Gaming - Page 169

Ubisoft's delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows is finally on track for its March 20 release on PC and consoles. This week, the company announced detailed PC specs and hardware requirements alongside a new trailer showcasing the PC version. Running on the latest version of Assassin's Creed's Anvil engine, it's another major release focusing on ray-traced visuals.

The game's 'Selective Ray Tracing' mode will limit the RT to the game's Hideout base building mode. A GeForce GTX 1070 or Radeon RX 5700 is recommended for 1080p 30 FPS gameplay with "Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling." This also includes running the game with the 'Low' quality setting. However, as you can see in the image above, the game is designed to look good across all modes.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is launching with support for NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS, including Frame Generation technologies. GeForce GTX 1070 owners will need to run the game with these specs using AMD's or Intel's upscaling solution, as DLSS is limited to GeForce RTX GPUs due to its requirement for AI Tensor Cores.

Blizzard is changing the game up with Overwatch 2 Season 15, just teased on X, with mechanics, new skins, new maps teased, and the return of the infamous lootboxes.

The developer is calling 2025 the "next evolution" of Overwatch 2 PvP with the introduction of the new Hero Perks mechanism, and a slew of changes to the game for Season 15 and future seasons throughout the year. The new Perks system sounds fantastic, with the Hero-specific mechanism giving players more control over how each character plays by offering exciting new upgrades two different times as you progress through a round.

Overwatch 2 Season 15 has big Competitive Mode changes, with a new competitive queue, the return of Loot Boxes, and more. Season 15 begins on February 18, with a competitive mode ranked reset, and new "competitive" Galactic Weapons that can be unlocked with rank Weapon Charms, Player Portraits, and more.

Crytek has just announced that its next-gen Crysis 4 is "on hold" as it lays off 15% of its global workforce, and puts its development focus into Hunt: Showdown 1896.

The developer announced the news in a post on X, saying that "complex, unfavorable market dynamics that have hit our industry these past several years. It pains us greatly to share today that we must lay off an estimated 15% of our around 400 employees".

Not only that, but the developer said "after putting the development of the next Crysis game on hold in Q3 2024" that Crytek has "been trying to shift developers over to Hunt: Showdown 1896". For now, let's hope that Crytek hasn't killed off its new Crysis game and that it's just on hold until the developer is in a better position, but it does NOT feel like good news for the infamous shooter.

Remedy has just announced that it has sold over 2 million copies of Alan Wake 2 as part of their full-year 2024 financial report.

Remedy CEO Tero Virtala said that the development and marketing costs of Alan Wake 2 have been recouped, with teh developer earning royalties for the game towards the end of Q4 2024. Virtala said that the continued support for Alan Wake 2 through Night Springs and Lake House expansions, as well as the beefy PS5 Pro update + RTX Mega Geometry updates, helped push sales of Alan Wake 2 up and over 2M copies.

Now that Alan Wake 2 is finished up, Remedy is now pushing full-steam ahead into its next projects including FBC: Firebreak, which Virtala confirmed for a 2025 launch. The Remedy CEO said in December 2024 that the development team had successfully conducted a closed technical test with external players, where they tested FBC: FIrebrerak and its matchmaking and backedn services, collecting as much data as they could to form the final game.

A Costco worker may have just leaked the price of the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2, and the leaked price has seemingly backed up recent statements from Nintendo.

Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa recently stated during a Q&A with investors that Nintendo will be taking into account the exchange rate environment shifting since the launch of the Nintendo Switch and how buyers expect Nintendo products to come with a degree of affordability. These statements from the Nintendo president quelled fears the Nintendo Switch 2 was going to be priced similarly to other competing consoles, and while that was never going to be a reality, it was good to hear it from Nintendo itself.

The official statements of the Nintendo Switch 2 being affordable have now been purportedly backed up by leaked pricing, as reported by NintendoWire. A Canadian Costco employee shared an internal product listing along with a sales floor sign that states the Nintendo Switch 2 will cost $499.99 CAD, which is about $350 USD. However, the Nintendo Switch OLED is currently priced at $450 CAD / $350 USD, which means the Nintendo Switch 2 will likely be priced at $399 USD.

Modern streaming culture has produced no shortage of viral gaming sensations. The most recent title to emerge is an unusual one - a Filipino horror game called Hapunan. The game throws you into the shoes of Niko, a vendor selling Filipino street food Balut (essentially fertilized duck eggs).

The premise is simple: you're a Balut vendor, and your job is to take care of your day-to-day responsiblities. Securing business permits, locking your windows and doors before work, selling food to customers. It features low-poly visual style similar to what you'll see in old games on the N64. So what is it that's actually grabbing people's attention?

Well, there's some cultural depth to the experience. The game, which starts as a 'work simulator,' devolves into a horror survival experience, with threatening figures lurking in the night. Gunmen equipped with threatening grins and heavy inspiration drawn from Filipino folklore.

