Gaming News - Page 1616

All the latest gaming news, with everything related to PlayStation releases (PS4 & PS5), Xbox, PC Games, Nintendo Switch & plenty more - Page 1616.

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Bungie spills the beans on Destiny's new major April update

Derek Strickland | Mar 17, 2016 5:42 PM CDT

Destiny players are suffering from content fatigue, but Bungie is ready to unload a bounty of content with a new major update coming April 12.

Bungie spills the beans on Destiny's new major April update

In the latest weekly update, Bungie has outlined what Guardians can expect from Destiny's new "April Update". The content drop will include a fresh batch of activities across the full spectrum of the game, from PVE to PVP, so no players are left out. That's a pretty important designation considering PVE gamers have long been clamoring for new stuff to do in the interstellar sandbox. Check below for a bullet breakdown.

Of course Bungie doesn't reveal too much about the nebulous April Update--they're not about to break their infamous hype-building nature and expose full transparency--but we do get an actual release date and content hints. Bungie will also be streaming the new content on its Twitch channel every Wednesday for the next three weeks, so be sure to tune in if you're interested. Sadly, I think most of Destiny's playerbase has moved on to The Division by now.

Continue reading: Bungie spills the beans on Destiny's new major April update (full post)

Star Wars: Battlefront will be the first DX12 game on the Xbox One

Anthony Garreffa | Mar 17, 2016 3:47 PM CDT

GDC 2016 - During the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft's Principal Group Program Manager, Jason Ronald, held a programming session talking about the future of game development on Windows. In this session, Ronald talked about what Microsoft is doing to push their vision on game development, on both the Xbox, and Windows.

Ronald also provided an overview of a "host of new platform innovations for games in every genre". DualShockers sat in on the session, noticing some great news on DX12, with Ronald talking about how DX12 will offer gains in both CPUs and GPUs.

Ronald mentioned that Star Wars: Battlefront will be the first DX12 title on the Xbox One, but didn't provide any release window on when this would happen. He did note that Microsoft has strong partner support in DX12 thanks to recent releases like Rise of the Tomb Raider, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Hitman and Ashes of the Singularity.

Continue reading: Star Wars: Battlefront will be the first DX12 game on the Xbox One (full post)

The Division has had over 1.2 million concurrent users at one time

Jeff Williams | Mar 17, 2016 1:03 PM CDT

The Division has been one of the most successful new games that Ubisoft has ever released, reaching over $330 million dollars in revenue globally within the first five days after it was released. But it didn't just sell well, people are actually playing it too, with over 1.2 million players having enjoyed it concurrently over this past weekend across all platforms.

That's an impressive amount of people playing a game at any one time, despite it starting off with a few, nearly game breaking, problems. There's been an incredible amount of actual involvement by the player-base, with a generally positive attitude even with the problems and association with past Ubisoft titles. Right now there is a recorded all-time peak, just through Steam alone, of 113,887 players at any given time. That's not bad at all, and almost more than the Team Fortress 2 record of 117,917.

"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," Ubisoft's CEO, Yves Guillemot, said in a statement regarding the success. "The Division is the latest example yet of our unique ability to deliver immersive gaming playgrounds that keep players engaged, and that they eagerly share with their friends and community."

Continue reading: The Division has had over 1.2 million concurrent users at one time (full post)

AMD updates Gaming Evolved with better video recording functionality

Jeff Williams | Mar 17, 2016 11:52 AM CDT

Gaming Evolved, or Raptr, hasn't exactly had the shining reception that AMD might have wanted when it was included with their driver set. But it's getting better with each iteration, and more useful too. The newest update vastly improves the video capture and recording features of the integrated Play.tv, beyond a lot of other free or premium platforms.

Recording, if you set it to, can begin automatically once you start a game up now. It can detect and begin without you having to remember to turn it on, capturing the entire play session and even going so far as to deleting older videos as time goes on to save storage space. They've added the ability to use a hotkey to "bookmark" a particular moment in the game, which will make a 30-second video clip when you press that hotkey. Play.tv will also record your mouse clicks, webcam, mic nearly everything so you can analyze your competitive play. And now they have a real video editor that allows you to actually edit those clips and make them viewable right from the app. It used to be quite the pain to get things ready for sharing.

Something quite revolutionary is the new integration with League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. When you play these games, the AMD Gaming Evolved client uses live match data to automatically create highlights that are completely pre-edited, ready to watch or share instantly. They plan on adding in more games that are compatible with it soon as well.

Continue reading: AMD updates Gaming Evolved with better video recording functionality (full post)

Unity now has support for NVIDIA's VRWorks, supports VR SLI and more

Anthony Garreffa | Mar 17, 2016 11:33 AM CDT

GDC 2016 - NVIDIA announced their latest GameWorks 3.1 package at the Game Developers Conference, and then Unity announced their latest version of their popular engine - and now, Unity Technologies has revealed that it will be adding support for NVIDIA VRWorks into the Unity engine.

VRWorks being added to Unity means that it'll soon support VR SLI and Multi-Res Shading, which will make it much easier for developers to build VR support into the Unity engine for GeForce video cards. As for the Unity engine, it continues to expand at rapid levels, with VR games like Cloudlands: MiniGolf VR, Hover Junkers, and Job Simulator.

But, the Unity engine isn't just there for games - as there are various VR applications it can be used for, such as social, medical, tourism, design, education and training. Multi-Res Shading is capable of providing a 50% performance improvement when used in the right application, which is something that game developers - and gamers - can get quite excited over.

