Gaming - Page 226

Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro wasn't just an open secret at Gamescom 2024 last week, but now it's rumored to feature an upgraded 2TB of Gen4 SSD storage, and use around 200W of power.

The new information on the PS5 Pro is coming from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, who has been told that a source of his has recently seen the PlayStation 5 Pro Dev Kit, and that it comes with 2TB of SSD storage. Microsoft has just unleashed its new Xbox Series X 2TB console, so Sony pushing for the same 2TB makes sense here (and with a far more powerful console in the PS5 Pro).

Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro Dev Kit is also running quiet and cool, with the same power connector on the PS5 Pro as the standard PS5, we're looking at the same power consumption. AMD's new semi-custom SoC codenamed "Viola" doing well on TSMC's new node, and keeping power the same (sometimes lower) and temps lower than the standard PS5 with considerable more grunt inside of the PS5 Pro... Sony will have another winner on its hands.

The Lenovo Legion Go is a powerful portable PC gaming handheld (check out our full review) with a large 8.8-inch 144Hz QHD display, detachable Joy-Con-like controllers, 16GB of LPDDR5X memory, and the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Processor with integrated Radeon graphics. It's an impressive unit that is powerful enough to play modern games and emulator several generations of classic console hardware.

Although it's been available for a while, Lenovo has just announced that it will release a range of new Legion Go accessories in the coming months: the Legion Go USB-C Dock, Legion Go Charging Connector, Legion Go Carry Case, and Legion Go Joystick and Joystick Caps.

The handheld's defining feature (compared to similar devices like the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally) is the detachable controllers. Two new accessories announced this week complete the Legion Go's 'Nintendo Switch in PC form' design. One is a fancier version of the Switch's pack-in dock and base station, and the other is a fancier Joy-Con Comfort Grip.

Are you among the countless PC gamers jumping into Black Myth: Wukong, the latest AAA action-adventure hit? If so, there's a good chance that during those first few moments with the game, like me, you were left wondering which button brought up the map. Only to discover that there's no in-game map to be found.

Granted, this is a deliberate choice from the development team at Game Science, and Black Myth: Wukong is the sort of game where you can get around pretty quickly without needing a map. However, with side quests, hidden boss encounters, and other secrets to discover, having a map would make exploration a lot easier.

Well, us map fans are not alone, as one of the most popular mods for the game on PC is called 'Simple Map.' Which, as the name suggests, adds an in-game map to Black Myth: Wukong on PC.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer Beta details are here, with access available over two weekends across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. This is the first time players on all platforms get access to a Call of Duty beta simultaneously and the first major entry in the series to launch day and date on Xbox and PC Game Pass.

The first Early Access Beta weekend begins in a few days, running from this Friday, August 30, through to Wednesday, September 4. Access is available to all players who have pre-ordered the game and those who are subscribed to Xbox Game Pass or PC Game Pass.

The full Open Beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will run from Friday, September 6, through Monday, September 9. It is open to all players across PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The announcement coincides with the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer Reveal Trailer, which showcases footage and gameplay from the 16 all-new maps coming.

Sony is raising the price of the PlayStation 5 in its home country for the third time, the company today announced.

The PS5 duo is about to get more expensive in Japan. Sony has revealed plans to raise the domestic MSRP of both the PS5 disc and digital editions alongside a multitude of peripherals within the region, culminating in the third PS5 console price hike in Japan since the system's launch.

The PlayStation 5 disc price will now be 79,980 yen ($550), an increase of roughly 13,000 yen ($90) from the previous cost. The PS5 digital edition is now priced at 72,970 (roughly $506), representing yet another increase of 13,000 yen ($90).

Windows 11 or 10 gamers who use a PS5 DualSense Edge controller for the titles where they prefer a gamepad to the mouse and keyboard will doubtless be pleased to learn that it's now possible to fully customize the peripheral on PC.

This is thanks to Sony releasing a new PlayStation Accessories app for Windows which lets you adjust all manner of parameters for the DualSense Edge.

As The Verge reports, you can use the app to customize the buttons, intensity of the haptic feedback, and also to adjust the deadzones for the triggers, and play with the stick sensitivity. Essentially it's possible to really fine-tune the DualSense to your own particular preferences for PC gaming.

Embracer Group's new quarterly report shows just how much the decentralized entertainment empire has cut from itself in an effort to stabilize and maintain profitability.

Like most of the video games industry right now, the Embracer Group has enacted some pretty harsh cost-cutting measures to help boost its margins. The group, which used to house a multitude of development teams and IPs from across the globe, went through a mass culling that saw thousands of people being laid off, and dozens of studios being shut down alongside dozens of game cancellations.

Recent figures from Embracer's Q2 2024 earnings report underlines how far these cuts actually went. We put together some numbers and graphs to illustrate the reductions in headcount, actual game projects, and studio closures.

Ubisoft's upcoming scoundrel-simulator Star Wars Outlaws may be pulling in solid pre-order numbers on PS5, updated PlayStation Store data indicates.

