Gaming News - Page 1759

During Nintendo's earnings report, the Japanese gaming giant revealed the overall Wii U sales figures, as well as updating its best-selling games list for its current generation console.

The company sold 3.38 million Wii U consoles during its last fiscal year, with the Wii U racking up a total of 9.54 million consoles as of March 31. If we compare this to its Japanese rival in Sony, which has shipped 22.3 million PlayStation 4 consoles. But when it comes to games, we finally find out which games Nintendo has been doing well on, with Mario Kart 8 being absolutely no surprise at all.

With 9.54 million Wii U consoles in the wild, Mario Kart 8 has sold 5.11 million units, meaning that over 50% of Wii U owners have purchased Mario Kart 8 which is quite big for Nintendo. New Super Mario Bros. U comes in second with 4.81 million units, while Nintendo Land comes in third with 4.68 million sales.

It was expected of Nintendo to talk about its next generation console at E3 2015 next month, but the company has confirmed that it will not be talking about its "NX" console at the show.

But, Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata said that the Japanese company will be talking about its NX console sometime in 2016. The Nintendo boss teased that they are calling it a new concept, with the team not considering the NX console a replacement of the Wii U. At this point, there's no clue what Nintendo could be working on, but if it's anything like the Wii, we could expect a big change to the game console.

The new NX console will also reportedly not be held back by region locking, as the company has been listening to customer feedback and proposals from the market.

Both of the current generation consoles have 8GB of RAM, which "should be plenty for the remainder of this console generation" according to ex-Naughty Dog developer and founder of Filmic Worlds, John Hable.

During a recent interview with GamingBolt, Hable said: "In general, I would not worry about the consoles becoming outdated. Remember, the PS3 and Xbox 360 have only 512MB of RAM, but the PC versions of the same games usually require 2GB or more. On consoles you have more control over memory allocations. The 8GB of RAM in both the Xbox One and PS4 should be plenty for the remainder of this console generation".

When Hable was still with Naughty Dog, he was in control of the HDR lighting technology found in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Current generation games are now using much more complicated lighting technologies such as global illumination and physical-based rendering, so GamingBolt wanted to know where Hable thought lighting technology in games would be going next.

After hearing the rumors for Call of Duty: Black Ops III for what felt like months, it was made official last month with a release date of later this year. With three studios now developing games within the Call of Duty franchise, there must be a lot of brainpower going around.

Last year, Sledgehammer Games developed Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but this year the torch goes to Treyarch Studios for Black Ops III. Treyarch has come out and said that they communicate with the two other studios that develop Call of Duty games, with Mark Lamia from Treyarch talking with the Official PlayStation Magazine, saying: "From very early on we'll share stuff on all sides".

He continued: "I invited the other teams very early on in this development, as soon as I had what I considered a representative prototype. I shared it with the other studios, but it's up to them to come up with their own [creative ideas]". Lamia continued: "It was interesting to see that they had maybe some movements like ours, but the systems and focus they had was different from ours. I think that's important inside the franchise to have some differentiation for the players so that they can get a different experience every year".

With Project CARS now finally out, comparisons are being made between the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC versions of Slightly Mad Studios' very ambitious driving game.

The comparison we've embedded above is between the PS4 and PC versions of Project CARS, with both versions running at 1080p 60FPS. For the most part there's not much of a difference between the two, with some impressive performance coming out of the AMD APU-powered PS4. But, if you pause the video at any time, there's some very serious motion blur happening on the PS4 version of the game.

At 2:40 into the video, mountains completely disappear on the PS4 version of the game for some reason, which I'm sure is performance-related. As for the PC version, it was running on High texture resolution with AA on High, FXAA disabled, and most other settings on Ultra. Motion blur was set to High, with grass, particle levels and intensity set on Ultra.

Battlefield: Hardline is out and while most of the servers are empty, Battlefield 4 is still DICE's most-played first-person shooter. Well, the developer has said that all future DLC for Battlefield 4 will be free, and not just for Premium users, but for everybody.

DICE's David Sirland has confirmed that all future content for Battlefield 4 will be free, which includes the upcoming new maps and the new Gunmaster game mode and new weapons. With a Spring patch on its way, something that will bring on the new Gunmaster game mode, five new weapons, and more, this is great news for Battlefield 4 players.

Later in the year, DICE will release a new community map which only recently entered production. Not only that, but the developer has an unannounced map remake from a previous Battlefield game that is being worked on right now, something we should hear about in the near future.

Since its inception, The Division has had three studios working on it. Massive Entertainment are leading development, while Red Storm and Reflections have been putting their long weeks and months into the open world RPG. Massive Entertainment has now partnered up with a fourth studio, Ubisoft Annecy, which will help out on all things The Division.

Managing Director of Massive Entertainment, David Polfeldt, has talked about this collaboration, where he said: "We are very happy that Ubisoft Annecy is part of The Division's family. They are highly experienced and talented developers, adding much value to the project. Being able to work with other studios offers fantastic creative opportunities during development and, in the end, strongly benefits the overall quality of the game".

Studio Manager at Ubisoft Annecy, Rebecka Coutaz, said: "The team in Annecy is delighted to be collaborating with Massive, Red Storm and Reflections on Tom Clancy's The Division. We are bringing our previous experience in multiplayer online games and this project is allowing us to build our technical knowledge in other areas and become experts on this incredible brand. The collaboration with the other studios is going very smoothly, and we're working together to ensure we meet and exceed the high expectations players have for this new title".

After they said that it would be a PC exclusive feature, it looks as though Rockstar Games will be releasing the Rockstar Editor for Grand Theft Auto V on the consoles.

The Rockstar Editor will not be reaching the Xbox 360 or PS3 consoles, but it will be released for the Xbox One and PS4. Rockstar is hoping to have the Editor ready this summer, or as they've put it: "as soon as it is ready", which could mean 2018. Are you excited for the Rockstar Editor? Or have you been enjoying the PC version of the game, which has it baked in already.

One of my biggest memories of being a younger gamer was when Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was released on the Nintendo 64 and PC back in 1997, as it had some of the slickest graphics at the time, with a huge fog of war to hide it all and get the performance up to relatively normal numbers.

Well, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is being remade by Level Designer Samuel Villarreal. Villarreal has designed levels for games like FEAR: Perseus Mandate, Section 8, Aliens: Colonial Marines (I wouldn't want that on my resume...) and he has reportedly been working on rebuilding Turok: Dinosaur Hunter in his free time.

Villarreal talked with TechRaptor, where he said: "I was originally working on remaking N64 Turok (called Turok EX) but it got put off to the side. Since now Night Dive Studios has picked up the rights to re-release it, Turok EX will resume development later this year".

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata says his company plans to release five mobile games by March 2017, as Nintendo tries to expand its business operations.

There is no word what characters will be featured, or which titles gamers can expect, but Nintendo promised it wouldn't simply port content for smartphones and tablets.

"You may think it is a small number... but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all - and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business," Iwata said during a meeting with investors.