Latest News - Page 1581

Gamers who buy Far Cry 6 on current-gen systems get a free next-gen upgrade, Ubisoft confirms.

Ubisoft just announced Far Cry 6 as a cross-gen game, complete with optimizations on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Luckily Ubisoft isn't pulling a 2K Games and charging extra for next-gen copies. Anyone who buys the game on current-gen PS4 or Xbox One consoles gets a free copy on PS5 and Xbox Series X as well (technically there's not a separate SKU for Xbox Series X thanks to Smart Delivery).

"Fans who purchase Far Cry 6 on Xbox One or PlayStation 4 will be able to upgrade their version on a next-gen platform at no additional cost after the launch of Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5," reads a press release sent out by Ubisoft.

An ultra-rare sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. on NES is now the highest-valued game of all time.

A Wata 9.4 graded mint copy of Super Mario Bros. was just auctioned for a massive $114,000, making it the most expensive and rarest video game in the history of Heritage Auctions.

Demand for the game was pretty high. There were a whopping 6,108 bids placed on the rare collector's item. The main draw for the sealed copy was the cardboard hangtab on the back, alongside the higher 9.4 mint grade. The hangtab meant this copy was an early black box game shipped in limited quantities in 1985. Turns out there's a science to this higher-level video game collecting and this is the holy grail for black box NES games.

Devolver Digital announced a nifty-looking indie called Olija during its latest digital showcase that's worth checking out.

Indies are the life's blood of gaming and help fill out the giant spaces in between big tentpole releases. And many indies do a better job in conveying and highlighting the more nuanced and enamoring elements of gaming. New titles like Olija from Skeleton Crew Studios looks like one of those games.

Olija is a neat platformer that is kind of like Castlevania on crack. You play as Faraday, a harpoon-wielding survivor who can dish out some serious damage. The game's main hook (pun intended) centers around the harpoon mechanic, which flings you in a stylish blur across levels and right into enemies. I think Eric Lecarde would be proud of Faraday's skills.

Ubisoft's internal teams are reeling after sexual abuse, harassment, and infidelity allegations. Now some of its biggest creative forces are resigning.

Ubisoft recently confirmed that three of its lead executives are leaving the French company, and these departures will have a radical effect on its future games. These include chief creative officer Serge Hascoet, Yannis Mallat, who led Ubisoft's Canadian studios, and HR head Cecile Cornet. The news comes after multiple allegations against Hascoet and Mallat broke out, accusing both of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behavior. Their exploits have been detailed in French magazine Liberation.

The company might make games for a living, but it's clearly not playing around this time. Hascoet's departure speaks volumes about the company's past culture, and the future of its biggest franchises.

Kojima Productions built Death Stranding specifically for 60FPS, but had to dial things back on PS4. The PC version is the way the game was meant to be played.

In a recent interview with Digital Foundry, Kojima Productions' technical director Akio Sakamoto confirms the game was always built to run at 60FPS. Of course KojiPro had to scale things down to 30FPS on the PS4 and PS4 Pro. The PC port is the purest form of Kojima's original vision. We know Death Stranding exceeds 60FPS (more on that in our review coming soon) and is fully optimized for both AMD and NVIDIA cards, complete with DLSS 2.0 tech on RTX cards, but an interesting surprise is how the game was tweaked to run on DirectX 12.

Remember that development of the PC version started alongside the console game years ago. KojiPro used Guerrilla Games' Decima Engine to make Death Stranding, which was also used for Horizon Zero Dawn. But for the PC version, KojiPro used a DirectX 12 version of Decima. The upcoming Horizon Zero Dawn PC port will also use DX12.

UPDATE: Nintendo today announced the new NES LEGO set, and there's a buyable store page that lists a $229 price and an August 1 launch.

LEGO is making a new NES set with a "screen" that actually moves.

A new LEGO x Nintendo set has been leaked out, and this time it's centered around the classic NES. The kit has you building a mini Nintendo Entertainment System and an old-school CRT TV that actually scrolls images with a dial on the side to simulate a Mario game. As you twist the dial, Mario will move and jump across the level. It's extremely innovative and interesting, but like all LEGO sets--especially the Mario-themed ones--the NES kit will set you back a pretty penny.

Far Cry 6 pre-orders are live across multiple storefronts and platforms, but the game is missing from Steam.

