Microsoft's second next-gen Xbox is rumored to be fully revealed in August. According to Eurogamer, the console will be named the Xbox Series S. From a report: Microsoft has been working on this second cheaper next-gen Xbox console for months. A Microsoft document, leaked last week, shed some further light on the company's plans. Microsoft's Xbox Series X devkit, codenamed "Dante," allows game developers to enable a special Lockhart mode that has a profile of the performance that Microsoft wants to hit with this second console. While we've been reporting this performance includes a slightly underclocked CPU, The Verge has seen additional documents that suggest Lockhart will actually have the same speed CPU as the Xbox Series X. The Lockhart console will also include 7.5GB of usable RAM, and around 4 teraflops of GPU performance. The Xbox Series X includes 13.5GB of usable RAM and targets 12 teraflops of GPU performance for comparison.

If the reports are accurate, Microsoft could choose August to unveil this second next-gen Xbox alongside pricing for the Xbox Series X. This second console is designed as a more affordable option, with 1080p and 1440p monitors in mind. Microsoft would have to detail some type of pricing alongside its Lockhart reveal, and it's reasonable to assume it will be heavily tied to the Xbox All Access subscription.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nearly 20 years after its initial release, a hacker has found a way to run homebrew software on an unmodified PlayStation 2 using nothing but a carefully burned DVD-ROM. Previous efforts to hack the PS2 relied on internal modifications, external hardware (like pre-hacked memory cards and hard drives), or errors found only on very specific models of the system. The newly discovered FreeDVDBoot differs from this previous work by exploiting an error in the console's DVD video player to create a fully software-based method for running arbitrary code on the system.

Security researcher CTurt laid out the FreeDVDBoot discovery and method in detail in a blog post this weekend. By decrypting and analyzing the code used for the PS2's DVD player, CTurt found a function that expects a 16-bit string from a properly formatted DVD but will actually easily accept over 1.5 megabytes from a malicious source. Sending carefully formatted data to that function causes a buffer overflow that in turn triggers another badly written function to tell the system to jump to an area of memory with arbitrary, attacker-written code. That code can then tell the system to load an ELF file written to a burned DVD-R in the system. Building on previous PS2 homebrew efforts like uLaunchELF, it's relatively simple to use that DVD-R to load homebrew software or even full copies of otherwise copy-protected PS2 games. The exploit is currently limited to very specific versions of the PS2's DVD player firmware (as of press time, firmwares 3.10 and 3.11, when set to "English") found in later editions of the console and won't work in earlier systems. But CTurt writes that he's "confident that all other versions also contain these same trivial IFO parsing buffer overflows" and can be exploited with broadly similar methods. The possibility of similar hacks through the Blu-ray player on the PS3 and PS4 (or the CD player on the PS1) are also being examined by the community.

Microsoft has been planning a second, cheaper and less power next-gen Xbox console. Codenamed Lockhart, it's designed to take most of the key next-gen improvements found in the Xbox Series X and provide them at a lower price point for gaming at 1080p or 1440p. A newly leaked Microsoft document, posted on Twitter, includes references to this Lockhart console and multiple "Project Scarlett consoles." From a report: Project Scarlett was the name Microsoft originally used to reveal its Xbox Series X console before it was officially named. Rumors had suggested two next-gen consoles under the broader Project Scarlett plans: Anaconda and Lockhart. Microsoft has etched an anaconda snake into the Xbox Series X mainboard, but the company has never publicly discussed its Lockhart plans. The leaked document also mentions a Lockhart profiling mode. Sources familiar with Microsoft's Xbox plans tell The Verge that this special Lockhart mode is part of the Xbox Series X developer kit. The devkit, codenamed Dante, allows game developers to enable a special Lockhart mode that has a profile of the performance that Microsoft wants to hit with this second console. We understand that includes 7.5GB of usable RAM, a slightly underclocked CPU speed, and around 4 teraflops of GPU performance. The Xbox Series X includes 13.5GB of usable RAM, and targets 12 teraflops of GPU performance.

