Gaming - Page 159

The 8K Association has shown off the world's first 8K @ 120Hz gaming over HDMI 2.1 at the recent NAB 2025 show (National Association of Broadcasting).

The team used a special 65-inch 8K 120Hz-capable Samsung Neo QLED QN950F TV over HDMI 2.1, plugged into a MAINGEAR desktop gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor and Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card. 8K Association fired up Horizon Forbidden West, rendering the game at 5K and then using AMD FSR 3 upscaling technology to bump it up to 8K. The signal was sent to the 8K TV using HDMI 2.1b with DSC (Display Stream Compression) technology.

It's an impressive feat -- 8K is 33 million pixels, compared to the 8.2 million at 4K -- but even more so at 120Hz. AMD's flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT isn't the GPU that I'd be using for 8K 120Hz. NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5090 is a much more powerful GPU with even more VRAM -- 32GB on the RTX 5090 versus 16GB on the RX 9070 XT -- and furthermore, FSR 4 or better yet, DLSS 4 should've been used.

The Homebrew Channel, a critical component for modding Wii consoles to run custom software, has now ceased development amid allegations of copyright infringement.

Wii modding may be at a standstill when it comes to homebrew applications as one of the major players in the space has stopped updating the Homebrew Channel. It's been revealed by the digital wizards at fail0verflow that the Homebrew Channel was essentially built on pirated code lifted directly from Nintendo Software Development Kits (SDKs). As a result, updates and development on the Homebrew Channel have been shut down, potentially preempting any potential legal action from Nintendo.

"The Homebrew Channel (HBC) is a vital tool for Wii homebrew enthusiasts. It's essentially a launcher for homebrew applications, allowing users to access them directly from the Wii's main menu," reads a quick description.

FromSoftware's macabre dark fantasy epic has sold over 30 million copies across the globe, Bandai Namco has announced.

By amassing over 30 million sales in little over 3 years on the market, Elden Ring is one of the most popular new games in recent memory, and it's also one of the best-performing new IPs in gaming history. The punishing action RPG hit the ground running with a meteoric 12 million sales in just 2 weeks, and after a year on the market, Elden Ring had moved 20 million units.

If we take a look at Elden Ring's sales trends, we can also see the possible effects that the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion may have had on repeated sales of the base game. Elden Ring sold 2 million copies in the period between February and June 2024, before Shadow of the Erdtree released, likely influenced by timely discounts as well as potential adoption for the Erdtree expansion.

Blizzard has reportedly chosen Nexon to make a new StarCraft game for the Korean/Japanese market, sources tell South Korean news publication MTN.

Last month, reports broke out that Blizzard was interested in releasing a new StarCraft game for enthusiast markets like ASEAN. Blizzard had reportedly courted various Korean developers including NC Soft, Netmarble, Krafton, and Nexon, pitting them against one another in a competitive bidding war landscape on a new StarCraft project.

New information indicates that Blizzard narrowed its selection down to free-to-play juggernaut Nexon, who is responsible for billion-dollar hits like Dungeon & Fighter, Maple Story, and KartRider. According to MTN's sources, each competing firm submitted their own unique ideas for a new StarCraft game in a series of pitches and concepts.

Oblivion Remastered didn't ship with a photo mode, but it's still possible to take beautiful HUD-free screenshots on PC.

Like all Bethesda games, Oblivion Remastered can be manipulated with a series of console commands, which are basically strings of text that you type in a special command line that can adjust in-game parameters. With enough knowledge, anyone can force the game to accept some pretty crazy conditions. But we wanted to do one thing first: Take pristine screenshots to show off just how impressive Oblivion Remastered actually is.

While it's not possible to turn off Oblivion Remastered's HUD while in-game, and certain older console commands like tm (toggle menu) don't work, we can brute force the functionality with mods and with new commands. These mods work on Game Pass, and this tutorial is for the PC Game Pass version of the game.

The new Oblivion Remastered re-release has generated tons of buzz and popularity, amassing millions of players in a matter of days.