Star Wars Outlaws appears to be doing well on the PS Store. A quick look at the best-selling games on Sony's digital storefront shows that Ubisoft's third-person Star Wars game is in the top 10 games on the list, clocking it at #9, with mega-hits like NBA 2K25, GTA V, and Roblox taking a few spots above it.

This is a good sign for potential strong pre-orders for Star Wars Outlaws, at least in its current position on the charts. It's also interesting to note that reviews for the game have recently dropped and Outlaws has garnered a 77 rating on Metacritic with generally positive reviews.

Nintendo recently announced it is shutting down Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp's current iteration as a F2P mobile game, but it'll be coming back as a pay-to-play title on iOS and Android. Nintendo's historical earnings data might give some clues as to why this is happening.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is Nintendo's 3rd most-popular mobile title with over 10 million downloads, so why is the company shutting it down, and re-launching it as a pay-to-play game? There's a few possible reasons for this.

The first is that NDCube, the development studio responsible for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, may be too busy to actually upkeep the live game over time with new content and in-app purchases--especially via Pocket Camp's own subscription service. After all, NDCube has been pretty busy over the past 6 years, having developed 5x Switch games including two Mario Party titles.

Amazon will apparently publish games on Nintendo's new Switch 2 console, despite having never released any games for the current-gen model.

In a recent interview with IGN, Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann expresses interest in Nintendo's new DLSS-powered, 4K-ready Switch successor. Dubbed the Switch 2, the system is expected to leverage a more powerful NVIDIA Orin Tegra chip to deliver upscaled 4K resolution gaming, likely within the confines of the Switch OLED's dock (which itself is indeed capable of 4K output).

This extra horsepower is apparently enough to attract publishers like Amazon Games, who has yet to release any games onto the existing Tegra X1-powered Switch system.

We all know it's coming, we all know it'll be here later this year... but Sony hasn't officially announced the PlayStation 5 Pro console, yet. This could happen during a State of Play presentation rumored for late September, says an insider.

During the recent Game Mess Mornings episode, Jeff Grubb said that last he heard the PlayStation 5 Pro was coming out this year, and that an insider had heard that Sony would probably host a State of Play presentation for the end of September.

Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro console was an "open secret" at Gamescom 2024 last week in Cologne, Germany, and with the Tokyo Game Show 2024 right around the corner, a possible State of Play presentation, and the holidays looming... Sony is going to make quite the splash with the PS5 Pro.

Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro could cost around $600 or $700 at the higher range, Giant Bomb reporter Jeff Grubb estimates.

How much will Sony's new PS5 Pro be at launch? Given the PS5 Pro's specs, it could be pricey.

The PS5 Pro's GPU will have 60 RDNA 3.0 Compute Units (CUs) and can boost to a whopping 2.35GHz, which indicates a max 36 TFLOPs of compute power (that's a 5.4% increase over the PS5's 2.23GHz max GPU speeds). Sony also developed a proprietary DLSS-like upscaler called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR).

Nintendo has taken to its social media channels to announce its hosting a Nintendo Direct tomorrow with the an Indie World Showcase. The company also touched on a Switch successor.

Nintendo took to its "Nintendo of America" X account to announce an Indie World Showcase will be hosted tomorrow, August 27 at 7am PT, and following that will be a Nintendo Direct that will last for approximately 40 minutes in total. Nintendo finished off its announcement by mentioning the highly anticipated successor to the Nintendo Switch, which the company said wasn't going to be mentioned at all during the Direct. "Please note, there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during either of these presentations."

The highly anticipated console is only rumored at the moment with no officially announced information being available. However, rumors do suggest the presumably Nintendo Switch 2 will have similar performance to the Xbox One and focus on a combination of 1080p and 1440p gaming. 1440p during docked mode, which will redesigned to increase the performance of the console when its plugged in. Other rumors have suggested the successor console will fall short of the Valve Steam Deck in performance.

Nintendo fans have been waiting for quite some time for the official announcement of the Nintendo Switch successor, presumably called the Nintendo Switch 2 given the incredible success of the Switch.

But until that day comes fans will have to quench their thirst with a new rumor, which specifically mentions improvements to the successor's controllers. In a recent episode of the Bonuslevel podcast from the Power Unlimted website, and reported on by UniversoNintendo, the conversation with a reported manufacturer that is a "long-time partner of Nintendo" and involved in the "production and distribution of liscensed controllers".

The manufacturer, which didn't reveal his identity for obvious reasons, revealed Nintendo has issued a mandate for its next-generation console controllers to have motion sensor hardware, specifically gyroscopic. Notably, this feature is already present on the Nintendo Switch but only available in a select variety of games, albeit the list is quite long. The manufacturer claims this is the first time Nintendo has requested this level of requirement for its new licensed accessories.

A new leak has revealed that a Cars world was considered for Kingdom Hearts III during its development, but didn't make it to the final release and was left on the cutting room floor.

