GTA 5: Rockstar building new update on Xbox One and PS4 with latest fan offering

GTA 5 is set to receive its next instalment of free content this summer, which will include the PC version's Rockstar Editor coming to PS4 and Xbox One.

The new tool will certainly prove a game-changer for many consoles fans who have had to look on enviously at the amazing clips being put together by those on PC.

Rockstar has already confirmed that due to the Editor being an advanced tool requiring additional processing power, it will not be compatible with GTA V on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

However, fans who made the leap to the new-gen console are set to get a version tailored for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which we will see a release most likely with the launch of the Ill-Gotten Gains content update later this summer.

And warming up to the release of the new creator tool, the GTA 5 developers have picked out a new wave of fan-made videos that have caught their eye.

One that should prove very useful to console fans waiting to get their hands on the Rockstar Editor will be user whanowa's GTAV: Create Awesome Videos in 5 Steps.

An accompanying description for the video guide, which can be seen below, explains: "There have been a few attempts at Rockstar Editor video tutorials since launch, but none goes as in-depth as whanowa's "GTAV: Create Awesome Videos in 5 Steps".

"As well as a holistic overview, each section of this 20 minute epic is packed with helpful tips and tricks, complete with reference clips and demonstrations. If you're an aspiring Rockstar Editor, this video is highly recommended."

Rockstar has also revealed that they plan to bring The Lab radio station to all four consoles in a forthcoming title update, although there seems to be zero change of a the playlist-style station transferring over to PS4 and Xbox One.

"The GTAV PC Self Radio experience that plays your personally curated playlist of mp3s in the game as a fully featured and properly integrated radio station just wouldn’t technically be possible on the consoles as it requires more than the consoles allow at this time," a Rockstar statement on the subject confirms.

4 Video Games Free for Xbox Gold Members in July 2015

One of the primary benefits of being an Xbox Live Gold member is that you get free games each month. Sure, the service costs around $60 per year, but the games you’ll get are worth far more than that, even if you’re only interested in playing a fraction of them.

Previously, members could only count on Microsoft to give away one free Xbox One game and two free Xbox 360 games each month. Starting in July, the company will begin offering two Xbox One games each month, which is good news for Xbox One owners looking to fill out their library of games.

Remember, even if you don’t have an Xbox One yet, you can redeem your free games either on Xbox.com or your Xbox 360. Then, if you buy an Xbox One in the future, you’ll be able to find those games in your account and download them. It’s like buying a new console and suddenly having an instant library of games to play.

Without further ado, here are the free Games With Gold for July 2015.

1. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Platform: Xbox One

Original price: $29.99

Available: All month

Metacritic score: 83

So what if Microsoft gave the Xbox 360 version of this game away to Gold members in April. Now you can have it on Xbox One.

Like all Assassin’s Creed games, this one whisks you to the past, where you’ll be tasked with sneaking around and killing bad guys. The setting is particularly exciting: you’re dropped in the pirate-infested Caribbean Sea during the colonial era of 1715. You have the standard wall-climbing and back-stabbing the series is known for, but there’s also a huge focus on exploration and ship combat. Many fans consider this the best Assassin’s Creed game yet, so be sure to download it for free while you can.

2. So Many Me

Platform: Xbox One

Original price: $14.99

Available: July 16 to August 15

Metacritic score: 78 (on PC)

This adorable indie platformer is all about clones. You play as a cute spherical character who duplicates himself at the drop of a hat. Your clones follow you every step of the way, but they’re easy to lose if you’re not careful — much like Lemmings.

Eventually you’ll discover different kinds of clones with new abilities that will help you make your way though the game’s many environmental puzzles. The reviews for the PC version have been pretty strong, so it’s definitely worth a look when it launches on Xbox One.

3. Plants Vs. Zombies

Platform: Xbox 360

Original price: $14.99

Available: July 1 to July 15

Metacritic score: 89

From Bejeweled to Peggle, developer Popcap knows how to make killer games that appeal to casual and hardcore gamers alike. Thought it’s been for a while, Plants Vs. Zombies definitely fits the bill. This “flower defense” real-time strategy game has you plant combat-ready flora in your front yard to stave off hordes of zombies trying to shamble their way into your house (and gnaw their way into your brain).

