Latest News - Page 1546

We're getting awfully close to Big Navi's huge release with the next-gen Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards, with some leaked 3DMark results showing it easily beating the GeForce RTX 3080.

The new benchmarks are for 3DMark FireStrike Ultra and FireStrike Extreme, as well as the TimeSpy Extreme and TimeSpy benchmarks. AMD's new Radeon RX 6800 XT crushes NVIDIA's new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3080 in FireStrike Ultra and FireStrike Extreme, while losing to the RTX 3080 in TimeSpy Expreme and TimeSpy.

This would mean the new Radeon RX 6800 XT is around 56% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti and 22% faster than the RTX 3080 -- but this is only 3DMark. This isn't a blanket "OMG the Radeon RX 6800 XT is way faster than the RTX 3080" but more so "these are the very latest leaked numbers on the RX 6800 XT" and they're specifically in a synthetic benchmark, which is not indicative of real-world gaming.

AMD is about to give everyone a reason to remember, remember the 5th of November with the release of Zen 3 -- and I think one of the most special Zen 3-based processors will be the Ryzen 5 5600X.

The new Ryzen 5 5600X is a new 6-core / 12-thread CPU on the Zen 3 architecture with base CPU clocks of 3.7GHz and boost clocks of up to 4.6GHz on an easy 65W TDP. In some new PassMark CPU Mark benchmark scores, we see that the single-thread performance on the Ryzen 5 5600X beats the Core i9-10900K that costs nearly twice as much.

More importantly is that this shows us the incredible IPC improvement on the Zen 3 architecture over the Zen 2 architecture that powers the current Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. The higher-end Ryzen 7 5800X, Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5950X processors will be even better -- this is just what to expect from the $299 chip.

Both factions will receive one hologram, one decal, one dashboaIn prep for The Mandalorian season 2's premiere on October 30, EA Motive has announced a nifty crossover event that features our favorite green Force-wielding alien baby.

Starting Wednesday, October 28, gamers can unlock new Mandalorian-themed cosmetics in Star Wars Squadrons. The best part about this news is that Baby Yoda himself will be an unlockable trinket for your ship's dashboard. The Child will help bring you good Light Side cheer as you're blasting Imperial dogs out of the sky.

Baby Yoda is only unlockable for New Republic ships, and the Mando supply drop brings a total of 8 new timed cosmetics to unlock: one hologram, one decal, one dashboard flair, and one hanging flair per faction. All of these drops will be earnable in-game and won't be sold as microtransactions (thankfully, Squadrons doesn't have any in-game purchases).

Ubisoft reveals how games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, and Far Cry 6 will play on next-gen PS5, Xbox Series X consoles.

Ubisoft's latest games will all have varying performance on next-gen consoles. Watch Dogs Legion, for example, runs at 4K 30FPS max with ray tracing on, where as AC Valhalla can hit 4K 60FPS but features no ray tracing.

There's some features that are constant across all games, though. All of Ubisoft's newest games will support free upgrades on PS5 and Xbox Series X. If you buy a PS4 or Xbox One version of specific games, you'll get a free next-gen upgrade for no extra cost. And all of the games will feature ultra-fast loading via the new PCIe 4.0 SSD tech in each console.

2018's Norse-themed God of War will hit 60FPS on PS5, complete with fast loading thanks to the console's powerful 12-channel PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Photo: Abe Taraky

Sony's first-party studios are starting to detail how their games will be boosted on PS5. The next-gen PlayStation will play nearly every single PS4 game at launch and many of them will be significantly boosted past PS4 levels. God of War will be one such game, and the devs confirm Kratos' icy quest will hit a buttery smooth 60FPS thanks to a new in-game performance mode.

Today Facebook announced it'll start streaming games to the Facebook app on mobiles and browsers on desktops/laptops.

Facebook's new cloud game streaming feature isn't like Stadia or Amazon's new Luna service. It's not even a separate service. Facebook isn't going to mirror Stadia and sell full-priced premium games like Red Dead Redemption 2, nor will it have the subscription channel revenue model like Luna.

Instead, Facebook is baking cloud game streaming right into the app itself, and it'll be part of the Facebook Gaming brand. Facebook's 2.7 billion users can natively stream select F2P games directly to their phones or their desktops via browser or app, all without any need for downloads. The streamable games are housed in Facebook's new Instant Games section.

We all know how hard NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards are virtually impossible to buy worldwide right now, but news is surfacing claiming it'll be much easier to find a GeForce RTX 3070 that launches in just a few days time.

NVIDIA is about to unleash its new GeForce RTX 3070 which will offer GeForce RTX 2080 Ti levels of performance starting from $449, with a new report from PC Watch saying that various retailers in Tokyo, Japan suggest with much more RTX 3070s available for gamers than the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 graphics cards.

In the Akihabara tech market-based in Tokyo, Japan one of the main retailers (Dospara) said that it will begin sales of the GeForce RTX 3070 at around 8PM JST, which is when the first tickets will be given out. PC Watch also talked to other retailers in the Akihabara market, who all said they will have much more RTX 3070s than they did RTX 3080s and RTX 3090s.

