Today PlatinumGames announced a new proprietary games engine that will help developers streamline their workflows on next-gen games.

Now that PlatinumGames is a developer-publisher that owns its IPs, it's time the company create a new future-proofed games engine for the new console generation. The new games engine, dubbed the PlatinumEngine (name not finalized), is being made from scratch. The engine has been in development for the past two years and has many goals, including high res graphics, but it's mostly focused on simplifying development.

"Our goal with this new engine is to reduce, as much as we can, the amount of effort that goes into game development. The idea is to take all the unnecessary work away from our game development teams," said R&D group leader Tsuyoshi Odera.

343 Industries could reveal bits and pieces about Halo: Infinite's matchmaking system during two multiplayer-focused GDC 2020 talks.

343 Industries engagement lead Josh Menke will hold two developer talks during the new GDC 2020 Twitch livestreams. The first, which goes live on Tuesday, March 17 at 12PM PST, focuses on the lessons the studio learned when developing Halo 5's multiplayer. Expect a deep dive on Halo 5's matchmaking infrastructure, probably including TrueSkill 2 optimizations and discussions, and maybe even hints or brief tidbits on Halo: Infinite's systems.

"What should matchmaking worry most about? Latency? Skill? Streaks? Wait time? There are several commonly held best practices on how to matchmake for engagement across the industry, some of which contradict each other, but little to no data-driven evidence to support them. The following will show how to effectively test matchmaking approaches and show real examples and data from a popular first-person shooter. The results show that not all practices are actually important, while others are critical."

The games industry's biggest publishers are gearing up projects for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, and Square Enix in particular teases big things for the systems.

Next-gen is an exciting time for the industry. Every developer is eager to show off new games to push the boundaries of what's possible. Devs want to take advantage of the PS5's and Xbox Series X's raw power, flexibility, and new feature sets like variable rate shading, ray tracing, and 120FPS gaming. Square Enix will be among these devs and the company has some big games set for 2020 and beyond.

In a Tweet revealing its plans to host a digital-based E3 stream, the Final Fantasy dev says their 2020 and next-gen lineups are "stronger than ever," asserting there's more next-gen games in the works that haven't been revealed yet.

The PS5 and Xbox Series X are likely to be delayed outside of 2020 due to coronavirus disruption, analyst firm DFC Intelligence predicts.

Analyst firm DFC Intelligence just sent out an email newsblast that updates their 2020 gaming hardware forecast to reflect the world's current economic disruption. The firm expects COVID-19 to force Microsoft and Sony to delay their next-gen systems in 2021 as critical supply and manufacturing chains are disrupted. These predictions reflect the delay prediction I made in February.

"The conclusion is that coronavirus is likely to have a major short-term impact on the delivery of both systems. There is a strong likelihood one or both systems will not make a 2020 launch. If the systems do launch supply will likely be constrained and initial pricing could be higher than expected," the firm wrote in the email.

One ex-Naughty Dog animator exposes just how intense the studio's crunch can get, including hospitalizations from overwork.

The games industry is kind of like a vampire that drains those who work in it. Many studios suffer from hostile work environments with fatigue runs rampant. To get a game shipped, developers have to work months of ruthless crunch time, leading to mental and physical breakdowns, emotional outbursts, and general malaise and depression. Naughty Dog is one such studio.

In an eye-opening expose, sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier about Naughty Dog's culture of crunch. It's a brutal one. The general consensus among workers is a simple question: "How long can we keep doing this?" Crunch takes a serious human cost, and making games often requires prolonged periods of overwork. Those amazing AAA interactive experiences that blow us away demand sacrifice from the all-mighty Crunch God. Developers have to give up their time, their soul, and their minds for the billion-dollar games industry.

If you thought 150-player matches in Call of Duty: Warzone was big, then you are about to get a big shock as that number will soon be increasing.

