Gaming - Page 199

It's official: Onimusha is back, and ready to bring bizarre swordplay chaos to a new generation.

While scouting Capcom's franchises, one thought comes to mind: When's a new Onimusha coming? After all, the franchise sold 8.7 million copies since the PS2 era. That might be enough interest to warrant a new game at some point. Now that's actually happening: Capcom is resurrecting the long-dormant Onimusha franchise.

At the Game Awards 2024, Capcom revealed Onimusha: Way of the Sword, a new adventure set in a demon-infused Kyoto, Japan that features an all-new protagonist.

Virtua Fighter is back with a new mainline entry, and the developers of the Yakuza series are making it.

The video games industry's first-ever 3D fighting game is back in the limelight. It's been years since the last big Virtua Fighter game, and SEGA is reviving the franchise--and many others--as part of its big new reinvigorated content slate.

At The Game Awards 2024, SEGA announced the next Virtua Fighter project...but no real details were revealed. That info will be saved for later.

The Elden Ring franchise is expanding with a new game, but it's not a sequel or an expansion.

Tonight at The Game Awards 2024, FromSoftware and Bandai Namco announced Elden Ring: Night Reign, a new standalone co-op experience that's coming in 2025. Gamers won't have to own the original game in order to play Night Reign, and it's unclear where it will fit in in regards to the series' lore.

"This is an action game in which you take on overwhelming situations together with other players," FromSoftware writes on its website.

CD Projekt RED officially announced a new Witcher game at The Game Awards 2024.

It's official: CD Projekt's next Witcher title stars Ciri as the main protagonist. The project was revealed at TGA '24, and it's called The Witcher 4. It's a action RPG just like The Witcher 3, and this time around Ciri has some awesome new tricks up her sleeve, including a brand new grappling hook weapon that she can ignite with the Igni spell.

The Witcher 4's reveal trailer was a cinematic-style experience similar to the original previous games, complete with some brutal combat, a true exploration of monsters and men, and some distinct industry-leading visuals. Witcher 4 is the start of a new 3-game trilogy that stars Ciri, so we're in for a multi-year ride of Witcher games that could span various console generations. While CD Projekt has not announced when The Witcher 4 will come, it's likely due out sometime by 2026, and CD Projekt has entered principal development on the project.

Former Marathon creative director Christopher Barrett is suing Bungie for an astronomical $200 million, which is close to what its parent company Sony paid for Spider-Man darling Insomniac Games back in 2019.

Last year, Bungie and Sony fired Christopher Barrett, who was then the creative director of Bungie's new nascent extraction shooter, Marathon. The reason for the firing, which is the entire focus of the lawsuit, remains unclear, but Bloomberg reports that 8 different women came forward with allegations of inappropriate behavior against Barrett.

Now Barrett is suing both Sony and Bungie in Delaware's Chancery Court, which is essentially a special court focused on businesses incorporated within Delaware. The legal complaint, which was made public by Barrett, alleges that Sony and Bungie "deliberately destroyed Barrett's reputation by falsely, and publicly, insinuating they had investigated Barrett and found that he had engaged in sexual misconduct."

Sony officially confirms that it has sent a letter of interest to acquire manga and anime publishing powerhouse Kadokawa Corp.

Sony has 1.7 trillion yen (about $11.7 billion) to spend on strategic investments, share repurchases, and acquisitions and buyouts across the next three years. This treasure trove isn't just spent on buying studios like Bungie, which Sony purchased in 2022 for $3.7 billion. It's spent on all things, including buying up shares in companies like Epic Games, re-purchasing shares to drive up value, and of course the aforementioned company acquisitions.

New reports say that Sony is eyeing Kadokawa Corp for its next buyout. If Sony bought Kadokawa, it would inherit a vast billion-dollar global multimedia empire that could fill in the missing pieces in Sony's IP catalog. Kadokawa is a leading publisher of manga and anime across the world, and it also owns a few game studios, including the popular Elden Ring developer FromSoftware as well as Spike Chunsoft.

Bungie acknowledges that it has a lot of work to do before Destiny 2 players trust the studio again.

It's tough out there in the games market these days. No one is immune to the current inflation-driven climate, and everyone's cutting costs. Some, like Sony, made a $3.7 billion acquisition during a period of low operating margins and is now paying for its Bungie buyout both with cash and with cost-controlled bloodletting.

So far, the acquisition may not be seen as very favorable for Sony. Destiny 2 has apparently missed revenue targets, stressing the studio to find new ways to grow Destiny 2's earnings. This, combined with high production costs, led to a restructuring of Destiny's content roadmap.

Microsoft beefs up its PC store competition by adding nearly 400 new games to the Xbox PC app storefront.

Xbox has quite the PC gaming ecosystem right now. Between Battle.net, the Microsoft Store, the web, and now the Xbox Windows app itself, there are a variety of different ways to buy Xbox-branded games and content on PC. The pressure to expand further onto PC propelled the $70 billion Activision buyout, and this pressure is also fueling Microsoft's ambitious multi-channel market competition plans.

