getting an oath breaker penalty?

In the know

Community Management is about more than telling jokes on Twitter. Responding to issues we diagnose, troubleshoot, and resolve is a team effort. The tip of that spear is Destiny Player Support.

This is their report.

Destiny 2 Update 1.0 .3: Server Maintenance and Downtime

Destiny 2 will be taken offline on Monday September 25 for server maintenance. Players will be required to download and install Destiny 2 Update 1.0.3 upon maintenance completion.

6 AM PDT (2 PM UTC): Players will no longer be able to sign in to Destiny 2.

7 AM PDT (3 PM UTC): All online players will be removed from Destiny

12 PM PDT (10 PM UTC): Expected maintenance conclusion, Destiny 2 Update 1.0.3 available.

Destiny 2 Known Issues:

The following issues have been confirmed, and are actively being investigated by appropriate teams:

• Trials of the Nine was not disabled properly at this week’s ritual reset. Moving forward, players should expect this activity to be available each Friday at 10 AM PDT through Tuesday at 2 AM PDT.
• The quest step “His Highness’s Seal” is not properly incrementing when players acquire Emperor Seals.
• Occasionally, objects aren’t properly spawning within the Exodus Crash Nightfall strike. Players may need to relaunch the activity for objectives to properly spawn. 
• Public event completions are not properly granting Clan XP upon completion.
• Clan Engrams are not being rewarded to some qualifying players. NOTE: If a player leaves a clan and joins a new clan mid-week, they will not be able to earn further Clan Engrams until the following weekly reset.
• If a player creates a new character after an alternate character has earned a raid key on a given week, the key will be erroneously removed from character Inventory. NOTE: Raid keys are removed, by design, with each weekly ritual reset.

Eververse: Query Failed

We have recently identified and are working with our partners to address issues that are causing some players to encounter delays in receiving their purchased Silver due to “Silver Sync Pending” or “Query Failed” errors.

If a Silver purchase has been made but has not yet appeared in-game, players may need to follow the below troubleshooting steps. 

• Fully close the Destiny game application
• Clear the console cache 
• Relaunch Destiny
• Select any character
• Silver should be credited directly to your inventory.

Players may also need to review the platform purchase to ensure that the Silver bundle purchased was for the correct Destiny release and Destiny account. If issues receiving or purchasing silver continue, please submit an Eververse Contact Form through help.bungie.net.

Send us your movies. We’ll make you famous! Well, at least Internet famous, for a week. If you are unfamiliar with this weekly ritual, it’s pretty simple. We pick a few of our favorite movies every week, and the winners get featured here. The creators also get sent a nice looking Emblem as a reward. We are still putting the finishing touches on the Destiny 2 version, but as soon as we get it the game, all of the winners who have won since launch will have it sent to their collection. 

Speaking of winners.

Movie of the Week: Destiny 2 The Journey Metal Cover

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Honorable Mention: Most Titan Moment Ever

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<3 Cozmo

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) division has established a new research group to learn more about the ethical questions posed by the dawn of AI.

The British artificial intelligence outfit was acquired by Google in 2014, and often uses video games as part of its projects.

For instance, back in 2016 the company partnered with Blizzard to create an API tailored for research environments based in StarCraft II, and prior to that the DeepMind team developed an artificial agent capable of learning how to play Atari 2600 games from scratch. 

Now, the DeepMind Ethics & Society unit hopes to unravel some of the biggest ethical quandaries posed by the creation of artificial intelligence to pave the way for “truly beneficial and responsible AI.” 

“We believe AI can be of extraordinary benefit to the world, but only if held to the highest ethical standards. Technology is not value neutral, and technologists must take responsibility for the ethical and social impact of their work,” reads a blog post on the DeepMind website. 

“The development of AI creates important and complex questions. Its impact on society — and on all our lives — is not something that should be left to chance. Beneficial outcomes and protections against harms must be actively fought for and built-in from the beginning. But in a field as complex as AI, this is easier said than done.

“As scientists developing AI technologies, we have a responsibility to conduct and support open research and investigation into the wider implications of our work. At DeepMind, we start from the premise that all AI applications should remain under meaningful human control, and be used for socially beneficial purposes.”

DeepMind isn’t the only institution asking looking into this area. Other research projects, such as Julia Angwin’s study of racism in criminal justice algorithms, and Kate Crawford and Ryan Calo’s examination of the broader consequences of AI for social systems, have also begun to peel back the curtain. 

For DeepMind, the hope is that its new unit will achieve two primary aims: to help technologists puts ethics into practice when the time comes, and to ensure society is sufficiently prepared for the day AI becomes part of the wider world.

Peanut butter and jelly. Shaq and Kobe. Master Chief and Cortana. If there’s anything we’ve learned during our short time on this planet, it’s that collaboration is the driving force of creation (and tasty sandwiches).

We recently heard from Bryan Sparks, Senior Designer, Microsoft Device Design Team, and Leonardo Del Castillo, GM of Xbox Devices Console Development to learn about their creative collaboration process behind the world’s most powerful gaming console: Xbox One X.

