Gaming - Page 1042

Just how successful has The Division been? Quite successful, thanks to Ubisoft announcing official revenue numbers for The Division.

In its first five days of release, Ubisoft pulled in over $330 million - beating out Destiny's $325 million five-day haul from September 2014. AlsoDestiny launched on the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, while The Division launched onto the PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot said: "The Division taking the top spot in the industry for first week sales of a new franchise is a tremendous achievement. We are very proud of our teams, and humbled by and thankful for the millions of players who are giving us their feedback and support".

GDC 2016 - Crytek announced its new CRYENGINE V at the Game Developer's Conference, with many exciting things to share from the latest iteration of its graphics engine. For the keen-eyed, CRYENGINE V skips CRYENGINE IV... as we still having games released with CRYENGINE 3.

CRYENGINE V has support for DirectX 12, full support for VR, a reworked low overhead renderer which "Significantly increases the performance of today's hardware in graphically intensive applications". Better yet, the latest version of CRYENGINE uses a "pay what you want" basis for developers, where "you contribute what you can" according to the Creative Director of Crytek, Frank Vitz.

Vitz continued: "Game engines that allow for lifelike rendering in real-time will be at the forefront of this revolution. Our first VR lab opened in Istanbul in January. We have seven more going in North America".

Battlecursed is an upcoming roguelike action RPG where you're in control of a four person party with real-time, first-person perspective battles.

It's like the usual RPG's you've probably played (think Elder Scrolls) but on crack. That is, every dungeon you enter is procedural generated, with not only a different layout, but different loot, traps and enemies lurking around. It'll take some swift thinking and calculated strategies to manage the whole party and successfully navigate the dangerous dungeons below.

Initial hero classes that you'll be able to play as include the Huntress, Cleric, Grave Knight and Necromancer. The shrewd Huntress stealthily takes down opponents using her agility to dodge attacks and dexterity to strike with fatal precision. The Necromancer taps into undead sorcery, binding all manner of evil creatures to carry out the party's bidding. The Grave Knight plows through enemies with his superior strength and surprises many with his deadly frost spells. The Cleric, empowered with divine magic, will serve as the primary healer and protector of the party.

Blizzard is on a role lately, taking care to make sure that even their older gamesget the love that they deserve as well. Warcraft 3 follows in Diablo 2's footsteps with a new update coming up this week.

It's been nearly 14 years since the game was released, and it still remains a popular game, and genre. World of Warcraft doesn't quite replace the majesty that was the RTS. Patch 1.27 is coming on March 15th and will include a few new features. One of the biggest, and most welcome, changes is the addition of actual matchmaking, and another confirmed feature is that of improved in-game communication. They're playing a bit coy with the actual details outside of that, however.

Robert Bridenbecker, the lead person for Blizzard Classic Games, made a YouTube video that announced the new update. What we can gather is that aside from what's explicitly said, balance tweaks and massive bug fixes to make it more compatible with modern operating systems. In the Back2Warcraft video, Bridenbecker had a lot of great things to say.

Square Enix started life as the architect of the JRPG, a genre that has grown immensely since they released the first Final Fantasy in 1987. And they're going back to those roots with I AM SETSUNA, the premier game from one of their new studio, Tokyo RPG Factory.

What that means is that they're going to take the impactful, deep storytelling aspect of the typical JRPG, mixing in complex and near endless character development with a modern graphics engine the new immersive tools at the disposal of developers. This is going back to the roots of what RPG's began as, and remaking that into something more. They're saying that the battle system is inspired by Chrono Trigger, which has one of the most refined of such systems.

No information on the release date just yet, but if they want tor bring back the authentic JRPG gameplay and dig deep into their archives for I AM SETSUNA, then who are we to complain? It has some beautiful art design and they promise to give us a sorrowful and impactful story. Stay tuned for more information on this one. A masterpiece in the making. Potentially.

The Coalition have announced just that the first round of beta testing for Gears of War 4 will commence on April 18th, but only for those that have played Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on the Xbox One, or through the Windows Store.

