Gaming - Page 1039

EA plans to fold in its own player-centric brand of competitive gaming into its business model, with features like "pay to spectate."

Over the next three years, EA will build its own competitive gaming sector that will bolster the company's revenue streams. The publisher makes it clear that competitive gaming is not eSports; instead of building up individual teams, EA wants to "make all stars out of all our players". Naturally this is accompanied by a whole new stream of money-making schemes, including monetized spectating and a heavy emphasis on in-game micro-transactions.

That's right: EA really wants to make people pay to watch competitive matches. The publisher claims that spectating isn't just about entertainment, but also teaching players new skillsets, which is actually true--and the company sees lots of opportunities in monetizing this. The competitive gaming arm is set to flex in the next 18 months and be fully established by FY 2019. EA will start with three major foundation goals: organize under a dedicated leader (likely an EA-branded competitive gaming sector), build core game features and platform, and establish partnerships with the biggest brands, devs, and names in gaming.

Ubisoft has detailed the upcoming v1.2 patch for The Division, something that has its own 'Conflict' trailer which you can check out below.

The official v1.2 patch for The Division will have a new Incursion known as Clear Sky, which will have Division agents playing against Rikers. This will have gamers trying to take back a LMB-controlled anti-air site. The new Conflict Incursion isn't the only new thing in the v1.2 patch, as we'll also be introduced to high-value targets, modifications to the Dark Zone, gamers having the ability to hijack loot, new gear sets and more.

Ubisoft explains: "Another new feature coming in the Conflict update is high-value targets (HVT). The HVT officer inside your base of operations will provide you with a list of these targets, along with a description, their level, and the recommended gear score you need to engage them. You'll have a limited amount of time and only one chance to take down these targets. The Dark Zone will see some changes that are going to make extractions even more intense than they were before. Specifically, Agents will now have the option to hijack your loot. This means that a player can run to an extraction rope and cut it, causing all of the loot to fall to the ground".

Modder Zulliethewitch created the first person mods for Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, and now she's back again with a first person mod for Dark Souls 3.

It's rudimentary to say the least: there is no character body visible from the new perspective and arms and hands float out in front of you attached to nothing. Presumably, the mod will be updated for realism, but if you just want to have some silly fun now, head here to download it (and here if you experience Windows 10 related issues with it).

The mod is said to not alter files in any way, but as always, use it as your own risk and know that a ban is a possibility, however slight.

Overwatch has been a success, with Blizzard reporting that over 9.7 million gamers participating in the recent open beta of Overwatch.

The Overwatch beta took place on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC for less than a week, with over 9.7 million gamers using the time to play 37 million matches. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime described the huge interest in Overwatch as "incredible" and "overwhelming".

With over 9.7 million gamers playing the Overwatch beta, Blizzard should be over the moon. Comparing it to Star Wars Battlefront which had 'only' 9 million players, but EA has recently confirmed 14 million copies have been shipped. The Division's beta had 6.4 million gamers, but made $330 million in the first five days on sale.

Sony has announced that it will be hosting its E3 2016 press conference at 6pm PT on June 13, which will take place in the Shrine Auditorium in LA.

Sony is taking its usual Monday evening spot during E3, while Microsoft and Ubisoft will kick off their E3 2016 festivities in the morning and afternoon. Ubisoft will be a few hours earlier than usual, closer to the EA spot that they moved away from this year. EA is hosting its own EA Play event on Sunday, June 12 during the afternoon.

Rumor has it the new PS4K won't be unveiled during E3 2016, but I think that would be a gigantic mistake on Sony's part. The PlayStation VR push should be quite real, as this is the biggest event that Sony can use to push its VR headset.

Quantum Break has been Quantum Broken since its release, with the Windows 10 release being in shambles since its release - but, there are big changes on their way.

Remedy Entertainment's head of PR, Thomas Puha, says that a future update for Quantum Break will add G-Sync and FreeSync support, thanks to Microsoft recently adding support for NVIDIA and AMD's variable refresh technology into Windows 10.

