Gaming News - Page 321

Can you gaming PC handle Elden Ring? Let's find out.

FromSoftware just released Elden Ring's official PC spec requirements, and they're not too bad. The game will run on lower-end Xbox One and PS4 hardware from 2013 after all.

The devs haven't announced perf targets for the following GPU and CPU combinations, but it's implied minimum specs will hit around 720p 30FPS at low settings whereas minimum could be around 1080p 60FPS at medium settings. So far Elden Ring doesn't look like a crazy next-gen spectacle so the lower-end specs make sense here.

Seagate's new Game Drives prep your console for one of the biggest PS5 games on the market.

Games are getting bigger and bigger, but luckily Seagate has you covered. Horizon Forbidden West, for example, clocks in at a massive 87GB on PS5 (even though the official PlayStation Store doesn't give exact file sizes). That's 13% of the PS5's available onboard SSD storage, which goes extra fast because the PS5 SSD's nefarious Other section fills up and takes lots of space.

Luckily Seagate has you covered with its Game Drive expandable storage. The latest lineup features Horizon Forbidden West's Aloy and comes in 2TB and 5TB capacities, which is plenty of space for the massive new open-world game.

Cyberpunk 2077 is finally playable on consoles thanks to a new free next-gen patch, offering tons of upgrades and optimizations for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S hardware.

After a full year of controversy, the definitive console version of Cyberpunk 2077 is now out on next-gen hardware. The new version is free for anyone who bought the game on PS4 or Xbox One and features a bunch of enhancements including a 4K 60FPS mode (with dynamic scaling) as well as 4K 30FPS with ray tracing on. Sadly the game runs at 1440p 30FPS on Xbox Series S without any other game modes.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been tweaked for both next-gen consoles. On PlayStation 5, the game supports the console's Tempest 3D architecture offering 3D audio, haptic DualSense feedback, activity card support. The game also supports smart delivery on Series X/S so there's no need for multiple downloads, and sadly the PS4 trophies don't transfer to the PS5 version because it's technically a different game entirely.

We are hours away from the unleashing of Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone Pacific Season 2, which will introduce some map changes to Caldera, new vehicles, weapons, and so much more.

Warzone Pacific Season 2 kicks off today across all platforms, weighing in at up to 47GB on the PlayStation... while there's something that was music to my ears: Rebirth Island Iron Trials on a new Rebirth Reinforced layout that will change up Rebirth in a huge way.

There's a new Bomber for Warzone Season 2, with the new Bomber plane capable of destroying Loadout Drops... which were, until now at least, indestructible. That's a huge change to the meta of Warzone, and will surely have people yelling into their mics for days. Now while the new Bomber sounds OP, the developer has been nerfing planes in preparation for Season 2 -- plane health decreases will be unveiled in full when the update goes live.

It turns out that Square Enix had the metaverse figured out a while back.

As more and more companies announce their plans for the metaverse, it's important to take a look at key examples that already exist in the market today. With its penchant for inter-connected transmedia and multi-game releases, Square Enix had inadvertently created a conceptual metaverse for Final Fantasy 15 years ago. Now it's doing the same thing with Final Fantasy 7.

A while back, Square Enix was going all-in on Final Fantasy 15. The plans were so ambitious that I called FF15 the new Skyrim. Square Enix created what it called the Final Fantasy 15 Universe, which included a vast webwork of games, animated shows, and even a stunning feature-length CGI film. The mainline FF15 game was the core of this early metaverse and everything branched out--and led to--the centralized framework.

Bandai Namco outlines plans for its IP Metaverse, a vast inter-connected webwork of services, games, and interactive media.

The metaverse is gaming's latest hot trend. The nebulous concept is a convergence of the most powerful mechanisms of gaming: online interaction, personalized customizable social hubs, launching/playing/sharing games, and a service-based ecosystem that offers games, movies, and interactive experiences that are monetized and scaled across a huge network. It's basically a combination of Final Fantasy 14, the PlayStation Network, and the PlayStation Store all-in-one.

Bandai Namco is the latest publisher to embrace the metaverse. The company says it plans to launch a new initiative for an IP Metaverse, which would create a "metaverse", or a ring of inter-connected interactive experiences, for each of its IPs. This strongly implies that franchises like Tekken, Dragon Ball, Gundam, Pac-Man, and Naruto would all get their own content hubs.

A Cryptopunk NFT has sold for nearly $24 million, proving the speculative market is extremely lucrative.

Chain.com CEO Deepak Thapliyal just purchased CryptoPunk#5822 for $23.6 million, or 8,000 ETH, making it the most expensive NFT in the CryptoPunk collection. This is also the fourth largest NFT purchase of all time, and dwarfs the previous CryptoPunk sales record, CryptoPunk#7523's sale for $11.8 million in 2021.

Data from DappRadar notes that the CryptoPunk line generated over $31 million in NFT sales in the week from February 7 - February 13.

Cyberpunk 2077's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S release date could finally be announced tomorrow.

Gamers who have been waiting for the definitive, fixed version of Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles may get some good news soon. CD Projekt today announced a special Cyberpunk stream will go live tomorrow, February 15 at 4PM CET (10AM EST) on the official CDPR Twitch channel.

The developer previously said Cyberpunk 2077's next-gen release would launch in Q1 2022. It's already February, so the game could still release across the rest of the month and the full month of March. CDPR also confirmed CP2077's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S launch would be free for existing PS4 and Xbox One owners, and rightly so given the game's near-unplayable launch condition.

Nintendo may delay its next-gen Switch Pro or Switch 4K due to the ongoing chip shortage.

Now is not a good time to release games hardware. 2023 may not be much better, either. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and a multitude of hardware makers are facing a worldwide chip shortage. Supply lines are constrained and production costs have risen as a result, and hardware is more expensive to make. This typically leads to two things: lower production volume and lower profits.

Meanwhile the gaming market is booming. The pandemic has kicked off a new level of hardware and software spending, and consumer hardware demand has been voracious throughout the shortage. It's not an issue of gamers wanting to buy hardware. It's an issue of companies being able to produce hardware, ship it, and then make enough of a profit on the hardware to make it necessarily worth it--or at least maintain according values.

Nintendo Switch is currently sold at a profit, but that margin is being lowered by the worldwide chip shortage.

Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa tells investors that ongoing semiconductor supply issues are slowly eating into Switch hardware profits. Supply and demand economics have raised prices of critical components, and the Switch in particular is becoming more expensive to manufacture, produce, and distribute.

In a recent Q3'22 Q&A session, Furukawa says profits made from Switch console unit production have been dipping gradually throughout the chip shortage. The CEO confirms Nintendo is prepared for the profit hit and will maintain its 23 million unit production forecast through FY22, but he also notes that next year's FY23 period could be impacted to an even greater degree.