The Halo franchise is breaking the FPS barrier for the first time with a new dedicated third-person mode.

Halo has always been a first-person shooter first and foremost. Sure the series has toe-dipped with third-person views, namely when operating vehicles or picking up huge turrets, but you're still playing most of the game in that eyes-on view. That is until now.

343 Industries recently announced Halo Infinite is getting its own third-person mode sometime in November 2024. The new view fundamentally changes gameplay by giving players more optics on their environments. Halo senior community manager John Junyszek has a quick explanation: "You have more awareness, you get to see your Spartan." That last part is important for 343 because the studio continues to sell cosmetic microtransactions for Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer.

Electronic Arts is leaning harder into user-generated content economies a la Minecraft and Roblox, and soon Sims players will be able to buy new content bundles.

EA's recent investor's day had a lot to say about AI and user-generated content. The billion-dollar publisher intends to use generative AI to supercharge the production of UGC (or what it calls UGX--User Generated Experiences). The idea is that AI tools could help accelerate the creation of these custom in-game levels, characters, and modes, thereby having more content on a digital market at a quicker rate.

It's unclear on whether or not this AI-driven UGX platform is coming to The Sims 4, but EA did confirm that it will not be making a traditional sequel to the franchise. The Sims 5 isn't happening, and instead, EA will elongate The Sims 4 to ensures gamers can continue their decade's worth of stories and adventures for even longer. EA is also adding a new Creator Kit economy which will allow The Sims 4 players to buy bundles of user-generated content. Think of this as a little bit like Bethesda's controversial Creation Club (aka paid mods)

Palworld is incredibly popular in China, a region where long-winded multiplayer games typically do quite well.

Palworld was one of the most surprising breakout hits of 2024. Released in January of this year, the game quickly racked up 15 million sales on Steam and reached 25 million players total in about a month after launch, becoming one of the fastest-selling video games of all time.

Interestingly enough, a significant portion of Palworld's total playerbase is in China. In a recent interview with GameRant, Pocketpair's Global Community Manager John "Bucky" Buckley revealed some surprising facts about Palworld's success in China.

FromSoftware, one of the most prestigious video game makers in Japan, has increased its base salary for all existing employees and newly-hired graduates.

Action RPG maven FromSoftware is boosting its monthly and annual salaries of existing and new employees, the company has announced. Base salary of current workers has been increased by nearly 12%, and new graduates will be offered 300,000 yen per month, which is little over $2,000 USD. That's not a lot to live on, especially if workers aim to live locally in Shinjuku City, Tokyo.

The news comes after years of discussion surrounding FromSoftware's comparatively low pay; former games journalist and NoClip documentarian Danny O' Dwyer said this on Twitter:

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund could buy up even more Nintendo stock, despite owning 8.5% of the company's shares.

The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) has invested billions of dollars in a multitude of companies over the last few years, and through its Savvy Games Group subsidiary, the PIF has even made strategic acquisitions like the mobile mega-hit-maker Scopely.

In 2022, the PIF purchased 5% of Nintendo's shares during the company's 10-for-1 stock split, representing nearly 6.5 million shares worth $3 billion. Since then, the Saudi fund has bumped up its investment to purchase 8.5% of Nintendo's total shares, which is about 111.45 million shares worth a whopping $5.8 - 6 billion. Now the PIF could further increase its investments in Nintendo and buy up even more shares of the Japanese gaming giant.

A new action RPG set in Nickelodeon's Avatar franchise is in development, but Aang won't be the main character.

The Avatar Legends multimedia universe is expanding with a brand new AAA game, sources have revealed to IGN. The project will see Paramount Game Studios team up with Saber Interactive, the label behind Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, World War Z, and the Evil Dead video game.

No official photos, images, or teasers were revealed for the game, but it was revealed that the interactive adventure will be centered around an entirely new and original Avatar--meaning Aang won't be the star. Paramount told IGN that gamers "can expect to be immersed in a vibrant world, master all four elements, engage in dynamic combat alongside companions, and experience the challenges and decisions that come with being the keeper of balance in the world."

I've just finished playing a few rounds of Overwatch 2's new Competitive Drives mode, which incentivizes OW2 players -- just like me -- to play more ranked games.

In an official blog post, developer Activision-Blizzard explained: "Each time you win a match you'll earn a drive score that is 10 times the total Skill Rank percentage gained from that match. For example, if you earn 21% toward your next tier and division, then you'll gain 210 drive points. Losing a match results in a having your drive score reduced five times the total Skill Rank percentage deduction, or half as much as a win gains. So, losing a match that costs you 19% in your competitive rank progress will deduct 95 drive points".

What if you get a crappy team (it happens, OW2 players know this all too well) and can't push your newly-earned drive points? The developer explains: "Losing matches will cause you to lose a small amount of drive progress, reaching each checkpoint guarantees your progress and rewards".

Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games, has reportedly enforced its developers to endure 7-day work weeks in a crunch time to meet heavy deadlines for Citizencon that kicks off on October 19.

Tom Henderson from Insider Gaming reports that Cloud Imperium Games sent out an email to its staff yesterday, which said that the developer needs to "double down over the next 18 days to make sure that once again we create an amazing experience for our community". This includes finalizing patch 3.42.2 for Star Citizen, as well as getting the Squadron 42 demo showcase for Chapter 1.

The email continues: "This means for the next two weekends we will be mandating extra time for all those working on deliverables for Citcon".

Konami has basically completely remade the original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater game with all-new animations and performance befit of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Konami is taking its new Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake pretty seriously, and rightly so, given the game's long-lasting legacy among MGS faithful. Announced a year ago, the MGS3 remake has generated tons of buzz and excitement among gamers for its higher-end visuals and newly upgraded animations.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, game producer Noriaki Okamura says that the team at Konami has studiously and laboriously remade nearly all of the original animations from the 20-year-old PS2-era classic. At first, Konami thought about just remastering the game and re-releasing it, similar to the HD edition from 2011.

Sonic games will continue releasing on Sony's last-gen PlayStation 4 for some time, at least until more gamers stop using the system.

Gen 9 has been one of the most transformation times in console gaming. The shift from Gen 8 to the current generation saw widespread backwards compatibility support, effectively merging the two generations together through software. As such, gamers didn't feel the need to immediately move on to the PS5, and Sony's internal data shows that half of active PlayStation users are still on PS4.

Publishers are wise to this trend, and those who want to maximize full sales potential of their games will frequently release their games across both PS4 and PS5. SEGA is one such company that prioritizes software sales, so we'll see future Sonic games cross over to both PS4 and PS5 in the foreseeable future.

Sony's new PS5 Pro was made specifically for developers, offering them much more power and flexibility to upscale games and lead into the next-gen PS6. Capcom, like many others, are excited for what they can do with the PS5 Pro's new horsepower.

The $700 PS5 Pro might have a high price tag, but it also has lots of potential for high-performance gaming. At least higher performance matched with solid 4K visuals, even if they are upscaled and not necessarily native. The real trick with the PS5 Pro is the console's new PlayStation Spectral Resolution AI library, on-chip machine learning/AI block, and beefier GPU. Developers can use the new tech to deliver higher frame rates, better visuals, and impressive RT effects--and sometimes, all three at once.

Capcom is one such developer who's interested in pushing their games to new limits. The team is currently working on its new RE neXt games engine, and it's likely Capcom is forging its upgraded games-building environment to utilize new tech like the PS5 Pro.

We've caught a glimpse of a leaked benchmark for the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, supposedly the initial 3D V-Cache processor that'll go on sale, and it's promising - though not in the way you might expect.

Mainly because this isn't a gaming benchmark, but a Cinebench result for the Ryzen 9800X3D (and 9950X3D, too) - so you may think that's not all that relevant to X3D chips which are really desired due to their PC gaming prowess.

Well, that's true to an extent, but there are buyers of models like the popular 7800X3D in the past who have lamented that the CPU might be top-notch for gaming, but for everyday workloads it isn't all that hot.

You've probably noticed that AMD's current-gen graphics cards have been getting a lot of discounts lately across the mid-to-higher-end models.

So, is now the time to pounce on the RDNA 3 model you've been eyeing for a while? Well, perhaps - but maybe not, we'd suggest.

Before we get into that though, what about those discounts themselves? The latest deal we've seen is the flagship of the RDNA 3 family getting reduced by $60 at Newegg so it's $870 - this is the XFX Speedster Merc310 version of the RX 7900 XTX (as VideoCardz noticed), and it comes with a two game bundle (Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 and Unknown 9: Awakening).

The time has finally come to switch off one of the instruments aboard one of the greatest ongoing scientific achievements of the human race.

NASA officially launched the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1977, and since then, it has been sending valuable scientific data back to Earth from interstellar space or beyond our solar system. NASA has been receiving Voyager 2's scientific data for 47 years, which makes the spacecraft the oldest active space probe. So far, Voyager 2 has traveled 12.8 billion miles away from Earth, and throughout its journey, it used several scientific instruments to measure the giant planets in the 1980s.

After completing that mission NASA switched off those instruments as they weren't useful in Voyager 2's new mission which was and still is to measure interstellar space. Voyager 2 is powered by plutonium, and it decays every year. NASA explained that Voyager 2's power source loses about 4 watts of power each year and that NASA teams have been working to postpone the time when more instruments aboard Voyager 2 would need to be shut down to conserve power for the overall mission.

Ubisoft's continuous downward spiral is seemingly only gaining speed, with the latest speed boost coming from the company Monetization Director for Ubisoft, who took to LinkedIn to call gamers critiquing the company and its products "non-decent human[s]".