AmiMoJo shares a report from Polygon: Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast has acknowledged the existence of racist stereotypes in its sourcebooks, and pledged to make changes to ameliorate the issue. In a blog post published on June 17 titled "Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons," Wizards of the Coast said that depicting a diverse array of human beings -- beyond "fantasy versions of northern Europeans" -- is "one of the explicit design goals of 5th edition D&D." The developers noted that while they want to feature characters "who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs," the game still contains problematic depictions of fantasy races.

Among these races are the orcs, who are often characterized as a savage horde of creatures who lust for battle, and the drow, an evil dark-skinned subrace of elves who dwell in a subterranean matriarchy. Wizards of the Coast specifically addressed these two groups in laying out recent and future changes to D&D products: "We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do." They add: "Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character's origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own." The publisher also said "it's adjusting material that maligns or stereotypes real-world ethnic groups like the Roma," reports Polygon. "The company has revised the adventure Curse of Strahd, which includes a people known as the Vistani that 'echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world.'"

"In addition, the publisher said two future books will be written with a Romani consultant so as to characterize the Vistani 'in a way that doesn't rely on reductive tropes.'"

Oculus is ending sales of its budget Oculus Go virtual reality headset and opening its Quest headset to a wider range of software. The Verge reports: The company will maintain Oculus Go firmware through 2022 and accept new apps through December 2020, but it will stop selling Go hardware after the current stock runs out. Meanwhile, it will add a new Quest app distribution channel without the current strict approval process, encouraging more developers to work with the headset. In a blog post, Facebook-owned Oculus says it's retiring the Go after positive response to the Quest -- which features the same all-in-one format but tracks full spatial (or 6DoF) motion, not just head orientation. "You've told us loud and clear that 6DoF feels like the future of VR. That's why we're going all-in, and we won't be shipping any more 3DoF VR products," the post says. Oculus already listed the $149 Go as out of stock before its cancelation, and it dropped the Go from its business VR platform in January, saying the Quest was the "best solution" for most users.

Oculus launched the Quest with a highly curated app selection aimed at giving new VR users a consistent experience. Now, with Go developers getting nudged toward the Quest, it's apparently developing an alternative option for early 2021. This system will let developers "share their apps to anyone with a Quest" as long as they meet Oculus' content standards. They won't get the visibility of an Oculus Store page, but users won't have to manually sideload the apps onto their headsets, making it easier to deploy software that's in testing or built for a limited audience.

More than 70 people in the gaming industry, most of them women, have come forward with allegations of gender-based discrimination, harassment and sexual assault since Friday. They have shared their stories in statements posted to Twitter, YouTube, Twitch and the blogging platform TwitLonger. From a report: The outpouring of stories from competitive gamers and streamers, who broadcast their gameplay on platforms like Twitch for money, led to the resignation of the C.E.O. of a prominent talent management company for streamers and a moment of reflection for an industry that has often contended with sexism, bullying and allegations of abuse. Already, the response has been a far cry from Gamergate in 2014, when women faced threats of death and sexual assault for critiquing the industry's male-dominated, sexist culture. Now, some are optimistic that real change could come.

Gamers began sharing their stories after a Twitter user who posts as Hollowtide tweeted about an unnamed "top" player of the online game Destiny on Friday night, referring to the person as a "scum lord." Three female streamers, JewelsVerne, SheSnaps and SchviftyFive, saw the post and decided to come forward about their experiences with the gamer in question, who is known online both as Lono and SayNoToRage. The women posted their allegations, including nonconsensual touching, propositioning for sex and harassment, on Twitter using their streamer handles.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is closing its Mixer service on July 22nd and plans to move existing partners over to Facebook Gaming. The surprise announcement means Mixer partners and streamers will be transitioned to Facebook Gaming starting today, and Microsoft will no longer operate Mixer as a service in a month's time. Microsoft is partnering with Facebook to transition existing Mixer viewers and streamers over to Facebook Gaming in the coming weeks. On July 22nd, all Mixer sites and apps will automatically redirect to Facebook Gaming. Existing Mixer Partners will be granted partner status with Facebook Gaming, and any streamers using the Mixer monetization program will be granted eligibility for Facebook's Level Up program. Mixer viewers with outstanding Ember balances, channel subscriptions, or Mixer Pro subscriptions will receive Xbox gift card credit.