You spend your time choosing seeds, collecting sunlight, and pelting cartoonish zombies with weapons like pea shooters. It’s one of those games that’s easy to start playing, but hard to stop because it’s so much fun. If you haven’t played it yet, be sure to give this one a try.

4. Gears of War 3

Platform: Xbox 360

Original price: $19.99

Available: July 16 to July 31

Metacritic score: 91

The human race is in dire straits as Gears of War 3 kicks off, which means it falls once again to you and your team of burly soldiers to save the day. Armed with machine guns, chainsaws, and a mighty weapon called the Hammer of Dawn, you set off to end the alien threat once and for all. No pressure, but if you fail, it’s pretty much curtains for humanity.

With enough epic set pieces to fill a summer blockbuster, Gears 3 is a thrill ride from start to finish. And after you’ve watched the credits roll, don’t forget to try the multiplayer modes. They’re just as gory and intense as the campaign.

One more quest: How mobile gaming reshaped online RPGs

Smartphone and tablets have changed the landscape for gaming. For one, it has made a gamer out of those who would have never even imagined playing a PC or console game, much less consider themselves a gamer. But even for those who have already been whiling away hours in front of the TV or the monitor, the culture of mobile has also changed a few things. Take for example the corner of the gaming world known as online RPGs and how the ubiquity of smartphones have somewhat redefined that genre, for better or for worse.

The Past

Ask a veteran and a new gamer what an online RPG is and they will undoubtedly give you different answers. Of course, there will be certain commonalities, like the requirement to be online (duh), the adoption of roles or job classes, and the need to hoard loot and experience. But ask them about the experience, both mechanical and social, and they will most likely give you different, if not diverging, opinions.

Before smartphones, online RPGs were, more often than not, called MMORPGs or massively multiplayer online RPGs. And that's because they were truly massive, both in the number of players they support at any given time, as well as the scale of the game world itself. Sprawling areas that spanned virtual continents, sometimes even planets, towns that make real world flea markets look deserted, and party or guild mates that felt just as real as your next door neighbors. This is the world of the likes of Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, and Ultima. This was the online RPG, before the idea of squeezing them into perpetually mobile device even became fashionable.

Mobile Constraints

Understandably, it was nigh impossible to compress all of that into a smartphone or a tablet, both the experience as well as the games themselves. Forget first the technical limitations of a smartphone. One has to consider the fact that not all game makers have the capacity to run massive servers like those mentioned above. A few hundred players they can support, maybe a thousand at most. Of course, there are companies like Gameloft or EA that can handle a lot more, but most of the time, they don't really scale.

Then there's the fact that one usually doesn't spend hours playing on a smartphone. At least not normally. At most, one can spend half an hour of uninterrupted gaming during the day, more during the night. The normal span, however, was measured in minutes. As such, the open ended, open world gameplay of online RPGs also do not scale down to size, where quests took longer to complete and raids required the full might of a ten-man party.

Of course, these days, the tides are shifting again. Mobile gamers are staying glued to their screens for hours, tapping like there's no tomorrow on Clash of Clans, forming friendships online that are just as strong offline. Online mobile gaming is indeed being reshaped, but this now and was definitely not back then.

Sweets and Avians

And then came along blockbuster casual games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush. People, even those who don't consider themselves gamers, would lose hours, not to mention dollars, playing those games and their kin. Clearly, they were doing something right that not only got people hooked, but also got people playing at any time that they wanted.

Of course, there are many factors that contributed to the success of these games, but one of the most unique things was the progression system. It presented levels as small, bit-sized chunks that you can play in just a few minutes, usually one or two. It visually showed a clear path of progress. The short bursts meant you didn't have to worry about spending too much time on the game. It gave you a sense of control, though, in fact, it was also somewhat of an illusion. While you could indeed stop when you wanted to, the gratification system, which bombarded you with victories every other minute, meant you were hopelessly hooked.

A new breed

Mobile games started to adopt this system and, in due time, it would also make its way to RPGs. Curiously, it was adopted more by RPGs that required you to be online. Offline games like the Zenonia series, for example, followed the traditional story-driven path. Online RPGs, however, needed a better hook than a deep storyline. And that's when the "casual online RPG" genre, for lack of a better name, was born.

