Far Cry 5 will have convenience microtransactions

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Mar 4, 2018 4:45 PM CST

Surprising absolutely no one, Far Cry 5 will indeed have optional time-saving packages that gamers can buy from a digital storefront.

Far Cry 5 will have convenience microtransactions

Back in May 2017 Ubisoft flat out confirmed that all of its games will be powered by live services, even singleplayer games. So the recent confirmation that Far Cry 5 will have a similar monetization model as Assassin's Creed: Origins shouldn't be shocking one bit--in fact I expected as such, especially with Far Cry 5's full online co-operative element. Remember that Ubisoft loves cashing in on engagement, and multiplayer is a massive driver for engagement--even co-op action.

"All our games now are bringing live operations," said Ubisoft CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot in the financial report. "But the operations are all different. Ghost Recon's live operations are different from Rainbow Six's, and will be different from Assassin's Creed. Clearly the philosophy of all the games that we make is to be able to justify and bring live operations to titles for as long as we think it fits for the game."

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Sony emphasizes first-party games in next fiscal year

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Mar 4, 2018 3:24 PM CST

Sony has recently announced a few key changes to its executive teams and that the company's gaming division will target more emphasis on its first-party game releases.

Sony emphasizes first-party games in next fiscal year

Now that current Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai is leaving Sony by April 1, the company has outlined a new roadmap that sees its various American, European, and Japanese branches working closer together than ever before. All of the branches--SIEA, SIEE, and SIEJA--marketing divisions will report directly to company deputy president and global sales/marketing exec Jim Ryan. Current Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO John Kodera will handle the American and Japanese segments whereas Ryan will spearhead the European markets.

Although Sony has yet to announce its new Mid-Year Plan--which typically outlines 4 or so years of planned operations and strategies--for the PlayStation brand, the company did state that its first-party slate of games is more important than ever.

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Dell boss laughs at AMD, says Intel is the 'dominant player'

Anthony Garreffa | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Mar 4, 2018 3:09 AM CST

AMD might have had a good year in 2017 with its new Zen-based line up of CPUs through Ryzen, Threadripper and EPYC, but this wasn't enough to impress OEMs from building machines round Ryzen.

Dell boss laughs at AMD, says Intel is the 'dominant player'

Now we have Dell EMC's CTO, John Roese, saying that "Intel is the big player, AMD is the second player. There's enough diversity between them that there are use cases to have them both in our portfolio, but just the sheer breadth of the Intel processor portfolio is massive compared to even the accelerated AMD world". He's not wrong, but it's still surprising to see.

It's not all doom and gloom about AMD from Dell, as he added: "AMD is doing some interesting things, and by adding them to the portfolio we pick up a few extra areas, but let's be very clear: there is a huge, dominant player in compute semiconductors, and then there is a challenger which is doing some very good innovative work called AMD, but the gap between them is quite large in terms of market share and use-cases. So our portfolio is not going to change in any meaningful way".

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Summon a 'Thor: Ragnarok' Blu-ray for free

Ben Gourlay | Contests & Giveaways | Mar 3, 2018 10:00 PM CST

To celebrate the release of 'Thor: Ragnarok', we have five Blu-ray copies of the film to give away thanks to our friends at Walt Disney Home Entertainment.

Summon a 'Thor: Ragnarok' Blu-ray for free

Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe without his mighty hammer and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok-the destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilization-at the hands of an all-powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela. But first he must survive a deadly gladiatorial contest that pits him against his former ally and fellow Avenger-the Incredible Hulk!

Thor: Ragnarok is directed by Taika Waititi and returns Chris Hemsworth starring as Thor and Tom Hiddleston reprising his role as Loki. They are joined by Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson and Karl Urban, with Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Hopkins.

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AMD Ryzen 7 2700X teased, 8C/16T at up to 4.2GHz

Anthony Garreffa | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Mar 3, 2018 4:55 AM CST

AMD will be launching their refreshed Ryzen 7 2000-series later this year, with a new tease leaking out about the Ryzen 7 2700X that it will be packing the same 8C/16T as the current-gen Ryzen 7 1700X, but have turbo clocks of up to 4.2GHz.

AMD Ryzen 7 2700X teased, 8C/16T at up to 4.2GHz

AMD's current Ryzen 7 1700X is an 8C/16T processor with a base CPU clock of 3.4GHz and boost CPU clock of 3.8GHz, but the new Ryzen 7 2700X will have base clocks of 3.7GHz, while the boost clocks will not only hit 4GHz but fly a little higher to 4.1GHz.

