Gaming - Page 1020

Sony won't unveil the PlayStation 4K at E3 2016, instead opting for an announcement at Paris Games Week, according to a renowned games industry insider.

Well-known insider and NeoGAF resident Shinobi602 says that Sony's new 4K ready PlayStation 4 Neo (PS4K, PS4.5) could be unveiled at October's Paris Games Week in France. According to Shinobi, Sony can't just announce the PS4K months before it's released--doing so would completely jeopardize the current PS4 sales. No one will by a current PS4 if they know that an upgraded PS4K is on the way. Sony will need to announce the PS4 Neo the same month as it's released.

"I've heard that Sony will announce the PS4 Neo at Paris Games Week. This made sense to me because the supposed upgrades are coming in what, October? I would have said this publicly if I was 100% sure, but it's just what I was told," Shinobi said during a recent podcast.

With Shenmue III on the not so distant horizon, about now would be a perfect time for remasters of the now fairly dated Shenmue and Shenmue II. A fan posited this exact idea to Sega's community and social marketing manager Dan Sheridan, who replied in the most recent episode of Sega Central that the publisher is investigating the possibility.

"With regards to Shenmue 1 and 2 HD, of course we would love to release these tomorrow. Sadly, it's not as simple as porting the games to the current platforms, as we will need to ensure any HD remaster lives up to the quality of the original titles," he explains. "And with games as immersive as Shenmue 1 and 2, there are further complications from licensed products that were included in the original games. That said, we'd love to do it and are currently investigating how to make it a reality."

Licensing issues or not, Shenmue III can happen after all these years, Shenmue and Shenmue II remasters seem plausible enough, so sit tight.

The Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster launched on Steam yesterday and word is it's a mostly solid port. One key issue that remains though is the inability to use Japanese voice acting with English subtitles, an option that wasn't available in the original release and one that many fans would love to try this time around.

Fortunately, the mod scene has yet again come to the rescue: modder Topher has some downloads that will allow you to play the game this way, thanks to a bit of hex editing on his part. Head here to grab them and for installation instructions, which are pretty straightforward. Before doing anything, be sure to back up your original .EXEs.

If you'd rather wait for something a little cleaner that likely won't require you to rely on hex edits and .EXE file replacements, modder Kalaiden will have something out soon. Keep an eye on his work here.

Sony's new upgraded 4K-ready PlayStation 4 Neo will launch before October of this year, says French wholesaler Innelec Multimedia.

Innelec published the forecast in their Fiscal Year 2016 earnings call, outright declaring Sony will release the PS4 Neo (aka PS4K, PS4.5) before October 2016. Seeing as Innelec is a major French video games distributor and wholesaler, this could be factual. If true, Sony will likely unveil the PS4K at the Tokyo Game Show in September.

"The 2016/2017 current year should be marked for the video game world by the arrival, in the first half of our fiscal year, an evolution of the Sony PS4 PS4 console with the Neo 4K with new features and that the placing on the market in October 2016 virtual reality helmet Sony VR." This folds neatly with WSJ's reports that the PS4K will be announced before the PlayStation VR headset ships in October.

Since Assassin's Creed will skip 2016, Ubisoft is betting pretty strongly on Watch Dogs 2 being a AAA success.

Ubisoft has yet to formally announce Watch Dogs 2, but the company has big plans for the upcoming open-world hackaventure. "Our biggest title in Fiscal Year 2017 will be Watch Dogs 2, which will build on the success of the first game," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said during the FY2017 investor's call. "The game will once again surprise players with a new tone, and with innovative hacking gameplay possibilities."

Guillemot's statements about a "new tone" match up with the recent leaks that Watch Dogs 2 will feature a new protagonist instead of Aiden Pearce, and be set in San Francisco. The game's principal lead was accidentally leaked by TheKingCort, the actor that portrays the character in the game.

CD Projekt RED previews their final Witcher 3 masterpiece, Blood and Wine, in full 1080p 60FPS...and it's quite magical.

Blood and Wine will be the last bit of content for Witcher 3, and Geralt's very last adventure. As such, CD Projekt RED has gone way beyond the call of duty making the expansion. The devs completely scrapped Witcher 3 and built Blood and Wine from scratch, upgrading the graphical fidelity and adding in all-new textures and meshes. We really thought CDPR couldn't top The Witcher 3, but they have, and in a big way.

The expansion will feature 30+ hours of content with some 90 quests to participate in, and Toussaint is complete with new regions, characters, castles, flora and fauna, and terrifying new monsters. In a sense, Blood and Wine is a playground for CDPR to flex its skills and prepare for Cyberpunk 2077, and it shows.

