Latest News - Page 1597

While other publishers like 2K Games are eager to charge $70 for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of their games, EA isn't sure on how to proceed.

EA may not charge $70 for next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X SKUs of its games. In a recent Q1'21 earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson commented on raising prices of next-gen games. EA will offer free next-gen upgrades of Madden 21 and FIFA 21, and is more focused on the smooth cross-generation transition instead of trying to capitalizing on full $70 next-gen titles.

"We start with the player motivations, the expectations the players have around depth and breadth of live service, and we go from there," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said.

Like pretty much every games company, EA is benefiting tremendously from COVID-19 lockdowns, and their recent Q1'21 earnings reflect strong spikes in overall earnings.

Today EA reported record first-quarter results for Fiscal Year Q1'21 that far exceeded the company's expectations. In the quarter ended March 31, 2020, EA generated $1.459 billion in total revenues, up 21% from last year. Net bookings were up tremendously by 78% YoY to $1.390 billion, outperforming EA's forecast by $390 million, driven by astronomical growth in full game sales and live service monetization. Free cash flow is up 286% to $340 million on these strong results.

Full game sales are up triple digit percentage points to $287 million (+202% YoY), which were driven in part by EA's fusillade of re-releases on Steam and strong console purchases. This reflects increased consumer purchases during COVID-19 quarantines. Q1 is typically EA's slowest period for game sales.

Halo: Infinite will run at 4K 60FPS on the Xbox Series X and PC, but will gamers play it if the shadows still look bad?

Right now Halo: Infinite has an issue with visuals, and everyone's noticed. The culprit is the game's new dynamic lighting that blankets the open-world setting. Things look great in the light, but in shadows, we see models lose their definition. The result is textures and models of guns, buildings, and characters look very last-gen.

343 Industries can fix it with global illumination techniques like hardware- or software-based ray tracing, which the Xbox Series X conveniently supports. But this fix comes at a performance hit. Halo: Infinite may not run at the advertised 4K 60FPS with ray tracing enabled; in its present state, with the dynamic lighting and shadows obfuscating details, it could hit a dynamic (or possibly even native) 3840 x 2160 with a steady 60FPS. With ray tracing turned on, it could drop to 1080p 60FPS.

Rocket League is already immensely popular, but now it'll grow even more by going free-to-play. There's a catch, though. It's easy access is gated off by the Epic Games Store.

Psyonix recently confirmed Rocket League is going F2P on PC, but only on the Epic Store. This follows Psyonix's full buyout from Epic in May 2019. New Rocket League PC players will have to download the chaotic auto sport indie from the Epic Store.

When Rocket League goes free-to-play it'll be simultaneously de-listed from Steam. Anyone who already owns the game on Steam will be able to keep playing, and Pysonix is preserving cross-play between Steam and the Epic Store versions as well as PS4 and Xbox One. The game will also support cross-progression on every platform so your unlocks will carry over wherever you go.

NASA has formally announced when the launch window for the Mars 2020 mission will be, and when we can expect to see Perseverance sent off to the distant red planet.

According to NASA, the launch window will be at 7:50 EDT, and it will be open for two hours. Throughout this time, NASA will be working out any potential problems that could hinder the launch, and then once checks are made, they will be buckling up with the rest of us as the Atlas 5 rocket from United Launch Alliance will begin its launch from Cape Canaveral.

NASA will be landing its latest-and-greatest rover, Perseverance, on the Martian surface on February 18th, 2021. The primary goal of the mission is to land the rover in jezero crater successfully. This is where the rover will be conducting numerous experiments in an attempt to discover whether life ever existed on Mars. Above you will find a link to the NASA YouTube Channel where they will be streaming the historic launch.

The coronavirus pandemic has taken the wind out of many people's sails, but luckily NASA has still found a way to get its historic mission underway. Finally, news that isn't COVID-19 related.

NASA has officially penned the launch date for the Mars 2020 mission, which will take the space agency's brand new rover and helicopter to our distant red planetary neighbor. The coronavirus, along with other technical delays, caused the space agency to have to delay the launch, but now things seem to be set in order, and as a result, a launch window has been set.

The Perseverance rover will be launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Atlas 5 rocket from United Launch Alliance. NASA says that it will take a matter of months for Perseverance to reach Mars, and has said that it will arrive on February 18th, 2021. Perseverance will be taking the latest and greatest scientific instruments to the red planet to conduct scientific experiments on Mars' surface in an attempt to discover if the red planet was ever home to some form of ancient life. The mission launch window opens at 7:50 a.m. EDT, this Thursday.

STALKER 2 will be dropping in 2021 exclusive to the PC and next-gen Xbox Series X, and now we're hearing reports it might offer an 120FPS option on the Xbox Series X version.

