Gaming News - Page 1

Blizzard reiterates something that most gamers already knew: Diablo IV is meant to be a never-ending live service game, and Blizzard is ready to serve up tons of content year-round.

Yesterday Blizzard confirmed that Diablo IV will two forms of monetization: an optional premium currency used to purchase cosmetic microtransactions, and paid season passes that will give cosmetic rewards. This will fund the most ambitious content expansion in Diablo history with tons of seasonal updates.

Blizzard recently said that it has an "army of developers" ready to bombard players with Diablo IV content. The game will expand with seasonal structure that sees 4 seasons a year. Every 3 months, gamers will get a bunch of new free content to consume and digest including new items, quality-of-life improvements, questlines and characters, and randomized events to make things interesting. Seasons are also like Ladders in Diablo II and require players to restart a brand new character for the 3-month term.

Datamined info suggests that Sony could be preparing its own PlayStation games launcher on PC. If true, Sony has a unique opportunity to unify PlayStation consoles with the PC platform...but it'll take a lot of planning to pull it off.

Sony has broken down its walled garden and is now sharing its precious, once-console exclusive games to PC. It's a good business plan; selling games on as many platforms as possible means more revenues. It's doing well so far, and Sony expects to make $300 million from PC this year.

There's just one thing missing: Console-to-PC integration. Right now gamers have to buy titles on Steam or the Epic Games Store, both of which are segregated from the PlayStation platform. Cross-platform integration is where the real money is. Sony could solve this issue with its own PlayStation PC launcher, which could unify consoles and services together in an ecosystem. It won't be easy...and it could be pretty costly. But if done right, Sony could make the most out of the PC platform.

The games industry is a wild place. Often developers, publishers, and platform-holders will make big-budget marketing and exclusivity deals that are typically hush-hush. Things get really interesting when two separate companies publish the same game on different platforms. Case in point: Death Stranding, which is coming to Xbox Game Pass in a few days.

The Xbox Game Pass Twitter made it obvious that Death Stranding was coming over, but it's still kind of surprising. Sony paid big bucks to fund and publish the game on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, keeping Kojima Productions' first game off of Xbox for an undetermined period of time. Then 505 Games got publishing rights for the game on PC, releasing the game on Steam and the Epic Games Store. Now 505 Games is releasing Death Stranding on Xbox Game Pass, which is a direct billion-dollar competitor to the PlayStation empire.

Death Stranding will be available on Xbox Game Pass for PC on August 23, 2022 at 12am UTC / 5pm PT / 1am BST / 9am JST.

NVIDIA has pushed out a big new update for GeForce NOW, which drives up the support for higher resolutions and frame rates inside of your Chrome browser on the PC.

The company is really pushing for gamers to be more addicted than ever before, where NVIDIA says game streaming through GeForce NOW is the "easiest way to spice up a boring study session". NVIDIA's new update for GeForce NOW can stream all of the best PC games across virtually all devices... including low-powered PCs with games running inside of the Chrome or Edge web browser.

NVIDIA says that its top-tier "RTX 3080" members can "level up their browser gameplay" to a huge 1440p resolution (2560 x 1440) and 120FPS. You don't need an app installed at all, since you just need to open up a Chrome or Edge browser on your PC and go to play.geforcenow.com to select the new resolution and refresh rates in the GeForce NOW "Settings" menu. No downloads, no hassles, just gaming.

STALKER 2 developer GSC Game World has teamed with Ukrainian supermarket chain Silpo, in opening a new STALKER-themed Silpo grocery store in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Inside the STALKER-themed Silpo grocery store you'll find artwork, props, and even foodstuffs themed from STALKER. Walking around, and shopping in the supermarket must feel like you're literally in the middle of a store inside of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Not only is there the regular grocery shopping area of the STALKER-themed Silpo grocery store, but there's a shop called "Vlasna Confectionary" that sells coffee, drinks, pizza, pastries, and sweets to eat and drink while they're shopping. There's also a "Traditional Shop" that sells products that were manufactured by Ukrainian companies.

Bandai Namco executives say the publisher will be more selective in what games it chooses to develop and release in the future.