The new update for Quantum Break is expected to drop in the next two weeks, where we should also expect some other tweaks and performance improvements. The last patch for Quantum Break included a fix for the frame pacing issues it was experiencing while the latest Xbox One patch had multiple general fixes and more.

Fallout 4's new Far Harbor DLC will be very much like a chilling horror movie, with a dark foggy atmosphere filled with lurking terrors.

Now that Far Harbor is in beta testing, some testers have revealed key features of the new DLC, revealing something quite surprising: Far Harbor is pretty haunting, with creepy atmospherics right out of John Carpenter's The Fog. Set on the cost of in post-apocalyptic Bar Harbor, Maine, the DLC features dangerously irradiated landscapes and skirling fog. A whole new breed of mutated monstrosities and slithering nasties are waiting in that fog, and players will fall prey to jump scares and an overwhelming sense of being hunted.

"It's kind of like a mix between Point Lookout and Dead Money," wrote on beta tester on Reddit. "It's incredibly unnerving to explore," says coldwave44. "Far Harbor is incredibly dark and foggy all the time, and you legitimately run the risk of being ambushed and murdered at any second. The enemies are really deadly too," writes another.

New job listings at id Software's Texas and Frankfurt offices might hint at a Quake reboot.

id Software's Doom reboot is a huge success, and the developer might be keen on resurrecting another classic FPS franchise: Quake. It's been some 9 years since the last Quake game--Quake Wars--released on PC, but it looks like id may be preparing a fresh Quake reboot akin to the new Doom game. The studio has no less than twelve open positions at is Texas office, including some pretty major roles like Lead Gameplay Programmer, Backend Server Programmer, and a Senior Lightning Artist. id Software Germany is also hiring for five positions, including a Senior Engine Programmer and a Senior Physics Programmer.

What makes these listings so eye-catching is that they outright mention Quake. "id Software is looking for a Senior Physics & Simulation Programmer to work as part of a development team on legendary id game properties like DOOM and QUAKE," reads one of the listings. Sure, this could be meaningless, but when we combine the small hint with the amount of open positions, it could indicate id is working on a brand new game.

Streaming set-top boxes will replace traditional games consoles, but only after another major hardware cycle, says Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.

Ubisoft's CEO envisions a future where digital-only games are beamed directly to a "new type of hardware" akin to a set-top box, or an all-in-one console-inside-a-TV solution. "We expect there will be new consoles that are going to make this market continue to grow. We'll still have another generation of consoles before we have new types of hardware coming to the market," Guillemot said.

Bandwidth is a huge roadblock for digital game-streaming, and Guillemot admits that it'll take quite a bit of time before the new sans-console age hits its stride, especially with the slow internet ISPs are peddling. "We believe in streaming--it demands lots of bandwidth. We think it's going to grow. But today, with the types of games we have, it will still take a bit of time to be more popular."

EA has confirmed a Battlefront sequel is happening, and that it'll tie into the new Star Wars films, but don't expect to see any Episode VIII references.

Battlefront 2 is slated to launch by March 31, 2017, and EA's CFO Blake Jorgensen affirmed the sequel will use content "from the new movies." But what movies? Everyone made the assumption Battlefront 2 would use Episode VIII as source material, possibly with a campaign focus, but there's a a big problem: Episode VIII doesn't release until December 2018, way after Battlefront 2's Q1 2017 launch deadline.

So where does this leave us? Battlefront 2 could use Rogue One as the source, since the movie is releasing this year, and of course Episode VII: The Force Awakens. But it couldn't be both, especially since Rogue One is based before Episode VII, so EA will have to make a major decision there. Whichever move is tied into Battlefront 2 could serve as the game's major campaign, too. From Jorgensen's words we can assume that DICE wants to focus on the new era of Star Wars for the sequel, just as the first Battlefront was tied into the original trilogy.

Overwatch's new CGI short delivers backstory on two of the game's warring characters--Genji and Hanzo.

