Gaming News - Page 66

Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive are likely to delay the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV to much later in the year of its expected release, according to analysts at Bank of America.

The Bank of America dropped its ratings of Grand Theft Auto IV to Neutral from Buy, sparking a market downturn for Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the highly anticipated game, as it fell 1.5% on Thursday. Notably, current earnings estimates placed the release of GTA 6 in March 2025, per analysts Omar Dessouky and Arthur Chu, but following the release of the insanely popular trailer, Bank of America now believes it "is more likely" the release won't take place until "the end of 2025".

But why is it likely GTA 6 will get delayed? The analysts believe that while the trailer was extremely popular, it didn't contain enough elements that "convinced us the game was well into alpha testing." Another concern was the lack of a PC version launch date, as there was no indication that the PC version would be launching in 2025 alongside the console version.

Payday creator Ulf Andersson reveals Den of Wolves, a new co-op mind-heist shooter with strong sci-fi elements.

10 Chambers, the dev team behind the spine-tingling GTFO co-op thriller, today announced its new heist game at The Game Awards 2023. The new project is called Den Of Wolves, and it goes from Payday's Heat to the more corpo-ruled Blade Runner without missing a beat.

The new shooter places strong emphasis on teamwork and best usage of advanced tech while tapping into a distinct dystopian futurism where AI and multi-billion dollar companies run amok. The result is a kind of no man's land city where crime runs rampant and players take on the role of mercenaries who pledge allegiance to the highest bidder.

10 Chambers, the studio run by Payday creator Ulf Andersson, just announced a new sci-fi heist game at The Game Awards 2023. We attended a special event in the Unity building in San Francisco to learn more about the FPS thriller.

The devs at 10 Chambers are mostly known for chaotic shooters. The studio made their debut splash in the FPS genre with the horrifying GTFO, which pits players in teams of four up against fearsome monstrosities in a brutal battle for survival, but before that, studio head Ulf Andersson was pioneering the heist genre with the Payday series.

The next game is a bit different and takes the studio back to its roots. It's a high-tech FPS called Den of Wolves, and it's centered around futuristic corpo-espionage and high-stakes combat.

10 Chambers has announced Duality, the final update to its cult hit GTFO.

It's official: After four years of support and 12 free content updates, GTFO's co-op survival story is coming to an end. The brutal FPS unleashed hellish carnage on the market back in 2019, and now 10 Chambers has revealed the very last chapter to GTFO's nail-biting roadmap.

Rundown 8.0: Duality is now live as a free update, and it will punctuate GTFO's narrative storyline as 10 Chambers gears up for its new sci-fi heist game, Den of Wolves. The horrifying live game won't be shuttered any time soon, and the studio plans to support GTFO with bug fixes and tweaks moving forward. That being said, Duality will be the last content update for the game.

Ubisoft has partnered with AMD to release Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and with that, the game takes full advantage of Ryzen and Radeon technologies, including FSR 3 and Frame Generation - alongside DLSS for GeForce RTX owners.

The game is currently bundled with AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics cards, with AMD and Ubisoft creating a custom Radeon RX 7900 XTX that looks fantastic in Avatar blue.

It doesn't stop there as AMD has partnered with Maingear to create a custom Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora-themed gaming PC rocking an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX AVATAR: Frontiers of Pandora Limited Edition Graphics Card. And it's giving it away as part of a global Sweepstakes, so be sure to enter here for your chance to win this one-of-a-kind gaming PC.

Hideo Kojima has formally announced his new Xbox game at The Game Awards 2023.

Hideo Kojima made quite an appearance Keighley's TGA23 showcase. The auteur showed up with Nine Inch Nails' "Came Back Haunted" blaring, walking through a creepy otherworldly doorway that's right out of his new Xbox game.

Kojima's upcoming title is called OD, and he's working alongside horror maven Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us, NOPE) to add a new level of immersivity to the game. OD will star Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer and a very terrified Udo Kier, and is described as a movie-game hybrid.

Ubisoft's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is one of the last major game releases for PC, and it comes from the team behind The Division franchise - Massive Entertainment. With gameplay set in the world of Pandora, as featured in the visually stunning films from acclaimed director James Cameron, it uses the studio's Snowdrop engine to deliver some incredible visuals.

With detailed environments, characters, impressive animation, and real-time ray tracing, you've got some stunning visuals to look forward to when firing it up on a high-end Radeon RX 7000 Series or GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU.

Like all Ubisoft games, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora features an in-game PC Benchmark tool - but it is the most detailed, in-depth, and future-proof Ubisoft benchmark tool to date. A new PC Features Deep Dive article from Ubisoft even includes a hidden 'Unobtanium' graphics setting that exceeds the 'Ultra' preset. It is "extremely difficult to run on currently available hardware."

Ark: Survival Ascended players will know that the servers have been having issues galore, but recognition from Studio Wildcard boss Jeremy Stieglitz saying they're complete "ass" would make Ark players feel a little bit better.

During a recent Extra Life charity stream, Studio Wildcard co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz said: "The servers are ass. They run like ass. And their stability is ass. We need to improve it. It's going to be improved". He said the developer would fix the Ark: Survival Ascended servers, but it would take time.

The original Ark: Survival Evolved was a huge hit when it launched years ago, with Ark: Survival Ascended being a remake of the original game using Epic Games' delicious Unreal Engine 5 technology. It launched in October on the PC through Early Access and then in November for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. The game sold over 600,000+ copies in its first two weeks on the market, which is a damn good feat.

Analyst's general consensus is that Grand Theft Auto 6 could sell tens of millions of copies in its first year of availability and generate nearly $3 billion in revenue.

GTA 6 is gearing up to be the most anticipated game in the last 10 years. Rockstar officially announced the game with an explosive trailer that has broken 122 million views in just 2 days. Gamers want to play now, but they'll have to wait: GTA 6 won't be here until 2025.

Analysts in the interactive entertainment field are busily updating their models for with GTA 6's projected performance and trying to fit their predictions into Take-Two's telegraphed earnings forecast. According to video games industry expert Joost van Dreunen, who cites various reports, analysts expect GTA 6 to sell about 38 million copies in its first 12 months on the market.

As per the $3.7 billion acquisition contract, Sony can take over Bungie and dissolve its internal board of directors if certain earnings targets aren't met.

New investigative reports from IGN's Rebekah Valentine shed more light on the current situation at Bungie. Sources tell IGN that the studio's independence hangs in the balance of ROI targets mandated by Sony. The $3.6 billion acquisition has squeezed Sony Interactive Entertainment's margins--the company has delivered low operating profit margins for the last three consecutive quarters as the games division pays for Bungie's buyout cost.

Bungie remained an independent subsidiary after the acquisition, complete with its game publishing branch. Two Sony executives--Head of Worldwide Studios Hermen Hulst and Sony SVP Eric Lempel--would get seats at Bungie's board of directors, sitting alongside three other Bungie execs. Part of the acquisition contract also included terms that allowed Sony to dissolve Bungie's board and take full control over Bungie's operations should the developer not hit specific earnings requirements.