Most games companies saw a drop in earnings in Q1...but Bandai Namco was an exception. The company made $692 million on digital games in Q1, up over 130% year-over-year, driven by strong sales of games like Elden Ring (which is at 16.6 million copies sold now). Bandai Namco wants to keep the ball rolling and has assured investors that it will be more selective in the development projects that it invests in--an interesting comment since Bandai is jumping headlong into the nascent metaverse.

The implication is that Bandai Namco will double-down on more popular IPs and franchises instead of stray too far away with risky, unproven content. The Japanese publisher makes most of its revenues from Dragon Ball (about $1.12 billion in FY21) and Gundam ($800 million), however Elden Ring is a breakout success, and there's fan-favorite IPs like One Piece, Kamen Rider, and Naruto to consider. What makes Bandai Namco interesting is that these revenues aren't all from games and also include toys/models and other merch.

Bandai Namco offers more details on its upcoming NFT and metaverse plans, confirms the first metaverse will be set in the Gundam franchise.

Bandai Namco sees opportunity with the metaverse and NFTs. The company has ambitions to create metaverses for each of its most popular franchises including Dragon Ball, Gundam. and possibly even Tekken. Bandai Namco's idea of a metaverse is a kind of hub that integrates gaming, merchandise, and digital content in a social sphere where gamers can connect, buy, and play.

The first metaverse will be based on Gundam. It's called Side-G and is a kind of galaxy with multiple "colonies" for different activities and content; one colony will be for esports, another for Gunpla models, and even one for games. In a new Q&A session, Bandai Namco tells investors that its metaverses, and incoming NFTs that are incorporated into the metaverses, are not meant for speculative purposes--e.g. trying to make thousands of dollars with artificial scarcity.

Amazon has leaked the full extent of Dead Island 2's details presumably ahead of a big Gamescom reveal.

Dead Island 2 isn't dead. We've known that for a while, but it's still great to see game's grave is empty. New leaks from Amazon confirm Dead Island 2 will shamble onto marketplaces and store shelves in February 2023 and bring ridiculous, over-the-top mayhem with it.

Amazons accidentally published Dead Island 2's game page ahead of schedule, revealing pricing ($69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S), release date (February 3, 2023), and a ton game details. We've collected the details in an easy-to-read list below.

Elden Ring's continued success helps Bandai Namco earn $312 million in game sales, up more than 50% year-over-year.

Elden Ring is one of the best-selling games in recent memory and one of Bandai Namco's most powerful titles. In a recent Q1 presentation (Japanese), Bandai Namco confirms that Elden Ring has sold a total of 16.6 million copies worldwide across PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Since the last figure was 13.4 million as of FY21's end on March 31, 2022, the new numbers indicate Elden Ring moved about 3.2 million copies during April - June.

Bandai Namco's total digital entertainment revenues are up over 134% year-over-year to $692.418 million driven in no small part by Elden Ring's success. In fact, the game made up nearly 1/3rd of total game volume sales during the period. Bandai Namco also saw significant boosts in total digital gaming profits, which hit a new all-time high of $227.28 million.

Meta spent $18 billion on...this? Mark Zuckerberg shares a bewildering image of its hopeful metaverse world that backfires as gamers, users, and consumers lampoon its hollow and outdated portrayal.

Meta's new Horizon Worlds is looking rough. The image speaks for itself and reminds me of those fake DS game covers that often pop up on game forums back in the mid-2000's. Meta has used Facebook's billion-dollar ad revenue to fund Horizon Worlds, a new platform that it hopes will pioneer the metaverse. The company, who changed their name from the one of the most iconic compound words in modern history to a moniker that reflect its new evangelized platform, spent $18 billion on its VR/metaverse plans since 2020.

Meanwhile, Fortnite is running laps around Horizon Worlds with its usage of pop-culture references and continual expansion. Sure Fortnite is an actual game and Horizon Worlds is a watered-down version of PlayStation Home that aims to be ultra-monetized with cosmetics and eventually advertisements, but the integration of cross-media references and cultural icons remains the same and Meta could learn important lessons from Epic Games.