A quick summary of Ubisoft's recent nose-diving begins with the unveiling of Assassin's Creed Shadows, which quickly gained controversy for numerous allegations that Ubisoft was mispresenting Japanese heritage through unpopular artistic design choices. Additionally, Ubisoft admitted that Star Wars Outlaws underperformed sales wise, and the controversy with Assassin's Creed Shadows reached a boiling point that the game is now officially delayed until February next year.

These company woes have also spawned an internal investigation and review by company board members. All of these bumps in the road have caused Ubisoft's share price to plummet more than 50% in just the last two months, causing the company's board of directors to launch an internal review of the company's performance which will likely result in a reshuffling of staff.

UPDATE - "User security and privacy are top priorities for Pixel. You can manage data sharing, app permissions and more during device setup and in your settings. This report lacks crucial context, misinterprets technical details and doesn't fully explain that data transmissions are needed for legitimate services on all mobile devices regardless of the manufacturer, model or OS, such as software updates, on-demand features and personalized experiences," emailed a Google spokesperson

A new report from Cybernews has focussed on the web traffic between Google and its latest flagship smartphone, the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL.

The report states that cybersecurity researchers at Cybernews analyzed the Pixel 9 Pro XL's web traffic and determined that even before any app is installed, the smartphone sends private user data back to Google servers. More specifically, the analysis found "Every 15 minutes, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL sends a data packet to Google" and within this packet of data is private information such as a users email address, phone number, location, network status, and other telemetry data.

Ubisoft had an ambitious plan to go all-in on the Assassin's Creed franchise with 10 new games in the next 5 years, but this roadmap may have been delayed and disrupted by the publisher's recent performance.

French games-maker Ubisoft is at an interesting crossroads right now. The company's share value tanked by over 50% in the last 2 months, with investors disappointed by recent events; two of Ubisoft's new games, Star Wars Outlaws and XDefiant, missed projections, and its big Assassin's Creed Shadows game was delayed outside of the holiday season. The sales misses caused an executive-level review of the company that may have led to the elimination/departure of a key Rainbow Six franchise executive.

Ubisoft is said to seek options to stabilize its business, and is even mulling over taking the company private with the help of Tencent, who now owns 49.9% of Ubisoft's largest stakeholder.

More than 60 games will be enhanced on Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro, developers and publishers have revealed.

Everyone is buzzing about the new $700 PS5 Pro, and the conversation isn't all about the price tag. Developers have been confirming their support for the new high-end PlayStation, and the list of upgraded games has tripled in size since the console's original announcement.

Multiple AAA games have now been added to the PS5 Pro Enhanced list, but the games will leverage the Pro's extra horsepower in different ways. Some games will double-down on visuals, others will try to hit 60FPS with 4K upscaling, and even more will achieve a mix of RT and fidelity utilizing the Pro's new PlayStation Spectral Resolution library and the new dedicated ML block that's been added right onto the GPU.

Digital Foundry, the tech experts that are widely considered to be the gold standard when it comes to gaming hardware and software breakdowns, has managed to get unfettered access to Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part 2 port for the PS5. The tech experts have pitted Sony's new PSSR upscaling technology on the PS5 Pro against the standard PS5, and the results are either super interesting or completely negligible.

Sony's announcement of the PS5 Pro wasn't very well received by fans for various reasons, with most complaints pointing to the price of the console and its increase in graphical fidelity versus the standard PS5. Digital Foundry has now put that to the test with The Last of Us Part 2, and the results were surprising. The tech experts discovered that the PS5 Pro and its PSSR provided sharper image fidelity than the standard PS5. Additionally, the PS5 Pro generated smoother image stability than the PS5 while also maintaining a higher FPS.

While these results are good and what we would expect out of a substantially more expensive console, Digital Foundry does point out that viewing distances and display sizes will dramatically impact whether these graphical improvements are even seen. Comments on the Digital Foundry video point out these graphical differences between the Pro and Standard consoles can only be really seen when the image is zoomed in on and that if a gamer is playing on a TV at a viewing distance of greater than six feet, it will be extremely difficult to notice any improvement.

YouTube has confirmed it's responsible for deleting thousands of accounts and videos that were mistakenly flagged as violations against its terms of service.

9to5Google pointed out that many YouTube account holders reported the loss of access to YouTube content. These reports were quickly followed up by YouTube in a support thread that confirmed bugs were present and they were affecting many aspects of the platform such as access to paid features such as YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, and YouTube Music.

Additionally, the bugs also affected other YouTube features, such as playlists. Along with the deleted of specific channels these bugs also removed videos from the platform. Reports indicate that affected users were sent unclear instructions by YouTube that ultimately weren't helpful in the recovery of their accounts. Additionally, another user claimed there was no way to lodge an appeal of the decision by YouTube.