Gaming - Page 232

Sony released its latest financial report for the quarter running from April to June 2024, and with 2.4 million sold, its lifetime sales total an impressive 61.7 million. However, PlayStation 5 console sales were down compared to the previous year, and the 61.7 million figure is lower than the PlayStation 4's lifetime sales at this point in its lifecycle.

But even with fewer PS5 consoles sold than expected or predicted, this is still good news for Sony's Game & Network Services division, with revenues up 12% year over year. Sony sold over 53.6 million PlayStation games for the quarter, with 80% of these being digital. In addition, monthly active users for the PlayStation Network increased to 116 million compared to 108 million in the same period last year.

Outside of Sony's strong financial performance, even with PS5 sales slowing down, one of the big takeaways from this new report is the shift to digital sales for console gamers. With boxed physical game sales continuing to decline, 80% of all game sales tied to the PlayStation Store and PC platforms like Steam bodes well for Sony's digital future.

Krafton, the parent company of PUBG Corp and Striking Distance Studios, has acquired Tango Gameworks from Xbox.

A bit ago, ZeniMax shut down Tango Gameworks. Now the studio has been bought out by South Korean gaming giant Krafton for an undisclosed amount. While not all properties are coming over with the sale, Krafton has acquired the Hi-Fi Rush IP from Xbox.

In the press release announcement (see below), Krafton confirms that it's working with ZeniMax to ensure a "smooth transition" of the teams so that more Hi-Fi Rush games can be made in the future. Tango and the Hi-Fi Rush series now has a new lease on life--which is great news amid the sea of layoffs in the games industry.

Microsoft is making a big subscription bet by launching Black Ops 6 day one on Xbox Game Pass...but that gambit doesn't make sense for everyone.

Take-Two is a believer in game subscriptions...but only where it makes sense. Case in point: GTA+ was introduced by Rockstar Games and has seen tremendous growth since launch. Plus, we've also seen GTA franchise revenues get a material boost after GTA V and GTA Online were included on services like Xbox Game Pass.

But there's a big difference in how publishers like Take-Two see subscriptions versus companies like Microsoft. Take-Two will only include evergreen games on subscription services. Microsoft, however, launches its games day-and-date on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in an attempt to A) change consumers behaviors towards digital-first subscriptions, and B) grow said subscription over time. Take-Two, however, has no vested interest in jeopardizing full game sales in this way--would anyone actually buy, say, GTA 6 if they could subscribe to Game Pass for a month and play it that way instead?

Gen 9 consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series hardware are expected to grow meaningfully over time--at least that's the take from one of the industry's most influential players.

PlayStation and Xbox just reported sluggish hardware performance. Quarterly console sales have dropped across both sides of the divide, with Xbox HW down a mighty 42% year-over-year. But this isn't the end for Gen9; Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick believes that the ninth console generation still has room for improvement. This makes sense, given his company is expected to help dramatically catalyze Gen9 console sales when Grand Theft Auto 6 releases in Fall 2025.

In a recent Q1 Fiscal Year 2025 earnings call, Zelnick shared his thoughts about the PS5 and Xbox Series generation, offering an interesting corollary to a Sony business report from May. In that report, Sony indicated that PS4 users represented half of its active console userbase.

After many consecutive quarters of millions-strong sales, GTA V is starting to flatten out while GTA+ subscriptions are on the rise.

Take-Two Interactive's Q1'FY25 results gave way to interesting trends for the publisher. It appears that sales of GTA V are starting to peter out after some 11 years on the market, indicating the best-seller is reaching peak saturation levels. While Take-Two does say that GTA V unit sales "continue to grow," the latest financial results put GTA V at "over 200 million," matching previous results from Q4'24.