Now we're seeing Microsoft beef up its digital games catalog with a swath of almost 400 titles to be added to the Xbox app. This will further mold the Xbox app into a more cohesive branching point within the ecosystem, brushing up against established launchers like Battle.net and Steam while filling out the content catalog along the way.

The Xbox app's new jump back in feature is a great addition for anyone playing PC games on their Lenovo Legion Go, ASUS ROG Ally, or other Windows handheld PC.

Microsoft is slowly but surely working its way up to a dedicated Xbox handheld. But before the hardware is ready, there's still lots of work to do on Xbox's native PC gaming presence, especially when it comes to adapting to a handheld's smaller screen.

On-the-go gaming is all about convenience. If you can pair that up with instant access, like, say, with Valve's innovative quick access button and suspend and resume feature, it's a potent combo for gamers. While the Xbox PC app doesn't have some sort of revolutionary built-in Quick Resume, it does have "jump back in," which is essentially a quick launch carousel of your recently played games.

The video games industry's uneasy Survive Till '25 mantra may have to get updated with a new number as industry figures believe Grand Theft Auto 6 is likely to be delayed beyond 2025.

Rockstar Games is no stranger to delays. Red Dead Redemption 2 was delayed twice, originally set to launch in Fall 2017, then pushed back to Spring and then Fall of 2018. GTA V was delayed once on consoles, and then three times on PC. Given this trend, the consensus is that the massively anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 will also be delayed.

In a recent Kinda Funny Games Daily podcast, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier shared his thoughts about GTA 6 launching in 2025. While this is Schreier's own thoughts, and not based on insider information from sources as per usual of his reporting, Schreier has extensive knowledge on the trends and goings-on in the industry, and has been reporting on GTA 6 specifically for many years.

Cyberpunk 2077 just got a big update, and it seemingly ushers in a major performance boost for those with a new Intel Arrow Lake CPU in their PC.

Doubtless you haven't missed the controversy around the launch of Core Ultra 200S (desktop) processors, which underperformed compared to the expectations Intel built up in the prerelease marketing phase.

Gaming performance turned out particularly shaky in terms of the generational uplift on 14th-gen CPUs, and Intel has acknowledged this, and is preparing microcode updates to boost frame rates (while also fixing apparent issues with Windows, too, that are slowing down Core Ultra 200S chips).

The latest in what seems like a never-ending line of Nintendo Switch 2 rumors is what very well could be the first look at Nintendo's next-generation console.

Nintendo's next-generation console, presumably called the Nintendo Switch 2, considering the immense success of the Nintendo Switch, has been hinted at by Nintendo several times, with the company confirming via financial reports that a successor console was on the way, and that the company will ride the original Nintendo Switch out until the end of this fiscal year in March 2025. However, Nintendo did confirm that it will announce the successor console this fiscal year, which means any time now Nintendo could reveal the highly-anticipated handheld.

It was only earlier this month that six development studios confirmed to a publication that titles being worked on for the next-generation Nintendo console will be released between June and July next year, meaning the Nintendo Switch 2 will have already been announced and on shelves. The latest rumor about this elusive console comes from Satisfye, a company dedicated to creating accessories for gaming consoles.

Steam set a new record for concurrent players on December 8, with 39,205,447 people logging in and playing games. This broke the previous record of around 38 million set in September 2024, which probably means it's only a matter of time before Valve's PC gaming platform hits 40 million concurrent players. Will it be another three months before the record is broken again? Time will tell.

The new record was set because some major PC releases dropped simultaneously, including Path of Exile 2, Marvel Rivals, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Path of Exile 2, the highly anticipated action-RPG sequel launched into Early Access, hit an impressive 578,569 peak concurrent player count on December 8, while Marvel Rivals' big free-to-play 1.0 launch hit 480,990 concurrent players. Both games are proving to be popular on the streaming platform Twitch, where they are climbing up the charts.

In addition to new titles, existing PC powerhouses like Counter-Strike 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and DOTA 2 saw massive player counts on December 8. Valve's games continue to be popular on the platform, including classics like Team Fortress 2. Here's a look at the current top 25 most-played games on Steam as of December 11, 2024.

It was only early last month Elon Musk appeared on the Joe Rogan Podcast, where he opened the show by discussing what he believes are the benefits of playing video games and also briefly touching on how he is one of the best Diablo IV players on Earth.

These claims aren't anything unusual from Musk, as the Tesla and SpaceX CEO discussed previously in interviews the time he spent playing several video games. As for the claims with Diablo IV specifically, Musk, at the time of the Rogan interview, held the 20th position for the fastest clear of The Pit, an end-game level piece of content that puts the player up against hordes of monsters. The goal is to beat The Pit in the fastest time possible, and according to Helltides.com, Musk's time of 2 minutes and 45 seconds earned him the 20th position on the website's leaderboards.