Predictably enough, the new Oblivion remaster in Unreal Engine 5 is a big hit. While we don't know exact game sales performance, Bethesda did confirm over 4 million people had played Oblivion Remastered across all platforms as of April 25, indicating a 3-day span to accumulate these players.

"We are so grateful to the over 4 million of you that have already ventured into Cyrodiil with Oblivion Remastered. Thank you!" Bethesda said on Twitter.

A colorful and dramatic French indie RPG is making waves in the world of gaming, and it could be one of the best-rated video games of all time.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a thunderous indie success on all platforms. The ultra-stylish turn-based RPG achieved 1 million sales in just 3 days, no doubt as a result of it's high reviews and universal acclaim. As Forbes notes, Expedition 33 might actually have the best user rating score on Metacritic, where it sits at a 9.7 across 2,500+ user reviews (to contrast this, something as big as Tears of the Kingdom has an 8.8 user score with over 13,000 user reviews). It's also rated 4.92 stars on PlayStation with 6.2K ratings, and 4.5 out of 5 stars on Xbox with 1.9K total reviews.

The game's official Twitter account described the situation quite succinctly: "And here we are. Three days after launch. One million copies sold. Thank you for believing in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33."

id Software apparently is not trying to connect the Quake and Doom franchises together, at least with Doom: The Dark Ages.

It's been long-rumored that the modern iterations of id's shooter franchises--Doom and Quake--could be connected. Initial rumors of a new Quake game said it could have a female protagonist, and that Wolfenstein and Indiana Jones developer MachineGames was helping with the project. Speculation hinted at some sort of crossover between Doom and Quake, and the two have been connected by tenuous threads.

That hellish crossover hasn't happened, though, and apparently id Software has no actual intention of bridging the two franchises...at least with the latest game, Doom: The Dark Ages. In a recent episode of the PlayStation Podcast, id Software's Hugo Martin says that the Dark Ages' Cosmic Realm isn't meant to be a supernatural link between the two shooter series, despite the obvious inter-dimensional similarities.

NVIDIA's semi-custom Tegra239 chip has been discovered inside of Nintendo's new Switch 2 gaming handheld, something that has been long-rumored, but now confirmed inside of the switch 2.

The upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 is powered by the semi-custom T239 processor from NVIDIA, confirmed by X user @Kurnalsalts, sharing an image of the "T239" SoC inside of the Switch 2. We don't have any information on the T239 processor from this post, but we know it should have 8 Arm-based Cortex-A78C cores, a hybrid GPU using Ada Lovelace and Ampere GPU architectures with 1536 CUDA cores.

The CPU clocks are said to be around 1.1GHz to 1.5GHz with varying figures when the Nintendo Switch 2 is in docked mode, joined by a 128-bit memory interface using LPDDR5 memory. NVIDIA's new T239 processor inside of the Switch 2 supports NVIDIA DLSS upscaling technology, too.

Doom: The Dark Ages will have its own homage to H.P. Lovecraft's elder gods, including what looks to be a Cthulhu-like deity.

id Software is continuing their hyperviolent machismo trilogy with Doom: The Dark Ages, which uses bullet hell mechanics to deliver on its "stand and fight" theme. A big part of Doom Eternal and Doom: The Dark Ages has been the influence of pop culture media, particularly the power fantasies you'd see in a summer popcorn flick, and we're seeing more of a sci-fi/horror approach with today's reveal.

The studio has highlighted a new area in Doom: The Dark Ages that looks like it's right out of Lovecraft's nightmares. The Dark Ages has a special new area called the Cosmic Realm, and it's teeming with monstrosities like the new cacodemon, which can stun players with its attacks, a twin-bladed cosmic baron, and even a sword-wielding cyberdemon with wings.

Nexus Mods has chosen to re-host a controversial gender designation mod for Oblivion remastered.

If you've played the Oblivion remake, you might've noticed a change in how the body types are described. There's no male or female genders, just Body Type 1 and Body Type 2. Someone made a mod called Body Type Selector that changes this back to the male/female options and uploaded it to the Nexus Mods site.