The hype train for AMD's upcoming Big Navi GPUs is getting pretty high, with new leaks teasing some monster GPU clocks on the Navi 21 XT that will power the Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card.

ASUS has its ROG Strix Radeon RX 6800 XT in the oven right now, with GPU boost clocks that will hit 2.5GHz and higher. The new information is coming from Patrick Schur, who reports that the custom ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 6800 XT has been tested in 3DMark 11 with GPU clocks breaching 2.5GHz.

The testing has the ROG Strix Radeon RX 6800 XT hitting an average of around 2.3GHz, while the max was up to 2.55GHz. I'm sure that with some custom tweaks to fan speeds we'll see a stable 2.4 - 2.5GHz without a problem.

Phasmophobia is one of the hottest PC games on the market right now and for good reason: It merges engaging four-player co-op with detective sleuthing in a unique ghost hunting experience.

Phasmophobia was the best-selling game on Steam for the week of October 18 - October 25, beating other major hits like Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and the latest streaming sensation Among Us.

Kinetic Games' indie hit is one of the most perfect games for the Halloween season. It's a mixture of P.T.'s creepiness with Ghostbusters and a nice helping of the modern-day Ghost Hunters TV show. Every session builds so much suspense and players have to work together to finally find the ghost, make it appear, and cleanse it from its haunting grounds.

Today GameStop announced FlexPay, a new purchasing program that lets consumers lease expensive hardware and make payments over time. It sounds good in theory, but the terms are astronomically bad for anyone without credit.

GameStop's new FlexPay program is basically the store-wide equivalent of Xbox All Access. FlexPay offers three different providers to help you get hardware and games via incremental purchases: Klarna, Quadpay, and Progressive Leasing. The latter is a lease-to-own program that has scam-worthy rates.

On a lark, I went over to Progressive Leasing's website and did a quick payment calculator estimate for a $499 lease-to-own deal from my local GameStop ($499 is the MSRP of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles). The results were absolutely mind-blowingly bad. Assuming you don't have any credit, buying a $499 console with Progressive Leasing with payments across 12 months would cost $1,181.75 in total.

Square Enix's new Avengers live service game is a big success with 2.2 million sales in its first month on the market, and is now the second-biggest digital launch for the publisher behind Final Fantasy VII: Remake.

SuperData's latest digital market estimates relay great news for Square Enix. The Japanese publisher needs all the wins it can get right now. The company recently warned investors that COVID-19 game development interruption will significantly impact its earnings.

Luckily it's latest live game is selling pretty well. Throughout its launch month in September, the new Marvel's Avengers game sold 2.2 million digital copies across PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Avengers became the third best-selling console game of September.

We really hope Elder Scrolls VI looks something like this...or maybe it'll be even better?

Bethesda is going all-out for The Elder Scrolls VI. The landmark sequel was revealed in 2018, and the devs are making the "largest engine overhaul in history" for TESVI complete with ultra-realistic photogrammetry captures and next-gen toolsets. The Elder Scrolls VI is still a long ways out, though, and it could skip PlayStation consoles thanks to Microsoft's recent ZeniMax buyout.

Since the reveal, Bethesda has been quiet about the game. The studio will stay that way for some time. That has stopped fans from trying to fill the void with concept videos of what could be. The results are absolutely incredible. YouTuber Captain Hishiro edited together an amazing sizzle reel concept for a next-gen Elder Scrolls game, complete with high fantasy, mythical monsters, and amazing visuals.

The Xbox Series X's 12.15TFLOP, 56CU Navi 2X GPU is 15% more powerful than the PlayStation 5's 10.3TFLOP, 36CU RDNA 2.0 GPU...but some third-party developers say this power discrepancy isn't a big deal.

Both next-gen consoles have their own strengths. The PlayStation 5 comes with a powerful 12-channel PCIe 4.0 SSD capable of hitting 4.8GB/sec, and also features liquid metal cooling compound to keep the system cool under intense 4K 120FPS gaming loads. The Series X, on the other hand, is able to maintain more demanding performance thanks to its 12TFLOP Navi 2X GPU with 56 RDNA 2.0 Compute Units and heavily-optimized DirectX 12 API toolsets.

Some third-party devs aren't entirely convinced the Series X's GPU will be an edge over the PS5. The Dirt 5 developers at Codemasters, who are among the first to implement 4K 120FPS on the Series X, say the GPU gains won't really impact development much. It's worth remembering Codemasters is a third-party dev, though, and first-party devs are always able to squeeze out extra performance and do crazy things with new console hardware.

The iconic spectral sleuths are coming to Fortnite, but don't expect to see Slimer or any of the original Ghostbusters.

Epic recently announced a Ghostbusters cross-over pack to help celebrate Halloween and punctuate its Fortnitemares event. The skin pack brings the old-school look and feel of Sony's landmark franchise, but there's a lot missing from the bundle.

