Gaming News - Page 101
Destiny 2 is the next game players are tricking AI sites into posting about secret boss Glorbo
Earlier this week, we reported on a story about how World of Warcraft players on Reddit managed to trick an AI newsbot into posting an article about the arrival of a fake character called Glorbo. It was a fun story because the name Glorbo is hilarious, and it highlighted how AI cannot differentiate between real news and fake news, even with text in the post stating, "I just really want some major bot-operated news websites to publish an article about this."
So yeah, it brought to light an issue with several shady online publications using AI to generate articles without highlighting what you're reading was generated by AI. Instead, these articles are credited to what we assume are names. And there's another gaming example of some random publication posting Reddit bait as news - this time, it's for Destiny 2, where Glorbo has made another appearance.
In the post from Rasputin_the_Warmind, titled 'I just want to say the new Glorbo secret boss has been the best content I've played in a while,' many replies feed into the prank celebrating Bungie for adding a super secret boss into the game's latest dungeon. "Can you PLEASE tell me how to access Glorbo?!" writes one response, with several more outlining outlandish ways to find Glorbo.
Xbox overhauls the Home UI for Xbox Series X|S consoles in time for Starfield
Xbox is currently rolling out a major update to the UI for the OS found across Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles, with Microsoft noting that the new UI design was based on player feedback to make game discovery easier. From custom backgrounds for tiles to subtle changes - let's take a look.
First up, one of the more subtle and welcome additions is the addition of a new shortcut bar at the top of the Home screen that includes quick access to your Library, the Microsoft Store, Xbox Game Pass, Search, and Settings. It's a great addition, as before this update accessing Xbox system settings required a couple of steps.
The biggest overhaul comes with the overall presentation of tiles to access recent apps and games, with more space for custom backgrounds and an option to change the background to match the game highlighted. This is reminiscent of the PlayStation 5's UI, which changes the background and even music depending on what game is currently highlighted. Seeing Starfield in Xbox's demonstration of the new UI is a nice reminder that the highly anticipated game is right around the corner.
Digital made up 77% of Capcom's Q1 gaming revenues, and 86% of total game sales
Like most of the top video game publishers and platform-holders, Capcom also made most of its gaming revenues from digital.
Digital has been slowly taking over the video games market for many years now. The Gen8 console cycle gave way to a paradigm shift towards live games and subscription services, and now both PlayStation and Xbox make most of their revenues from in-game purchases and digital sales.
Capcom is one of the publishers that has contributed strongly towards this trend, and digital is a big reason why the company is able to deliver strong consistent operating income growth across its games unit. According to Capcom's latest Q1 2023 financial report, the Japanese games-maker once again made most of its game unit sales and total video games revenues from digital delivery.
Xbox Game Pass increases one of gaming's most important metrics
Microsoft's FY23 results had muted expression of Xbox's full-year performance and missed another valuable opportunity to update investors on the division's current standing on the market.
Xbox's FY23 results are in, showing strong consistent earnings across content and services. Xbox made $15.477 billion in FY23, the second-highest earnings year of all time for the games segment. Interestingly enough, Q4 revenues missed MIcrosoft's expectations due to "weakness in first-party and third-party content."
As per usual, there was no breakdown on Game Pass earnings or subscribers. We've been able to dial-in Game Pass revenue estimates based on previous comments from Microsoft management, and the current Game Pass subscriber count is still "over 25 million." Game Pass did increase in one of the most important metrics in modern gaming, and one of the biggest KPIs that Microsoft looks at: Play time and monthly active users.
Continue reading: Xbox Game Pass increases one of gaming's most important metrics (full post)
CD Projekt RED to lay off 9% of workforce, sets aside $1 million for severance
CD Projekt Group prepares to lay off 9% of its CD Projekt RED workforce in an effort to stay lean as it continues developing multiple high-profile Unreal Engine 5-powered games.
CD Projekt today announced that has planned to lay off 9% of its employees in the CD Projekt RED division across multiple sectors including game development, publishing, and back office. In its 2022 annual report, the company stated that approximately 1,012 people worked in its CD Projekt S.A. division that includes CD Projekt RED, so this would be about 91 people.
