Gaming News - Page 1

Amazon reveals its Twitch Prime freebies for March 2021, and the offering includes one of the most visceral indie games ever made.

Prepare yourself for penitence! Blasphemous, the brutal platformer from The Game Kitchen, will be available free for all Amazon Prime subscribers on March 1. Just link your account to Twitch Prime to unlock this stylish, blood-soaked indie.

While you're at it, be sure to grab the huge SNK game pack while it's still free. The collection includes a ton of classic games from franchises like Metal Slug, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, and Samurai Shodown. The SNK pack will be available free until March 31.

Sony plans to unlock the PlayStation 5's expandable SSD storage slot this summer, sources tell Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki.

The PlayStation 5's limited storage is a pain point that's caused headaches since the system launched. The PS5 console ships with a 825GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, but only 667GB of it is usable. That's not much considering games like Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War and Cyberpunk 2077 take up over 100GB a piece. Luckily, the console has an expansion slot that supports high-end PC-grade NVMe PC SSDs, but the M.2 port is currently inactive because only specialized premium drives will work with the console. The PS5 requires expansion SSDs that match or exceed the base 5.5GB/sec I/O speeds, which are made possible by the console's custom 10-channel memory controller. Sony cautions gamers not to buy NVMe SSDs for PS5 expansion until they formally announce compatibility lists.

"We will be supporting certain M.2 SSDs. These are internal drives you can get on the open market and install in a bay on the PlayStation 5. They connect to the custom I/O unit just like our SSD does so they can take full advantage of the decompression, I/O co-processors, and all the other features," PlayStation 5 architect Mark Cerny said in March 2020.

Destiny 2 will get cross-play this fall, allowing Xbox, PlayStation, and PC gamers to play together in PVE and Crucible.

Bungie just outlined a bunch of content and changes coming to Destiny 2 in Season 14 and Season 15. The major changes for Season 14, which kicks off in May, includes tweaks across subclasses, the return of the classic Vault of Glass raid, and a new lowered power cap raise by 10.

Season 15 is where things really start to heat up. Cross-play is finally coming to Destiny 2 to complement cross-saves, and this feature will usher in a new level of consistent engagement across the live game. Bungie didn't give an exact date when cross-play will be implemented, but Season 15 should start sometime around mid-August of this year.

A new report from Bloomberg outlines what exactly went wrong with Stadia, painting a grim picture of overreaching, overspending, and mismanagement.

Just a year after release, Google has pulled the plug on Stadia and closed all first-party studios. The service is now a storefront platform rather than the innovative new ecosystem that Google promised would go up against PlayStation, Xbox, and the Nintendo Switch. That plan failed for many reasons.

Sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that Stadia was rife with mismanagement. Google shelled out millions acquiring studios and setting up first-party games (which were later cancelled, with the studios defunded and closed) in a whirlwind of spending. Rather than starting small, Google rushed the market with a pocket full of cash, overpromises, content, and innovative features.

Eager to break farther into mobile gaming, Square Enix is making a Final Fantasy 7 battle royale game for iOS and Android. Yes, really.

With Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier, Square Enix hopes to tap the billion-dollar market that PUBG Mobile (and soon, Apex Legends) has been enjoying. The game is a mix of first-person and third-person shooter, complete with action-based combat straight out of games like Final Fantasy XV and FF7 Remake.

Classic magical spells like firaga, thundaga, blizzaga, and barrier also show in combat, offering a unique mix of unorthodox gunplay and wizadry. There looks to be both PVP chaos and PVE boss battles lifted straight out of the most recent Final Fantasy releases.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is coming to the PlayStation 5 as a next-gen re-release, but it won't be cheap.

Square Enix is bringing Final Fantasy 7 Remake over to the PS5 with high-end features like a 4K graphics mode, a 60FPS mode, overhauled texture, lighting, and weather effects, and ultra-fast loading via the system's 5.5GB/sec PCIe 4.0 SSD. Sadly, the publisher is also embracing the new $69.99 standard for next-gen games.

The company's storefront confirms the new $69.99 price tag, and we should expect new mainline Square Enix titles to adopt this pricing on next-gen hardware (although Outriders, the new game from People Can Fly, is $59.99 on PS5).

March 2021's free PlayStation Plus lineup was just revealed, and it's one of the best in the service's history with Square Enix's blockbuster Final Fantasy 7 Remake headlining the collection. There's just one small catch.

Starting Tuesday, March 2, PlayStation Plus owners can grab the massively popular Final Fantasy 7 Remake for free. This is the PS4 version, though, and won't include any upgrades. In fact, the free PS Plus version isn't eligible for FF7 Remake's free PS5 upgrade when it releases on June 10, 2021.

If you download FF7R on PS Plus, the only way you can play it on PS5 is if you re-buy the new next-gen Final Fantasy 7 Integrade re-release. It's a bit of a bummer but the upside is your PS4 saves can cross over to the PS5 version.

PUBG is still one of the most-played games in the world, with KRAFTON, Inc. announcing the "next evolution of Battle Royale on mobile" with the introduction of PUBG: NEW STATE. Check out the pre-order trailer:

PUBG: NEW STATE wipes the slate clean with some of the mechanics and feels stronger after a nice hot chicken for dinner and a Red Bull to perk you up, with new "dynamic gunplay that is easy to learn, but hard to master". The developer teases that there are new features that "evolve the battle royale experience like never before".

We can expect "ultra-realistic graphics that push the limits of mobile gaming", making more sense of the continued push into gaming smartphones from the likes of ASUS and Razer. PUBG: NEW STATE has been completely built and optimized for mobile play, which is unfortunate because a large portion of PUBG players are on PC.

It's official: Final Fantasy 7 Remake is coming to the PlayStation 5, and PS4 owners get a free next-gen upgrade.

A next-gen version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake is coming June 10, 2021 for PlayStation 5, complete with high-end optimizations. The game will have two modes: a 4K mode that prioritizes graphics and visuals, and a 60FPS mode that boosts frame rates--which is a big deal for an action game like FF7R. Other tweaks include ultra-fast loading via the PS5's SSD (the game will load in just seconds), new atmospheric fog and lighting effects, and improved textures.

Square Enix is offering a free next-gen upgrade to anyone who bought the PS4 version, and your saves will transfer over. There's also a normal difficulty for classic mode and a photo mode to boot.

Dragon Age 4 has shifted development twice now, and like most games, the process hasn't been straightforward. Here's a closer look at what's happened since the game entered development in 2015.

The next Dragon Age is in full swing at BioWare, and will be the next game the developer releases. But like Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda, and Dragon Age Inquisition before it, the game has changed and morphed over the last 6 or so years--so much that key BioWare executives have left the company after decades' long tenures.

After today's news that Dragon Age is now a singleplayer-only game, I thought it important to outline and chronicle all the major changes and updates with the game and BioWare's development environment in the last few years.