After months of rumors, Sony's State of Play Livestream is officially happening. In a surprise blog post, Sony announced that the event will be taking place on Wednesday, February 12th, at 5PM ET, available to stream via YouTube and Twitch. The show will have a 40-minute run-time.

The last State of Play took place September 24th, 2024. We were shown the announcement trailer for Ghost of Yotei, in addition to the release dates for Monster Hunter Wilds, Lego Horizon Adventures, and a new trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Four months have passed since the last State of Play, and there's still very little info regarding what to expect at this event. Three weeks ago, reputable leaker NateTheHate correctly hinted at the early February schedule for the event. A day ago, an anonymous Reddit poster also suggested that Hell is Us, an exploration-focused sci-fi action-adventure title, would be part of the 2025 State of Play lineup. However, no sources were provided to support this claim.

Rumors have begun recirculatnig about a modern video game adaptation of the famous Back to the Future franchise. Speculation about the project first emerged in a 2024 interview, where the film's screenwriter Bob Gale all but confirmed the possibility.

He also clearly iterated that 2025 is the 40th anniversary of the original movie, hinting that if there was any time to hear about it, it'd be this year.

Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, has commented on the falling sales of the console market while alluding to the strategy the publisher and developer Rockstar Games will implement with the release of Grand Theft Auto VI.

During a recent interview with IGN, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick touched on Grand Theft Auto 6 only coming to consoles when it releases in Fall 2025. While there hasn't been an official confirmation from Rockstar or Take-Two that a simultaneous console/PC release has been ruled out, it certainly appears that is the case. During the interview with IGN, Zelnick said, "We don't always go across all platforms simultaneously, historically, Rockstar has started with some platforms and then historically moved to other platforms."

This is hardly surprising, as it has been the case for all major Rockstar releases, with the PC port of Grand Theft Auto V taking 1.5 years. For any PC gamers still holding out hope Rockstar will release GTA 6 at the same time as the console version, the nails were further hammered into the coffin of that idea when Zelnick commented on the declining unit sales of both the current-gen consoles. Zelnick said Take-Two isn't worried console sales are declining because of the catalog of games, not just from Take-Two, but also from others scheduled to release in 2025.

Valve has continued its push to add more consumer protections on Steam: introducing a platform-wide ban for any games that force users to watch or engage with advertising.

The change was first sighted on Gaming on Linux, where users reported the new advertising guidelines added to the SteamWorks Documentation. The guidelines clearly outline that while product placement, cost promotions, and paid advertising outside Steam are allowed, developers cannot use paid advertising as a business model in-game. Examples cited included 'requiring players to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play' or gating gameplay behind advertising.

The move comes in direct opposition to the freemium, ad-driven model that plagues a large portion of the mobile game market. It also follows an update, released last week, that provides warnings if an early access title hasn't been updated for a duration of longer than 12 months.

Independent video game developers gathered at the South Australian Game Exhibition over the weekend to showcase a collection of games currently in development, and these were the best games I saw at the show.

In a world where there are so many games and not enough time to enjoy them, it's sometimes worth seeing where they come from, meeting the people behind the titles, and giving those people feedback on your experience with the game. The South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC) recently held a showcase of South Australia's video game development sector, which featured a bunch of independent developers displaying the games they have been hard at work.

In an effort to shine a light on South Australian game development and indie game development as a whole, I have selected my personal favorite titles from the showcase and linked to each of their Steam listing. Sometimes us gamers forget that great games can be made by just a small team of passionate gamers.

Sony's PlayStation Network went offline for a considerable period this past weekend, with players unable to access their games and other online services for almost 24 hours. It's the second-longest PSN outage to date, falling behind the monumental 2011 outage that lasted weeks - sparking many to wonder if it was due to a breach or attack.

With Sony's PlayStation Network and PSN services restored, the company announced on social media that it had "fully recovered from an operational issue." This vague explanation has done little to satisfy fans wanting a detailed explanation or reasoning for the outage, which occurred right as the weekend began. On the plus side, Sony is compensating players with a free reward.

Sony's social media post reads, "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience. All PlayStation Plus members will automatically receive an additional 5 days of service."

The PlayStation Network has been down for 17 consecutive hours at the time of publication, and Sony has not given exact updates on when the servers will be back up.

PlayStation gamers woke up to a rude surprise today: Sony's PlayStation Network infrastructure has been knocked out for 17 hours, impacting Friday night game sales, subscription sign-ups, and the all-important microtransactions across the PlayStation Store. Sony has confirmed the PSN outage started last night on Friday, February 7 at 7PM EST.

More importantly, live service games were knocked out on console gaming's largest platform (by revenue). It's unknown how exactly this will impact Sony's upcoming Q4'25 quarterly earnings but it's not just Sony who's impacted: All third-party partners can't sell their games or make money from in-game purchases until the PlayStation Network is online.

