Latest News - Page 1695

Bethesda is removing their games from NVIDIA's new game streaming service GeForce NOW, with some major games getting flushed away. NVIDIA also announced there are over 1 million people now using GeForce NOW.

NVIDIA's new GeForce NOW game streaming service loses the likes of many Fallout games, Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls 5, and more -- the only one staying is going to be Wolfenstein: Youngblood, something I benchmarked with RTX and DLSS features enabled. GeForce NOW will however lose all other Wolfenstein games.

Activision-Blizzard dropped its games from GeForce NOW in a move that NVIDIA called a "misunderstanding", with NVIDIA taking to its blog recently to explain: "As we approach a paid service, some publishers may choose to remove games before the trial period ends. Ultimately, they maintain control over their content and decide whether the game you purchase includes streaming on GeForce NOW. Meanwhile, others will bring games back as they continue to realize GeForce NOW's value (stay tuned for more on that)".

NVIDIA launched its game streaming service GeForce NOW just a couple of weeks ago and the company has already seen over 1 million gamers sign up for it. With games like Cyberpunk 2077, and Google Stadia sucking in comparison (and GeForce NOW being much cheaper), it's no wonder NVIDIA is seeing success.

GeForce NOW supports over 400 games, while another 1000 are available for single-session installations -- all taking place on NVIDIA's servers. You can play your own games through your own accounts on Steam, the Epic Games Store, or Uplay -- while there's a free tier, NVIDIA also offers the premium Founders tier.

NVIDIA's premium Founders tier for GeForce NOW offers up longer play sessions, while both the free and premium tiers have RTX on (ray tracing) but the free version of GeForce NOW only has it for a 90-day introductory period. NVIDIA also announced that they have 1500 more games coming to GeForce NOW in the near future.

Magic: The Gathering Arena has been tremendously successful on PC, and Wizards of the Coast are eager to expand the game's reach to other platforms.

MTG Arena is likely coming to every single platform and addressable market in the games industry. The free-to-play online-based digital CCG, which puts an emphasis on monetizing randomized card packs, is prime territory for dedicated consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, or the on-the-go handheld Switch hybrid. It's even a contender for Stadia, Google's new cloud streaming service. But Arena's true potential for massive earnings is on the $68.5 billion mobile market.

Now in a recent Hasbro investor's meeting at ToyFair, Wizards of the Coast not only confirms Arena will release on mobile in 2020, but the game will see a dramatic expansion to other devices and services.

Gamers will get the chance to help shape Baldur's Gate 3's development with an early access build releasing in 2020.

Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to early access later this year, Wizards of the Coast President Chris Cocks confirmed in a recent investors presentation.

"Larian will be showing off the game to the public next weekend at PAX East before entering early access later this year," he said.

Nintendo sends mixed signals to fans who are disappointed with its clandestine and awkward approach to Animal Corssing: New Horizons save backups.

Nintendo just pulled an interesting move that has some far-reaching implications. The company just edited and re-uploaded the recent Animal Crossing: New Horizons showcase with one key bit of info omitted out--the rather draconian save recovery policy.

Before the edit, the Direct outlined the strict stipulations to getting back their precious save data. Users can only recover save data in the event of a lost or damaged console, only a single time, and only if they're Switch Online subscribers, indicating that Nintendo automatically backs up your saved data anyway but blocks off user access. (That's really the only way they could restore your data if you lose a system, whereas they could manually transfer the saves from your old broken system to a new working one in their facilities.)

EA has cancelled yet another Star Wars game, this time an interesting-sounding project that was in development at EA Vancouver.

Making Star Wars games is very, very hard, and no one knows that better than Electronic Arts. The publisher has now cancelled three consecutive Star Wars projects: Visceral Games' Project Ragtag bounty hunter game in 2017, then EA Vancouver's live-driven open-world Project Orca in 2019, and now Project Viking, yet another EA Vancouver title. This marks the second EA Vancouver Star Wars project that EA has cancelled in a row.

Sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier that Project Viking was an open-world game derived from the Battlefront series. Viking was meant to fill the large Millennium Falcon-shaped hole in EA's 2020 Star Wars games lineup and launch on the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. EA killed the project in early 2019, sources familiar with the game say.

Following the acquisition of Saber Interactive, The Embracer Group (also known as THQ Nordic) now owns a whopping 163 game series and franchises.

While scouting The Embracer Group's recent earnings, I found something quite interesting: Raw numbers that show just how massive the company's gaming presence is. The media titan currently has access to over 150 new IPs, and has a massive global dev pool of 92 teams worldwide across a multitude of wholly-owned studios.