It was like Final Fantasy meets Angry Birds. It has the strappings of an RPG game, with customizable characters, loots galore, and the semblance of a plot. But there was also staged progression, where parts of the story are dished out piecemeal and in almost disconnected fashion. Every minute or so you could choose stop and return to the real world and it would not make a dent in your gaming experience.

Majority of these RPGs become more like short skirmishes, with slaying one wave of enemy after another as the primary goal. And after a period of screen mashing and swiping, the player is thrown back to "town", more often than not just a screen littered with menus for equipment, skills, and cash shops.

Sure, some mobile online RPGs do inject a bit of social activity, which takes different forms. Sometimes, it can be as simple as a list of friends whose characters you can summon to your aid even when their owners are offline. It can also be as elaborate as guilds or some semblance of it, allowing players to, from time to time, band together for a common goal or raid. But these social features, more often than not, are tacked on. These online games remain primarily solitary games that you just happen to play online.

The Dilution

Such online RPG games have proliferated and flourished with such a basic pattern that has been repeated and copied to no end. While that is, to some extent, a good thing, pulling in more people into the world of mobile gaming and increasing the army of gamers worldwide, it also served to dilute the some of the key experiences of an RPG, particularly an online one.

"RPG" has become a blanket term to cover any game that involves growing characters and their equipment. It barely matters if there's any rhyme or reason to the game. In fact, in many of the games, the plot is practically a very thin excuse to kill enemies. Call it a single-player MOBA (if such an oxymoron did exist) and it would change nothing. These games have the "game" part down to a T, but the "role-playing" aspect has been lost somewhere in transition. Instant gratification has become the name of the game. Somewhat ironically, those bits of gratification do pile up, turning what should be just minutes of gameplay into hours.

The "online" part has also somewhat lost its meaning, though happily not completely. Some mobile games even advertise themselves as mobile MMORPGs and yet fall short of the MMO half. In particular, the social aspects become dwarfed. Friend Lists, leaderboards, and chats are good, but they too don't come close. Nothing replaces the feeling of logging into a town full of other players going about their business, or exploring vast maps with new found friends, or the thrill of taking down a boss monster with your long-term guildmates. Those were the experiences that have drawn and hooked thousands of players to MMORPGs. Now we wait for the same to happen with our smartphones.

Final Thoughts: A New Hope

Apart from a few outliers, this has been the state of mobile gaming for quite some time now. But it seems that there are stirrings happening rather quietly. Mobile devices and frameworks have evolved to the point that games need to worry less about hardware capabilities, giving game makers some leeway to break from the mold and experiment a bit. They no longer need to worry too much that devices can only load very small scenes and very few assets, which limit how much you can accomplish in a game. And we can see some faint trails of those.

Gameloft paved the way with its Order and Chaos Online, with O&C almost like its take on the Warcraft franchise. Recently, games like Iruna Online and Izanagi Online have also popped up. What these three have in common is an open world more like a traditional MMORPG and all that it entails. Perfect World Entertainment and Snail Games, both legends in the PC MMORPG scene, are also bringing their titles to mobile, though it remains to be seen if they will take the easy, cookie cutter path or blaze a new trail.

With advancements in mobile technology and hardware, game designers are more free to think less about hardware constraints and really answer the hard questions. With the changing behavior of mobile device users, they also need not worry anymore about whether there will be players willing to spend more than just a few minutes on a well done, addictive title. And hopefully, we will also get to see more mobile gamers daring to go beyond their comfort zones and venture into the dangerous world outside their cave, sword and shied in hand.

Why Big Game Publishers Aren't Into Virtual Reality (Yet)

  The breathless enthusiasm over virtual reality hasn’t extended to one key corner of the video game industry: the companies that make the most popular games. At this week’s E3 conference, representatives from Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, and Take-Two all said they were taking a wait-and-see approach to virtual reality. None are planning on having games ready for next year, when Oculus and Morpheus headsets will go on sale for the first time.  

"We haven't seen the commercial release of the hardware. We haven't seen commercial release of any software,” says Strauss Zelnick, chief executive officer of Take-Two, makers of Grand Theft Auto. "We're intrigued. We're doing a lot of homework. We haven't made any announcements yet. I think it remains to be seen what that format is."

Laura Miele, senior vice president for publishing at Electronic Arts, says that the company’s past experiences chasing every trend in gaming has left it circumspect about losing focus.  “We talk as much about what we’re not doing as what we are going to do. That’s a significant shift for the company,” she says. 

