Gaming - Page 134

As part of its latest weekly roundup of new DLSS 4 games, NVIDIA has confirmed that over 800 games and apps use RTX technologies like DLSS, Reflex, and real-time ray-tracing. This is a significant milestone and the reason why DLSS is a key feature and selling point for the company's latest GeForce RTX 50 Series generation.

DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation is the latest version of NVIDIA's AI-powered rendering technology for PC gaming, and the new 'Transformer' AI model for Super Resolution has been a game changer for image quality. Whether gaming at 1080p, 1440p, or 4K, DLSS 4 Super Resolution delivers better-than-native image quality, making it a free performance boost delivered entirely by software and AI hardware.

Multi Frame Generation is the latest version of NVIDIA's Frame Generation that is currently exclusive to the GeForce RTX 50 Series. With improved image stability and reduced VRAM usage, like DLSS Super Resolution, it's the gold standard for frame generation technology. And with that, NVIDIA has announced a new batch of DLSS 4 games this week - Eternal Strands, Diablo 4, Strinova, and more.

Sony used liquid metal on its PlayStation 5 console and it is causing issues for gamers, where your PS5 console can die in a matter of years... right when it's out of warranty.

In the latest episode of Moore's Law is Dead's Broken Silicon podcast, Alderon Games founder Matthew Cassells was the guest star, pointing out how the PS5's critical flaw is causing liquid metal that's used for cooling to drop down to the bottom of the console when placed vertically, causing dry spots on the semi-custom APU.

Once the liquid metal on the APU drips down, it'll cause dry spots on the APU that compromise its functionality and can even force your PS5 to shut down in particular conditions. There were stories from a while ago from the developer that had received reports that the latest update of their dinosaur-themed MMO, Path of Titans, was causing PS5 consoles to shut down all of a sudden.

Hironobu Sakaguchi was the glue holding Square together, but all of that changed when he left way back in 2003.

Legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu recently gave Western gamers a lesson in RPG history. In a new episode of his podcast show, NOBIYO To Isshoni, the famed master of symphonies recalls what it was like at Square when Hironobu Sakaguchi departed.

"Maybe Sakaguchi isn't aware of this, but the situation at Square was awful after he quit. He left and the organization suddenly collapsed. I thought to myself 'Oh no, I should get away from here,'" Uematsu said, as translated by Automaton Media.

Daybreak Games sues the creators of Everquest emulator The Heroes' Journey for copyright infringement.

The owners of the iconic Everquest franchise, Daybreak Games, have filed a lawsuit against the creators of The Heroes' Journey. The Heroes' Journey is an EQEmu (an Everquest emulator) where gamers connect to a non-official server and play a customized version of the game. THJ launched in November 2024 and is described as a "three-year labor of love aimed at creating an incredible soloduo EQ experience."

The 41-page complaint alleges that defendants Kristopher "Aporia" Takahashi and Alexander "Catapultam-Habeo" Taylor profited from the unauthorized use of the Everquest IP through a "thinly-disguised donation system."

PlayStation still has no plans to mimic Xbox Game Pass's biggest selling feature.

Xbox Game Pass was created to disrupt the industry and build a new service-oriented business model. This plan worked so well that both Nintendo and Sony put their own unique spins on what the FTC would call "value-added, multi-game subscription services," creating the 3-tiered PS Plus and Switch Online subscriptions. But unlike Xbox, neither Nintendo nor Sony were willing to put their biggest games on a subscription on day one because of the impact to sales (a phenomenon referred to as "cannibalization").

Now Sony management has reiterated its original plan. Sony remains steadfast in its commitment to avoid launching marquee first-party PlayStation games onto PS Plus. In a recent interview with Game File, Sony VP of global services Nick Maguire laid out a familiar game plan for PlayStation Plus.

Square Enix has seen the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and has been inspired to take the Final Fantasy franchise back to where it began, turn-based.

The decision to return to command-based RPGs comes after Square Enix was disappointed with the sales of Final Fantasy 16, which saw the developer take a shift in direction with the title, particularly with its combat, which was compared to games such as Devil May Cry. The sharp directional change caused a split with Final Fantasy fans, with some praising the new direction for the franchise and others wanting a return to a turn-based combat system.

It seems turn-based combat system fans will be getting what they want. Square Enix has responded to an individual who, during an investor call, got a chance to speak to the developer and advocate for this change.

Peak, the comedy climber that is currently climbing its way up Steam's Most-Played games, was actually conceived in a hot tub in Sweden and then brought to an Airbnb in South Korea for a month-long development jam.

Peak, which has already obtained more than 1 million sales in just the week it has been available, has gained an incredible amount of attention within the gaming community recently, as clips of the strange characters called scouts have been circulating on various social media platforms, causing the game to spread like wildfire. For those who are out of the loop, Peak is a cooperative climbing and survival game developed by Landfall and Aggro Crab.