Microsoft's choice to partner with Facebook is clearly a strategic one that's also related to broadening the appeal of its upcoming xCloud game streaming service and its overall gaming efforts. Microsoft will work closely with Facebook to bring xCloud to Facebook Gaming, allowing viewers to click and immediately play games that people are streaming. It's a vision that's very similar to Google's ambitions with Stadia, but Mixer has lacked the scale and viewership to truly deliver this more broadly. Microsoft recruited exclusive streamers like Ninja and Shroud with big deals, but they haven't been enough to get more people using the service over rivals. Ninja, Shroud, and other top streamers are now free to rejoin Twitch or stream on Facebook Gaming.

Nintendo is retreating from the $77 billion mobile gaming arena after disappointing results deflated once-lofty ambitions, ending a multiyear effort just as the market goes through an unprecedented Covid-era boom. From a report: President Shuntaro Furukawa proclaimed two years ago that smartphone games would be a $1 billion business with growth potential, building on his predecessor's promise that Nintendo would release two to three mobile titles each year. That spurred hopes among investors that the gaming powerhouse could carve out a substantial slice of the market. In May, however, the president adopted a markedly different tune, saying "We are not necessarily looking to continue releasing many new applications for the mobile market." Nintendo's shares slid 4% the day after that remark. Close observers might have sensed Nintendo was growing disillusioned with the mobile realm even earlier. Its smartphone games project was born out of necessity to shore up the bottom line amid the Wii U's failure. Now, riding a surge in Switch popularity and investor confidence, the Kyoto-based company appears to have reassessed the mobile business and narrowed its focus to its own console ecosystem.

Epic Games is apparently trying to navigate some difficult cultural waters, reports Engadget: Gamers report that Epic has removed all police cars from Fortnite as of the shooter's latest update, and the Wall Street Journal understands that it was in response to Black Lives Matter protests over police violence. The developer wasn't trying to make a "political statement," according to a WSJ source — rather, it was trying to be "sensitive about the issues" players are dealing with...

The broader game industry has endorsed the Black Lives Matter cause, including a message in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and temporary shutdowns of GTA Online and Red Dead Online. Epic appears to be taking a milder approach with Fortnite, acknowledging the outrage without explicitly advocating for a cause. The company previously stressed that it wouldn't ban players for political speech.

After a few weeks of consideration, Apple denied Facebook's new Gaming app. "Since February, Apple has rejected at least five versions of Facebook Gaming," reports The New York Times. "Each time, Apple cited its rules that prohibit apps with the 'main purpose' of distributing casual games." From the report: Facebook Gaming may also have been hurt by appearing to compete with Apple's own sales of games, two of the people said. Games are by far the most lucrative category of mobile apps worldwide. Apple's App Store, the only officially approved place for iPhone and iPad users to find new games and other programs, generated about $15 billion in revenue last year. Apple's rejections of the app from Facebook, a fellow Silicon Valley powerhouse, illustrate the control it exerts over the mobile software and entertainment ecosystem -- clout that regulators are increasingly examining.

The Facebook Gaming app on Android shows a catalog of simple games presented by category and with colorful icons. Facebook initially submitted its Gaming app to Apple for approval in late February, said the people with knowledge of the situation. Apple rejected that version, they said, citing Section 4.7 of its app rules, which state that HTML5 games are allowed "as long as code distribution isn't the main purpose of the app" and "the code is not offered in a store or store-like interface," among other restrictions. But the initial version of the Gaming app that Facebook showed to Apple was similar to the Android version, listing games by category in a manner that could be interpreted as "store-like." Trying to get the Gaming app through Apple's review process, Facebook then changed the design of the presentation of games in several ways, the people said. The colorful icons were removed in favor of a bland listing. The different games categories were removed to list all games at once. The ability to sort games was also taken away.

