Gaming News - Page 136

Microsoft has revealed new performance measurements that highlight the company's engagement-driven business model.

In some ways, Xbox is a lot different than PlayStation. Microsoft's games division has prioritized services, subscriptions, and digital engagement above all else, and this paradigm shift has helped the Xbox brand stay competitive. Along with cross-platform unification through OS and services, Game Pass is the purest example of this model. The subscription thrives from the breadth of content offered, but also the successful capturing and exploitation of player engagement through key online-driven and replayable experiences.

This model is paying off in terms of players engaged with specific titles, which remains a critical part of today's video games market. The most popular and lucrative games on the planet rely on digital engagement models that monetize players over time directly through in-game purchases, but Xbox Game Pass is another method of indirect monetization through recurring subscriptions. Rather than just relying on full game sales alone, Xbox is diversifying its games to leverage the strongest elements of engagement through steady digital content releases. These ultimately serve both monetization and retention of its Game Pass service.

If you're gaming on a PC, then no doubt most of that time is spent using Valve's Steam client, and today it just got a massive update that overhauls everything from the underlying framework and codebase to the UI elements, in-game overlay, and more.

In fact, if you fire up Steam, you'll notice that even things like font choices and how information and notifications are laid out look different.

This update has been in the works for quite some time, with the big goal being how the client shares code between its various modes - Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck. This means new features and updates will be easier for Valve to implement going forward. Plus, hardware acceleration has been added to Steam's Mac and Linux versions.

Rather than focusing exclusively on mega-hit AAA blockbusters, Xbox Game Pass helps fuel the development of experimental passion projects like Obsidian's Grounded and Pentiment games, and Xbox management sees the service as a kind of cyclic wheel that helps foster creativity.

Game Pass is one of the most interesting and disruptive parts of the modern video games industry. The service not only packs tremendous value due to sheer volume of content offered, but the real driver is the diversity of the games included in the subscription. Microsoft's day-one first-party releases have created an environment where Xbox Game Studios devs can pitch, fund, and eventually release the games they've always wanted to make, including Minecraft offshoots like the Diablo-like Minecraft Dungeons and Rare's Sea of Thieves.

This has fostered a wide array of unique first-party games that appeal to the full spectrum of gaming, from AA indies to long-lasting service games and heavy-hitting AAA titles like, for instance, the Forza series.

The director of Cyberpunk 2077's new Phantom Liberty expansion will also lead the next game in the franchise.

According to a new Bloomberg feature, Phantom Liberty is more than just post-release content. It's essentially a Cyberpunk 2077 refresh that's been in development for over two years. CD Projekt is using the $30 expansion as a gateway to significantly overhaul the game, including new systems, graphical capabilities, and a forced migration over to SSDs on PC.

Gabe Amatangelo, the director of Phantom Liberty, was essentially given a blank check by CD Projekt RED to fix the game. Amatangelo started first with Patch 1.5, which natively optimized the game to leverage the power of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S systems. The director has had great success so far, and this gave CD Projekt the confidence to have Amatangelo also direct the big-budget sequel to Cyberpunk 2077.

As of March 2023, People Can Fly still haven't received royalty payments for its Outriders looter-shooter.

Today People Can Fly announced a big new partnership with Microsoft to develop a new Xbox game. The game is codenamed Project Maverick, and could be some sort of first-person or third-person looter shooter that aligns with the Polish game publisher's core action focus.

While scouting the publisher's investor relations page, I noticed something interesting: Outriders, the well-received third-person co-op game released in 2021, has yet to turn a profit. Outriders was financed by Square Enix and People Can Fly were to receive royalties if the game broke even. As of March of this year, Square Enix hasn't sent any royalties to People Can Fly.

People Can Fly, the developers behind Bulletstorm and Outriders, today announced a lucrative multi-year contract to develop a big new Xbox game for Microsoft.

Polish game developer People Can Fly are pretty busy. The team are currently working on a handful of projects, including new 3 self-published games in IPs wholly-owned by PCF, a new game in an IP owned by Square Enix called Project Gemini, and VR content as well as other concepts.

Following the cancellation of a big publishing deal with Take-Two Interactive, the studio has been seeking new opportunities with other companies. Now it's found a new deal with one of the best independent-friendly companies in gaming. People Can Fly has secured a contract to make a new Xbox game with a hefty $30 - 50 million budget.

PlayStation 5 games are coming to PS Plus Premium game streaming, Sony has announced.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is currently testing out PS5 game streaming on its PS Plus Premium service. As it currently stands, the $119/year PS Plus Premium only offers PS4 titles and games in the Classics Catalog section for game streaming.

"We're currently testing cloud streaming for supported PS5 games - this includes PS5 titles from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Game Trials, as well as supported digital PS5 titles that players own," PlayStation services executive Nick Maguire said on the PlayStation Blog.

Federal judge Jaqueline Scott Corley has granted the FTC's request for a temporary restraining order in the Microsoft-Activision merger case, but the most important order has yet to be issued.

In a bid to stall (and ultimately prevent) the Microsoft-Activision merger from closing, the Federal Trade Commission sought two court orders from federal courts: a temporary restraining order (TRO), which would prohibit Microsoft and Activision from merging for a specified period of time, and the more important preliminary injunction (PI), an order that would restrict the merger from closing until after the FTC's internal administrative lawsuit is complete. The tech firms have indicated they would "close-over," or merge together despite the ongoing FTC admin lawsuit, at any time after June 15. This pressured the FTC to file for emergency intervention from federal courts.

Northern California District Judge Jaqueline Corley has approved the FTC's request for a TRO. This order temporarily restrains Microsoft and Activision from merging. The two billion-dollar games companies cannot join together until five days after the court decides whether or not to issue the preliminary injunction order. The PI order remains the FTC's main goal with seeking federal intervention.

Blizzard has taken to its social channels to reveal some statistics that have been accumulated over the week Diablo IV has released.

Blizzard took to its Diablo Twitter account to share a graphic that showcases a bunch of interesting stats, one of which is particularly humorous, and that's the fact that of the 316,991,632 player deaths, 5,792,063 of them can be awarded to The Butcher. According to Blizzard's stats, The Butcher is responsible for 1.6% of all player deaths over the first week of Diablo IV being released.

Diablo IV fans were quick to comment on the hilarious stat, with one writing, "I have added to that stat many times", and another writing, "He is a damn sponge and hits like a truck. I leave the dungeon and re-enter. He has no business being that tough." Another gamer wrote, "The one time I've even seen him was after joining a buddy's game whilst hearing him scream, "THE BUTCHER IS HERREEE".

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is the big story expansion for CD Projekt Red's visually stunning first-person action RPG, and it's out this September. In addition to presenting a new cinematic story with more Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand and Idris Elba as Solomon Reed, it will take players to a new section of Night City called Dogtown with the overall tone described as a "spy thriller."

And with the base game being on the absolute bleeding edge regarding in-game visuals and real-time ray-tracing, NVIDIA has confirmed that the expansion will support DLSS 3 at launch alongside the Technology Preview of the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode, which is a fully path-traced version of the game that requires the use of DLSS 3 to ensure a playable frame-rate on account of, well, ray-tracing for just about everything you see.

And with that, we've got the full PC requirements for the Phantom Liberty expansion covering everything from the minimum specs to the non-RT Ultra requirements and the fact that you'll need a GeForce RTX 4080 to play with the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode enabled in 4K at 60 frames-per-second.