Latest News - Page 1935

Battle royale games like Respawn's mega-hot Apex Legends, Epic's billion-dollar Fortnite, and PUBG will rake in over $20 billion in 2019, analyst firm SuperData predicts.

According to SuperData's latest report, the battle royale genre is set to explode in 2019 by earning $20.1 billion across all platforms. This represents a mighty 60% year-over-year increase over a year that saw tremendous BR growth; battle royale earnings skyrockted by 625% from 2017 to 2018.

Surprisingly enough, buy-to-play BR games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Black Ops 4's Blackout mode are expected to earn the lion's share of 2019's BR revenue with $10.2 billion, or around 50.7% of total earnings. Console will lead other platforms by raking in $10.4 billion, SuperData predicts, with PC coming in at second with $6.3 billion, and mobile, which typically towers above all others, checking in at just $3.3 billion.

EA is swapping out a press conference for a glut of live streams, interviews, and other sensory overload at its annual pre-E3 event. This decision isn't about giving gamers what they want, but keeping them entertained and engaged.

EA recently announced its EA Play 2019 plans to press and gamers, confirming a paradigm shift that reflects the current state of the games industry. Right now live streamers and "influencers" are the core focus of any publisher (just look at how much EA spent to promote Apex Legends), and that's great for the billion-dollar games-makers. Influencers can stretch engagement quite far and act as interactive advertisements for their biggest games (especially when they're paid to do so, versus games outlets). Now this model is seeping into how publishers are showcasing their new games.

EA's decision to scrap its annual press conference isn't just because they're often lampooned, nor is it just because they want to give "gamers more of what they want." It's about engagement, about keeping you glued to your seat for as long as possible while watching a live stream, about providing tons of information all while they collect metrics and viewership counts that may actually affect game development.

Live games are raking in billions every year, and every publisher wants in on the action. But independent devs like From Software also want a slice of the earnings pie.

From Software's next game could be a big jump from games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and the upcoming Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Seen as the bastion for hard-as-nails survival games, FromSoft's future projects could be online-only affairs that're monetized via live service models, not unlike EA's and Activision's titles. In a recent interview with The Telegraph, FromSoft boss Hidetaka Miyazaki expressed keen interest in making a live game and actually wants to put his spin on battle royale.

"There's always the possibility [we'll make a battle royale game]. These games are definitely fun. And we're interested in the patterns they are taking. If we did it, it might be a bit different! But we're definitely interested and there's definitely that possibility in the future. We'd love to take a crack at them some day," Miyazaki told the publication.

A recent announcement from NantG, the PC developer of H1Z1: King of the Kill has detailed that the game will have its name changed from H1Z1: King of the Kill to the much more simple 'Z1 Battle Royale'.

If you haven't heard about H1Z1: King of the Kill, it was a game that was left in the dust in the very early stages of the battle royale craze. The game picked up some extreme popularity, but then was quickly overshadowed by the release of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Former developer Daybreak Games handed the PC version of the game over to the NantG development who is issuing an update out that plans on bringing some of the older H1Z1 players back to the game.

According to the General Manager of Z1BR, Anthony Castoro, "[The PC update for Z1BR is] also huge because it represents the first big delivery on the promise that the new NantG team made when it took over development last September: Bring back the game that so many of you fell in love with in the classic 'King of the Kill' era around Preseason 3 at the end of 2016 and in early 2017. We still plan to address old weapon models, classic in-game UI elements, and more." For more information regarding the update, visit the official blogpost for Z1 Battle Royale here.

The release of Capcom's Devil May Cry 5 is almost upon us, only being merely hours away we have some new information regarding the difficulty of the trophy list. Simply put, it isn't going to be a walk in the park to achieve platinum status.

While there is definitely a large amount of gamers sitting there with their fangs bare ready to sink their teeth into the new Devil May Cry game, how many of those players game enough to attempt platinum status? Well, after seeing the requirements of platinum I can honestly say that I won't be achieving it, and perhaps it would be fair to say that its ALMOST impossible for anyone to achieve it.

Destructoid has managed to get their hands-on the trophy list ahead of the games launch and they reveal that each of the achievements besides one are quite easy to obtain. All except "Worthy of Legend". To get the trophy for this challenge, the player must beat every mission except for Heaven and Hell and receive an S rank on all difficulty levels. Meaning that the player will be required to play through the game five different times while maintaining the same level of efficiency at beating each level at a S rank. While this might sound easy enough at the lower ends of the difficulty, it will be come much more challenging at the higher ends of the difficulty spectrum as enemies have increased health and not to mention damage output.