Ubisoft confirms its new guerrilla-warfare shooter Far Cry 6 won't come to Steam when it launches in February 2021. "Far Cry 6 will launch on PC (through the Epic Games Store, Uplay, and UPLAY+)," Ubisoft said in a press release.

Far Cry 6 will be another Epic Games Store exclusive that skips Steam and even the Microsoft Store. The PC version of the game, which stars Breaking Bad's Giancarlo Eposito alongside a fearsome wiener dog on wheels, is available for pre-order on the Epic Store and uPlay, but is missing from both Steam and the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft has announced that Flight Simulator will be launching on August 18, and in order to make the news even better -- they've released a new 4K trailer for the game. Check it out:

Jord Neumann, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, explains: "We have been thrilled and humbled by the support and dedication that has fueled the Flight Sim community for the past 38 years. Since the launch of the very first Microsoft Flight Simulator in 1982, we knew it was finally the right time to develop the next-generation version of Microsoft Flight Simulator".

There will be 3 different versions of Flight Simulator released, these will include:

It wasn't too long ago that EPOS | Sennheiser came into fruition, and now EPOS has announced that it's currently in preparation for its first gaming audio-related product.

Above you will find a video that has been released on the EPOS Gaming YouTube Channel, and from the video, we can see that EPOS is pushing the theme of "Out of this world gaming audio". According to Jeppe Dalberg-Larsen, who is the President of EPOS said, "With our ambition to make EPOS the industry leader within premium audio solutions in gaming, we aim to win the minds of all gamers who want to push their own limits - unleashing their potential - through the Power of Audio."

In the press release that was sent out its stated that EPOS products will develiver powerful audio experiences that will give gamers an unsurpassed amounts of in-game immersion. Judging on the products that have come out of Sennheiser, and the relative success the company has had at providing awesome gaming audio products, I would expect that EPOS is going to launch a very competitively good audio product. If you are after a bit of history about EPOS, check out this link here.

It looks like someone is about to lose their job at Amazon Australia, with pre-order pages going up for the PlayStation 5, its hardware and accessories, and even a bunch of PS5 games.

A user on Reddit noticed that Amazon Australia had complete pre-order pages or the PS5 console, accessories and games, but you can't pre-order anything right now. The pages are live, and that's it -- but that means we're one step closer to the PS5 pre-orders going live worldwide.

We don't know about pricing on the PlayStation 5 just yet, but we're expecting somewhere in sub $500 range. We have had rumored pricing on the PS5 at $599 and $699, but new PS5 price leaks suggest $499 for the standard PS5 and $399 for the digital PS5 -- both launching on November 20.

Man of Steel was released back in 2013 and had a 'sequel' in the form of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but there was no direct sequel to the movie. But now, we're teased with Man of Steel: Cerebral, which could feature Brainiac -- thanks for the excitement, Boss Logic.

Superman fans and myself included, hoped that Man of Steel director Zack Snyder would announce something Man of Steel 2-ish when he revealed Zack Snyder's Justice League, which will be an HBO Max exclusive in 2021 -- but nothing happened.

Now we have the team at Boss Logic teasing the world on Twitter with a simple tweet saying "Let the mind games begin #manofsteel 2" and tagging Zack Snyder himself. The sequel here in this mind game is called Man of Steel: Cerebral, a nod towards Brainiac.

Death Stranding is now pre-loading to PC gamers on both Steam and the Epic Games Store, with the pre-load requiring 63GB of storage space.

There's a catch with pre-loading Death Stranding, where if you pre-purchased the game you can now pre-load before the game officially launches on the PC at 7am PST / 3pm GMT / 1pm JP on July 14.

If you've got Death Stranding pre-loaded once the launch is live, you can play it immediately. Those who didn't pre-order will be able to begin their downloads, while you can already be peeing in the game.

Death Stranding is about to release on the PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store on July 14, with the legend himself Hideo Kojima set to talk about the PC version of the game... later today.

We have Geoff Keighley's Summer Games Fest kicking off this week, with Hideo Kojima and artist Yoji Shinkawa from Kojima Productions joining Keighley today to talk about the PC version of Death Stranding -- which launches tomorrow.

We don't know what exactly will be talked about, but they have said it will be a "special conversation" about the PC version of Death Stranding. I'm keen to see what they're going to talk about, especially with the tame PC system requirements. I want to hear about the crazy high-end version of the game with high-end textures and all that, hopefully it's not all about the Half-Life side and selfies.

