Latest News - Page 2126

Sony has filed new patents for upgraded motion controllers, likely for its PlayStation VR headset.

The PlayStation Move controllers that Sony currently uses for its console-powered PlayStation VR headset are years old and are due for an update. Apparently Sony agrees, and has filed patents for new controllers that are quite similar to the Oculus Touch controllers used by the Rift headset.

The new PS Move (might be called something else) iteration sees a joystick added on, and a kind of knuckle strap that's seen on HTC's next-gen "Vive Knuckles" prototype controller for the Vive headset. The most interesting thing, though, is how the patent says the controllers will be tracked by the headset itself--not the PlayStation Camera sensor--which strongly indicates a new PS VR headset is in the works.

BioWare now has tunnel vision on the single most important game it's ever developed: Anthem.

After Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare has a lot of proving to do in the eyes of gamers, and following the big hubbub over Battlefront II, players are somewhat wary of EA. A while ago I predicted that Anthem, BioWare's new online shooter, would be a service game with microtransactions--something that's a touchy subject as of late...and based on everything we've heard so far, it seems quite plausible. Now the expectations are all on BioWare's shoulders and the team is gearing up the game's development.

BioWare's key teams across its Edmonton and Austin branches (remember Montreal was closed after ME: Andromeda and employees were absorbed into other teams) are focusing near-exclusively on Anthem to ensure it meets the Fiscal 2019 release target, sources have told Kotaku's Jason Schreier.

Crystal Dynamics has snagged a bunch of key industry developers to help build its Avengers project.

Marvel's recent deal with Square Enix is a pretty big deal: the Disney-owned titan has conscripted the Japanese games-maker for a multi-year slew of games, including a new Avengers game that players can "enjoy for years to come." The game has undoubtedly been in the works for a bit, and Crystal Dynamics, the team developing it, has acquired 15 new top industry vets to help fortify the project including former Naughty Dog Creative Director Shaun Escayg who joins The Avengers Project as Creative Director, and as Director of Production Stephen Barry, a 27 year veteran from EA/Visceral Games.

Armed with this new talent the developer has made "tremendous progress" on the Avengers game. "We're committed to delivering an incredible, completely original Avengers experience to our gamers, and that means we are always looking to add amazing developers to our existing best in class studio talent," said Scot Amos, Co-Head of Studio at Crystal Dynamics.

On the heels of Microsoft's big Xbox Game Pass announcement comes some even more welcome news: some of them can be played on PC as well.

Just yesterday Microsoft confirmed that future first-party games like Sea of Thieves, Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2 and even new Halo, Forza and Gears of War games can all be played on Xbox Game Pass. That means if you subscribe for $10 a month that you'll be able to play new titles the day they come out rather than ponying up the full $60 price tag. Plus there's an added 20% off bonus if you decide to buy the game and then cancel your subscription.

But now Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg confirms that Play Anywhere games on the service can be played on PC, too. And since most first-party Xbox One games are Play Anywhere...this could be a neat little boon for PC gamers to get in on the action as well. Which, of course, is Microsoft's plan now that Xbox is a multi-platform service and no longer a console.

Micron announces its latest line of enterprise SSDs that leverage 64-layer 3D NAND technology to boost storage capacities, power efficiency, and more.

Micron's new 5200 series SSDs include the 5200 ECO and 5200 PRO drives, all of which use high-end 3D NAND storage that offers huge capacities up to 7.68TB and can deliver 95k IOPs random reads and 33k random writes. In fact the new 5200 lineup is the first enterprise grade SSD available for purchase with NAND tech, and is optimized for latency-sensitive, read-intensive workloads that demand higher performance.

"Micron 5200 SSDs unleash market-leading performance, capacity and reliability, paired with a rich feature set and unprecedented flexibility, adding up to the ideal storage solution for business-critical workloads," said Micron Storage Business Unit Vice President and General Manager Derek Dicker. "We simplified the server qualification process by leveraging the same foundational architecture that's currently available on Micron SATA SSDs. Customers can trust the same proven controller and firmware design while taking advantage of advanced flash media for better performance, quality of service, and value."

Cowen analyst Doug Creutz highlights how Destiny 2's issues could affect Activision's future fiscal performance.

It's no secret that Destiny 2 is having a problem with player engagement, which happens to be the hallmark and bread and butter of service games. The shooter's lackluster end-game rewards, tedious grinding, and community revolt against microtransactions have had a serious affect on public opinion as well as player retention. As Epic's Fortnite and Bluehole's PUBG continue to soak in new players every day, it's critical for Bungie to fix this gaping hole in Destiny's ship--not patch it with minuscule paid expansions.