There are other entries of the Ryzen 7 2700X at 4.2GHz, so we should expect a larger punch in the frequency department. My insider sources have told me there "won't be much performance" increases with the new Ryzen 7 2000-series processors, so we'll have to wait and see how big the difference is between 3.8GHz boost on the 1700X and the purported 4.2GHz on the 2700X.

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Sea of Thieves hit with another scale test ahead of launch

Jak Connor | Gaming | Mar 2, 2018 6:00 AM CST

Rare has decided that Sea of Thieves needs another scale test before its launch, this time the test will be conducted on March 4th in just a couple days.

Sea of Thieves hit with another scale test ahead of launch

Microsoft and Rare are working tirelessly to make the Sea of Thieves launch to be a stable one as all of the previous server tests provided them with a great amount of information. These scale tests are designed to put major strain on the server, this is done by allowing a large amount of players to join but unfortunately for the players this causes performance issues for everyone involved.

Rare has taken to their Sea of Thieves website to announce the news, saying that the scale test will be running from Friday, March 2nd, at 2 a.m. PT until Sunday, March 4th, at 2 a.m. PT.

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Mulaka receives a trailer with its debut to the Switch

Jak Connor | Gaming | Mar 2, 2018 5:00 AM CST

Mulaka released on the Nintendo Switch yesterday and to celebrate the launch Nintendo have released a new trailer for the title.

Mulaka receives a trailer with its debut to the Switch

The trailer appears to be quite similar to that of The Legend of Zelda: Breathe of the Wild but definitely does have a certain uniqueness to it.

The third-person action adventure that is based on Mexican mythology takes players through "the rich indigenous culture of the Tarahumara." For those that do not know what Mulaka is the description reads as such "Renowned for their impressive running abilities, embark on the journey of a Sukurúame - a Tarahumara shaman - as you fight back the foulness corrupting the land, while drawing upon the powers of demigods. Mulaka is available now on Nintendo Switch!"

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Super Mario Odyssey game files show new unreleased costumes

Jak Connor | Gaming | Mar 2, 2018 4:00 AM CST

Nintendo Switch data-miners have delved into Super Mario Odyssey files and discovered a bunch of new unreleased costumes. These costumes are planned to be released at later dates.

Super Mario Odyssey game files show new unreleased costumes

According to the data-miners, these files have already been downloaded by players and have been implemented into the game but have been blocked by Nintendo servers.

We can assume that based on some of the costumes titles and descriptions that costumes such as the Santa outfit will be released at their respective times. What also could be speculated is that some of the costumes that don't have a respective event will be added in with a new mini-game or even a new kingdom, this is not confirmed as of yet but just a guess towards how Nintendo will release some of these very cool costume ideas.

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Blizzard teases Diablo 3 coming to the Nintendo Switch

Jak Connor | Gaming | Mar 2, 2018 3:00 AM CST

Blizzard have taken to Twitter to tease their entire audience on Diablo 3 coming to the Nintendo Switch. A gif was released showing a Diablo themed night light being turned on and off.

Blizzard teases Diablo 3 coming to the Nintendo Switch

The post from Blizzard certainly is confusing and does come across as slightly random, but when looked at as a marketing post for a future game release the picture comes together much more nicely. The post captioned "Sweet Dream" features a gif of someone switching on and off their Diablo themed night light, this could suggest that Diablo is coming to the Nintendo Switch.

On the other hand, this post could also be interpreted the opposite way, as the caption says "Sweet Dreams" this could also suggest that the Diablo themed night light is just a random post by Blizzard. This side of the debate is backed up by a post made by South Park that said "Nin-ten-do. I'm coming. I'm coming, Nin-ten-do #blizzard2017." Everyone thought that this meant a South Park game was coming to the Switch, unfortunately it was just a 'joke' post that never had any further meaning.

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Overwatch teases Brigitte, Torbjorns daughter makes a debut

Jak Connor | Gaming | Mar 2, 2018 2:00 AM CST

Following up on the speculation that the next Overwatch hero is a cat or Torbjorns daughter can now be done, as we now have confirmation from Blizzard that Brigitte Lindholm is on the way.

Overwatch teases Brigitte, Torbjorns daughter makes a debut

On the Overwatch YouTube channel, Blizzard have released two videos, one video is a origin story of Brigitte and the other is a Developer update which is narrated by Jeff Kaplan.

From both of the videos we can understand that Brigitte will be falling into the defensive/support role, much like Reinhadt. Brigitte and Reinhardt are tied in two as from the origin story we discover that "Eventually, she realized that serving only as a mechanic wasn't enough, and that the best way she could aid Reinhardt was to become a warrior in her own right. While Reinhardt trained her in combat, Brigitte began to build her own suit of armor in secret."

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