If you did play the latest remaster of Gears of War, then you should start getting a beta token through the Xbox Live messaging system that you can redeem for the early access to the beta. The good news is that everyone that has an Xbox Live Gold membership and an Xbox One will be eligible to try out the beta just a bit later, on April 24th running through May 1st. They're extending the timeframe in which you have had to log in and play Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, moving the deadline from March 1st all the way until April 11th.

The beta will be all about the multiplayer aspect and should include some fun levels to romp around in. Just remember that it's a beta and isn't at all complete. There will be bugs and other glitches, and some things in some certain situations might not work as you'd expect. Don't be a stranger to reporting any bugs, so they can fix them before it's released.

The new remake of the classic Battlezone is getting a very well done single-player campaign. But it isn't going to be entirely written and structured by humans, though. Instead, it'll have elements of procedural generation to keep thing unique for everyone. The new trailer gives us a glimpse inside the cockpit, as well as what that campaign might look like.

The dynamic nature of procedural generation means that there will be endless opportunities for replayability. You'll rarely get bored if this type of action is something you've been waiting for. The enemies, objectives and seemingly the levels can all change drastically, making for new and exciting experiences. If the AI is up to snuff, then that'll just be icing on the cake.

The game itself is looking really good. The cockpit is almost ergonomic, if it were real, and the windscreen doesn't seem to pose an issue with visibility at all. The remaster is looking splendid and really brings back memories of the original Atari classic. The sound effects alone are a pretty good homage to the original. I'm certainly excited to see how it actually plays out, is anyone else looking forward to this?

The remastered version of System Shock 1 has finally been shown in full, working form for the first time since it was announced. The remake, they say, is going to stay true to the original, attempting to capture the same parts of our imagination that it originally did. so take a look below, see if it feels at all familiar.

Night Dive Studios is remaking System Shock 1 using the Unity game engine. The in-game trailer is a showcase of all the work they've done in translating the original into the new engine and in how they've remade the UI. The want to keep the classic System Shock, but update it and make it much more visually striking, allowing it to be a better representation of the original intent.

The remastered version is going to be available on the Xbox One and the PC starting sometime in 2017, so you'll be able to have your chance at reliving the nightmare very soon.

Google's DeepMind AI first set its sights on European Go champion Fan Hui, defeating it soundly before taking the crown from world champion Lee Sedol (while there's still one game to go in the series, it currently sits at 3-1, favoring DeepMind). With that achievement in its pocket, we're left to wonder what's next. Asked just that at the Structure Data event in San Francisco today, Google Senior Fellow Jeff Dean pointed to StarCraft, calling it their "likely next target."

StarCraft presents a different and possibly greater challenge for DeepMind, as a lot of information is hidden from it unlike with Go where the opponent's moves are laid out in front of it. Due to that and the more visually stimulating nature of video games, the prospect is very exciting. Of it, a Blizzard said to us, "We're reaching out to learn more about what Google has in mind. For now, let's just say... challenge accepted!"

There's a lot of cool and interesting ideas that are coming out of the VR revolution, and not all of them are the hardcore super immersive experiences, either. Some, like Disco Flux which is coming to the PlayStation 4, are taking on a much lighter and more playful take on what VR can do for gaming.

Disco Flux is one of those games that breaks the bounds of one genre and adds in another that ends up being something completely unexpected. A music game that's wrapped with shooter mechanics? Oh yeah, this is a thing, and after watching the video above, this is a very good thing too. Just look at how awesome it looks, and how challenging it might possibly be, forcing you to use hand-eye coordination while rocking out to some of your favorite retro music. It looks like a blast, pun fully intended.

It's a music-driven shooter, that has four different modes that the game will switch through dynamically as you play more. They're already including some retro disco-esque music, but in the future you'll be able to import your own music that it'll analyze so targets can pop-up to the beat. This minimalist style of game would actually be very well suited to mobile. It doesn't seem to necessarily require a whole lot of processing power, and it would work well with the GearVR or similar headset.

