Gaming - Page 191

Bioware's latest RPG, Dragon Age The Veilguard, is a substantial miss at launch. Electronic Arts indicates that the game has sold fewer than 1.5 million copies on all platforms.

EA recently gave investors some premature bad news. Rather than waiting for investors to find out, EA jumped the gun and released some early figures for its Q3 holiday period. Two games missed the mark in this quarter, EA FC 25 and Dragon Age The Veilguard, the latter of which had been marred by controversy which potentially inhibited its sales potential.

The new Dragon Age game has apparently been a disappointment for Electronic Arts. The publisher says that Veilguard "engaged approximately 1.5 million players," which seems to be a totality of players. Microsoft typically uses this metric instead of full game sales because its games are included on Xbox Game Pass, and Veilguard is included in the $16.99/month EA Play Pro subscription.

EA has slashed its holiday and full-year earnings targets because two of its major games have underperformed, and the company's stock has dropped by nearly 17% over the last two days of trading.

Yesterday EA announced disappointing news for investors: The company wasn't going to hit its intended earnings targets for Q3, or for the full fiscal year. The company doesn't just expect to miss the targets by a small margin--the miscalculation is in the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The culprits are Dragon Age The Veilguard, a singleplayer-only RPG that missed expectations by roughly 50%, and EA FC25, the heavily-monetized replacement for the FIFA franchise. As a result, EA now expects to make around $2.215 billion in net bookings for the Q3 period, a reduction of 7.7% or $185 million, from the original low-end target of $2.4 billion. The original targets can be found in EA's Q2 release.

While fans await the release of the most anticipated game of all time, a parody developer has been officially greenlit to release their game about "making the most anticipated game of all time".

Fittingly titled "Grand Taking Ages," the game takes a satirical angle on game development, poking fun at the lengthy development process and what feels like an endless wait for highly anticipated titles. The game is a management simulator about running a game studio, so you won't find a vast open world or an intricately crafted narrative. Instead, what you'll find is a satirical take on modern gaming culture, filled with references ranging from "the ancient art of relabeling bugs as features" and the art of the classic "it's not a delay, it's additional polish" release technique.

Grand Taking Ages first appeared on the PlayStation Store last December before being promptly removed by Sony. The game's development team, Violarte, has had a myriad of issues with getting their game approved by storefronts, in large part due to the use of AI-generated artwork that closely mirrors the look coined by the Grand Theft Auto series. In order to get it approved by Sony and Valve, the studio reworked elements of Grand Taking Ages to "clearly differentiate Grand Taking Ages from the original inspiration, GTA 6".

Despite having a shaky start upon release, Sony's PlayStation 5 is on track to outsell the PlayStation 4, which moved 117 million units globally.

According to Mat Picatella, executive director and video game industry analyst at Circana (formerly NPD Group), since the release of the PlayStation 5, the US sales of Sony's latest console is outpacing the PlayStation 4 by 7% when aligned for launch, which seems to indicate that Sony has made up for all of the lost sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic when the PS5 released. 4 years after the launch of the PS5, Sony is selling the new console like hotcakes across the US, while the same can't be said for Microsoft's Xbox Series console, which is reportedly falling behind the sales trajectory of the Xbox One.

It was only in August last year Sony reported the PS5 had sold 61 million units, and while Microsoft doesn't reveal the hardware unit sales for their consoles, the Wall Street Journal estimates the company has sold half of PS5 sales. Piscatella points to the Nintendo Switch coming to the end of its lifecycle for the overall declining revenue in video game hardware sales, as the industry analyst writes that PS5 hardware fell 18% when compared to December 2023, and the Xbox Series and the Switch each declined by 38%. Ultimately, annual spending on video game hardware wrapped up 25% lower than in 2023 at $4.9 billion.

Ubisoft has officially unveiled "Claws of Awaji," an expansion for Assassin's Creed Shadows that is slated to release later this year.

The announcement of the new DLC, which will be available to anyone who decides to pre-order Shadows, comes after the company was criticized for its lackluster and intense pricing strategy for the game. Initially, Ubisoft was only throwing in a single quest as a pre-order bonus for Shadows, and that quest is "Thrown to the Dogs".

