Gaming - Page 214

Ubisoft has two main goals right now: open-world adventures like Assassin's Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws, and live games like Rainbow Six Siege.

Reports say that Ubisoft could go private in a bid to better control its business, with the Guillemot family teaming up with Tencent to buy out all existing shares. No one knows exactly what will happen, but Ubisoft's core focus remains the same as it has been for a while: open-world games and live services.

We've heard as much from the publisher's executive management, who have frequently discussed this dual-pronged approach to investors and analysts. Now the company has reiterated this business plan in a formal response to the share buyout rumors. Ubisoft stock has rallied since the reports, increasing by up to 40% from €10.74 to a peak of €15.07 on Monday, October 7.

More than half of worldwide surveyed gamers like singleplayer games the best, but the story is different for younger audiences--hence why publishers are still chasing and perpetuating live service trends.

The battle between live services and singleplayer games has been waging for a while, and it's now almost as old as the ever-shrinking battle between frame rate vs fidelity. Thanks to forever games like Fortnite, which has made $20 billion in revenue in less than a decade, everyone is trying to break into the live service market--even traditional singleplayer-makers like Sony.

The market has shown that there's more than enough room for both live and singleplayer games to co-exist, but microtransactions still reign supreme, likely due to their constant always-on storefronts and comparatively lower costs. Even still, analyst firm Midia has conducted some interesting research that shows surveyed players typically prefer to play singleplayer games on average when compared to other forms of gaming like PVE, couch co-op, and online PVP.

Alien Isolation 2 is confirmed--get ready for more thrilling interstellar terror.

There's few games that are scarier than Alien Isolation. It's a horrifyingly tense experience full of sheer nail-biting suspense. Being hunted by the monstrous xenomorph throughout the haunted ship of the Nostromo makes you feel like prey with the odds hopelessly against you. 10 years ago, Creative Assembly captured one of the most unique movies in cinema history and let us actually experience it in an interactive way.

Now the team is going to do it again. Today, creative director Al Hope officially announced that Alien Isolation 2 is in development at Creative Assembly. "Today, I'm delighted to confirm, on behalf of the team, that a sequel to Alien: Isolation is in early development. We look forward to sharing more details with you when we're ready."

Just imagine... a totally next-gen Grand Theft Auto 7 on a future-gen PlayStation 7 console, powered with next-gen hardware and AI that looks almost photorealistic... but with a certain (really awesome-looking) vibe. Check it out:

We all know Rockstar is going to release the biggest game of all time with Grand Theft Auto 6, but with our eyes to the future with next-gen hardware (AMD's future-gen Zen 6 and RDNA 6 architectures) as well as Sony's continued advancements into adding ray tracing (RT) and AI-powered upscaling that truly begins with PlayStation 6, but this tiny glimmer of hope is inspiring... the hype for this would be unbelievable.

In a post on X, NikTik explained that the scene in the tweet (below) is a scene from GTA: San Andreas reimagined with Runway Gen-3 AI. He also mentions that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang talked about the future of DLSS, mentioning that it will generate in-game assets including textures and objects, with DLSS 10 hypothetically delivering full neural rendering.

Fortnite has just broken its concurrent player count record it set back in December 2023, as nearly six million gamers flocked to the popular battle royale shooter to help take down Marvel's Doctor Doom.

According to a new report from Insider Gaming, Fortnite attracted 5.6 million gamers to its end-of-season finale, which spawned a 150-foot-tall Doctor Doom onto the map that, in natural boss fashion, began destroying environments and attacking players. Reports indicate the 5.6 million concurrent users battled against Doctor Doom's global health pool, which took approximately an hour to deplete.

The spawning in of Doctor Doom as the season finale concludes Fortnite's Marvel-themed season and ties directly into Marvel's upcoming projects. For those that don't know, it was only earlier this year that Robert Downey Jr revealed will be playing Doctor Doom in an upcoming Marvel project. As for Fortnite, events such as this are a testament to the effort put in by the developers over at Epic Games. Global events such as this one are why Fortnite remains one of the most popular games on the market.

Ubisoft is going through one of its most challenging times in recent memory, with the company recently announcing the official delay of the upcoming next installment in the Assassin's Creed franchise, Assassin's Creed Shadows amid controversial development choices, and following the internally admitted disappointing release of Star Wars Outlaws.

The turmoil at Ubisoft has been reflected in the company's plummeting stock price, which has dropped by around 50% in just the last two months. Ubisoft's stock price reached as low as 9.89 EURO at the end of September, which is down from the 22 EURO it was in July. The stock price recently saw a bump of 31% due to reports of Tencent and Guillemot Family reportedly mulling over a buyout.