The speculation can now be put to bed as Amazon have officially revealed that their upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show will be set in the 'Second Age' of Tolkien's Legendarium.

Amazon created a dedicated "The Lord of the Rings on Prime" Twitter account to share updates with fans about the coming TV show. Poetically, the account started off their tweeting with "I wisely started with a map"which is quote from J.R.R Tolkien himself. The page then proceeded to post images of a map and slowly over time it reposted the same image but with updated locations on the map. Eventually, the account posted a link to the map on the Amazon website with the caption "Welcome to the Second Age".

Now what does this mean for the TV show story-wise? and how is this going to influence what we are going to see in season 1? If the second age is the chosen setting for the TV show, we will most likely see a great display of the rise and fall of Numenor. We can see Numenor at the bottom left of the map, and its inhabitants, the Numenorians landing on Middle-Earth and the struggles of fighting Sauron throughout the Second Age. The first season should also give us a overview of the relationship between Middle-Earth's Elves and the landing Numenorians, eventually moving into the settling of Arnor and Gondor. Within the entirety of this article I have provided a much better explanation video of the Rise and Downfall of Numenor.

The second trailer for the upcoming Lord of the Rings author biopic movie titled 'Tolkien' has been released, showcasing some brand new scenes from the movie.

The trailer has been released onto FoxSearchlight and begins with lead actors Nicholas Hoult who players Tolkien, and Lily Collins who players Tolkiens partner, Edith Bratt. The trailer begins with Tolkien explaining to Bratt that he is fascinated with language, so interested that he even went on create his own through his stories or legends. Bratt then asks Tolkien to recount a story for her, we are then thrown back into the early stages of Tolkien's life while the older Tolkien narrates over his yourself's adventures.

We see many scenes from different stages of Tolkien's life, such as him growing up, going to war, the struggles of romance, the bonding of brotherhood and most importantly, the creation of the very well known 'fellowship.' The movie will be concentrating closely on the 'fellowship' that was formed during Tolkien's time in school and how it extended to the battlefield of World War 1. There will also be some concentration on the relationship between Bratt and Tolkien and how she helped shape him into the man he became and how that influenced the writings in his legendary books. Tolkien is directed by Dome Karukoski and is planned to hit theaters on May 10.

At the start of this week we saw some very strange live-action images leaked for a supposed Sonic The Hedgehog movie. Now one of the original creators of Sonic has voiced his opinion on the images.

It certainly is hard to say that the live-action image renders of Sonic look fantastic, I mean Sonic isn't even wearing his iconic gloves... Yuji Naka would also agree, as the co-creator of the original design of Sonic The Hedgehog has taken to Twitter to voice his opinion on the matter. Saying "Is this a 'Sonic' movie? I feel that it is important to look at the whole body visual of Sonic and head, body, and stomach. Did you not get a little more balance?" - translated with Microsoft.

Naka continued on his Twitter spree saying that the leaked images could of been on purpose to gauge how fans of the series would react to the design. Naka also expresses his concerns with too much bad word of mouth, saying that it could potentially hurt the Sonic The Hedgehog's intellectual property. In my opinion, I would say that the design for Sonic needs to be changed and also I wouldn't be surprised if the 'leaked images' were leaked on purpose to gauge the communities response. This type of 'trial by fire' actions are typical from large companies that are unsure of which direction to take, or to just purely increase hype.

Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 has hit a couple of major milestones, where it was spread far and wide today that over 800 million devices have Windows 10 installed.

The other big milestone for Windows 10 is that it has the highest customer satisfaction in the history of Windows, something underlined by Microsoft Corporate VP of Modern Life & Devices Yusuf Mehdi. Mehdi tweeted: "Thank you to all our customers and partners for helping us achieve 800 million #Windows10 devices and the highest customer satisfaction in the history of Windows".

Microsoft predicted it would have 1 billion users with Windows 10 within 2-3 years, but it hasn't quite hit that peak yet. However, Windows 7 is about to die finally and that should see Windows 10 adoption skyrocket.

In a move that isn't so surprising for people looking forward with how big Disney is getting, the company has announced that its upcoming streaming service Disney+ will be packed with "the entire Disney motion picture library".

The news is coming directly from Disney CEO Bob Iger, which will effectively end Disney's current 'Vault' system, which wasn't anything to brag about anyway. This is a huge departure from the usual operating procedure at Disney, as it never offered its entire library of content and instead held classic films that people wanted badly, just to drive hype up to its launch. Try it yourself; older Disney movies aren't the easiest to find, but this new move will make them incredibly easy to find.