Call of Duty: Warzone currently has one of the bigger battle royales with 150 players dropping into one map to wreak havoc on each other. But what if 150 isn't enough? Do we want more players? The answer comes from the developers of the game, Infinity Ward, and they certainly do want more players as they are planning on upping the anti very soon. According to Infinity Ward co-head, Patrick Kelly, soon players will be experiencing matches with 200 players.

Kelly spoke to USA Today, and said the following "Actually, I can tell you we are already playing with 200 players. We are going to release that a little bit later." On top of adding more players to a single match, Kelly also reveals that the development team is also testing larger squads. Here's what he said, "I can tell you we have four-and five-player squads we are already playing with. But we want to launch with something we know works really well and we have tested to the nines and then play around with these different team sizes."

If you are into battle royales, then you have most likely heard about Call of Duty's newest installment into the genre -- Call of Duty: Warzone.

If you have already heard about it and are wanting to jump into the action, then I must tell you to be prepared for a large download. The standalone Warzone client weighs in at anywhere between 80gb - 100gb, depending on your platform. The download can be smaller than that if you already have Call of Duty Modern Warfare installed as Modern Warfare shares some of the same assets as Warzone. But why is the new mode so large in general?

According to Production Director, Paul Haile who works at Infinity Ward, the developers for Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Warzone, the reason behind the file size being so large is because its "just a tone of content". Haile went into more detail behind why the file is so large, and partially blamed the size on Infinity Ward's production pipeline. Here's the full quote, "And also in this case since Warzone shares progression with MW every weapon and character asset from MP needs to also work in Warzone. Our pipeline isn't perfect but even if it was it's still a mountain of data to ship."

This probably won't be surprising to anyone who has been keeping up with the news recently, but the coronavirus has caused The Walt Disney Company to announce the closure of Disneyland.

The announcement was made this past Thursday, and according to the statement, there have been no cases of COVID-19 at the park, but the company has decided to close it anyway in the people's best interest. The closure will be for Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure and will begin on March 14th until the end of the month. It was also mentioned that Disneyland Resort Hotels would remain open until March 16th so guests can sort out the proper travel arrangements.

According to New York Times reporter Brooks Barnes, this is the fourth time in the history of the park that it has closed down. The previous times the park has experienced a close was on September 11th, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Northridge earthquake in 1994. At the moment, there is no word on whether or not The Walt Disney Company will be deciding to close Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. If the news is announced, I will be sure to update you in a follow-up post.

Researchers and scientists have just make a major breakthrough when it comes to amputee patients and prosthetics.

Scientists at the University of Michigan have just had a breakthrough in mind-controlled prosthetics being used by patients. The new discovery has closed the gap between amputee patients thinking about moving a prosthetic limb, and the limb actually moving. According to Paul Cedena, a professor of biomedical engineering and Robert Oneal Collegiate Professor of Plastic Surgery at the U-M Medical School, "This is the biggest advance in motor control for people with amputations in many years."

Cedena continued, "We have developed a technique to provide individual finger control of prosthetic devices using the nerves in a patient's residual limb. With it, we have been able to provide some of the most advanced prosthetic control that the world has seen."

Call of Duty: Warzone has been out for 48 hours now, and players have already figured out a way to win games from within the deadly gas.

Originally found on the Call of Duty Warzone Reddit, players in the above video seem to be on the last round of their game. What is interesting is that instead of going for the other team in a guns-blazing fight, they decided to stick to staying in the gas, and while you might think that's a stupid idea, you will be surprised at what happens. Communicating with each other, one teammate gets dropped by the gasses damage, then his teammate picks up him.

Both teammates go back and forth rinse and repeating this same cycle of reviving each other in an infinite loop. The enemy team eventually cannot find the team that is reviving each other and seems to have been caught in the gas but didn't get the revive. This causes the team that was simply just back-and-forth reviving each other to win the entire game. It should be noted, MightyKonsti the user who posted the video to the subreddit, did mention that both he and his teammate had the TuneUp perk equipped, which speeds up revives by 25%.