As a counterpoint, it's possible that Take-Two simply hasn't updated its numbers for GTA V. The the investor's presentation, TTWO says that the GTA franchise has sold over 430 million units to date, which is +5 million over Q4'24's results. It's possible that the newer GTA trilogy has made up the bulk of these sales--the game was recently released onto mobiles--but no clarification was given in the investor slides. This coverage is based around the assumption that GTA V sales have not materially increased by millions of units based around the messaging in the presentation, and TTWO has been quick to update GTA V sales on these slides in the past.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise made around $175 million in revenue last quarter, Take-Two Interactive says.

Total GTA franchise revenues accounted for about 13% of Take-Two's Q1 Fiscal Year 2025 net revenues, the company has said in a recent 10-Q SEC filing. The interactive entertainment giant managed to generate $1.338 billion in net revenue during the period, and quick bit of math shows that Rockstar's popular series made approximately $175.3 million during the quarter.

The results represent a +0.33% increase from last year, where Q1'24 delivered $174.719 million in earnings, and a -5.7% decrease from last quarter. The numbers represent a combination of both game sales and microtransaction revenue from GTA Online, however the full amount of these in-game purchases is not reflected in Take-Two's net revenues, and are instead fully represented in the company's net bookings metric. Since we aren't given any percentage values on GTA's share of net bookings, we can't properly calculate the full impact of digital purchases made in GTA Online.

Doug Cockle, the voice actor of Geralt from the original Witcher trilogy, seems to confirm that the White Wolf will play some role in The Witcher 4.

A surprising bit of info has just dropped about CD Projekt's next Witcher game. Apparently Geralt of Rivia, aka The White Wolf aka The Butcher of Blaviken, will be a part of the game, despite the hero's journey being quite neatly wrapped up in The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine expansion.

"The Witcher 4 has been announced...I can't say anything about it. We know that Geralt will be part of the game, we just don't know how much. The game won't focus on Geralt, so it's not about him this time. We don't know who it's about, I'm excited to find out, I want to know," Cockle said in a recent gamified YouTube video where he tries to recreate iconic lines from the game.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is one of the best-looking games ever made, but it doesn't chew through your storage space like other huge games that require 300GB+ of space.

The base install of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 weighs in at around 130GB, with a bunch of world updates bringing the full install to around 500GB. If you thought that was bad... well, be thankful we don't have petabyte-sized SSDs on the market yet.

In a recent interview with PCGamer, the Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorge Neumann, said: "We have two and half petabytes (2,500,000 GB) of aerial data, obviously we can't install that, so we stream that. The same is true for the digital elevation map. It's also huge, and we stream that as well. What we do now is, we stream a bunch of the measures, almost all of them, actually. So almost all of it is on the cloud side. And streaming works great, right? So there's no problems there. But the client side gets thinner and thinner".

Remedy Games has announced that its upcoming Max Payne remake (Max Payne 1&2) is in "full production". Ohhhh yes.

Not only are the Max Payne 1&2 remakes in full production, but Remedy has teased that Control 2 has entered its "production readiness stage". Remedy CEO Tero Virtala said the "development fees increased from the comparison period due to higher development fees from Max Payne 1&2 remake".

What's exciting is that the Max Payne 1+2 remake will have a "similar development budget" to Alan Wake 2, which had a reported $75 million budget (and a marketing budget of almost $21.5 million). So Remedy is throwing close to 9 figures behind the Max Payne 1+2 remake, which as a huge, huge Max Payne fan, I'm very, very excited to see the final product.

For the past several months, we have been getting a slow trickle of Nintendo Switch 2 rumors, concentrating on what Nintendo is planning to put under the hood of its highly anticipated successor to the Nintendo Switch.

Current rumors suggest the Nintendo Switch 2 will have performance comparable to the Xbox One and concentrate on the combination of 1080p and 1440p gaming at various refresh rates. Previous rumors suggested the Switch successor's performance would fall short of the Valve Steam Deck but would come with a significant performance boost via a redesigned dock.