Iger explained during the announcement at a company shareholder meeting: "The service, which I mentioned earlier is going to launch later in the year, is going to combine what we call library product, movies, and television, with a lot of original product as well, movies and television. And at some point fairly soon after launch it will house the entire Disney motion picture library, so the movies that you speak of that traditionally have been kept in a 'vault' and brought out basically every few years will be on the service".

E3 2019 isn't for a few more months but EA has today announced it won't be hosting its annual E3 press conference this year, putting its focus wholly into its own EA PLAY.

EA Play is an annual showcase that the company hosts, where this year it'll take place between June 7-9. EA explains it is skipping its E3 2019 press conference and "multiple live streams that will air during the first two days of the event, bringing you more of what you've told us you want - more gameplay and insights from the teams making the games".

EA PLAY 2019 will feature:

Remedy Entertainment is in the middle of developing its new game Control, where during an awesome interview with Game Informer we're finding out a bunch of new information about the game in a 94 rapid-fire question video.

First and foremost, the entire game takes place in a single location in New York City called 'The Oldest House' but Control's game director Mikael Kasurinen said that it's a "complicated, shifting" place. The world of Control is always in flux, with traits of previous games like Quantum Break influencing the development of this game.

Control will have absolutely no multiplayer, it will have DLC, there are not multiple difficulty, and the game is "not linear at all". The visuals of Control are inspired by legendary film director Stanley Kubrick, who directed 2001: A Space Odyssey (which is still impressive today, considering it was released in 1968, the year before men walked on the moon) with shapes and forms meaning a lot to the game.

Dead or Alive 6 is just a few days old now and it is already surrounded in controversy with the release of its first season pass, something that costs more than the actual game itself. Ridiculous, right?

The full game costs $40 while the season pass costs a whopping $93, over double the cost of DOA6. What do you get for $93 just doesn't seem worth it with 62 new costumes up on offer, with developer Koei Tecmo Games saying that we could see even more content released soon, outside of the first season pass, so prepare your wallets accordingly.

So even if you plonk down $40 for Dead or Alive 6 and then another $93 for the season pass, you won't receive all of the additional downloadable content that will be released between now and June. There will definitely be new content, costumes, and more for the game that hasn't been announced yet, outside of the first season pass.

In an age where aggressive monetization is found in everything from AAA to mobile titles, Nintendo wants to keep a level head about its free-to-play smartphone games.

Nintendo has warned its partners not to over-monetize its smartphone games with too many spending opportunities, The Wall Street Journal reports. According to The WSJ, the company would rather earn potentially less money from mobile games then become embroiled in controversy--a sentiment that most games-makers don't agree with. Nintendo is fiercely protective of its brand, and it wants to stray far away from negative press.

Despite making most of its mobile revenues from a game riddled with "gacha" style microtransactions, as well as advocating for lootboxes to drive engagement, Nintendo wants to be more careful in how its future games are monetized. In-game spending opportunities need to be limited and reflect the actual goal of its smartphone business, which is to primarily bring exposure to the brand and fold consumers into the ecosystem. Making money comes second.

Today Sony stealthily released a new PS4 firmware update that allows Remote Play console mirroring to iOS devices.

After a long, long wait, iPhone and iPad owners can now control their PS4 and play games from afar. Originally created as an extension to tether the now-dead PS Vita to the PlayStation 4 ecosystem, Remote Play essentially lets gamers use their consoles, play games, and interact with friends outside of a home network. It's a nifty feature that works surprisingly well on Android and PS Vita (provided both devices are connected to the internet), and it makes sense Sony would bring it to iOS to maximize exposure. The Remote Play app is currently available on the App Store.

The timing is particularly interesting, too. Sony is currently doubling-down on fortifying existing services and making new ones for its incoming next-gen PS5 console.

As promised yesterday, the legends at 3D Realms reveal a brand new shooter that hearkens back to the bloody days of early PC gaming.

Today 3D Realms announced Wrath: Ruin of Aeons, a new blistering hardcore FPS that taps the industrial horror of yore. The game was built with the original Quake engine, and every bit of scenery shows parallels to that distinct gritty colosseum hellworld style; blood oozes down walls, obelisks to strange gods piece the stone ground, half-eroded monasteries rise into the dark, red embers glow ominously, and strange sci-tech glyphs promise interesting secrets.