While EA does have some early prototypes of virtual reality content, Miele thinks it will be years before the company sells games for headsets. “We’ll not miss an opportunity, but we’re not porting all of our games or having a huge rush to be in VR right now,” she says. 

In large part, the reluctance stems from uncertainty as to whether there’s real money to be made in virtual reality yet, says Joseph Evans, an analyst who covers gaming for Enders Analysis. Compared to console games, there won’t be much in sales at first. “I’d do the same in their position,” says Evans. "For all the buzz, we just don’t know the level of consumer demand, and I see no reason they couldn’t get up to speed very quickly once the market is there.” 

Because no one yet knows what makes a good virtual reality game, publishers who excel at making expansive experiences for consoles won’t necessarily have an advantage over smaller shops experimenting with new types of games. The most successful smartphone games have generally come from companies that emerged specifically to focus on mobile, rather than from well-known publishers making games for other devices. 

Some publishers that concentrate primarily on consoles are showing more interest in virtual reality. Ubisoft, for instance, showed at this year’s conference a number of prototypes it has been working on. But most of the action in virtual reality seems set to come from the hardware companies themselves, as well as from smaller developers willing to take risks. Oculus recently announced that it would invest $10 million to help independent developers create software for its headsets. Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony’s World Studios, says that virtual reality games will be cheaper to make at first than console games, because the early games won't be nearly as big as titles like Call of Duty or Halo. 

This could make it harder to sell headsets at first. Despite all the advances in technology, the thing that really sparks sales of gaming hardware is excitement over new versions of the most popular games. It seems that Oculus and Morpheus will launch with few such titles available. Yoshida says he expects to eventually see versions of popular console games for virtual reality. He also argues that they’re not needed to draw people to the technology: New game formats and such things as travel experiences will prove just as tempting to potential users.

“These things will appeal to many different kinds of audiences,” he says. “The potential is much broader than the current console games.” 

Will Gamers Pay Three Times the Price for a Fancier Xbox Controller?

It's a lot to pay $150 for a game controller that can kill virtual aliens a few milliseconds faster. The Xbox Elite, announced last week at the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles, costs about three times as much as a standard controller—or nearly half the price of the Xbox One console itself, which comes bundled with a regular game pad.

At first glance, Microsoft's pricing strategy here seems hopelessly out of whack with what consumers are willing to pay. The $150 device, which comes out in October, has a “diamond rubber grip,” customizable buttons on the back, and levers and joysticks you can swap out. Oh, and a carrying case. But it looks pretty similar to its cheaper predecessor.

Serious gamers, who raved about the controller at E3, were able to look past the resemblance. The seemingly small changes make a big difference to players who spend hours a day mastering Call of Duty and Halo. By creating a product with premium materials and advanced features, Microsoft is trying to tap into a small segment of the gaming community that's willing to spend big on tools that might give them an edge on the digital battlefield.

This high-end niche hasn't really existed on consoles before. North American console gamers will spend more than $450 million in 2015 on game controllers, mostly for the standard fare, according to an estimate from research firm IDC. But PC gamers have shown a willingness for years to spend absurd amounts of money for mechanical keyboards and weighted mice.

With the Xbox Elite, Microsoft is trying to create a premium market among console gamers similar to the one that exists among PC obsessives. “They're going for a very specific audience that's relatively price insensitive as long as the quality is there,” says Lewis Ward, director of games research at IDC. “Think of it as the Maserati of standard game controllers.” About 20 percent of gamers are designated “hardcore,” meaning they spend at least 15 hours a week playing fast twitch games, according to Ward. They account for a higher percentage of revenue for game accessories because they demand the latest and best for any advantage they think they can get.

The new controller from Microsoft, which also works on Windows PCs, is the first attempt in this generation of consoles to sell add-on hardware to a premium class of gamers, Ward says. Past consoles have tried, usually unsuccessfully, to sell niche accessories. These were often specialized peripherals that only worked with a handful of games, such as plastic golf clubs, steering wheels, arcade-style joysticks, and a $200 contraption for the original Xbox that contained about 40 buttons, two joysticks and three foot pedals to simulate piloting a mech. Microsoft's Xbox Elite isn't going after the cheap add-on crowd. “I don't think they're going to sell a ton at the end of the day, but I don't think it's a bad bet overall,” says Ward.

