Gaming News - Page 137

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg might be set for a cage fight - or at least some of the gossip from the rumor mill claims - but if you're keen on getting some big-tech-CEO brawling action right now, well, you can simulate the bout in a freshly released browser game.

The freebie Zuck vs Musk 'techbro beatdown' is the brainchild of the designer of Bejeweled, and founder of Blue Wizard, Jason Kapalka (as PC Gamer reports). It's actually a modified spin of an existing Blue Wizard game, WrestleBros, but with Musk and Zuckerberg starring as the wrestlers.

You can partake in a match against the computer, or versus a human opponent (playing against a local player on the same PC, or online), with wins facilitating upgrades.

Rockstar's original Red Dead Redemption has suspiciously been re-rated by Korea's Game Rating and Administrative Committee, hinting at a possible remaster.

It looks like Red Dead Redemption could be getting a remaster. Korea's GRAC ratings board has just published a final decision for Red Dead Redemption, giving it a mature rating. GRAC received the application earlier this month on June 5, 2023, and made a decision on June 16, 2023.

This new rating is separate from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. The new rating does not list a platform so it's hard to be sure.

Despite opinions of the contrary, data shows that Activision-Blizzard is a unique video games company. The publisher routinely generates multiple billions of dollars every year principally from three major franchises--Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Candy Crush. In my coverage on the Microsoft-Activision merger, there's been one point that I've reiterated over and over: Activision is an absolutely massive force in the video games industry.

Unfortunately, this is something that the FTC's key witness, the economist Dr. Robin Lee, failed to adequately demonstrate to federal judge Jacqueline Scott Corley. Lee was provided with a valuable opportunity to illustrate the full magnitude of Activision Blizzard King's presence in the industry.

Judge Corley had asked Lee specifically what other Activision games are important--much of the focus of today's hearing was on the $31 billion Call of Duty franchise, and rightfully so because that series is one of the consistently best-earning franchises ever created--but there's a lot more to Activision's billion-dollar portfolio.

"AMD is proud to announce that we are Bethesda's exclusive PC partner for the next-generation role-playing game, Starfield," reads the announcement. As one of the biggest PC releases of the year (or decade), the 25-years-in-the-making sci-fi RPG epic from the studio behind Skyrim is out in September.

AMD notes that it has worked closely with the team at Bethesda Game Studios on the release of Starfield across the PC and Xbox versions. This makes sense, as Xbox features AMD hardware for its CPU and GPU.

AMD highlights that optimizations have been made for multi-threaded processing for both PC and Xbox, with added support on PC for the new Ryzen 7000 series of processors and the new Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards. FSR 2 upscaling will be available in the game across PC and Xbox Series X|S hardware.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan tells federal courts that he believes Activision CEO Bobby Kotick wanted to make a separate side deal to ensure Activision games, including Call of Duty, would continue shipping on PlayStation if the $68.7 billion merger with Microsoft fell through.

In 2022, the bosses of some of the most powerful forces in gaming came together in Brussels to share their opinions of the Microsoft-Activision merger with the European Commission. Among them was PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, two men that have enjoyed a prolonged business relationship that has spiraled upward into a multi-billion dollar arrangement.

In private, Ryan allegedly told Kotick:"I don't want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger." Now in today's recent evidentiary hearing in the FTC v Microsoft federal case, Ryan clarifies on what led up to that eye-opening statement.

BioWare is handing off development of its long-running Star Wars The Old Republic MMORPG to another studio so it can narrow its focus on singleplayer RPGs.

After more than a decade of support, BioWare is moving on from its Star Wars MMO. BioWare general manager Gary McKay has confirmed future content development of Star Wars The Old Republic will be handled by Broadsword Online Games, a development team that's handling Ultima Online. This will free BioWare to focus on its core strengths: building singleplayer RPGs.

Sadly, McKay confirms that layoffs will occur as a result of the shift. BioWare's Austin, Texas and Edmonton, Canada-based studios will now be entirely devoted to the company's wholly-owned dual franchises, Dragon Age and Mass Effect. The next Dragon Age game, Dreadwolf, is currently set to launch sometime in 2024 at the earliest, whereas the next Mass Effect game is still in pre-production phases.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan gives a timeline of when he started to notice strong red flags in regards to the Microsoft-Activision merger.

Sony's Jim Ryan has had strong convictions about the Microsoft purchasing Activision, and believes that Microsoft will withhold access to specific games in an effort to cause anti-competitive harm against PlayStation. This wasn't always the case, though. Emails show that Ryan originally believed the merger "was not an Xbox exclusivity play," however his view changed after a very particular email exchange from August 2022.

During his testimony in the FTC v Microsoft federal hearing, the Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO said that he believes that Microsoft would use Call of Duty to damage PlayStation either with full foreclosure (withholding Call of Duty completely from PlayStation) or partial foreclosure (timed exclusivity on content and game releases).

Alan Wake 2 is due out on October 17, and we already know it's a digital-only game - there won't be a release on a physical disc, and the reason for that is Remedy wants to ensure the game is as good as it can be.

In other words, a disc release would have to be finalized (go gold) in time for manufacturing and packaging, and that'd be problematic in terms of the quality of the finished product.

Eurogamer spoke to Alan Wake 2's creative director, Sam Lake, and game director, Kyle Rowley, at the Summer Games Fest, getting their thoughts on the reasoning behind the digital-only decision.

New internal documents from Microsoft's business leadership shows that Xbox has missed revenue forecasts by over $700 million.

The Microsoft-Activision merger is being challenged in federal courts, (FTC v Microsoft, 3:23-cv-02880-JSC) and a lot of interesting information is being released to the public as a result. Court exhibits have uncovered the dynamics of the Xbox gaming business and the performance expectations from Microsoft's SLT, or Senior Leadership Team. One such metric is Xbox revenues.

The case file exhibit list includes one very illuminating 80-page internal Microsoft document that outlined where Xbox currently is and where it can grow. The slide deck, which was issued during Microsoft's Q3 FY22 (January - March 2023), has assigned an estimated revenue target of $17 billion for the Xbox games division. Actual results were quite different--Xbox made $16.22 billion in FY22, missing the internal target by some $780 million.

Diablo IV will eventually get DirectStorage support on PC, according to a report that cites a developer from the team.

PC Gamer delved into the issue - we already know that DirectStorage files are in the code for the action RPG, thanks to keen-eyed data miners - and came up trumps with a confirmation direct from the horse's mouth.

A member of the Diablo IV team told the gaming website: "MS DirectStorage is currently not enabled, but we are planning on enabling it in the future."