The world's biggest games retailer has told MCV it is happy about the latest Xbox strategy rethink.

In a statement sent to us this evening GameStop said it welcomes Microsoft's new plan for Xbox One.

Earlier today platform boss Don Mattrick confirmed in a letter published on Xbox.com that he had rethought the new console's strategy around online check-in, game ownership and pre-owned games.

Many had speculated that the original plan could harm games retailers, who offer trade-in and second-hand games as a means to fund new games purchases.

GameStop says Microsoft was right to listen to consumer backlash around the strategy.

A statement from the firm sent to MCV says: "GameStop welcomes today’s announcement from Microsoft about changes in functionality for its next-generation console, the Xbox One.

"This is great news for gamers and we applaud Microsoft for understanding consumers and the importance of the pre-owned market."

Vocal feedback from gamers has led Xbox to revise its plan for new digital game ownership on its upcoming Xbox One console.

A fresh letter from Xbox boss Don Mattrick has confirmed gamers can "play, share, lend, and resell your games exactly as you do today on Xbox 360".

The letter acknowledges plenty of vocal feedback since Xbox One was revealed and then when, two weeks later, Microsoft confrimed that a new game strategy would require regular online check-in and could stop second-hand games.

But Microsoft has u-turned on these contentious points.

Specifically, Mattric says:

• An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games– After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.
  
  

• Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today – There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.

The letter in full reads:

Last week at E3, the excitement, creativity and future of our industry was on display for a global audience.

For us, the future comes in the form of Xbox One, a system designed to be the best place to play games this year and for many years to come. As is our heritage with Xbox, we designed a system that could take full advantage of advances in technology in order to deliver a breakthrough in game play and entertainment. We imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing, and new ways to try and buy games. We believe in the benefits of a connected, digital future. 

Since unveiling our plans for Xbox One, my team and I have heard directly from many of you, read your comments and listened to your feedback. I would like to take the opportunity today to thank you for your assistance in helping us to reshape the future of Xbox One. 

You told us how much you loved the flexibility you have today with games delivered on disc. The ability to lend, share, and resell these games at your discretion is of incredible importance to you. Also important to you is the freedom to play offline, for any length of time, anywhere in the world.

So, today I am announcing the following changes to Xbox One and how you can play, share, lend, and resell your games exactly as you do today on Xbox 360. Here is what that means:

• An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games– After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.
  
  

• Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today – There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.
  
  

In addition to buying a disc from a retailer, you can also download games from Xbox Live on day of release. If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline just like you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console -- there will be no regional restrictions. 

These changes will impact some of the scenarios we previously announced for Xbox One. The sharing of games will work as it does today, you will simply share the disc. Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray. 

We appreciate your passion, support and willingness to challenge the assumptions of digital licensing and connectivity. While we believe that the majority of people will play games online and access the cloud for both games and entertainment, we will give consumers the choice of both physical and digital content. We have listened and we have heard loud and clear from your feedback that you want the best of both worlds.

Thank you again for your candid feedback. Our team remains committed to listening, taking feedback and delivering a great product for you later this year.

If the latest web rumours are true, Microsoft is poised to announce a revised agenda for second-hand games and online check-in.

Whathifi and Giant Bomb are both claiming via independent sources that the format-holder will abandon controversial plans that would demand Xbox One connect to Microsoft HQ servers once every 24 hours.

It is also said that this means the decision to allow publishers to charge for trade-in and buying used games will be scotched too.

On Xbox One, all game discs will work 'as they do on 360' says one of the reports.

Two weeks ago Microsoft confirmed that new game ownership strategies - designed to allow players to retain ownership of games in the cloud and access them from other devices - would mean a new approach to how games are sold and owned, and changes to how players could borrow them from friends or rent them from retailers.

But the strategy has been met with cynicism from gamers, the specialist press, and some retailers, who fear what the move does to the current retail market.

Sony even took the opportunity at E3 last week to confirm that it would not try these strategies - an announcement met with glowing applause at its press conference.

It is said the move will be announced today - we'll publish the official confirmation should it appear.

Human rights organisation Walk Free has launched a campaign targeting Nintendo.

The body seeks assurances that Nintendo hardware doesn’t use slave-mined minerals, which can arrive on the global market from troubled regions such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, in any of its hardware.