Ubisoft writes in the description of the above video that in addition to Thrown to the Dogs, gamers who pre-order will also get the Claws of Awaji expansion DLC, which will provide 10+ hours of additional gameplay, a new region to explore, new weapons, side activities, gear, and skills. Ubisoft teases in the YouTube video description that players will be "hunted" throughout the DLC and will be able to reclaim lost treasure while also mastering a new weapon type called the Bō staff.

Microsoft has taken gamers behind the scenes at Xbox Developer Direct with a glimpse at Xbox's latest offerings for early 2025. Multiple anticipated games have been given release dates, and a surprising new title was officially announced. Here's everything you need to know.

Developer Direct opened with a revival of an old, beloved franchise following the reveal of Ninja Gaiden 4. With 10 years having passed since the franchise's last entry, the team at Team Ninja and PlatinumGames have partnered with Xbox Game Studios to bring you a sequel.

The game will be set in the heart of a fictional, near-future Tokyo, with an all-new protagonist, exciting new gameplay mechanics, and next-generation visuals. The title is slated for a release in the fall of 2025, coming to Xbox Series X/S, PC, and PS5.

Ubisoft has officially unveiled the Animus Hub, a new Call of Duty HQ-style launcher that is designed to provide Assassin's Creed players with a single place to access all the latest Assassin's Creed games.

The Animus Hub was originally codenamed "Assassin's Creed Infinity" but was later rebranded to the Animus Hub, and for those unfamiliar with the Call of Duty HQ launcher, the Animus Hub will be a seamless entry point for all of the latest Assassin's Creed games as players will be able to access a timeline of recent heroes within the franchise.

As GameRant brilliantly points out, the Animus Hub represents Ubisoft's commitment to reimagining how players interact with the franchise, and by creating an HQ launcher for AC and naming it the Animus Hub has elevated the in-game animus from being a simple plot device to a fully interactable experience. Ubisoft explains in its blog post the Animus Hub isn't a stand-alone launcher and will be fully integrated into the latest Assassin's Creed release, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and all future Assassin's Creed games.

Ubisoft has just confirmed that its new Assassin's Creed Shadows will be launching March 20, unveiling the PC system requirements at the same time.

Assassin's Creed Shadows will support ray traced global illumination and reflections, an in-game benchmark tool for performance analysis, ultrawide resolution support, uncapped frame rates, and more. Ubisoft recommends an Intel Core i7-13700K or AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16GB for 1440p 60FPS with RT on the Enthusiast setting, or the RTX 4090 24GB for 4K 60FPS with RT on the Extreme setting.

Pre-orders for the game include the Standard Edition of the game for $69.99, the Digital Deluxe Edition for $89.99, and the Collector's Edition will cost a whopping $229.99. Here's what you'll get with Assassin's Creed Shadows in Digital Deluxe Edition and Collector's Edition form:

Mark your calendars gamers and prepare the time off because DOOM: The Dark Ages has a release date of May 15... and you might want to upgrade your PC with NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card.

DOOM: The Dark Ages not only has a release date but it also finally has its PC system requirements, and a new gameplay trailer. DOOM: The Dark Ages will require a higher-end CPU, 32GB of RAM, 512GB or more of SSD space, and an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card for 4K 60FPS on Ultra settings.

id Software explains a new generation of idTech is here with idTech8 powering DOOM: The Dark Ages: "id Software's most ambitious title yet, DOOM: The Dark Ages pushes new standards in visual fidelity and performance with the power of idTech8. Taking full advantage of modern hardware on all platforms, idTech8 ushers in a new era of gameplay performance and visual fidelity featuring all-new dynamic interactive ray-traced lighting and shadows, higher-fidelity image quality, increased gore and destruction and so much more".

CD PROJEKT RED has pushed out its new Cyberpunk 2077 update, adding NVIDIA's new DLSS 4 upscaling technology support with its Transformer model, with significant image quality improvements over DLSS 3.8.

Cyberpunk 2077's new 2.21 patch introduces a bunch of new things into the game, including a new Photo Mode, vehicle color customization fixes, randomizer settings in Character Creation, and much more. The big deal here is NVIDIA DLSS 4 support, with support also for the RTX 50 series GPU exclusive Multi Frame Generation technology.