Now, a Famiboards forums user has shared some details from a supposed shipping manifest leak that claims Nintendo is planning on placing a second cooler on the Nintendo Switch 2, presumably on the dock. Additionally, the leaked information pointed to the inclusion of a 60W charger, which lends to the theory that the Nintendo Switch 2 will come with fast-charge support. As for a release of the Nintendo Switch 2, credible rumors, along with Nintendo's own financial reports, point to a release of the Switch successor sometime in early 2025, likely around March.

The first two DOOM games have been bundled together and re-released on every platform, but these classic titles come with a range of improvements, earning the description of "enhanced versions".

According to the blog post about the announcement found on the Steam website, this latest bundle of DOOM games is the developer's "biggest effort yet" as these enhanced versions come with online cross-platform Deathmatch and Co-op for up to 16 players, community-published single-player mod support for all those juicy community-created downloadable additions, optimized rendering, accessibility options, and support for 4K at 120Hz.

Additionally, the blog post states buyers will be able to select between the modern IDKFA soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult, which includes the brand-new DOOM II recordings, alongside the original MIDI soundtracks. As for people who already own the first DOOM games, they will receive a free upgrade to the combined game along with all of its new content and features.

Roblox has been officially banned by the Turkish government over concerns of "child exploitation" and inappropriate content.

The ban was issued by the Turkish Directorate of Communications, which states the decision was made after a concerning increase in the number of inappropriate sexual content on the platform, allegations it was used as a gathering place for pedophiles, and its in-game currency Robux being used to encourage children's involvement in inappropriate and predatory activities. Roblox has confirmed the ban, saying they have contacted the relevant authorities to attempt to get the game back online.

Officials also stated that Roblox's oversight for the user-generated content uploaded to the platform isn't substantial enough to respond to these growing issues. Notably, the Roblox ban comes only a few days after the Turkish government announced it was banning Instagram, which appears not to be related to the Roblox ban at this time.

There are rumors, or speculation, that Rockstar's highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 could see its planned 2025 release delayed to the following year. 'Highly anticipated' is putting it lightly; Grand Theft Auto 6 is on track to become the most successful game launch ever. The good news is that it's still on track for 2025, with publisher Take-Two narrowing the release window.

During Take-Two Interactive's latest quarterly financial earnings call, CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed that Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto 6 "will deliver an unparalleled entertainment experience" when it launches for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in Fall 2025.

This puts the release sometime during September, October, and November next year. Grand Theft Auto 5 has sold over 200 million copies to date, so undoubtedly, every other developer and publisher will be looking to avoid the exact launch date for GTA 6 when that's finally revealed.

God of War Ragnarok's PC launch is right around the corner. The highly anticipated sequel will arrive on September 19, 2024, on Steam and the Epic Games Store. PC development is being handled by the game's original developer, Santa Monica Studio, with assistance from the Vancouver-based Jetpack Interactive. We now have the full PC hardware specs and requirements for the game.

Covering 1080p, 1440p, and 4K with different visual quality settings, Santa Monica Studio confirms that its specs do not include or require upscaling technology to hit the targets. This is unlike Ubisoft's recent PC requirements for Star Wars Outlaws, where the publisher received some negative feedback for 'forcing' upscaling even at 1080p.

God of War Ragnarok will support NVIDIA DLSS 3.7, AMD FSR 3.1, Intel XeSS 1.3, and Frame Generation for all PC gamers, boosting performance and fidelity at higher resolutions when using the Ultra settings or those playing on Ultrawide displays.

Square Enix has confirmed that its latest RPG epic, Final Fantasy 16, was coming to PC; however, the development team was focused squarely (heh) on the PlayStation 5 launch ahead of the game's June 2023 release. As for a specific release date or window, PC fans have had to play 'wait-and-see' until the studio and producer Yoshi-P felt the PC version was ready to unleash.

The release could be right around the corner, thanks to some old-fashioned internet sleuthing. Fans on Reddit have found multiple mentions of the game in NVIDIA's latest Game Ready 560.81 WHQL driver for GeForce RTX graphics card owners.

