Latest News - Page 1349

Grand Theft Auto V is a sales juggernaut that has not only amassed 150 million shipments to date, accounting for 1/3rd of total GTA franchise sales, but the game has helped generate over $6.4 billion since its release.

In preparation for Take-Two's Q1'22 earnings call tomorrow, I decided to chart GTA franchise revenues on a quarter-by-quarter and year-by-year basis. The results were just as eye-opening as the huge GTA V game sales graphs I put together.

According to numbers provided by Take-Two Interactive, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has made $6.468 billion in revenues as of Fiscal Year 2021 (bear in mind this is total GTA revenues, not just GTA V, but most of if is from GTA V).

Halo Infinite's technical preview is frenetic, chaotic, and exhilarating, but it can also overload your senses at times. Here's some tips to help you along the way.

Halo Infinite's first beta test is just that: the multiplayer puts you up against AI bots to test out your skills. The bots are no slouches, though, and will take you out unless you learn some basic skills--namely headshotting with the pistol. This isn't always easy, especially with all the on-screen effects 343i has thrown in. Luckily you can switch them off.

Tip 1: Turn off rumble. The single biggest tip I have for Halo Infinite's technical preview is to turn off rumble. There's nothing more jarring and disrupting than having the controller shake every time you're hit. The bots are really good with the AR, so expect this to happen often. To get clean, proper headshots you need a steady hand and a steady reticle. That's not going to happen if your controller is vibrating every two seconds.

Sony has fried a unique Dualsense controller giveaway from Down Under.

To celebrate 50 years of burgers and fries, Macca's--what Australians call McDonald's--planned to give away 50 McDualsense controllers in a Stream Week event. These were custom PlayStation 5 controllers stylized with a Big Mac on one side and crispy French fries on the other. In other words it was a product placement advertisement that constantly reminded you of the not-so-healthy fast food chain.

There's just one problem: Macca's didn't get Sony's permission for this promotion. A billion-dollar food chain using a separate product to essentially advertise itself without authorization is grounds for repercussions, so Macca's has cancelled the Dualsense giveaway.

Mark Cerny says he plans to use a WD_BLACK SN850 SSD in his PlayStation 5 to expand storage.

The PS5's SSD expansion bay will soon be unlocked to finally let gamers add more high-end storage to their consoles. After a new firmware update drops, PS5 owners can slot in a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD into their console that's up to 4TB big. But what drives do you buy? Sony has yet to put together an official list of compatible SSDs just yet, but they have given some guidelines: It needs to be at least 5GB/sec, it has to be a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drive, and it needs to have a heat sink. These don't come cheap.

Case in point: Mark Cerny is inadvertently recommending the WD_BLACK SN850 2TB SSD, which comes with a heat sink and can hit incredible speeds of up to 7GB/sec. It's also pretty expensive at $500, which is literally the same price as a disc-based PlayStation 5.

Halo Infinite's technical preview has racked up hundreds of thousands of players and gamers are avidly slaughtering as many bots as possible.

Halo Infinite testers have killed over 7.2 million bots in the last 48 hours, 343i recently confirmed. Killing as many bots as possible across a myriad of maps and with different weapons gives the devs tons of data. The technical test has evolved over time, too. The AI bots started off at Marine difficulty, which is basically medium, and now they've moved on to ODST, which is equivalent to hard mode. Soon they'll be on Spartan mode which is basically Legendary difficulty for AI.

This is the first mainline Halo game to feature bots and the game is all the better for it. Playing against bots is enthralling, chaotic, and plain fun. The AI isn't a slouch and they're not completely inept. Even on ODST they'll give you a run for your money and test your mettle. I personally can't wait to see how many Spartan bots get annihilated...or maybe the reverse?

PSA: Dataminers are posting up Halo Infinite story spoilers on public forums like 4Chan and even Reddit.

Halo Infinite's technical preview is an absolutely fantastic slice of FPS chaos. The developers at 343i are stoked with the responses, and gamers are having a blast all around the world. There's just one issue with the preview: The source files actually contain story spoilers and campaign info we weren't meant to discover.

Data miners have unearthed a treasure trove of spoiler content that outlines many key events of the campaign, so be sure to keep an eye out. 343i warns anyone who posts up this content to YouTube or other social media channels will likely be hit with a DMCA--especially if the content includes assets like voice snippets.

Netflix may be producing a TV show based on BioWare's hit fantasy Dragon Age series, and it's possible it will tie into the new sequel game.

Sources tell website Giant Freakin' Robot that a new Dragon Age series is in development at Netflix. There's no details on setting, scope, production, or whether or not it'll be live action, CGI, or animated. Netflix has built quite the video game adaptation repertoire with shows like The Witcher and Castlevania, and more shows are on the way including Captain Laserhawk, a series based on Far Cry Blood Dragon, a new Splinter Cell series, and a new Castlevania spin-off starring Richter Belmont.