With all this turmoil, we are now seeing some Ubisoft executives jump ship, with a new report from Insider Gaming claiming that the vice president of Rainbow Six Siege, Cameron Lee, has left the franchise and Ubisoft altogether. Notably, Lee joined the Rainbox Six Siege team in April 2022 and was brought on to be "responsible for creating the long-term brand strategy for the Rainbow Six franchise and aligning and collaborating with all internal partners."

Halo has changed forever, and 343 Industries is no more as the franchise moves into Unreal Engine 5 with incredible next-gen visuals.

Today, one of Xbox's biggest studios made a surprise announcement; 343 Industries has changed its name to Halo Studios, and Halo is now moving to Unreal Engine 5. There's also multiple new Halo games in development, potentially hinting at a mainline sequel and perhaps some sort of cross-platform F2P multiplayer release that could bridge PC, Xbox, and maybe even PlayStation.

While the Tatanka battle royale mode has been cancelled, Halo Studios did just announce a third-person mode for Halo Infinite, and we have to wonder if Certain Affinity is helping Halo Studios on their new UE5 projects.

Today one of Microsoft's biggest game studios made a big announcement: 343 Industries is no more, and has been replaced by Halo Studios.

Armed with a bold new vision for the future, 343 Industries has changed its name to Halo Studios. This swap comes at a pivotal point for the group, as the team has now become a game studio first and foremost, shedding its focus on the archaic and difficult proprietary Slipspace Engine that powered Halo Infinite.

Halo Studios made one thing very clear in its announcement video: a new era of Halo is here...and gone are the days of old. Things have changed for the Halo series and the people that make it.

Sony's recent Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered announcement surprised many because it's still a good-looking game in 2024. As one of the first major first-party PlayStation titles to get a PC port, Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition ramped up the visual fidelity and detail over the PS4 original - so this new remastered version feels even more out of step.

Especially when Sony is already delisting Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition on Steam and the Epic Games Store in favor of the newer and more expensive remaster. This is not to say there's no difference between the two versions. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered brings the visuals in line with the sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, including over 10 hours of re-recorded voices and motion capture, revamped character models and animation, and "countless graphical improvements."

The upgraded visuals and presentation can be seen in the announcement trailer and in official screenshots. However, one aspect of the release is making PC gamers shake their heads - well, two, if you count the fact that Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition is no longer available to purchase.

We've covered NVIDIA ACE technologies a few times at TweakTown, a toolset and set of AI-powered technologies that can bring digital humans to life. As seen in the Covert Protocol tech demo, AI creates and generates personalities and dialogue, converts text-to-speech, generates facial animations, and more. For game developers and gamers, it's a potential game changer for player interaction and immersion in a digital world.

However, when it comes to NVIDIA ACE, the generative AI tools available to developers aren't merely there to add AI-generated characters into a game powered by the Nemotron Mini 4B model that can run locally on GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU.

Audio2Face-3D is a brilliant tool in its own right. It is a plugin that uses audio to generate accurate lip-synching and facial animation for characters.

PC gaming is accelerating rapidly in Japan, offering Microsoft a unique opportunity to swoop in and capture more of this uptick with its PC Game Pass subscription service.

According to new data from Japanese trade organization CESA, the PC games market is growing at a substantial rate in the overseas region. As per analyst Dr. Serkan Toto of Kantan Games, the data shows that PC game software sales revenues have nearly tripled from 2019 - 2023, ranging from 82 billion yen ($551 million) in 2019 to 236.4 million yen ($1.589 billion) in 2023.

This represents an increase of 187% in revenues, and a CAGR of 23.5% across the five-year period. Comparatively, PC game sales revenues went from 5% of total software earnings in 2019 to a whopping 13% of the total in 2023--a big jump for Japan.

The Halo franchise is breaking the FPS barrier for the first time with a new dedicated third-person mode.

Halo has always been a first-person shooter first and foremost. Sure the series has toe-dipped with third-person views, namely when operating vehicles or picking up huge turrets, but you're still playing most of the game in that eyes-on view. That is until now.

343 Industries recently announced Halo Infinite is getting its own third-person mode sometime in November 2024. The new view fundamentally changes gameplay by giving players more optics on their environments. Halo senior community manager John Junyszek has a quick explanation: "You have more awareness, you get to see your Spartan." That last part is important for 343 because the studio continues to sell cosmetic microtransactions for Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer.

Electronic Arts is leaning harder into user-generated content economies a la Minecraft and Roblox, and soon Sims players will be able to buy new content bundles.

EA's recent investor's day had a lot to say about AI and user-generated content. The billion-dollar publisher intends to use generative AI to supercharge the production of UGC (or what it calls UGX--User Generated Experiences). The idea is that AI tools could help accelerate the creation of these custom in-game levels, characters, and modes, thereby having more content on a digital market at a quicker rate.

