Gaming - Page 189

Xbox has been steadfast in its approach to bringing Xbox games to as many platforms as possible, and now, building upon the rumors of Xbox-exclusive titles coming to PlayStation, we have a new rumor that claims the Nintendo Switch 2 will also be a target platform for Xbox games.

It was only yesterday that Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer alluded to many games coming to Nintendo's new platform, with Spencer saying in a recent interview that Xbox is "really looking forward to supporting them with the games that we have." Previous rumors suggested Xbox was working on a selection of new titles to bring over to PlayStation, with leaks pointing to Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition coming to Sony's platform and the Nintendo Switch.

Now, Spanish publication Vandal has claimed it has obtained information from unknown sources that some of the "closest" Xbox titles coming to PS5 "are Killer Instinct and Starfield." The publication also claims that both of the aforementioned titles have been in development for the PS5 "since its launch on Xbox Series and PC - late 2023." These aren't the only titles purportedly currently in development to make the transition, as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, Age of Mythology: Retold, and Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, have all been mentioned for PlayStation ports.

Hollywood is looking to cash in on the massive popularity surrounding video game franchises by creating adaptations in the form of movies and TV shows, and now one more video game can be added to that list -- and it's not even released yet.

The newest video game to get an adaptation is Clair Obsur: Expedition 33, a new turn-based combat fantasy RPG from Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive. The title was part of Microsoft's summer showcase in August and was further highlighted during last week's Xbox Developer Direct.

It was only yesterday that Sandfall Interactive announced it's struggling to keep up with pre-orders for both the physical edition and collectors edition of the game, with Sanfall Interactive saying it's seen the "outpouring of support" for the title, and "Never could we have imagined we'd have sold out of our collectors editions so early, nor did we know the demand for our physical editions would be so high."

Microsoft needs the help of advertisers to fulfill its gaming ambitions.

Editor's Note: Microsoft has not revealed any concrete plans to bring advertisements to Xbox games on consoles and/or PC.

Earlier this month at CES 2025, Microsoft's advertising group presented some interesting details about what the future of Xbox could look like. Microsoft has been doubling down on making Xbox more accessible than ever before through various endpoints across mobile, console, and PC, and that infrastructure could also host cross-platform advertisements for extra revenue.

Microsoft has made one point very clear to fans: once-exclusive Xbox games are coming to all platforms, including competitors like PlayStation and Nintendo.

Today Xbox announced that Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PlayStation 5 this spring, complete with cross-play with PC and Xbox. Once a shining star in console game exclusivity, the Forza franchise's cross-over to PS5 is the latest development in Microsoft's current plan to maximize game sales. Right now the Xbox division is under pressure to deliver specific margins following the $75.4 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard King, and this has led Xbox to target what it calls high-margin businesses, which include digital game sales, subscriptions, and microtransactions.

The plan is working, too. Microsoft's latest Q2FY25 financials indicate that improved profit margins at Xbox helped boost total More Personal Computing segment earnings. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella further underlined the games division's current cross-platform, exclusive-shy business model that had been previously discussed by Xbox's Phil Spencer on numerous occasions.

No Man's Sky just got a huge patch which brings in all manner of goodies.

This is the 'Worlds Part II' update (which follows up, yes, you guessed it - 'Worlds Part I') and it expands the game's universe with new stars, planets, terrain and environments to dive into (literally, in the case of the deep oceans that have been introduced).

In short, it's a big content drop, as Hello Games continues to impress with the amount of effort put into a game that was released the best part of a decade ago now.

The official PC requirements for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have been released, following the developer announcing on X they are struggling to keep up with the demand for both the Collectors Edition and physical edition of the game.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based combat RPG that is powered by the graphically impressive Unreal Engine 5, and while the title may have slipped under some gamers' radars, the hype for it is certainly building momentum, with the developer Sandfall Interactive taking to the official Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 X account to announce they are struggling to keep up with pre-orders. Sanfall Interactive states in its post it has seen the "outpouring of support" and has requested restocks of certain editions and availability.

Moreover, if you are planning on picking up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 when it releases on April 24, 2025, you will need to be aware of the above Recommended System Specifications and Minimum System Requirements that were recently revealed. As a minimum, the developers behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 recommend at least a GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB / Intel Arc A580 8GB, and for Recommended, a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16 GB.

BioWare has put out a strangely opaque statement about the current developer situation at the company that has been coupled with a positive announcement regarding Mass Effect 5.

The developer took to its blog to announce that Mass Effect 5 has officially begun development, with the studio writing the "core team at BioWare is developing the next Mass Effect game" and that the project is headed by leadership from the original trilogy of games. That veteran leadership includes Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, Parrish Ley, and others.