At first, Nexus Mods removed the mod and all subsequent uploads, but after a review, the Body Type Select is now being allowed. It turns out it's not the mod itself that Nexus Mods has a problem with, rather the intent of the mod's uploader. Nexus Mods had banned the original uploader of Body Type Selector because of what they had said in public comments on the mod page.

Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer reassures fans that the titles on Xbox Game Pass should also continue to be made available for purchase.

Microsoft's core business is centered around software and services, and Xbox Game Pass combines both into one monthly subscription. But Game Pass offers a unique kind of interference to traditional models: the "cannibalism" of game sales, that is to say consumers may buy a month of a lower-cost subscription for $20 instead of paying $70 for a new game. This effect has been documented in the FTC v Microsoft trial.

In a recent interview with Variety, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer gives an update on Microsoft's ethos around Game Pass as it pertains to this effect. Following the $70 billion Activision merger, Microsoft basically wants to maximize its chances of making money on video games. That means the full gamut: game sales, subscriptions/streaming, breaking exclusivity on its franchises and selling them on Sony and Nintendo platforms.

The bloody world of Berserk is crossing over into Diablo IV and Diablo Immortal with special timed events.

Blizzard's Diablo series is about to have one of the best-fitting crossovers in the history of gaming. Berserk is bringing its cursed behelits to the already-sinful world of Diablo's Sanctuary, offering custom bosses, cosmetics, and items that are stylized after Kentaro Miura's legendary manga.

The events are a little bit different for each game. Diablo Immortal is having the Struggler's Path event, which runs from May 1 - 30. It sounds pretty involved, complete with an eclipse that shows up every minute and transports users to a hellish underworld. There's also a boss fight with Nosferatu Zodd, a Crimson Behelit legendary gem, and of course cosmetics--the infamous Berserker Armor and Griffith's White Hawk set. There's also log-in rewards for Immortal players when the event is active.

Remedy Entertainment, mostly known for its cerebral action games, is taking a big leap with its first self-published project...but some of that risk will be mitigated with subscription deals with PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass.

Today, Remedy announced that it's new game FBC: Firebreak will release on June 17 as both a premium $40 game and as a title included in Sony's and Microsoft's game subscriptions. Remedy has confirmed FBC will launch day one into PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium as well as Xbox Game Pass for console and PC.

The news brings a perspective to the self-publishing market as it pertains to mid-scale independent developers like Remedy, who are taking a lot of potential risk by self-publishing a game alone, but also entering a rather saturated market of online shooters.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is selling better on PS5 than it is on Xbox and Steam, analyst firm Alinea Analytics predicts.

A year ago when the Fallout TV show came out, Microsoft had more best-selling first-party games on the PlayStation Store than Sony did. This trend showed the full extent of Microsoft's owned IPs and illustrated PlayStation gamers' willingness to buy Xbox exclusives. The latter is something Microsoft has counted on and PlayStation has now reinforced itself as an integral part of its competitor's business.

While we typically can't exactly quantify the results of these trends in precise numbers, analyst firms track the performance of these games in their respective online stores and make predictions. According to Alinea Analytics, Bethesda's big-budget Indiana Jones game is actually selling better on PlayStation than it is on Xbox and Steam--a trend that may speak to the conditioning of these subset of consumers.

EA's new Skate game will require an online connection in order to play, game developer Full Circle has confirmed.

A new Skate is coming soon, but the sim has now been morphed into a live service game that's free-to-play and doesn't cost an upfront purchase. The flip side is that Skate will now be monetized with microtransactions, and is now an always-online game. The developers confirmed the news in a blog post, saying that Skate was built from the ground up as a digital world that gets updated over time.

"The game and city are designed to be a living, breathing massively multiplayer skateboarding sandbox that is always online and always evolving," Skate developer Full Circle said in a recent blog post.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, developed by Sandfall Interactive, has sold half a million units in just 24 hours after its release, according to a recent announcement.

