Gaming News - Page 1

Microsoft's big new first-party games like Everwild, Perfect Dark, and Fable may not release in 2022, and the company might be making third-party deals to fill the void in its lineup.

It may be a while before the bulk of Xbox's new high-profile exclusives are ready--in fact, some of the games are a long ways away. That's according to GamesIndustry.biz writer Christopher Dring, who cites sources at Xbox's global studios teams.

"I've had a few conversations with a few friends at Xbox studios. Those games they've announced--Everwild, Perfect Dark, Fable--are so far away, as in there might even be a new Xbox by the time those games come out," Dring said in a recent VGC podcast (at the 27-minute mark).

"They are so far away that no wonder that Xbox is looking and investing and signing certain products in a minute because they don't have a lineup of big exclusive at all."

Are you playing Outriders and noticing your HDD or SSD filling up faster than usual? You might want to check the game's crash report folder.

Outriders is crashing so much on PC that crash reports are taking up multiple gigabytes of space on HDD and SSD storage. One Redditor's crash report folder ballooned to 23GB, which is basically the size of a large update or expansion. That's roughly 32% of the game's advertised 70GB of require space taken up by crash reports. Other users also say their folders are in multiples of gigabytes.

Luckily you can easily delete these crash reports, just follow this file path to find the folder:

AppData -> Local -> Madness -> Saved-> Crashes

NVIDIA has teased that its magic DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology is coming to NARAKA: BLADEPOINT, driving performance through the roof. Check out a side-by-side comparison of NVIDIA DLSS technology on, and off in the game below:

NARAKA: BLADEPOINT enjoys some huge performance gains with DLSS enabled, with DLSS set to Ultra Performance mode (rendering the lowest resolution and upscaling it) sees performance on the previous-gen Turing-based GeForce RTX 2060 go from just under 30FPS average at 4K to 55FPS average.

The newer-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3060 goes from 43FPS average to 70FPS average, while the GeForce RTX 3070 jumps from 66FPS to 99FPS and the GeForce RTX 3080 from 84FPS to 129FPS. The flagship GeForce RTX 3090 leaps from 101FPS average at 4K in NARAKA: BLADEPOINT to a huge 152FPS average with DLSS turned on and set on Ultra Performance.

Battlefield leaker and industry insider Tom Henderson is getting pretty busy with his tweets, giving us some juicy rumors on the next-gen Battlefield and now on Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6.

In a reply to someone tweeting him saying to give us an update on GTA 6, Henderson tweeted: "It's not set in the 1980's and is modern". @NerosCinema replied to Henderson, saying that an "80s GTA would actually be incredible" to which Henderson replied with "GTA Online + Modern + Wacky Shit = More Money".

@kryptzx replied to that saying "Do u think GTA Online will release at the same time Gta 6 releases?" with Henderson explaining "Yeah. They'll probably be some kind of integration - It seems like everyone is going this route now".

With the addition of four-player co-op multiplayer support, Outlast Trials is the most ambitious game Red Barrels has made yet. To make its nightmares a reality, the developer has had to double its workforce.

Red Barrels has expanded quite a bit for its new game, Outlast Trials, and now has 40 developers working on the project. The new team is a 200% increase over Outlast 2's production:

"Our amazing Red Barrels team has grown from 10 during the development of Outlast 1, to 20 for Outlast 2, and we are now over 40 teammates strong. We have adapted to keep the development of The Outlast Trials rolling while maintaining the safety and health of our entire team (above Murkoff standards of course)," reads a development update.

The next BioShock game could be an open world FPS with strong story elements--you know, like one of Irrational's original games.

2K's new Cloud Chamber studio is making a next-gen BioShock game, and job listings might tell us what to expect from the sequel. The studio is currently hiring 17 people, and based on the positions, the game might still be in early production phases. According to a senior writer position, the game could be set in an open world:

"Cloud Chamber is looking for a Senior Writer to join our talented Narrative team to bring the world of BioShock to life once again. Under the supervision of the Lead Writer, and collaborating closely with the Narrative and Design teams, our Senior Writer will craft memorable narrative arcs, write dialogue, and breathe life into our characters. Experience in writing for games, with a particular aptitude for managing the nuances of interactive storytelling, would be ideal for this role. We're hoping to find someone who can weave impactful, character-driven stories in an open world setting."

Days Gone 2 was never in production, and it wasn't actually greenlit by Sony. At a time where Sony is doubling-down on safer bets and bigger franchises, it's likely Days Gone 2 was shelved due to budgetary concerns.

In a recent interview with God of War creator David Scott Jaffe, Days Gone director Jeff Ross gives valuable insight on the games industry and discusses the game's development process. Ross also indicates that it was budget, not necessarily Days Gone's Metacritic scores or reception, that led to Sony scrapping Days Gone 2.

Shortly after shipping Days Gone in 2019, Sony Bend pitched a sequel to Sony. The team wanted to make a second chapter to fit in everything that wasn't possible in the first game. "When you're making tough decisions when making a game, you go, 'oh, the sequel,' this thing we can't get to this time we'll put in the next one," Ross said. The sequel was meant to be a kind of definitive Days Gone experience that carried over the learnings from the first game.

I don't think we're too far from an official reveal or teaser trailer to the new Battlefield, or Battlefield 6 -- with industry leaker Tom Henderson teasing a drawing of a new map inside of EA DICE's next instalment to Battlefield.

Henderson notes that the map is a "literal storm" or tornado is flying towards the island, taking things to the next level in the new Battlefield. Henderson teases to "refer to old tweets to theorise what happens next" where if we combine what we know: next-gen destruction physics + natural disasters = storm damaging the island and building, changing the environment thus the map and the way you play once that happens.

I'd dare say that most of that jungle would be gone, visibility would suck (snipers, long distance weapons rendered useless) and if you took shelter in the building then the walls would possibly be destroyed. This would change the way you'd approach the game, with an actual tornado flying into the island and changing the entire environment, inside and outside -- all upside down and destroyed.

Third-party game sales may have generated upwards of $795 million on the Epic Games Store since the storefront opened in late December, new Apple court documents suggest.

As the Apple vs Epic Games court case heats up, Apple today published a document that reveals tons about Epic's notoriously private business. According to the filing, Epic has paid out over $700 million to third-party studios in revenue shares since the store launched.

Since third-party developers keep 88% of revenues, and Epic keeps 12%, a quick bit of math shows that third-party game sales on the Epic Store have generated roughly $795 million to date. If the numbers are right, Epic has kept about $95 million of revenues.

New court documents filed by Apple reveal the Epic Games Store has yet to turn a profit, and the Fortnite titan could lose over half a billion dollars in total storefront investments by 2021.

According to Apple's lengthy new court document, the Epic Games Store hasn't been profitable since it launched in late 2018. Epic has reportedly sunken hundreds of millions of dollars into the storefront to secure publishing deals, payouts bonuses for developers, and timed exclusivity--not to mention the store's 88-12 revenue split that favors game developers.

The doc actually puts a total figure to the Epic Games Store's losses, which total up to about $593 million by the end of this year. The company spent many millions more on content deals than the storefront actually made; Epic lost $181 million in 2019, $273 million in 2020, and projects to lose $139 million in 2021, the report states.