Facebook also included a version that looked almost exactly like how such games are presented already within the main Facebook app on Apple devices, which is a single unalphabetized, unsortable list, the people said. Apple said no to each of them, pointing to the same rule, they said. In Facebook's most recent submission, the Gaming app did not include a separate tab for playable games and included no way for the user to choose from a wide selection of games to play, the people said. Instead, that version suggested certain games within the user's news and activity feed. Apple denied it. For what it's worth, Google quickly approved the app and began offering it worldwide on April 20.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Guinness World Records has reinstated a number of classic video game world records held by Billy Mitchell. The move comes just over two years after Mitchell's records were expunged following an investigation by Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard, which partners with Guinness to adjudicate video game records. That investigation found that recordings of some of Mitchell's record performances on Donkey Kong were not achieved on legitimate arcade hardware, based on extensive video analysis that showed signs of emulator use. Twin Galaxies has not changed its position on Mitchell's records, resulting in a split between the two record-tracking organizations. Guinness now once again recognizes Mitchell as the first player to achieve a perfect Pac-Man score of 3,333,360 points in 1999 and the first player to reach 1 million points in Donkey Kong in 2005. "It's been a long time coming," Mitchell said in an interview with Ars Technica. Twin Galaxies owner and CEO Jace Hall sent this meme as an image, which he said could serve as his quote on the matter.

Mitchell has since released a fuller video statement, "where he says he first got in touch with Guinness last September," adds Ars. "Mitchell uses the opportunity to praise Guinness' reputation and says it was 'very refreshing dealing with them' as they conducted their own investigation."

shirappu writes: Nick Walton created AI Dungeon as an experiment to build an AI dungeon master for D&D games. Since then, it's grown into a text adventure game in which players can type in anything they want, with the game's AI responding dynamically [and with over 1.5 million players and multiplayer adventures.]

In this interview about the year since its release, Nick talks about how it works and what they're working on now: quest systems, world persistence, and longer-term memory. He also opens up about where he thinks AI systems can support game development.

"One of our visions for AI is not as a tool to replace game designers, but a tool for augmenting their work. We want to make it easier to create awesome games. If it only takes one or two people to build an awesome game because AI fills in the details, it opens up doors for a lot of people.

"We really want to enable people to build cool things with this tech. Deploying this kind of AI training and these massive models is really hard for the average person, so our hope is that we build out the infrastructure and platform, and then let people build cool things on top of that."
Walton says they've recently added a modding feature that "basically allows for people to create custom modifications for their worlds."

In a test run I was a cyberpunk "living in the the futuristic city of Zail. You have a bag of drugs and a holoband. You wake up in a dark alley with bruises all over your body. You have no idea what happened. You stand up and see three men pointing guns at you..."

"It looks like Twitch streamers are the latest targets for coordinated DMCA attacks," writes Slashdot reader stikves. "What is more concerning is that these could potentially cripple their accounts." Engadget reports: The company has acknowledged (via Evening Standard) a "sudden influx" of DMCA takedown requests against streamers for allegedly violating music copyright in clips captured by viewers between 2017 and 2019. As each request potentially represents a strike against an account, this raises the threat of permanent bans for streamers who might get three strikes with relatively little warning -- and for clips they didn't even choose to create.

The Amazon-owned service is recommending that broadcasters delete any affected clips. However, it's a very slow process. You can only delete a handful at a time, and popular streamers may have thousands of clips. Twitch said it was working to "make this [process] easier," but didn't elaborate how.

