Latest News - Page 1575

Final Fantasy 7 Remake's upcoming second chapter could be release as a separate next-gen PlayStation 5 game, Tetsuya Nomura seems to hint.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, game director Tetsuya Nomura confirmed that Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2 is in full-blown development. The team likely moved on to the second chapter weeks or even months before Final Fantasy 7 Remake shipped in April, and in the new interview Nomura promises to raise the quality even further than the PS4 release.

This is interesting considering how amazing FF7R looks and plays on PlayStation 4, especially with the backgrounds, CGI cinematics, and overall fluid gameplay. The next logical performance and quality jump is of course on Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5, which offers massive upgrades via new powerful CPU, GPU, RAM, and high-end PCIe 4.0 hardware with 5.5GB/sec transfer speeds.

Anton Castillo, played by Breaking Bad's Giancarlo Esposito, is the villain in Ubisoft's new tropical Far Cry 6 game. Now Ubisoft takes a closer look at Anton's twisted psychology.

In Far Cry 6, there's one main opposing force: Anton Castillo, el presidente of the Latin island-country of Yara. Castillo rules the so-called Jewel of the Caribbean with an iron fist, aiming to smite any uprisings by sheer force. This only fans the flames of revolution, igniting a full-on Cuba-esque guerrilla revolution that sees Yara's streets filled with chaos. But Anton isn't going to let up. He plans to quell the rebellion by smashing it to bits. That's where you come in as Dani Rojas, a Yara native who leads the heart of the revolution.

Far Cry's villains are some of the most captivating and interesting parts of the games. Every time they're different and a little crazy in their own way. Anton, however, is a more reserved brand of crazy.

Ubisoft Quebec originally planned to have Kassandra as the sole playable character in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but company exec Serge Hascoet forced the team to add in a playable male character because "females don't sell."

According to Bloomberg's new lengthy expose into Ubisoft's alleged culture of misconduct, the company had very different plans for both its new Assassin's Creed games. Origins, for example, originally killed off the charismatic, stoic, and likable Medjay Bayek early on in the game. Players were supposed to play as his wife, Aya, for most of the game as she sought answers and revenge.

The ancient Greece-based Assassin's Creed Odyssey went farther and originally didn't even feature a playable male protagonist. Kassandra was to be the sole lead, as is obvious by her magnetism and excellent character development. Alexios was added in at the behest of Serge Hascoet, a now-departed high-level Ubisoft executive who's orbited by illicit allegations of sexism, sexual abuse, and harassment.

Before Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch was working on a medieval third-person action-adventure game called Prophecy.

The game features a gruff protagonist named Abel Taboora, the most-wanted person in the fantasy world of Glascony. Abel has turned into a thief who's being hunted down, and the vertical slice has him running through a medieval-style city in a kind of linear scripted sequence, complete with seamless blending of gameplay and cutscenes. The gameplay is brutal and visceral like The Last of Us 2, and death scenes are particularly grisly.

The game's mechanics are reminiscent of Assassin's Creed with leaping and parkour, but it's clear how Prophecy helped shape Ghost of Tsushima. The cancelled game has swordplay and stealth that resembles Jin Sakai's maneuvers, and enemies have Samurai-esque armor. Abel has an assortment of alchemical potions that dish out elemental damage like fire and explosions.

Nintendo's latest 2020 annual report shows a number of substantial investments into partner companies, but it's biggest is Bandai Namco.

While scouting Nintendo's new annual report, I noticed something interesting: The Japanese games-maker has invested considerably into Bandai Namco, one of its principal game development partners. Nintendo currently owns over 3.8 million shares of Bandai Namco that're worth roughly $186 million. The company says this investment serves the "purpose of maintaining and developing the business relationship."

This makes sense considering Bandai Namco has developed and is developing high-profile games for Nintendo, including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Nintendo's second best-selling game on Switch with over 18 million units sold, and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4.

Today House House and iam8bit announce the Untitled Goose Game Lovely Edition, a limited physical boxed edition of the infamous honkin' indie.

After tons of acclaim, sales, and awards, House House's beloved Untitled Goose Game is coming to physical retail stores as a boxed indie. The game releases on September 29 and will be sold as a boxed edition on PS4 ($29.99) and Nintendo Switch ($34.99), complete with a 24-page physical booklet, a poster, and a special anti-goose sticker.

The eco-friendly Lovely Edition is exclusive to iam8bit and is priced the same as the other SKU.