However, there are some caveats to this claim. Diablo IV doesn't have official leaderboard rankings, meaning Helltides' rankings consist of players who manually submit their clear times. Helltides is renowned as the go-to place for leaderboard rankings in Diablo IV. But that isn't the worst of the caveats. According to Pirate Software, or Jason Thor Hall, a previous engineer at Blizzard who worked on banning more than two million World of Warcraft accounts for in-game exploits, hacking, and other violations against ToS, Elon Musk is using an exploit within Diablo IV to achieve his world-renowned clear time of The Pit.

Grand Theft Auto 6 will have a "significant online mode" that Rockstar will continue to make millions of dollars from not just in the months post-launch, but years into the future according to the latest leaks.

In a new report from Bloomberg, we're learning more information on GTA 6 from writer Jason Schreier, who reports that Rockstar has not only missed multiple deadlines for the game, but publisher Take-Two says that Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto 6 are "now on track".

Schreier said that GTA 6 has "already missed multiple deadlines, a common practice at Rockstar, but Take-Two says it's now on track. Sales of the game, while likely to be astronomical, won't tell the whole story. The title will feature a significant online mode, selling in-game content designed to generate revenue for years into the future. That's how Take-Two kept GTA 5 going for more than a decade".

Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be the biggest release of virtually any product ever, with billions and billions of dollars to be made at launch... scaring other developers and publishers, making them push their game releases as far away from GTA 6 as possible.

Rockstar is still hard at work on GTA 6, with Bloomberg reporting that the anticipation for the game is so high that some competing game publishers are "waiting as long as possible" before committing release dates for their games in the fall of 2025, according to "people familiar with their deliberations who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly".

In full, Bloomberg reported: "Anticipation [for GTA 6] is so high that some competing game publishers are waiting as long as possible to commit to their release dates for the fall, according to people familiar with their deliberations who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. The publishers want to see whether GTA 6 will make its deadline or slip into 2026, these people say, and they're determined to keep their own games far, far away".

LEGO Fortnite is getting a makeover, shifting into a new experience with the moniker "Odyssey," presumably in reference to Odysseus' mythical journey.

Epic has recently made some big announcements around Fortnite, specifically the side experiences within the mighty metaverse-like umbrella. LEGO Fortnite is getting a very GTA-esque roleplaying sim mode called Brick Life, and Fortnite is even getting its own first-person, Counter-Strike-inspired, bomb-planting attack vs defense mode called Ballistic.

Now comes LEGO Fortnite Odyssey, a quick name swap with the original LEGO Fortnite. Instead of being its own game, Epic now assigned the LEGO Fortnite name to describe LEGO content altogether. Odyssey's swap is coming with the new Storm Chasers update, which will be out on December 10.

GPD has just launched its new Win Max 2 (2025) gaming handheld, rocking AMD's new Ryzen AI HX 370 "Strix Point" APU, a huge 10.1-inch screen, OCulink connectivity, costing $1462.

The new GPD Win Max 2 gaming handheld features a 10.1-inch 1080p 120Hz display, AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 "Strix Point" APU, 64GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory by default, and dual M.2 SSD slots with a 2280 port for up to 2TB of SSD storage hidden inside of the WIn Max 2 handheld, and another that is hidden behind a small lid on the back.

GPD is even including 4G LTE module support for internet on-the-go, an OCulink connector for external graphics cards, dual USB4 ports for devices that require Thunderbolt 3/4, SD and microSD card support, and audio ports on both sides of the Win Max 2 gaming handheld.

Epic Games and LEGO have a message for gamers: Can't wait for Grand Theft Auto VI? Maybe try this new brick sim with Miami-esque city streets, neon lights, and tons of vehicles. Sound familiar?

Epic is on a roll lately. The Fortnite-maker recently announced Ballistic, a new 5v5 FPS that's a direct contender to its rival's biggest game, Counter-Strike. Now LEGO Fortnite is expanding with a very Grand Theft Auto-esque "social roleplay experience" coming on December 12. It's called Fortnite Brick Life, but most people just call it LEGO GTA.

With a rather limited set of players to one world, Brick Life looks like a good mix of simulation and multiplayer. The mode supports 32 players total and the city itself will expand over time, both organically based on player choices and interactions and directly from developers through continued content updates.

Despite the industry's solidarity with the collective Survive till '25 sentiment, GTA 6 is striking fear into the hearts of publishers everywhere. No one wants to go up against Grand Theft Auto.

GTA 6 is expected to be so big that it will help save the video games industry. At least, that's the popular belief going around...and there's a good chance the game will boost the market across the board, whether it be full game sales across digital and retail channels, or gaming hardware sales across consoles and PCs.

Recent history has shown the market is full of unknowns and unprecedented occurrences--your best-selling Palworlds and Helldivers 2 in 2024, for instance, or Baldur's Gate 3's cultural explosion throughout 2023 remain key examples. When it launches in 2025, there's a chance GTA 6 could even beat GTA 5's thunderous success, as if magnified by the current trends of high consumer appetites.