Once you've updated your game, you'll be able to choose between the old CNN model or the new Transformer model for DLSS Super Resolution, DLAA, and Ray Reconstruction on all RTX series GPUs. In the video embedded above, MxBenchmarkPC has put together an awesome video comparing the new NVIDIA DLSS 4 Transformer model with Native, DLSS 3.8, and the new DLSS 4 upscaling tech.

Ted Price, founder and CEO of Insomniac Games, is officially stepping down after 30 years. In an exclusive from Variety, the studio outlined their plans to pass the torch over to the next generation of developers.

However, another interesting tidbit related to the studio's plans to continue their pursuit into film and television. Insomniac previously ventured on this pathway, with the 2016 release of Ratchet and Clank. While the film was, for the most part, poorly received by critics - recent statements suggest the studio are willing to give it another crack.

Since Spiderman and Wolverine are off the table, the question lies: which franchise would Insomniac most feasibly adapt? All signs point to Ratchet and Clank. However, there's also potential to see an animated feature for Spyro, a project that was previously attempted but canceled back in 2010.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has gone through one of the toughest launches in the franchise, and now leaked screenshots of the title have appeared online ahead of its scheduled release date in March.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has been plagued with mounting criticism from the gaming community over its artistic design choices, price, choppy animations seen in a gameplay trailer, accusations of Ubisoft purchasing bots to post positive comments beneath poorly received YouTube videos about the game, and it's setting. This pushback from the community led to Ubisoft delaying the title from its original scheduled release date in November last year to February 2025, but this was promptly followed up by another delay announcement from Ubisoft at the beginning of the month that pushed the title's release date back to March 2025.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has experienced yet another hit, with a selection of screenshots of the game being leaked online ahead of the scheduled release date. Additionally, the YouTube channel GamingTrends has gotten its hands on a preview of the game and has posted some of its thoughts online. According to GamingTrends, Assassin's Creed Shadows has "struck a balance between the RPG and stealth elements, and the key to that is the intersection of weapons and skills."

ADATA's gaming brand XPG gave us a tour of their suite at CES 2025, where they showcased several new products, including new cases, coolers, power supplies, and a new gaming chair.

XPG showcased a selection of new cases at the trade show, and one that particularly caught my eye was the Starfighter ITX chassis, which features XPG's exclusive "Exoskeleton" design language. Notably, the Starfighter is still a prototype chassis, but XPG informed that it's likely to hit the market sometime throughout 2025, and as for its design, the Starfighter has quite a small footprint given its Mini-ITX chassis.

The Starfighter supports a 160mm fan and 360mm radiators. Additionally, it comes with support for NVIDIA's newly announced GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs, and its highlighted feature is the removable panels.

In a market characterized by failed, dead-on-arrival live service titles - the recent research from GDC's 'State of the Game Industry' report highlighted that publishers simply refuse to back away from the model.

According to the data, 33% of triple-A developers are still developing live service games. However, despite the failures of Concord and Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League - there's still hope even from within the development space. Former Bungie producer Joe Tung highlighted in 2024 that the model is "so much better for developers and players" - given that it allows developers to take a long-term orientation on content and vision.

Survey respondents also recognized the value of the model, pointing to the benefits of player experience and community building. Also noting detriments such as declining player interest, predatory practices, and microtransactions. While this might spell gloom for gamers, it's important to note that the survey sample might not necessarily be reflective of the broader market. NYU Steinhardt Professor Laine Nooney took to Bluesky with various criticisms of the GDC report, highlighting the 1-2% response rate, the absence of non-western nations, and overall misleading interpretations of the data.

As part of its RTX Blackwell and GeForce RTX 50 Series unveiling, NVIDIA announced RTX Neural Shaders, which is all about leveraging AI to improve rendering - from texture compression to reduce VRAM requirements to RTX Mega Geometry, which is all about dramatically increasing the detail in ray-traced scenes alongside improving performance.

At CES 2025, we saw demos of RTX Neural Shaders up close, and the results blew us away. From its implementation in Half-Life 2 RTX Remix and Remedy's Alan Wake 2, we won't have to wait long to see it live in an actual game. Alan Wake 2 is set to get a massive DLSS 4 and RTX Mega Geometry update to coincide with the GeForce RTX 50 Series launch.

Without getting too technical, RTX Mega Geometry can transform a complex scene of up to 50 million triangles or polygons into a scene with over 500 million. The technology can be seen in NVIDIA's impressive Zorah demo - with Remedy adding it to Alan Wake 2 to boost the game's path tracing performance, VRAM requirements, and image quality all at once.