To hear them tell it, the story is a fascinating one. In that, the engineering and design teams executed on the development of Xbox One X with a clear and specific goal from the outset — deliver True 4K Gaming in a small form factor design — and endeavored to work together to make that dream possible without compromising on their vision. And the end result is tremendous.

Kickstarting the Process

As you might imagine when one sits down to create the world’s most powerful gaming console, the engineering and design teams would face a lot of questions: How do you make the systems work with each other? How can we make it compact? What’s the expression of Xbox One X? How does it tell a story just by the way it looks?

While these were all great questions the team looked to tackle early on, the most critical that they all agreed to land on was that this was going to be “True 4K Gaming” at its heart, and this is what was going to drive the architecture of the system.

The Scorpio Engine is designed, at its core, to be the most powerful system-on-a-chip for game consoles that has ever been created. Everything about it was designed to be compatible with Xbox One (and Xbox One S). And to make that happen, it was clear that nearly every component that was to be housed in the system was going to have to be custom built. That left the team with a lot of freedom of how it could design the system around things like optical drives, hard drives, and memory components.

“If you start with a bag of parts, how does that turn into a product?” explains Del Castillo. “We needed a direction, and floor planning directions, to lead the architecture around what the motherboard will look like, what will the chassis look like. And for that you lean on the design team.”

The Design of a System

“Whenever you start a new design project, it’s this blank canvas and you start feeding ideas and constraints,” explains Sparks. “Eventually, you see this thing start to form as you work through the process.”

When creating the design of the system, the team knew all those parts had to come together in one cohesive unit. They knew it was going to be part of the growing Xbox One family of devices, and wanted to take all the feedback received on the design of Xbox One S that the community loved.

“The other part of our vision is what would embody this product,” Sparks continued. “We envisioned this monolith (“2001: A Space Odyssey”). Whenever you see it in the film, it was a signal to the audience that it was the next phase of advancement. So, we kept that as a design goal: Xbox One X is the next point of advancement.”

“We did not want Xbox One X to be any larger than Xbox One S, which was a huge ask as we were putting 40% more power into it. And this is where we knew we had to work with Leo and the engineers to make that happen.”

Fitting into Place

As the engineering team continued to look at the overall intent of the design, for which there was a lot of collaboration between the two teams, they begun to lay out the components like the motherboard, and determined how memory would route to the system and be arranged. The iteration continued to the point where they found it would make the most sense to have the motherboard fit on the “ceiling” of the console, and placing the optical drive and hard drive on top of one other to create the optimum stacking height of the system.

The other benefit of having the motherboard on the ceiling is that there would not need to be any venting on the top space of the console, keeping the clean, monolithic form the design team was looking to achieve.

The other intent was to ensure the power supply would live internally, just like Xbox One S — it’s not much larger, but it is nearly 40% more powerful. To continue with the efficient design (getting these parts into a small form factor) they placed the power right behind the optical drive. In turn, this allowed them to keep all the ports on the back of the system in nearly same place as Xbox One S so that when you’re upgrading to Xbox One X, set up would be as simple, yet familiar, as possible.

Keeping Cool

With so many components, and with a system nearly twice as powerful as Xbox One S, there’s sure to be a lot of heat moving through the chassis that needs to be exhausted. This was initially tackled where a heat sink would work as a base with a radiator, and then with a stacked fan on top of it. The problem with that approach is it created a lot of added height to the system.

“When you’re trying to scale that amount of power into the Scorpio engine, it wasn’t going to be a feasible approach to achieve the size we wanted to do,” says Leo. “We got innovative and looked at other tech we could use and created a vapor chamber heat sink, like what you’d find in high-end PCs and graphic cards, and we believe this is the first time it’s being used in a consumer electronic.”

The vaper chamber heat sink is fascinating. It’s hollow, filled with water, and there’s a vacuum that draws upon that water to help move the heat to the radiator fins and thus into the air. Leo’s team looked like they solved how to keep temperatures lower than normal, but there still needs way for that air to move through and out of the system.

The result is a custom centrifugal fan assembly with ducts and propellers that are custom built just for Xbox One X. This helps move air out of the system and keep all the components cool, including the power supply. In fact, the team built the fan assembly in a virtual space and ran empirical models to continue refining the design, helping to pinpoint any “hot spots” in the console’s components before laying down the silicone needed to create the fan housing.

The team had found a solution to move air out of the system — but how would the design bring air in to Xbox One X?

“This is where concurrent engineering comes into play,” explains Sparks. “We’re working back and forth between the functional realities of the engineering process and the design intent. And this is where we get to play off each other.”

Part of this play was figuring out which components were prioritized to get access to the air flow first, and that came back to the Xbox One S design, with its short-side venting detail to allow air into the console box. But the design team wanted to figure out how to upgrade that expression from the bold hole pattern from Xbox One S.

“Where we landed was grabbing the vent pattern from Xbox One S and miniaturizing it as much as we could to where it was just barely manufacturable. Which was no easy ask. It was another thing we had to innovate,” says Sparks.