It's common for the average job to give an employee an opportunity to sometimes take home a hefty bonus, but imagine if you could take home $13 billion in bonuses in just a single day.

Well, that is similar to what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just achieved, as the multi-billionaire just saw the largest single-day increase to his net-worth since the Billionaire Index was created eight years ago. Bloomberg has reported that Bezos saw an increase of $13 billion in one day, as the stock for Amazon increased by 7.9%.

Since the coronavirus pandemic, the Amazon CEO has seen how net-worth increase by $74 billion since the start of the year. This increase is no doubt partly due to millions of people buying supplies for the coronavirus off of Amazon. Bezos is leading the pack as the world's richest individual with $189 billion, followed not-so-closely behind is former Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates, with $118 billion.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just updated their guidance on some critical COVID-19 information, changing their suggestion for just how long people spend in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19.

The CDC has updated its guidance for COVID-19, where they've made some adjustments to the symptom-based criteria. The CDC explains:

So what now? If you've just tested positive for COVID-19 then the CDC still says you need to isolate yourself for 10 days starting the day you noticed the symptoms. But the new guidelines adjust what happens after those 10 days, where you'll now need to have "at least 24 hours" pass since you last had a fever -- and have not been taking fever-reducing medications.

AMD has just unleashed a new family of desktop processors if you can believe it, with the onslaught against Intel continuing in the form of the new Ryzen 4000 G-series CPUs.

What AMD is aiming for with the new Ryzen 4000 G-series processors is that they have kick ass built-in Radeon graphics, leverage the 7nm node and Zen efficiency, where it delivers the ultimate performance that AMD touts is 2.5x more than last gen.

AMD unleashed 6 new processors in its Ryzen 4000 G-series family, with the specs above showing that we have 3 x 65W offerings and 3 x 35W offerings. AMD offers an 8C/16T chip at both 35W and 65W, a 6C/12T chip at both 35W and 65W, and a 4C/8T chip also at both 35W and 65W.

Overcooked and Overcooked 2 are being remastered for next-gen consoles, with Overcooked: All You Can Eat announced. Check out the announcement trailer:

Ghost Town Games is remastering both of the Overcooked games for the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. Overcooked: All You Can Eat will pack remasters of both games, all of the DLC from both games, and overhauled graphics.

Overcooked: All You Can Eat will be running at the glorious 4K resolution at 60FPS, as well as having super-fast load times. Ghost Town Games has also even rebuilt the original Overcooked using the newer Overcooked 2 engine, so the original game will look even better than before.

Kayne West is in the headlines yet again, going viral on Twitter right now -- but this time it's not about his run for the 2020 elections against President Trump and Joe Biden -- but some major bombshells through a series of tweets.

The biggest one that caught my eye just now is where Kanye says "Everybody knows the movie get out is about me". Now for those who don't remember and can't connect some of those dots, I'll break this bit down for you:

What is Get Out? Get Out is a horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele, where it centers around Chris -- an African-American man, decides to visit his Caucasian girlfriend's parents during a weekend getaway. Although they seem normal at first, he is not prepared to experience the horrors ahead" as explained in a quick Google search.

In a move which I'm sure felt like forever, Microsoft is finally moving Minecraft onto its own Azure server infrastructure -- away from competitor Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Minecraft developer Mojang has been using AWS for Minecraft Realms since 2014, where gamers can create private play spaces in Minecraft without needing to set up and then host a private server, for an $8 per month subscription service.

But now, things are changing with Mojang Studios moving Minecraft away from AWS and into the warm arms of Azure -- Microsoft's cloud service. Also remember Microsoft acquired Mojang back in 2014 for $2.5 billion and now owns Minecraft.

D-Wave Systems Inc. has just announced that it has expanded its Leap quantum cloud service to two new markets: India and Australia.

This move is a big deal for both India and Australia as it means developers, researchers, and businesses in those countries get access to something quite incredible -- and something not available in their respective countries: access to D-Wave 2000Q quantum computers.

D-Wave Systems recently opened up their D-Wave 2000Q quantum computers over the same Leap quantum cloud service to researchers and scientists to help out in the COVID-19 pandemic. This news now unlocks India and Australia researchers access to use the quantum computers for their tasks.

We are getting closer and closer to Samsung's huge Unpacked 2020 event, where we will be treated to the virtual announcements of the Galaxy Note 20 seires of phones, as well as the new Galaxy Z Fold 2.

