Gaming News - Page 1

Nintendo has taken to its website to announce its cutting ties with X, the social media platform formerly named Twitter.

Nintendo's announcement found on its website states as of June 10, players will no longer be able to post screens or videos directly from their Nintendo Switch's Album to X. Additionally, they send friend requests to social media users via the Friend Suggestions feature will be removed. Nintendo notes that posting screenshots and videos to Facebook "will continue to be available," but it will remain a service that "may also be discontinued at a later date."

Nintendo goes on to target three games specifically; Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Splatoon 3, and Splatoon 2. The company explains the ability to post Smash Ultimate screenshots from the Album in the Nintendo Switch Home Menu to Smash World, within the Nintendo Switch Online smart device app, will also become unavailable. As for Splatoon 3, posting to X via mailboxes in Splatsville, Inkopolis Plaza, or Inkolpolis Square will be removed, along with posting to Facebook. The same change applies to Splatoon 2's mailboxes.

During a recent earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said that the publisher's developers and studios have a "real hunger" for generative AI. The company is looking to use the new technology to make game development more efficient and to deliver big and complex games quickly.

"As a company, we've been deeply tied to AI since our inception," Andrew Wilson said. "It has been the very center of all of the games that we create, replicating human intelligence in the context of a gameplay experience. But certainly, as we think about the wave of generative AI today and as it merges into artificial general intelligence, broadly, we're still very early."

Citing FIFA as an example, using the game's animation and run cycles - this grew from 36 run cycles in FIFA 23 to 1,200 run cycles in EA Sports FC 24. The result is a more realistic-looking depiction of football/soccer and one that feels closer to watching the sport live on TV than the series has ever been.

Rumors have been circulating for a while, indicating that ASUS planned to release a new version of its ROG Ally gaming handheld this year. This led to people speculating that it could be a full-blown sequin or laptop-style refresh with new Ryzen hardware or possibly even a new OLED display, ala the Steam Deck refresh.

Recent speculation and rumor have pointed to the 2024 ROG Ally refresh being nothing more than a minor hardware update that would fix the SD Card Reader issues that have plagued some units since ASUS launched the Windows 11-based PC gaming handheld in 2023. It's a minor but very welcome fix that would sort out one of the only real faults with the hardware and something that wouldn't warrant a special presentation.

That said, ASUS is teasing a special stream set to broadcast tomorrow with the title 'The Next ROG Ally.' This indicates that there's a lot more coming to the ROG Ally 2024 refresh than a fix to the SD Card Reader.

Upscaling tech is such a big part of PC gaming that NVIDIA announces which titles are adding support for DLSS Super Resolution and DLSS 3 Frame Generation every week. However, with that said, only a handful of PC games are adding support this week - limited to DLSS Super Resolution or DLSS 2. There's no Frame Generation, but hey, there's always next week.

The big one is the long-awaited Homeworld 3 from Blackbird Interactive and Gearbox, which launches on May 14. This strategic sci-fi RTS takes place in beautifully rendered 3D spaces, and for all GeForce RTX owners, DLSS 2 will boost performance while maintaining the game's impressive visual fidelity. Homeworld 3 is the latest installment in a long-running and beloved PC franchise, so there's definite hype surrounding its launch.

The second game getting DLSS 2 support is a little more unknown. It's an Early Access RPG available to play on Steam and already sitting on a 'Mostly Positive' user review rating. With survival mechanics, exploration, action, resource and town management, story, and armies to command in a medieval setting, Bellwright is worth checking out.

Sony now once again has more games on the PlayStation Store's best-sellers list than Microsoft does.

Once Microsoft purchased Activision for $70 billion, Xbox became an overnight powerhouse. Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard King, Bethesda/ZeniMax, and the myriad of teams under its Xbox Game Studios banner. That's a lot of IPs and franchises--Microsoft now casts one of the widest nets in gaming.

Buying ABK wasn't enough--Microsoft also needed to break exclusivity and bring its first-party games to competing platforms so it can "use what Sony has" to sell games. As a result of these expansion efforts, Microsoft took over the U.S. PlayStation Store top-sellers charts simply by virtue of its size.

Nintendo gives fans a very loose timeline on when the next-gen Switch will be revealed.

Today, Nintendo announced its Q4 financials that clearly illustrate the Switch is on its way out. It's time for a new model, and Nintendo is set to unveil its new Switch 2 (aka the Super Switch, Switch 4K, etc). The only question is...when?

In a surprise move, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa gave an update on Twitter on the new hardware. The company plans to reveal the new Switch during the current Fiscal Year 2025 timeline, which ends in March 2025. And it won't be revealed in June. So the system could be revealed at any time in 9 months.

Microsoft has shut down three studios from ZeniMax as the games industry shrinks and retracts.

In a bid to cut spending and stabilize margins, Microsoft has made multiple rounds of layoffs across its Xbox games division. In January, Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees across its Xbox and Activision branches, and today it was revealed that three entire studios will also be closing down.

Arkane Austin, the developer of Prey and the ill-fated Redfall, Tango Gameworks, the devs of Hi-Fi Rush and the excellent Evil Within games, and Alpha Dog, who made mobile games like Mighty Doom for ZeniMax, have all been shut down.

Microsoft has announced the closure of at least four developer studios under its Bethesda branch, including Arkane Austin, the studio behind Redfall, and Tango Gameworks, the creators of Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within.

According to an internal email sent to studios by Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, Microsoft has decided to blame the inevitable job cuts on its initiative of "reprioritization of titles and resources". The email states the team at Arkane Austin will be closing, and some members of the team will be going to other teams at Bethesda.

Alpha Dog Studios, the developers of the mobile game Alpha Dog, will also be closing, along with the internal development studio Roadhouse Games, which will be merged into ZeniMax Online Studios, which is working on titles such as The Elder Scrolls Online. As for Tango Gameworks, the developer behind Hi-Fi Rush, Booty, thanked the team for their work and said the game will remain available to players, the same as Redfall.

The president of Nintendo has confirmed when the company will make an announcement regarding a successor to the Nintendo Switch - something fans have been dying to know for many months now.

If you have been following along with the Nintendo Switch 2 news, you will know there have been plenty of rumors and leaks of information regarding Nintendo's next console, with some pointing to support for higher than 60FPS gameplay, and others saying the console will come with "electromagnetic suction" Joy-Cons, along with an 8-inch display. While all of the rumors haven't been confirmed, Nintendo has finally confirmed when it will be announcing its next-generation console.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa took to X and stated Nintendo will make an announcement regarding the successor to the Nintendo Switch "within the fiscal year". The president of Nintendo made a point to mention the Nintendo Switch was announced in March 2015, making its existence 9 years old, an incredible age for the console. For context, the Switch became available in March 2017.

Helldivers 2 has had a somewhat tumultuous week following Sony Interactive Entertainment's announcement that PC gamers will soon be required to connect to a PSN account to access the game.

Sony has since backpedalled on that announcement, saying via the PlayStation X account that none of the the previously announced changes were going to go ahead and that it's still learning how to engage with the PC gaming community. The initial news of forced PSN and Steam connection resulted in massive backlash in the form of negative review bombing the game's Steam listing and an uproar in the Helldivers 2 Discord.

Spitz, the Helldivers 2 community manager stopped posting in the game's dedicated Discord server on Saturday, one day after the changes were announced. PCGamer reports the community manager left then server and has only returned today, telling the community he was almost fired for his last public comments about the controversial situation.