Gaming News - Page 96

The next installment in Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise, due for release on October 5, will see the series return to its roots by focusing on stealth, investigations, and assassinations in a single detailed location - Baghdad in the year 861. And with the release right around the corner, Ubisoft has outlined what to expect with the PC version and what you'll need to run the game in 4K.

Compared to some of the recent high-profile PC releases, Assassin's Creed Mirage looks to be less intensive on hardware - with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070, AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, and Intel Arc A770 able to hit 1440p 60fps using the 'High' detail mode. All three of these cards only feature 8GB of VRAM, too, so it doesn't look all that taxing.

Ubisoft's announcement for the PC features, which includes support for uncapped frame rates, ultrawide and multi-monitor displays, and keyboard and mouse controls, also reinforces that it has partnered with Intel for the game's release. This means no DLSS or AMD FSR support, just Intel's XeSS Super Sampling.

Microsoft is responsible for accidentally leaking incredibly sensitive information about its Xbox games business, not the FTC, the Commission says.

On September 15, a wave of documents and files were uploaded to the FTC v Microsoft court exhibits list. These files included information about Xbox and Microsoft's post-merger plans. Accidentally included in the dearth of files was a series of highly sensitive PDFs and slides that revealed Microsoft's plans, including new consoles, how much Xbox pays to include titles day one on Game Pass, expected subscriber growth rates as a result of the ZeniMax buyout, an upcoming games list, and more.

This is the largest leak in video games history, and it gives consumers, investors, analysts, and competitors a clear look at Microsoft's gaming strategy through 2030. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't the Federal Trade Commission who uploaded the files, but Microsoft themselves.

Mortal Kombat 1 is the latest entry in the long-running fighting game franchise, and it's available to play on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch. A reboot and sequel, it brings back classic characters and a rich cinematic story to experience alongside the over-the-top violence and gore.

And with players getting Early Access to the game ahead of its official launch this week, all eyes have been on the Nintendo Switch version of the game - and not for a good reason. With the Switch version commanding the same premium price tag as the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game, visually (to borrow a term from the game), it's a realm apart.

No one was expecting the Nintendo Switch version of Mortal Kombat 1 to look on par with the PS5 release, but this goes beyond running the game at the Switch's native resolution of 720p and dialing down a few settings. It looks like the aftermath of one of the in-game Fatalities - a mess.

New public court documents included in the FTC v Microsoft trial exhibit list given an idea of what Xbox plans to do after it acquires Activision.

Activision Blizzard King isn't just making its money from game sales and microtransactions, but advertisements from King's lucrative ad tech platform. Microsoft plans to take advantage of Activision's advertising platform and expertise on a post-merger basis, and has indicated it will incorporate advertisements in PC and mobile games.

The exhibit PX1763 filing may be one of the most important files in the entire list. It's a slide deck of the Project Denali valuation model that was used to help convince Microsoft's board of directors to greenlight the Activision buyout. In this document, Microsoft outlines three value drivers for the acquisition.

Microsoft reveals more details about how much money Xbox Game Pass actually makes.

Over the last few years, we've pieced together a lot of information and data about Microsoft and its video games division. In October 2022, we uncovered that Xbox Game Pass on console made $2.9 billion in revenue in 2021, as per a regulatory document. Shortly after, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer said Game Pass made around 10-15% of content and services revenues, leading to our own adjusted calculations.

Now Microsoft has delivered concrete data on Game Pass revenues. According to a newly published Xbox slide deck from the FTC v Microsoft federal case, Xbox Game Pass generated an average of $9.26 per subscription. We know that there were around ~25 million Xbox Game Pass subscribers as of January 2022, so Xbox Game Pass may have generated around $231.5 million in revenue for the month of April 2022.

New court documents in the FTC v Microsoft case reveal in-depth figures from Xbox's secretive data vault.

Days ago, the Northern California District Court uploaded a series of new exhibits to the recent Microsoft-Activision merger federal trial. One of these documents has an eye-opening view of revenue metrics that the games division typically keeps under wraps.

Exhibit PX1240 is a slide deck of an internal gaming review from April 2022. While nearly all of the slides in the deck have been redacted and blacked out, two particular slides (pages 49 and 50) have been left untouched. In these slides, Microsoft reveals useful KPIs (key performance indicators) like MAUs (monthly active users), monetized users, and gaming hours. These numbers are much more important to Microsoft now that it has shifted towards a service-oriented and subscription-first business model.

A newly-published email chain reveals that Microsoft consulted with Matthew Ball, a leading force behind the emerging metaverse trend, to help with its growing Game Pass subscription.

California district courts recently uploaded a new batch of exhibits, documents, and files from the FTC v Microsoft federal case. These documents have shown that The Elder Scrolls 6 will be exclusive to Xbox and PC, highlighted Microsoft's initial plans to propose an acquisition of SEGA, and some interesting tidbits about Game Pass.

According to exhibit PX1087, Microsoft hired metaverse pioneer and ex-Prime Video strategist Matthew Ball to help solidify plans and ideas around Xbox Game Pass. The email chain reveals that Ball wrote an expansive 13,000-word white paper for Microsoft that discusses subscription models in length.

Bethesda's next Elder Scrolls RPG will skip PlayStation, new court documents from Microsoft indicate.

Microsoft apparently has no plans to release The Elder Scrolls VI on PlayStation consoles and may keep the massively-anticipated RPG exclusive to Xbox and PC. The latest evidence of TESVI's exclusivity is found in a recently uploaded court document in the FTC v Microsoft case (23-cv-02880).

In the document, Microsoft's legal counsel submits a table (PX0027-004) with upcoming first-party Xbox games. The table is meant to illustrate how Microsoft handled games on a post-acquisition basis and that the company did not instantly make specific titles exclusive to Xbox after buyouts. To prove a point, Microsoft's lawyers focus on ZeniMax games, and The Elder Scrolls VI is listed on the table with a "expected 2026 or later" release timing and an apparent confirmation that the upcoming RPG will not be on PlayStation.

The past couple of weeks we are starting to see rumors swirl about the Nintendo Switch 2, with many of these rumors pointing toward a massive performance upgrade.

The rumors came from select developers that were reportedly pulled into a private room by Nintendo employees and showcased the hardware that will be running the Nintendo Switch 2. The developers suggested that Nintendo's highly anticipated console will come with massive performance upgrades, which will put it much closer to the performance of Microsoft and Sony's consoles.

The jump in performance can be attributed to the rumored adoption of a NVIDIA Ampere GPU, which pushed select titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to 4K at 60FPS. This wild purported leap in performance has now been backed up by internal Activision emails that have been made public by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Starfield is already getting attention from the modding community despite the game not having the official mod tools released.

Starfield has been out for a little over two weeks now, and despite the lack of official modding tools, modders are rolling out mods in various forms, with one being the implementation of Stormtroopers. Now, we are starting to see mods surface that fix some of the most annoying aspects in Starfield. For instance, players have always wanted to be able to create a ship without size limitations. Vanilla Starfield ship construction is limited to 40 meters long and wide, which isn't enough if a player wants to build any large ship from Star Wars.

Thanks to NexusMods user AccursedPrism, players can now enjoy Starfield ship creation without a size limit, as the new mod overrides the default limitation of 40 meters and adds the following options - 60 meters, 80 meters, and 4/5 kilometers. The sizes below 100 meters are considered to be "safe", which indicates minimal or hardly any performance issues or in-game bugs. However, 4/5 kilometers will likely have a massive impact on performance/cause bugs. Check out this mod here.