Now analyst Doug Creutz underlines some of the key ways that Destiny 2 is on the downhill, including Bungie's secrecy regarding future content as well as how microtransactions were implemented with the Eververse.

Monster Hunter games are synonymous with Nintendo hardware...but Capcom's latest MonHun will miss Nintendo's hot new Switch system. Why? Well...it's been in development for a long time.

Monster Hunter: World is a huge game for Capcom in many ways: not only is it an online service type of game with key multiplayer elements (a massive undertaking in of itself), it's jumping over to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC as a multi-platform release. The Japanese games-maker has a lot riding on this to say the least. Monster Hunter is one of its premiere top-earning IPs in game sales, and if done right, MonHun: World could be a huge boon.

Capcom definitely understands this: that's why the game has been in development for almost four years time, way before the Nintendo Switch was revealed behind closed doors to key devs. Remember Capcom played an instrumental role in helping the Switch grow...but even then the company says it's not necessarily the right platform for their new online Monster Hunter.

Microsoft has recently revealed a big new step in its digital engagement strategy: releasing new Xbox One games directly onto Xbox Game Pass.

Right now Microsoft's Xbox division is mostly focused on engagement rather than raw hardware sales. The company has leveraged the diversity and power of its Xbox LIVE network to bring new services and player-building content such as communities and other social features in a bid to not only pull more players in, but retain them. As the industry shifts towards digital gaming for the sake of convenience (and revenue earning via full game downloads and microtransactions) it's important hardware-makers follow suit, including Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. The latter of which has taken an interesting new jump in merging its flagging exclusive games lineup with one of its core strengths: backwards compatibility and digital-based focus.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer has announced that future Xbox games like Crackdown 3, Sea of Thieves, and State of Decay 2 will be available on Xbox Game Pass, which charges gamers on a per-month basis for access to a pool of digital games. This novel step also includes future unannounced games like the next Halo, Forza and Gears of War games--as well as all future Xbox One exclusives to boot.

Bandai Namco has taken to their Twitter page to announce the beta test times release for the Xbox One version of the game.

As we know the last beta for Dragon Ball FighterZ had several problems with online connectivity, this resulted in the players being unable to jump into the online fighting action. Bandai Namco has made up for this by releasing a second beta for Xbox One users that missed out.

The new beta is going to run for a total of 24 hours, beginning on January 23 at 9pm PST and ending on January 24 at 9pm PST.

IGN has sat down with the directors of the upcoming Monster Hunter World and discussed whether or not the title could be in the pipeline for heading to the Nintendo Switch.

Kaname Fujioka and Yuya Tokuda, directors for Monster Hunter World has said that due to the development time of their upcoming title, there is currently no plans for it to arrive on the Nintendo Switch.

The main reasoning for the title to not be released on the hybrid console is due to the fact that the Switch was not even announced when the team started developing the game. The directors elaborate more on this by saying:

Cory Barlog, creative director at Santa Monica Studios has taken to Sonys PlayStation Blog to announce a confirmed release date for God of War.

Barlog announces the launch date for April 20th and to go with the announcement of the date, a new story trailer has been released for the game.

The story trailer gives some insight into the relationship between Atreus and Kratos, and also provides us with some small amounts of action.

AMD has finally announced that they've appointed Mike Rayfield as their new Senior Vice President and General Manager of Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), alongside David Wang who will act as Senior Vice President of Engineering. Both of the new RTG members will report directly to Lisa Su.

Rayfield will handle the strategy and business management side of AMD's graphics business, something that includes consumer graphics, professional graphics, and semi-custom products. Wang will handle graphics engineering, with his tasks including technical strategy, architecture, hardware and software for all graphics-related products made by AMD.

Lisa Su, President and CEO of AMD said in a press release: "Mike and David are industry leaders who bring proven track records of delivering profitable business growth and leadership product roadmaps. We enter 2018 with incredible momentum for our graphics business based on the full set of GPU products we introduced last year for the consumer, professional, and machine learning markets. Under Mike and David's leadership, I am confident we will continue to grow the footprint of Radeon across the gaming, immersive, and GPU compute markets".

With a game that has sold just under 28 million copies and daily see's over 2 million playing at a given time, it's fair to say there will be some people who really want that chicken dinner and use cheats to ensure they get it. Who am I kidding, there is A LOT of people who cheat in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and if you believe The PUBG Development and Community Team, things are about to change.

Recently in a post on the official Battlegrounds forums, PUBG developer 'PUBG_Hawkinz' has said that since 1.0 release, the development team has prioritized a fair and competitive environment for gamers.

"We recently discovered a new pattern of cheats in action. This week, we performed a thorough gameplay data review of 10 million players and completed analysis of tens of millions of data logs. Through this exercise, we were able to identify over 100,000 instances of the new pattern related to use of cheat and now we have confirmed that it was clearly an attempt of compromising our game. These players will be permanently banned in a single wave. This is an example of additional measures we will be taking on top of the basic detection systems in place."

