Gaming - Page 196

When we had the chance to go hands-on with the new ZOTAC GAMING ZONE handheld at Computex earlier this year, we were immediately impressed. With its robust Steam Deck-like form, vibrant 800-nit 120 Hz OLED display, fast memory, and Ryzen 7 8840U processor with integrated Radeon 780M graphics, it presented a viable alternative to other Windows-based devices like the ROG Ally from ASUS.

When it comes to PC gaming handhelds, OLED can be a game changer in its right thanks to the excellent contrast and color accuracy; however, ZOTAC's handheld arrived on the market several months after similar non-OLED devices from Lenovo, ASUS, and MSI hit the scene.

With CES 2025 right around the corner, AMD is expected to announce the new Ryzen Z2 series of chips for handhelds. And with that, ZOTAC is teasing a new GAMING ZONE device with "stronger hardware."

Sony gives a pretty clear explanation on why the PlayStation Portal isn't natively running games like the PS Vita or Nintendo Switch.

The $199 PlayStation Portal is a curious device--it started out as only supporting Remote Play, meaning gamers already had to have a PlayStation 5 in order to actually play anything on the handheld. It was essentially a receiver-only device, although Google's engineers did hack a Portal to run a PSP emulator.

Now Sony is bringing cloud streaming to the PS Portal via a new beta program. This allows gamers to just buy a $199 PS Portal and play PS5 games through the cloud all without having to own an actual console. But many have wondered why Sony took this route in the first place? In a word, it all comes down to profits (the PS Portal is very profitable), and creating a new dedicated handheld platform would cost a lot of time and money.

Sony technically released its very first Nintendo Switch game with LEGO Horizon Adventures, and it sounds like more multi-platform PlayStation games could be on the way.

2024 saw pretty much everyone breaking game exclusivity except for Nintendo. Both PlayStation and Xbox released first-party games on competing products throughout the year, underlining just how important it is for the Big 3 to work together. Microsoft is all-in on breaking exclusivity as more first-party games like Indiana Jones and Outer Worlds 2 jump to PlayStation 5.

Sony, on the other hand, has been reticent to break exclusivity and offer its marquee games to console rivals. PC is a different story, and Sony has launched nearly 20 PlayStation games on Steam in a bid to sell more copies of its games. But in 2024, Sony also brought its first game to Switch--a smaller-scale, family-friend LEGO game, not a major AAA hit like God of War--and recent comments from PlayStation management may indicate that widespread sales and engagement are more important than closed-end exclusivity.

Having already dominated traditional console gaming and broken onto PC, PlayStation is now moving into gaming's most lucrative market. But what does the future hold for PlayStation mobile games?

According to analyst firm Newzoo, global gamers spent $92.5 billion on mobile titles throughout 2024. With numbers like these, it's fair to say that everyone wants to get in on mobile, especially big-name companies who really don't have a traditional foothold in the segment. Microsoft went so far as to spend $70 billion to buy Activision so it could boost its mobile gaming presence.

Sony, on the other hand, is trying to build mobile games from the ground up. Sony already has a big mobile hit with Fate/Grand Order, which is operated by subsidiary Aniplex. But Sony's major mobile aspirations will involve its PlayStation Studios brand. Sony plans to license IPs and work with external partners first, meaning PlayStation's mobile games will first be third-party games. First-party studios may eventually work on smartphone games.

Games are expensive to make, and because Sony wants to keep its operating margins high, the company says that it has become more selective on which games it will greenlight moving forward.

Despite breakout best-selling hits like Helldivers 2, Palworld, and Balatro to name a few, 2024 was a tough year for gaming. In a bid to reduce spending, practically every publisher and developer in the games industry had laid off thousands of workers. Projects were also cancelled as companies took write-down losses.

Sony wasn't immune to some tough lessons in 2024. Concord came and went, a flummoxing multi-hundred-million-dollar failure that was shut down within 2 weeks. PlayStation laid off staff, with management commenting: "We have to run a sustainable business."

PlayStation is always looking at new ways to reinvigorate franchises and IP, studios boss Hermen Hulst tells Famitsu.

While Sony has yet to implement native PS3 backwards compatibility in modern hardware, the company has nonetheless put emphasis on efforts to preserve PlayStation games. Sony launched a proprietary, in-house games preservation team back in 2022 tasked with backing up and archiving 30 years of PlayStation history; the team will "ensure the titles of today are captured, catalogued, and secured for the games industry of tomorrow."

Classic IPs are making a comeback too, albeit in more indirect ways. We've seen Sony add a plethora of multi-generational PlayStation games to its PS Plus catalog, stretching from the PS1 era all the way to the PS4 gen. And while a number of old-school franchises remain dormant, PlayStation's first-party studios group is always on the lookout for new opportunities to resurrect IP.

Grand Theft Auto 6 will be one of the best-looking games of all time when it releases in 2025, with so much detail that Rockstar has been working on stretch marks on a woman's thighs at the beach, and so much more. Check out some of the high-quality shots below:

Rockstar has been cooking up some incredible detail for Grand Theft Auto 6, but it was only when the trailer was uploaded to Chinese social media site Bilibili, that we got to see some of the additional detail lost in the YouTube upload. Check out some of these stills from the trailer above.

