Fully Charged: Star Wars Battlefront beta extended, and even Kanye hates in-app purchases
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Star Wars Battlefront beta extended
Did you spend a big chunk of the weekend playing the Star Wars Battlefront online multiplayer beta? It sounds like the large-scale open beta – which spans Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC alike – has gone pretty smoothly so far. And it’ll continue on a little further than anticipated.
Like the recent Call of Duty: Black Ops II beta, the Battlefront test will be extended an extra day to let everyone savor the pre-release taste just a little bit further. Rather than end later today, the Battlefront beta will run through tomorrow, 13 October.
However, take note that EA is trying to push the servers to the extreme before the proper release, so the team has a small warning for anyone hopping on now: "These [additional] tests are to help us find some extreme scenarios, and that means some players may experience occasional issues such as being kicked from the game or losing connectivity. This is all being done in the name of shoring up our infrastructure before we launch on November 17th."
[Source: EA Star Wars via Twitter]
Read More › Star Wars Battlefront hands-on review
Even Kanye West hates IAP
The lives of rich and famous celebrities might seem totally disconnected from our own daily routines, but every so often, we get a little hint that they’re really just like us. Over the weekend, we got that from rapper Kanye West, who took to Twitter to complain about in-app purchases in iPad kids’ games.
"F— any game company that puts in-app purchases on kids games!!!," began his multi-tweet rant about the tablet use of his daughter North with wife and reality TV star Kim Kardashian. "That makes no sense!!! We give the iPad to our child and every 5 minutes there’s a new purchase!!!"
While the first two tweets were all blind rage, he ended the complain with a common sense plea: "If a game is made for a 2 year old, just allow them to have fun and give the parents a break for Christ sake." Surely we – especially those of us with kids – can all agree on that, at least.
[Source: Twitter]
Star Citizen gets an all-star cast
Star Citizen has quietly raised some US$90 million in crowdfunding over the last three years for the ongoing development of the sandbox space simulation PC game, and now we know where at least some of that cash is going to: the creation of Squadron 42, a single-player campaign (to supplement the persistent multiplayer action) with a well-known voice cast.
Over the weekend, at the CitizenCon 2015 event, developer Roberts Space Industries revealed the cast, which features the likes of Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, John Rhys-Davies, and Andy Serkis. A couple of those (Hamill and Rhys-Davies) worked with game director Chris Roberts back on the classic Wing Commander series, so Star Citizen truly is shaping up as a modern spiritual successor in more ways than one.
Kotaku says the campaign should be available as part of Star Citizen sometime in 2016, and you can catch a behind-the-scenes clip above for a look at the extensive capture process being used to bring the game to life.
[Source: Kotaku]
Read More › The 30 most anticipated games of 2015
Andrew Hayward
Freelance Writer 
