Gaming News - Page 64

Bethesda's latest year in review update offers a look at what's to come in Starfield in 2024.

Starfield isn't like other Bethesda games. Starting in February 2024, the studio plans to roll out consistent updates to the space sim every six weeks. This cadence will yield all sorts of changes, tweaks, and upgrades over the base game, including but not limited to actual content additions and basic/in-depth quality-of-life updates.

So what's on the horizon for 2024? The developers have already teased that "new ways to travel" are coming to Starfield next year, but the blog post also confirmed new details like unique difficulty options, a new survival mode, and fresh templates and parts for enthusiast ship builders.

EA has published a new design update for its Frostbite games engine, and confirms that all EA dev teams can choose whichever engine they'd like to work on.

Originally designed for FPS games, DICE's proprietary Frostbite engine has grown up throughout the years. The engine is now used for everything under the sun at EA, including third-person action-adventure RPGs like Dragon Age.

Interestingly enough, the publisher now says that developers are essentially free to pick what game-making toolset they want to make their game with--Unreal Engine, Unity, etc. This is a stark contrast to 9-10 years ago when EA pushed its studios to all use Frostbite, even BioWare, who worked incredibly hard to get Mass Effect and Dragon Age games running on Frostbite.

The development teams behind Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Doom just got a new boss.

Microsoft has reorganized the structure of its video games business to make way for its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. The games division has shuffled executives around as it integrates ABK into the existing Xbox infrastructure, creating new positions like the first-ever president of Xbox (Sarah Bond) and a new Xbox Content & Studios president role (Matt Booty).

The shake-up also sees Jill Braff stepping in to lead ZeniMax and Bethesda's game development teams. Braff will oversee ZeniMax Online, which includes the teams behind The Elder Scrolls Online, as well as Bethesda Softworks, which is the banner that includes studios like Bethesda Game Studios (Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Starfield), id Software (Doom, RAGE), Arkane (Dishonored, Redfall, Prey), MachineGames (Wolfenstein, Indiana Jones), and Tango Gameworks (The Evil Within, Hi-Fi Rush).

Sony no longer plans to remove Discovery TV content from the PlayStation Store.

Weeks ago, Sony announced that it would be deleting over 750 pieces of Discovery digital video content from the PlayStation Store. This wasn't just a de-listing, but would have been an outright deletion and removal of all of the affected shows. Users who had purchased the content would have had their access rights stripped and the shows simply would have vanished from both the storefront and user libraries.

Now Sony has confirmed that the deletion will no longer take place. PlayStation gamers will be able to keep all of their purchased Discovery TV shows and content. The reason? WB Discovery and Sony have signed a new deal.

SEGA shares brief details and a few new screen captures of its upcoming retro remakes.

At The Game Awards 2023 showcase, SEGA announced plans to resurrect a bunch of classic game IPs with new releases. Beloved Dreamcast and Genesis franchises like Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, the beat-em-up Streets of Rage, and even Shinobi are coming back with new games. SEGA launched a marketing campaign called Next Level for these games.

Exact details like platform availability have not been announced, but SEGA has delivered a few new descriptions on the games in a recent company-wide presentation.

Elden Ring is the best-selling FromSoftware game of all time. The bizarre fantasy RPG is billion-dollar success and is even seen as a franchise. There's just one problem: No one at FromSoft knows exactly why it's so popular.

Elden Ring took the world by storm when it launched in February 2022, and is still played by many gamers today. It's the kind of game that only comes around once in a generation, engaging millions of people in an interactive, tough-as-nails scavenger hunt complete with epic bosses and loot.

While YouTubers have written essays that examine Elden Ring as a whole, the game's secret sauce remains a mystery to its creators. At Sony's internal PlayStation partner awards showcase, FromSoftware producer Yasuhiro Kitao said that the studio has 'no idea' why Elden Ring is so big.

The teenager behind last year's disastrous Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks has been sentenced to life in a secure hospital, the BBC reports.

18-year-old hacker Arion Kurtaj has been sentenced to a life term in a mental hospital for his role in Lapsus$ cybertheft activity. In 2022, Kurtaj took part in a major database infiltration on Rockstar Games, successfully acquiring 90 clips of the then-unannounced Grand Theft Auto 6. Kurtaj actually hacked Rockstar and released the GTA 6 videos while he was out on bail for previous hacks on NVIDIA and BT/EE.

As a result of his actions and apparent motivation to keep carrying out cybercrimes, UK Judge Patricia Lees has sentenced Kurtaj to an indefinite stay in a mental hospital. Kurtaj suffers from acute autism and was found by psychiatrists as unable to stand trial, so the courts took a more direct approach and simply asked Kurtaj if he did the acts, Reuters reports.

Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer outlines the new pecking order at Microsoft's games business.

Xbox is adjusting its ranks as it integrates its $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard King into its ecosystem. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick will resign at the end of this month, and the current ABK management will stay in charge.

The biggest update is regarding Matt Booty's recent promotion to president of Game Content and Studios, a new position that was opened up shortly after the ABK merger was closed. In this position, Matt will oversee the existing stable of developers under the Xbox Game Studios label, as well as Activision Blizzard King and ZeniMax, who will sit horizontally in the structure instead of vertically under the Xbox Game Studios banner.

Baldur's Gate 3 has released another hotfix - the fifteenth for the game in fact - and it makes what you might call an interesting tweak.

As PC Gamer reports, those who have run into one particular bug probably haven't forgotten it, because the glitch causes character noses and cheeks to get stretched during cinematics, to the point where they can "lose their eyeballs, turning the sockets into pits of flesh," apparently. Yikes...

Developer Larian tells us: "Have you found some characters' faces turning into stretched eldritch horrors with pits of flesh in place of eyes? That should not be a problem anymore!"

Steam users who are buying games they'd rather not let anyone else know about can now hide such purchases.

Valve has introduced a new capability in beta whereby Steam users can choose a new option at checkout - 'For my account: private.'

As the name suggests, when this choice is made, the game is purchased, but not shown publicly.