On the Xbox store page for STALKER 2, it says that it was designed to take advantage of the powerful hardware inside of Microsoft's new Xbox Seires X console and it means "frame rates up to 120FPS".

The store page reads: "Games built using the Xbox Series X development kit are designed to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the Xbox Series X. They will showcase unparalleled load-times, visuals, responsiveness, and frame rates up to 120 FPS".

Roblox Corporation has said that its game has over 150 million monthly players, with the company expecting to pull in $250 million this year.

During the COVID-19 pandemic there have been more and more players in Roblox, with the developer announcing the news during its annual developer conference -- held virtually because of the on-going coronavirus pandemic.

David Baszucki, founder and CEO of Roblox Corporation explained: "The accomplishments of our developer community have eclipsed even our loftiest expectations. Our focus is to give developers the tools and resources they need to pursue their vision and create larger, more complex, more realistic experiences and collectively build the Metaverse".

Sony still hasn't given us much details on the inner workings of its next-gen PlayStation 5 console, but a new patent Sony filed in 2019 is interesting.

The new patent was filed in 2019 but only published a few days ago on July 23, and discuses image reconstructing technology that uses reference images through machine learning. You know, kinda like how NVIDIA's own Deep Learning Super Sampling -- or DLSS, works.

This is exciting as NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 provides double the performance in games that support it, while not looking any worse -- and in some cases they look better.

Philips has just announced their new 498P9 Brilliance 32:9 SuperWide Curved monitor, with a native resolution of 5120 x 1440 thanks to its 32:9 aspect ratio.

We have an 1800R curvature on the Philips 498P9 Brilliance 32:9 SuperWide Curved monitor, which will make looking at that huge 5120 x 1440 resolution nice and easy on your eyes. The 5120 x 1440 resolution is pumping away at 70Hz, so this isn't a gaming monitor and more aimed at professionals.

Philips also has 498P9 Brilliance 32:9 SuperWide Curved monitor with support for Adaptive-Sync technology, which will help out if you want to get your game on at 70FPS.

Sony will launch its next-gen PlayStation 5 console in November, but between its launch and the first 5 years on the market the console is expected to sell at least 120 million units.

The news is coming from DigiTimes, which reports it from sources in the "backend supply chain in Taiwan", which explains: "The life cycle for household game consoles may be shortened to five years from 6-7 years, and PS5 shipments may challenge 120-170 million units when its 5-year cycle expires, compared to 110 million units registered to date for PS4 launched in November 2013".

It added: "Sony has recently boosted its PS5 shipment estimate for 2020 to near 10 million units".

Analogue's new $199 Pocket handheld aims to be the king of all retro pocket-consoles by playing tons of old-school cartridges better than ever before.

If you love playing retro handheld games, then the new Analogue Pocket was made just for you. Analogue revealed a bunch of surprising new details around the Pocket, including pre-orders that go live on August 3.

The Pocket's specs are also pretty nice. The display is a 3.6-inch, Gorilla Glass-covered LCD panel with 1600x1440p resolution and 615ppi, which is roughly 10x the resolution of an original Game Boy. It has a 4300mAh battery that allows for 6-10 hours of play, and fully remappable buttons. Here's a quick breakdown of some of the most interesting features:

Atari's new VCS console will be accompanied by a storefront, but the digital marketplace won't copy Steam's catalog of AAA games.

The Atari VCS is a kind of jack-of-all-trades. It's a console-PC hybrid that supports Linux and Windows 10. It's also a console with its own first-party storefront, controllers, and online ecosystem. But unlike Steam or the PlayStation Store, the Atari VCS store won't sell $59.99 AAA games--at least not at launch. Instead, the Atari VCS games will be capped at $25 a pop and will be more like GOG than Steam.

Atari is taking a smaller approach with its store and will exclusively sell remasters, classic version of its old games, and indie games at launch, complete with its vault of 100 Atari classics, Anstream on-demand retro game streaming, and remasters of older games like Missile Command.

Introducing the Aya-Eve, a new gaming PC in a Switch-like handheld form factor.

Handheld PCs are on the way to merge portability with actual PC-quality gaming. First we had the GPD Win 2, then the GPD Win Max, and Alienware's impressive Project UFO handheld with its detachable controllers. Now there's another competitor called the Aya-Eve.

The Aya-Eve has some decent specs including an AMD 4500U notebook APU with 6 cores and 6 threads, 16GB of DDR4-4266 RAM, and 512GB of onboard NVMe flash memory. Other specs are tentative and could change, but right now the team is targeting a 7-inch 1280 x 800 IPS display, which is akin to the Switch's 6.2-inch 1280 x 720 screen.