Although Overwatch doesn't have a campaign mode per se, Blizzard is delivering important storylines through CGI trailers, and the first two have already made waves in the gaming community. The third CGI trailer, Dragons, delves into the brutal rivalry between the cyber-ninja Genji and the arrow-slinging Hanzo, tying neatly into a unique myth about twin dragons.

The video is quite touching and reveals quite a bit about Genji and Hanzo, and explains Hanzo's ultimate Dragonstrike ability. Overwatch is slated to drop on May 24 across PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and seeing as 9.7 million gamers played the beta, the shooter will become a huge AAA blockbuster.

Nintendo's new NX console won't be built around the x86 architecture and won't "blow away current consoles", according to an industry insider.

Inside sources have told industry soothesayer Emily Rogers that Nintendo's next-gen NX console won't be based on an x86 architecture like the PS4 and Xbox One. This folds neatly with our projections that the NX will be powered by a next-gen Pascal-based NVIDIA Tegra chip, especially since Tegra is ARM-based and not x86. Rogers also says that the NX won't be powered an AMD Polaris GPU derivative, calling the claims "wacky"

"After speaking to seven different people this week, I can say with confidence that this is false. NX is not using x86 architecture like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One," Rogers said in a recent blog post. "The NX has special, custom-made chips and the overall design of the hardware is very modern. The chips are industry leading because they are very modern chips, but having modern chips doesn't necessarily mean Nintendo is aiming to create the most powerful hardware on the market. Furthermore, any NX rumors on "Polaris chips" and "Polaris architecture" are all wacky. There's a good reason why those rumors are wacky."

Modder Naxshe is hard at work on making all of Final Fantasy X HD Remaster's cutscenes 60FPS with hex editing and "various other tricks", and you can enjoy the first fruits of his labour below. There is some skipping in the video, but Naxshe says this is due to his recording software, not the mod.

By comparison, here is the same scene in 30FPS.

It's going to be awhile before all of the scenes are 60FPS ready as Naxshe has to work on each individual scene, and of course there are a lot. But hey, that will be a good excuse to replay it for the millionth time.

With Sony beating Microsoft at the current-gen console race, Resident Evil developer Capcom has predicted that there will be over 100 million consoles sold by 2020.

Capcom CEO Kenzo Tsjimoto said during the company's recent earnings Q&A session: "Our perception of the home video game market is that it will continue to be active at the global level, as we believe the install base of major home video game consoles will break the 100 million unit mark in 2020".

Right now the "major home video game consoles" would be the Xbox One and PS4, with the Nintendo NX console - which is said to be powered by an NVIDIA Tegra processor, said to be revealed this year and released in 2017. Sony is months away from a new PlayStation device, and we all know Microsoft is cooking something up behind the scenes. There are alternate reports that claim there'll be over 109 million PS4s and Xbox One consoles sold by 2019, with the PS4 and new PlayStation beating out whatever Microsoft is throwing at them.

Depe Silver is mostly known for its big franchises like Saints Row and the Metro series, with the developer teasing it has a major announcement in store for E3 2016.

The next game should be a AAA sandbox-style experience, with Deep Silver's CTO Oles Shishkovstov saying during an interview before the release of Metro Redux: "less linear but still hugely story-driven". He added: "I will not go into details, but it requires some work from programmers as well. Also, we are improving graphics in very different aspects, like recently we did a physically-based global ambient occlusion (instead of local, like SSAO). But yes, we are fully PBR now for the next project. No more tuning knobs - at least for now".

How good would an open-world Metro game be?

I have no doubt that Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be one of the biggest games of our time, with CD Projekt Red putting blood, sweat and tears into its huge follow up to the iconic The Witcher series of games.

In a recent interview with Game Pressure, CD Projekt Red Kraków boss, John Mamais, said that they're hoping to push as much as they can into Cyberpunk 2077. Mamais said: "Well, we haven't slowed down much in the last 5 years, perhaps except for a few long weekends, some raucous team parties, and a few personal holidays ;). It's been The Witcher 2 straight to The Witcher 3 in parallel with Cyberpunk and then, after TW3 base game, straight onto 2 large expansions:Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. To realize our ambitions regarding Cyberpunk 2077 we need to scale the size of the team working on it which means from 300+ to 500+".