CD Projekt Group president Adam Kicinski later clarified that "around 100 people" would be laid off. The reason for the layoffs is so that CD Projekt RED can conduct "deep transformations" as it pivots not only from its internal RED engine to Unreal Engine 5, but also to the development of new games in three different franchises that should also incorporate multiplayer aspects.
Blizzard actually lost 1 million users after Diablo IV's release
Diablo IV made $666 million revenue in just 5 days, and helped Blizzard achieve record-breaking earnings during the quarter, but apparently the game wasn't enough to significantly impact Blizzard's monthly active users.
By all accounts, Blizzard's latest action RPG is a mega-hit. Diablo IV saw 10 million players embark in an epic quest to slay evil, and the game helped Blizzard make $1 billion in a single quarter for the first time in its 32-year history. But there's one thing Diablo IV apparently didn't do: Considerably drive up the player base.
In its recent Q2 2023 earnings report, Activision Blizzard King outlined its total monthly active players for the April - June period. In that timeframe, Blizzard's monthly active users (MAUs) actually dropped by 1 million players, reducing total MAUs to 26 million. There's a few reasons this may have happened.
Continue reading: Blizzard actually lost 1 million users after Diablo IV's release (full post)
Capcom delivers record Q1 with 13.5 million game sales, arcade segment growth
Capcom continues its long-running streak of record operating income, hitting a new all-time quarterly high for game sales.
Capcom's latest Q1 2023 earnings results are out, showing consistent strong growth for the Japanese games publisher.
On a converted yen to USD basis, the company set new records for net sales ($439 million), operating income ($240 million), and net income ($182 million), driven by the success of its blockbuster game sales and growth in its arcade business.
If Remnant 2 challenges an RTX 4090 GPU, how is it on PS5 or Xbox? There's good and bad news
Remnant 2 has already been seen on PC giving the mighty RTX 4090 GPU a tough time with keeping smooth frame rates - and there's plenty of feedback on Steam about performance woes - so how does it fare on cutting-edge consoles?
The curious can check out a new Digital Foundry video (see above) which evaluates frame rates on Remnant 2 for both the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, as well as overall graphics quality.
To be fair, Remnant 2 (which uses Unreal Engine 5) does look pretty good for overall visuals - especially in the early stages of the game - and as Digital Foundry makes clear, there are some impressive visuals to be witnessed.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart hits up to 200 fps with DLSS 3 Frame Generation and RTX IO
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is out this week, and it's the latest PlayStation 5 title to make its way to PC. And the PC version is shaping up to be something quite special, with improved visuals, enhanced ray-tracing, support for ultrawide resolutions, and NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation support on day one.
It also marks the arrival of NVIDIA RTX IO in a major AAA release, the DirectStorage-like technology that shifts decompression from the CPU to the GPU to deliver a massive increase in loading times and things like streaming in assets when paired with a fast SSD. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart joins the impressive path-traced Portal: Prelude RTX as one of the first games to support RTX IO.
At launch, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was a next-gen showcase of PS5 hardware and made full use of the console's new high-speed internal SSD to seamlessly and instantaneously shift between detailed environments as part of the game's 'Rift' mechanics. To showcase the benefit of RTX IO, NVIDIA has posted a video (above) where the new technology "enables rapid loading of assets, accelerating the seamless portal-jumping gameplay."
Xbox revenues hit $15 billion, miss expectations due to 'weak first-party, third-party content'
Xbox delivered a record-breaking Q4 period, but total-year revenues missed Microsoft's expectations due to weak performance of content offerings.
Microsoft just posted up its Q4 and full-year Fiscal Year 2023 results, and based on the figures provided we were able to key in some performance estimates for the Xbox video games division.
According to the info provided by Microsoft, Xbox gaming generated $15.477 billion in total revenues during Fiscal Year 2023, with the Q4 period delivered a record $3.5 billion in earnings. As per usual, the bulk of the division's revenues game from content and services, with Xbox pulling in a total of $12.198 billion in FY23 from game sales, subscriptions, DLC, microtransactions, and other content sold on the Xbox ecosystem.