Gaming News - Page 365

Rockstar updated GTA 3's infamous Francis International Airport billboard with a new image. Too bad it's probably not for GTA 6.

Rockstar Games is known for adding in teases and Easter eggs hinting at the next GTA game. The most famous one is when Rockstar confirmed Vice City's location in GTA 3 with a sign that said "See you in Miami". That sign has been updated for the new GTA 3 remaster...but it probably is not advertising the next big sequel.

The new Shoreside Vale sign does show a beach but it's not Miami. It's Chumash Beach from Grand Theft Auto V. It's very likely that Grove Street Games (or even Rockstar) are teasing the upcoming GTA V Expanded & Enhanced re-release instead of the next mainline game.

Every version of San Andreas contains files, animations, and content from the infamous Hot Coffee mini-game, one modder has said.

Rockstar Games recently pulled the GTA Definitive Edition trilogy remaster from the Rockstar Games PC launcher. The move was made after dataminers discovered lots of files in the source code including cut music tracks, developer notes, and files for San Andreas' Hot Coffee content.

San Andreas' Hot Coffee stirred up massive controversy in the 2000s (Hot Coffee was a mini-game where you had explicit sexual intercourse with a woman, complete with nudity, position changes, and view changes, which earned San Andreas an Adults Only rating before it was censored). Rockstar was sued for allegedly hiding the sex game inside of San Andreas.

The new GTA trilogy Definitive Edition remaster collection has been lampooned for its portrayal of popular in-game characters, and today we take a closer look at some of Vice City's icons.

Vice City is one of the better looking games in the new Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition remasters. The NPC models though? Not so much. Some characters look okay, including mob boss Sonny Forelli, but others are downright freakish (Candy Suxxx, Love Fist guy, etc). And other icons like Lance Vahn look much different than their debonair PS2 days. This is almost like a Ricky and Morty alternate universe or maybe Vice City Boomer Stories--everyone looks older, weirder, and just...off.

We used the Vice City appearance change cheats to get in the skins of NPCs like Candy Suxxx, Lance Vahn, Hilary King, Ken Rosenberg, Phil Cassaday, Sonny Forelli, and Ricardo Diaz. The results are interesting to say the least.

Valve's new handheld Steam Deck has been detailed in a new teardown by the team at Valve during their recent Steam Deck Development Live Stream. Check it out:

In the new detailed Valve Steam Deck unveiling, we find out that AMD's custom "Aerith" SoC is used with a 4-core, 8-thread CPU based on the older-gen Zen 2 architecture with CPU clocks betrween 2.4GHz and 3.5GHz. Next to that we have an RDNA 2-based GPU with 8 Compute Units and GPU clocks of between 1.0GHz and 1.6GHz.

AMD's custom Aerith SoC has a TDP of between 4W and 15W, with Valve asking for developers to enable a frame rate limiter of some sort for the Steam Deck -- while confirming that the company has not pushed any artificial power limit on what the Aerith SoC can use. But if you are outside, Valve has said that the Steam Deck will thermal throttle with the TDP reduced in order to keep the GPU clocks high.

Strass Zelnick, the CEO of Rockstar's parent company, gives perspective on why GTA 6 is taking so long.

GTA 6 is reportedly in development hell right now and may not release until 2025. The game has apparently been rebooted multiple times, and the departure of key Rockstar talent like Leslie Benzies in 2016 and more recent GTA co-writer Dan Houser in 2020 has disrupted GTA 6's progress.

Despite these hurdles, there's another reason GTA 6 is taking so long to develop: Rockstar has an obligation to deliver on fan expectations. GTA V and GTA Online have raised the bar and fans are eager for the next big hit. That's according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick who is in favor of letting a franchise "rest" in between big mainline releases while also giving the dev teams enough time to make something fantastic.

Take-Two Interactive, the publisher behind Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, and BioShock, is betting big on new IPs.

Right now Take-Two's new games pipeline is bigger than its ever been before. The company's myriad of developers plans to release 62 new games in the next 3 years, many of which are mobile games, mid-line titles, and big heavy-hitting AAA releases. There's everything from sequels like BioShock 4, Borderlands 4, and new NBA 2K games to brand new franchises and IPs that haven't been established before (one of these new IPs, Volt, has already been cancelled).

In a recent virtual conference, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick confirms that 56% of the slate--or 35 games--are based on new IPs.

The PlayStation 5 is officially one year old...but most next-gen console owners aren't playing Sony's first-party games.

Today Sony celebrated the PS5's first anniversary with a look back over the last 12 months. The PlayStation Blog post was mostly a fluff piece touting various milestones like the release of games, announcements of products that won't be here for a while, and Jim Ryan saying that "we're just getting started" while somehow also saying the next-gen PSVR headset has been revealed (it hasn't).

The most interesting part of the article was a top 10 of the most-played PS5 games. It turns out Fortnite is leagues more popular than any first-party Sony game, which makes sense considering its free-to-play...but more premium games like Cold War, FIFA, NBA 2K, and even Assassin's Creed Valhalla beat out Sony's first-party games like Miles Morales and Demon's Souls.

The new Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition has been taken offline with the Rockstar Launcher on PC being in "maintenance" for the last 12 hours...right after dataminers discover interesting things in the source code.

Dataminers have uncovered a goldmine of content nestled in the new GTA trilogy remaster's source code. Apparently the original music were actually included in the PC install of San Andreas in OGG-VORBIS audio format, but were switched off in the consumer build. The music is there but gamers simply can't play the songs in-game. Music licenses are costly and if misused can land companies in court so it's likely this is the main reason the PC version of the trilogy remains offline.

There's also snippets of developer communication in the code. It's not uncommon for game developers to leave notes peppered through the source code to help unravel the rat's nest of garbled language that can ensue while making a game. Some of these notes are pretty hilarious and could have been made by the remastered trilogy's new developer, Grove Street Games (formerly War Drum Studios who had helped Rockstar make mobile ports and re-releases of GTA titles).

Activision-Blizzard is no longer the most valuable video games publisher in the United States--someone else has taken the top spot.

Following a huge spike in shares, Roblox is now worth more than Activision-Blizzard. Both heavy-hitting gaming titans have market capitalizations in excess of $50 billion, but Roblox has leaped ahead of Activision by quite a bit.

Strong earnings caused Roblox shares have jumped by nearly 20% over the past five days, pushing shares to $98.12. Roblox currently has 521.57 million shares outstanding (or total shares on the market) and a market cap of $57.32 billion.

Halo Infinite's campaign will make Halo 5 players very happy...especially everyone who hated the Forerunners and Prometheans. Plus there's a ton of new changes to literally make the game into a never-ending Halo.

343i is taking fan feedback pretty seriously. That's why Halo Infinite will have absolutely no Promethean enemies (except for maybe those flying imp guys). Another big change is how Halo Infinite is basically an RPG, complete with level ups, weapon upgrades, and new armor.

New Game Informer content confirms how some of these systems will work. Halo Infinite is actually a lot like Far Cry with new Forward Operating Bases that can be captured by UNSC forces.