The company's pipeline is just as big as its IP treasure. There's 96 total games in development at Embracer's studios, of which 52 have yet to be announced. A lot of these projects aren't AAA endeavors and are a long ways off. Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors says he wants to release at least two major AAA games by March 2021 (possibly Dead Island 2 and Saints Row V, both of which have been in development for years now).

Temtem, the popular Pokemon-like MMO, is off to a tremendous start with over 500,000 copies sold in its first month.

Crema's monster-catching MMORPG is an early access sensation on Steam, pulling in over half a million users in just one month. The hunger for a Pokemon-esque experience on PC is real, and backed with a mighty $573,000 Kickstarter and Humble Bundle as publisher, Temtem is now a bonafide success on Steam.

Temtem is largely familiar territory to Digimon and Pokemon players, featuring a plethora of catchable creatures with their own abilities, elemental affinities, and other traits. There's a stamina system instead of a PP system, and combat features unique 2v2 battles for tag team action. The biggest departure is that Temtem is online and allows for native team-based co-op at any time. Gamers can connect, play, and interact with other Temtem tamers, and tackle PVP battles to boot.

The global coronavirus infection continues disrupting critical technology supply lines, and this time Valve's proprietary Index VR headset is affected.

With the VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx on the way, everyone wants a Valve Index virtual reality headset. But there's just one problem: They're completely sold out, and have been for months. Now Valve says Index supplies will remain scarce due to the coronavirus, which sees China forcibly closing manufacturing facilities and plants in an effort to curb the contagion.

Valve confirmed the news to UploadVR with the following statement: "With Half-Life: Alyx coming March 23rd, we are working hard to meet demand for the Valve Index and want to reassure everyone that Index systems will be available for purchase prior to the game's launch.

Today the District Court of California announced a settlement agreement between Crytek and Cloud Imperium Games, but no specifics were revealed.

After a long 3-year legal battle, Crysis developer Crytek and Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games have finally settled their legal dispute. New court documents filed yesterday confirm the news, and stipulate both parties have up to 30 days to outline the exact details of the agreement. These details probably won't be publicized.

"Pursuant to C.D. Cal. L.R. 40-2, Plaintiff CRYTEK GMBH and Defendants CLOUD IMPERIUM GAMES CORP. and ROBERTS SPACE INDUSTRIES CORP., by and through their counsel of record, hereby notify the Court that they have reached an agreement in principle of terms to settle this action in its entirety and are working to document the terms of their agreement. Following execution of the agreement, the parties will promptly file a joint stipulation of dismissal. The parties respectfully request that the Court allow the parties thirty (30) days to document and execute their agreement and to file the joint stipulation of dismissal."

On the heels of Fortnite's big season 2 reveal, analyst firm SuperData notes a marked drop in digital revenues through January 2020.

Still a titan of the industry with $1.8 billion earned in 2019, Epic's battle royale sensation Fortnite kicked off 2020 with reduced revenues. The weight of Fortnite's earnings slide has pulled down the entire free-to-play console segment by 42%, analyst firm SuperData notes.

"Console spending was down a steep 42% in the free-to-play segment (due to lower Fortnite revenue) and down 19% in the premium space," the firm wrote in its recent January 2020 worldwide spending analysis.

Square Enix today confirmed Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be playable at its PAX East booth from February 27 - March 1.

While Sony pulls out of PAX East, other Asian devs like Square Enix are excited to show off their biggest games. Right now, it doesn't get much bigger then the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. A fully-fledged playable FF7R demo will be hosted on-site at PAX East in Boston, giving die-hard fans an opportunity to try out the re-imagined RPG with its new real-time hack-and-slash combat system. This will be the fifth major city to get access to the demo after key events like E3, Gamescom, and Tokyo Game Show.

The news could also strongly hint at Square Enix releasing the public PS4 demo soon. A bit ago, the Final Fantasy 7 demo was leaked out, revealing key info about the game including characters, animations, file size info, and of course the actual gameplay itself. Considering how close we are to release (the Remake is just 7 weeks away) it makes sense to release a demo shortly after PAX East's hands-on event.

Coronavirus scare prompts Sony to skip GDC 2020 and miss a valuable opportunity to court developers for its next-gen PlayStation 5 platform.

Sony has confirmed it won't be at this year's annual Game Developers Conference to protect employees from potential coronavirus exposure. The news comes days after Sony decided to likewise skip PAX East. But missing GDC is a much bigger deal, and could have a more significant impact on Sony's next-gen plans.

GDC is a closed developer-centric event where the biggest names in gaming like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo come together to showcase new tech, talk about platform features, and overall try to inspire developers to make games for their systems.

THQ Nordic now has a whopping 8 dozen games in development, and more than half of them are unannounced.

The Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic) is an absolute powerhouse of gaming that has potential to completely revitalize dormant IPs. The company, which has access to a treasure trove of franchises, currently has 96 total projects in its lineup and only 52 of them have been revealed. This is a pretty big jump over the 80 projects that were in development as of May 2019.

The company's recent buyout of World War Z developer Saber Interactive adds tons of opportunity to this games lineup. Saber brings 9 IPs over to Embracer's staggering arsenal, complete with 8 unannounced projects that're currently in development.

Call of Duty's new free-to-play Warzone battle royale will be a playground for 200 players, sources tell Video Game Chronicle.

Activision's new Warzone gametype for Modern Warfare is a big deal. The incoming battle royale mode will support 200 players on a map that's twice as big as Black Ops 4's Blackout BR, complete with free access on console on PC. Warzone will be both a standalone free-to-play download as well as baked right into premium Modern Warfare versions, and is expected to support cross-play on all platforms.

It represents years of planning it could be the biggest mechanism for engagement the publisher has ever seen, with potential to make tremendous revenues from in-game microtransactions.

CD Projekt RED just hit a huge milestone for The Witcher 3 sales on PC's biggest platform, and now gets to keep more revenue from every sale.

The Witcher 3's game sales now meet Steam's new revenue split criteria, allowing CD Projekt RED to keep 80% of every game purchase. The game has made more than $50 million in sales revenue since Valve pass a new earnings model, making the acclaimed RPG an even bigger asset for CDPR.

Back in October 2018, Valve announced a new earnings split that favorite high-selling games. If a game sells $10 million, devs get 75% of revenues, and at $50 million, devs keep 80%. The Witcher 3 is one such game and CD Projekt RED will henceforth retain 80% of every copy of The Witcher 3 sold.

It's always interesting when a company that makes one specific product decides to jump into a new market and manufacture something different. AOC is the company we are looking at today, as they will be diving headfirst into the peripheral market.

Kitguru was invited to check out AOC's latest monitors at an even held in London. Throughout the exhibition, they found a bunch of AOC keyboards and mice. AOC is originally a monitor manufacturer, but they will now be stepping into keyboards and mice. Firstly, we have the AGON GK500. This keyboard sports a detachable plastic wrist rest, RGB lighting, Outemu switches and comes it at the cost of $75 USD.

Moving onto the more higher-end keyboard, the AGON AGK700. This keyboard is much more expensive than the GK500 as it comes with Cheery MX Blue switches (Cherry MX Red coming soon), dedicated macro buttons, a plush leatherette wrist rest, and a dial at the top of the board. Both keyboards support AOC's new G-Tools software for customization purposes. The AGK700 comes it at a price of $161 USD.

Guy "Dr Disrespect" Beahm is expanding into other areas outside of his domination in the streaming game. Now, reports are coming out about the doc signing a deal for a comedic "memoir" to be published.

According to an exclusive report by Hollywood Reporter, the doc has signed a new deal with Gallery Books for a comedic "memoir" titled "Violence. Speed. Momentum. A Memoir by Dr Disrespect". The new book will feature "never-before-told-stories" of the docs incredibly popular character, and "what it's like being the greatest gamer in the history of the universe, and possibly the best overall human being."

Right now, the doc has amassed one of the biggest live streaming followings on the internet, with more than 4 million followers and regular-stream viewers of 20,000+ people, there's no wonder that he wants to branch out into new fields. Back in early December, it was announced that the doc would also be getting a TV show revealing how the doctor became the doctor, more on that story here.

Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 icons will be getting a fresh coat of paint in the coming months ahead. Prepare for your Windows 10 icons to be updated!

Windows has taken to its blog to announced that Windows 10 icons will be evolved into some newer and fresh. Microsoft will begin the re-design with some built-in apps like Alarms & Clock, Calculator, Mail, and Calendar. The effort behind this re-design is to bring a new level of consistency and connection across all of Windows' icons.

The first apps that will get the fresh coat of paint will be Calendar and Mail. The updates for them have already rolled out to Windows Insiders, as updates from the Microsoft Store. Windows 10 users can expect the rest of the icon updates to follow over the course of a few months. If you are interested in checking out more information for what Microsoft has planned for Windows 10, check out this link here.

If you can't wait for the next-gen consoles and want to get your hands-on a sweet deal real soon, then Amazon has your back.

Right now, Amazon is running a deal for the most powerful PlayStation console, the PlayStation 4 Pro. At the moment, Amazon is selling the console for $299.98, which is 25% off of its original price of $399.99. If you can't do that math, it means Amazon is discounting the PS4 Pro by $100.01.

Now, if you don't want the full-size PS4 Pro, and would prefer picking up the slim version, Amazon has that discounted as well. The slim PS4 Pro was priced at $299.99 but is now going for $251.95. Amazon has slashed the slim price by 16%, equating to a $48.04 discount.