Gaming News - Page 134

Microsoft is raising the price of Xbox Game Pass on console, but PC isn't getting a price hike. Here's a big reason why.

Xbox Game Pass will soon rise by $1 for the base tier and $2 for Ultimate. The increase is only on consoles PC will remain the same. There's a key reason for this: Microsoft still hasn't secured enough PC gamers to meet a specific threshold.

Shortly after Microsoft legal counsel said that there were no plans to increase Game Pass subscription prices if the Activision merger were to close, Microsoft is apparently taking a pre-emptive strike to raise prices before the merger is either terminated or consummated. The Microsoft-Activision merger has a termination date of July 18, and the first price hike is set to start on July 6.

Reports from The Verge indicate Microsoft is raising the price of its premium games subscription before the merger either passes or terminates.

Microsoft is making good on its warning of price increases for its Xbox brand. The company will reportedly raise the price of both of its Xbox Game Pass subscription options, including the base console version and and its Game Pass Ultimate subscription, in nearly all worldwide markets.

Starting July 6, the regular Xbox Game Pass subscription will raise from $9.99 to $10.99 a month, and Game Pass Ultimate will move from $14.99 to $16.99 in the United States. The price of PC Game Pass will not change.

It's finally happening; Nintendo is officially remastering Mario's first and only turn-based RPG.

Today Nintendo announced a big surprise for 30-something gamers who grew up with a Super Nintendo back in the day: A fully-fledged Super Mario RPG remaster is releasing later this year on the Switch. The original isometric game was released in 1996 by none other than Squaresoft, who was then at the height of their role-playing glory. The game garnered a cult following that grew into a devoted fan base as decades went by, but ultimately the RPG didn't hit it big due to the N64's launch just a few months later.

The new Super Mario RPG remaster will feature upgraded visuals and graphics befit of the Switch, but the core turn-based action remains intact. The remaster will launch on November 17, just a month after the ultra-weird new Super Mario Bros. Wonder game.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a game that's been blighted by performance issues since its launch, with gremlins in the works that are still to be cured - but one enterprising PC gamer has taken matters into their own hands.

Wccftech spotted that 'Snight01' took to the Steam forums with a post linking to their DIY mod (that you stick in the PAKS directory) which fixes some of the most annoying problems with Jedi: Survivor.

Namely the game crashing with ray tracing turned on, plus the mod fixes occlusion culling pop-in (that causes horrible flashes of white to appear fleetingly).

Nintendo's new Mario game is weird...really weird.

Today Nintendo announced Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a new 2D side-scroller that hearkens back to the old-school days of SNES platforming. The game looks pretty familiar on its surface, but things get truly strange when Mario touches a "wonder flower." After that, all bets are off.

The game basically goes into a psychedelic trip that makes Alice in Wonderland look tame; Mario literally turns into an elephant, gets stretched out like a giraffe in a strange shadow world, power flowers start talking to you, and pipes even come alive and wriggle around like caterpillars.

The Sims 4 is getting a new expansion that's broadly cowboy-themed and introduces horses, according to heavy hints dropped by EA.

This follows recent rumors of a horsey expansion, fueled by listings at retailers for 'The Sims 4 Horse Ranch' (as PC Gamer pointed out).

With EA announcing on Twitter that a 'rootin' tootin' expansion' is coming that'll allow you to 'take the reins,' there's not much doubt that horses are inbound for The Sims 4. Especially as in a following tweet, EA tells us that there's a trailer due to arrive on June 22 (tomorrow) and to "giddy up for good news coming soon."

Here's a strange one, with all props going to the team at Wccftech for doing a little sleuthing when it comes to recent major PC game releases. It might be a case of 'tin-foil hat conspiracy' thinking, but the evidence does point to a very noticeable trend.

And that is, regarding PC game releases sponsored by AMD and Radeon, titles with FSR do not feature NVIDIA DLSS support - widely considered the superior rendering tech for boosting performance with a minimal hit to visual fidelity. The flip side to this, NVIDIA sponsored PC games with DLSS support; these games also feature support for AMD's FSR.

Some of the notable AMD-sponsored games without DLSS support include new AAA titles Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Dead Island 2, and Resident Evil 4 Remake, with older releases like Far Cry 6, Callisto Protocol, Saints Row, and many more making up the list.

Traditional console and PC gaming segments are expected to comprise less than half of 2023's total revenues in the United States,

New data from analyst firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) indicates that console and PC gaming are expected to shrink from 2023 onwards, driven by gains in the social and casual gaming segment. According to the figures that were published by VentureBeat, the firm expects console and PC gaming to generate $15.514 billion in the United States throughout 2023, comprising about 27% of total regional earnings.

Casual gaming, which includes mobile titles, is expected to make $34.459 billion in 2023, driven primarily by advertisements (over $20 billion) and in-app spending like microtransactions.

A new patch has arrived for Cyberpunk 2077 which makes an important fix for some PC gamers, plus a bunch of other tweaks and honing across console and PC platforms.

The significant development for those with a gaming PC that pairs a new AMD processor with an NVIDIA Lovelace GPU is that CD Projekt Red has improved the performance of DLSS 3 with Ryzen 7000 CPUs in patch 1.63.

You may have seen reports online that the game engine (REDengine) doesn't play nice with Ryzen 7000 chips, with players experiencing bad stuttering (highly off-putting, of course - and also affecting The Witcher 3, it should be noted).

Some very interesting developers are involved with Skydance New Media's upcoming Star Wars game.

Five years ago, EA shut down Visceral Games and cancelled an ambitious new Star Wars game. 10 years ago, LucasArts cancelled Star Wars 1313, an action game based on Boba Fett's exploits in the layered criminal city-world of Coruscant. Now two of the main creatives behind both of these projects--Amy Hennig and Dominic Robilliard--are under the same roof working on a new Star Wars game.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Dominic Robilliard announced that he will serve as game director on Skydance New Media's upcoming Star Wars game. It's a fitting placement, considering Robilliard was the creative director of the famously cancelled Star Wars 1313 project.