It's unclear on whether or not this AI-driven UGX platform is coming to The Sims 4, but EA did confirm that it will not be making a traditional sequel to the franchise. The Sims 5 isn't happening, and instead, EA will elongate The Sims 4 to ensures gamers can continue their decade's worth of stories and adventures for even longer. EA is also adding a new Creator Kit economy which will allow The Sims 4 players to buy bundles of user-generated content. Think of this as a little bit like Bethesda's controversial Creation Club (aka paid mods)

Palworld is incredibly popular in China, a region where long-winded multiplayer games typically do quite well.

Palworld was one of the most surprising breakout hits of 2024. Released in January of this year, the game quickly racked up 15 million sales on Steam and reached 25 million players total in about a month after launch, becoming one of the fastest-selling video games of all time.

Interestingly enough, a significant portion of Palworld's total playerbase is in China. In a recent interview with GameRant, Pocketpair's Global Community Manager John "Bucky" Buckley revealed some surprising facts about Palworld's success in China.

FromSoftware, one of the most prestigious video game makers in Japan, has increased its base salary for all existing employees and newly-hired graduates.

Action RPG maven FromSoftware is boosting its monthly and annual salaries of existing and new employees, the company has announced. Base salary of current workers has been increased by nearly 12%, and new graduates will be offered 300,000 yen per month, which is little over $2,000 USD. That's not a lot to live on, especially if workers aim to live locally in Shinjuku City, Tokyo.

The news comes after years of discussion surrounding FromSoftware's comparatively low pay; former games journalist and NoClip documentarian Danny O' Dwyer said this on Twitter:

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund could buy up even more Nintendo stock, despite owning 8.5% of the company's shares.

The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) has invested billions of dollars in a multitude of companies over the last few years, and through its Savvy Games Group subsidiary, the PIF has even made strategic acquisitions like the mobile mega-hit-maker Scopely.

In 2022, the PIF purchased 5% of Nintendo's shares during the company's 10-for-1 stock split, representing nearly 6.5 million shares worth $3 billion. Since then, the Saudi fund has bumped up its investment to purchase 8.5% of Nintendo's total shares, which is about 111.45 million shares worth a whopping $5.8 - 6 billion. Now the PIF could further increase its investments in Nintendo and buy up even more shares of the Japanese gaming giant.

A new action RPG set in Nickelodeon's Avatar franchise is in development, but Aang won't be the main character.

The Avatar Legends multimedia universe is expanding with a brand new AAA game, sources have revealed to IGN. The project will see Paramount Game Studios team up with Saber Interactive, the label behind Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, World War Z, and the Evil Dead video game.

No official photos, images, or teasers were revealed for the game, but it was revealed that the interactive adventure will be centered around an entirely new and original Avatar--meaning Aang won't be the star. Paramount told IGN that gamers "can expect to be immersed in a vibrant world, master all four elements, engage in dynamic combat alongside companions, and experience the challenges and decisions that come with being the keeper of balance in the world."

I've just finished playing a few rounds of Overwatch 2's new Competitive Drives mode, which incentivizes OW2 players -- just like me -- to play more ranked games.

In an official blog post, developer Activision-Blizzard explained: "Each time you win a match you'll earn a drive score that is 10 times the total Skill Rank percentage gained from that match. For example, if you earn 21% toward your next tier and division, then you'll gain 210 drive points. Losing a match results in a having your drive score reduced five times the total Skill Rank percentage deduction, or half as much as a win gains. So, losing a match that costs you 19% in your competitive rank progress will deduct 95 drive points".

What if you get a crappy team (it happens, OW2 players know this all too well) and can't push your newly-earned drive points? The developer explains: "Losing matches will cause you to lose a small amount of drive progress, reaching each checkpoint guarantees your progress and rewards".

Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games, has reportedly enforced its developers to endure 7-day work weeks in a crunch time to meet heavy deadlines for Citizencon that kicks off on October 19.

Tom Henderson from Insider Gaming reports that Cloud Imperium Games sent out an email to its staff yesterday, which said that the developer needs to "double down over the next 18 days to make sure that once again we create an amazing experience for our community". This includes finalizing patch 3.42.2 for Star Citizen, as well as getting the Squadron 42 demo showcase for Chapter 1.

The email continues: "This means for the next two weekends we will be mandating extra time for all those working on deliverables for Citcon".

Konami has basically completely remade the original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater game with all-new animations and performance befit of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Konami is taking its new Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake pretty seriously, and rightly so, given the game's long-lasting legacy among MGS faithful. Announced a year ago, the MGS3 remake has generated tons of buzz and excitement among gamers for its higher-end visuals and newly upgraded animations.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, game producer Noriaki Okamura says that the team at Konami has studiously and laboriously remade nearly all of the original animations from the 20-year-old PS2-era classic. At first, Konami thought about just remastering the game and re-releasing it, similar to the HD edition from 2011.