On Wednesday, Magic: The Gathering publisher Wizards of the Coast took unprecedented measures to remove racist cards from its game. Seven cards in all, dating back to 1994, are now banned from play. Their images will also being removed from the game's official online database. Polygon reports: "The events of the past weeks and the ongoing conversation about how we can better support people of color have caused us to examine ourselves, our actions, and our inactions," Wizards said in a statement. "We appreciate everyone helping us to recognize when we fall short. We should have been better, we can be better, and we will be better." The list of now-banned cards is: Invoke Prejudice, Cleanse, Stone-Throwing Devils, Pradesh Gypsies, Jihad, Imprison, and Crusade.

One card in particular, Invoke Prejudice, was singled out. It shows a hooded executioner with a black axe. "If opponent casts a Summon spell that does not match the color of one of the creatures under your control, that spell is countered," says the card. It effectively kills off creatures that don't look like the creatures already on the table. Gatherer, the official online database of every Magic card ever published, displays the card at a web URL ending in "1488," numbers that are synonymous with white supremacy. All cards will be replaced online with a note that calls out their racist depictions, text, or a combination thereof.

At a live event today, Sony officially unveiled its PlayStation 5 console. Eurogamer reports: The sleek and curved box will come in two flavors -- one with a disc drive, and one without. Meet the PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. No pricing or launch date details were announced today. The white-colored console can be orientated horizontally or vertically. Both versions have a USB and USB-C port in the front. Also shown: a controller charging station which docks two DualSense pads, a headset featuring 3D audio support and noise-cancelling microphones and a media remote with built-in microphone. You can watch the PS5 hardware reveal trailer here. Sony also offered a first extended look at actual games running on the upcoming hardware.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nearly three months after laying out some of the PlayStation 5's technological underpinnings, Sony today offered a first extended look at actual games running on the upcoming hardware during a live event. The event started off with a glimpse of an "expanded and enhcanced" version of Grand Theft Auto V, which is coming to the PlayStation 5 in 2021, in case you need an excuse to buy the game again. PlayStation 5 owners will also get GTA Online free at launch in 2021, while PS4 owners of GTAV will get $1 million in monthly online GTA Cash every month until the PS5 version launches.

A follow-up to last year's Spider-Man featuring Miles Morales will be hitting the PS5 in Holiday 2020. "A hero is just someone who doesn't give up," an unseen narrator says over the footage. "Your dad said that. He was right. Now it's your turn. Go be a hero Miles." Though the footage shown is tagged with a "captured on PS5," (and a ""Be greater, be yourself" slogan), it's unclear if it will also be available on older PS4 systems. Ratchet and Clank are back for more madcap run and gun mayhem in Rift Apart, a game that seems focused on warping quickly between dimensions that are randomly collapsing in on one another. The trailer shows the duo riding dragons, facing pirates, sliding down futuristic buildings, and more. And one dimension even features a female member of Ratchet's species, which is sure to satisfy a particular type of fan. Other games mentioned in the report that are coming to Sony's next-gen console include: Square Enix and Luminous Productions' Project Athia, Annapurna's Stray, Housemarque and PlayStation Studios' Returnal, LittleBigPlanet's A Big Adventure, Destruction Allstars, Ember Lab's Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Goodbye Volcano High, Soulstorm, Ghostwire Tokyo, Superbrothers' The Far Shore, Gearbox and Counterplay Games' Godfall, Solar Ash, Hitman 3, Astro's Playroom, and Little Devil Inside.

Developing...

Nintendo has almost doubled the number of user accounts compromised by hackers in the past few months. From a report: The Japanese gaming giant originally said that 160,000 Nintendo accounts were compromised, exposing personal information like the account owner's name, email address, date-of-birth and their country of residence. In an updated statement, the company said another 140,000 Nintendo accounts had been compromised. Nintendo said the number increased as a result of its continuing investigation. The company said it reset those passwords and contacted customers. The statement reiterated that fewer than 1% of all accounts were impacted by the breach. News of account compromises came as early as March when users complained that their accounts were charged for digital items without their permission. Nintendo said in a tweet in April that users should enable two-factor authentication on their accounts but without saying why.