Console owners are the frugal, sensible constituency in the $20 billion games industry compared with the excess in the world of PC gaming. If you want to be a real PC gamer, the first thing you'll need is a computer. But not just any machine will do. Hardcore gamers typically shop at custom builders like Falcon Northwest, which specializes in machines that allow their customers to specify everything from $1,000 paint jobs to the color of the fluid in their liquid cooling system. A Mach V rig with some top components can easily run more than $10,000. Throw in a high-end monitor or two—as any real gamer would—and you're looking at the price of a brand new Kia Rio.

In the high-end computer accessories department, a Mad Catz R.A.T. 9 gaming mouse, which its manufacturer claims will give a 1 millisecond response time, will set you back $134, if you opt for the glossy paint job. The S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 customizable keyboard costs $252. There are even specialized computer desks designed for gamers. The Volair Sim Universal Flight or Racing Simulation Cockpit Chassis costs $660.

After looking at the premium market for PC game accessories, the Xbox Elite game pad might seem like a bargain. But as I've learned from testing high-end game equipment, none of the customizable buttons and millisecond-saving mechanisms has ever saved me from a rifle butt to the back of the head in Halo.

Xbox One games will be playable with the Oculus Rift...sort of

LOS ANGELES — Xbox One games can played with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, but it's not what you think it is.

At E3 2015, Oculus VR co-founder and vice president of product Nate Mitchell told Mashable the Xbox One will be able to stream games to the Oculus Rift, but what you'll see will be more like being in a theater with a really big projection screen.

SEE ALSO: The Xbox One's $150 Elite controller may be the best controller ever created

"You'll be able to [stream Xbox One games] to the Rift on a projection screen on the moon," Mitchell said. Although he didn't elaborate in detail, he did confirm the feature will be similar to the Oculus Cinema app for the Samsung Gear VR that simulates the feeling of watching movies on the moon and in the theater.

Just imagine what you see below, but with Xbox One games on the screen instead of movies:

It's not full-blown VR gaming like Sony's Project Morpheus for the PlayStation 4, but the idea of being able to play on a virtual screen that's massive already has me excited the idea of being able to play on a virtual screen that's massive already has me excited since I really dug watching movies in Oculus Cinema.

While Sony has embraced VR, Microsoft hasn't done the same for its Xbox One. Instead, the company is pushing its HoloLens "mixed-reality" headset with games like Minecraft.

That's not to say Microsoft has no interest in VR at all. That's really not the case. The company is working closely with Oculus VR and Valve VR to optimize Windows 10 for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift headset and HTC Vive. Additionally, the company is partnering with Oculus VR to include an Xbox One controller with every Rift.

There may be no real VR experience on the Xbox One (yet), but it wouldn't shock us if they're looking into it and just haven't announced anything so far.

How Kamcord could run away with mobile gaming videos while YouTube fights with Twitch

Gaming is a visual medium, and that has helped video sites like YouTube and Twitch build huge audiences of people seeking game-related content. But as more of the world shifts its game time to mobile, a new company is trying to establish itself as the leader there.

Kamcord is a startup based in San Francisco with offices in New York and Japan, and it’s all about enabling gamers on mobile to make and share videos. This started exclusively on iPhone and iPad way back in 2012, but the company has since expanded to Android. 

It even recently introduced an app on the Google Play store that can record any game where, previously, developers had to integrate Kamcord’s SDK. This has the company, its technology, and its social network on the verge of growing into a huge destination for people who love mobile gaming, and GamesBeat wanted to look back at how it got to here.

“[Cofounders Matt Zitzmann, Kevin Wang, and I all knew each other from school,” Kamcord engineer Aditya Rathnam told GamesBeat. “We did computer science at MIT together.”

The group got together in early 2012, and — at that point — the idea wasn’t to make a solution for sharing videos from mobile games. It was simply just to come up with any startup at all.

They started brainstorming ideas because they knew they wanted to work together. During one of the sessions, Wang was playing Battlefield and watching a lot of videos of the game on YouTube.

“Why doesn’t this exist for mobile games,” asked Wang.

And when none of them had an answer for that, they all realized that they could probably build it.

