Gaming News - Page 369

Halo Infinite's first battle pass will cost $10 and has fifteen unlockables including skins for Halo Reach's Noble Team.

343 Industries recently detailed Halo Infinite's battle pass payment schemes along with the content included. The passes will cost $10 a piece, and season 1 is called Heroes of Reach and feature full armor sets for all of Halo Reach's Noble team including Carter, Noble Six, Jun, Jorge, Cat, and Emile. Gamers can also mix and match each armor component to customize their Spartans.

In total, Halo Infinite's Heroes of Reach battle pass has 15 unlocks ranging from armor sets to armor effects, a new AI, and death animations. 343i did confuse us a little bit by saying you need an "armor kit" to look like Noble Team. We're not exactly sure what this means or how it works.

SEGA says it will continue exploring strategic acquisitions and buyouts to help bolster its new game plan.

SEGA has a bold new plan. The company wants to make a new type of video game called Super Games, which are massive global online-driven games that make $1 billion in lifetime revenues (think Phantasy Star Online 2). This endeavor is going to take lots of money, time, and talent. If it wants to meet its goal to release a new Super Game by 2026, SEGA might need some help. Luckily it's interested in buying new studios.

In its recent annual report, SEGA outlined its plans for its new Super Game focus and says it will "proactively explore" new acquisitions to help its plans along. SEGA is prepared to spend an extra 100 billion yen (roughly $880 million) to aid in games development, acquisitions, and strategic planning across five years.

The new Skyrim Anniversary Edition re-release actually has a decent price tag, all things considered.

It's been 10 years since the last Elder Scrolls and by the end of the year Skyrim will have been released five times. Thankfully the new sixth version of Skyrim won't be expensive. Bethesda confirmed the upcoming Skyrim Anniversary Edition will cost $49.99 on digital platforms, as opposed to the new $69.99 price of next-gen games and the existing $59.99 MSRP of current-gen titles.

Bethesda also re-confirmed that owners of Skyrim Special Edition on PS4 and Xbox One will get a free next-gen upgrade to the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions. The only difference between the Special and Anniversary Editions are Creation Club additions. The Anniversary Edition includes every piece of Creation Club content released to date. Mod support, next-gen optimizations, and the full existing base game are available on both versions.

Halo Infinite's first battle pass has been revealed and 343i confirms XP can be earned by playing the campaign.

Halo Infinite's season one battle pass is called Heroes of Reach and features armor unlocks from Noble Team including Carter, Emile, Jun, Cat, Jorge, and Noble Six. There's also fiery pauldrons and an explosive helmet to spice things up.

An interesting bit of the announcement is confirmation that gamers can unlock cosmetics by playing Halo Infinite's campaign. No specifics were given and it appears the battle pass is entirely separate from the campaign. We don't know if playing the campaign will give you XP towards the battle pass, or whether or not there are challenges in the campaign itself similar to Halo Reach.

Nintendo's latest corporate strategy brief strongly indicates that a new Switch model is on the horizon.

Rumors of an upgraded Switch Pro or Switch 4K have been circulating for years now. Reports say the Switch OLED was supposed to be a Pro version, but the beefier 4K-ready console was delayed due to chip shortages. Official details are scarce, but Nintendo's latest documents inadvertently suggest the new upgraded Switch is indeed coming.

There's one particular section in the report that talks about how the new Switch models have changed consumer purchases and habits. Switch hardware is diversified across the Switch Lite, 2017-2019 Switch model, and the new premium Switch OLED. Gamers are buying multiple Switch consoles to fit their needs and adoption of the Switch Lite and Switch OLED has been steady.

Top games publishers like Ubisoft, EA, and now Square Enix are getting into NFTs as a new source of monetization, engagement, and long-term revenue streams.

Square Enix going all-in on digital. Everyone wants to transition towards digital due to higher revenues and lower costs. But not every company is adept at monetization or engagement, which are two main pillars of the segment. Digital expands far past full game sales. The real bread and butter is long-term earnings from ongoing purchases within the game.

Despite not being experts at existing monetization trends outside of its ever-popular Final Fantasy 14 MMORPG, Square Enix is jumping into new emerging trends like blockchain and NFTs with both feet. The Final Fantasy-maker has experimented with NFTs and the results were very positive; the company sold all of its minted digital trading cards in the Shi‐San‐Sei Million Arthur series.

A newly leaked repository from the infamous GeForce Now leak indicates multiple big-name PS4 and PS5 games are coming to PC in 2022.

Sony recently doubled-down on its commitment to PC gaming and plans to release a bunch of new PlayStation exclusives on the platform. If this supposed leak can be confirmed, Sony could bring as many as 7 high-profile games to PC throughout 2022.

The list includes PS5 exclusive like Returnal as well as Ghost of Tsushima and surprisingly Horizon Forbidden West, which is strange timing considering the console release is in February 2022. If this is accurate, Sony could bring Horizon Forbidden West to PC just months after its console version. On the other hand Sony just announced the Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection is coming to PC in "early 2022", and the document lists a February 7 launch date. It's possible this info could be genuine.

The Nintendo Switch has now sold-in a total of 92.87 million shipments worldwide and is on pace to beat the Wii's sales by the end of the fiscal year.

Nintendo recently announced a Q2 earnings slide across revenues, operating income, profit, and overall hardware sales. The numbers are comparatively lower due to last year's huge gains sparked from COVID-19's continued lockdown measures.

Switch sell-in has dropped significantly. Like every other tech company, Nintendo is having a hard time securing components and scarcity has led to less shipments. During Q2, Nintendo shipped 3.83 million Switch consoles, down 44% from last year's blitzkrieg shipments.

Xbox gamers get to pre-load Battlefield 2042 four days earlier than PC and PlayStation users, DICE today confirmed.

Battlefield 2042's worldwide pre-load timings are now up and they reveal something interesting: Xbox gamers get first dibs. This could be a result of EA's marketing deal with Xbox for Battlefield 2042 but it ultimately doesn't amount to much because no one can start playing the game until early access goes live on November 12.

Also remember that Xbox gamers can technically pre-download games they don't own yet with the game unlocking once they officially buy it.

The Elder Scrolls Online is the first game to support NVIDIA DLAA technology, but don't confuse DLAA with DLSS. DLAA = Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing, while DLSS = Deep Learning Super Sampling.

DLAA is now enabled in The Elder Scrolls Online with its new v7.2.5 update (Deadlands and Update 32) which adds both NVIDIA DLSS and DLAA support into the game. DLAA could very well be the best anti-aliasing technique yet, but we'll have to see it up and running in The Elder Scrolls Online, first.

The Elder Scrolls Online's new patch opens up the gates to the Deadlands: Gates of Oblivion DLC, which will drop gamers into the Dagon's plane of Oblivion. You'll also explore the mysterious city of Fargrave, while the storyline of Gates of Oblivion will come to an end in Deadlands.