Gaming News - Page 89

Microsoft has funded two digital-only mid-gen Xbox console refreshes, but Sony moves in the opposite direction to improve profitability and significantly reduce costs.

Xbox and PlayStation compete in two different timelines. Microsoft is trying to plan for an all-digital future where consumers are funneled into subscriptions, whereas Sony is capitalizing on the here and now. Since the PS5s launch in 2020, Sony has released multiple console revisions aimed at boosting profitability while simultaneously reducing costs.

Microsoft's Xbox Series X/S consoles aren't profitable--in fact, no Xbox console has been made and sold at a profit. The PlayStation 5, on the other hand, was profitable soon after launch. This profitability isn't constant, though, and the PS5 has ebbed in and out of certain levels of profitability due to higher manufacturing and shipment costs. Sony responded by raising PS5 prices worldwide except for North America and releasing multiple hardware revisions that reduce weight and make the system more efficient.

Sony has officially announced the new PlayStation 5 "slim" duo, complete with a modular redesign that allows consumers to fluidly change their consoles at any time.

As previous reports had indicated earlier this year, Sony will indeed release a new PS5 Slim lineup for Holiday 2023. Sony isn't calling the new designs "slim," though. These new versions are meant to be successors that eventually replace the existing PlayStation 5 disc and digital consoles that are currently on the market.

The new PS5s will still be sold separately as the PlayStation 5 ($499) and the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition ($449). As before, one model comes with a disc drive and the other doesn't. The major difference here is that either model can morph back and forth between each form factor. PS5 Digital Edition owners can buy a disc drive later down the line for $80 and install it at any time--the PS5 digital edition is no longer permanently digital. The converse is true--any disc-based PS5 can also transform into a disc-less unit.

Some players of Assassin's Creed Mirage have been experiencing a bug that has left them unable to play the game on the Xbox.

Wccftech spotted that Microsoft took to X (formerly Twitter) to let affected Xbox gamers know that the firm is aware of the problem, where an error code (0x87e10bc6) appears, and is investigating.

That error is popping up when Assassin's Creed Mirage is first launched, and the game crashes with it rather than reaching the menu.

Elden Ring's expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, now has a rumored release date, so you can tentatively pencil in February 5, 2024, in your diary (assuming you've bought one for next year already).

As Wccftech spotted, the news comes from YouTuber Ziostorm, who shared the rumor about Shadow of the Erdtree on X (formerly Twitter) as you can see above.

The first thing to note here is that the speculation comes from "unverified sources" which gives us cause for concern. Furthermore, we're told that those sources haven't come up with anything concrete.

Unity CEO John Riccitiello is retiring from the company, an official press release has announced.

Unity today announced a significant leadership shake up. John Riccitiello will retire as acting chief executive officer, president, chairman, and board member of Unity. Riccitiello's retirement is immediate and Unity's board has appointed James Whitehurst as interim CEO of the engine-maker.

"It's been a privilege to lead Unity for nearly a decade and serve our employees, customers, developers and partners, all of whom have been instrumental to the Company's growth. I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the Company's future success," Riccitiello said in the press release.

Activision Blizzard games won't start showing up on Xbox Game Pass until 2024, the publisher today announced.

The $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision merger is expected to close by Friday, October 13, but gamers shouldn't expect to see a full Activision library up on Xbox Game Pass for several more months. Activision has clarified that it has no strategy to add Diablo IV or Modern Warfare III directly into Xbox Game Pass in 2023.

Instead, Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft will work to bring a catalog of games to Xbox Game Pass in 2024.

Remedy Entertainment's head of PR has some choice words about Microsoft's lower-end Xbox Series S, saying that some of the system's lower-end specs are a "big problem" for developers.

Remedy is known for pushing hardware to pretty extensive heights. From the original Max Payne games and Quantum Break on the Xbox One, to Control's impressive utilization of early raytracing on PC (via RTX cards) and Xbox Series X/PlayStation 5, the studio is known for pushing the envelope with its proprietary Northlight engine. This level of experience adds significant weight to Remedy's overall analysis of video games console hardware.

So when a studio like Remedy says that the Xbox Series S' weaker specs are an issue, then it means two things: one, we should listen and heed what is being said, and two, this isn't an isolated incident and other devs are likely experiencing frustrations with the Series S. We've seen first-party studios like Bethesda also saying that Starfield's 30FPS hard cap is there to ensure "consistency," which infers the FPS cap could have been lowered to ensure the Series X and Series S are uniform experiences. After all, the Series S has 37% less RAM and has a GPU with 60% less compute units than the Series X.

The video games industry has laid off more than 6,000 employees across all disciplines, startlingly disappointing figures from Video Games Layoffs.com indicate.

Most of the popular video game-related aggregator websites will track things like review scores, how many players are actively playing a specific game, or the prices of the games themselves. One site chronicles the more depressing state of the world's leading entertainment space: How many people have been laid off and let go, often from companies that generate billions of dollars of revenue a year.

According to the Video Games Layoffs website, an estimated 6,100 workers in the video games industry have been laid off throughout 2023 so far. The data includes games-related layoffs across platform-holders and game developers big and small, ranging from the Xbox games division and SEGA to the engine-makers at Unity and Epic as well as smaller-scale devs like Telltale Games.

Bethesda's Todd Howard is surprised by how far people have taken the custom shipbuilding in Starfield, an area of the game that allows players to flex their creativity to create something new or something based on pop culture. When the game launched last month, we highlighted some of our favorite creations, including ships from Star Wars, Futurama, and some fun stuff like Thomas the Tank Engine.

Thanks to mods that remove the physical size limitation of ships on PC, we've seen the shipbuilding go one step further - and potentially reach the absolute end-game thanks to this new faithful recreation of a giant Star Destroyer from Star Wars in the game. Created by Reddit user DotElectronic7174, they note that due to the size and scope of the ship, the in-game shipbuilder struggles to rise above 15 FPS.

However, performance is fine when the massive Star Destroyer is rendered in-game orbiting above a planet.

Assassin's Creed: Mirage is now out in the wild, and the folks over at Digital Dreams have cranked up Ubisoft's latest title at the glorious 8K resolution, running at 60FPS.

Digital Dreams ran Assassin's Creed: Mirage at 8K (so 7680 x 4320) at 60FPS+ on NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, with the ReShade preset enabled. The rest of the hardware is beefy, too: AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X processor is installed into an AORUS X670 AX motherboard with Kingston DDR5-6000 memory to boot.

Chromatic Abberation was disabled for the test, with "Beyond All Limits" ray tracing added... and still, it doesn't make Assassin's Creed: Mirage look out-of-this-world, but you can't knock that it doesn't look fantastic cranking along at 8K 60FPS+ on that level of hardware.