Five years after the release of Kingdom Hearts III the title's Premium Showcase files have been datamined, which are files that essentially show off behind-the-scenes development of cutscenes, mechanics, and other content. This isn't the first time a Kingdom Hearts game has been datamined to discover what fans didn't get to experience in the final release, as the same treatment was applied to previous mainline Kingdom Hearts games. However, this is the first time it has been applied to Kingdom Hearts III.

It appears developers were considering a Cars world for the 2019 game, as X user @ligero_miguel highlighted the word, "カーズ（仮)" which translates to "Cars (Tentative)". Unfortunately, the dataminer was unable to find any files related to Cars, which leads me to believe that it only existed as a potential idea for Kingdom Hearts III, and perhaps didn't even make it to the conceptual phase of development where rough sketches or assets were created.

Each year, the Gamescom Awards honor the best games at the show, from new trailers to announcements to playable demos, walkthroughs, and deep dives. This year was no different; however, two titles dominated the winners across various categories - one that makes a lot of sense and one that is a welcome surprise.

Capcom's highly anticipated and fantastic-looking Monster Hunter Wilds took home several awards thanks to its Gamescom showing - including the 'Most Entertaining' award for how the game was presented, plus awards for 'Most Epic' showing, having the 'Best Trailer,' and the 'Best Sony PlayStation Game' at the conference.

The other title that wowed Gamescom attendees and the jury was BANDAI NAMCO's Little Nightmare 3, which won the award for 'Best Visuals,' 'Best Audio,' and 'Best Microsoft Xbox Game.'

It was only last week Microsoft confirmed that Black Myth Wukong was still on its way to Xbox, following the removal of the Xbox logo from the title's marketing material back in June that spurred speculation Wukong was never heading to Microsoft's console.

Black Myth Wukong has already sold more than 10 million copies worldwide as of August 23, which was only three days after its release, along with it shattering the Steam record for the most-played single-player game in the platform's history with 2.3 million concurrent players. With the extreme popularity of Black Myth Wukong Xbox gamers are undoubtedly chomping at the bit to find out when the title is releasing on their console, and why it has been delayed.

Officially, neither Game Science or Microsoft has revealed why Wukong wasn't released on Xbox at the same time as PlayStation and PC. Forbes speculated in a recent article that Wukong was suffering from a similar fate as Baldur's Gate 3, which had development issues related to the low-end Xbox console variant, the Xbox Series X. In summarization, Black Myth Wukong is still being optimized for lower-end hardware as Microsoft requires developers to launch a game on all of its console variants and not selectively.

In the early 1990s, Nintendo announced that it was partnering with Sony to develop and create a new PlayStation console that would play Nintendo cartridges and Sony CDs. At the time, the CD-ROM was considered a cutting-edge game changer as it offered over 100 times the storage space compared to a traditional game cartridge or floppy disk.

Nintendo ultimately withdrew from the deal and partnered with Philips for the doomed-to-fail Philips CD-i system. Sony went on to develop the PlayStation as a standalone console. The rest is history. However, the Nintendo PlayStation or Nintendo-backed version of the Sony PlayStation made it to the prototype phase. Over the years, it has become an extremely rare collectible and a fascinating historical artifact.

A prototype Nintendo PlayStation sold for $360,000 at an auction back in 2020, and now Heritage Auctions has sold a Nintendo PlayStation controller prototype for a cool $35,000. This is an eye-watering amount for what looks like a Super Nintendo controller with a Sony and PlayStation logo on it.

Concord is a new first-person competitive hero shooter from Firewalk Studios and the latest first-party PlayStation game to launch simultaneously on PC and PlayStation 5. Earlier this year, Sony found immediate and incredible success in releasing the multiplayer-focused Helldivers 2 on PC and PS5.

Was it hoping to replicate that success with Concord? Most likely. However, the opposite has happened - Concord has had one of the worst game launches in recent memory, hitting a maximum of 697 concurrent players on its first weekend on Steam. And it's dropping fast.

This is a dramatically lower player count than even 2024's most notorious flop, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and a death sentence for a competitive shooter. By all accounts, the gameplay of Concord isn't the issue, nor is the overall performance and polish of the game - the game isn't resonating with gamers for a few key reasons. Let's break them down.

Popular action-adventure game Stellar Blade has generated roughly $19.5 million in revenue for developer Shift Up, but it has apparently sold more than 1 million copies on the PlayStation 5.

New earnings reports from Korean games company Shift Up give a clear look at the impact of Stellar Blade's sales. According to publicly-released data, Shift Up made 65.2 million Korean won (KRW), which amounts to roughly $48 million, in Q2'24, which coincides with the April - June 2024 period in which Stellar Blade had launched.

The company enjoyed an impressive operating profit margin of nearly 69% with 45.1 million KRW ($33.1 million) earned during the quarter. According to the results, Stellar Blade made about $19.5 million in royalties, which is an interesting figure.