Gaming News - Page 1

Capcom is set to deliver seven consecutive fiscal years of record-breaking operating income growth thanks to the overperformance of key games.

Capcom's games are selling so well that the publisher has significantly adjusted its earnings forecast. The company now expects to have made 152.4 billion yen (about $968 million) in net sales across the Fiscal Year 2023 period, which ended in March. This forecast represents an increase of +12.4 billion yen (about $78 million) over the last estimate.

Operating income is also expected to be up 1.8 points to 57 billion yen. If Capcom can hit this target, then it will have achieved seven consecutive fiscal periods of record-breaking operating profit results. Based on our findings, Capcom's operating income trajectory will have a CAGR of 20% when looking at results from FY17 through FY23.

When it comes to physics-driven sandbox games with community mods and creations, PC classic Garry's Mod is up there as an all-timer. It's been a Steam staple for decades, with the game's history tied to the release of Valve's own iconic Half-Life 2 from 2004.

And now, in a very strange and out-of-nowhere move, Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman and Facepunch Studios have confirmed that they have received DCMA copyright takedown requests from none other than Nintendo. At first, many believed this was a hoax orchestrated by a copyright troll, but Garry Newman has taken to X to confirm that the takedown requests are "legit" and have been "verified by Nintendo."

What does this mean? Any mod or creation for Garry's Mod, including Nintendo content, characters, or IP, must be removed. And when you're talking about decades and thousands of uploads, it's "an ongoing process" with "20 years of uploads to go through."

Valve has changed Steam's refund policy, which featured a loophole that was undoubtedly abused by at least thousands of gamers.

Steam's refund policy is quite straightforward; at its most rudimentary, a user can purchase a game and play it for up to two hours. Before the two-hour mark, the buyer was able to refund the game at zero cost, and as you can probably imagine, this loophole was easily abusable by the millions of Steam users. However, Valve has now changed its policy by partially patching up the loophole, specifically in regard to titles that are in pre-purchase and offer "Advanced Access."

For those that don't know, Advanced Access can be granted to a player that pre-purchases a title. Sometimes developers and publishers will give early access to a game to those who pre-order. The duration of this access can sometimes be as long as a week or just 24 hours. Steam's refund policy didn't count any hours played of an Advanced Access title, and only began counting after it was officially released.

Sony's gaming patents are now starting to coalesce into exciting new features for PlayStation consoles, and today's new addition could help pave the way for major next-gen upgrades on the PlayStation 6.

Community Game Help is now live on PS5, turning PlayStation users into tipsters along the way. The new feature is an evolution of the PS5's Game Help feature that gives users video and/or picture tutorials on how to complete certain activities in a game (e.g. boss fights). Think of it as a digital version of those old NES secrets books from the 1990s.

What does the Community Game Help feature actually do? How does it work? Sony explains: "Once you turn on the settings, your PS5 will automatically capture a video when you complete a certain activity in a game. Then, it will be reviewed by a moderator, and if approved, your video will be published as a Game Help hint for PlayStation players to watch, learn from, and rate."

Blizzard games have started appearing on GeForce NOW, thanks to NVIDIA's cloud gaming service supporting Battle.net. As part of its weekly GFN Thursday update, NVIDIA confirmed the addition of 16 new games to the GeForceNOW library. And there's more Blizzard love joining the service in the form of classic games from the Diablo and StarCraft franchises.

This includes StarCraft Remastered, StarCraft II, Diablo II: Resurrected, and Diablo III, all playable over the cloud with GeForce RTX hardware. And yes, you can stream games like the excellent Diablo II: Resurrected remaster/remake at up to 4K 240 frames per second if you've got a GeForce NOW Ultimate subscription - and access to a GeForce RTX 4080.

These Blizzard additions join Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, Call of Duty, and Hearthstone, which are all supported and available on GeForce NOW. Other new titles joining the library this week include Dead Island 2 (Steam), the retro-inspired shooter Phantom Fury (Steam), and the highly anticipated Manor Lords (Steam and Xbox/PC Game Pass).

Microsoft confirms that its gaming hardware revenues are down significantly as consumers are buying fewer Xbox consoles.

Microsoft's latest Q3 results delivered both good and bad news for Xbox. The good news is that revenues are up +50% to $5.451 billion, driven by content & services, and that Xbox has now made more than it ever has before. The bad news? Hardware earnings are down, this time dropping by 31%.

Xbox consoles generated $429 million in revenue for the Q3 period, representing just 8% of the total quarterly amount. "Xbox hardware revenue decreased 31% driven by lower volume of consoles sold," reads Microsoft's new 10-Q SEC filing. While Microsoft may be getting outpaced on the hardware front, it's doing very well when it comes to gaming software and services.

Xbox gaming revenues are being supercharged by Activision Blizzard King.

Microsoft just reported its Q3 FY24 results, and it's great news for Xbox. The games division generated $5.45 billion in the period from January - March 2024, up 50% year-over-year and driven almost entirely by software and services. Q3 earnings have been significantly elevated due to Microsoft recognizing Activision's revenues as part of its own--ABK made up 61 points of the 62% growth in content & services earnings.

Things get even more interesting when we tally up Xbox's 9-month results. Thanks to Activision's mighty multi-billion dollar influx, Xbox has now made more revenue in 3 quarters than it has for all previous full year periods. Xbox is currently at $16.481 billion for the Fiscal Year 2024 period, beating out the original $16.22 billion record set in Fiscal Year 2022.

New data released by Bethesda and Microsoft may indicate that Fallout 76's userbase primarily plays on consoles.

Thanks to the Amazon Prime show, everyone is playing Fallout games, including Bethesda's infamous comeback kid Fallout 76. The studio recently confirmed that Fallout games had nearly 5 million people all playing at the same time. The live game Fallout 76 had over 1 million players all raiding and surviving in irradiated West Virginia, making up about 20% of all Fallout players.

It's likely that the majority of Fallout 76's users are playing on consoles. This is based on the admittedly limited data from SteamDB that shows Fallout 76 hit an all-time peak of 73,368 users on Steam. That means Steam PC players accounted for 7.3% of total Fallout 76 players during this timeframe at a maximum. So where are the other 926,000 players?

In a 3-2 vote, the FCC has just restored Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality is officially back. Under the reinstated rule, internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T are now prohibited from "blocking traffic, slowing down content, or creating pay-to-play internet fast lanes."

Broadband internet has been deemed an essential service, and has been reclassified as a telecommunications service, making internet subject to Title II standards of the Communications Act (essentially, now that the internet is an essential telecommunications service, the FCC can impose specific rules on ISPs).

AMD has released a new GPU driver and it brings in support for a high-profile game - Manor Lords - plus it improves another big hitter, performance-wise.

So, the headline here is the mentioned support for Manor Lords in AMD's Adrenalin 24.4.1 driver, the much talked about city builder set in medieval times which became the most wish-listed game on Steam - and it's released tomorrow.

Two games are also getting expanded HYPR-Tune support, and those are Nightingale along with Skull and Bones.