Continue reading: Unity now has support for NVIDIA's VRWorks, supports VR SLI and more (full post)

Sony says PS4 Xbox One cross-play 'could be easy' technically

Jeff Williams | Mar 17, 2016 11:06 AM CDT

Microsoft announced that they've changed their internal policies regarding cross-console play, but there's been the question of whether or not it was actually possible. The president of Sony Computer Entertainment, Shuhei Yoshida, says that the technical part of having the two platforms work together in games would potentially be the easiest part of the process. In fact, Sony has had cross-platform play available with the PC since the PlayStation 2 days, so they're definitely not against such an idea.

Yoshida is all for allowing gamers to play together whatever the platform, they've been pioneers since Final Fantasy 11 (which is still operational by the way). But connecting to the PC is much more straightforward with it being a much more open network. Speaking to Eurogamer, he said that "Because PC is an open platform it's much more straightforward. Connecting two different closed networks is much more complicated so we have to work with developers and publishers to understand what it is they are trying to accomplish." But it isn't an insurmountable challenge at all.

He continued by mentioning that the technical aspects of it were the easiest part to overcome. The challenge lies in whether or not it's in their best interest, from a business perspective, to actually allow it. It comes down to policy and business issues more than anything. But at least it's possible, and we're bound to eventually see Xbox One and PlayStation 4 gamers enjoying non-exclusive games harmoniously. Or at least semi-harmoniously.

Continue reading: Sony says PS4 Xbox One cross-play 'could be easy' technically (full post)

Skyforge update brings new quests, lets you battle other pantheons

Jeff Williams | Mar 17, 2016 10:02 AM CDT

Skyforge, an MMO that crosses the line between science-fiction and fantasy letting you play almost as a god, has received a new update called Dark Omen, and it's all about improving the quality of life for your pantheon (the equivalent of a guild) and bringing a bit more content before they drop an even larger and more substantial update coming very soon.

Overall this update is a quality of life update. In the update they've created a new operations system where higher level players can combine their powers to fight off any invasions much more efficiently, and spectacularly too. They've made this easier to use, and much better looking too. An Elder God questline has been added, so you have a chance to learn the backstory of what it actually takes to become a divine Elder God on Aelion. That questline culminates in a showdown with a massive boss battle unlike anything seen so far in the game.

One of the issues that players have noticed is that of merging their pantheon of warriors with another. Sometimes growth meant teaming up with others, but there was no easy way to accomplish this. Allods Team, the developer, have added a new Pantheon Fusion tool that makes it much easier to join forces against the invading forces that are trying to wipe you out.

Continue reading: Skyforge update brings new quests, lets you battle other pantheons (full post)

Star Crusade aims to be the new Hearthstone but in space

Jeff Williams | Mar 17, 2016 9:03 AM CDT

A new online collectible card game is coming out of the gates swinging, and wants to capture your attention in a way that no other game of its genre quite has just yet. Star Crusade: War for the Expanse gives you a massive overarching story, where you get to be in control of one of the six different, powerful factions struggling for power.

Star Crusade offers a deep and highly customizable card battle experience with more than 400 playable cards and multiple different types of playable modes. They've got single-player matches and competitive battles against friends or random people. Four-player play, sharing and gifting of your deck is all coming soon as well.

Competitive collectible card games are a genre that's been growing as of late. The popularity is now crossing over into the digital realm with the likes of Hearthstone continuing to gain momentum since it was officially released in 2013. It's quite the phenomenon really.

Continue reading: Star Crusade aims to be the new Hearthstone but in space (full post)

Disgaea 'Pretty Prinny' mod removes resolution cap, adds MSAA, SSAO

Sean Ridgeley | Mar 16, 2016 3:04 PM CDT

Modder Kaldaien is at it again with a mod for the recently released JRPG Disgaea. While a decent port, Disgaea still has some room for improvement, particularly on the visuals front, and that's what the 'Pretty Prinny' mod, as he calls it, is primarily focused on.

Among other things, it adds 'proper' V-Sync support and removes the 720p internal resolution cap as well as artifacts related to sprite smoothing. Pretty Prinny is only at version 0.2.1 at the moment, so expect lots more to come, including additional visual enhancements as well as performance and stability improvements. Tonight version 0.3.0 will be released with SSAO and MSAA support.

Hit the source to download the mod and for configuration and installation instructions.

Continue reading: Disgaea 'Pretty Prinny' mod removes resolution cap, adds MSAA, SSAO (full post)

Unity gets a massive update and has a new completely open beta program

Jeff Williams | Mar 16, 2016 1:13 PM CDT

The Unity engine is one of the singularly most used game engines in the world. They've been working very hard at making game creation a more accessible endeavor, and that's paid off tremendously. Unity has been updated to version 5.3.4, which is stable, gorgeous and full of easy to use tools.

Unity has to keep up with the pace of innovation, so they're also introducing a more widely available public beta program for their unstable, yet advanced, beta versions. Which is now up to version 5.4. At their keynote at GDC they said that they're very committed to the future and evolving the engine to keep pace with the rest of the gaming community, and in order to better serve their users they've opted to open up beta testing to everyone. This way more people get to play with,and find all the things that could possibly go wrong with new implementations of technology, or new tech altogether.

Right now they estimate that Unity covers around 30% of the market. And that's across the 25 different supported platforms. That's a lot of games and developers that have their hands in the Unity pie. And so they're making it even easier to build games with improved collaborative functions that let you save assets to a cloud-based system to be shared among a team working far apart. And there's a lot in beta 5.4 to like and want to share with others. Just look at the difference above from version 5 to the 5.4.

Continue reading: Unity gets a massive update and has a new completely open beta program (full post)