Wrath: Ruin of Aeons strives to recreate that classic look and feel of the golden Quake age of gaming, and sports the classic goretastic run-and-gun approach. 3D Realms crafted 9 unique weapons for maximum heart-pumping death-metal carnage like an arm-mounted blade saw, the old-school double-barreled shotgun, a wicked spike gun that makes mincemeat out of baddies, and even a weird disgusting semi-organic alien gun.

Blizzard is bringing a treasure trove of its classic PC games to GOG.com starting with the immortal tough-as-nails ARPG that started it all: Diablo.

For a red-hot $10 gamers can now experience the mayhem, wonder, and visceral thrill of the original Diablo. These hallowed halls are much different than the player-friendly games of today and Diablo will truly test your mettle. There's no auto-regen here, just cut and dry do-or-die; run out of potions? You're dead. Mismanaged your TPs? You're dead. Panic and aggro a huge group of enemies and accidentally cast the wrong skills? You're dead. And once you die, all your precious loot pops from your corpse like a human pinata. Diablo is ruthless, sadistic, and tons of fun.

The GOG version of Diablo 1 will feature everything the main game offered, including LAN, network play over Battle.net classic, and TCP/IP play. It's also been optimized for Windows 10 PCs too, but that particular mode doesn't yet have online multiplayer (but the base game actually works quite well). There's even instructions on how to configure your router for Battle.net too.

To compliment the release of the upcoming POKEMON Detective Pikachu movie starring Deadpool actor, Ryan Reynolds. The Pokemon Trading Company will be making Pokemon trading cards for a select amount of Pokemon seen in the movie.

In celebration of the new upcoming POKEMON Detective Pikachu, The Pokemon Company have announced a brand new selection of Pokemon trading cards that use images from the upcoming movie. In the trailers that have been released we have already seen some of the Pokemon that are coming to trading cards. There will be a total of 27 new cards released, 18 of which have already been showcased.

If you are interested in checking out the official Pokemon trading cards that have been announced, visit the official Pokemon website here. According to the Pokemon website, "booster packs for this special set will not be sold separately, so look for them in special collections starting April 5, 2019". In other news about POKEMON Detective Pikachu, Ryan Reynolds became a Pikachu through method acting, even claiming he lived at his height for a brief period of time, more on that here. There is also the first trailer that can be found here if you happened to miss that, as well as the second trailer that can be found here.

Most Dark Souls fans at least have an eye on FromSoftware's next project, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The game has attracted quite the attention and now some more gameplay of a new area has been released alongside a tease of an epic snake boss.

The new gameplay that has been released has been through GameSpot, and gives us a look at the Senpou Temple and the enemies that it inhabits. We see a great display of combat in a dense, but luscious jungle environment. The player uses stealth to utilize backstabbing on enemies to do massive amounts of damage, while also being very good on the blocking side of things throughout a large variety of different enemies. There is mini bosses such as the heavier club wielding ogre and the very agile monk.

On the FUN GAMES YouTube Channel we also have a new boss fight trailer for 'The Great Serpent' which can be found in the entirety of this post. The trailer gives us a quick 30 second look at what players are assuming they will be up against and it seems the boss will be no easy task. Being so damn big, I'd assume that players will have to use the environment to their advantage in this fight, with great use of the grapple ability we could see some snake riding action following by a solid sword to the back of its head. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is planned for release on March 22nd, Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Mortal Kombat 11 has swamped the gaming news sector, as NetherRealm Studio's gears up for the release of the next title in their iconic franchise a confirmed to what engine the game will be running on has been announced.

While Mortal Kombat 11 looks undoubtedly gorgeous on screem, the initial guess would that it is running the most recent version of Epic Games' Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 4. That guess would be in-fact wrong, as NetherRealm Studios Programming Lead, Jon Greenberg has confirmed on Twitter that the title actually uses a custom Unreal Engine 3 that has been specifically modified by NetherRealm. Greenberg continues and explains that the engine that they are using is "radically different from Epic's at this pt (point)".

Greenberg continues to respond to fans in the Twitter thread that the reasoning for the game still using Unreal Engine 3 is because this allowed the developers to start work on Mortal Kombat 11 straight after the release of Injustice 2. If the transition from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4 was made there would have to of been rebuilding of what is described as "years and years worth of stuff". Greenberg also touches on the fact that MK Mobile uses Unreal Engine 4 and that the developers for both games are interchangeable . Mortal Kombat 11 will be released on the 23rd of April for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC. For more information, visit the official Mortal Kombat 11 website here.