Gaming News - Page 311

Koch Media, entertainment parent company of games labels like Deep Silver, Prime Matter, has donated more money to Ukranian relief than Activision-Blizzard has.

Video games companies are donating funds en masse to help embattled Ukraine during the current Russian invasion. Many of the top games-makers including The Pokemon Company, SEGA, Remedy Entertainment, Activision-Blizzard, and Koch Media have donated tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to worldwide humanitarian efforts.

One interesting thing about these donations is the overall values. Some companies give what they can--Remedy, for example, made 44.7 million euros in 2021 and donated 50,000 euros to Ukrainian relief. Koch Media, a multimedia company who made roughly $244 million in 2021, has donated $500,000 to Ukrainian relief and is prepared to donate another $500,000 through matched employee donations.

Valve's PC gaming platform Steam had more monthly active users throughout 2021 than the PlayStation Network, new data indicates.

PC gaming is on the rise and big-name publishers like Capcom, SEGA, Microsoft, and even Sony are bringing their games the market. Steam is firmly at the top of the PC platform hierarchy (nearly every publisher has released their own proprietary games launcher, but some, like Bethesda.net, are closing shop) and outside of multi-million Epic Games Store exclusivity deals, everyone wants their games on Steam for one big reason: That's where most of the players are.

New data from Valve shows that Steam had a whopping 132 million monthly active users (MAUs) throughout 2021.

Microsoft has only sold 2.3 million Xbox consoles in Japan over the last 20 years, data from Weekly Famitsu indicates.

Xbox isn't popular in Japan. The platform and its associated services pales in comparison to the mighty PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, which are leagues more popular in the region. While official console sales data is scarce (Microsoft doesn't report specifics any more), new estimations from Japanese gaming magazine Weekly Famitsu paints a rather desolate picture for Xbox in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Across a two-decade span, only one Xbox console has sold over 1 million units. The Xbox 360 sold over 1.6 million units in Japan through its lifetime. The original Xbox from 2001 is next in line with 472,000 units, and the Xbox One has moved little over 114,000 units. The Xbox Series X/S duo is already beating Xbox One's total lifetime sales with a whopping 142,000 units to date, which is 6% of the market's total 20-year console sales.

International sanctions from the United States and European Union have blocked payments to Russian Twitch streamers.

Early on in the Ukraine invasion, Western countries blocked Russian banks from SWIFT, the payment tracking system used by worldwide institutions. This has affected Russia's purchasing power as payment processors no longer accept payments to and from the region; Nintendo's eShop, for example, no longer accepts Russian rubles for online purchases.

Now Russian Twitch streamers are being affected. The California-based streaming company can no longer send payments to Russian influencers due to the sanctions. In the blink of an eye, streamers in Russia have been cut off from their monthly paychecks.

Gear up, Spartan! Catch the new Halo TV series on Paramount+ for just $2 a month.

The Halo TV series will premiere March 24 exclusively on Paramount+, and luckily the streamer is having a special promotion that steeply discounts monthly prices. Paramount is celebrating its one-year anniversary for the service and has dropped subscription costs to just $1/month for 3 months (or $2/month for commercial-free, which I highly suggest over the ad-based version). To get started, click here.

This promotion works even if you have already tried Paramount+ and I was able to re-activate and use the promo on an old existing account that I cancelled months ago.

Gamers are comparing Elden Ring to other open-world games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but this comparison doesn't hold water on a business perspective.

There's a few memes floating around that poke fun at Assassin's Creed games with the humorous tag "if Ubisoft made Elden Ring," complete with tons of on-screen icons, guides, and interactive UI features. The memes have garnered lots of response and gamers are becoming more critical to Ubisoft's style of game development, namely with monetization and hand-holding. Those things are fair on a critical level, but on a business level, comparing Elden Ring to Assassin's Creed is apples and oranges.

The reality is Ubisoft and Bandai Namco are two very different companies. To put it quite simply, Bandai Namco--and FromSoftware's owner, Kadokawa--have a different goals than Ubisoft.

Grand Theft Auto V is currently cheaper on PlayStation 5 than it is on PlayStation 4.

Pre-orders for the next-gen version of GTA V are now live, and the game is surprisingly affordable. GTA V won't cost $69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as we had predicted. Instead, the game is only $9.99 right now on PlayStation 5 (only buyable on-console), which is cheaper than the $14.99 PS4 premium edition (this isn't an upgrade price as I don't currently own or have ever owned GTA V on PS4).

The full GTA V edition is $19.99 on Xbox Series X/S consoles, which is double the price of PS5. Why is that? Here's a refresher: Rockstar is splitting GTA Online from GTA V and selling it as a standalone game. There's now two SKUs, or versions, of Grand Theft Auto V: The Story Mode, which is erroneously named because it includes both story mode + GTA Online, and GTA Online standalone. GTA Online retails for $19.99, but is discounted to $9.99 on Xbox Series X/S until June 14, 2022.

Nintendo refreshed its portable gaming system last year with the introduction of the Nintendo Switch OLED, packing a beautiful OLED display that acted as enough of an upgrade over the original Switch, and now that OLED panel has been put through a burn-in torture test.

Now when I say burn-in torture test, I really do mean it: we're talking about a huge 3600-hour burn-in (3600 hours works out to 24/7 for 150 days). This is years of regular use crammed into less than half a year, with the OLED showing a bright scene the entire time (a static shot of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Link looking into the sun).

After the 3600 hours of being at full brightness, the Nintendo Switch OLED display had only just had ghosting appear... which isn't even that much really. The reality of burn-in has changed so much from the fear-driven panic of early Plasma and LCD TVs, but with OLED panels it really isn't that much of an issue.

Cyberpunk 2077's in-game character models get celebrated in this impressive new graphical showcase video.

Performance issues aside, there's one thing most of us can agree on: CD Projekt RED created one of the best-looking PC games of all time with Cyberpunk 2077 (especially in 8K resolution, as shown by TweakTown's own Anthony Garreffa).

A new video from YouTuber Ultraclocked highlights Cyberpunk 2077's incredibly detailed NPCs and character models featured throughout Night City. The result is a dazzling visual treat that closely inspects the fine grain details of the characters from their faces, eyes, and hair to the fluid animations and lighting effects.

One gamer paid a cam girl over $20,000 to beat Elden Ring's campaign with him.

Elden Ring is better with friends, but if you don't have them, you can apparently pay a digital escort to play with you. Chris, a gamer from New Jersey, reportedly paid cam girl Charley Hart a whopping $20,160 to play Elden Ring's main story with him. The session lasted for an epic 40 consecutive hours and became the longest cam stream on the CamSoda platform.

"It might not be for everyone, but I appreciated the companionship of Charley. She kept things...fun," Chris said in an interview.