Moreover, BioWare writes that it's taking this time between the release of Dragon Age: Veilguard, which publisher EA confirmed underwhelmingly performed sales-wise, and the development of Mass Effect 5 to reimagine "how we work at BioWare" and to "think deeply about delivering the best experience to our fans."

A former Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 developer has said he expects Grand Theft Auto 6 to fall short of 60FPS on both consoles.

The former developer is GTA 6 and RDR2 animator Mike York who spoke on Kiwi Talkz and said he expects Rockstar will be aiming for 30FPS on both Xbox Series consoles and PlayStation 5. York said he doesn't know if Rockstar will be able to "pull off 60FPS," and instead, Rockstar will likely opt for locked 30FPS, meaning the game will never dip below that figure -- and if it does it will only be a few frames at most.

For those wanting 60FPS, York said, "But it can be bumped up to 40, 41, 52, whatever, and I bet you, like, later, once it's on PC, it'll probably get super optimized and changed and new graphics cards that come out, and you'll be able to run it at 60fps probably at that time." For comparison's sake, GTA 5 is currently running at 60FPS on PS5, but let's not forget that game released in 2013 and has had many years of optimization-focussed updates stabilizing its performance.

The release date for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 is one of, if not the most sought-after date in the gaming industry, and now an online retailer has seemingly revealed it.

The online retailer is a Spanish store called XUruguay, which listed Grand Theft Auto 6's release for September 17, 2025. As you can probably imagine, gamers were quick to dissect the legitimacy of this "leak," with some suggesting it could be real, considering September lines up with Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive's confirmed release window of Fall 2025.

Further conversation was sparked when the online retailer promptly removed the date from its website, and when queried about how it obtained the release date, the retailer said it works "directly with PlayStation, they let us know which products we can sell and on what dates."

At CES, we got to go hands-on with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with Full Ray Tracing running in 5K on the new GeForce RTX 50 Series. From developer

MachineGames, the immersive first-person stealth, exploration, and adventure game, is not only one of the best-looking games for a high-end PC but also one of the best games of 2024.

Launching in December, it still feels new, and the build we played at CES 2025 implemented several DLSS 4 features, including the new Transformer model for Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and Multi Frame Generation. The current build of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PC doesn't include Ray Reconstruction for its ray tracing options, so the jump to DLSS 4 is pretty mind-blowing in what it brings to the overall image quality.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 helped Xbox hit a new all-time revenue high for Game Pass subscriptions, and it's possible this growth could've helped Game Pass make more than Xbox hardware during the Holiday 2024 period.

Things are on the up and up for Xbox, at least when it comes leadership comments. The latest holiday 2024 earnings results show a $500 million+ decline in total Xbox platform earnings, but the downward pull was mostly due to hardware. And since hardware is sold at a loss, reductions in actual Xbox console shipments/sales can actually boost Xbox's total profits.

While we didn't refreshed Xbox Game Pass subscriber numbers, we did get a vital snippet if info from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The subscription actually made record-breaking revenues throughout the Q2'FY25 / Holiday 2024 period, driven by Black Op 6's megaton launch on Xbox Game Pass.

Spider-Man 2 spins its web onto the PC in less than 24 hours, and now we have PC system requirements, and PC-specific enhancements that have been unveiled. Here's the trailer:

Spider-Man 2 has been tweaked by the team at Nixxes, with the game developed by Insomniac and until now, a PlayStation exclusive, a "technological and graphical showcase utilizing tools like ray tracing to bring the city of Marvel's New York to life". However, on the PC there are new ray tracing options, NVIDIA DLSS, and so much more.

NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 will launch with Spider-Man 2 on the PC, as well as NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction technology, improving ray tracing performance if you've got the right hardware. There's also ultrawide monitor support, with Nixxes providing support for 21:9, 32:9, and even 48:9 aspect ratios on triple-monitor gaming PCs. Nixxes' team of engineers and artists "worked hard ensuring all cinematics in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 are adapted to be fully viewable in aspect ratios up to 32:9".

Xbox hardware revenue is down to its second-lowest point in the last 10 years...but this isn't actually bad news for Microsoft right now.

Microsoft's latest Q2FY25 results have been posted, showing interesting results for Xbox. Based on the data provided, Xbox gaming earned $6.581 billion throughout the Holiday 2024 quarter, driven significantly by content and services (game sales, microtransactions, subscriptions, etc). Xbox hardware only accounted for 15% of total revenues, or about $1.01 billion.

These numbers mean that FY25 saw the second all-time low for Xbox hardware revenues in the last decade, second only to the $815 - $830 million earned in the Holiday 2019 quarter. Interestingly enough, this is actually a good thing for Microsoft...at least for the time being.

Microsoft's shift towards high-margin businesses like Xbox Game Pass may have helped make the games division more profitable throughout the holiday 2024 period.

