Gaming News - Page 419

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone are about to enjoy Season 5 kicking off, with both Activision and Treyarch teasing new Operators, and more. Check out the Season 5 official cinematic trailer:

It's funny... the main character is a female hacker that seems very cool from the trailer, but Activision can't get the freaking hackers out of Warzone. So the new character is a hacker, in a game filled with hackers that ruin half the rounds that I (and millions of others) play. Nice.

Season 5 should end up being the last season in the Black Ops Cold War cycle, as Call of Duty: Vanguard should take in from there. We should expect lots of new goodies in the Warzone Season 5 battle pass, map changes, and more.

EA DICE will be kicking off the Battlefield 2042 technical playtest next week, with a "strict NDA" that will stop playtesters from sharing any gameplay videos or details about the game... but we now know the PC system requirements for the technical playtest.

The Battlefield 2042 technical playtest requires at a minimum: 8GB of RAM, Windows 10, and an AMD FX-8350 or Intel Core i5-6600K processor. GPU-wise you need an AMD Radeon RX 560 or GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card with 4GB of VRAM and above.

But those are the minimum PC requirements, the recommended PC requirements are higher: 16GB of RAM, and an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i7-4790 processor. GPU-wise, EA DICE recommends an AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT or GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card with 8GB of VRAM and above.

Activision's Q2 earnings outperformed expectations on the back of consistent player spending.

Activision just reported its best Q2 in the last ten years, with net revenues ($2.296 billion), operating income ($959 million), and net income ($876 million) all setting new decade highs. Player spending on in-game content was a major driver for earnings and Activision's Q2 continues riding the wave of spending surge driven by last year's pandemic.

In Q2 2021, Activision-Blizzard made $1.319 billion from in-game spending on DLC, add-ons, subscriptions, and microtransactions across key games like Candy Crush, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch. In-game net bookings accounted for 68% of total net bookings ($1.9 billion). King made the lion's share of mTX revenues with an all-time record high of $635 million segment revenues, and King also had 255 million MAUs as compared to Activision's 127 million MAUs.

Sony confirms that it will ship 12.5 million more PlayStation 5 consoles from now until March 2022.

PS5 stock is about to increase through 2021 and beyond. Today during its Q1 FY21 earnings call, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki confirms the company has secured enough semiconductor chips to meet its 14.8 million PS5 shipment target for the full year. Sony has shipped 2.3 million PS5s in Q1, leaving 12.5 million PS5 shipments for the rest of the year.

"The shortage of semiconductors have impacts in various areas and through various measures we have been taking some actions. For PS5, the console sales target for this year has been set and we have secured the number of chips necessary to achieve that. Regarding supply of semiconductors, we're not concerned," Totoki said.

EA confirms Battlefield is now a service instead of singular release, and that new games could come biannually.

EA now sees the Battlefield franchise as a service. Publisher CEO Andrew Wilson confirms that Battlefield 2042's online-only framework is the foundation of the future of the series, and that new Battlefield games could release every 2 years.

"That is our orientation," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said when asked about new Battlefield games releasing every 2 years.

Jedi Fallen Order 2 will be among EA's new Star Wars games, the publisher today confirmed.

In its Q1 FY2022 earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed the publisher will continue making games in the Jedi Fallen Order franchise. In the call, Wilson attributes Q2's high net revenues to strong sales in Mass Effect Legendary Edition and also mentioned Jedi Fallen Order, which has successfully re-engaged users with a next-gen release.

"We will continue to invest in both of these franchises to grow our IP," Wilson said, referring to both Jedi Fallen Order and Mass Effect.

The PS5 only has 667GB of usable space, but owners will soon be able to expand internal storage with the same high-end SSDs used in PCs. But which one should you buy?

New data from The Verge reveals that gamers don't necessarily need to pick the most expensive SSD with crazy read/write speeds. Sony's official recommendations call for a PCIe 4.0 SSD that achieves at least 5.5GB/sec speeds, but testing shows that even slower drives like the XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite 1TB M.2 2280 SSD can work well in the system without many load speed discrepancies.

Meanwhile, OEMs have revealed official PlayStation 5 compatible SSDs like the Seagate FireCuda 530, which commands a 7.3GB/sec read speed matched with a premium $239 price for 1TB models. PS5 architect Mark Cerny also recommends the WD_BLACK SN850 2TB SSD which is as much as a PlayStation 5 console itself.

Activision-Blizzard has upwardly revised its total-year 2021 earnings forecast and now expects to earn a record-breaking $8.5 billion.

While a storm of controversy hangs over Activision, the company's earnings performance is doing better than ever. Activision-Blizzard's Q2 2021 results outperformed across every metric, raking in the best net revenues ($2.296 billion), operating income ($959 million), and net income ($876 million) in a second quarter period in the last 10 years. EPS also beat expectations with $1.12 per share.

Activision has now boosted its original full-year earnings predictions based on these results and now targets a whopping $8.515 billion for CY 2021, up $145 million from the previous forecast.

Activision-Blizzard is now facing two separate types of class-action lawsuits: One for sexual harassment and workplace discrimination, and another for securities fraud as a result of the ongoing controversy.

A total of five U.S.-based law firms are investigating Activision-Blizzard for securities fraud, and three of them have already filed lawsuits.

The firms include:

The PlayStation 4 is highly unlikely to ever beat the PS2's mighty hardware sales reign, but it's already beating the legacy titan's software sales.

Sony's latest financial report confirms PS4 sales are drying up quickly. In Q1 FY2021, the PS4 shipped 500,000 units, marking the first quarter that the console sold-in less than 1 million. Right now total PS4 shipments sit at 116.7 million, as compared to the PlayStation 2's mighty 155 million sales. The PS5 is already overlapping the PS4 at a rapid rate as the PS4 enters market saturation. It would take a miracle for the PS4 to beat the PS2's sales.

The PS2 isn't completely dominating, though. The PS4 is actually beating the PS2 quite handily in game sales.