Players assume the roles of stranded nature scouts who must ascend a perilous mountain to escape a mysterious island. It has gained quite a lot of popularity for the value of proximity chat experiences, funny encounters/setbacks, and overall comedic approach. Peak hit a staggering 102,799 concurrent players.

Ubisoft has rolled out a new update for Assassin's Creed Shadows, which adds several new features such as a new crossover story quest, a new nightmare difficulty setting, and a new open-world alarm system.

The new update is scheduled to be pushed on June 25 at 7am PT / 10am ET, and is relatively big depending on the platform it's being downloaded on. For example, the new update comes in at 6.27GB on the PS5, and much larger on PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles at 19GB.

One of the main aspects of the update is the new quest called A Critical Encounter, which features Robbie Daymond's character Rufino from Critical Role's Assassin's Creed Shadows one-shot. Daymond voices the character in the quest.

Another one of Microsoft's first-party games is crossing over to PlayStation 5 later this year, this time with Ninja Theory's Hellblade II.

Hellblade II: Senua's Saga is getting a new enhancement patch on Gen 9 consoles and PC alongside the game's official PS5 release. Senua's sequel is set to release on PS5 on August 12 with two editions: the standard $49.99 version, and a deluxe $69.99 SKU that comes bundled with an upgraded PS5-ready version of the first Hellblade, alongside an official soundtrack.

The new Hellblade II: Senua's Saga Enhanced edition will be optimized for both the PS5 and PS5 Pro, offering major performance upgrades like doubling the frame rate to 60FPS. The Xbox Series X/S and PC versions also run at 60FPS in performance mode, and Ninja Theory has added in a new very high graphics preset on PC. The devs also say that the enhanced edition will be Steam Deck verified at launch.

Techland's new Dying Light Retouched update will be out on all platforms on June 26, complete with visual boosts and more.

The Dying Light franchise turned 10 years old this year, and to celebrate, the developers over at Techland put together some extra bonuses for their community. One big addition is Dying Light Retouched, a new game patch that adds a higher level of detail to the last-gen classic.

The free Retouched update isn't a remaster, but Techland did say it was a significant amount of manual work to make the adjustments. These enhancements include 8K Ultra shadow quality, tweaked lighting, boosting LOD from 260% to 340%, increased texture quality, and improved physics-based rendering.

Microsoft is planning a significant round of layoffs in the Xbox games division, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

New layoffs are set to happen at Xbox. New reports indicate that Microsoft will conduct another large layoff in the Xbox games unit next week as part of a company-wide restructuring. These layoffs will be on top of the 6,000 job eliminations that Microsoft made last month.

Today's news marks the fourth round of layoffs at Xbox in the last 18 months. To stem costs and help equalize margins, Xbox management has laid off thousands of workers over the last year and a half across all of its operating groups (Activision Blizzard King, ZeniMax Media, and Xbox Game Studios).

Meta formally announces a special edition Xbox-themed Quest 3S virtual reality headset as Microsoft further expands beyond consoles.

Microsoft wants to bring Xbox services to all devices that can play them, including VR headsets. But there's just one problem: Making hardware is expensive, and Xbox VR was nixed a while back. That's the impetus behind today's hardware reveal, the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition.

Rather than make its own VR headsets, Microsoft teamed up with Meta to make an Xbox-branded Quest 3 headset. The bundle is Xbox only in name and color palette--it's still just a Quest 3S--but it does come with a custom Xbox controller and 3 months of Xbox Game Pass for $399. The headset is now available over on Meta's website.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has made its way into the hands of millions of gamers and a portion of those gamers are taking to social media to complain about the screen in handheld mode, specifically how blurry it is.

Following these complaints, tech experts such as Digital Foundry and now Monitors Unboxed put the Switch 2 under the spotlight and ran a series of tests to determine what was causing this reportedly blurry display, and the results were shocking.

The Nintendo Switch 2 blurry screen complaints are justified and measurable, with the Switch 2 display having an extremely slow response time for an LCD IPS display, measuring at a very slow 33.3ms (GtG) in Monitors Unboxed testing. For comparison, a typical LCD IPS panel has an average of 6.3ms response times.

War Thunder is a free-to-play online military simulator that enables players to engage in simulated combat in air, land, and sea. The game is renowned for its attention to detail and has gained quite an audience, some of whom are former military personnel who seemingly still have access to restricted information.

Why does this matter? Because one War Thunder forum user was just banned after leaking a page of an AV-8B flight manual, which marks the ninth known case of classified or, at the very least, restricted information being released to the public via the War Thunder forums in an attempt to influence the technical levels of the game. The user uploaded a section from a NATOPS manual for the AV-8B and TAV-8B, Harrier, which are used by the United States Navy and Marine Corps.