As reported earlier this week, Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games now give you the option to disable V-Sync, thus your framerate is no longer locked to your monitor's refresh rate (60 for most of you). However, the games themselves need updates to take advantage. As promised, The Coalition has responded promptly for Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, which now lets you disable V-Sync for maximum framerates.

The developer has thrown in a few other sweet options too: a frame rate limiter (use it with V-Sync off if you see tearing but don't want to be capped to your refresh rate), anisotropic filtering, and an FPS counter. Finally, there are a couple of bug fixes, one of which fixes potential hitching, and another which makes sure post processing stays enabled.

Grab the update now through the Windows Store.

Ubisoft will release an unannounced AAA IP in 2017, according to the company's Fiscal Year 2017 forecast.

Leading games industry titan Ubisoft will expand its franchise lineup with a brand new AAA IP in 2017, complimenting its Fiscal Year 2017 lineup that includes Watch Dogs 2, South Park: Fractured but Whole, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and For Honor. Ubisoft's FY 2017 ends on April 2017, so all of these games--including the new AAA IP--will be out before then.

Details on the unannounced IP are light, but expect it to be a completely new franchise that's not tethered to any existing series--it won't be an Assassin's Creed game. Ubisoft has yet to publish the transcripts for its FY 2017 earnings call, but we'll be sure to comb the recording to find out any snippets. We could see an unveiling at E3 2016, too.

EA has said that it wants to expand into the 'gigantic action' space, because you know - it's not there with its franchises like Battlefield and Titanfall.

EA Studios chief Patrick Soderlund spoke with IGN, saying: "If you look at the biggest segment in our industry, which is action, we don't have a lot. EA is not known to make gigantic action games like Assassin's Creed or Batman or GTA or those types of games that are really big. The strategic direction that we put in motion is to expand our portfolio more into that segment, to see what can we bring to gamers that maybe hasn't been done before".

If anything, EA is going to make an open-world game, with Soderlund teasing: "I'm not suggesting we're going to go after GTA and sell 50 million units. We would love to! But what I'm saying is those types of absolutely AAA, big productions is what we want to do. And I think for us to do that, we need the right people".

Earlier this week, Amazon listings indicated a disc option was out for Battlefield 1 on PC. Today, EA confirms the news, although notes some regions will still have the option.

"Here in North America, there will be a PC box version that you can buy in stores that will have a code in the box and no disc," a representative said. "If you buy that same PC box version Internationally, some countries will offer a disc inside."

No doubt this is a response to a lack of demand for a disc version; PC gamers have long been more about downloads which have been inherent to the platform for longer than with consoles, and the gap seems to widen more every year.

Battlefield 1 will have micro-transaction-style purchases, says EA CEO Andrew Wilson.

DICE's new WW1-based shooter Battlefield 1 will allow players to buy "micro-monetization options" consisting of "valuable, small-scale" increments. "In Battlefield 1 you will see both macro-monetization--like maps and large-scale content--as well as micro-monetization opportunities," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in the company's FY17 earnings call. "These will be smaller increments of gameplay. Over time what you'll see from us is elements of gameplay that allow gamers to engage and expand their experience much the way people do with FIFA Ultimate Team today."

Wilson didn't reveal what exactly these "micro-monetization" options are (probably Battlepacks), but affirms that the company isn't going to embrace a pay-to-win style scheme. "We never want to be in a place where there's a belief that we are providing a pay-to-win mechanic inside one of our games."

Civilization VI has been announced by 2K Games, with a release this October.

2K Games has revealed Sid Meier's Civilization VI, the latest in the landmark grand strategy series. Civ VI's Steam page is now up, revealing the game's October 21, 2016 release date and key details. Check below for more info: "Civilization VI offers new ways to interact with your world, expand your empire across the map, advance your culture, and compete against history's greatest leaders."

"Civilization VI offers new ways to engage with your world: cities now physically expand across the map, active research in technology and culture unlocks new potential, and competing leaders will pursue their own agendas based on their historical traits as you race for one of five ways to achieve victory in the game."

Now that CD Projekt RED finally announced Geralt's final adventure will launch on May 31, a new bit of gameplay has launched to showcase the expansion's huge new content offering.

The new Witcher 3: Blood and Wine gameplay video highlights some of the new monsters Geralt will hunt down in Toussaint, including a terrifying banshee-screeching vampire-harpy, a hulking giant that causes seismic quakes with its stomps, and a near-invincible stone golem.

