Gaming News - Page 44

The hype surrounding Nintendo's next console just had a wet blanket thrown on it as the company published its quarterly financial results for the period ending March 31, 2024.

The financial results showcased that the Nintendo Switch is continuing to sell well despite numerous expectations from industry analysts that sales will begin to decline in late 2023. Notably, Bloomberg Japan has gathered important information from company president Shuntaro Furukawa, who said the Nintendo Switch has sold a staggering 139.36 million units as of December 31, 2023.

While Furukawa didn't deviate from the strict script that didn't mention anything about a next-generation console, the financial results stated the company's "main business" going into FY2024-2025 will be the current-gen console, indicating that a Switch successor is currently on the back burner, or at least in the eyes of Nintendo. This statement certainly shook up the gaming industry, which expected Nintendo to release a new console sometime in 2024.

Blizzard's Warcraft and StarCraft games are legendary examples of brilliant RTS games, and if you're a fan of the genre, you probably want to keep an eye on Stormgate. It's a brand-new next-gen RTS game from a team of WarCraft III and StarCraft II veterans at Frost Giant Studios, who left Blizzard so they could continue to work on the genre they love.

You can now play a Stormgate demo as part of the Steam Next Fest event - which ends on February 12, 2024. The demo features DLSS 3 Frame Generation support for those rocking GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs. And the Stormgate Steam Next Fest Demo is also playable via the GeForce Now cloud gaming service.

With its sci-fi setting, it's more StarCraft than Warcraft, focusing on epic large-scale battles with armies, vehicles, and lots of firepower. Stormgate is still a work in progress, with an Early Access launch slated for mid-2024.

There's some disappointing news for Xbox gamers looking to try FF14: The game will not only require a paid subscription fee in order to play, but you'll also have to have an active Game Pass subscription too.

After more than a decade, Final Fantasy XIV is finally coming to Xbox. Square Enix will hold an open beta test starting Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at around 12:00 a.m. (PST) on Xbox Series X/S, where anyone can dive into the world of Eorzea. Well...almost anyone.

The developer has confirmed that an active Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Xbox Game Pass Core subscription is required to play Final Fantasy XIV's open beta. This is the equivalent of the old Xbox LIVE Gold requirement that online games had years ago, before Microsoft phased-out and re-named Xbox LIVE Gold. PlayStation gamers, on the other hand, do not have to have an active PlayStation Plus subscription to play FFXIV.

The Nintendo Switch family has now shipped nearly 140 million units worldwide, further cemented it as the third best-selling video games hardware ever made.

Despite being on the market for 7 and a quarter fiscal years, the Switch is still selling pretty strongly for such an older system. Nintendo's latest financial report delivers updated figures for the platform and confirms some staggering lifetime sales.

According to the figures, total Switch shipments have reached 139.36 million as of December 2023. Nintendo shipped 6.9 million consoles during Q3 FY24 (Oct - Dec 2023), down 58% year-over-year from holiday 2022. In fact, these are the lowest holiday shipment numbers that the Switch platform has ever seen.

Apex Legends launched in native next-gen form for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles back in 2022, offering 120Hz, but developer Respawn promised 120FPS was on the way... and now that day has finally come.

The new update for current-gen consoles in the Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X/S consoles unlocks 120FPS gaming on Apex Legends with its new Breakout season. This is huge news for Apex Legends players on current-gen consoles, as PC gamers have been enjoying 120FPS (and much, much more) since the game launched 5 years ago.

Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment explained the 120FPS update on its website: "Enable Performance Mode on current-gen consoles for 120Hz output to displays that support it! This new Video Settings option adjusts graphical settings, leveraging recent improvements in the Apex rendering engine to target up to 120 FPS gameplay".

What's going to be the big step forward taken by Sony's next-gen console? It could well be seriously upping the quality of games using AI, if one leaker is right.

This comes from Moore's Law is Dead (MLID) on YouTube, who in the latest episode of Broken Silicon discussed a wide swathe of topics, including the PlayStation 6 and what features it might have in terms of how the console will really advance the world of gaming.

That could well be some of the usual stuff - even faster loading (although with the PS5 we already have blazing speeds), better graphics, faster frame rates and so forth. Which is all great - particularly the latter in terms of 4K gaming on your big-screen TV - but the real difference will be made somewhere else.

Fallout 4: Project Arroyo is an ambitious fan remake of the classic 1998 isometric hit Fallout 2 from Black Isle Studios - the last major entry in the franchise before Bethesda Game Studios took over in the mid-2000s.

Like other ambitious mods like Skywind and Skyblivion, which are Morrowind and Oblivion remakes in a more modern Bethesda engine, this goes one step further by translating a 2D game into full 3D.

Fallout 4: Project Arroyo has been in development for a few years, but over the weekend, we got our best look at the project with a two-minute location trailer that captures the look and feel of Fallout 2's New California setting. Fans of the classic will undoubtedly notice the Sacred Head of the Vault Dweller looking very cool (and imposing) recreated in Fallout 4.

Patch 2.11 for Cyberpunk 2077 and the Phantom Liberty expansion went live recently, bringing several fixes to the game, including a few visual updates. Although not mentioned in the full release notes, the update also adds a new NVIDIA DLSS settings called DRS or Dynamic Resolution Scaling to sit alongside the Quality, Balanced, and Performance modes.

The various DLSS modes refer to the rendering resolution as a percentage, where Quality at 4K means AI upscaling from 1440p and Performance at 4K means AI upscaling from 1080p. The new DRS mode is about maintaining a target frame rate, where the resolution that DLSS is upscaling from dynamically changing to ensure a minimal performance loss.

It's an exciting new addition as it means DLSS will be able to dynamically switch from DLAA's native rendering to lower resolutions in much smaller increments, with Redditor 'skyj420' posting that they witnessed native 1440p drop to just 1420p to maintain the target frame rate set of 45 FPS.

Reports say Microsoft is thinking about bringing select Xbox console exclusive games to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Fans are predictably not happy and want answers. Next week, they will have them.

Multiple reports say that big-name games like Starfield, the new Indiana Jones project, and even Gears of War could break exclusivity and release on PlayStation. The goal here would be to maximize sales outside of the Xbox and Windows Store ecosystem--both of which have not captured substantial shares of their respective console and PC markets.

Everyone is confused by these announcements, but Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirms that the new business plans will be revealed next week during a special stream. This event could determine the fate of the Xbox hardware business as we know it.

It's official: The godfather of tactical stealth games is returning to the genre. Hideo Kojima has announced he is making a new experimental espionage game with Sony.

Hideo Kojima has now announced three projects: Death Stranding 2, the horror game OD for Xbox, and a new stealth espionage game that's totally not Metal Gear Solid. The last game was announced at Sony's recent State of Play event, and while details are light, we do have a name.

The project is codenamed PHYSINT, which could be short for "Physical Intelligence," a term used to describe operatives collecting intel on the field. It'll be set in a totally new, all-original IP, and it's being made for PlayStation. It's also to be a film-game hybrid...which is interesting. "Two years from now, I will celebrate the 40th anniversary of my game production career. I am confident that this title will be the culmination of my work," Kojima said at the event.