The trailer showcases the game’s beautiful world, and sets the stage for a “sad and evocative tale that echoes throughout eternity.” NieR: Re[in]carnation is the first mobile entry in the long-running series, and is being developed by Applibot and directed by Yoko Taro himself.

Pre-registrations for the game are live, and interested fans should definitely get themselves registered as soon as possible. The game seems promising, and the involvement of creative masterminds like Yoko Taro prove that NieR: Re[in]carnation is not just a cash-grab. More showcases and reveals are due for the day, so stay tuned.

The iOS App Store, which Apple launched ten years ago today, set off a revolution in gaming. Mobile games, which until then had been an underserved niche, exploded in popularity, becoming a pillar of the gaming market, attracting the masses of casual gamers that Nintendo had hoped to capture with the Wii, and going on to become the single largest segment of the gaming market by revenue.

The effects of the mobile gaming revolution can be felt to this day. Most major companies in the world- EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Square Enix, Epic, Sega, The Pokemon Company, Konami, Sony, Microsoft, Take Two, even Nintendo– have mobile marketing strategies. Monetization and distribution methods popularized by smartphones, including free to play games and microtransactions and lootboxes, have become mainstays even of AAA console gaming. Nintendo’s Switch is a direct response to the rise of mobile gaming, which chipped away at so much of its previous console and handheld market.

As I am sure you have realized from reading that list above yourself, the App Store’s influence has not all been positive. While it gave a platform for indie games to do well, it devalued games with its race to the bottom mentality pricing, and led to the proliferation of popular exploitative strategies like loot boxes.

But the App Store, and indeed, the mobile market itself, is starting to stabilize now- and who knows, maybe, going forward, we will see it mature into a meaningful place to play great games on an ongoing basis. I sure hope we do. The potential of mobile as a platform for video games continues to remain immense.

Look, there is a real and indisputable problem with mobile gaming- the storefronts through which these games are sold are hardly curated, meaning all sorts of crap eventually manages to make its way through to consumers. And while quality control is something we can debate all day long, the larger issue is when obvious knock offs, which are in clear violation of copyright law, and which generally mislead customers and exist to scam them out of their money, manage to make their way to the storefronts too.

Such a thing has happened right now. If you visit the App Store from an iOS device, you will find a listing for Minecraft: Pocket Edition 2 (adding insult to injury is the fact that it is currently charting high on the Paid Apps list). The title of the app would suggest that it is a sequel to the first Minecraft game’s mobile version- and indeed, the description of the game would suggest that too:

“Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. Minecraft II is taking those activities to a whole new level of excellence and uniqueness. At first, people built structures to protect against nocturnal monsters, but as the game grew players worked together to create wonderful, imaginative things.

“Explore randomly generated worlds and build amazing things from the simplest of homes to the grandest of castles. Play in creative mode with unlimited resources or mine deep into the world in survival mode, crafting weapons and armor to fend off the dangerous mobs.

“Craft, create, and explore alone, or with friends on mobile devices or Windows 10.”

It’s a well written blurb, unlike so many other scam or knock off products, and the mention of other copyrighted properties like Windows 10 would probably allay any fears you may have had. Unfortunately, Minecraft: Pocket Edition 2 is not an official product. It’s a scam made by someone called Viktor Todorov (though on the game’s official page, the developer is listed as Scott Cawthorn, possibly in an attempt to mislead customers into associating the game with the developer of the Five Nights at Freddy’s series, Scott Cawthon).

Worse than the copyright infringement, however, is the nature of the product itself. The game advertises itself using screenshots from Minecraft, misleading players into thinking that the game will play like that. Unfortunately, the actual game is nothing like Minecraft– according to Eurogamer, who have discovered this knock off via Reddit, it is a “terrible top-down swipe game” which eventually crashes your phone.

You want to know what somehow manages to make it even worse? Worse than the fact that it infringes upon multiple copyrights, worse than the fact that it misleads customers, worse than the fact that it is a terrible product? It’s the fact that it costs £5 (or $11)- it’s a terrible product that doesn’t even have the decency to be free, or cheap.

Eurogamer has gotten in touch with Mojang, and received an official statement.