The images were picked up by GTA 6 Info on X and shared, where there is actually a decent amount more detail in the Bilibili upload, with Lucia's arm hairs on display, sand sticks to people's feet at the beach (such a nice, small detail) as well as some of the best lip detail that I've seen in a game yet:

Valve's annual 'Best Of' list for Steam includes all of the biggest PC releases of the year, plus those PC gamers are still playing, broken down into Gross Revenue and Peak Concurrent Players. The list doesn't provide information on how many copies are sold or what the highest-earning PC game of the year was, but it does break things down into various categories.

For the top sellers across all games and new releases, Platinum covers the top twelve games in random order, Gold covers numbers 13 through 24, Silver covers 25 through 50, and Bronze covers 51 to 100. The Steam Best of 2024 list is now live.

Looking at new PC games for 2024 that broke into Steam's biggest earners list for the year, it's not surprising to see the likes of Black Myth: Wukong, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, and Helldivers 2 make it into the Platinum bracket. However, it is cool to see Path of Exile 2 make it into the Gold bracket after launching into Early Access on December 7 - a few weeks ago.

AYANEO has just announced the "world's first modular handheld" with the introduction of the new AYANEO 3, which has the ability to swap out modular buttons and controller layouts, to personalize your handheld in a totally new way. Check it out:

The new AYANEO 3 features the company's new technology "Magic Module" which has been in development for a couple of years, with button types on gaming handhelds no longer determining if the handheld is suitable for a particular game, or game style. Now, that's no worries as AYANEO 3 has modules that you can swap in and out, changing up the buttons and controller layouts for full personalization of your gaming handheld.

AYANEO 3 has multiple modules, touchpads, and 6 buttons to choose from, which look to be held in with magnets. The company has confirmed that the modular buttons can even be inverted, which is a wicked detail to see. This means that if gamers want the D-pad lowered, it takes just a couple of seconds to swap it out. Not only that, but gamers can adjust individual ABXY buttons if their placements cause text to appear in the wrong orientation, another nice touch.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has provided some more GTA 6 hype over Christmas, saying in a recent interview: "I would say I think it'll be extraordinary and worth waiting for".

Zelnick was in a video interview with Conner Mather when he provided the new commentary on Grand Theft Auto 6, but they later talked about GTA's community feedback, and that Rockstar looks to have prepared features and content for the fans that they might not have even dreamed of... exciting stuff.

Zelnick continued: "We definitely listen to feedback from our fans, absolutely. You need to, in our business, and you're able to. But remember, the biggest hits are always the ones that are unexpected. Everything that we do has to be new and different, not derivative. So, by definition when people are commenting on something that is in the market, that means they're looking at something that was done before".

In a speech at The Game Awards 2024, Larian boss Swen Vincke delivered a critique of the modern video games industry while underlining the push-pull dynamics of publisher-developer relationships.

Gaming isn't in the best place right now, and while the industry has raked in around $184 billion in 2024, global growth is flat. So how do you make it in the tough market?

Swen Vincke, the boss of Baldur's Gate 3 developer and Game of the Year winner Larian Studios, shares the secret for success. It's really all about passion and respect across the entire product stream, from software development to publisher distribution and then eventually end-user play. Selling a bunch of copies really lies in a team's passion and skill, but also the fine and often precarious relationships between the funding publishers and the critical, but spend-happy, creatives.

With the long-awaited release of Blizzard's Diablo 4 last year and its Vessel of Hatred expansion a few months ago, not to mention the early access launch of Path of Exile 2, it's an excellent time for action-RPG or ARPG fans. Moon Beast Productions, a new studio that includes Diablo co-creator Erich Schaefer and developers who worked on Diablo 1, Diablo 2, Diablo 3, Torchlight, and more, are cooking up something new for the genre.

The studio has secured funding for its new ARPG game, which it's set to unveil sometime next year. It's looking to shake up the genre with something new while returning to its roots, the original Diablo from 1996.

"For the past 20 years, we've dreamed of ARPG gameplay in more open, dynamic worlds," Erich Schaefer, who was instrumental in the first Diablo game's development, said in the press release. "We finally have the technological capabilities and decades of design experience to bring those visions to life. We're going back to what made those early Diablo games feel so awesome but taking them in some cool, fresh directions."

Steam Replay is back for 2024, giving a breakdown of all the PC games you've been playing throughout the year. Following similar annual gaming summaries from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, Valve's Steam Replay first debuted in 2022. It's chock full of stats and figures to remind you of what PC games you were into throughout the year.

2024 has been a banner year for new releases from Black Myth: Wukong to Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree to Helldivers 2 to the long-awaited arrival of STALKER 2. Of course, it's also been a big year for indie releases like Balatro and Hades 2's early access debut. Plus, the usual heavy hitters like Counter-Strike 2 and Call of Duty.

