Gaming News - Page 116

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64 is legendary; it took one of the all-time great top-down action RPGs from the 16-bit Super Nintendo era (The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past) and successfully translated that into an interactive full 3D experience. An open-world game before that was even a term.

With the recent release of the critically acclaimed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (check out our in-depth review here), the Zelda franchise is as relevant as ever, delivering some of the most immersive gaming experiences in 2023 - and on aging hardware like the Nintendo Switch.

But what if The Legend of Zelda was given the ultra high-end visual fidelity treatment with something like Unreal Engine 5? That's exactly what The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Unreal Engine 5.2 from CryZENx presents. Albeit currently in limited form with the Deku Tree dungeon from the game's introduction fully playable.

Activision-Blizzard's mobile performance was one of the main reasons why Microsoft seeks to buy the publisher for $68.7 billion, and our analysis really underlines just how important on-the-go gaming has become for the publisher.

It's well known that ABK makes a lot of money from mobile. After all, the three-headed giant includes King, who is responsible for the ultra-lucrative Candy Crush. But what about the other segments? Traditionally, the company's segments each have their own strengths. King reigns on mobile, Activision dominates on consoles, and Blizzard leads the charge on PC. That's what makes the publisher such a powerhouse--it's able to effectively generate billions of dollars everywhere games are played and sold.

Throughout recent years, we've seen ABK break these traditions. In 2018, the publisher enacted its new four-part plan, an ambitious strategy that led to more mobile games as well as new cross-game innovations like Call of Duty Warzone. The company sought to expand the presence of its mighty billion-dollar IPs (ABK has eight of them) across all available platforms.

Square Enix has officially responded to the recent Final Fantasy 16 sales debacle.

There's been lots of talk about Final Fantasy 16 somehow being regarded as a financial flop. The game has sold less than Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy 15 at launch, but as I've explained before, these are bad comparisons to make because the games launched in radically different console environments. Apparently Square Enix agrees with this assessment.

The publisher has given official comment to IGN about Final Fantasy 16's sales. Given the current landscape of the PlayStation 5 sales base, Square Enix considers Final Fantasy 16's launch sales to be "extremely strong." Data clearly supports this assertion.

In what will come as no real surprise to anyone, Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 4 has set a new record for sales of its games.

As part of the firm's latest fiscal results, Blizzard told us that the action RPG is its 'fastest-selling title to date,' having sold through more units than any other game at the same stage of its life.

Diablo 4 drove Blizzard to achieve its first $1 billion net sales in a quarter, with net sales increasing 50% for Q2 compared to the same quarter last year. Yes, Diablo 4 is proving to be quite the cash cow (even if there isn't a secret cash cow level).

Xbox Game Pass subscribers might have a pleasant surprise incoming in the hopefully near future, or so a hint delivered on Twitter suggests - namely the arrival of Elden Ring.

A cryptic clue in a tweet from Sarah Bond, who is Xbox VP for Game Creator Experience and Ecosystem at Microsoft, was made slightly less cryptic in a follow-up message.

Initially, Bond tweeted an icon for an older person and a ring - 'Elder' or rather 'Elden' and 'Ring' - then decided that was maybe a bit too obscure, so just dropped an image of Elden Ring into the mix (not so obscure).

Diablo 4's latest patch is causing gamers to swear off the dungeon crawler en masse, and the controversial update could jeopardize player counts, engagement, and potentially even spending.

Running a live game is hard. In fact, I think it's one of the hardest things any publisher or developer can do. Online games can deliver the most revenues, but they're also incredibly risky and there's no guarantee of a payout. What makes live games so difficult to handle is developers not only have to maintain stability but also iterate and try to keep things new. Developers have to live in all three timelines at once--the past, to figure out what worked and what didn't work; the present, to apply these lessons to the now; and the future, to carry these lessons forward while also trying new updates and new content. Perhaps what is most important, though, is that a team is able to pivot to a backup plan if something goes wrong.

Blizzard, whose bread and butter is live games, knows these lessons quite well. That doesn't ease their burden. Diablo 4's recent update is proof of this, and the developer isn't in an enviable position right.

On the same day Microsoft announced that it would extend the Activision merger deadline, Blizzard confirms plans to break exclusivity on its Battle.net PC launcher.

For quite a long time, Battle.net has been the only place you could play Blizzard Entertainment PC games. There's a good reason for this: Blizzard's proprietary storefront/launcher allows the publisher to keep all revenues made from purchases and not pay a royalty to third-party platform-holders. After all, Blizzard already brings its games to Xbox, PlayStation, and the Nintendo Switch. But now with the $68.7 billion merger with Microsoft on the horizon, Blizzard is changing its tune.

Today Blizzard announced that it will bring a few of its games over to Steam, but the exact range of titles remains unclear. Blizzard says that Overwatch 2 will be the first game on Steam, and the store page is now live. "We're excited to announce that we are bringing a selection of our games to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2... which will be available on the platform on August 10!"

BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft and Activision have officially extended their merger agreement into October.

Last night, the Microsoft-Activision merger deadline came and went. As UK regulators at the CMA weigh Microsoft's latest offers, both Microsoft and Activision have delayed the merger deadline in an attempt to safeguard the $68.7 billion deal from any further elongated investigations from the Competition and Markets Authority.

"Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have extended the merger agreement deadline to 10/18. We're optimistic about getting this done, and excited about bringing more games to more players everywhere," Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer said.

Despite being released in 2013, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V is still teeming with players, and now those players can push the game to its absolute limits graphically with this eye-watering mod.

While Grand Theft Auto V is certainly considered an old game, the Rockstar title is still one of the best-looking games available, even surpassing some of the most recently released AAA titles. However, those graphical achievements are reached through additional downloadable mods, and thanks to developers such as Digital Dreams, Grand Theft Auto V is still being talked about for its graphical potential.

As demonstrated by the above video posted to the Digital Dreams YouTube channel, Grand Theft Auto V can be seen running at 8K with multiple mods, such as the ReShade Ray Tracing mod, QuantV 3D clouds, and the GTAV Real mod. For those that don't know, the GTAV RealMod converts what was Los Santos into Los Angeles, and according to reports, the results are quite impressive. If you are interested in checking out this mod more, visit the Patreon here.

Diablo 4's Season 1, dubbed the 'Season of the Malignant,' will go live in all regions on Thursday, July 20. And with that, Diablo 4 just got a massive 1.1 patch ahead of the new Season that brings several changes to the game, buffs, nerfs, new Unique and Legendary Aspects, and more fixes than you can shake a Wirt's Leg at. In case you were wondering, that's a deep-cut reference to Diablo 2.

For those wondering what existing skills and builds have been nerfed, it looks like Barbarian Hammer of the Ancients, Druid Werewolf Shred, Necromancer Bone Spear, and Sorcerer Ice Shard builds have been scaled back. The good news is that the patch is mostly about buffing other skills and abilities to broaden the options for players.

One nerf that will affect most players, especially those diving into the first Season, is that the experience points rewarded to players for killing enemies that are at a much higher level than them have been scaled back. "We have observed that the experience bonus rewarded for killing higher-level monsters escalates too fast compared to the relative challenge involved," Blizzard writes. With this, players will get +1.5% experience per level higher than the player up to a maximum of 15% at 10 levels.