“It’s great that Minecraft has inspired people to create amazing things, but when a product attempts to dupe our community or exploit their enthusiasm for the game, it’s our responsibility to step in,” Mojang’s Owen Hill said.

“Our dedicated enforcement team are extremely busy!”

Meanwhile, of course, we are all left wondering if this is truly what mobile gaming has become- exploitative and scammy at the best of times, but at the worst, an uncurated wild west where games that are buggy, misleading, and illegal end up somehow rising to the top of the charts.

The last time something like this happened, there was a video games crash- that may be the direction that mobile gaming is headed in itself.

We already know that Nintendo is getting into the mobile gaming business along with DeNA and that the NX is a part of that plan but news of the first game in this line-up is coming soon.

According to DeNA West CEO Shintaro Asako at the GamesBeat 2015 conference (via VentureBeat), “Soon, we should be able to announce the game.”

It was already announced that the first game would be announced before 2015 concluded so this is hardly a surprise. This will be the first of five new smartphone/tablet games to be announced between now and March 2017 so it should be interesting to see which franchise Nintendo places front and centre, especially considering Japanese industry analyst Serkan Toto’s recent tweet.

“About that first Nintendo-DeNA mobile game: Expect the unexpected, and soon.”

A hybrid between Mario and Fallout Shelter? We’ll find out in the coming days so stay tuned for more information and let us know what you want to see in the comments.

A while ago, as Sega announced some significant restructuring, it announced that it would be moving away from the console market- which it now ultimately sees as unprofitable to its bottom line- and towards a digital focus on PC and mobiles. Now, it seems it has made its first serious step towards that end, as Sega announced today that it had purchased Demiurge Studios.

You might not know who Demiurge are, even though you should- they have worked on a series of high profile projects, and with a variety of big name partners in the industry, including Harmonix, 2K Games, and Gearbox. Their credits include the PC port of Mass Effect, co-development on the original Bioshock, and the cancelled Wii U port of Aliens: Colonial Marines.

“We’re constantly evaluating the independent mobile game space for studios that fit our vision of fun, high-quality gameplay experiences,” said Haruki Satomi, CEO of SEGA Networks. “Demiurge underscores our commitment to investing in the West.”

Demiurge itself seems to be pretty damn excited. “Through some miraculous happenstance of fate, we’ve founded a partner that likes us just the way we are–warts and all,” the developer wrote. The studio will, for now, continue working on Marvel Puzzle Quest, and it will continue maintaining its corporate identity and culture.

Of course, for anyone who is worried about how Sega will handle the new studio, at this point, I would say one does not have to worry- just look at how well Sega have handled The Creative Assembly, Relic, or Atlus for proof.

Stay tuned for more coverage.

Konami has announced that its PES Manager mobile gaming app- the mobile gaming counterpart to its popular PES football sim series on consoles- has now been updated with new player data, reflecting the new season rosters and rankings, as well as data on all new players- over 1,500 of them, in fact.

The new players also bring with them brand-new uniforms and skill sets to keep users at the top of their game. To further sweeten the deal, players will, for a limited time, receive a special item upon logging into the game, for free.

In addition to new player data, the updates to the game include the availability of a group of national player badges called “National Dream Greats” (NDG) and the even stronger “National Dream STARS” (NDS), which are available in the game from teams such as Germany, Spain, Brazil and more. In addition, Konami promises to keep the app updated as the European football season progresses, so that in addition to enjoying the game, players can also make it their hub for football news and trends.

Oculus Rift is supposed to be PC gaming’s poster boy for high tech, cutting edge, high graphical fidelity gaming, but the device was always supposed to be platform agnostic, and coming to a full range of hardware, including smartphones and tablets (something that Samsung, in particular, was pretty enthusiastic about when it was first announced).

Well, today Oculus made that official and concrete, as they released the mobile software development kit (SDK) for developers.In addition, the SDK also includes the full-source code for Oculus Cinema, Oculus 360 Photos, and Oculus 360 Videos under an open license, meaning developers can basically just go ahead and jump start their Oculus Rift VR app development.