“There has to be a place you can go watch mobile games all day,” said Rathnam. “Similar to how people were watching so much PC and console gaming on YouTube and Twitch. It felt like one of those ideas that would exist. We weren’t sure how to make it happen or whether there was a business model or whether it would even be feasible, but it felt like one of those things that, in four or five years, there would be a destination you could go to to watch mobile gameplay and interact with other gamers.”

The three students really started exploring the space. At that time of 2012, Twitch was really starting to come on strong. And YouTube was turning into a powerful means to get the attention of gamers. So Kamcord started talking to developers about whether they would want a new toolkit that could enable game recording.

Rathnam met with a developer friend of his who was super skeptical. The friend explained that game makers already have too many tools to select from, and no one wants more. But when Rathnam explained exactly what they were thinking, the friend gave an endorsement by saying: “I don’t hate this idea.”

“That’s literally what he said,” Rathnam relayed. “This is an idea I don’t hate, so maybe you should pursue this. That was encouraging.”

So, Wang, Zitzmann, and Rathnam decided to form Kamcord. They knew all along that they wanted to build the destination where people would find their favorite content. They wanted to build an alternative to YouTube for mobile gamers. But, first, Kamcord had to figure out the tech.

“We realized pretty quickly — within the first couple days — that we couldn’t go build the destination directly,” said Rathnam. “We needed to have actual content in order to build the destination. Kevin began exploring ways to record what was happening on the screen without slowing down the game. The general consensus was, if you started recording the screen you would slow down the game to 1/6th its original speed, making the game unplayable.”

Thank you, Apple

But Kamcord’s timing was fortuitous. Apple had just released iOS 5, which came bundled with a new low-level OpenGL-based path to enable recording.

“It wasn’t the entire solution. Just a part of it,” said Rathnam. “But it was a way to record the screen without slowing down the game. Kevin discovered this new piece of technology that had just come out and used that, adding a bunch of other optimizations, to eventually get a working prototype of recording the screen without slowing down the game.”

But built-in iOS technologies and Wang’s magical optimizations still didn’t make things easy.

“We’d underestimated how much work it would be to record the screen in a performance-minded way,” said Rathnam. “‘Oh, yeah, we’ll build this in a couple of months and get it out there, this is going to be awesome.’ It turns out it actually took — we did get something working in a couple of months, but we’re still working on it today.”

Once Kamcord had the technology, it still didn’t have anything it could really provide to gamers. So, it started pitching its SDK to developers. Wang had a demo where he had a spinning box playing on his phone, and he was able to record and share that. It was by no means a completely solution, but it was a start. And it was something that could get people who make mobile games — the kinds of people who stay up nights trying to figure out ways to make their products more discoverable — excited.

And Rathnam thinks it was great that the Kamcord team didn’t just sit around in a room trying to solve every riddle mobile-gaming videos could throw at them.

“It would have been overwhelming, the amount of work we’d have to do,” he said. “But we were able to get some quick wins every one or two months. That kept the ball rolling. Before we knew it we were neck-deep in it. ‘Okay, I guess now we have to build a way to record audio as well.'”

Naturally, that was way harder than Kamcord expected. It’s actually something it still struggles with.

“Three years in and we’re still focusing on low-level audio capture for Android devices,” said Rathnam.

The real challenge

And while the technology is hard, Kamcord’s true difficulty was establishing a rapport with developers.

It’s one thing to have a super skeptical friend say that he doesn’t hate it, but it’s another to get strangers to put your code in their game. But again, Kamcord was making the right deal at the right time.

“We were fortunate,” said Rathnam. “As part of that market research phase, we got connected with a couple of guys who were the owners and maintainers of the Cocos2D [game development] platform. We put a form on the Cocos2D blog that said ‘we’re building this recording and sharing solution, here’s a video of how it works in this particular game, who wants to sign up?'”

Kamcord didn’t expect that to have a big impact. They were anticipating to get around five signups before the blog fell off of the Cocos2D page. They ended up getting 75 on the first day.

“We immediately started talking to all these people and getting as many of them on board as possible, even just sharing a test video,” said Rathnam. “The feedback they gave was invaluable.”

Of the 75 who reached out to Kamcord, the startup was able to get recording working in about 10 of their games. With that under its belt, the company went back to Cocos2D and asked if they could do a new blog about the success they’ve had. Cocos put it up on their blog and didn’t post anything new for a month, so every developer that checked out that page saw Kamcord’s tech first.