A petition demanding confirmation on the issue and an audit of Nintendo’s supply chain has so far attracted over 400,000 signatures, the group claims.

It has created a video, which can be seen below, and a Flash game, which can be found on the official website, to try and draw attention to the issue.

“While this parody allows gamers to demand that Nintendo articulate credible steps to ensure slavery is not in its supply chain, slavery is not a game,” Walk Free’s movement director Debra Rosen stated.

“We’re not mocking the problem, we’re poking fun at the absurdity of Nintendo’s lack of response. Nintendo – as the world’s largest maker of video game machines – should be leading other consumer electronics companies in showing the public that they are working to have a supply chain free of slavery. Instead, they are lagging behind.”

Nintendo has in the past also been criticised for its green credentials. In 2007 Greenpeace scored Nintendo a flat zero in its global electronics manufacturers study and the following year claimed the company had no environmental policies.

MCV has contacted Nintendo for a response.

Here’s the video:

Developer Infinity Ward cannot finish work on key elements of Call of Duty: Ghosts as it is yet to receive final next-gen hardware samples.

“Obviously we are in crazy early development and we will have to see how the consoles play out,” the game’s executive producer Mark Rubin told OPM. “We have made some cool improvements on AI. Most of it has to do with some of the cinematic values.

“We need some hardware, some finished hardware, before we can really expand.”

Reports from E3 suggest that PS4 game demos were running from Sony’s dev hardware. Many Xbox One games, however, were shown to be running off Windows 7 PCs – interestingly with Nvidia graphics hardware.

So what sort of AI enhancements is Rubin discussing?

“It is subtle, really subtle,” Rubin explained. “AI in general is one of those things [where] the subtle things are often easy to notice when it is bad.”

He went on to discuss what was described as “situational AI”. Basically, opponents will at times react to the events around them.

“They take some of the environment cues and pay attention to them,” he added. “A lot of times they just kind of ignore the environment, they are just like ‘Ok this guy is supposed to be here I’m shooting, but the building is falling all over me… No, I’m still shooting you’. So sort of doing stuff like that.”

PC graphics expert Nvidia is to begin licensing out its technology to other device makers.

Reuters reports that the company’s chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco that licensing its graphics cores and visual patents will help Nvidia tap into the growing mobile computing markets.

"The bottom line is the world has changed and we're expanding our business model to serve markets that we historically could not serve by selling chips alone," Huang said.

"The opportunity went from a few million game consoles a year to now, billions of devices per year. The opportunity is now much bigger.

"I think the shape of companies in the future will look increasingly hybrid. Microsoft licenses software, they sell devices, they have services. All of the above. I think you'll see more and more companies that are like that."

The move will place Nvidia in competition with the likes of Qualcomm and Samsung – a brave new world compared to its familiar battles with AMD, which in itself is an interesting case.

The numbers suggest that Nvidia is in a fitter state than its PC rival, but an aggressive marketing push for AMD that has seen it provide the innards for both PS4 and Xbox One and push its PC graphics card with extensive bundled software offers has arguably placed Nvidia on the back foot.

Indeed, AMD is in the process of completely repositioning itself as a key player in the gaming market. There are also concerns that developers creating games for the AMD architecture of the next-gen consoles may lead to a weakening of Nvidia tech in the PC sector.

UPDATE: Sony has contacted MCV to say that it has "not made any announcements about PS4 software pricing for the UK or Europe and will do at a later date".

ORIGINAL STORY: PS4 games will be priced the same as PS3 games, Sony has confirmed.

“We have announced the pricing for our first party line up of PS4 launch and launch window games,” a rep told ShackNews. “All four titles – Killzone: Shadow Fall, Driveclub, Knack, and inFamous Second Son – are all $59.99."

Microsoft made a similar commitment regarding Xbox One software pricing earlier this week, with a rep stating that “Microsoft Studios games on Xbox One will be $59.99”.

Of course, none of this necessarily means that third party publishers won’t try and alter the pricing structure for games.

Indeed, even the last generation the likes of EA and Activision attempted to hike the price of titles such as FIFA 12, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops to an eye-watering £54.99.

Still, there are those of us who remember paying £79.99 for Super Street Fighter II on the SNES…

Talk that left many Nvidia graphics card owners worried last night has been roundly dismissed by EA and AMD.