In light of previous Xbox One exclusives coming to PC, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer was recently asked at a Microsoft event what reason do PC gamers now have to purchase an Xbox One. Spencer's reply: "So they might not [buy an Xbox One]. And I want that to be OK."

He seems to see PC gamers and Xbox gamers as one and the same in a sense, to which Microsoft provides one service to accommodate both.

"When you go and you buy [PC and Xbox One games]," he says, "You're not gonna feel like you're dealing with disconnected islands that don't understand what games you own, or where you are in those games, or what your achievements are in those games and what you play with, but that instead [we] put you as the gamer at the center of our platform and build our platforms around you."

Sniper Elite 4 is well into development, and was announced to much fanfare last week when it was unveiled by Rebellion Developments.

Now a new press release has revealed a fairly tight window of release of sometime in 2016 and will retail for £49.99 / €69.99 / $59.99 when it hits the streets. Of course it'll be available through the usual digital channels, but physical copies of the game will be available from Sold Out. in the UK. They were responsible for providing physical copies of Zombie Army Trilogy when that released. Physical copies of the game will be available in the US through U&I Entertainment through an exclusive deal with Sold Out.

Sniper Elite 4 will be available on the PC, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One when it comes out sometime in 2016. Rebellion is promising that we'll see it at 1080P on both the consoles, with an unlimited framerate and 4K (and Eyefinity) support on the PC. Maps will be many times the size of anything we encountered in Sniper Elite 3, and it'll retain the less linear way in which you can go about your missions, taking place in Italy in 1943.

Microsoft has wanted to have a way for people from all of their platforms to play together, but it just hasn't really been technically possible. Until now. And they're expanding the idea to other platforms "including other console and PC networks." Meaning the PlayStation 4.

They're new cross-network play was just announced today and it means that games, if the developer choose to support the function, can enable every platform that a game happens to play on, to be able to interact with each other. A native solution hasn't ever been available that allowed this. Wargaming.net had to create their own internal API to even let Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC gamres to play together with World of Tanks.

The first game to take advantage of this is naturally Rocket League, which will let you play against your friends that are on whatever platform they happen to have. Right now it only supports play across the Xbox One and the PC, but there's an open invitation to allow the PlayStation 4 to participate, because it apparently isn't hard to implement. Interestingly, this could make the decision to buy a console rest solely on other factors other than what your friends happen to have, or want.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for the PC got off to a pretty bad start when it was released at the beginning of the month. It was a complete mess for AMD cards and a slightly smaller mess for NVIDIA cards. DirectX 12 was there, but it didn't quite provide the performance boost that we thought, and expected, it would. But a new patch coming out soon should prove to fix quite a few of the more worse problems.

This new update will include a lot of performance optimizations, tweak Ambient Occlusion and disable mouse smoothing, some of the most requested additions to the game. Unfortunately, if you have a 60Hz monitor, you're still limited to the up to 60FPS, even with V-sync turned off. At the moment they're working on a fix for that. And they're also looking into adding an FPS counter into the game since very few external solutions support UWP or even being available in DirectX 12. FRAPS, a popular solution, doesn't work in DX12 enabled games, for example.

The most important fix in the patch are the performance enhancements, and under-the-hood changes they've made so that AMD cards don't result in a whole screen of graphical artefacts or other strange occurrences. Now it'll actually be playable, even if it's limited to the refresh rate of your monitor. And at least a smooth constant 60FPS is acceptable for playing, if not really for showing off.

Star Fox Zero for the Wii U is going to cater to the beginning gamer in all of us, allowing you to activate an in-game invincibility mode to let you get used to the controls and help you become more proficient without the worry that death can cause.

Shigeru Miyamoto, a designer from Nintendo, was asked by Time whether or not some Nintendo games tended to coddle players in certain situations. He responded that they aren't simply making the game easier, but are making some challenges more fun for those that otherwise could be overwhelmed by them. There's no sense in having a game that can't be fun for a wider audience. Younger gamers in particular, might benefit from having a bit of assistance once in awhile. And they don't want to lower the hurdle, so to speak, but just make it more accessible.