If you've been waiting for the full 4K Blu-ray box set of Game of Thrones, then Winter is coming for you my friends.

Game of Thrones: The Complete Collection has been announced, with Best Buy having an exclusive steelbook edition on pre-order right now for $240. The regular price at Amazon is $255 without the steelbook, so the Best Buy pre-order seems like it's a better deal, for now.

In the package you'll get 33 discs of Game of Thrones goodness, with the Game of Thrones: The Complete Collection including the 4K UHD and regular Blu-ray disks, as well as digital copies of all 73 episodes.

Ubisoft detailed Watch Dogs: Legion recently, where the London-based open world game was run on the flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card by the good folks at Digital Foundry. Check it out:

In their hands-on time with Watch Dogs: Legion, Digital Foundry may have been using the most powerful graphics card you can buy in the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti -- yet it couldn't handle the game at 1080p and anything over 30FPS. Ubisoft had locked Watch Dogs: Legion's preview build to 30FPS, for some stupid reason.

Nothing Digital Foundry could do would bump it above 30FPS into the much-more-playable 60FPS region. The outlet notes Ubisoft is using SSR (Screen Space Reflections) on certain types of surfaces, like rivers, etc but they're using SSR in the preview build of Watch Dogs: Legion -- but this might change in the final build with ray traced reflections.

Flight Simulator is getting closer to official takeoff, with Microsoft to begin a public closed beta on July 30 according to the latest reports.

The announcement itself is coming directly from the latest developer blog by Microsoft, after Alpha 5 was sent out to Flight Simulator testers. It arrived with a new slew of Flight Simulator alpha invitations for previous registrants, so if you've registered for the alpha -- you might want to check your inbox.

Microsoft explains in the blog post: "We are currently scheduled to release Closed Beta on 07.30. As a reminder, if you are currently an Alpha tester, you will be automatically granted access to the Closed Beta. If you are not currently an Alpha tester, we will be sending out new invitations for Closed Beta participation".

We all remember how insane the first wave of cryptocurrency mining was, with graphics cards sold out across the world and gamers being very, very mad about it.

Well, it looks like we could be preparing to see a second wave hit us very soon. The folks at MyDrivers are reporting that NVIDIA send out an internal notice to their AIB partners telling them to expect a boost in demand as cryptocurrency mining is growing, again.

We also just heard that NVIDIA is reporting ending their GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, and GeForce RTX 2070 -- all leading into the warm, welcoming arms of the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series which should drop in September.

NVIDIA is reportedly discontinuing a bunch of its highest-end GeForce RTX series graphics cards based on the Turing architecture.

The new rumors come from ITHome, which is reporting NVIDIA is going to discontinue and delist the following graphics cards: GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2070.

I've been noticing that it's been harder and harder to source GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards on Amazon as it is, and checking today was no different. There's not many GeForce RTX 20 series cards in stock on Amazon right now, and it has been an issue for weeks and even a couple of months now.

Like its predecessors, Assassin's Creed Valhalla will have an in-game microtransaction storefront that allows gamers to purchase items.

A new gameplay trailer for Asssassin's Creed Valhalla confirms the game will be monetized in some way with an in-game store. The footage clearly shows a Store tab in the upper right-hand corner, but it didn't outline what exactly will be sold.

We should expect in-game "convenience items" like crafting materials as well as on-demand purchases of powerful weapons to be sold for Helix credits, the universal Assassin's Creed currency. Both Assassin's Creeds Odyssey and Origins had stores that sold these types of items and used the premium currency.

New Assassin's Creed Valhalla gameplay footage shows some epic new weapons including a "Viking harpoon".

The latest Viking-themed Assassin's Creed game has lots of new combat additions and weapons. One of the most surprising is what's called the Viking harpoon, which is basically like Scorpion's infamous kunai hook. Since it's 873 AD, Eivor uses a rope with a cruel hook on the end instead of a chain to yank enemies into brutal execution moves. In the latest trailer we see Eivor use the harpoon to decapitate a foe.

Gamers can now dual-wield pretty much any one-handed weapon in the game for maximum fury, including hammers, swords, shortswords, morningstars/flails and axes--you can even dual-wield shields. There's also two-handed weapons like bardiches and greatswords that make combat much more visceral, chunky, and lethal.