As for Dragon Age 4, EA has officially said not to expect it before its FY23 timeline, which ends on March 31, 2023. Sources tell Venture Beat that Dragon Age 4 may release in 2023, possibly later than the March cutoff date. This would put DA4 in EA's FY24 period. It's possible this new Netflix series could lead up to Dragon Age 4 and help fill in the story gaps between Inquisition and the new game.

343i just posted up full schematics for Halo Infinite's preview maps to show players where specific weapons are located.

Halo PVP is all about controlling power weapons. If your team has a full fleet of BRs you probably won't lose. Halo Infinite's weapon spawns aren't as straightforward as other games, though, because the primary guns A) spawn on walls and B) rotate in and out. For example, the Commando and Battle Rifle typically rotate back and forth. The power weapons spawn in a specific marked location and are usually on cooldowns.

This can make Infinite a confusing and jarring experience. Not knowing where power weapons are is always a disadvantage in Halo, but it's especially true here now that the spawns are staggered. Luckily 343i has you covered.

NVIDIA and AMD's next-gen GPUs are going to be utter performance beasts, but you'll need some serious PSU horsepower behind you as well.

That's to be expected if we're going to get 100%+ performance gains over the current Ampere and RDNA 2 flagship GPUs, with leakers @kopite7kimi and @Greymon55 stating that both AD102 and Navi 31 GPUs will use between 400W and 500W of power.

AMD's next-gen RDNA 3 architecture will reportedly be offered in multiple versions, with the flagship Navi 31 being an MCD design (Multi-Compute Die). This means it'll be a dual-die GPU beast, and could be as huge as 800mm2 -- but power on Navi 31 and the future Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card shouldn't go over 500W. We should expect somewhere between 420-450W.

The largest earthquake in the United States in 50 years hit south of the Alaska Peninsula yesterday at around 10:15 PM, the largest earthquake since the M8.7 earthquake in the Aleutians in 1965.

While there was a lot of shaking and moving around, no major damage was reported across Alaska -- the largest state in the USA. The quake struck around 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) offshore, and around 29 miles (46 kilometers) below the surface of the North Pacific Ocean.

There were tsunami warnings in effect within seconds, with coastal communities told to evacuate, but in the end there was not much damage to report. The ground shook for up to two minutes in some places across Alaska, where the worst damage was broken glass, plates, and other household items that were being bounced around in homes.

The last we heard on AMD's next-gen AM5 socket was from a mockup of the new LGA1718 socket, but now we have a proper render that looks fantastic, thanks to ExecutibleFix on Twitter. Check it out:

The new render shows how AMD's new AM5 socket locking mechanism would work, which looks similar to Intel's own HEDT LGA sockets -- there are no screws here like the LGA socket-based EPYC processors use. The pins being moved from the CPU to the motherboard is a big change for AMD with Zen 4 + AM5 socket, just like it was for Intel all those years ago.

AMD's next-gen Raphael CPUs are teased here in the render, with the Zen 4-based processors expected to drop in the second half of 2022 -- but between now and then we can expect Vermeer-X3D which is a Vermeer refresh, but it'll rock AMD's new 3D V-Cache technology.

Here's a closer look at Grand Theft Auto franchise sales ahead of Take-Two Interactive's upcoming Q1 FY22 earnings call.

Grand Theft Auto is the fifth best-selling franchise in the games industry with 345 million total sales. Grand Theft Auto V makes up 42% of total franchise sales with an astronomical 145 million units shipped worldwide.

I've compiled data from Take-Two earnings call transcripts since Grand Theft Auto V's launch in 2013 (which coincides with the company's FY2014 period). The data isn't perfect and contains some estimates based on previous sales trends.

A new Take-Two Interactive SEC filing highlights game sales of its most popular franchises, confirming big numbers for IPs like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and NBA 2K.

Take-Two recently put out a briefing to help prepare shareholders for the company's annual voting session. The presentation has a quick recap on franchise/game sales that adds perspective to the publisher's biggest tentpole releases. According to the numbers, Grand Theft Auto is now at 345 million (GTA V makes up 145 million alone) and the annual NBA 2K sports franchise is at a staggering 111 million. Red Dead Redemption is also at 60 million units.

Since we already made a graph on GTA V's astronomical sales growth, I decided to look at quarter-over-quarter sales of Red Dead Redemption 2. The results are pretty impressive. The game has managed to sell-in 37 million units since its launch in October 2018. Most of the sales occurred in the Q3 launch period with 23 million units sold, but RDR2 managed to push 6 million sales in its second year, and 5 million sales in its third year.

A look at Halo Infinite's PC settings shows 343 Industries is taking the platform very seriously.