Microsoft just reported its Q2FY25 results, giving us a status update on the Xbox brand. All-told, revenue was down around 7%, dropping from the all-time high of $7.111 billion earning in Q2FY24 down to $6.581 billion, representing a hefty half-billion dollar increase. Despite the drop, though, this is the second-highest holiday period in Xbox history (thanks in no small part to ABK's contributions).

Nestled in the earnings report is also mention of operating income. Remember that Xbox is part of Microsoft's More Personal Computing division, and it's not its own branch. That means we don't get operating income/profit info for Xbox (despite us being able to glean info from leaked documents).

On the heels of the comments from Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gives an update on the future trajectory of Xbox.

Xbox has one singular goal above all else: To meet (or ideally surpass) the profit margin goals that are set by Microsoft's CFO and board. The group has two ways to meet this goal: Cut costs and improve business margins.

We've heard Xbox talk about high-margin businesses in the past. Key examples include digital game sales and subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass. A big example of Microsoft executing on high-margin opportunities is launching Black Ops 6 onto Xbox Game Pass, although the exact business dynamics are blurry. Another example is how Xbox is breaking exclusivity to launch its games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms.

Xbox reports its second-highest holiday quarter thanks to the help of Activision Blizzard King's billion-dollar contributions.

Today Microsoft revealed its earnings results for Q2 FY25, which runs from October - December 2024. The holidays are critical for games companies, and Xbox managed to pull in $6.581 million in total revenue throughout the 3-month period. Unsurprisingly, this is the second highest quarter of earnings in Xbox history, and the second-highest Q2 earnings behind Q2'FY24's all-time high of $7.111 billion.

"Gaming revenue increased $1.2 billion or 11% driven by growth in Xbox content and services, offset in part by a decline in Xbox hardware. Xbox content and services revenue increased 24% driven by the impact of the Activision Blizzard acquisition," reads Microsoft's earnings report.

Sony has relented to pressure from PC gamers, drops the unpopular PS Network login requirement for some singleplayer PlayStation games on Steam.

The PSN login controversy hit Sony at an extremely inopportune moment, and it was almost big enough to destabilize Helldiver II's breakout success. Back then, Sony originally wanted everyone to make a PSN account to play Helldivers II and gave an ultimatum to fans--make a PSN by Summer, or you'd be locked out of the game. Significant push-back caused Sony to change its policy and bend to its audience. Now Sony is making more concessions with its PSN login policy.

Sony today announced that it will not require PlayStation Network logins for select upcoming singleplayer games on PC. Instead, gamers will be able to choose whether or not they want to sign in with a PSN account. If you do sign in, you'll get bonuses like trophy support and extra in-game unlocks similar to Ubisoft Connect.

It looks like gamers are moving on from the PS4 at least with PS Plus freebies, and Sony is taking the hint.

Sony wants the PS5 to beat the PS4 in every way possible--sales, profits, services, accessories, etc. So any time there's an opportunity to sunset Gen8 features, content, or delivery, Sony might take it. Something like that is now happening with PS Plus freebies.

SIE today announced that PS4 games will no longer be a "key benefit" of the PS Plus Monthly Games and Game Catalog. Starting January 1, 2026, PS4 games are no longer guaranteed as monthly content for PS Plus subscribers, and Sony will offer free PS5 games instead.

BioWare isn't ready to enter full production on the next Mass Effect game, so EA has moved core BioWare dev teams to other projects.

Now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has shipped (and missed targets), BioWare is now focusing on its next big AAA project: Mass Effect 5. But the studio isn't quite ready to ramp up to full production just yet. ME5 starts out as all game do: with a small, tight-knit core team that outlines the vision in pre-production phases--in this case, the game is being led by series vets like Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, and Parrish Ley.

So what do the other BioWare devs do while the smaller team outlines the early framework for ME5? According to general manager Gary McKay, they can find new jobs/placement at other EA studios. It feels like BioWare is shedding extraneous teams to reduce costs while re-allocating resources for parent EA, who is assuredly disappointed with the performance of BioWare's most recent game.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer clearly outlines the future of Xbox as it pertains to exclusivity, re-affirming plans to expand games, content, and services to as many screens as possible.

Xbox exclusivity is now extinct. Microsoft wants to expand its business laterally and use its rival-competitors to sell more games. This means offering once-Xbox exclusives onto PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2, and following the powerhouse $74 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard King, Xbox has made a thorough transition into a service-driven company. This means embracing all platforms to maximize sales/microtransactions (also remember that Microsoft/Activision are contractually bound to keep shipping the $31 billion+ Call of Duty franchise on Sony and Nintendo platforms).

Now in a recent interview with Gamer Tag Radio, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer dispels all confusion with Microsoft's plans going forward. All games, content, and services are fair game for other platforms, devices, and/or screens. In other words, Xbox wants to maximally expand its reach, especially on rival platforms.