Invincibility will come from a difficulty level that allows a special Arwing that you can obtain so you can familiarize yourselves with the levels. He didn't quite go into detail as to how that would work, but higher difficulty levels will likely feature better rewards. But for the more hardcore player, they also seem to be adding in even higher difficulty modes as well.

Ubisoft is getting tired of the rampant cheating that seems to happen in Rainbow Six Siege. They've already released one patch that took care of a lot of latent exploits in the various levels, and it also made it possible to report people for alleged cheating. But that doesn't seem to have been enough. Now they're expanding their criteria when looking for cheaters in their game. So cheaters beware.

To help to prevent cheating on the scale that it already seems to exist, they're implementing new algorithms to identify cheaters. That algorithm looks at how you play, where you aim compared to where the bullet seems to strike and so on. They're becoming much more strict in their effort. And if you've been identified as a cheater mid-game, you're immediately pulled from the game and given a temporary suspension. There's no word whether punishments will become worse as more instances are found, or if there's the possibility of banning you from the game completely.

Cheating is an issue in any kind of game but games of a competitive nature that have a rank structure attract more due to the want, or perceived need, to be the absolute highest even with the absence of skill. And of course, that can potentially ruin the game for others, who want to play it within their skill level amongst those that are like-minded. It can be incredibly frustrating playing against those that are using assistance. It's a bit easier to be more strict with Rainbow Six Siege being purely a multiplayer competitive experience. It's great to see them wield that ban-hammer a bit more surely.

Have you forgotten about the Half-Life and Portal movies? Well, they're still in development according to The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams.

During a chat with IGN, Abrams said: "Nothing that would be an exciting update". So while it's not new news, it's something - acknowledging that they're still in development. J.J. Abrams first said he was working with Valve on Half-Life and Portal movies during DICE 2013, during a chat with Gabe Newell.

At the time, Abrams said at the time that they had talks with Newell about storytelling in film and video games, which is why they started working together. At the time, Abrams said: "We're not looking to make a movie in the gaming world. We're not looking to impose what we do on that".

With the performance-related issues surrounding Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, it's good to hear that the upcoming patch for the game will address at least some of the performance problems. The upcoming patch will have performance optimizations, Ambient Occlusion tweaks, and more. Here's the full list:

As for what's coming in the future, The Coalition will be adding 21:9 support, NAT problems and more. We should expect these improvements in the coming weeks.

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EverQuest next was supposed to be a return to form for the MMORPG that started it all, but Daybreak Games has decided instead to just cancel the project.

The decision hasn't been made lightly, it seems, but it hasn't quite been meeting the expectations that have been set both internally, and by fans. That said, they thought it best to just cancel this project and to instead focus on somethign completely new.

"Watching EverQuest's ability to entertain and bring people together has inspired and humbled us. It's shaped our culture and has emboldened us to take aggressive risks with our game ideas and products." Russ Shanks, the president of Daybreak Games said. "When we decided to create the next chapter in the EverQuest journey, we didn't aim low. We set out to make something revolutionary." And so they'll have to take a bit more time to make sure that the next EverQuest meets the high standards that people have for such a prolific MMORPG.

Courtesy of PC port masters Nixxes Software, DirectX 12 support has arrived for Rise of the Tomb Raider in the game's fifth patch.

"For Rise of the Tomb Raider the largest gain DirectX 12 will give us is the ability to spread our CPU rendering work over all CPU cores, without introducing additional overhead," Jurjen Katsman, Studio Head at Nixxes Software, says of the patch. "This is especially important on 8-core CPUs like Intel i7's or many AMD FX processors."

"When using DirectX 11, in situations where the game is under heavy load - for example in the larger hubs of the game - the individual cores may not be able to feed a fast GPU like an NVIDIA GTX 980 or even NVIDIA GTX 970 quick enough. This means the game may not hit the desired frame-rate, requiring you to turn down settings that impact CPU performance. Even though the game can use all your CPU cores, the majority of the DirectX 11 related work is all happening on a single core. With DirectX 12 a lot of the work is spread over many cores, and the framerate of the game will run at can be much higher for the same settings."