The footage also shows off the new enchanting and vibrant realm of Toussaint, a new "self-contained" region that has higher fidelity and graphics than the base game. About "90% of the assets featured in Toussaint" are brand new, and the region features over 30 hours of exploration, 90 new quests, and a massive laundry list of improvements and optimizations that weren't in The Witcher 3. As it's Geralt's last adventure, CDPR promises the Blood and Wine DLC will be "better than the main game", with a storyline full of twists and turns and a "charismatic, unique enemy" for players to face.

EA confirms a new unannounced IP for 2017, which lines neatly up with BioWare's new mystery IP project.

BioWare's new IP could launch next year, according to EA's Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen. "We do have a new IP coming next year, we haven't yet announced it, but it's something that you'll see probably coming up soon," Jorgensen said in EA's FY2016 earnings call.

We've known that BioWare has been working on a mysterious new IP for quite some time, even as the devs prep Mass Effect: Andromeda for its early 2017 release.

The new Star Wars action game from Dead Space developer Visceral Games will release in 2018.

In its recent earnings call, EA revealed a roadmap release schedule for upcoming games, including Titanfall 2 and the array of new Star Wars games from studios like Visceral Games, DICE, and Respawn. "We'll most likely have one Star Wars title a year for the next three to four years," said EA's CFO Blake Jorgensen.

According to the call, Visceral Games' new Star Wars action game will launch in 2018. The game will be powered by the Frostbite 3 engine, and feature its own a spin-off story not directly tied to the films. Ex-Uncharted creative director/writer Amy Hennig will serve as creative director for the new game, and will co-write the story with another Uncharted alum, Todd Stashwick.

With EA preparing both Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 for later this year, the publisher has teased a sequel to Star Wars Battlefront, its luke warm first-person shooter from last year. The publisher has announced the sequel for its 2017 fiscal year.

This means we can expect the Star Wars Battlefront sequel sometime in the second half of the year, and with over 14 million copies sold, there's no surprise when it comes to the sequel being in development. EA's Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said during the call: "We'll most likely have one Star Wars title a year for the next three to four years".

EA will continue its Star Wars games with an untitled Star Wars game in development over at Visceral Games - the developer behind Battlefield Hardline, for 2018. We don't know much about this game, but it could be a third-person game, and with Visceral's experience in Dead Space, that's exciting news.

Electronic Arts is riding the wave of awesome marketing for its Battlefield 1 unveil, with the publisher scheduling Titanfall 2 for later this year in the fall.

In EA's slide presentation for its 2017 fiscal year, Titanfall 2 is listed for a release in Q3 - sometime between October and December of this year. We should expect Respawn Entertainment to ship Titanfall 2 in the same window as DICE with Battlefield 1, making EA have one of its best quarters ever.

During an investor call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said that the two games won't eat into each other's sales, calling the first-person shooter genre "a giant category in our industry". I agree, I think Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 are completely separate games with similar audiences, while some gamers will grab both. Will you be buying Battlefield 1 or Titanfall 2, or both?

The reboot of Need for Speed has been pretty good, with developer Ghost Games confirming a sequel for Need for Speed for 2017. The developer hasn't said much, but it said it will be building on the foundation it built with Need for Speed, in order to make the sequel.

Ghost Games said: "We are now building upon the foundations that have been laid with Need for Speed and delivering our next game in 2017". The developer added: "That's not to say that we're going quiet between now and then... far from it. We'll be working with our community and there will be multiple opportunities to bring many of you into the studio in the coming months to get your feedback on where we're headed".

Will you be picking up the new Need for Speed in 2017? What did you think of the reboot?

Mass Effect: Andromeda is now confirmed to release "early 2017" by BioWare general manager Aaron Flynn, and will be shown off at E3 2016.

BioWare has just dropped a lengthy update post on Mass Effect: Andromeda, divulging new details and promising an E3 2016. Check below for the update, or click here to see leaked Mass Effect: Andromeda gameplay footage.

"With Mass Effect: Andromeda, our team at BioWare is exploring how far they can take this beloved franchise. Yes, we're building the best of what we all love about Mass Effect - amazing stories, characters and fun third-person shooter combat - and bringing them along with us on the expedition to Andromeda. But we're also excited to be introducing new features and ways you can enjoy a Mass Effect game."

Despite recent successes with the 'Disney Infinity' brand, it's been a tough few years for Disney Interactive to carve out a niche in the console business, and now the studio is calling it a day.

In a surprise announcement, Disney Infinity Senior VP and General Manager John Blackburn confirmed that the studio will cancel 'Disney Infinity' after the release of two expansion packs which are currently in production. Further, the company announced their intention to cease self publishing in their earnings call, necessitating a $147 million writedown.

It's understood that the studio will focus on licensing out the studios in future.