Gaming News - Page 294

Hideo Kojima has officially debunked rumors saying that PlayStation will acquire his game development studio.

Kojima Productions is not being purchased by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Studio founder Hideo Kojima confirmed the news on Twitter by essentially saying he has no interest to sell the company: "Kojipro has been, and will continue to be, an independent production studio."

The rumors were started from a new PlayStation Studios banner that added Death Stranding among the image slices of first-party games.

CD Projekt RED is far from finished with Cyberpunk 2077 and has devoted considerable development manpower for the game's upcoming expansions.

In a recent earnings report, CD Projekt erroneously reported that most of its teams are working on new games including the next Witcher title. The company has now clarified that the bulk of its dev teams are actually still working on Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming expansion, which is due out sometime in 2023.

"Right now, the bulk of our team is working on the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion that is targeted to be released in 2023," CD Projekt Group President and Joint CEO Adam Kicinski said in the FY2021 earnings call.

New details on Halo Infinite's innovative battle royale mode have surfaced, hinting at huge 100-player chaos.

According to new reports, Halo Infinite's battle royale gametype will be a combination of many existing modes and battle royale mechanics. For example, Infinite's ambitious new mode incorporates elements of multi-team and free-for-all with up to 100 players alongside traditional BR elements like shrinking map zones.

The mode, codenamed "Tatanka", is so big that it could be a separate client or perhaps a whole separate section within the Infinite server, separated from traditional multiplayer.

A huge 'Warzone-scale' battle royale type of mode is coming to Halo Infinite in an effort to revitalize the playerbase.

Halo Infinite's often-rumored battle royale mode could arrive sometime in season 3 alongside Forge, sources have told Windows Central's Jez Corden.

Halo 2 multiplayer developer Certain Affinity is making the mode, a massive undertaking that's been in development for two years with a scale that may rival Call of Duty Warzone--in fact, it's so big that it's "almost like another game."

Microsoft is reportedly working on its own ad tech platform that would serve up advertisements in free-to-play Xbox games.

Reports from Business Insider say that Microsoft wants to facilitate a platform to bring in-game ads to F2P Xbox games. Sources say Microsoft is currently in talks with ad tech specialists to build a new advertisement platform that will inject ads into specific games, namely free-to-play titles that may include the likes of Fortnite, Warzone, and Rocket League.

Although ad tech is one of the most lucrative aspects of mobile gaming, Microsoft's goal may be to boost visibility and engagement rather than make money. Sources say that Microsoft may not take a cut of the revenues generated from ads. Instead, game developers/publishers and advertisement agencies would share the proceeds.

Activision-Blizzard's latest SEC filing gives clues on what's on the horizon for the publisher, including possible release timings for its biggest games.

Blizzard's latest revenue earnings forecast suggests something big is coming in 2023. The company has forecasted a huge 90% year-over-year revenues spike that sees earnings jumping from $2 billion in 2022 to a whopping $3.75 billion in 2023.

Blizzard segment revenues have a forecasted 22% CAGR rate over the four-year period, and this particular rise represents the largest jump in year-over-year revenues across all of the company's segments.

Cyberpunk 2077's controversy has significantly impacted sales to the point where other digital-only games are beating CD Projekt's latest release.

Today Blizzard confirmed that Diablo II Resurrected has sold more than 5 million copies across PC and consoles. This is a stellar debut for a AAA project, especially a remaster/re-release. The game did so well that it actually beat Cyberpunk 2077, which moved about 4.3 million sales through 2021-2022. It's worth noting that CP2077 was discounted to just $5 multiple times during this period, and D2R was a digital-only release that had no physical in-store launch.

While the figure is certainly triumphant for Blizzard and Vicarious Visions, it's also a stark reminder of how devastating controversy can be for game sales. Cyberpunk 2077 launched to extreme hype that quickly switched to controversy due to terrible performance on PS4 and Xbox One. Sony actually pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store for six months and Microsoft branded the game with a warning message on the Xbox store.

Cyberpunk 2077's first expansion won't release this year, CD Projekt RED has confirmed.

Cyberpunk 2077 is far by CD Projekt RED's fastest-selling game of all time. The sci-fi FPS launched into extreme hype and subsequent controversy with a massive 13.7 million copies sold within a month's time, and helped CD Projekt make more money than it ever has before. The trade-off was that CD Projekt essentially sold its reputation for upfront cash: The game performed so badly on PS4 and Xbox One that CDPR was vilified for months on end, with Sony even removing Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store for 6 months.

Ever since then, CDPR has been on a redemption arc and trying to make a big comeback. The recent Cyberpunk 2077 release on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S helped things along but the absence of substantial content has contributed to a dramatic drops in game sales.

Years after controversy, Sean Murray is once again hyping up his next game...which is said to be so ambitious it might be impossible.

Sean Murray has been talking up his new project for a while now. The game, which isn't No Man's Sky 2, has yet to be announced, but we first reported on it back in 2019.

Back then Murray used similar vernacular to describe the game, too: "We've got something else going on at the studio. It's exciting, and it's unfortunately going to be ambitious," said at the time.

BioWare's next Mass Effect game has entered early phases of development, studio GM Gary McKay has announced.

In a new blog update, BioWare assures fans that it's working hard on two new projects: Dragon Age 4, which is set to launch sometime in 2024 according to reports, and a new Mass Effect game that's coming way later down the line. Although in initial stages, development on Mass Effect 5 is progressing with a smaller team led by Mike Gamble.

According to the update, Mass Effect 5, which will continue the original trilogy storyline, has moved from prototyping stages to early stages of development.