MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL!

Hello all!

I won't be posting this weekend as it's christmas and all, plus I have work...

BahHumBug.

Anywayyy I hope you all have a great day and enjoy your gaming related gifts!

Much Love,

Connor!

P.S. Apologies for not posting last weekend, I had work everyday last weekend and I was knackered when I got home, so I basically fell asleep as soon as I got home!

I hope you all can forgive me!!

NEWS | Week beginning December 7th | UK Charts, Steam Security Step-Up & New Xbox Coming Soon?

Greetings all! I'm back! I felt like turd last week, so I decided it was probably a good idea to rest up and get better. I am now better, so things shall continue as normal!

UK Charts

First up, this weeks UK Chart has been released, and personally, it looks a little strange...

Most of the games on the list deserve to be on the list, well, depending on what type of games you prefer to play, it's just the order that the games are in that confuses me. Here, have a look at the list...

1. FIFA 16
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
3. Star Wars Battlefront
4. Just Cause 3
5. Fallout 4
6. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege
7. Minecraft: Story Mode
8. Grand Theft Auto 5
9. Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection
10. WWE 2K16

Can you see why I'm confused? November, as always, has been a big month for releases. For

Is it 'James' or 'Hamez'?

example, games like Fallout 4, Star Wars Battlefront and Black Ops have graced our faces this month. We've also seen games like Just Cause 3 and Rainbow Six: Siege come out this month. All great games that have sold well and deserve to be on the list.

A couple of the games on the list confuse me. I honestly never saw WWE as a big video games franchise. GTA come out a good two or three years ago, but apparently it still sells well. And FIFA? I love FIFA as a series, but I'm not quite sure how it's top of the list, especially after all the big games we've had released in November, but hey, what do I know?

Steam Security Step-Up

Next up, Valve has announced that they plan to step up security on Steam after finding that around 77,000 accounts are hacked into each month.

Valve wrote earlier in the week that they plan to increase the security measures on their PC gaming platform Steam to try and fend off hackers on the Steam Community Market.

"These are not new or naïve users; these are professional CS:GO players, reddit contributors, item traders, etc. Users can be targeted randomly as part of a larger group or even individually. Hackers can wait months for a payoff, all the while relentlessly attempting to gain access. It's a losing battle to protect your items against someone who steals them for a living.

"We can help users who've been hacked by restoring their accounts and items, but that doesn't deter the business of hacking accounts. It's only getting worse."

For those of you who use Steam regularly, you may have noticed a big banner advert along the top of Steam, advising users to install the new Authentication App. The new app is one of many efforts created by Valve to help counter the hacker threat online. The app uses a system known as 'two-factor authentication', which means that two seperate devices are used when logging into to your account and confirming your identity.

"Two-factor authorisation is the use of a separate device to confirm your identity". "The security of this system is based on moving that step from your PC to a device a hacker can't access, such as your smartphone. PCs can be easily compromised, therefore a PC-based authenticator would not provide better security than a password or email authentication."

Go download it! Now! Do it quickly!

So basically, it means you have to log into your account on PC, then go through the Authentication App and do the same thing so Valve knows that you are you, and not an imposter. As an added bonus to not losing your precious Steam account, Valve has also offered users who download and use the app discounts on their Steam Community Market purchases. Another advantage to downloading the app!

If that's not enough, Valve has also added a couple other measures juuust to make sure everyone who isn't using the app is also protected. They include:

• Anyone losing items in a trade will need to have a Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator enabled on their account for at least 7 days and have trade confirmations turned on. Otherwise, items will be held by Steam for up to 3 days before delivery.

• If you've been friends for at least 1 year, items will be held by Steam for up to 1 day before delivery.

• Accounts with a Mobile Authenticator enabled for at least 7 days are no longer restricted from trading or using the Market when using a new device since trades on the new device will be protected by the Mobile Authenticator.

  If you don't already have or use the Authenticator App, go and get it and start using it. Otherwise, trading between friends and other Steam users will become a slow, frustrating process. Valve however claims that the extra time that will be taken between trades will give both users and Steam time to discover that an account has been hacked and recover the lost account. Not all bad then, eh??

I'd suggest reading the full post published by Steam to gain a full understanding of the new security measures added.

Story Credit: Kotaku

New Xbox Coming Soon?

Finally, it looks like we will be seeing another Xbox console in the future, whether or not we will see it soon remeains to be seen.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer was asked in an interview by The Verge  whether or not Xbox will still maintain a physical presence or whether the platform will be concentrating on the app marketplace in the future. 

The future is bright
it seems...

"No," Spencer says, "I fully expect that you’ll see another console from us. Our best customers are Xbox console customers, and I want to keep those people engaged both on the Xbox One and anything we might do in the future. I’m 100 percent committed to that."

"I don’t want to dilute what the Xbox console customer feels," says Spencer. "I want to expand what we’re able to do for more customers."

Many have been predicting that the current generation of gaming consoles will be the last. With Spencer saying otherwise will definitely shut people up. Physical gaming consoles, like the Xbox One and PS4, will be around for a long long time to come. The sales of physical gaming consoles will continue to increase and increase, especially as technology advances and new bits of tech are being added and tweaked. Consoles will only get better and better, and that's most definitely a good thing!

So that's it for this week, what did you expect of this weeks news round-up? Did the Top 10 Chart for this week surprise you? Are you using the Steam Authenticator App? Do you want another generation of video game consoles? Let me know in the comments down below!

See you guys next week, and thanks for reading!

Connor :)