How will you remember Christmas 2014? Maybe it was setting fire to
the tree with your new drone, or perhaps Grandma managed to go a whole
hour without making a slightly racist remark. For many people it was the
frustration of not being able to access PSN or Xbox Live because a
bunch of bored hackers decided to take both services down. What a time
to be alive.
Understandably, Sony and Microsoft both felt a little
responsible for letting their servers be taken down so easily so both
are compensating players with a few goodies. Sony will be giving everyone five free days of PlayStation Plus along with a 10% discount token to be used on the PlayStation Store.
Microsoft
also announced that it's extending its latest weekly Xbox 360 and Xbox
One deals, which will now go through to January 6.
Power to the people
While we're on the subject, a different hacking group, H4LT, offered up a less intrusive Christmas gift by leaking the November Xbox One
development kits. That might not sound so exciting on the face, but the
leak revealed that Xbox One developers now have access to more CPU
power.
Since October, developers have been allowed access to a
seventh processing core that was previously reserved for background
activities. There are payoffs for this extra gain, including fewer voice
commands, but the result will hopefully bring more balance to the
force. Only time will tell.
Hey, ever wondered what BioShock would look like as a Final Fantasy game? Us neither!
Dead exciting
Finally, this Christmas also brought news that - surprise, surprise - The Last of Us 2 is probably happening and
probably in the early stages of development.
Or at least that what Avalanche Studios senior character artist Michael Knowland let slip on his Linkedin profile.
The former Naughty Dog artist listed one month of "prototyping head
sculpts" on The Last of Us 2, which has since been removed.
Earlier
in the year The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann said that
the chances of a sequel were "50/50". Don't expect any firm details for a
while - we've got Uncharted 4 coming, remember - but we suspect that a
second game will choose to focus on a different story to Joel and
Ellie's.