Gaming News - Page 332

The next two mainline Call of Duty games will release on PlayStation platforms and will not be Xbox exclusives.

Call of Duty won't be Xbox exclusive until 2025, sources tell Bloomberg in a new report. Sony's pre-existing deal with Activision will prevent full Call of Duty Xbox exclusivity following Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard.

Sony's deal includes the next three Call of Duty games: 2022's Modern Warfare 2, a new shooter from Treyarch, another game--as well as a new version of Call of Duty Warzone.

Xbox gaming made more money in Holiday 2021 than it ever has before.

Microsoft recently reported its Q2'22 earnings (October - December 2021), confirming explosive results for its gaming division. Xbox generated record earnings during the holiday period with over $5.442 billion in revenues, up nearly half a billion dollars from last year's high Q2 water mark.

This is not only the best Q2 in Xbox history, but the best quarter of all time for Microsoft's video games platform. FY22's second-half earnings (Q1+Q2) are $9.035 billion, which is more than Xbox's total-year revenues in FY15. This year should be another record fiscal year for Xbox.

Blizzard's next big IP might be an interesting take on a Kid in King Arthur's Court and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Today Blizzard confirmed it is working on an ambitious new IP. The unnamed project is a survival game that merges modern and fantasy together, as per details gleaned from a brief concept art glimpse. Job listings also confirm the new IP will be an online-based adventure which is Blizzard's usual fare.

"Blizzard is embarking on our next quest. We are going on a journey to a whole new universe, home to a brand-new survival game for PC and console. A place full of heroes we have yet to meet, stories yet to be told, and adventures yet to be lived. A vast realm of possibility, waiting to be explored," reads a job posting.

Respawn Entertainment, EA's new darling that's responsible for the billion-dollar Apex Legends, is leading the development of multiple new Star Wars games.

Our suspicions were correct; Respawn is developing three new Star Wars projects. The first game is a sequel to 2019's best-selling Jedi: Fallen Order, which became the fastest-selling Star Wars game of all time. It was so successful that it changed how EA makes Star Wars games.

The second EA Star Wars project is a FPS led by Respawn's Peter Hirschmann, who says the game will "tell a story he's always wanted to tell." Hirschmann served as a producer at DreamWorks for 7 years, a VP for Product Development at LucasArts for 6 years, and has been at Respawn as a game director since 2016.

People Can Fly is developing a second AAA game for Square Enix...could it be Outriders 2?

Polish game developer People Can Fly is very busy. The company has expanded to multiple territories and is working on three big new games, one of which is another title for Square Enix.

The studio's recent Q3 2021 financial report confirms two new games are in currently in production for a slated 2024 release: Project Gemini, a new game for Square Enix, and Project Dagger, an RPG action game for Take-Two Interactive. PCF is also working on another new IP that it plans to self-fund and self-publish.

NetEase has funded Nagoshi Studio, a new game development team lead by former Yakuza director Toshihiro Nagoshi.

After 32 years at SEGA, Toshihiro Nagoshi joined up with Chinese games juggernaut NetEase to form a new studio. Like Kojima Productions did with Konami, the new Nagoshi Studio has poached former SEGA and Yakuza developers over to the team.

NetEase's substantial revenues affords Nagoshi more freedom to chase new ideas. NetEase's earnings dwarf those of Nagoshi's previous home; The Chinese games-maker has generated $9.7 billion in from Q1-Q3, which is nearly 4x as much money as SEGA generated throughout the whole FY21 period.

Online-only shooter Outriders may have taken 5 years to develop and ship onto the market.

People Can Fly's recent Q3 2021 financials indicate Outriders may have taken as long as 5 years to make, which isn't unusual for AAA loot-and-shoot video games.

The report confirms People Can Fly signed the multi-year publishing agreement with Square Enix in 2016:

Outriders' post-launch content may extend through 2023 with two big expansions.

Outriders' first major expansion, Worldslayer, is due out in 2022. But it may not be the only expansion People Can Fly has planned for the game.

Worldslayer is expected to propel the online-only looter shooter to new heights. Forbes' Paul Tassi guesses Worldslayer could be Outriders' own version of Reaper of Souls, complete with a new usable class, new zones, and more.

Valve is helping out developers with more funding to research open-source Radeon Linux GPU drivers for the Steam Deck handheld, with more testing of Mesa commits + Radeon GPU drivers.

Charlie Turner, programming consultant for Igalia, created a merge request on FreeDesktop's Mesa site for more dEQP runners. The agency itself "specializes in the growth of innovative projects and solutions" with the new request asking Valve to help with AMD Radeon GPU Linux drive testing, and since the Steam Deck is powered by an AMD RDNA 2-based GPU it makes sense for Valve to commit more resources to Radeon Linux GPU drivers.

"This series proposes to add more dEQP bare-metal runners, sponsored by Valve. For now the runners are conditioned on a selection of users (similar to how freedreno's restricted traces work), since there are not enough machines to hit the runtime targets required for inclusion in the automatic pre-merge pipelines. There's nothing secret about the test loads, the restriction is purely practical for now and any interested user may request access to the runner. A follow-up series will add trace testing runners to the CI, using a similar approach to the above".

Battlefield 2042 is an absolute mess, where it garnered literally less than 30 minutes of playtime before I stopped playing it and went back to Warzone and more specifically, Rebirth Resurgence... thinking of that, I don't think I even refunded it. Sigh.

Now we have Battlefield insider Tom Henderson tweeting that EA is reported "very disappointed" in how Battlefield 2042 has performed and that the company is "looking at all the options" when it comes to the future of the game. Henderson says that "this is including looking at Free to Play in some capacity".

But I really, really don't see how making a shit game free, in any capacity, will help. I think admitting the game is a mess, opening the game up to the community to mod into something actually playable... admitting your total faults to the community and maybe turning Battlefield 2042 into something that doesn't resemble a digital pile of dog shit.