Samsung's new Galaxy Z Fold 2 and its story is slowly unfolding, where we thought it would be called the Galaxy Fold 2 -- successor to the current foldable Galaxy Fold smartphone. But it seems Samsung is re-branding it to the Galaxy Z Fold 2, which we have some final renders through fresh leaks.

The leak isn't exactly clear, but it seems to retain most of the design of the original Galaxy Fold -- but you'll notice that it has an upgraded camera system, and similar to the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra smartphone.

Tenet has to be the biggest movie of 2020 that has been affected so badly because of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, which has shut most of the world down and especially entertainment-focused businesses like cinemas.

Warner Bros. has now officially delayed Christopher Nolan's new epic Tenet, indefinitely.

US cinemas were pegging their hopes on their doors being re-opened and a big tent pole like Tenet bringing in millions of customers. Well, it's not happening. Tenet was due for release on July 17, 2020 but was delayed until July 31 and then eventually delayed until August 12 -- and now once again, indefinitely.

Samsung is expected to unveil its successor to the Galaxy Fold smartphone at its Unpacked 2020 event on August 5, where we should also be introduced to the new Galaxy Note 20 smartphones.

But when it comes to the Galaxy Fold successor most people thought it would be called the Galaxy Fold 2, but now we're seeing new reports of the 'Galaxy Z Fold 2' -- which seems to be a re-brand of the Galaxy Fold. Remember that Samsung has two foldable phones right now: the Galaxy Fold as its flagship foldable, while there's the cheaper, and clamshell-style Galaxy Z Flip.

The new reports suggest that Samsung's purported Galaxy Z Fold 2 will feature a 7.7-inch Youm On-Cell Touch AMOLED (Y-OCTA) display with a super-slick 120Hz display. Samsung will also reportedly be using the same Ultra-Thin glass that it did on the Galaxy Z Flip smartphone.

It seems Intel is about to launch another Core i9 processor in its growing family of Comet Lake-S desktop processors in the form of the 10th generation Core CPUs.

The next chip in line from Intel seems to be the Core i9-10850K, which is a very slightly cut down Core i9-10900K (our review here) which remains the same 10-core and 20-thread CPU but with reduced clock speeds. The new CPU has appeared as an option for system makers, with US-based PC builder Digital Storm listing the Core i9-10850K.

The new Core i9-10850K will offer 10 cores and 20 threads, which is identical to the flagship Core i9-10900K. Where the changs happen are in the base and boost CPU clock speeds, with a 100MHz reduction from the Core i9-10900K. So we're looking at the Core i9-10850K having 3.6GHz base and 5.2GHz boost clocks, but one larger change.

Today the Epic Games Store has received full integration support into CD Projekt RED's GOG Galaxy 2.0 platform, a move that sees storefronts and ecosystems blurring lines and joining forces.

With GOG Galaxy, CDPR has an ambitious idea: To unify all storefronts in a universal launcher. Some stores are resistant to the idea--Steam, for example, and EA's Origin--but Epic has pledged their support. GOG Galaxy 2.0 can now link up with your Epic account and migrate, launch, and connect to your Epic Games Store content and games.

"We're partnering with our friends at Epic Games to bring you a more seamless and reliable experience while organizing, installing, and launching your Epic Games Store games via GOG Galaxy 2.0 thanks to the new official integration," CDPR wrote in a GOG update pane.

Logic might've quit the rap game, but he's not ready to give up gaming altogether.

Logic, the rapper behind the platinum album Everybody, has signed an exclusive streaming deal with Twitch worth seven figures. The move comes as more celebrities and artists are pivoting towards streaming due to COVID-19 disrupting tours, premieres, and shows. Twitch is likewise pivoting to attract mainstream performers outside of its typical gaming sphere.

Even still, Logic says he's just a nerd that loves video games. "I'm not this rapper guy, man. I'm just a nerd. I love video games," he said in a recent interview with The Verge. That doesn't mean he'll stop being a musician--despite announcing his departure from the rap world, Logic will still perform on Twitch.

During today's Summer Game Fest stream, Team 17 announced a huge new Stir of Dawn expansion coming to Blasphemous in August.

Get ready to jump back into the bizarre, hallowed world of Cvstodia, O' Penitent One. Team17 is rolling out a sizable free DLC for Blasphemous that adds a ton of content including the long-awaited NewGame+, new mind-bending storylines, and a new penitence system that's a more cruel version of the original Fallout's traits system.

Gamers will also get new maps, new enemies and NPCs, and a ton of new items and buffs/nerfs/balances. Essentially Blasphemous will take on a whole new scope with the free Stir of Dawn update.