Halo Infinite's PC version has a myriad of performance toggles, graphics tweaks, and visual adjustments in its settings menu. The game has some nifty features like built-in FPS and network latency overlays, as well as a FOV slider, and gamers can even change the thickness of gun reticles too (very useful for precise shots).

The graphics options are extremely robust. PC gamers can adjust presets for nearly everything in the game, including overall textures, sky quality, ground textures, anti-aliasing, texture filtering, depth of field, reflections--the works. Thankfully you can also turn off all the screen effects like motion blur, speed lines, and the chromatic aberration that happens in the HUD during explosions.

The Coalition flexes the Xbox Series X's raw console power and pushes the 12TFLOP RDNA 2 GPU and Zen 2 CPU to its limits.

Gears of War developer The Coalition has been setting benchmarks on the Xbox Series X since the get-go. Before the system launched, the devs managed to get Gears 5 running at Ultra PC equivalent presets on the Series X with Unreal Engine 4, complete with new global illumination effects. Now they're setting sights on Epic's new potent Unreal Engine 5.

In its recent Alpha Point tech demo, The Coalition managed to get 100 million+ triangles running flawlessly on the Series X with real-time light and reflections thanks to Unreal Engine 5's new toolsets. The results deliver an incredible look at the potential of next-gen gaming. The devs are careful to say Alpha Point does not represent any commercial product; it's merely an illustration on what's possible on the Xbox Series X. And things are still very early. Microsoft's internal first-party teams are busily testing, experimenting, and iterating on console software, SDKs, and games engines in exciting ways to help redefine what's possible on the Series X.

Horizon Forbidden West has been delayed to early 2022, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

Sony and developer Guerrilla Games has apparently decided to push back one of the year's biggest PlayStation exclusives. Sources say Horizon Forbidden West, the sequel to 2017's Horizon Zero Dawn, will no longer meet its 2021 release slate. The game is instead being delayed to early 2022, and it's possible the game will launch before Sony's fiscal year ends on March 31, 2022.

The sequel is a much more ambitious game and features major innovations over the original including free climbing, a grappling hook, and even a glider for open-world exploration. It will also fully leverage the PS5's capabilities with high-end visuals and instant loading times.

The Steam Deck may not be abandoned like the ill-fated Steam Machines or Steam Controller--Valve could make new successors to its handheld-PC hybrid.

Valve is open to the possibility of making new Steam Decks with better specs and upgrades in the future, not unlike the jump from a 3DS to a Switch. The system's future depends on one thing: Sales. If the Steam Deck sells enough units and garners enough demand, then Valve might continue making new models similar to its bold vision for VR.

"We look at this as just a new category of device in the PC space. And assuming that customers agree with us that this is a good idea, we expect not only to follow up in the future with more iterations ourselves, but also for other manufacturers to want to participate in the space," hardware designer Greg Coomer tells IGN.

We take a look at the growth of Capcom's top five best-selling franchise to get a better perspective of the games company.

Capcom just reported record Q1 earnings with an all-time high of 48 billion yen in sales, up over 100% from last year. Game sales from big franchises like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter were the major driver; Resident Evil Village alone made up 33% of the 13.3 million games sold during Q1'21.

While Capcom does have a diversified lineup of games, the majority of its yearly sales are propped up by tentpole franchises. The same is true for the likes of Take-Two, Ubisoft, EA, and Activision-Blizzard, who each have heavy-hitters like NBA 2K, Assassin's Creed, FIFA, and Call of Duty.

I hate writing these stories, but sometimes a torch needs to be shined into the darkness -- Brazilian Fortnite streamer Raulino de Oliveira Maciel aka "RaulZito" has been arrested, allegedly raping two children.

The arrest was performed by the Police of Child and Adolescent Victims after one of the victim's mothers reached out to authorities about it. The mother said in the police report that RaulZito had sexually abused her son in February and then again in May 2021, while another report from another child claims the Fortnite streamer also abused him, too.

RaulZito reportedly used his decently sized reach online -- with 200K+ followers on Instagram, 118K+ followers on Twitch, and 144K+ followers on YouTube -- to get in contact with children between the ages of 10 and 14 years old.

AMD's new mid-range RDNA 2 graphics card is here, with the introduction of the Radeon RX 6600 XT debuting during Chinajoy (and a press event online that I attended).

The new Radeon RX 6600 XT is aimed at the 1080p gaming market, and will be competing directly with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060. AMD's new Radeon RX 6600 XT rocks 8GB of GDDR6 memory, while NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 features 12GB of GDDR6.

Inside, the new Navi 23 XT-based Radeon RX 6600 XT has 32 Compute Units, has its GPU clocked at 2359MHz (at least in reference form), 32MB of Infinity Cache, and 1 x 8-pin PCIe power connector and 160W TDP.