“We used that to get another 600 sign-ups,” said Rathnam. “Those 600 very quickly translated into about 20 to 30 live games. That was the initial momentum for us.”

Those were all tiny games, but Kamcord now had around two dozen working examples of its technology. It had a record it could rely on in its discussions with bigger studios or in talks with investors.

Getting that money

Later in 2012, after the early success with Cocos2D developers, Kamcord got accepted into the seed-funding investment group Y-Combinator.

Kamcord had 20 games ready to show off for its demo day at Y-Combinator, and that helped the company stand out. It’s technology wasn’t just an idea.

Y-Combinator backed the company, and Kamcord has since raised a total of around $25 million from investors like Yahoo chief executive officer Marissa Mayer, Chinese gaming behemoth Tencent, and Japanese megadeveloper GungHo Online Entertainment.

A history of good timing

We’ve already talked about how Kamcord was able to capitalize on several key moments throughout its history because it was doing the right thing at the right time.

It was trying to figure mobile recording as Apple released its new technology to make that easier. It was able to work with Cocos2D at a time when developers were looking for exactly something like Kamcord. The company was then able to turn that into funding.

Moving forward into the future, the company is now well positioned to once again take advantage of good timing. That’s because the aforementioned updates to Google’s Android — along with another change coming to iOS — have blown the market wide open.

On Google’s platform, you no longer need to implement recording on a game-by-game basis. You can, but the Google Play store already has a few dozen apps capable of recording or even livestreaming your games or everything you do on your phone.

That would maybe make Kamcord concerned — if it hadn’t planned all along to end up as the destination for mobile gamers everywhere.

“On the competition side, we feel like we’re in a strong place in the U.S. and Europe,” said Rathnam. “Everyplay is the other big company in the space, but we’ve taken a big lead over them.”

Kamcord has shifted a lot of its focus to China and Japan where it has competition that caters specifically to those markets. Rathnam claims his company still has better tech, but he admits that isn’t enough.

“That’s a big part of why we’ve opened up a Japanese office,” said Rathnam. “We have five people at Kamcord Japan now. We’re making our experience as localized for the Japanese market as possible. Similarly, we opened a two-person office in Korea, and we’re opening an office in China as soon as possible.”

Kamcord wants to win this space and have a share of the market similar to what YouTube has for gaming on the Web.

And it could get that simply because it has always had that clear goal of building a social network for mobile game-video sharing in place.

“We think of ourselves as similar to Instagram,” said Rathnam. “Instagram lets you share videos and pictures to Facebook and Twitter and so on, but Instagram is the authoritative version of all the content they have. We’d like to build a similar experience and be that destination for mobile gamers using our app and our website.”

And that’s already starting to happen.

Kamcord users have already shared 45 million videos, and more than 1.3 million people make videos using Kamcord every month. That’s more than Twitch, which claims to have over 1 million content creators. And Kamcord says it has not even spent any money on acquiring gamers.

“Things are going well on that front,” said Rathnam. “But we obviously want to reach more and get more content.”

With its community side growing, the new competition might not matter. People want to share their videos where the audience is, and right now, on mobile, that’s the Kamcord app.

Getting ahead; staying ahead

“For this year, we have two big focuses for us as a company,” said Rathnam. “One is Asian expansion and the second is growing the community in our app.”

For Asia, Kamcord is going to keep doing its best to localize the experience for the three biggest markets of China, Japan, and Korea. It will also keep hiring in those regions to boost its relationships with developers.

“On the community side, in the U.S., we’re laser-focused on retention in the app right now,” said Rathnam. “Toward the end of this year the plan will be to get more users into the app and to build a vibrant community in the app around some of the features we have there, like chat and group chat and so on. People are taking to that.”

Finally, the company is looking into livestreaming, and it expects to have something that can enable gamers to share their videos as they play them in the near future.

Here's a Forza-branded Xbox One Elite Controller

The Xbox One Elite Controller might already be the ultimate console gamepad, but here's something we didn't expect to see — not so soon, at least. We found these at the Forza 6 stations in Microsoft's E3 2015 booth: Elite Controllers with Forza-branded thumbsticks and a faceted D-pad celebrating 10 years of the franchise (the first Forza Motorsport debuted in May 2005).

