Gaming News - Page 407

343i is slowing down support for Halo Master Chief Collection ahead of Halo Infinite's launch.

Halo MCC's new Season 8 update will be the last big update of 2021, and will be the end of the game's seasonal release cadence. 343i says they will no longer release big updates in a seasonal format and instead launch new content and features when they're ready. This will fee the studio up to focus on Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer which will take precedence over everything else (thanks in part to in-game microtransactions).

"Starting next year, we're targeting pivoting away from our current seasonal model and cadence to instead focus on smaller MCC updates that can land when they're ready based on development status and studio roadmap alignment," Postums said in a new Halo Waypoint update.

Now that the PlayStation 5 supports PC-grade expandable storage, gamers are looking to buy high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs to supercharge their next-gen gaming experiences. With blazing speeds also comes potential for higher temps and a proper heat sink is incredibly important for any internal storage--especially NVMe drives in compact gaming consoles.

If you're a PS5 owner looking to pop in an extra SSD, Be quiet!'s MC1 cooler should be on your radar. The MC1 fits right into the PS5's expansion bay and is a great fit for both single- and dual-sided high-performance drives without heat sinks like the Samsung 980 Pro or Crucial's P5 Plus.

ASUS launched its ROG gaming furniture earlier this year, but now it is being deployed in the US through IKEA both in-store, and online next month.

The new ASUS ROG gaming furniture includes gaming chairs, gaming desks, cabinets, drawers, ring lights, phone holders, mouse pads, a mouse bungee, an insulated tumbler, a multifunctional blanket (so awesome), a neck pillow, cup holder, and even a wooden arm headphone stand.

That's a pretty extensive ASUS ROG setup there.

Call of Duty: Vanguard will limp onto the market in November, but there is some beta lovin' that people who pre-ordered the game can enjoy now -- meaning we have more information on Vanguard.

It looks like developer Sledgehammer Games will have support for AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology in Call of Duty: Vanguard, which will support both AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and its super-popular (and hacker-filled) Warzone have DLSS support.

FSR support in Call of Duty: Vanguard was spotted in the game files, but you can't just enable it in the menu right now -- I'm sure it'll have full support by its launch on November 5, 2021. Interesting that Sledgehammer isn't tapping DLSS, as it was used to great effect in Warzone and helps drag those frames up to 120FPS in a big way at 4K.

Gamers speculate that Quantic Dream could be making a narrative-driven Star Wars game.

Quantic Dream, the studio behind ultra-realistic graphics and story-driven games like Detroit Become Human and Beyond Two Souls, could be developing a Star Wars game. The news comes via a Tweet from reliable Battlefield and Call of Duty leaker Tom Henderson. While Henderson didn't outright say QD's next game is Star Wars related, he did put out an image that led lots of people to believe that's the case.

This rumor comes at an interesting time for Quantic Dream. David Cage's studio recently confirmed it wanted to self-publish its own games. Lucasfilm Games could license the Star Wars property to Quantic Dream similar to its plans with EA and Ubisoft. QD says its latest move is to "preserve our freedom and our independence, to continue working on innovative and even more ambitious projects, to address greater challenges, and to create the unexpected."

Diablo II Resurrected will be limited to 4 players on Switch, and it should take extra time to level up as a result.

Diablo II is an extremely grindy game that demands lots of time. The game's RNG magic find roulette is one of the most time-consuming in all of gaming and requires gamers to do hundreds--if not thousands--of MF runs across Pindle, Ancient Tombs, Mephisto, etc. Just look at any of Dbrunski 125's Human Bot projects and you'll see how little amount of high-end loot comes from thousands of runs.

This is a big reason why I've warned gamers to avoid playing Diablo II Resurrected on consoles and stick to PC whenever possible. The grind will be extra intense for these users for a few specific reasons, including trading, which is apparently awkward on consoles (the entire reason to MF is to get gear that you can use or trade for better gear), and teaming up with other users to level up. Consoles don't have lobby systems to find/make games and must instead depend on a Party Finder, which is essentially a matchmaking tool that sets you up with random players.

Sony's new PlayStation 4 firmware update is reportedly hardware-bricking PS4 consoles.

Sony just released PS4's new v9.0 update alongside the PS5's big SSD expansion update, and some users are reporting that the firmware patch is hard-bricking their PS4 consoles. Multiple users on Reddit report that their base PS4s and PS4 Pros have stopped functioning after downloading the v9.0 update. Others report the PS4 is blinking blue, which signifies some sort of hardware or OS error. Reports say the consoles will not power on and do not work, however some users have gotten their systems to operate with a hard reset (unplugging the console for a minute or so and then rebooting).

Other users are reporting significant slowdowns on PS4 and PS4 Pro hardware, or consistent 35888 error codes (or SU-42118) preventing the update from being installed. The general consensus for a solution is trying to reinstall the update after a hard reset and praying for the best. The most frustrating part is that gamers can't use their PS4s or PS4 Pros online without downloading the update; Sony forces users to update to the latest firmware in order to connect to the internet or the PlayStation Store.

This fan-made Halo Infinite trailer really captures the original spirit of Halo's old-school marketing campaigns.

Halo's advertisements have changed over the years. Back in the day, the ads invoked a certain sense of fragility and sci-fi wonder that tapped into the heart of the Halo franchise; the Halo 3 Believe ads, for example, showed an epic war where humans were completely overrun. Halo Reach's Discover Hope showed the ultimate sacrifice, and the ODST ads exposed the brutality of the Human-Covenant War.

But where is Halo Infinite's marketing campaign? So far it's been kind of MIA and we haven't seen any real epic ads--at least not any live action ones. We've had two great campaign trailers but nothing in the vein of the old ads. YouTuber Infinite Forges steps in to bridge that gap a bit with a simple but effective fan-made marketing trailer that brings that old-school spirit.

A new batch of supposed leaked Halo Infinite images shows a high-res upgrade for Craig.

Despite intense controversy, something good came out of Halo Infinite's 2020 gameplay demo: Craig the brute. What started out as a meme making fun of Infinite quickly became one of the most recognizable Halo icons, and 343i confirms the lovable brute would bel be immortalized in Halo Infinite. Now we have our first glimpse into what Craig could look like in the final game.

A few new leaked Infinite images show snaps of high-res brutes from Halo Infinite, and one of them looks similar to Craig. This time around it looks like the Jiralhanae has grown a fashionable goatee and sports Kratos-like warpaint.

It's been eight years since Grand Theft Auto V has released, and to celebrate let's take a look at some of the milestones the game has made.

Right now fans aren't too happy about GTA V. The game is 8 years old today and will soon span three generations of console hardware (for comparison's sake, Rockstar released three separate Grand Theft Auto games on the PS2). Fans have expressed their frustrations by disliking the recent GTA V E&E PS5 trailer en masse--right now the trailer has 184,000 dislikes on YouTube.

Still, GTA V is a thundering success for both Rockstar Games and Take-Two. Since its release in 2013, the sequel has helped the franchise generate an incredible $6.4 billion in revenues across 150 million game shipments worldwide. GTA V is so big that it makes up 43% of total Grand Theft Auto franchise sales (325 million). Fun fact: Grand Theft Auto earned nearly $1.5 billion in sales revenue when GTA V released in Take Two's Q3 FY14 period (September 17, 2013).