And to do just that, the engineering team realized they would have to create a new tool to answer the growing number of asks from the design team: 5-sided unibody with a top-housing, zero draft, thousands of tiny pins to make the perforation pattern, and super thin walls.

“But we were able to do it! Probably making the most innovative and complex injection molding tool we have ever made,” proclaims Sparks. “We did all of this to give the outside appearance of this console the same level of precision of the work we’ve been putting into the inside.”

Putting it All Together

The guts for Xbox One X are all placed on the table, making it hard to imagine how these will snap into the small form factor of Xbox One X. Leo picks up each piece one at a time and easily starts to put it all together, like some sort of awesome jigsaw puzzle, continuing to talk through and explain the logic behind the layout of the components in such a snug form-fitting design. Even when placing the hard drive into the system, Leo takes the time to explain how such a basic component has also received some special attention.

“As for the hard drive, the mechanical components are pretty much standard,” explains Leo. “We do work with our manufactures to optimize firmware performance specifically for our product. To preserve that performance, we have to take a great deal of care when it’s mounted.”

To solve for this the team created a custom mount for the drive to dampen the vibrations that would be carried through the chassis, as too much vibration would compromise the performance of the drive itself. Especially since the optical drive and hard drive will be living on top of each other inside the system.

Leo then grabs the fan assembly and fits it snug over the vaper chamber heat sink, the power supply drops in above the motherboard, and the ducts from the assembly all naturally snap right into place.

“Every single component and where it’s placed is critical,” explains Leo. “Start moving holes around or components, even a millimeter, it can cause interference to other products. So, it’s necessary for the engineers to be working on the design concurrently. There’s no staging like, ‘First we design a motherboard, then we’ll design a chassis around the motherboard…’ If we did that we’d wind up with a sub-optimal product.”

The Finishing Touch

“For Xbox One S we developed a brand-new color called Robot White and that did a great job of embodying what Xbox One S was, which was a bold, approachable console,” explains Sparks. “For Xbox One X, we had a different goal in mind. We wanted a color that would embody the power that was encased inside this console.”

Interestingly, after all the combinations of color to design, Sparks and his team landed back on black, specifically Infinite Black, finding that a deep, rich, neutral black was a color that worked well with the simple design of Xbox One X.

However, since the design of Xbox One X is between two separate housings, and not wanting to lose the slight shift or overhang, Sparks and his team felt the housing design could get lost being all the same color.

“What we did was, create a fine top housing texture that almost looks like it’s painted, and on the bottom housing we pushed on a heavy texture, so the final part looks really, really, matte,” says Sparks.

The effect is very noticeable as you look at the console in different shades of light and how it seems to move elegantly around the system, refracting differently to help draw attention to the top and bottom housings of the system. There’s also a bit of an inspiration from the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller as well, bringing some of the textured grip from those controllers to the base of the unit.

And if there was a one more thing moment to be had, it was showcasing Xbox One X in its vertical form, harkening back to that original design intent goal of a monolith, calling to this as the next moment in the story of Xbox.

“All these details, and this work, and all this refinement lead us down the track of creating, in my opinion, the best console we have ever made,” says Sparks. “We didn’t build this for us; we built this for the gamer. The gamer wins in this scenario. They get the best console we could possibly create.”

Just recently Curve Digital confirmed two games that it’s bringing to the Switch eShop, including The Flame in the Flood (developed by The Molasses Flood). Pleasingly a press release has now confirmed that it’ll arrive next week (12th October), so we’ll get a chance to put it to the test.

You can see the Switch trailer and some blurb below.

The Flame In The Flood is a bleak but beautiful rogue-lite set upon a treacherous, procedurally generated river. With the help of your trusty dog, Aesop, The Flame In The Flood tasks you to make the most of your surroundings by foraging, hunting and scavenging your way through nature and the remains of society. With an evocative, homespun art-style and lilting, original soundtrack by Chuck Ragan, survival has never been this enjoyable.

It seems like quite a challenging game based upon comments from those that have played it elsewhere. Not only do you need to stay safe on the river but also make landfall and find vital resources; nature is rather cruel in the process.

Are you planning to venture into ‘post-societal America’ in this title?

With the rapid expansion of the Switch eShop we’re gradually seeing more genres and variety. We’ve had a few top-down shooters of various styles, for example, and next week Neon Chrome will add itself to the list.

Developed by 10tons Ltd, it’s a stylised title with procedural generation; a trailer and details are below.

Neon Chrome is a top-down twin stick shooter with a science fiction setting. Each level is procedurally generated, meaning levels throughout the game will be unique on every play session. The game features intense gunfights, destructible environments, and light role playing elements such as permanent statistics upgrades, better weapons, cybernetic enhancements and different character classes.

Features:

• Shoot through walls, make rooms explode, and obliterate whole floors
• Explore procedural levels with endless variety
• Defeat bosses in hand-crafted boss fights
• Unlock new abilities, enhancements and weapons
• Install enhancements and upgrade your weapons

It’ll arrive on 12th October with a confirmed price of $14.99USD for North America. Will you be tempted to give this a try?