With the Xbox Series X on the horizon, Microsoft's head of videogame hardware sees a future where consoles may no longer be front and center. Wired reports: Despite its massive push for the Xbox Series X, Microsoft is hedging its bets that a decade from now more and more gamers will be taking a "no gods, no masters" approach to where and how they play. Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, thinks whether consoles will exist in 10 years is the wrong question to ask. "In the long run, to me, it's a question about the viability of the television," said Spencer last week in an interview with WIRED. "There's this calculus, this chess match we're playing," says Spencer. "It's no longer checkers." Spencer's chess match isn't against Sony or Nintendo; it's against the ever-changing trends in how two billion gamers worldwide consume media. When the Xbox Series X arrives in stores later this year, it will become a part of Xbox's chimera approach -- alongside its cloud gaming service, Project xCloud, and Xbox Play Anywhere -- to capture gamers wherever they are. With xCloud, you'll pay a currently undefined subscription to stream AAA games onto your mobile phone and tablet. With Xbox Play Anywhere, you can buy, say, Forza Horizon 4 and play it on both Xbox One and Windows 10 on PC.
[...]
Spencer paints the Xbox Series X and the "game anywhere on stuff you have" pitches as complementary rather than cannibalistic. "I don't think it's 'hardware agnostic' as much as it's 'where you want to play," he says. Which makes sense: The more ways to play, and the more services Microsoft provides, the more repeatable revenue flowing into Microsoft's coffers. After the hype around the Xbox Series X cools down and the hardware-content singularity approaches, it's possible that many of the people opting to play Xbox games will do so on everything except the Xbox. It seems fair to ask whether this generation of dedicated consoles will be the last. "I like watching TV. I like playing games on TV. It's where I play most of the time," says Spencer. "I think there will be -- for a long time -- a world where people want to play on a television, and we're committed to that and we will deliver great console experiences. I don't think Xbox series X is our last console. I think we will do more consoles to make that great television play experience work and be delightful."

And if not, well, the company still has options. "The nice thing about being in a company the scale of Microsoft is we're able to make bets across a lot of those fronts and we're not really dependent upon any one of those individual kinds of businesses or relationships to succeed," says Spencer.

EA Games has just released The Command & Conquer Remastered Collection on Steam, described by Hot Hardware as two of the '90s-era real-time strategy games that "were incredibly popular in their day and are still popular with retro gamers today..."

"Gamers can change between legacy and remastered 4K graphics in real-time when playing solo mode," they note, adding that "deep support for mods via the Steam Workshop is baked in."

But UnknownSoldier (Slashdot user #67,820) also writes EA has released the source code for two of their classic real-time strategy games in the Command and Conquer series: CnC: Red Alert and CnC: Tiberian Dawn on GitHub. Interesting trivia:

- Source code is around 5 MB.

- There are no art of sound assets.

- Filenames are all in capitals. This makes it easy to tell what was added for the Remaster.

- The path finding is NOT using the usual A* algorithm but the "Crash and Turn" algorithm.

- Searching the source for PETROGLYPH_EXAMPLE_MOD shows an example of how to add a mod.
And 25 years after the release of Tiberian Dawn, the remastering team even tracked down the original voice for its in-game computer system EVA -- to create new high-definition recordings.

One of the issues with the NBA's plan to restart its season in July is playing games without fans in the arena. According to a report from The Athletic, there's a proposal to pipe in crowd noise from the NBA 2K video game. Engadget reports: NBA 2K also serves as the platform for the league's official esports series and has already simulated its own end to the 2019-2020 regular season, and its attention to details of the basketball experience may help fill in the blanks. Some leagues that have returned to action during the coronavirus pandemic already use piped-in sound, including Bundesliga soccer, and Sky Sports is planning to use EA's FIFA 20 game to a similar effect on Premier League broadcasts.