According to a new survey from analyst firm Experience12, thousands of UK gamers are overwhelming more interested in the PS5 than the Xbox Series X.

Data firm Experience12 surveyed 3,000 gamers in the UK to see which next-gen console they're more interested in. Turns out the PS5 is at the top, which isn't surprising given the console's massive install base. 84% of respondents, or roughly 2,520 people, said they were more excited about the PS5. 16% of them, or just 480 of respondents, preferred the Xbox Series X.

To properly understand this data we need some perspective. The PlayStation 4 has a staggering lead over the Xbox One in global sales, and is handily beating Microsoft's console by over 60 million units. As Ampere Analysis shows, the PS4 is currently at 108 million sales (sell-through, not the 110.4 million sell-in Sony reports) compared to the 49 million Xbox Ones sold worldwide. The PS4 has outsold the Xbox One by 59 million units, or more than the total Xbox One sales across the globe.

Konami, ever the curious company, is joining the likes of Alienware, MSI, and Corsair with custom pre-built gaming PCs.

On the heels of making the Turbo Grafx 16 Mini, Konami has wider hardware ambitions. This time it's making gaming PCs for Japanese consumers. The new Arespear gaming desktops are made for esports and were originally announced in February 2020.

The three-SKU line features somewhat beefy specs and LED lighting, but are dramatically overpriced for the hardware. Konami has just now opened pre-orders for the PCs, which are scheduled to start shipping in September.

Duke Nukem dev 3D Realms is back on the map, and now they're teasing a brand new game.

3D Realms has made a resurgence and released their latest game, Ion Fury, on the original Duke Nukem BUILD Engine. Now they're coming back with a new all-original IP and it looks like a fantasy-based experience. We're not exactly sure what the team is cooking up--fantasy is kind of a weird focus for a FPS-driven studio--but it could feature magic-blasting instead of guns.

Apart from this new IP, 3D Realms is also working on Wrath: Aeon of Fury, a bloody FPS built in the original Quake engine that's due out on 2021. Other 3D Realms published games include Ghostrunner and Kingpin Reloaded.

Games get cancelled all the game in the industry. Some are extremely groundbreaking. Others devolve into chaos. Some, like the new RPG from Mike Laidlaw, get cancelled on a whim by people who have too much power.

Back in 2017, lots of executives left BioWare. The studio was endemic with overwork, ruthless crunch, and had a severe morale problem. Ian Frazier kicked off the exodus in 2017, followed by general manager Aaryn Flynn in July, and then Dragon Age alum Mike Laidlaw in October. Laidlaw had been with BioWare for 14 years and helped shape pivotal RPGs like Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

After leaving BioWare, Laidlaw joined up with Ubisoft on a mysterious new game. The announcement was made in December 2018, but Laidlaw had been working as a creative consultant at Ubisoft Quebec for nine months before the reveal. It was clear Ubisoft was gearing up for something big, a unique new IP to help stand apart from established numerical franchises like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Watch Dogs.

The commercialization of space is fantastic news for everyone, and with space travel being opened up, many companies are stepping forward with designs for new spacecraft.

One of the companies that have been in the race for quite some time is Boeing, but unfortunately, the company has proven somewhat disappointing with their Starliner program. Back in December, Boeing had to abort its unmanned test flight due to a glitch in the system that really threw things up into the air. NASA has since decided to do an independent analysis of the Starliner program and returned with numerous "recommendations" NASA wants to see before Starliner attempts another launch.

SpaceFlightNow is reporting that NASA is still skeptical, and even concerned about how Boeing is going to address these issues and if they will be able to conquer them fast and efficiently. Donald McErlean, a member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, recently said, "However, despite this progress, which is definite and in fact measurable, the panel continues to be concerned about quality control problems that seemingly have plagued the Boeing commercial crew program."

One of my favorite headsets I have ever reviewed is Logitech's Pro X, and now the gaming brand of Logitech has announced and released a wireless variant.

According to a new press release found on the Logitech website, Logitech is debuting the Pro X Wireless, which is basically the exact same as the Pro X wired, but comes with a wireless dongle and Logitech's LIGHTSPEED wireless technology. The new headset incorporates everything that was great about the Pro X wired but adds the convenience of being wireless. Due to the designs being identical, the wireless version will no doubt come with all the issues that the wired version comes with.

So what does the Pro X wireless sport? According to the press release, the Pro X wireless sports the same 50mm drivers, Blue VO!CE support, DTS 7.1 surround sound, lightweight design, and comfortable memory foam padding. I'm yet to receive my review sample of the Pro X wireless, but that will no doubt be arriving in the mail within the coming weeks. You can expect a review on TweakTown in the weeks after I have received my sample, for the time being though, you can check out my review on the wired variant here.