Sandfall Interactive is celebrating the launch of the turn-based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and what better way to celebrate than to announce how many units the game has sold? According to the official Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 X account, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has surpassed more than 500,000 copies sold, presumably across all the platforms it has released on. As for PC, SteamDB data indicates the game reached its peak all-time player count of 71,225 as of today, with that being an upward trend.

Steam players have also responded to the release of the title quite positively, with the game receiving a 91.69% Steam rating across approximately 7,000 reviews. For those who don't know much about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, here's a brief overview. Players will take members of Expedition 33 on a quest to destroy the Paintress in order to prevent her from painting death again. Players will embark on an epic journey that takes them across a world inspired by Belle Époque France.

DOOM: The Dark Ages has received a brand new trailer published on the PlayStation YouTube channel, where the title's game director, Hugo Martin, reveals some previously unknown details about the upcoming title.

Martin explains DOOM: The Dark Ages will be the biggest DOOM game ever released, and plans to include a world that has never been implemented into the DOOM universe before, the Cosmic Real. Martin describes the Cosmic Realm as a "Lovecraftian dimension" formed through a blend of Hell and the Comic Realm. This realm features is littered with "cyclopean architecture" and is filled with dark secrets guarded by "the most insane enemies".

The new gameplay trailer shows off a few new enemies, such as the Cosmic Baron, a twin-bladed brute that has relentless close-range attacks and a long-range psionic attack. The Cosmic Baron can be defeated by a proficient Slayer who takes advantage of its small parry windows. To go along with the new enemies is a new weapon, the Reaver Chainshot, a brutal ballistic iron mace that can be used quickly for a single target attack or charged to inflict area-of-effect damage.

QD-OLED gaming monitors are the best gaming monitors available on the market, and now Phillips has unveiled its latest contender, sporting Samsung's latest third-generation pixel technology.

Within the category of QD-OLED gaming monitors, the latest are 27-inch displays, which all come with 166 Pixels Per Inch (PPI) for increased image clarity. QD-OLED monitor at this size have only been released by a few brands so far, MSI and ASUS to name some of the biggest players in the space, and having tested a few, I can personally they are worth looking at if you are looking to make the jump to 4K from a 1440p or even 1080p display.

As for Phillips' latest addition to the gaming monitor market, the company has showcased the Evnia 27M2N8800, a 26.5-inch monitor that has a 3840 x 2160 resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, and a 0.03ms (GtG) response time. Other notable specifications are as follows: 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, 97.6% of Adobe RGB, and 100% of sRGB, with factory calibration ensuring Delta E <1 accuracy. Connectivity-wise, the Evnia 27M2N8800 features 2x HDMI 2.1 ports (48 Gbps FRL6), 1x DisplayPort 2.1 (80 Gbps UHBR20), USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 1x USB-B upstream port, and a headphone jack.

The Nintendo Switch 2 was confirmed to have upscaling technology when it was announced, and now we are starting to get some hands-on reports revealing the technical details of what is happening under the hood.

A new report from the gold standard of gaming hardware analysis, Digital Foundry, has looked at what the Nintendo Switch 2 is doing with Street Fighter 6, and according to the experts at Digital Foundry, Nintendo's new console is capable of achieving a stable 60FPS while in docked mode with visuals on par with PlayStation 4 and Xbox Series S versions of the same game. An early analysis of the footage revealed the Switch 2 isn't running the game at native 1080p, but using its NVIDIA DLSS technology to upscale it from a base 540p resolution to 1080p.

As for optimization, Digital Foundry reports the Switch 2 was able to consistently produce 60FPS for Street Fighter 6, but does make some concessions to get there, specifically with shadow quality being reduced, and screen space reflections being disabled, which is the same as the PS4 and Series S versions of the game. Other Switch 2 titles that are using NVIDIA's DLSS upscaling technology include Cyberpunk 2077, which is reportedly using the technology in both docked and handheld mode.