And that's multiple because not only is "ffxvi.exe" listed under a game profile for Final Fantasy XVI, but also "ffxvi_demo.exe" - indicating that Square Enix is planning on releasing a playable slice of the RPG for all PC gamers to try out.

AMD has a new gaming bundle for those looking to pick up a new Ryzen CPU or Radeon GPU. Eligible customers will receive two new PC games to play - Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 and Unknown 9: Awakening. Both are visually impressive titles arriving later this year. However, the deal doesn't apply to AMD's new Zen 5 desktop Ryzen 9000 Series.

Eligible desktop products include any Ryzen 7000 Series CPU from the Ryzen 7 7700 and above or any Radeon RX 7000 Series GPU from the Radeon RX 7600 XT and above. The gaming bundle also applies to laptops, but these will need to include a Ryzen 7000 Series processor and a mobile Radeon RX 7600S or RX 7700S graphics card.

The deal is available to customers everywhere, including North American retailers such as Amazon and Newegg. For the games, hit the jump to check out trailers alongside the complete list of eligible products.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is officially coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, according to a new announcement from publisher Electronic Arts.

Survivor originally released on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, and the PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the EA App on April 28, 2023, and more than a year later, it's now coming to consoles that are more than 11 years old. While the PS4 and Xbox One are considered to be very old, there are still millions of gamers on both of those platforms, hence EA's push for Survivor to be available on the platforms.

The PS4 and Xbox One versions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will come with a variety of optimizations that are designed to maximize the capabilities of the hardware within both of the previous-gen consoles. Both versions of the game will retail for $49.99. Additionally, Respawn Entertainment confirmed via its press release that the PC version of the game will be getting an update in the "coming weeks" that will improve performance and controls while also introducing a bunch of quality-of-life improvements.

Hardware developers, which includes consoles, typically apply codenames to any prototypes they are working on. Nintendo is known for having some of the friendliest codenames for its prototypes, and one of them has re-emerged online in a new picture.

The console under the spotlight here is the GameCube, which the social media account Console Variants explains was called the "Nintendo Dolphin" when it was in its early prototype phase. The social media account explains that this version of the GameCube is so rare that it wasn't allowed to share the photos to the internet "until now" and that more pictures of it will be released "soon."

Notably, this version of the GameCube has been spoken about before, and imaged. But, the photographs snapped of it aren't clear enough to clearly see the "Nintendo Dolphin" branding. The Console Variations image is extremely clear, showing the "Nintendo Dolphin" branding and the disc tray. At the moment it remains unclear if Console Variations own the device, or is being sent the images from another source.

If you had a live feed of Activision headquarters right now you would likely see the a red alarm siren continuously blasting and employees running around like headless chickens, as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 gameplay has leaked ahead of the official release scheduled in just a couple weeks time.

The leaked content has already spread to numerous social media platforms, and Activision has responded by moving into high gear the number of issued DMCA takedown notices. Unfortunately for Activision, it appears its too late as the videos/images have already been saved and duplicated numerous times, which means the most the publisher can do is minimize the impact of the leaks.

So, what got leaked and how? It appears from reports the leak can be primarily traced back to an anonymous user who used a jailbroken PlayStation 4 to access the multiplayer beta of Black Ops 6 that was uploaded to COD HQ, the launcher that the last three Call of Duty games used.

Microsoft and the Xbox team have confirmed that Obsidian's new RPG, Avowed, will not be released in 2024 and has been delayed to February 18, 2025. The Xbox social media team confirmed the delay in an announcement that began with the phrase "so many games!" hinting that the delay comes down to too many first-party and key third-party releases on the way this holiday season.

Xbox head Phil Spencer chimed in, adding, "We're proud of what the Obsidian team have accomplished with Avowed and want to make sure they have the best launch possible. We look forward to you enjoying it along with the rest of our lineup of games and updates coming this year and beyond."

According to insiders, development on Avowed is wrapping up, and the delay is purely due to timing - so that the highly anticipated RPG doesn't get lost in a sea of Xbox games.