Slimer isn't in (why not?), the original cast members aren't in (to be expected to do likeness rights, I guess), and there's no unlicensed nuclear accelerator beam-thrower. The proton pack is in, so is the ghost trap, but I'd love to see crazy beams fly across the Fortnite map in some way.

Current-gen PS4 games are getting enhancement patches that significantly reduce loading times from HDDs.

Sony is stealthily rolling out enhancement patches for first-party PS4 games that cut loading times by more than 80%. Case in point: The Last of Us: Remastered just got a patch that reduces load times by 85% when starting a new game (90 seconds unpatched, 13.86 seconds patched) from the console's base 7200RPM hard disk drive. Loading a save has also been reduced by a whopping 89% (123 seconds unpatched, 13.86 seconds patched).

It's possible Naughty Dog is tapping similar optimizations as the kind Sucker Punch used for Ghost of Tsushima, which launches blindingly fast even on base PS4 hardware. Gamers speculate these patches are preparing current-gen games for the PS5's enhanced backwards compatibility functionality. If so, these games will run even faster thanks to the PS5's powerful custom 12-channel PCIe 4.0 SSD, which is capable of hitting 4.8GB/sec uncompressed data transfers.

Plan on playing Control on PS5, but have existing saves on PS4? You'll need to run the Ultimate Edition on the PS4 first.

Control is a good example on how to not handle next-gen upgrades. The base PS4 and Xbox One version of Control aren't getting free next-gen PS5 or Xbox Series X upgrades. Gamers who already own Control on current-gen systems have to re-buy the Control Ultimate Edition at full price to play the game on next-gen hardware with high-end optimizations like ray-traced visuals and boosted frame rates. Control is still fully backward compatible, though, and will take advantage of new features like improved loading times via SSD tech.

Things get more even more frustrating, though. Existing saves from the non-Ultimate port of the game aren't compatible with next-gen consoles by default. The base version of Control has a different save than the Ultimate Edition. Gamers have to first run the Ultimate Edition on a PS4 or Xbox One to convert their base Control saves to a format that's compatible with next-gen consoles. This is a process that's usually done seamlessly with free in-game updates.

The digital games market generated $10.7 billion in September 2020, up 14% year-over-year, SuperData reports.

September's double-digit percentage growth was driven by a huge spike in console game revenues. Big hits like NBA 2K21 (1.9 million sales), the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 re-release (2.8 million), Super Mario 3D All-Stars (1.8 million) and Marvel's Avengers (2.2 million) all helped skyrocket console earnings by 40%. No exact revenues were given, however.

PC gaming was up slightly by 8% thanks in no small part to Crusader Kings III, which moved 1.1 million sales. PC gaming was dominated by the usual suspects like League of Legends, Dungeon Fighter Online, and CrossFire. Another big metric was how Rocket League players jumped by 193% after the game went free-to-play on the Epic Store and consoles.

Nintendo officially reduces Switch JoyCon MSRP to $39.99 per controller, a $10 price drop...but it's not enough.

The Switch JoyCon controllers are neat little contraptions with gyroscoping tracking, unique split-design for dual-handed play, and can detach from the base Switch for on-the-go two-player action. There's just one big problem: The JoyCons are rather cheap. The JoyCons don't outright break easily, though--instead their malfunction is a more maddening slow burn where the analog sticks move all by themselves.

JoyCon drift is a well-documented issue in the gaming sphere and has afflicted many long-time Switch owners. It's so bad that consumers have actually sued Nintendo over it. Worse still, the JoyCons used to be $49.99 a piece, a premium cost associated with Nintendo products. It's part of the Switch tax, a concept that sees most games and peripherals costing more than other platforms.

Hideo Kojima confirms his next game is in full production. Kojima Productions is now ramping up its employee base for the ambitious new project.

After months of teasing, Kojima Productions is finally ready to start principal development on its next game. No exact details are known about the game just yet but we could see some sort of official teaser at this year's The Game Awards showcase in December. Remember that Death Stranding was announced in 2016 and didn't launch until 2019.

Although nothing's been announced, Kojima has delivered a few clues. The auteur has said he wants to make a new horror game that transcends the normal conventions. Kojima's also said he wants to make short films. We've predicted the next game could combine the two in a hybrid similar to Netflix's Bandersnatch. Then again, Kojima also has new sketches for Death Stranding and Norman Reedus recently confirmed he's in talks to work with Kojima on a new game.

Apex Legends will drop on Steam next month, complete with full cross-play support with consoles and Origin.

In a bid to maximize exposure and in-game revenues, EA is bringing a lot of its breadwinners over to Steam. The latest is Respawn's popular battle royale game Apex Legends, which will release on Steam on November 4 as a free-to-play release and massively expand the game's reach. Steam is still the dominant PC user ecosystem and remains the platform's most important storefront.

Respawn also confirms the Switch port of Apex Legends has been delayed into 2021. No exact timeline or release window was highlighted, but the devs say the Switch version will retain all the content, features, and cross-play capabilities as the console and PC versions.