What's excellent about Steam Replay is that it's personalized for you, and you can choose to share all your PC gaming stats or keep them private. It's a sea of nifty charts and figures, from how many achievements you've unlocked to how many games you've played to your longest gaming streak.

It's official: SEGA is done making mini consoles, so don't expect to see a Saturn or Dreamcast mini.

A few years ago, mini consoles were all the rage. It was like the old 1990s console wars again: the SEGA Genesis and SNES mini consoles went head-to-head in a holiday showdown. But things have changed since then, and no one has the money to produce extra hardware, especially when it comes pre-loaded with software that you could sell on multiple devices.

Despite the popularity of the Genesis mini (we loved it, check out our review here), SEGA has no plans to produce or release any more retro mini consoles. That means no Saturn or Dreamcast minis...yet SEGA has other plans for these old-school eras of gaming.

SEGA's new president wants to bring the spark back to the beloved games company and stop playing it so safe.

SEGA could become more of a dazzling eye-catching spectacle again, just like it was in its prime during the 1990s and the early 2000s. At least that's the game plan of new SEGA of America and SEGA Europe exec Shuji Utsumi, who plans to re-ignite the brand's image and rally the offensive against the competition.

"I want to make Sega really shiny again," Utsumi told the BBC in a recent interview. What makes Utsumi's words so interesting is that he was head of SEGA Japan during the Dreamcast era, and he's certainly aiming to bring that era back.

SEGA is currently mulling over whether or not it should enter the subscription market.

Following Game Pass' launch in 2017, a number of big-name publishers also rolled out their own subscriptions. Ubisoft has uPlay, Electronic Arts has EA Play, and other platform-holders jumped in with Nintendo Switch Online and PlayStation Plus. Now it looks like other publishers are ready to jump into the market after years on the sidelines.

SEGA is one such company. In a recent interview with BBC, SEGA president Shuji Utsumi said that subscriptions are "very interesting" and that the house of Sonic was currently "evaluating some opportunities."

Rather than buying Kadokawa Corp for multiple billions of dollars, Sony has chosen to invest in the manga giant instead.

Sony will not be acquiring Kadokawa after all. Both companies have announced a strategic partnership that sees Sony purchasing 10% of Kadokawa's stock for 50 billion yen, or about $319.5 million. That's a lot less than it would have cost to buy out Kadokawa completely.

Despite Kadokawa's commanding presence in the manga/anime markets (not to mention its gaming might thanks to FromSoft and others), Sony making this kind of investment makes more sense than an outright buyout. The news comes at a time when Sony is aggressively slashing its budgets and spending in an effort to boost profitability, and new consolidation could take years to unravel. Based on Kadokawa's market capitalization, it could have cost Sony over $3.3 billion to buy out Kadokawa's existing shares.

The worldwide games market pulled in $184.3 billion throughout 2024, driven primarily by digital software and microtransactions, analyst firm Newzoo estimates.

Newzoo has just updated its forecasted earnings figures for 2024, and the new numbers are actually slightly down. According to coverage from Games Industry.biz, Newzoo now projects that the global video games industry earned $184.3 billion throughout 2024. It should be noted that the data does not include advertising revenues, hardware and peripheral sales, and earnings from regulating gambling games.

The actual results are considerably less than what Newzoo had originally expected that gaming would make in 2024. Previous coverage shows that Newzoo had forecast gaming to hit $187.7 billion in 2024, meaning the current results are off by some $3.4 billion, or nearly 2%. Global digital game revenue was $175.8 billion, making up 96.4% of total earnings, whereas physical clocked in at around $8.5 billion and accounted for just 4.6% of yearly spending.

A new job promotion under Xbox's management team could hint at a handheld-based future for Microsoft.

Through a series of interviews, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer has teased that Microsoft wants to make an Xbox handheld. There's just two problems: Microsoft has a bad track record with hardware profitability, especially Xbox consoles; and two, Microsoft has never actually made a gaming handheld before (but they did make phones),

So that's why Microsoft has been drumming up interest and helping mature the nascent-but-growing handheld market in its own way, through third-party deals, advertisement promos with Game Pass, and strong marketing campaigns like the recent "this is an Xbox" barrage. LG signed such a deal with Microsoft to promote its Logitech G Cloud handheld. Microsoft is essentially finding ways to bolster the handheld market while not actually having to produce any hardware of its own.

Lenovo will have a "special guest" at its gaming handheld event in Las Vegas at CES 2025 on January 7, and that special guest is Valve... with Lenovo cooking up its first SteamOS gaming handheld.

We heard rumors of the Lenovo Legion Go S last week from leaker Evan Blass, but now The Verge is confirming that "the future of gaming handhelds is coming to CES '25 and you have a front row seat!" The January 7 event is titled "Lenovo Legion x AMD: The Future of Gaming Handhelds" with a special guest: Valve SteamOS and Steam Deck co-designer Pierre-Loup Griffais.

Lenovo and AMD call him Valve's "Chief Design Architect" but Griffais will be joined by Microsoft VP of Xbox Gaming Devices and Ecosystem, Jason Ronald, where he will be introduced as Microsoft's "VP of Next Generation".