The Oculus Mobile SDK 4.0 comes with support for a variety of features, including:

• Asynchronous Timewarp
• Direct front buffer rendering
• Clock frequency locking
• GPU context priorities
• Real-time, fine grained GPU context switching
• Real-time CPU threading
• Direct warped content

That’s pretty cool. Who knows, VR may actually take off with Oculus Rift. We’ll see.

Remember Big Huge Games? You have to. Created by Brian Reynolds, the co-creator of the excellent Civilization series, the studio had a trailblazing start, when they debuted with the paradigm setting real time strategy game, Rise of Nations. Big Huge Games’ subsequent output, however, which usually involved expansion packs for Microsoft’s strategy or sim games, such as Age of Empires III or Zoo Tycoon 2, never lived up to the potential of their first game, and by the time the studio released Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning with 38 Studios, it was folded up as part of the latter’s bankruptcy, as part of the game’s failure.

Well, now Brian Reynolds has revived the studio, and they have already announced their new game. It is called DomiNations, and it is an ‘epic’ and ‘innovative’ strategy game, that will let players virtually travel through history, from the stone age to the space age.

It is also a mobile title. For iOS and Android tablets and smartphones.

And it will be releasing in 2015.

If ever there was a case of mixed emotions, this would be it.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more, I guess.

… for mobiles.

Yes, that was extremely anticlimactic, but it is what it is.

Undead Labs, the folks known for the excellent zombie shooter, State of Decay, that came to the Xbox 360 and PC last year, have announced their new game, and if you were expecting for something awesome that would follow in State of Decay’s footsteps, maybe for the Xbox One, well, then this will be a bit of a letdown for you.

You see, their new game in a new RPG. It’s called Moonrise. it is coming for mobiles.

If that’s not bad enough, then it is being released in association with Kabam games, who describe themselves as the leaders of free to play mobile gaming in the west.

This is terrible.

“We are thrilled to partner with Undead Labs. They are a veteran team that has worked on some of the greatest game franchises of all time,” said Aaron Loeb, senior vice president of Kabam’s North American Studios. “Their new creation, Moonrise, will bring a truly next generation mobile experience to gamers around the world.”

“We’re a gamer-focused studio with a great console pedigree,” said Undead Labs’ Jeff Strain. “And Kabam is a world-class publisher focused on delivering console-quality games on mobile devices. It’s a perfect match.”

Well, I guess we’ll be keeping you posted on this game as well. Stay tuned.

Free to play games are the most misleadingly named kind of product ever- while there are, of course, examples of actual, well made, exemplary free to play games (such as Path of Exile, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, DOTA 2, Hearthstone, Killer Instinct), most of them (especially the ones on smartphones and tablets) are exploitative services designed to forsake balance in order to extract as much money from the customer as possible, making them terrible as games (since there are no gameplay mechanics, only mechanics to encourage the spending of real money), and even worse as products.

It appears that the European Commission has had enough of this, as it has issued new guidelines regarding these ‘free to play’ games, and the misappropriation of the label. The new guidelines include:

• Games advertised as “free” should not mislead consumers about the true costs involved;

• Games should not contain direct exhortation to children to buy items in a game or to persuade an adult to buy items for them;

• Consumers should be adequately informed about the payment arrangements for purchases and should not be debited through default settings without consumers’ explicit consent

Google has already acted on a number of these. Apple, so far, has not, although with the rulings now being made official, it’s only a matter of time before they do.

“This is the very first enforcement action of its kind in which the European Commission and national authorities joined forces. I am happy to see that it is delivering tangible results. This is significant for consumers. In particular, children must be better protected when playing online. The action also provides invaluable experience for the ongoing reflection on how to most effectively organise the enforcement of consumer rights in the Union. It has demonstrated that cooperation pays off and helps to improve the protection of consumers in all Member States,” said EU Commissioner for Consumer Policy Neven Mimica.

Vice President Neelie Kroes, responsible for the Digital Agenda, added: “The Commission is very supportive of innovation in the app sector. In-app purchases are a legitimate business model, but it’s essential for app-makers to understand and respect EU law while they develop these new business models”.

Personally, I am all on board with this idea. Hopefully the rest of the world follows suit.