It is only a few more days until Dragon Ball FighterZ gets fully released, and in order to keep the anticipation high Bandai Namco has put out a launch trailer and a character trailer for Android 21.

We already know that Dragon Ball FighterZ will be featuring a story mode but some were confused on how the new character Android 21 would fit into that since she is a completely original to the game.

According to the description of the launch video, players will "Join Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta and the rest of the squad as they take on a mysterious new foe, Android 21."

People that follow Steam Early Access releases know that some titles can get stuck in this development phase and never see a full release. Well Rust is now not one of them as the game is due for release on February 8.

Facepunch founder, Garry Newman, has announced this news on a blog post explaining that the game will be leaving Steam Early Access but in no regard is it a completed product.

Newman says that Rust will be breaking into two separate versions, one for bleeding edge updates and another for the main game which would be more stable.

Ubisoft has revealed the official PC requirements for their upcoming Far Cry 5, they have said that the game will automatically detect users' hardware and calibrate for optimal performance.

According to Ubisoft's official news post on their Far Cry 5 website, the game will be featuring what seems to be everything that a PC gamer wants when it comes to customization for optimal performance.

Kirill Bragin, the PC version producer on Far Cry 5 was quoted in the news post and said "In order to help ensure PC players have the best experience possible, the Benchmark feature and video memory usage meter will help you analyze your system and calibrate the myriad visual options, including variant aspect ratio support, FOV adjustment, optional FPS locking, and resolution scaling."

Yuji Naka, who's credited with programming and helming the original Sonic games and basically pioneering the Blue Blur's definitive gaming experience, is now working with Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix on something new.

While Naka didn't actually jump from SEGA to Square Enix--he left the company in 2006 to start up his own indie studio called Probe--the move is quite interesting to say the least. Square Enix is gearing up for a number of games in its next fiscal slate and beyond, some of which we actually know about (Final Fantasy VII: Remake, another NieR game, Octopath Traveler, the new Marvel Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy game, etc) but Yuji Naka's project might be one of the mystery ones left in the dark.

"Just a quick note to let you know, I joined SQUARE ENIX in January. I'm joining game development as before, and strive to develop games at SQUARE ENIX. I aim to develop an enjoyable game, please look forward to it," Naka wrote on Twitter.

Stardew Valley, the beloved Harvest Moon-esque game of growing crops and managing a ranch, has become the best-selling game download on the Nintendo Switch in 2017...beating out the games-makers own titles.

Stardew Valley was the most downloaded Switch game of last year--that's according to Nintendo's announcement which was highlighted in a new report published by SuperData's senior analyst Elena Fedina. The firm highlights that the indie sensation has sold over 3.5 million units to date, and in January 2018 alone the active playerbase has jumped 13% year-over-year to 700,000 players.

What's the secret to Stardew Valley's success? Dedication, love, and scratching a particular itch gamers have been feeling for years. "[The game's] success is also the result of an incredible amount of work and dedication," Fedina writes in the report.

At CES 2018, HTC announced its new Vive Pro headset, which bumps the resolution of the VR peripheral along with a few other nifty features. But will gamers need a beefier rig to support it? Not technically, but it might be a good idea to look at upgrades regardless.

Although the Vive Pro will actually retain the same minimum PC spec requirements as the Vive (GTX 970 or R9 290, 8GB of RAM, Intel i5-4590, etc), you probably shouldn't try to skate by with the bare minimum--especially with bigger studios like Bethesda porting over Fallout 4 and Doom to the platform. Sure you'd be able to functionally run the game, but there's no guarantee of good performance, and any kind of stutters or hitches can seriously break the immersion.

Interestingly enough an HTC rep says the recommended specs for the Vive Pro haven't been set in stone yet. In fact the PC requirements for the new headset are likely to shift above the classic model, but the minimum specs will stay the same. "We have a minimum spec and a recommended spec, we haven't revealed recommended yet but those are two different things," senior HTC VR marketing manager J.B. McRee told Upload VR in a recent interview.

NBA All-Star Paul George's new premium basketball shoes are inspired from the classic PS2.

Sony has endorsed the PG-2s, a new shoe that Nike and the NBA's Paul George crafted in a bid to highlight the glory of the old-school PlayStation days. The Nike PG-2 colorway has a light-up panel with the PlayStation logo that can pulse with cool blue light--but the best part is that it's activated via a power button behind the tongue of the shoe.

In terms of color and style, the basketball shoes look straight out of the early PS2 days, and feature accents and hues that both match the current and yesteryear look of the PlayStation brand.