Tom Henderson, a known industry insider and owner of InsiderGaming has cleared up a few details in regards to the recent rumors surrounding a new God of War and Sony's upcoming State of Play event.

Henderson stated during the most recent Insider Gaming Weekly podcast that he's hearing, from sources that will remain unnamed, that the new God of War game isn't based in Egypt, which was the most recent rumors surrounding the unannounced title, and instead, it will be a young Kratos based in Greece. Henderson says the storyline concentrates on Kratos's relationship with his father, Zeus.

Notably, Henderson says, "Don't run with it," in regards to this rumor, meaning it hasn't been confirmed to him. The InsiderGaming owner said he simply just wanted to weigh in on the previous rumor of the new God of War being set in Egypt with what he's been hearing. Moreover, Henderson said he doesn't know if the title will be a remaster, prequel, or a reboot.

Rockstar's premium subscription service could be a major part of GTA 6's online component at launch, and could offer some other unique benefits to users.

In 2022, Rockstar announced GTA Plus (GTA+), a new subscription service specifically made for Grand Theft Auto Online. The service expanded and Rockstar created its own Game Pass-like service, complete with a rotating lineup of classic games. It's pretty much the most affordable and convenient way to access older Rockstar games because practically half of their catalog is on the service.

The value proposition has worked pretty well. Take-Two Interactive has commented a number of times on the success of GTA+ but hasn't given us actual subscriber figures. One thing's for sure, though: More people are buying into Rockstar's premium GTA+ offering. It's working so well that Rockstar raised the price of the subscription from $5.99 to $7.99 in April 2024.

If sales trends are any indicator, Rockstar Games could finish Grand Theft Auto V's megaton legacy with $10 billion in cumulative earnings.

Grand Theft Auto VI is on the horizon, and when (if) it drops in Fall 2025 as executives have reaffirmed, GTA V's playerbase could tank. If everything goes according to plan, then GTA 6 could launch in Q2 or Q3 of Take-Two Interactive's fiscal year.

This gives the current GTA moneymakers--GTA V, GTA Online, and the GTA trilogy remaster on consoles/mobiles--up to 3 quarters to rake in money before everyone presumably moves to GTA 6.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has made over $9.5 billion in cumulative earnings since GTA V's release, new earnings documents reveal.

Take-Two's latest Q3FY25 results gave us a closer look at how much money the company made from the megaton GTA series. According to the reports, Grand Theft Auto products and services have made approximately $9.54 billion since the launch of GTA V in September 2013 to the end of 2024.

In Q3FY25, Take-Two made $179.465 million from the Grand Theft Auto series, up 4.42% quarter-over-quarter but down slightly year-over-year.

Have you ever sat there playing Call of Duty and thought 'man, I'd make for an awesome drone pilot in a real war', well, the Ukrainian military agrees with you... saying that COD players make great drone pilots in a war.

In a chat between battling it out in a war, Ukraine's special drone unit somehow had the time to speak with Business Insider. The unit is called Typhoon, saying that real drone warfare is far more complicated and more dangerous than using drones in games like Call of Duty.

Uncrewed systems, including a range of first-person view drones (FPV) are being used on Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, with Ukrainian operators comparing how they fly their drones, and how they play video games. FPV headsets aren't like VR systems, and while the controllers can be similar, they're different beasts.

Take-Two Interactive sees a substantial boost in stock value following yesterday's earnings results.

In a call to investors, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick expressed confidence that Grand Theft Auto 6 would release in 2025. "Yes, we did today reaffirm our schedule through the remainder of the calendar year. And I think we were pretty clear about that," Zelnick said. GTA 6 is listed for a Fall 2025 launch on the sheets provided to investors.

The news was spread far and wide, and the market took notice. TTWO stock is currently trading at, $210.88, up +$27.80 or 15.19% in day-to-day trading.

Take-Two Interactive recently wrapped up its earnings call, where company boss Strauss Zelnick was asked about the publisher's perception of the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2.

Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI, was asked if Nintendo's upcoming console, which is scheduled to get more details in early April, will get various Take-Two-published games when it finally makes its way into the hands of gamers. Zelnick responded by revealing Take-Two's perception of Nintendo's platform has shifted recently, with the CEO saying the days of Nintendo platforms being "geared at younger audiences" are now over.

Zelnick pointed to the release of Civilization 7 on the Switch and stated that in the past, Take-Two has supported the platform "when it made sense for the individual release." But, "today with Switch and potentially with Switch 2, the Switch device can support any audience." Notably, Zelnick didn't confirm any specific Take-Two title coming to the Nintendo Switch 2, but given the previous statements, from Take-Two's perspective, nothing is off the table -- begging the question, "Will GTA 6 release on the Nintendo Switch 2?"