We don't have any other details right now other than they exist. Branded parts makes a lot of sense for Microsoft, especially if they're sold as interchangeable parts (vs. the entire controller package), but while we think it's safe assume these will go on sale at some point this year (Forza 6 will launch in September, the Elite Controller in October), we honestly don't know. So for now, let's just enjoy some pictures.

Box for Office Online lets you edit Office docs from the cloud

The online cloud storage service, Box, is now an official Microsoft OFfice 365 Cloud Storage Partner. Users will see new integrations with Office Online, making it easier to be productive without having to install the full range of Office programs on every device they own. 

According to Box, there are over one billion Microsoft Office files on its cloud at the moment. That makes Office files the single most uploaded files proliferating Box. To make it even easier to access and edit those files, Box created Box for Office Online. This new service is designed to bring users the best of Office Online's online editing capabilities for Office documents paired with Box's multi-device cloud service.

Users will be able to access, create, and upload Office files from a range of devices through their web browser. Box for Office Online users shouldn't have to open any installed programs to complete their Office tasks, which makes it useful for those times you need to use a shared computer, in a pinch.

In April, Box began opening up to developers with the release of an SDK. So, this corporate pairing with Microsoft may be the first in a series of new features coming to Box.

It will need all the extras it can get to compete with big name cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox. This isn't news to Box as it has been repeatedly spearheading free storage campaigns to attract users. Whether it sways users or not, it will be a handy feature for the billions of Microsoft documents already situated on its cloud.

New video games will make children kinder and better behaved

  

As a veteran school counsellor in the US, Gregg Graves has seen kids bully their peers for all kinds of reasons, from being too short to wearing the wrong brand of boots. Such targeted ridicule, studies show, can have lasting effects. Bullied children are more likely to get anxious or depressed and even drop out of school. So when clinical psychologist Melissa DeRosier asked if Graves would like to try Zoo U, a computer game she created to teach kids empathy and co-operation, he was intrigued.

He decided to test-drive the game with his 125 nine to 10-year-old students at North Forest Pines Elementary in Raleigh, North Carolina. They took to the cartoon scenes of hallway chats and playground four-square right away, he says. "When kids started taking the headsets off, they were saying, 'Can we do that again?'" For years, there has been a widespread perception that video games are inherently bad for children. Screen time is bad time, the thinking goes, leading kids to become poor students, unhealthy and antisocial.

Today, though, it's becoming clear that's not the whole story. Even violent video games are starting to be recognised as potentially edifying in some respects. One recent study finds that they boost kids' cognitive and social skills. Imagine the impact if games with a positive bent could go one better. The non-profit Games for Change has been funding promising socially conscious games for years; this spring, the organisation began a high-profile event as part of New York City's Tribeca Film Festival, with a "Games for Learning" summit co-sponsored by the US Department of Education.

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MindLight, developed by the Netherlands' GainPlay Studio, has been praised for its immersive experience that helps kids overcome fears and anxieties. Zoo U was released last November by 3C Institute, a social-skills researcher based in Durham, North Carolina, and nearby spin-off company Personalized Learning Games handles distribution. And If, a game designed to build empathy and relationship skills from Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, launched its first "chapter" in early 2014; other chapters came later in the year.

Proponents of gaming for change say practising positive behaviour in a game setting pays real-life dividends. New research backs them up: a 2014 Psychological Science study, for example, reported that when kids play video games that encourage co-operative behaviour, they show more caring and empathy in the real world. Another study at the UK's University of Sussex found kids who took part in a co-operation-centred game were more likely to help a person who'd dropped something and intervene if they saw someone being harassed. And earlier this year, children in Germany who played story-based video games in a Freiburg University study improved in understanding others' emotions – a skill that researchers believe could be useful to kids on the autism spectrum.

Using video games to teach social skills makes sense given how the brain works. Social and behavioural theories posit that outside reinforcement and repetition drive learning, and video games provide ample opportunities for both. "You do a behaviour, you either get rewarded or punished," says Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile, a co-author of the Psychological Science study. "We're training ways of perceiving and thinking about the world."

Graves was impressed with how quickly the game supplied him with a wealth of information on all 125 students' social acumen. "I was able to sit down with [the teachers] and explain what it revealed about social skills that kids were struggling with."

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