Microsoft Edge has been on a surprising trajectory in recent years, clawing its way from the poor reputation of Internet Explorer, into the #3 player on the browser market.

While, to be fair, Chrome remains the dominant player in browsing. A recent preview update offers a range of new features that might incentivize gamers to make the switch. Microsoft Edge Game Assist is a feature that would allow users to essentially browse the web, and receive tailored advice while in-game. Meaning players looking for tips, guides, and other assistance will no longer need to alt-tab or refer to their second window to find what they're looking for.

Game Assist will operate through the Windows Game Bar (Win+G), and utilizes the same browser profile as Edge on PC. The game bar has already proven itself as a useful tool, particularly for the easy ability to balance the audio levels of your apps, as well as easy access to performance data, Spotify, and in-game capture.

GeForce NOW, NVIDIA's cloud streaming service that lets you play the PC games you own on up to a GeForce RTX 4080-powered rig, is currently "sold out" in several regions. If you're wondering how a cloud gaming subscription service has sold out, it appears NVIDIA is running out of cloud gaming capacity, pointing to the service's increasing popularity.

That hasn't stopped the company from expanding its GeForce NOW reach. At CES 2025, we got word that a native app for the Steam Deck is set to arrive sometime this year and will support up to 4K 60 FPS gaming when connected to a TV. Right now, though, many gamers cannot sign up for the service's Free and Performance tiers, with Ultimate Day Passes also currently unavailable.

Although NVIDIA hasn't provided a statement to confirm capacity issues, it does sound like capacity has been an ongoing issue. Recently, the company introduced a monthly cap of 100 hours for all subscribers.

After admitting to breaking the terms of service of both Path of Exile 2 and Diablo IV, Elon Musk has been caught level boosting his character while he attended President Trump's inauguration.

For those out of the loop, the gaming community has been pointing its pitchforks at Elon Musk for his insanely high-level characters in both Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2). The suspicions of cheating began when Musk revealed his POE 2 character was among the highest-ranked in the game, leading gamers to question how the world's richest man had enough time to fulfill all of his duties at his multiple companies and also grind levels in POE 2.

Allegations began to fly that Musk was paying players to boost the level of his character while he was away performing his duties, and these allegations transformed into truths after Musk admitted to a fellow PoE 2 player that "top accounts in Diablo or PoE require multiple people playing the account to win a leveling race". Now it seems Musk has been caught redhanded, as streamer Quinn69 noticed Elon Musk's character was playing PoE while Musk attended President Trump's inauguration.

Half-Life 2 RTX has leaked online, or at least screenshots and a short 6-minute gameplay video showing off the development being done on the iconic PC game.

Half-Life 2 RTX Remix is a mod that enhances the classic game, which has gone down in history as one of the greatest PC games of all time and one of the few iconic golden-age titles that helped PC gaming get to the level it's at now. Given its importance in the PC gaming community, it feels only right that Half-Life 2 should get a fresh coat of paint, or in this case, a fresh coat of NVIDIA-powered features that help bring the classic title to the modern age of gaming.

Orbifold Studios is heading the project, and the team has the full support of NVIDIA along with the GeForce team, which has enabled Half-Life 2 to be blessed with a slew of NVIDIA technologies such as Full Ray Tracing/Path Tracing and support for DLSS 3 Frame Generation and DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction. Below is a selection of leaked screenshots showing the massive graphical improvements made to Half-Life 2 compared to the original title. Additionally, there is a 6-minute gameplay video that shows the game in action.

Independent video game launchers have become the bane of many gamers' existence, dating back from the infamous Games with Windows to the current-day Rockstar Games Social Club.

There will be one less headache for those parties in question - as EA has announced that the Origin App will be officially shutting down as of April 17th, 2025. The move is driven by Microsoft ending support for 32-bit software on Windows 11, as users will be transitioned into the newer, fully supported EA app.

The Origin app was originally released in June of 2011 and caused many Battlefield: Bad Company 2 players complained of unresponsive controls, login issues, and needless additional steps to launch into their games. It also became mandatory to purchase major EA titles through the platform. Releases such as Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3, and Dragon Age: Inquisition were excluded from Steam - and packaged through EA Origin as 'Origin Exclusives'.