Word spread across the internet last night that EA and AMD had joined forces for a PC gaming collaboration. The talk was that EA’s entire slate of Frostbite 3-powered games – such Battlefield 4, Mirror’s Edge 2 and Need for Speed: Rivals – would be tuned for optimum performance on AMD’s Radeon cards to the detriment of Nvidia’s GeForce lineup.

Worse still, rumours even spread that EA’s PC releases could be locked to AMD hardware and incompatible with Nvidia cards.

Fortunately, both rumours seem to have been quashed, although EA and AMD are working together on Battlefield 4.

“DICE has a partnership with AMD specifically for Battlefield 4 on PC to showcase and optimize the game for AMD hardware," an EA spokesperson told IGN. "This does not exclude DICE from working with other partners to ensure players have a great experience across a wide set of PCs for all their titles.”

An AMD spokesperson added: "It makes sense that game developers would focus on AMD hardware with AMD hardware being the backbone of the next console generation. At this time, though, our relationship with DICE and EA is exclusively focused on Battlefield 4 and its performance optimizations for AMD CPUs, GPUs and APUs.

"Additionally, the AMD Gaming Evolved program undertakes no efforts to prevent our competition from optimizing for games before their release.”

Nvidia recently launched its new line of PC graphics cards. The £550 GTX 780 leads the way followed by the GTX 770. The GTX 760 is expected to be announced imminently.

Having unveiled its Radeon HD 7990 earlier this year as the driving force behind Battlefield 4, AMD is expected to unveil its HD 8000 series GPUs some time over the next three months.

Sometimes games aren’t about multi-million pound budgets and transmedia marketing – sometimes they’re about changing people’s live for the better.

Such is the case for Tom Francis. Many of you will know him as a writer for PC Gamer. Some of you will know him as the developer of PC title Gunpoint. In the future, he hopes all of you know him as a great creator of games.

Writing on his blog, Francis revealed that Gunpoint had already enjoyed great success before it was even out, with the pre-order numbers alone far exceeded his expectations.

“So, I quit my job,” he wrote. “In fact, I think I have quit jobs, as a concept. I started Gunpoint as an audition piece to get myself a position at a developer, but designing it has been so creatively satisfying that I no longer want one, and so commercially successful that I’ll never need one.

“I can now make games full-time for the foreseeable future. More amazingly, I can do it with total creative freedom. There’s really no pressure for my next thing to make a particular amount of money, so I can do whatever I think will be most exciting.

“It also means I can afford to keep being nice. I didn’t let anyone pay for Gunpoint until I was ready to put a free demo out, so everyone would have a way to make sure it ran OK on their system and that they liked it before giving me any money.

“I was informed by lots of people with industry experience that this is commercial idiocy: you want to hold it back so that excited fans buy without trying, then you can release the demo later to tempt those who weren’t convinced.

“I’m sure they’re right, and as a noob I appreciate the advice. In fact I got so much scepticism that I started to think the lost sales might actually be the difference between being able to become a developer or not. But even if that had been the case, I wasn’t going to quit my job for a career in tricking people into giving me money and regretting it.

“I have no idea if and how much the pre-release demo hurt Gunpoint’s sales, but it doesn’t matter now – that’s how I want to treat people, and the amazing support for Gunpoint means I can afford to.”

MCV offers our hearty congrats to Tom. We’ve played Gunpoint and it’s brilliant. Don’t believe us? Then believe its 85 per cent rating on Metacritic.

The lead system architect on the PS4 and Knack director Mark Cerny will deliver the conference keynote at this year’s Develop in Brighton.

The talk, called Changing the game: Developing into the next generation, will look at the making of the PS4, the lessons learnt from previous console generations, the future of the hardware, and how embracing the indie scene will play a key part in that future. 

Cerny will also discuss his motivations behind creating PS4 launch title Knack alongside working on the console, and the insights he has gained performing both hardware and software development roles.

“Following the rave reception Sony received for the PlayStation 4 at E3 earlier this month, we are delighted that Mark Cerny is delivering the Develop in Brighton keynote this year and we fully expect it to be standing room only,” said Tandem Events MD Andy Lane.

Mark Cerny has worked in the game industry for over 30 years, starting out at Atari in 1982 and developing Marble Madness. He subsequently went on to work on titles such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon.

The Develop in Brighton conference will take place at the Brighton Hilton Metropole hotel from July 9th to July 11th.

Visit the official website for more information.