The manual is marked with "Distribution Statement C," meaning it's restricted to government personnel only and not suited for public release. Why did this user leak this information? To win an argument, of course. The user wanted to prove they were right in a technical discussion about the vehicles and to hopefully influence the way the game is designed.

A trusted leaker has revealed some new details about Sony's and Microsoft's next-generation consoles. The leaker writes that Microsoft and Sony will use the same GPU technology for their upcoming consoles.

That leaker is KeplerL2, who posted to the NeoGAF forums and wrote that PS6 and the next Xbox are using the "same GPU architecture." Notably, Kepler stated earlier this year that both the PS6 and next Xbox are scheduled to use AMD's UDNA GPU architecture and that both consoles are slated for release in 2027. As for UDNA, that GPU architecture is currently codenamed "gfx13" and is the next GPU architecture after RDNA 4, which is the architecture in the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9060 discrete PC graphics cards.

For reference, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles use GPUs based on the RDNA 2 architecture, and Kepler writes that UDNA architecture should provide a leap of about 20% faster performance per compute unit in traditional rasterized rendering, and twice as fast in ray tracing and AI operations. Moreover, Kepler writes that these new consoles will increase HDMI bandwidth to 80 Gbps, which could enable higher refresh rates at 4K, or even 8K gaming.

No, Nintendo hasn't decided to start bringing its back catalog of games to PC, that will probably never happen. Instead, Mario Kart 64 has just received a PC port from the team at Harbour Masters, which was created using the same disassembly and recompilation template seen with previous native PC ports for Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

The game's original code is decompiled and recompiled in a PC-friendly codebase and language without containing any of the original game's assets. Harbour Masters calls the release Spaghetti Kart, requiring a ROM of Mario Kart 64 to work. As this is not an emulation of the Nintendo 64 hardware, the game benefits from modern PC gaming features.

This includes rendering the game at higher resolutions, with Ultrawide support, and with performance that can hit 120 FPS. It also means texture packs, new audio, and other remastered assets can easily be added to the game. This PC port includes a course editor and the ability to tweak several settings not present in the original N64 release.

An early build of Concord was uploaded over the weekend, and now reports are claiming the build dates back to November 14, 2023, nine months before the game was released to its tragic reception and ultimate demise.

For those who have never heard of Concord, or vaguely remember hearing the name within the gaming market, Concord was a flash in the pan that cost Sony reportedly $400 million in development, but was eventually pulled from marketplaces and refunds issued to those who purchased it.

The game was developed by Firewalk Studios, which has since closed, and debuted with a $40 price tag. It attracted less than 1,500 players concurrently, and due to it being a team-based shooter attempting to compete with Overwatch, Sony was forced to take down the live servers and essentially delete the game.

Microsoft has confirmed that it will return to Gamescom this year, but we're still not sure what exactly will be shown at the event.

Now that Microsoft has grown to a gigantic Roman Empire-like entity in the games industry, it's no surprise that the company will be attending major video games trade shows. That's the case for Gamescom 2025, with Microsoft recently announcing it will attend the show in Cologne, Germany later in the fall.

Xbox's presence at Gamescom will run from August 20 to 24, and Microsoft's bustling stable of games publishers and developers will be in attendance. Blizzard says it'll be at the show with World of Warcraft in tow, offering "five days of non-stop community celebrations." Blizzard confirms it will reveal new details about World of Warcraft's eleventh expansion, known as Midnight.

You can now buy Nintendo Switch 2 motherboards from Chinese resellers directly from the production line for just $124 on local marketplaces like Goofish.

The Chinese resellers have shown images of a panelized PCB design, which is a manufacturing technique where multiple individual PCBs are arranged onto a single PCB during production. In the later stages, manufacturers and assemblers like Foxconn, separate or depanelize them.

The PCB that can now be purchased is identical to those in the official retail version of the Nintendo Switch 2 -- including the same market stamps which are usually applied during verification. Chinese marketplace variants are just missing some of the metallic shielding layers for important components, but that's about as close as we'll see to the official motherboards inside of the Nintendo Switch 2.

MindsEye did so poorly that it is reportedly triggering layoffs at the studio that made it, Build a Rocket Boy.

The meteoric pendulum swing of MindsEye is an example of flash-in-the-pan excitement constructed on hollow hype. The game was built up by former Rockstar Games mastermind Leslie Benzies and a slick marketing campaign hoping to capitalize on past glories. Skepticism won out in the long run, though, because MindsEye launched with a plethora of bugs and glitches, and was promptly publicly lambasted on social media. MindsEye is now the worst-reviewed game of 2025 and will ultimately be remembered for a tarnished legacy.

Now sources tell IGN's Wesley Yin-Poole that MindsEye developer Build a Rocket Boy is preparing layoffs to stem the losses.