Cyberpunk 2077 is being developed by both of CD Projekt Red's studios, with the Warsaw and Krakow-based studios cranking 24/7 to get it to market. CDPR's Krakow-based studio is a big part of its future, with the company hoping that the studio will find its own identity, giving birth to a new AAA title in the future. Mamais added: "Kraków will play a critical role in that expansion and the intention is to grow that studio from 30 now to 100+ in the next year (representing about 20% of the dev team on CP). Kraków is already planned to work on some key areas of Cyberpunk. But it's part of the goal to build a studio with its own identity and to give the Kraków team ownership. Thereafter in Kraków it will be more and more growth and a new independent full AAA game conceived, pitched, and developed in Kraków".

id Software seems to have hit a homerun with the new DOOM, but I'm loving the performance analysis side of things from sites like Gamers Nexus, and now Digital Foundry has tested the console version of the game.

Digital Foundry's testing was done on the Xbox One and PS4 versions of DOOM, with the PS4 version being the better of the two. DOOM runs at 1080p 60FPS on both the Xbox One and PS4, with Digital Foundry reporting that the Xbox One version of DOOM falls "well below" 1080p at times, but adds that "It's pretty simple to say that it looks and runs smoother on Sony's console. But the Xbox One version is no slouch, either".

DOOM allows gamers to tweak some graphics settings on the console, such as chromatic aberration, motion blur and even the field of view. Loading times on the consoles are actually pretty bad, with 10-15 seconds between some of the levels. Remember you need 5GB+ of VRAM to enable the 'Nightmare' graphics setting in DOOM... yeah.

The latest patch for Forza Motorsport 6: Apex is now out, with stability fixes, performance improvements, and more. The ability to disable VSync is now there, with the patch being auto downloaded from the Windows 10 store. Here's what to expect from the changelog:

Forza Motorsport 6: APEX - Update May 12th Changelog:

I'm still yet to receive my DOOM code, but I'm looking forward to playing it as it doesn't look like a steaming pile of crap like most of the shooters from 2015. Our friends over at Gamers Nexus have benchmarked id Software's new first-person shooter, with a slew of video cards and reported that the Radeon R9 390X loses out to the GeForce GTX 980 at 4K. Remember, DOOM requires 5GB+ of VRAM to run the 'Nightmare' graphics setting, too.

This is surprising, as the R9 390X has 8GB of GDDR5 with a much wider 512-bit memory bus, while the GTX 980 has 4GB of GDDR5 with a smaller 256-bit memory bus. The GTX 980 Ti card "maintains 45FPS" average, while the R9 Fury X was capable of 41.6FPS, even with its HBM1 technology. Knocking the resolution down to 2560x1440, the GTX 980 Ti comes out on top, with the GTX 980 coming in second place - actually beating out the Fury X at 1440p.

86FPS average at 1440p for the GTX 980 Ti, while the normal GTX 980 is pushing 72.6FPS average. This leaves the Fury X with 71FPS average, while the R9 390X trails way further behind with 51.3FPS average. What about 1920x1080?

Doom's graphics settings actually go past Ultra--you can unlock the so-called "Nightmare" setting for in-game shadows, but it calls for video cards with an insane 5GB+ VRAM minimum...all for minor improvements.

Doom's new Nightmare graphics setting is pretty demanding, requiring a video card with a minimum of 5GB+ VRAM to even turn on, so you'll have to have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X, 980 Ti, Titan, or an AMD R9 390/390X/290X to push your shadows past Ultra in the hellish shooter.

Naturally, you'd expect Nightmare mode to be a sizable leap in fidelity, especially being powered by 5GB+ VRAM, but the jump isn't that eye-boggling. Toggling on Nightmare does improve shadows and field of view, adding in more definition to faraway environments, but the differences aren't that dramatic. Keep in mind the mode isn't exactly a fully-fledged preset and only pushes two different options past Ultra: Shadows Quality and Virtual Texturing Page Size.