Gaming News - Page 121

Xbox Game Pass subscribers might have a pleasant surprise incoming in the hopefully near future, or so a hint delivered on Twitter suggests - namely the arrival of Elden Ring.

A cryptic clue in a tweet from Sarah Bond, who is Xbox VP for Game Creator Experience and Ecosystem at Microsoft, was made slightly less cryptic in a follow-up message.

Initially, Bond tweeted an icon for an older person and a ring - 'Elder' or rather 'Elden' and 'Ring' - then decided that was maybe a bit too obscure, so just dropped an image of Elden Ring into the mix (not so obscure).

Diablo 4's latest patch is causing gamers to swear off the dungeon crawler en masse, and the controversial update could jeopardize player counts, engagement, and potentially even spending.

Running a live game is hard. In fact, I think it's one of the hardest things any publisher or developer can do. Online games can deliver the most revenues, but they're also incredibly risky and there's no guarantee of a payout. What makes live games so difficult to handle is developers not only have to maintain stability but also iterate and try to keep things new. Developers have to live in all three timelines at once--the past, to figure out what worked and what didn't work; the present, to apply these lessons to the now; and the future, to carry these lessons forward while also trying new updates and new content. Perhaps what is most important, though, is that a team is able to pivot to a backup plan if something goes wrong.

Blizzard, whose bread and butter is live games, knows these lessons quite well. That doesn't ease their burden. Diablo 4's recent update is proof of this, and the developer isn't in an enviable position right.

On the same day Microsoft announced that it would extend the Activision merger deadline, Blizzard confirms plans to break exclusivity on its Battle.net PC launcher.

For quite a long time, Battle.net has been the only place you could play Blizzard Entertainment PC games. There's a good reason for this: Blizzard's proprietary storefront/launcher allows the publisher to keep all revenues made from purchases and not pay a royalty to third-party platform-holders. After all, Blizzard already brings its games to Xbox, PlayStation, and the Nintendo Switch. But now with the $68.7 billion merger with Microsoft on the horizon, Blizzard is changing its tune.

Today Blizzard announced that it will bring a few of its games over to Steam, but the exact range of titles remains unclear. Blizzard says that Overwatch 2 will be the first game on Steam, and the store page is now live. "We're excited to announce that we are bringing a selection of our games to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2... which will be available on the platform on August 10!"

BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft and Activision have officially extended their merger agreement into October.

Last night, the Microsoft-Activision merger deadline came and went. As UK regulators at the CMA weigh Microsoft's latest offers, both Microsoft and Activision have delayed the merger deadline in an attempt to safeguard the $68.7 billion deal from any further elongated investigations from the Competition and Markets Authority.

"Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have extended the merger agreement deadline to 10/18. We're optimistic about getting this done, and excited about bringing more games to more players everywhere," Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer said.

Despite being released in 2013, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V is still teeming with players, and now those players can push the game to its absolute limits graphically with this eye-watering mod.

While Grand Theft Auto V is certainly considered an old game, the Rockstar title is still one of the best-looking games available, even surpassing some of the most recently released AAA titles. However, those graphical achievements are reached through additional downloadable mods, and thanks to developers such as Digital Dreams, Grand Theft Auto V is still being talked about for its graphical potential.

As demonstrated by the above video posted to the Digital Dreams YouTube channel, Grand Theft Auto V can be seen running at 8K with multiple mods, such as the ReShade Ray Tracing mod, QuantV 3D clouds, and the GTAV Real mod. For those that don't know, the GTAV RealMod converts what was Los Santos into Los Angeles, and according to reports, the results are quite impressive. If you are interested in checking out this mod more, visit the Patreon here.

Diablo 4's Season 1, dubbed the 'Season of the Malignant,' will go live in all regions on Thursday, July 20. And with that, Diablo 4 just got a massive 1.1 patch ahead of the new Season that brings several changes to the game, buffs, nerfs, new Unique and Legendary Aspects, and more fixes than you can shake a Wirt's Leg at. In case you were wondering, that's a deep-cut reference to Diablo 2.

For those wondering what existing skills and builds have been nerfed, it looks like Barbarian Hammer of the Ancients, Druid Werewolf Shred, Necromancer Bone Spear, and Sorcerer Ice Shard builds have been scaled back. The good news is that the patch is mostly about buffing other skills and abilities to broaden the options for players.

One nerf that will affect most players, especially those diving into the first Season, is that the experience points rewarded to players for killing enemies that are at a much higher level than them have been scaled back. "We have observed that the experience bonus rewarded for killing higher-level monsters escalates too fast compared to the relative challenge involved," Blizzard writes. With this, players will get +1.5% experience per level higher than the player up to a maximum of 15% at 10 levels.

In December 2022, NVIDIA released Portal with RTX - a stunning path-traced and fully ray-traced remaster of Valve's iconic puzzle game that took full advantage of modern rendering and the company's DLSS 3 Frame Generation technology. A glimpse at the future of lighting in games through the guise of one of the best first-person puzzle games in recent times.

Created in part with NVIDIA RTX Remix, the company's modding platform that can transform any older title to bring it into the RTX era, it's one of those releases that is a must if you've purchased one of the new GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards.

Today comes word from NVIDIA that it has used the same RTX Remix toolset to remaster one of Portal's most enduring mods - Portal: Prelude from creator Nicolas "NykO18" Grevet. Set before the game's events, this unofficial and award-winning prequel in RTX form includes enhanced materials, full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 3, and NVIDIA Reflex support.

Back in July 2003, Troika Games laid out a very interesting proposal for Baldur's Gate 3 that deviated from classic cRPG norms.

With Baldur's Gate 3 releasing in August, games industry vet Tim Cain takes curious gamers back to the past to discover Troika Games' unique vision for a third Baldur's Gate game on PC.

"It was in real-time [...]This whole thing was a very action-oriented version of D&D," Cain said in a recent video.

Cloud Imperium Games, the company that makes the mega-popular Star Citizen space sim game, has merged with its long-time game development partner Turbulent.

As Star Citizen continues expanding, so too must the teams behind the decade-long live game. CIG has announced that it is joining forces--and companies--with its 11-year partner Turbulent to continue its ambition to disrupt the video games landscape. And, of course, deliver the anticipated Squadron 42 campaign to Star Citizen players.

So who exactly is Turbulent? The studio has worked on various dimensions of Star Citizen, including the game's original website, its StarMap, social systems, and also helped worldbuilding and concept creations.

New reports from Reuters indicate that Microsoft and Activision are continuing discussions on a merger deadline extension.

The Microsoft-Activision merger deadline is tonight, July 18 at 11:59PM. If the deal is not closed by that time, then Microsoft or Activision can walk away from the deal, triggering a $3 billion termination fee that Microsoft will pay to Activision. Walking away seems quite unlikely and risky for the billion-dollar video games publisher, and reports suggest that an extension of the deadline is the most likely outcome.

While the merger is essentially free to close in the United States following the FTC's recent loss in court, the deal's approval is still in limbo in the UK. Microsoft is making major headway in UK, though, and is one step closer to winning over antitrust regulators at the CMA. Microsoft will formally notify a new restructured deal to the CMA that is expected to alleviate many of the agency's concerns about the merger, but this formal assessment process could take up to 20 days' time. With the merger deadline looming, time is something that Microsoft and Activision don't have.